Albert Curtis Clark

“ The breach, however, was bound to come, and the saying, maliciously attributed to Cicero, that Octavian was an “excellent youth who must be praised and—sent to another place,” neatly expresses the popular view of the situation. [7] Cicero was sharply criticized by M. Junius Brutus for truckling to Octavian while showing irreconcilable enmity to Antony and Lepidus (ad Brut. i. 16. 4, i. 15. 9) ; but Brutus was safe in his province, and it is difficult to see what other course was open to a politician in Rome. Whether Cicero was right or wrong, none can question his amazing energy. ”

“ He has nothing but contempt for the Epicureans, and cannot forgive their neglect of literary style. As Cicero’s philosophical writings have been severely attacked for want of originality, it is only fair to recollect that he resorted to philosophy as an anodyne when suffering from mental anguish, and that he wrote incredibly fast. ”

“ Marcus Tullius Cicero, only son of the orator and his wife Terentia, was born in 65 B.C. At the age of seventeen he served with Pompey in Greece, and commanded a squadron of cavalry at the battle of Pharsalus. In 45 he was sent to Athens to study rhetoric and philosophy, but abandoned himself to a life of dissipation. It was during his stay at Athens that his father dedicated the de Officiis to him. After the murder of Caesar (44) he attracted the notice of Brutus, by whom he was offered the post of military tribune, in which capacity he rendered good service to the republican cause. ”

“ It is universally agreed that the letters ad Familiares were published by Tiro, whose hand is revealed by the fact that he suppresses all letters written by himself, and modestly puts at the end those written to him. That Cicero kept copies of his letters, or of many of them, we know from a passage in which, when addressing a friend who had inadvertently torn up a letter from him, he says that there is nothing to grieve about; he has himself a copy at home and can replace the loss (Fam. vii. 25. 1) . Tiro may have obtained from Terentia copies of letters written to her. ”

“ Cicero gives various clausulae which his ears told him to be good or bad, but his remarks are desultory, as also are those of Quintilian, whose examples were largely drawn from Cicero’s writings. It was left for modern research to discover rules of harmony which the Romans obeyed unconsciously. Other investigators had shown that Cicero’s clausulae are generally variations of some three or four forms in which the rhythm is trochaic. Dr Thaddaeus Zielinski of St Petersburg, after examining all the clausulae in Cicero’s speeches, finds that they are governed by a law. ”

“ They never forgot that he was a “new man,” and were jealous of the great house upon the Palatine which he acquired at this time. Caesar had made every possible effort to conciliate Cicero, [3] but, when all overtures failed, allowed Publius Clodius to attack him. Cicero found himself deserted, and on the advice of Cato went into exile to avoid bloodshed. He left Rome at the end of March 58, and arrived on the 23rd of May at Thessalonica, where he remained in the deepest dejection until the end of November, when he went to Dyrrhachium (Durazzo) awaiting his recall. ”

“ The public career of Cicero henceforth is largely covered by the general article on Rome: History, II. “The Republic,” ad fin. The year of his consulship (63) was one of amazing activity, both administrative and oratorical. Besides the three speeches against Publius Rullus and the four against Catiline, he delivered a number of others, among which that on behalf of Gaius Rabirius is especially notable. The charge was that Rabirius (q.v.) had killed Saturninus in 100 B.C., and by bringing it the democrats challenged the right of the senate to declare a man a public enemy. ”

“ Cicero seldom prosecuted, but it was the custom at Rome for a rising politician to win his spurs by attacking a notable offender (pro Caelio, 73) . In the following year he defended Marcus (or Manius) Fonteius on a charge of extortion in Gaul, using various arguments which might equally well have been advanced on behalf of Verres himself.
In 68 B.C. his letters begin, from which (and especially those to T. Pomponius Atticus, his “second self”) we obtain wholly unique knowledge of Roman life and history. ”

“ Some thirty-five other books of letters were known to antiquity, e.g. to Caesar, to Pompey, to Octavian and to his son Marcus.
The collection includes nearly one hundred letters written by other persons. Thus, the eighth Book ad Fam. consists entirely of letters from Caelius to Cicero when in Cilicia. When writing to Atticus Cicero frequently sent copies of letters which he had received. There is a great variety in the style not only of Cicero’s correspondents, but also of Cicero himself. Caelius writes in a breezy, school-boy style; the Latinity of Plancus is Ciceronian in character ”

“ Absurd suspicion has been cast upon the later speeches in Catilinam and that pro Archia. An oration pridie quam in exsilium iret is certainly a forgery, as also a letter to Octavian. There is a “controversy” between Cicero and Sallust which is palpably a forgery, though a quotation from it occurs in Quintilian. [14] Suspicion has been attached to the letters to Brutus, which in the case of two letters (i. 16 and 17) is not unreasonable since they somewhat resemble the style of suasoriae, or rhetorical exercises, but the latest editors, Tyrrell and Purser, regard these also as genuine. ”

“ In the pro Caelio he says that Catiline had in him undeveloped germs of the greatest virtues, and that it was the good in him that made him so dangerous (Cael. 12-14) . He sometimes deliberately puts the case upon a wrong issue. In the pro Milone he says that either Milo must have lain in wait for Clodius or Clodius for Milo, leaving out of sight the truth, that the encounter was due to chance. He used to boast that he had cast dust into the eyes of the jury in the case of Cluentius (Quintil. ii. 17-21) .
Cicero had a perfect mastery of all weapons wielded by a pleader in Rome. ”

“ Cicero then left Rome on account of his health, and travelled for two years in the East. He studied philosophy at Athens under various teachers, notably Antiochus of Ascalon, founder of the Old Academy, a combination of Stoicism, Platonism and Peripateticism. In Asia he attended the courses of Xenocles, Dionysius and Menippus, and in Rhodes those of Posidonius, the famous Stoic. In Rhodes also he studied rhetoric once more under Molo, to whom he ascribes a decisive influence upon the development of his literary style. ”

“ Brutus, or de claris oratoribus, a history of Roman eloquence containing much valuable information about his predecessors, drawn largely from the Chronicle (liber annalis) of Atticus (§§ 14, 15) . (c) Orator, dedicated to M. Brutus, sketching a portrait of the perfect and ideal orator, Cicero’s last word on oratory. The sum of his conclusion is that the perfect orator must also be a perfect man. Cicero says of this work that he has “concentrated in it all his taste” (Fam. vi. 18. 4) . ”

“ Cicero’s method was to construct a commentarius or skeleton of his speech, which he used when speaking. If he was pleased with a speech he then wrote it out for publication. Sometimes he omitted in the written speech a subject on which he had spoken. A record of this is sometimes preserved: e.g. “de Postumi criminibus” (Mur. 51) , “de teste Fufio” (Cael. 19) . These commentarii were published by his freedman Tiro and are quoted by Asconius (ad Orat. in Toga Candida, p. 87) .
Cicero in his speeches must be given all the privileges of an advocate. Sometimes he had a bad client ”

“ I rejoice for myself. I love you. I watch your interests; I wish for your love and to be informed what you are doing and what is being done” (Fam. vi. 15) . When writing to Atticus he eschews all ornamentation, uses short sentences, colloquial idioms, rare diminutives and continually quotes Greek. This use of Greek tags and quotations is also found in letters to other intimate friends, e.g. Paetus and Caelius; also in letters written by other persons, e.g. Cassius to Cicero; Quintus to Tiro, and subsequently in those of Augustus to Tiberius. ”

“ Thinking it useless to continue the struggle, he sailed to Brundisium, where he remained until the 12th of August 47, when, after receiving a kind letter from Caesar, he went to Rome. Under Caesar’s dictatorship Cicero abstained from politics. His voice was raised on three occasions only: once in the senate in 46 to praise Caesar’s clemency to M. Claudius Marcellus (pro Marcello) , to plead in the same year before Caesar for Quintus Ligarius, and in 45 on behalf of Deiotarus, tetrarch of Galatia, also before Caesar. He suffered greatly from family troubles at this period. ”

“ In the de Oratore, iii. 173 sqq., he considers the element of rhythm or metre in prose, and in the Orator (174-226) he returns to the subject and discusses it at length. His main point is that prose should be metrical in character, though it should not be entirely metrical, since this would be poetry (Orator, 220) . Greek writers relied for metrical effect in prose on those feet which were not much used in poetry. Aristotle recommended the paean ◡ ◡ ◡ –. Cicero preferred the cretic – ◡ – which he says is the metrical equivalent of the paean. Demosthenes was especially fond of the cretic. ”

“ But we have always to be on our guard against misrepresentation, exaggeration and falsehood. The value of the letters lies in the fact that in them we get behind Cicero and are face to face with the other dramatis personae; also that we are admitted behind the scenes and read the secret history of the times. One of the most interesting documents in the correspondence is a despatch of Caesar to his agent Oppius, written in great haste and in disjointed sentences. It runs as follows: “On the 9th I came to Brundisium. Pompey is at Brundisium. ”

“ Cicero’s juvenile work de Inventione appears to be drawn partly from this and partly from a treatise by Hermagoras. This is a slight production and does not require detailed notice. Other minor works written in later life, such as the Partitiones Oratoriae, a catechism of rhetoric, in which instruction is given by Cicero to his son Marcus; the Topica, and an introduction to a translation of the speeches delivered by Demosthenes and Aeschines for and against Ctesiphon, styled de optimo genere oratorum, also need only be mentioned. ”

“ The oldest evidence now existing for any works of Cicero is to be found in palimpsests written in the 4th or 5th century. The most interesting of these, now in the Vatican (Lat. 5757) , discovered by Angelo Mai in 1822, contains the treatise de Republica, only known from this source. Fragments of the lost speeches pro Tullio and pro Scauro were discovered in two Milan and Turin palimpsests. ”

“ Tusculanae Disputationes, so called from Cicero’s villa at Tusculum in which the discussion is supposed to have taken place. The subjects treated are:—in Book i., the nature of death and the reasons for despising it; Book ii., the endurance of pain: Pain is not an evil; Book iii., wisdom makes a man insensible to sorrow; Book iv., wisdom banishes all mental disquietude; Book v., virtue is sufficient to secure happiness. The materials are drawn largely from works of Dicaearchus.
De Deorum Natura.—The dialogue is placed in 77 B.C. In Book i. ”

“ Though trained on the same lines as Marcus he never spoke in public, and even said, “One orator in a family is enough, nay even in a city.” Though essentially a soldier, he took considerable interest in literature, wrote epic poems, tragedies and annals, and translated plays of Sophocles. There are extant four letters written by him (one to his brother Marcus, and three to his freedman Tiro) and a short paper, De Petitione Consulatus (on canvassing for the consulship) , addressed to his brother in 64. ”

“ In the following year he made his celebrated defence of Sextus Roscius on a charge of parricide. He subsequently defended a woman of Arretium, whose freedom was impugned on the ground that Sulla had confiscated the territory of that town. ”