an accomplished orator. He was born and educated at a period when he must have formed the most exalted idea of his country. She had reached the height of power, and had not yet sunk into submission or servility. The subjects to be discussed, and characters to be canvassed, were thus of the most imposing magnitude, and could still be treated with freedom and independence. The education, too, which Cicero had received, was highly favourable to his improvement. He had the first philosophers of the age for his teachers, and he studied the civil law under Scævola, the most learned jurisconsult who had hitherto appeared in Rome. When he came to attend the Forum, he enjoyed the advantage of daily hearing Hortensius, unquestionably the most eloquent speaker who had yet shone in the Forum or Senate. The harangues of this great pleader formed his taste, and raised his emulation, and, till near the conclusion of his oratorical career, acted as an incentive to exertions, which might have abated, had he been left without a competitor in the Forum. The blaze of Hortensius’s rhetoric would communicate to his rival a brighter flame of eloquence than if he had been called on to refute a cold and inanimate adversary. Still, however, the great secret of his distinguished oratorical eminence was, that notwithstanding his vanity, he never fell into the apathy with regard to farther improvement, by which self-complacency is so often attended. On the contrary, Cicero, after he had delivered two celebrated orations, which filled the Forum with his renown, so far from resting satisfied with the acclamations of the capital, abandoned, for a time, the brilliant career on which he had entered, and travelled, during two years, through the cities of Greece, in quest of philosophical improvement and rhetorical instruction.
With powers of speaking beyond what had yet been known in his own country, and perhaps not inferior to those which had ever adorned any other, he possessed, in a degree superior to all orators, of whatever age or nation, a general and discursive acquaintance with philosophy and literature, together with an admirable facility of communicating the fruits of his labours, in a manner the most copious, perspicuous, and attractive. To this extensive knowledge, by which his mind was enriched and supplied with endless topics of illustration—to the lofty ideas of eloquence, which perpetually revolved in his thoughts—to that image which ever haunted his breast, of [pg 152]such infinite and superhuman perfection in oratory, that even the periods of Demosthenes did not fill up the measure of his conceptions313, we are chiefly indebted for those emanations of genius, which have given, as it were, an immortal tongue to the now desolate Forum and ruined Senate of Rome.
The first oration which Cicero pronounced, at least of those which are extant, was delivered in presence of four judges appointed by the Prætor, and with Hortensius for his opponent. It was in the case of Quintius, which was pleaded in the year 672, when Cicero was 26 years of age, at which time he came to the bar much later than was usual, after having studied civil law under Mucius Scævola, and having further qualified himself for the exercise of his profession by the study of polite literature under the poet Archias, as also of philosophy under the principal teachers of each sect who had resorted to Rome. This case was undertaken by Cicero, at the request of the celebrated comedian Roscius, the brother-in-law of Quintius; but it was not of a nature well adapted to call forth or display any of the higher powers of eloquence. It was a pure question of civil right, and, in a great measure, a matter of form; the dispute being whether his client had forfeited his recognisances, and whether his opponent Nævius had got legal possession of his effects by an edict which the Prætor had pronounced, in consequence of the supposed forfeiture. But even here, where the point was more one of dry legal discussion than in any other oration of Cicero, we meet with much invective, calculated to excite the indignation of the judges against the adverse party, and many pathetic supplications, interspersed with high-wrought pictures of the distresses of his client, in order to raise their sympathy in his favour.
Pro Sext. Roscio. In the year following that in which he pleaded the case of Quintius, Cicero undertook the defence of Roscius of Ameria, which was the first public or criminal trial in which he spoke. The father of Roscius had two mortal enemies, of his own name and district. During the proscriptions of Sylla, he was assassinated one evening at Rome, while returning home from supper; and, on pretext that he was in the list proscribed, his estate was purchased for a mere nominal price by Chrysogonus, a favourite slave, to whom Sylla had given freedom, and whom he had permitted to buy the property of Roscius as a forfeiture. Part of the valuable lands thus acquired, were made over by Chrysogonus to the Roscii. These new proprietors, in order to secure themselves in the possession, hired Erucius, an informer and prosecutor [pg 153]by profession, to charge the son with the murder of his father, and they, at the same time, suborned witnesses, in order to convict him of the parricide. From dread of the power of Sylla, the accused had difficulty in prevailing on any patron to undertake his cause; but Cicero eagerly embraced this opportunity to give a public testimony of his detestation of oppression and tyranny. He exculpates his client, by enlarging on the improbability of the accusation, whether with respect to the enormity of the crime charged, or the blameless character and innocent life of young Roscius. He shows, too, that his enemies had completely failed in proving that he laboured under the displeasure of his father, or had been disinherited by him; and, in particular, that his constant residence in the country was no evidence of this displeasure—a topic which leads him to indulge in a beautiful commendation of a rural life, and the ancient rustic simplicity of the Romans. But while he thus vindicates the innocence of Roscius, the orator has so managed his pleading, that it appears rather an artful accusation of the two Roscii, than a defence of his own client. He tries to fix on them the guilt of the murder, by showing that they, and not the son, had reaped all the advantages of the death of old Roscius, and that, availing themselves of the strict law, which forbade slaves to be examined in evidence against their masters, they would not allow those who were with Roscius at the time of his assassination, but had subsequently fallen into their own possession, to be put to the torture. The whole case seems to have been pleaded with much animation and spirit, but the oration was rather too much in that florid Asiatic taste, which Cicero at this time had probably adopted from imitation of Hortensius, who was considered as the most perfect model of eloquence in the Forum; and hence the celebrated passage on the punishment of parricide, (which consisted in throwing the criminal, tied up in a sack, into a river,) was condemned by the severer taste of his more advanced years. “Its intention,” he declares, “was to strike the parricide at once out of the system of nature, by depriving him of air, light, water, and earth, so that he who had destroyed the author of his existence might be excluded from those elements whence all things derived their being. He was not thrown to wild beasts, lest their ferocity should be augmented by the contagion of such guilt—he was not committed naked to the stream, lest he should contaminate that sea which washed away all other pollutions. Everything in nature, however common, was accounted too good for him to share in; for what is so common as air to the living, earth to the dead, the sea to those who float, the shore to those who are [pg 154]cast up. But the parricide lives so as not to breathe the air of heaven, dies so that the earth cannot receive his bones, is tossed by the waves so as not to be washed by them, so cast on the shore as to find no rest on its rocks.” This declamation was received with shouts of applause by the audience; yet Cicero, referring to it in subsequent works, calls it the exuberance of a youthful fancy, which wanted the control of his sounder judgment, and, like all the compositions of young men, was not applauded so much on its own account, as for the promise it gave of more improved and ripened talents314. This pleading is also replete with severe and sarcastic declamation on the audacity of the Roscii, as well as the overgrown power and luxury of Chrysogonus; the orator has even hazarded an insinuation against Sylla himself, which, however, he was careful to palliate, by remarking, that through the multiplicity of affairs, he was obliged to connive at many things which his favourites did against his inclination.
Cicero’s courage in defending and obtaining the acquittal of Roscius, under the circumstances in which the case was undertaken, was applauded by the whole city. By this public opposition to the avarice of an agent of Sylla, who was then in the plenitude of his power, and by the energy with which he resisted an oppressive proceeding, he fixed his character for a fearless and zealous patron of the injured, as much as for an accomplished orator. The defence of Roscius, which acquired him so much reputation in his youth, was remembered by him with such delight in his old age, that he recommends to his son, as the surest path to true honour, to defend those who are unjustly oppressed, as he himself had done in many causes, but particularly in that of Roscius of Ameria, whom he had protected against Sylla himself, in the height of his authority315.
Immediately after the decision of this cause, Cicero, partly on account of his health, and partly for improvement, travelled into Greece and Asia, where he spent two years in the assiduous study of philosophy and eloquence, under the ablest teachers of Athens and Asia Minor. Nor was his style alone formed and improved by imitation of the Greek rhetoricians: his pronunciation also was corrected, by practising under Greek masters, from whom he learned the art of commanding his voice, and of giving it greater compass and variety than it had hitherto attained316. The first cause which he pleaded after his return to Rome, was that of Roscius, the celebrated [pg 155]comedian, in a dispute, which involved a mere matter of civil right, and was of no peculiar interest or importance. All the orations which he delivered during the five following years, are lost, of which number were those for Marcus Tullius, and L. Varenus, mentioned by Priscian as extant in his time. At the end of that period, however, and when Cicero was now in the thirty-seventh year of his age, a glorious opportunity was afforded for the display of his eloquence, in the prosecution instituted against Verres, the Prætor of Sicily, a criminal infinitely more hateful than Catiline or Clodius, and to whom the Roman republic, at least, never produced an equal in turpitude and crime. He was now accused by the Sicilians of many flagrant acts of injustice, rapine, and cruelty, committed by him during his triennial government of their island, which he had done more to ruin than all the arbitrary acts of their native tyrants, or the devastating wars between the Carthaginians and Romans.
In the advanced ages of the republic, extortion and violence almost universally prevailed among those magistrates who were exalted abroad to the temptations of regal power, and whose predecessors, by their moderation, had called forth in earlier times the applause of the world. Exhausted in fortune by excess of luxury, they now entered on their governments only to enrich themselves with the spoils of the provinces intrusted to their administration, and to plunder the inhabitants by every species of exaction. The first laws against extortion were promulgated in the beginning of the seventh century. But they afforded little relief to the oppressed nations, who in vain sought redress at Rome; for the decisions there depending on judges generally implicated in similar crimes, were more calculated to afford impunity to the guilty, than redress to the aggrieved. This undue influence received additional weight in the case of Verres, from the high quality and connections of the culprit.
Such were the difficulties with which Cicero had to struggle, in entering on the accusation of this great public delinquent. This arduous task he was earnestly solicited to undertake, by a petition from all the towns of Sicily, except Syracuse and Messina, both which cities had been occasionally allowed by the plunderer to share the spoils of the province. Having accepted this trust, so important in his eyes to the honour of the republic, neither the far distant evidence, nor irritating delays of all those guards of guilt with which Verres was environed, could deter or slacken his exertions. The first device on the part of the criminal, or rather of his counsel, Hortensius, to defeat the ends of justice, was an [pg 156]attempt to wrest the conduct of the trial from the hands of Cicero, by placing it in those of Cæcilius317, who was a creature of Verres, and who now claimed a preference to Cicero, on the ground of personal injuries received from the accused, and a particular knowledge of the crimes of his pretended enemy. The judicial claims of these competitors had therefore to be first decided in that kind of process called Divinatio, in which Cicero delivered his oration, entitled Contra Cæcilium, and shewed, with much power of argument and sarcasm, that he himself was in every way best fitted to act as the impeacher of Verres.
Having succeeded in convincing the judges that Cæcilius only wished to get the cause into his own hands, in order to betray it, Cicero was appointed to conduct the prosecution, and was allowed 110 days to make a voyage to Sicily, in order to collect information for supporting his charge. He finished his progress through the island in less than half the time which had been granted him. On his return he found that a plan had been laid by the friends of Verres, to procrastinate the trial, at least till the following season, when they expected to have magistrates and judges who would prove favourable to his interests. In this design they so far succeeded, that time was not left to go through the cause according to the ordinary forms and practice of oratorical discussion in the course of the year: Cicero, therefore, resolved to lose no time by enforcing or aggravating the several articles of charge, but to produce at once all his documents and witnesses, leaving the rhetorical part of the performance till the whole evidence was concluded. The first oration, therefore, against Verres, which is extremely short, was merely intended to explain the motives which had induced him to adopt this unusual mode of procedure. He accordingly exposes the devices by which the culprit and his cabal were attempting to pervert the course of justice, and unfolds the eternal disgrace that would attach to the Roman law, should their stratagems prove successful. This oration was followed by the deposition of the witnesses, and recital of the documents, which so clearly established the guilt of Verres, that, driven to despair, he submitted, without awaiting his sentence, to a voluntary exile318. It therefore appears, that of the six orations against Verres, only one was pronounced. The other five, forming the series of harangues [pg 157]which he intended to deliver after the proof had been completed, were subsequently published in the same shape as if the delinquent had actually stood his trial, and was to have made a regular defence.
The first of these orations, which to us appears rather foreign to the charge, but was meant to render the proper part of the accusation more probable, exposes the excesses and malversations committed by Verres in early life, before his appointment to the Prætorship of Sicily—his embezzlement of public money while Quæstor of Gaul—his extortions under Dolabella in Asia, and, finally, his unjust, corrupt, and partial decisions while in the office of Prætor Urbanus at Rome, which, forming a principal part of the oration, the whole has been entitled De Prætura Urbana. In the following harangue, entitled De Jurisdictione Siciliensi, the orator commences with an elegant eulogy on the dignity, antiquity, and usefulness of the province, which was not here a mere idle or rhetorical embellishment, but was most appropriately introduced, as nothing could be better calculated to excite indignation against the spoiler of Sicily, than the picture he draws of its beauty; after which, he proceeds to give innumerable instances of the flagrant sale of justice, offices, and honours, and, among the last, even of the priesthood of Jupiter. The next oration is occupied with the malversations of Verres concerning grain, and the new ordinances, by which he had contrived to put the whole corps of the island at the disposal of his officers. In this harangue the dry statements of the prices of corn are rather fatiguing; but the following oration, De Signis, is one of the most interesting of his productions, particularly as illustrating the history of ancient art. For nearly six centuries Rome had been filled only with the spoils of barbarous nations, and presented merely the martial spectacle of a warlike and conquering people. Subsequently, however, to the campaigns in Magna Græcia, Sicily, and Greece, the Roman commanders displayed at their triumphs costly ornaments of gold, pictures, statues, and vases, instead of flocks driven from the Sabines or Volsci, the broken arms of the Samnites, and empty chariots of the Gauls. The statues and paintings which Marcellus transported from Syracuse to Rome, first excited that cupidity which led the Roman provincial magistrates to pillage, without scruple or distinction, the houses of private individuals, and temples of the gods319. Marcellus and Mummius, however, despoiled only hostile and conquered countries. They had made over their [pg 158]plunder to the public, and, after it was conveyed to Rome, devoted it to the embellishment of the capital; but subsequent governors of provinces having acquired a taste for works of art, began to appropriate to themselves those masterpieces of Greece, which they had formerly neither known nor esteemed. Some contrived plausible pretexts for borrowing valuable works of art from cities and private persons, without any intention of restoring them; while others, less cautious, or more shameless, seized whatever pleased them, whether public or private property, without excuse or remuneration. But though this passion was common to most provincial governors, none of them ever came up to the full measure of the rapacity of Verres, who, allowing much for the high colouring of the counsel and orator, appears to have been infected with a sort of disease, or mania, which gave him an irresistible propensity to seize whatever he saw or heard of, which was precious either in materials or workmanship. For this purpose he retained in his service two brothers from Asia Minor, on whose judgment he relied for the choice of statues and pictures, and who were employed to search out everything of this sort which was valuable in the island. Aided by their suggestions, he seized tapestry, pictures, gold and silver plate, vases, gems, and Corinthian bronzes, till he literally did not leave a single article of value of these descriptions in the whole island. The chief objects of this pillage were the statues and pictures of the gods, which the Romans regarded with religious veneration; and they, accordingly, viewed such rapine as sacrilege. Hence the frequent adjurations and apostrophes to the deities who had been insulted, which are introduced in the oration. The circumstances of violence and circumvention, under which the depredations were committed, are detailed with much vehemence, and at considerable length. Some description is given of the works of sculpture; and the names of the statuaries by whom they were executed, are also frequently recorded. Thus, we are told that Verres took away from a private gentleman of Messina the marble Cupid, by Praxiteles: He sacrilegiously tore a figure of Victory from the temple of Ceres—he deprived the city Tyndaris of an image of Mercury, which had been restored to it from Carthage, by Scipio, and was worshipped by the people with singular devotion and an annual festival. Some of the works of art were openly carried off—some borrowed under plausible pretences, but never restored, and others forcibly purchased at an inadequate value. If the speech De Signis be the most curious, that De Suppliciis is incomparably the finest of the series of Verrine orations. The [pg 159]subject afforded a wider field than the former for the display of eloquence, and it presents us with topics of more general and permanent interest. Such, indeed, is the vehement pathos, and such the resources employed to excite pity in favour of the oppressed, and indignation against the guilty, that the genius of the orator is nowhere more conspicuously displayed—not even in the Philippics or Catilinarian harangues. It was now proved that Verres had practiced every species of fraud and depredation, and on these heads no room was left for defence. But as the duties of provincial Prætors were twofold—the administration of the laws, and the direction of warlike operations—it was suspected that the counsel of Verres meant to divert the attention of the judges from his avarice to his military conduct and valour. This plea the orator completely anticipates. His misconduct, indeed, in the course of the naval operations against the pirates, forms one of the chief topics of Cicero’s bitter invective. He demonstrates that the fleet had been equipped rather for show than for service; that it was unprovided with sailors or stores, and altogether unfit to act against an enemy. The command was given to Cleomenes, a Syracusan, who was ignorant of naval affairs, merely that Verres might enjoy the company of his wife during his absence. The description of the sailing of the fleet from Syracuse is inimitable, and it is so managed that the whole seems to pass before the eyes. Verres, who had not been seen in public for many months, having retired to a splendid pavilion, pitched near the fountain of Arethusa, where he passed his time in company of his favourites, amidst all the delights that arts and luxury could administer, at length appeared, in order to view the departure of the squadron; and a Roman Prætor exhibited himself, standing on the shore in sandals, with a purple cloak flowing to his heels, and leaning on the shoulder of a harlot! The fleet, as was to be expected, was driven on shore, and there burned by the pirates, who entered Syracuse in triumph, and retired from it unmolested. Verres, in order to divert public censure from himself, put the captains of the ships to death; and this naturally leads on to the subject which has given name to the oration,—the cruel and illegal executions, not merely of Sicilians, but Roman citizens. The punishments of death and torture usually reserved for slaves, but inflicted by Verres on freemen of Rome, formed the climax of his atrocities, which are detailed in oratorical progression. After the vivid description of his former crimes, one scarcely expects that new terms of indignation will be found; but the expressions of the orator become more glowing, in proportion as Verres grows more daring in [pg 160]his guilt. The sacred character borne over all the world by a Roman citizen, must be fully remembered, in order to read with due feeling the description of the punishment of Gavius, who was scourged, and then nailed to a cross, which, by a refinement in cruelty, was erected on the shore, and facing Italy, that he might suffer death with his view directed towards home and a land of liberty. The whole is poured forth in a torrent of the most rapid and fervid composition; and had it actually flowed from the lips of the speaker, we cannot doubt the prodigious effect it would have had on a Roman audience, and on Roman judges. In the oration De Signis, something, as we have seen, is lost to a modern reader, by the diminished reverence for the mythological deities; and, in like manner, we cannot enter fully into the spirit of the harangue De Suppliciis, which is planned with a direct reference to national feeling, to that stern decorum which could not be overstepped without shame, and that adoration of the majesty of Rome, which invested its citizens with inexpressible dignity, and bestowed on them an almost inviolable nature. Hence the appearance of Verres in public, in a long purple robe, is represented as the climax of his enormities, and the punishment of scourging inflicted on a Roman citizen is treated (without any discussion concerning the justice of the sentence) as an unheard-of and unutterable crime. Yet even those parts least attractive to modern readers, are perfect in their execution; and the whole series of orations will ever be regarded as among the most splendid monuments of Tully’s transcendent genius.
In the renowned cause against Verres, there can be no doubt that the orator displayed the whole resources of his vast talents. Every circumstance concurred to stimulate his exertions and excite his eloquence. It was the first time he had appeared as an accuser in a public trial—his clients were the injured people of a mighty province, rivalling in importance the imperial state—the inhabitants of Sicily surrounded the Forum, and an audience was expected from every quarter of Italy, of all that was exalted, intelligent, and refined. But, chiefly, he had a subject, which, from the glaring guilt of the accused, and the nature of his crimes, was so copious, interesting, and various, so abundant in those topics which an orator would select to afford full scope for the exercise of his powers, that it was hardly possible to labour tamely or listlessly in so rich a mine of eloquence. Such a wonderful assemblage of circumstances never yet prepared the course for the triumphs of oratory; so great an opportunity for the exhibition of forensic art will, in all probability, never again occur. Suf[pg 161]fice it to say, that the orator surpassed by his workmanship the singular beauty of his materials; and instead of being overpowered by their magnitude, derived from the vast resources which they supplied the merit of an additional excellence, in the skill and discernment of his choice.
The infinite variety of entertaining anecdotes with which the series of pleadings against Verres abounds—the works of art which are commemorated—the interesting topographical descriptions—the insight afforded into the laws and manners of the ancient Sicilians—the astonishing profusion of ironical sallies, all conspire to dazzle the imagination and rivet the attention of the reader; yet there is something in the idea that they were not actually delivered, which detracts from the effect of circumstances which would otherwise heighten our feelings. It appears to us even preposterous to read, in the commencement of the second oration, of a report having been spread that Verres was to abandon his defence, but that there he sat braving his accusers and judges with his characteristic impudence. The exclamations on his effrontery, and the adjurations of the judges, lose their force, when we cannot help recollecting that before one word of all this could be pronounced, the person against whom they were directed as present had sneaked off into voluntary exile. Whatever effect this recollection may have had on the ancients, who regarded oratory as an art, and an oration as an elaborate composition, nothing can be more grating or offensive to the taste and feelings of a modern reader, whose idea of eloquence is that of something natural, heart-felt, inartificial, and extemporaneous.
The Sicilians, though they could scarcely have been satisfied with the issue of the trial, appear to have been sufficiently sensible of Cicero’s great exertions in their behalf. Blainville, in his Travels, mentions, that while at Grotta Ferrata, a convent built on the ruins of Cicero’s Tusculan Villa, he had been shown a silver medal, unquestionably antique, struck by the Sicilians in gratitude for his impeachment of Verres. One side exhibits a head of Cicero, crowned with laurel, with the legend M. T. Ciceroni—on the reverse, there is the representation of three legs extended in a triangular position, in the form of the three great capes or promontories of Sicily, with the motto,—“Prostrato Verre Trinacria.”
Pro Fonteio. It is much to be regretted, that the oration for Fonteius, the next which Cicero delivered, has descended to us incomplete. It was the defence of an unpopular governor, accused of oppression by the province intrusted to his administration; and, as such, would have formed an interesting contrast to the accusation of Verres.
[pg 162]Pro Cæcina. This was a mere question of civil right, turning on the effect of a Prætorian edict.
Pro Lege Manilia. Hitherto Cicero had only addressed the judges in the Forum in civil suits or criminal prosecutions. The oration for the Manilian law, which is accounted one of the most splendid of his productions, was the first in which he spoke to the whole people from the rostrum. It was pronounced in favour of a law proposed by Manilius, a tribune of the people, for constituting Pompey sole general, with extraordinary powers, in the war against Mithridates and Tigranes, in which Lucullus at that time commanded. The chiefs of the Senate regarded this law as a dangerous precedent in the republic; and all the authority of Catulus, and eloquence of Hortensius, were directed against it. It has been conjectured, that in supporting pretensions which endangered the public liberty, Cicero was guided merely by interest, since an opposition to Pompey might have prevented his own election to the consulship, which was now the great object of his ambition. His life, however, and writings, will warrant us in ascribing to him a different, though perhaps less obvious motive. With the love of virtue and the republic, which glowed so intensely in the breast of this illustrious Roman, that less noble passion, the immoderate desire of popular fame, was unfortunately mingled. “Fame,” says a modern historian, “was the prize at which he aimed; his weakness of bodily constitution sought it through the most strenuous labours—his natural timidity of mind pursued it through the greatest dangers. Pompey, who had fortunately attained it, he contemplated as the happiest of men, and was led, from this illusion of fancy, not only to speak of him, but really to think of him,” (till he became unfortunate,) “with a fondness of respect bordering on enthusiasm. The glare of glory that surrounded Pompey, concealed from Cicero his many and great imperfections, and seduced an honest citizen, and finest genius in Rome, a man of unparalleled industry, and that generally applied to the noblest purposes, into the prostitution of his abilities and virtues, for exalting an ambitious chief, and investing him with such exorbitant and unconstitutional powers, as virtually subverted the commonwealth320.”
In defending this pernicious measure, Cicero divided his discourse into two parts—showing, first, that the importance and imminent dangers of the contest in which the state was engaged, required the unusual remedy proposed—and, secondly, that Pompey was the fittest person to be intrusted with the conduct [pg 163]of the war. This leads to a splendid panegyric on that renowned commander, in which, while he does justice to the merits of his predecessor, Lucullus, he enlarges on the military skill, valour, authority, and good fortune of this present idol of his luxuriant imagination, with all the force and beauty which language can afford. He fills the imagination with the immensity of the object, kindles in the breast an ardour of affection and gratitude, and, by an accumulation of circumstances and proofs, so aggrandizes his hero, that he exalts him to something more than mortal in the minds of his auditory; while, at the same time, every word inspires the most perfect veneration for his character, and the most unbounded confidence in his integrity and judgment. The whole world is exhibited as an inadequate theatre for the actions of such a superior genius; while all the nations, and potentates of the earth, are in a manner called as witnesses of his valour and his truth. By enlarging on these topics, by the most solemn protestations of his own sincerity, and by adducing examples from antiquity, of the state having been benefited or saved, by intrusting unlimited power to a single person, he allayed all fears of the dangers which it was apprehended might result to the constitution, from such extensive authority being vested in one individual—and thus struck the first blow towards the subversion of the republic!
Pro Cluentio. This is a pleading for Cluentius, who, at his mother’s instigation, was accused of having poisoned his stepfather, Oppianicus. Great part of the harangue appears to be but collaterally connected with the direct subject of the prosecution. Oppianicus, it seems, had been formerly accused by Cluentius, and found guilty of a similar attempt against his life; but after his condemnation, a report became current that Cluentius had prevailed in the cause by corrupting the judges, and, to remove the unfavourable impression thus created against his client, Cicero recurs to the circumstances of that case. In the second part of the oration, which refers to the accusation of poisoning Oppianicus, he finds it necessary to clear his client from two previous charges of attempts to poison. In treating of the proper subject of the criminal proceedings, which does not occupy above a sixth part of the whole oration, he shows that Cluentius could have had no access or opportunity to administer poison to his father, who was in exile; that there was nothing unusual or suspicious in the circumstances of his death; and that the charge originated in the machinations of Cluentius’ unnatural mother, against whom he inveighs with much force, as one hurried along blindfold by guilt—who acts with such folly that no one can ac[pg 164]count her a rational creature—with such violence that none can imagine her to be a woman—with such cruelty, that none can call her a mother. The whole oration discloses such a scene of enormous villainy—of murders, by poison and assassination—of incest, and subornation of witnesses, that the family history of Cluentius may be regarded as the counterpart in domestic society, of what the government of Verres was in public life. Though very long, and complicated too, in the subject, it is one of the most correct and forcible of all Cicero’s judicial orations; and, under the impression that it comes nearer to the strain of a modern pleading than any of the others, it has been selected by Dr Blair as the subject of a minute analysis and criticism321.
De Lege Agraria contra Rullum. In his discourse Pro Lege Manilia, the first of the deliberative kind addressed to the assembly of the people, Cicero had the advantage of speaking for a favourite of the multitude, and against the chiefs of the Senate; but he was placed in a very different situation when he came to oppose the Agrarian law. This had been for 300 years the darling object of the Roman tribes—the daily attraction and rallying word of the populace—the signal of discord, and most powerful engine of the seditious tribunate. The first of the series of orations against the Agrarian law, now proposed by Rullus, was delivered by Cicero in the Senate-house, shortly after his election to the consulship: The second and third were addressed to the people from the rostrum. The scope of the present Agrarian law was, to appoint Decemvirs for the purpose of selling the public domains in the provinces, and to recover from the generals the spoils acquired in foreign wars, by which a fund might be formed for the purchase of lands in Italy, particularly Campania—to be equally divided among the people. Cicero, in his first oration, of which the commencement is now wanting, quieted the alarms of the Senate, by assuring them of his resolution to oppose the law with his utmost power. When the question came before the people, he did not fear to encounter the Tribunes on their own territory, and most popular subject; he did not hesitate to make the rabble judges in their own cause, though one in which their passions, interests, and prejudices, and those of their fathers, had been engaged for so many centuries. Conscious of his superiority, he invited the Tribunes to ascend the rostrum, and argue the point with him before the assembled multitude; but the field was left clear to his argument and eloquence, and by alternately flat[pg 165]tering the people, and ridiculing the proposer of the law, he gave such a turn to their inclinations, that they rejected the proposition as eagerly as they had before received it.
But although the Tribunes were unable to cope with Cicero in the Forum, they subsequently contrived to instil suspicions into the minds of the populace, with regard to his motives in opposing the Agrarian law. These imputations made such an impression on the city, that he found it necessary to defend himself against them, in a short speech to the people. It has been disputed, whether this third oration was the last which Cicero pronounced on occasion of this Agrarian law. In the letters to Atticus, while speaking of his consular orations, he says, “that among those sent, was that pronounced in the Senate, and that addressed to the people, on the Agrarian law322.” These are the first and second of the speeches, which we now have against Rullus; but he also mentions, that there were two apospasmatia, as he calls them, concerning the Agrarian law. Now, what is at present called the third, was probably the first of these two, and the last must have perished.
Pro Rabirio. About the year 654, Saturninus, a seditious Tribune, had been slain by a party attached to the interests of the Senate. Thirty-six years afterwards, Rabirius was accused of accession to this murder, by Labienus, subsequently well known as Cæsar’s lieutenant in Gaul. Hortensius had pleaded the cause before the Duumvirs, Caius and Lucius Cæsar, by whom Rabirius being condemned, appealed to the people, and was defended by Cicero in the Comitia. The Tribune, it seems, had been slain in a tumult during a season of such danger, that a decree had been passed by the Senate, requiring the Consuls to be careful that the republic received no detriment. This was supposed to sanction every proceeding which followed in consequence; and the design of the popular party, in the impeachment of Rabirius, was to attack this prerogative of the Senate. Cicero’s oration on this contention between the Senatorial and Tribunitial power, gives us more the impression of prompt and unstudied eloquence than most of his other harangues. It is, however, a little obscure, partly from the circumstance that the accuser would not permit him to exceed half an hour in the defence. The argument seems to have been, that Rabirius did not kill Saturninus; but that even if he had slain him, the action was not merely legal, but praiseworthy, since all citizens had been required to arm in aid of the Consuls.
[pg 166]It was believed, that in spite of the exertions of Cicero, Rabirius would have been condemned, had not the Prætor Metellus devised an expedient for dissolving the Comitia, before sentence could be passed. The cause was neither farther prosecuted at this time, nor subsequently revived; the public attention being now completely engrossed by the imminent dangers of the Catilinarian Conspiracy, which was discovered during the Consulship of Cicero.
Contra Catilinam. The detection and suppression of that nefarious plot, form the most glorious part of the political life of Cicero; and the orations he pronounced against the chief conspirator, are still regarded as the most splendid monuments of his eloquence. It was no longer to defend the rights and prerogatives of a municipal town or province, nor to move and persuade a judge in favour of an unfortunate client, but to save his country and the republic, that Cicero ascended the Rostrum. The conspiracy of Catiline tended to the utter extinction of the city and government. Cicero, having discovered his design, (which was to leave Rome and join his army, assembled in different parts of Italy, while the other conspirators remained within the walls, to butcher the Senators and fire the capital,) summoned the Senate to meet in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, with the intention of laying before it the whole circumstances of the plot. But Catiline having unexpectedly appeared in the midst of the assembly, his audacity impelled the consular orator into an abrupt invective, which is directly addressed to the traitor, and commences without the preamble by which most of his other harangues are introduced. In point of effect, this oration must have been perfectly electric. The disclosure to the criminal himself of his most secret purposes—their flagitious nature, threatening the life of every one present—the whole course of his villainies and treasons, blazoned forth with the fire of incensed eloquence—and the adjuration to him, by flying from Rome, to free his country from such a pestilence, were all wonderfully calculated to excite astonishment, admiration, and horror. The great object of the whole oration, was to drive Catiline into banishment; and it appears somewhat singular, that so dangerous a personage, and who might have been so easily convicted, should thus have been forced, or even allowed, to withdraw to his army, instead of being seized and punished. Catiline having escaped unmolested to his camp, the conduct of the Consul in not apprehending, but sending away this formidable enemy, had probably excited some censure and discontent; and the second Catilinarian oration was in consequence delivered by Cicero, in an assembly of the people, in [pg 167]order to justify his driving the chief conspirator from Rome. A capital punishment, he admits, ought long since to have overtaken Catiline, but such was the spirit of the times, that the existence of the conspiracy would not have been believed, and he had therefore resolved to place his guilt in a point of view so conspicuous, that vigorous measures might without hesitation be adopted, both against Catiline and his accomplices. He also takes this opportunity to warn his audience against those bands of conspirators who still lurked within the city, and whom he divides into various classes, describing, in the strongest language, the different degrees of guilt and profligacy by which they were severally characterized.
Manifest proofs of the whole plot having been at length obtained, by the arrest of the ambassadors from the Allobroges, with whom the conspirators had tampered, and who were bearing written credentials from them to their own country, Cicero, in his third oration, laid before the people all the particulars of the discovery, and invited them to join in celebrating a thanksgiving, which had been decreed by the Senate to his honour, for the preservation of his country.
The last Catilinarian oration was pronounced in the Senate, on the debate concerning the punishment to be inflicted on the conspirators. Silanus had proposed the infliction of instant death, while Cæsar had spoken in favour of the more lenient sentence of perpetual imprisonment. Cicero does not precisely declare for any particular punishment; but he shows that his mind evidently inclined to the severest, by dwelling on the enormity of the conspirators’ guilt, and aggravating all their crimes with much acrimony and art. His sentiments finally prevailed; and those conspirators, who had remained in Rome, were strangled under his immediate superintendence.
In these four orations, the tone and style of each of them, particularly of the first and last, is very different, and accommodated with a great deal of judgment to the occasion, and to the circumstances under which they were delivered. Through the whole series of the Catilinarian orations, the language of Cicero is well calculated to overawe the wicked, to confirm the good, and encourage the timid. It is of that description which renders the mind of one man the mind of a whole assembly, or a whole people323.
[pg 168]Pro Muræna.—The Comitia being now held in order to choose Consuls for the ensuing year, Junius Silanus and Muræna were elected. The latter candidate had for his competitor the celebrated jurisconsult Sulpicius Rufus; who, being assisted by Cato, charged Muræna with having prevailed by bribery and corruption. This impeachment was founded on the Calpurnian law, which had lately been rendered more strict, on the suggestion of Sulpicius, by a Senatusconsultum. Along with this accusation, the profligacy of Muræna’s character was objected to, and also the meanness of his rank, as he was but a knight and soldier, whereas Sulpicius was a patrician and lawyer. Cicero therefore shows, in the first place, that he amply merited the consulship, from his services in the war with Mithridates, which introduces a comparison between a military and forensic life. While he pays his usual tribute of applause to cultivated eloquence, he derides the forms and phraseology of the jurisconsults, by whom the civil law was studied and practised. As to the proper subject of the accusation, bribery in his election, it seems probable that Muræna had been guilty of some practices which, strictly speaking, were illegal, yet were warranted by custom. They seem to have consisted in encouraging a crowd to attend him on the streets, and in providing shows for the entertainment of the multitude; which, though expected by the people, and usually overlooked by the magistrates, appeared heinous offences in the eye of the rigid and stoical Cato. Aware of the weight added to the accusation by his authority, Cicero, in order to obviate this influence, treats his stoical principles in the same tone which he had already used concerning the profession of Sulpicius. In concluding, he avails himself of the difficulties of the times, and the yet unsuppressed conspiracy of Catiline, which rendered it unwise to deprive the city of a Consul well qualified to defend it in so dangerous a crisis.
This case was one of great expectation, from the dignity of the prosecutors, and eloquence of the advocates for the accused. Before Cicero spoke, it had been pleaded by Hortensius, and Crassus the triumvir; and Cicero, in engaging in the cause, felt the utmost desire to surpass these rivals of his eloquence. Such was his anxiety, that he slept none during the whole night which preceded the hearing of the cause; and being thus exhausted with care, his eloquence on this occasion fell short of that of Hortensius324. He shows, however, much delicacy and art in the manner in which he manages the attack on the philosophy of Cato, and profession of Sulpicius, [pg 169]both of whom were his particular friends, and high in the estimation of the judges he addressed325.
Pro Valerio Flacco.—Flaccus had aided Cicero in his discovery of the conspiracy of Catiline, and, in return, was defended by him against a charge of extortion and peculation, brought by various states of Asia Minor, which he had governed as Pro-prætor.
Pro Cornelio Sylla.—Sylla, who was afterwards a great partizan of Cæsar’s, was prosecuted for having been engaged in Catiline’s conspiracy; but his accuser, Torquatus, digressing from the charge against Sylla, turned his raillery on Cicero; alleging, that he had usurped the authority of a king; and asserting, that he was the third foreign sovereign who had reigned at Rome after Numa and Tarquin. Cicero, therefore, in his reply, had not only to defend his client, but to answer the petulant raillery by which his antagonist attempted to excite envy and odium against himself. He admits that he was a foreigner in one sense of the word, having been born in a municipal town of Italy, in common with many others who had rendered the highest services to the city; but he repels the insinuation that he usurped any kingly authority; and being instigated by this unmerited attack, he is led on to the eulogy of his own conduct and consulship,—a favourite subject, from which he cannot altogether depart, even when he enters more closely into the grounds of the prosecution.
For this defence of Cornelius Sylla, Cicero privately received from his client the sum of 20,000 sesterces, which chiefly enabled him to purchase his magnificent house on the Palatine Hill.
Pro Archia.—This is one of the orations of Cicero on which he has succeeded in bestowing the finest polish, and it is perhaps the most pleasing of all his harangues. Archias had been his preceptor, and, after having obtained much reputation by his Greek poems, on the triumphs of Lucullus over Mithridates, and of Marius over the Cimbri, was now attempting to celebrate the consulship of Cicero; so that the orator, in pleading his cause, expected to be requited by the praises of his muse.
This poet was a native of Antioch, and, having come to Italy in early youth, was rewarded for his learning and genius with the friendship of the first men in the state, and with the citizenship of Heraclea, a confederate and enfranchised town of Magna Græcia. A few years afterwards, a law was [pg 170]enacted, conferring the rights of Roman citizens on all who had been admitted to the freedom of federate states, provided they had a settlement in Italy at the time when the law was passed, and had asserted the privilege before the Prætor within sixty days from the period at which it was promulgated. After Archias had enjoyed the benefit of this law for more than twenty years, his claims were called in question by one Gracchus, who now attempted to drive him from the city, under the enactment expelling all foreigners who usurped, without due title, the name and attributes of Roman citizens. The loss of records, and some other circumstances, having thrown doubts on the legal right of his client, Cicero chiefly enlarged on the dignity of literature and poetry, and the various accomplishments of Archias, which gave him so just a claim to the privileges he enjoyed. He beautifully describes the influence which study and a love of letters had exercised on his own character and conduct. He had thence imbibed the principle, that glory and virtue should be the darling objects of life, and that to attain these, all difficulties, or even dangers, were to be despised. But, of all names dear to literature and genius, that of poet was the most sacred: hence it would be an extreme of disgrace and profanation, to reject a bard who had employed the utmost efforts of his art to make Rome immortal by his muse, and had possessed such prevailing power as to touch with pleasure even the stubborn and intractable soul of Marius.
The whole oration is interspersed with beautiful maxims and sentences, which have been quoted with delight in all ages. There appears in it, however, perhaps too much, and certainly more than in the other orations, of what Lord Monboddo calls concinnity. “We have in it,” observes he, speaking of this oration, “strings of antitheses, the figure of like endings, and a perfect similarity of the structure, both as to the grammatical form of the words, and even the number of them326.” The whole, too, is written in a style of exaggeration and immoderate praise. The orator talks of the poet Archias, as if the whole glory of Rome, and salvation of the commonwealth, depended on his poetical productions, and as if the smallest injury offered to him would render the name of Rome execrable and infamous in all succeeding generations.
Pro Cn. Plancio.—The defence of Plancius was one of the first orations pronounced by Cicero after his return from banishment. Plancius had been Quæstor of Macedon when Cicero came to that country during his exile, and had received [pg 171]him with honours proportioned to his high character, rather than his fallen fortunes. In return for this kindness, Cicero undertook his defence against a charge, preferred by a disappointed competitor, of bribery and corruption in suing for the ædileship.
Pro Sextio.—This is another oration produced by the gratitude of Cicero, and the circumstances of his banishment. Sextius, while Tribune of the people, had been instrumental in procuring his recall, and Cicero requited this good office by one of the longest and most elaborate of his harangues. The accusation, indeed, was a consequence of his interposition in favour of the illustrious exile; for when about to propose his recall to the people, he was violently attacked by the Clodian faction, and left for dead on the street. His enemies, however, though obviously the aggressors, accused him of violence, and exciting a tumult. This was the charge against which Cicero defended him. The speech is valuable for the history of the times; as it enters into all the recent political events in which Cicero had borne so distinguished a part. The orator inveighs against his enemies, the Tribune Clodius, and the Consuls Gabinius and Piso, and details all the circumstances connected with his own banishment and return, occasionally throwing in a word or two about his client Sextius.
Contra Vatinium.—Vatinius, who belonged to the Clodian faction, appeared, at the trial of Sextius, as a witness against him. This gave Cicero an opportunity of interrogating him; and the whole oration being a continued invective on the conduct of Vatinius, poured forth in a series of questions, without waiting for an answer to any of them, has been entitled, Interrogatio.
Pro Cælio.—Middleton has pronounced this to be the most entertaining of the orations which Cicero has left us, from the vivacity of wit and humour with which he treats the gallantries of Clodia, her commerce with Cælius, and in general the gaieties and licentiousness of youth.
Cælius was a young man of considerable talents and accomplishments, who had been intrusted to the care of Cicero on his first introduction to the Forum; but having imprudently engaged in an intrigue with Clodia, the well-known sister of Clodius, and having afterwards deserted her, she accused him of an attempt to poison her, and of having borrowed money from her in order to procure the assassination of Dio, the Alexandrian ambassador. In this, as in most other prosecutions of the period, a number of charges, unconnected with the main one, seem to have been accumulated, in order to [pg 172]give the chief accusation additional force and credibility. Cicero had thus to defend his client against the suspicions arising from the general libertinism of his conduct. He justifies that part of it which related to his intercourse with Clodia, by enlarging on the loose character of this woman, whom he treats with very little ceremony; and, in order to place her dissolute life in a more striking point of view, he conjures up in fancy one of her grim and austere ancestors of the Clodian family reproaching her with her shameful degeneracy. All this the orator was aware would not be sufficient for the complete vindication of his client; and it is curious to remark the ingenuity with which the strenuous advocate of virtue and regularity of conduct palliates, on this occasion, the levities of youth,—not, indeed, by lessening the merits of strict morality, but by representing those who withstand the seductions of pleasure as supernaturally endued.
This oration was a particular favourite of one who was long a distinguished speaker in the British Senate. “By the way,” says Mr Fox, in a letter to Wakefield, “I know no speech of Cicero more full of beautiful passages than this is, nor where he is more in his element. Argumentative contention is what he by no means excels in; and he is never, I think, so happy as when he has an opportunity of exhibiting a mixture of philosophy and pleasantry; and especially when he can interpose anecdotes and references to the authority of the eminent characters in the history of his country. No man appears, indeed, to have had such real respect for authority as he; and therefore, when he speaks upon that subject, he is always natural and in earnest; and not like those among us, who are so often declaiming about the wisdom of our ancestors, without knowing what they mean, or hardly ever citing any particulars of their conduct, or of their dicta327.”
De Provinciis Consularibus. The government of Gaul was continued to Cæsar, in consequence of this oration, so that it may be considered as one of the immediate causes of the ruin of the Roman Republic, which it was incontestibly the great wish of Cicero to protect and maintain inviolate. But Cicero had evidently been duped by Cæsar, as he formerly had nearly been by Catiline, and as he subsequently was by Octavius, Pollio, and every one who found it his interest to cajole him, by proclaiming his praises, and professing ardent zeal for the safety of the state. So little had he penetrated the real views of Cæsar, that we find him asking the Senate, in his oration, what possible motive or inducement Cæsar [pg 173]could have to remain in the province of Gaul, except the public good. “For would the amenity of the regions, the beauty of the cities, or civilization of the inhabitants, detain him there—or can a return to one’s native country be so distasteful?”
Pro Cornelio Balbo.—Balbus was a native of Cadiz, who having been of considerable service to Pompey, during his war in Spain, against Sertorius, had, in return, received the freedom of Rome from that commander, in virtue of a special law, by which he had obtained the power of granting this benefit to whom he chose. The validity of Pompey’s act, however, was now questioned, on the ground that Cadiz was not within the terms of that relation and alliance to Rome, which could, under any circumstances, entitle its citizens to such a privilege. The question, therefore, was, whether the inhabitants of a federate state, which had not adopted the institutions and civil jurisprudence of Rome, could receive the rights of citizenship. This point was of great importance to the municipal towns of the Republic, and the oration throws considerable light on the relations which existed between the provinces and the capital.
In Pisonem.—Piso having been recalled from his government of Macedon, in consequence of Cicero’s oration, De Provinciis Consularibus, he complained, in one of his first appearances in the Senate, of the treatment he had received, and attacked the orator, particularly on the score of his poetry, ridiculing the well known line,