# Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic/Chapter 4

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CHAPTER IV.
CICERO AS A MAGISTRATE.
69-63 B.C.
HILE the case against Verres was still pending Cicero had been 70 B.C.elected curule ædile, and in the year 66 B.C. he served the office of prætor. He had no difficulty in his contest for this magistracy, and he tells Atticus that he need not put himself out of the way to come to Rome to help him. There appear to have been two abortive attempts at a voting before the election was actually carried through, and on each occasion it was clear that Cicero was at the head of the poll.
Meanwhile political agitations were astir which brought Cicero for the first time to the front as an orator dealing directly with the affairs of the State. ​The spread of piracy in the Mediterranean became during these years so alarming, and the incapacity of the government to deal with it so obvious, that public opinion called for a drastic remedy.
"Am I to tell you," says Cicero, "that during these years the sea was closed to our subjects, when our own armies could never set forth from Brundisium except in the depth of winter? Am I to complain to you that envoys coming from foreign nations have been captured, when legates of the Roman People have been held to ransom? Am I to say that the sea was not safe for merchants, when twelve fasces with their axes have fallen into the hands of the pirates? Will you listen to the story how the famous cities of Cnidus and Colophon and Samos and many others have been captured, when you know that your own barbours, and those harbours which are the very channels of your life and breath, have been in the pirates' power?" And again—"What State was there ever before, I will not speak of great maritime powers such as Athens or Carthage or Rhodes, but what State was there ever so feeble, what island so petty, which could not by its own efforts defend its harbours and fields and some part of its shores and coasts? 'Yet for many years together before the Gabinian Law that same Roman People, which within our own memory had preserved a record clean from defeat at sea, made a huge surrender not only of its interests but of its power and dignity. We, whose ​ancestors overcame at sea King Antiochus and Perseus and the Carthaginians, we could not on any waters look pirates in the face. . . . And yet in those bad days the magistrates of the Roman People were not ashamed to take their stand on this very platform which your ancestors left to you adorned with the spoils of fleets and with the beaks torn from the ships of our enemies."
This reproach was quickly wiped away. In the year 67 B.C. Aulus Gabinius, a tribune of the plebs, proposed to the People that one man of consular rank should be invested for three years with supreme command over the whole Mediterranean and its coasts and islands, and should have all the resources of the Empire placed at his disposal for a great effort to clear the seas of pirates. The name of Pompey was not mentioned in the law, but it was certain that the popular vote would fall on him. This proposal was eagerly welcomed by every rank in the State, except the senators. The populace of the capital was cut off from its supplies of grain; the country-people of Italy found not even the great Appian Road safe from the free-booters; the Roman Knights, who had business relations in all parts of the civilised world, suffered from an interruption of communications ruinous to their interests. All were sick of the prolonged inaction and feebleness of the government, and called upon it to stand aside and let the one efficient man do the work. In spite of the utmost efforts of the senatorial leaders the law ​was passed. Pompey was then unanimously appointed to this great charge, and the Senate was directed to give him all assistance in detail, an instruction which the Nobles did not now venture to disregard.
The public confidence in Pompey was marked by an immediate relief in the corn-market, where famine prices had been ruling, and this confidence was abundantly justified by the result. Pompey made his preparations instantly for a systematic campaign. Personally and by aid of the fifteen lieutenants whose services he commanded, he swept the Mediterranean from west to east, and drove back the pirates into their Cilician harbours where he soon compelled their surrender. Before the end of summer his task was accomplished, and the seas were open. His triumph was due partly to the overwhelming force which he displayed at every point, partly to the mildness and clemency with which received submission. Many of the freebooters were glad to abandon resistance and to accept pardon from Pompey's hands. He planted thousands of them in Cilician colonies, and granted them lands that they might not be driven by poverty to resume their old trade. The anxiety of the Cretans to make their submission to Pompey, rather than to Metellus, the proconsul of the island, nearly brought on an armed collision between the two generals.
In an age when, as Cicero says, "the Roman soldiers had destroyed more cities of their allies, which ​were assigned to them for winter-quarters, than cities of the enemy, which they had taken by force of arms," Pompey succeeded in protecting the peaceable provincials against his troops. His own self-restraint set them an example, and likewise enabled him sternly to repress any outrages on the part of his subordinates. The integrity and single-mindedness of the commander contributed not a little to his great and startling success. "Whence came, do you suppose, this incredible rapidity of movement? It was not any preternatural strength in his oars-men, nor any magic art in navigation, nor any new currents of wind which bore him so swiftly to the ends of the earth. It was, that those impediments, which check the progress of other commanders, never stayed him. Greed never made him swerve from his path for any prey, nor lust for any beauty, nor any pleasant spot that he should loiter there, nor any famous city that he should be curious about it, nor any toil that he should repose after it; and for the statues and pictures and all the adornments of Grecian towns, which others think are made for them to carry off, he would not so much as look at them."
The glories of Pompey's success are heightened doubtless by all the skill of the orator; but the success itself was complete, indubitable, and overwhelming, and it was the more welcome from the long period of distress and humiliation to which it put an end. In the meantime affairs in the East were fast approaching a serious crisis. Lucullus could conquer ​in the field, but he could not manage his troops, who were now in open mutiny against him. Acilius Glabrio had been sent to succeed Lucullus, and the soldiers considered this sufficient to discharge them of their allegiance; although the new commander delayed his appearance they refused to obey the old one. Mithridates with the assistance of Tigranes had again begun to make head against the Romans; he had cut off and overpowered a division of the Roman army under Triarius before Lucullus could come to its assistance; he had recovered the greater part of his kingdom of Pontus, and was pressing hard upon Cappadocia. It was evident that the Romans had acted prematurely when they decreed the recall of Lucullus under the belief that the war was practically over; and Glabrio and Marcius Rex, the governors on whom would fall the responsibility of defending Asia were obviously not strong enough for the task. Everything seemed to portend a great disaster in the East, and all eyes turned towards the victorious proconsul of the seas and coasts. Manilius (one of the tribunes of the year 66 B.C.) gave voice to the general wish by a proposal that the command against Mithridates should be assigned to Pompey.
A disturbance in Asia was not so much a matter of life and death to the mercantile class at Rome as was the blockade of the seas and coasts by the pirates. Still the interests of the Roman Knights both as merchants and as tax-farmers were seriously affected by the threatened danger, and they expected relief from the same hand which had just rescued them from the more pressing and intolerable calamity. ​
CNÆUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS.
MITHRIDATES.
COIN OF CNÆUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS, AND ONE OF HIS LEGATES.
To the Nobles, this heaping of fresh honours and powers on the head of the man they detested was a bitter necessity, against which they rebelled to the end. Had they possessed sagacity to penetrate the character of Pompey, they might have known that he could be safely trusted with these powers; but they seem never to have truly gauged either his greatness or his weakness. If he had been indeed a man possessed with the vulgar ambition to make himself a despot, this last additional grant would, no doubt, have concentrated in his hands force sufficient for the overthrow of the free State. It might well be argued that the Republic ought not to be thus laid at the mercy of any citizen, however loyal. But such arguments were discredited by having been used the year before against the Gabinian law. Cicero's rejoinder is crushing: "What then is the burden of Hortensius' speech? That, if all power is to be placed in the hands of one man, Pompey is the most worthy recipient; but that such a grant ought not to be made to him or to anyone else. That argument has grown stale; it has been refuted, not so much by words as by events. For you, ​Hortensius, who advise us now, employed last year all your wealth of words and all your marvellous faculty of oratory in a studied and weighty speech in the Senate against that worthy citizen Aulus Gabinius, when he proposed his law for appointing a single commander-in-chief against the pirates; and again from this place, where I now stand, you spoke at length against that law to the People. Well, suppose that—Heaven help us!—the Roman People had then listened to your counsels rather than to its own instinct of self-preservation and to the cogency of fact, should we this day be enjoying this glorious present, and this Empire which we hold over the wide world? For how could you call that an Empire, when legates and prætors and quæstors of the Roman People were taken captive? When neither the State nor its citizens could touch the supplies which should have come to them from all the provinces? when every sea was so closed to us that we could conduct no business, private or public, across the water? . . . And so the Roman People judged that you, Hortensius, and the rest who agreed with you, spoke in all sincerity what you believed to be for the best; but it preferred, when the public safety was at stake, to obey the call of its own sufferings rather than bow to your authority. And so one law, one man, one year has not only freed us from that distress and that reproach, but has made us at last to be in very truth what we claimed to be, lords by land and by sea over all peoples and nations."
The result could not be doubtful. The law of ​Manilius was carried by acclamation, and Pompey was invested with powers hardly inferior to those afterwards enjoyed by Augustus. For the next five years he remained in the East, marching, fighting, and organising. Meanwhile affairs in the capital went on their course without his active intervention; but amidst all the shifting scenes of parties and all the conflicts of statesmen, the presence in the background of the power of Pompey is never forgotten; it is felt that whatever men may do at home, his must be in the end the deciding will.
Among those who most envied the great position of Pompey was his former colleague Crassus. Crassus was anxious to win for himself some exceptional command which might hold in check the power of his great rival. It seems probable that Cæsar, who was now dazzling the world 65 B.C.with the extravagant splendour of his shows as ædile, encouraged these aspirations of Crassus, and that the democratic party, as a whole, followed his lead. Though they had supported Pompey in the struggle over the Gabinian and Manilian laws, the democrats seem to have recognised more clearly than the Optimates, that the great soldier would not readily fall in with the plans of a revolutionary party. Crassus and Cæsar looked to Egypt as the scene of their operations. Crassus was censor this year, and he proposed to enrol Egypt in the list of provinces on the ground that it had been left to the Roman People by the will of the last king. This king ​(Ptolemy Alexander II.) had died sixteen years before, in 81 B.C.; but with characteristic hesitation the Senate had never declared whether they considered the bequest valid or whether they meant to accept it. Meantime an illegitimate member of the family, nicknamed Auletes, or "the Piper," had usurped the throne, where he had been tolerated, though never acknowledged, by Rome. The plans of Crassus with regard to Egypt were frustrated by his brother censor Catulus and by Cicero, who as a matter of course opposed all measures directed against Pompey. The most that Crassus could do was to induce the Senate to despatch a young partisan of his, named Cnæus Piso, with an extraordinary command to Spain, where he hoped that he might raise an army to serve as some sort of counterpoise to that of Pompey. This scheme too fell through, for Piso was assassinated, some said by partisans of Pompey, not long after his arrival in his province.
The mission of Piso to Spain is connected with a strange story in which we hear for the first time the name of that Lucius Sergius Catilina, who was destined two years later to cross Cicero's path with momentous consequences to them both. This "first conspiracy of Catiline," as it is called, is assigned to the end of the year 66 and the beginning of the year 65 B.C. Crassus and Cæsar are said to have been implicated in it. A plot which never came to overt acts ​is a fruitful theme for speculation, and modern writers have expended much ingenuity in discussing it. The evidence is so inconclusive, and the story, as told, contains so many contradictions and improbabilities, that I prefer to pass it over as wholly or almost wholly apocryphal. An assassination or a massacre, more or less, makes no great difference in our estimate of Catiline or even of Crassus; but it is satisfactory not to be obliged to fix this stain on the great name of Cæsar.
Having served the prætorship in 66 B.C. Cicero was eligible for the consulship of the year 63 B.C. For a year before the election, that is to say from about Midsummer 65 to Midsummer 64 B.C., his thoughts and efforts were constantly directed to the attainment of this great prize. From his own letters, and from his speeches on behalf of clients, and likewise from the "canvasser's pocket-book" of instructions (Commentariolum Petitionis), which Quintus Cicero wrote out for his brother's use, we get a vivid picture of a contested election at Rome.
Questions of party or policy hold but a small place in these contests. There is nothing answering to the modern "caucus," and it is rarely that we hear of the selection of candidates who are to forward the interests of a party or can claim its united support. It was not even expected that a competitor for office should put forth any political creed or announce what "platform" he adopted; rather it seems to have been considered proper for the aspirant to office, ​while striving to produce the general impression of statesmanlike qualities, to efface his particular convictions as much as possible, and not to touch on the burning questions of the day for fear of giving offence to any party or section in the State. The explanation of this strange divorce between politics and electioneering is not far to seek. In modern States there is what the French call "solidarity" between the different members of the executive government, so that votes at elections are practically given for a whole group of men united by common convictions under a common chief, who are to undertake, not only the business of administration, but the responsibility of initiative and the duty of guiding the policy of the State. But in the Roman Republic the function of the magistrate is much more limited. The Senate, and not the magistrate, advises and directs; and, while he keeps within constitutional limits, the magistrate does not use his formal power of initiative in legislation except under the Senate's instructions. It is noticeable that the revolutionary faction at Rome, which never respected the constitutional rules and always, when it was strong enough, carried through its measures on the bare initiative of a magistrate, had an organisation more resembling that of modern parties, and tried to elect magistrates in order to carry out schemes of policy and legislation by their means. But this is the exception and not the rule. The regular practice is that, as each magistrate has under the constitution ​a personal though limited power co-ordinate with that of his colleagues and not a joint power as member of a Board or Cabinet, so in the contest for magistracies each man is chosen separately and independently and each must "fight for his own hand." An election to the consulship is the advance of an individual in the official career, and the door of admission to the most dignified order in the State, not the triumph of a party or of a principle. The aspirant does not wait to be adopted as the representative of a party, whether as the reward for past services or in hopes that he will carry out its political programme. If to high nobility and connections he unites a decent character and tolerable capacity, he drifts naturally to the front; if he be the son of a Roman Knight, destitute of the advantages of aristocratic lineage, he must force his way by personal exertions. In either case it is a question "of men, not of measures."
The ideal Roman elector was supposed to look to the merit or "dignity," as it was called of the candidate, resting partly on a man's ancestry, partly on his own services to the State at home or abroad. But "merit" was always liable to be overridden hy "favour" ; "each man who votes considers more frequently what claims the candidate has on him, ​than what claims he has on the commonwealth." To gain this personal favour was the first business of the candidate. To this end he must be constantly in evidence, and habituate the people to his presence; his face and manner must be familiar in their daily surroundings. "I perceived," says Cicero of himself, "that the ears of the Roman People were somewhat dull but their eyes quick and keen; and so I ceased to trouble myself as to what men might hear of me from a distance, but took care that they should see me in person. I lived in public, I frequented the Forum, no one was ever kept from seeing me by my porter or by my slumbers." In apportioning their good-will the electors kept a strict note of what each candidate had done or was prepared to do in the way of amusing them. "The Roman people dislikes private luxury, but it loves public magnificence; it has no liking for sumptuous banquets, but it hates shabbiness and ungracioushess." Cicero tells of one rich man who was always unsuccessful in his candidatures, because he was thought to have shirked the ædileship, and of another of great family and reputation who
"lent his ears
To those budge doctors o the Stoic fur,"
and by an unlucky display of philosophic frugality on a great occasion lost his chance of the ​prætorship. On the other hand there was a feeling that the man who had sufficiently dazzled the people by his entertainments would never ask for their votes in vain. It was on this account that the ædiles ransacked the world for the gift of wild beasts and the loan of works of art, that Cæsar displayed gladiators in silver panoply, and that Scaurus invented his movable theatres, which when the plays were over were wheeled round, spectators and all, so as to form an amphitheatre for the exhibition of the fighting. "You have no right," says Cicero, "to cast such scorn on the tastefulness of Murena's games or the magnificence of his scenery, which were strong points in his favour. Why should I observe, what is obvious, that it is the populace and the crowd of ignorant men who are so much caught by games? There is no great wonder in that. But that is enough for my argument; for the elections lie with this same common multitude.. . Men do enjoy the games, you may take my word for it, and not only those who frankly acknowledge their interest, but those who pretend not to care. This was brought home to me when I was a candidate, for I too had the magnificence of a rival's scenery against me; and if I, who had given three sets of games myself, was staggered by those of Antonius, do you suppose that you, who as it happened had not given any, were not put at a disadvantage by these very silver fittings of Murena's stage at which you scoff?"
​In Cicero's own case it was mainly the influence gained by his practice at the bar which won him the consulship. His brother puts this in the forefront of his advantages: "You will have your fame as an orator to counterbalance your want of noble birth." The Roman advocate was forbidden to accept a fee, but he expected to be repaid by the personal exertions of the client and his friends at the next election; "you must take care," writes Quintus, "that they are as good as their word; you must constantly remind, ask, exhort and look after them, that they may understand that they will never have another opportunity of showing their gratitude." Each brief undertaken thus formed a centre of influence and of support for the successful pleader. We hear much of the aid given by friends and partisans. In Murena's contested election, for instance, his stepson had feasted his young comrades in the equestrian centuries, his chief engineer had hired seats at the games for his fellow-tribesmen, a Vestal, his kinswoman, had placed her stall at the disposal of the candidate. These proceedings, so Cicero argued with success, did not come within "the blow of the law"; "all such observances count among the dues of friendship, the gratifications of the humbler classes, the attentions looked for from a candidate."
The Roman elector expected to be asked and even entreated for his vote. He was not displeased if he were asked more than once. This required great personal exertions on the part of the candidate and his friends. Quintus urges his brother never to be out of the way, and never to give anyone the ​opportunity to say "that, so far as he was concerned, you might have had what you wished, if he had been asked by you and asked with earnestness and insistence." Nearly a year before the actual election there commenced the process of preliminary canvassing, prensatio or "hand-shaking," as it was called. It was a great point for the candidate to be able to address each voter by his name, and to aid him in this he had specially trained slaves, whose business it was to make themselves acquainted with the faces of the citizens and to whisper the name of each in his master's ear as he approached him. "O fie! for shame, Cato!" exclaims Cicero, as he banters the precisian statesman who is trying to upset the election of Murena, "is it possible that you can do such a thing? are you not deceiving? are you not using your slave's memory to act a lie to your fellow-citizens? is this consistent with principle? can such a practice bear to be weighed in your philosophic scales?"
As "nothing succeeds like success," it is important for a candidate to produce the impression that he is assured of overwhelming support. He must lose no opportunity of advertising his strength, and for this purpose must collect an imposing array of "followers." To take part in such a following is an attention which the humblest can offer, and on that ground Cicero defends the practice against Cato's strictures. "'What need is there,' says Cato, 'for ​followers?' What a question to put to me of all people, 'what need is there' for that which we have all of us always practised! The one opportunity, which men of humble rank have of earning the thanks and repaying the kindnesses of those in our station, is the service and attendance which they give in our candidatures. Senators and Roman Knights cannot spend all the day in following about their friends when canvassing, and no one expects it of them. If they call at your house each morning, and occasionally escort you down to the Forum and honour you with their company for one turn along the colonnade, you think that they have shown ample consideration and observance. Constant attendance is the special task of our humbler friends, whose time is more at their own disposal, and of these a kindly and charitable man is sure to have no lack. Do not be so anxious then, Cato, to rob the lower classes of their sole chance of showing their dutifulness; allow those, who look to us for all sorts of favours, to retain one favour which they can confer on us. If such a one has nothing to give but his single vote, that seems a petty boon; if he wishes to canvass for us, he has no influence. As they say themselves, they cannot speak for us, they cannot give security for us, they cannot invite us to their houses; such attentions they expect to receive from us, and they think that their only means of acknowledgment is this personal service."
All this elaborate machinery of canvassing was worked with untiring assiduity by Cicero when he stood for the consulship. It may be doubted, ​however, whether he would have had an easy victory, if he had not been aided by an external circumstance. The candidature of Catiline and Antonius began to alarm the constitutional party. Already during the early summer of the year 64 B.C. Catiline had begun to lay the foundations of a desperate conspiracy against the State. His plans got abroad through the vapourings of one of his associates, a foolish young spendthrift, to his mistress. The woman gave information to the government, and the Nobles, who had hitherto looked askance on Cicero's candidature, now withdrew their opposition. Cicero was returned by acclamation at the top of the poll, and Antonius headed Catiline by a few votes for the second place. Caius Antonius was a man of high birth but of indifferent character and small reputation, who had been closely connected with Catiline, and who was supposed to be ready to give at least a passive support to his plans. Cicero's first effort was to detach him from the conspiracy, and he purchased his support by giving up to him the lucrative province of Macedonia. Thus fortified Cicero entered on his consulship on the 1st of January 63 B.C.
The year began with an attempt on the part of the democrats to renew the efforts, which they had made under the guidance of Crassus 63 B.C.two years before, to win for themselves some base of operations independent of the power of Pompey. This time, the scheme took the well-known form of an Agrarian Law. A tribune of the ​plebs, Publius Servilius Rullus, proposed that there should be a great distribution of land to the poorer citizens. But where was the land to be found? As the result, partly of the legislation of the Gracchi, partly of the reactionary measures which had followed their death, the whole of the public land which had formerly been held by the great squatters had ceased to belong to the State. It was now the property of individual Romans, and the agrarian agitators of the Roman Republic, though they often disregarded equitable rights of occupancy hallowed by long prescription, never mentioned the confiscation of what was legally private property. Some fresh public land had indeed been provided for this generation through the appropriation by the State of the lands of towns and individuals that had stood against Sulla, and the occupiers of these lands might well fear eviction. But Rullus protested that he had no such design. He even introduced a clause making all such land the absolute property of the present occupiers, or else paying them its money value in case they preferred to get rid of it. There remained only a small district round Capua, which, because the tenants of this land paid a rack-rent to the State, had escaped distribution in the age of the Gracchi. This Rullus proposed to parcel out, though the Treasury could ill bear the loss of the rent.
But this was the most modest feature of the bill. Rullus' commissioners were further empowered to sell the whole of the property of the Roman People beyond the seas, in order with the money so obtained ​to buy land in Italy for distribution. The project seems so extraordinary that we could hardly believe it, if the very words of this clause had not been preserved to us by Cicero. "All lands, places, buildings—what is there besides? Well there is much property in slaves, cattle, gold, silver, ivory, raiment, furniture and so forth. What are we to say? Did he think it would not look modest if he named all these things? He has never shown any signs of such scrupulosity. What then? He thought it would be tedious, and feared that he might omit something; so he simply added, or anything else. Everything therefore outside Italy, which has become the property of the Roman People in the first consulship of Sulla or since that date, is ordered to be sold by the decemvirs. I say, Romans, that by this clause all peoples, nations, provinces and kingdoms are granted away and committed to the sole authority, judgment, and power of the decemvirs. For first I would ask, what place in the world is there of which they may not assert that it has become the property of the Roman People? For when the person who asserts has the power of pronouncing judicially on the question, where need he draw the line in his assertions? It will be convenient to maintain that Pergamus, Smyrna, Tralles, Ephesus, Miletus, Cyzicus, in fact the whole of Asia, which has been recovered since that consulship, has become the property of the Roman People. . . Then there is Alexandria and the whole of Egypt; how secretly it is smuggled ​in, how all mention of it is avoided, how cunningly it is handed over to the decemvirs. You all of you know, that it is said that this kingdom became the property of the Roman People under the Will of King Alexander. Now on this matter I, as consul of the Roman People, not only pronounce no judgment, but decline to express any opinion. For the question seems to me too difficult, I will not say to decide, but even to discuss. I see that there are some who assert that such a Will was made, and that the Senate committed itself to the acceptance of the inheritance, when after the death of Alexander it sent envoys to Tyre to claim possession of moneys which he had deposited there. I remember to have heard Lucius Philippus repeatedly assert this in the Senate; and I take it that almost all are agreed that the person who occupies the throne at present is not of royal birth and has none of the qualities of a King. On the other side it is maintained, that no such Will exists, that it is unbecoming in the Roman People to seem to be grasping at the possession of kingdoms; that our citizens will be tempted to migrate to that country on account of the richness of the soil and the abundance which reigns there. Well, on this momentous question who is to be judge but Rullus and the rest of the commissioners his colleagues? and a famous decision they will make of it surely!"
Thus under cover of an Agrarian Law the democratic leaders seem to have designed to secure for themselves the control of the powerful province, which would as they hoped enable them to treat ​with Pompey on equal terms. This unlimited power of raising money was supplemented by an equally ide discretion in spending it. The decemvirs were empowered to buy lands and wplant colonies in whatever part of Italy they chose, or rather, says Cicero, to occupy the strategical points of the country with their garrisons, "keen partisans, eager for violence, ready for rebellion, who at a word from the decemvirs can be armed against the citizens and let loose for slaughter."
Respecting the "Ten Kings," as Cicero calls them, who were to be set up by the law, two things were certain: first, that Rullus would, under the machinery proposed, practically have the nomination of them; and secondly, that Pompey was not to be one of them. While other existing magistrates were eligible, Pompey was excluded, almost by name, through a clause which required the personal appearance of each candidate in the Forum; "and can you doubt," says Cicero, "that certain persons are seeking for domination and supremacy over the whole State, when you see that they keep out that man who, as they plainly perceive, will be the defender of your liberties?"
The bill as it stood was fairly open to Cicero's strictures. At the same time we need not suppose that its promoters were so foolish as to intend to bring about any immediate conflict with Pompey. If the bill had been carried, Cæsar would doubtless have persuaded his colleagues on the commission to ​avoid carefully any interference with Asia Minor or Syria or the Greek islands. Possibly he might have made it a merit with Pompey, to refrain from any action which could trench on this, Pompey's doubted sphere of influence. At any rate the game of the democratic party was to allow Pompey to settle the East as he pleased and to return quietly to Rome, while they established a rival power for themselves in Egypt or elsewhere. Meanwhile they would have ample means at their disposal to provide for their more hungry partisans, and so to put off any premature attempts at revolution.
It may be doubted whether Cicero himself fully understood the plan on which Cæsar was working when he encouraged Rullus to propose this law. The main lines of that plan can now be clearly traced by the light of Cæsar's subsequent action in Gaul; but at the moment they were not so obviously discernible. In the meantime, however, it was quite clear that a blow was being aimed at Pompey, and Cicero justly thought that it was his first business to parry that blow. If the main object of the bill was dangerous to the future peace of the State and the stability of the constitution, the most tempting points for criticism were those which seemed to portend a speedy collision with Pompey. On these Cicero directed his main attack, and the bill was so loosely and clumsily drawn that it was easy to construe its provisions as an outrage on Pompey's dignity. All the sources of revenue with which Pompey had enriched the State, all the kingdoms and cities which he had conquered, and whose affairs he was in the ​act of regulating, might be claimed by the rival power. The very ground on which Pompey was encamped might be sold under his feet by virtue of this law. "Pompey," he says, "is determined that whatever you decide, he will consider that he must bear it; but he will take good care, you may be sure, that whatever you cannot bear, he will not permit you to be compelled to bear it longer than you please."
"Are these," Cicero asks in another place, "the plans of sober men or the dreams of wine-bibbers? Are they the calculations of sense, or the extravagances of lunacy?" The answer doubtless is, that the promoters of the bill can have hoped to carry a scheme, manifestly directed against Pompey, only on the supposition that he was too far off to trouble himself about their machinations, and that his friends in Rome would not honestly and fearlessly maintain his cause. In this they were disappointed; Cicero at once came forward, and in a series of spirited and effective speeches exposed the nature and object of the scheme. He directs many arguments against the promoters, but one is really sufficient, namely that the bill is a studied attack on the position of Pompey; with the name of Pompey he always couples the liberty and the greatness of Rome. He sums up the whole matter at the end of the third speech—"Is any one of you disposed for violence, for crime, for massacre? Not one. And yet it is for men who will do all these things that the land of ​Campania and the great city of Capua is reserved. An army is being got together against yourselves, against your liberty, against Cnæus Pompeius. Capua is set up against this city; bands of desperate ruffians against you; the ten chiefs against Pompey."
When once the bill was put in its true light, as an act of war on Pompey, public opinion declared against it. Cicero was listened to with marked favour by the multitude.—"They gave up to him," says Pliny, "the Agrarian Law, that is to say, their own bread." One of the other tribunes announced that he would veto the bill, and its chances were so hopeless that Rullus presently withdrew it of his own accord.
The next nine months may be passed lightly over.January to September. The consul is recorded to have pacified by a conciliatory speech the popular resentment against Roscius Otho, who four years previously had restored to Cicero's friends, the Knights, their reserved seats in the theatre. A little later we find him resisting an attempt to remove the political disabilities with which Sulla had affected the children of those who had been put to death in the great Proscription. Cicero acknowledged that the proposal was humane and righteous, but he succeeded in persuading not only the people but the very victims of the existing law themselves, that it was ill-timed. Strange to say, the same considerations seem to have kept Cæsar during his consulship and the triumvirs during their period of supremacy ​from meddling with Sulla's arrangement, and it was not until the year 49 B.C., while the second Civil War was in progress, that this relic of the first was removed.
Cicero does not appear to have taken any part against a harmless but popular measure proposed by the tribune Labienus, which restored to the people under certain restrictions the power of electing the members of the great priestly colleges. The first effect of the change was to place in strong light the overwhelming personal popularity of Cæsar. The supreme dignity of Pontifex Maximus was now vacant, and Cæsar, though as yet he had served no office higher than the ædileship, appeared as a candidate, and was elected by a great majority over the heads of all the most distinguished members of the senatorial party, including the aged and revered Catulus.
Labienus and Cæsar were next found united in a fanciful project, which seems to have been intended as a sort of manifesto of principle on the side of the democratic party. Thirty-seven years previously the tribune Saturninus had been put to death in consequence of an armed riot during which he had seized on the Capitol. The Senate by special decree had empowered the Consul Marius to act against him, and on the strength of this decree Saturninus and his associates had been overpowered and massacred. Cæsar and Labienus now affected to rehabilitate the memory of Saturninus and to protest against such proceedings on the part of the Senate, by bringing to trial an aged senator named Caius ​Rabirius, who had avowedly taken part in the attack on Saturninus, and who, as his accusers asserted (though he seems to have proved the contrary), had actually struck the fatal blow. For the purpose of this trial an imposing though somewhat childish display of constitutional antiquarianism was provided. On the one side there was furbished up the "rugged formula of the old law," which was said to have been invented by King Tullus Hostilius for the trial of that Horatius who stabbed his sister for lamenting her lover, the fallen champion of Alba. On the other side an equally obsolete contrivance enabled the prætor Metellus Celer to break up the assembly by striking the red flag on the Janiculum, which in old times was the sign that the Etruscans were at the gates, and that the burghers must run to arms. Cicero spoke to the people on behalf of Rabirius; but the proceedings were not intended to be very serious; the assembly was allowed to disperse, and Labienus and Cæsar, though they might have brought on the case again another day, let the matter quietly drop.
Only two legislative measures bore the superscription of Cicero's name as consul. The first was a law heightening the penalties for corrupt practices at elections. An opposing advocate once wittily suggested that Cicero must have passed it "in order to furnish his perorations with more touching appeals to the feelings of the jurors." The second measure relates to honorary or, as they were called, "free ​embassies," which enabled a senator to travel in the provinces at the public expense. A law was passed by Cicero limiting the power of the Senate to grant such commissions. They were now never to be extended beyond the period of one year. Cicero tells us that he wished to abolish them altogether, but was thwarted by the opposition of a tribune.
I have hitherto noticed those actions of Cicero, as consul, which had no direct bearing on the Catilinarian conspiracy. So far we have the record of a useful and creditable but by no means a brilliant year of office. We must now turn to the more stirring events which have made Cicero's consulship famous in the history of the world.
* ↑ Pro Leg. Man., 1, 2.
* ↑ Pro Leg. Man., 12, 32.
* ↑ Pro Leg. Man., 18, 54.
* ↑ Dio Cassius, xxxvi., 23, 5.
* ↑ Dio Cassius, xxxvi., 37, 1.
* ↑ Pro Leg. Man., 13, 38.
* ↑ Pro. Leg. Man., 14, 40.
* ↑ Pro Leg. Man., 2, 4.
* ↑ Pro Leg. Man., 17, 52.
* ↑ Plutarch, Crass., 13, 1.
* ↑ See below, p. 102.
* ↑ Mommsen (Rom. Hist., v., ch. 5) points out that fragments of the speech "De Rege Alexandrino" prove it to have been delivered at this time.
* ↑ The genuineness of this little treatise has been questioned, but not, to my mind, on sufficient grounds.
* ↑ Q. Cicero, De Pet. Cons., 13, 53.
* ↑ When Domitias Ahenobarbus was cut out of his hopes of the consulship of 55 B.C. by the unexpected and irresistible candidature of Pompey and Crassus, Cicero exclaimed (Ad Att., iv., 8, b. 2): "What can be more annoying than for him, who has been designated for the consulship since his cradle, to miss it when his turn comes." After all Domitius was only put off till the next year.
* ↑ Pro Plancio, 4, 10.
* ↑ This is the sequel to the story of Cicero's return after his Sicilian quæstorship, see p. 22.
* ↑ Pro Mur., 36, 76.
* ↑ Pro Mur., 19, 38.
* ↑ See below, p. 131.
* ↑ Pro Mur., 36, 77.
* ↑ Pro Mur., 34, 70.
* ↑ Sallust, Cat., 23.
* ↑ Contra Rullum., ii., 15, 38, et seq.
* ↑ Contra Rullum, ii., 30, 82.
* ↑ Contra Rullum, ii., 10, 25.
* ↑ Contra Rullum, ii., 23, 62.
* ↑ Contra Rullum, i., 1, 1.
* ↑ Pliny, Hist. Nat., vii., 30, 116.
* ↑ Pliny, Hist. Nat., vii., 30, 116.
* ↑ "Lex horrendi carminis," Livy, i., 26.
* ↑ Pro Plancio, 34, 83.
* ↑ De Leg., iii., 8, 18.