James Leigh Strachan-Davidson

“ Look round on all the limbs of the State which you know so well; where will you find one that is not crushed and crippled . . . So I will bear my private grief, as you bid me, and the public grief perhaps even more patiently than you, my preceptor. For you have some hope to comfort you, I am resolved to be strong amidst absolute despair."
The misery and hopelessness, which was entailed on the Romans by Cæsar's government, may be well illustrated by Cicero's correspondence with his old friend Servius Sulpicius Rufus. ”

“ There have been ages during which Plato and Aristotle have suffered eclipse; but perhaps hardly one in which Cicero's philosophic writings have not been cherished by at least a few men of letters. They have thus kept alive the memory of ancient philosophy, and have humanised the thoughts and words of one generation after another. If we were required to decide what ancient writings have most directly influenced the modern world, the award must probably go in favour of Plutarch's Lives and of the philosophic works of Cicero. ”

“ Such was the path in which Cæsar willed that the world should walk. The other alternative before him was to undertake a complicated and difficult task, requiring the highest constructive statesmanship. The Italian people was still sound at heart; Italy still loved liberty and hated despotism; her sons could still endure with patience, and dare with energy, and die with heroism around the eagles. When a people displays such qualities, a statesman need not despair of organising it into a free nation. ”

“ Cicero became a main channel of Cæsar's grace towards his old comrades, and in the delight of serving them committed himself more and more to acquiescence in the new government, and to hopes based on the personal character and conduct of its chief—"nothing [18] can be better than the ruler himself; for the rest, men and things are such that, if needs be, it is better to hear of them than to see them."
Cicero is the main hope and stay of the exiled Pompeians. He is ever writing them letters of solace and encouragement, and working assiduously for their restoration. ”

“ Tullia's death marks a turning-point in Cicero's appreciation of Cæsar and his work. He is resolved that patience shall not be wanting, but he "has lost for ever that cheerfulness with which we used to season the bitterness of the time." It is characteristic of the man, their his private sorrow opens his eyes to the fact that the hopes which he has been indulging for the commonwealth are all delusions. ”

“ He never speaks of Pompey, but in the most honourable terms." Cicero is eager to make excuses for Cæsar. If he delays the restoration of the Republic, it is because "Cæsar himself is the slave of the situation." [16] "Since," he says, [17] "I have judged it right to live on, I cannot but feel a kindness for the man by whose favour life has been granted me. If that man desires that there should be a commonwealth such as perhaps he wishes, and such as we are all bound to pray for, he has no power to realise it, so hampered is he by obligations to his followers." ”

“ It would have required a modification at least of slavery, and the extinction of the slave-trade, personal military service as the duty, and the power of choosing and controlling his rulers as the right of every Roman, and, finally, the gradual extension of the citizenship with political as well as personal privileges to the subjects of the Empire. A constitution was called for, which would have given room for the personal policy of a great statesman, while it carefully cherished every germ of independence and self-reliance in the citizens. ”

“ That is not so easy after all; but there is no other way of forgetting our anxieties. But where, you say, is philosophy gone? Yours to the kitchen, and mine to the rhetoric school. I am ashamed to be a slave, and so I make believe to be busy, that I may shut my ears to the reproaches of Plato." To another friend [38] he describes a dinner with Volumnius Eutrapelus, where Cicero and Atticus and other grey-beards found that they had been invited to meet a lively person, hardly fit company for a consular of Rome. "You wonder that we can make our slavery so merry. ”

“ It was long before Cicero gave up the hope that after all there was to be "some sort of Free State," and that Cæsar was destined to be its founder. This delusion was fostered, and not unnaturally, by the spectacle of Cæsar's constant clemency and kindness to the conquered. "The all-powerful ruler," he writes to an exiled Pompeian [14] in January, 45 B.C., "seems to me to be daily inclining more and more to justice and to a reasonable view of things . . . Every day something is done with more of lenity and liberality than we were expecting." ”

“ The subject peoples gained incidentally by establishment of a despotism. Cicero hits the truth when he calls the provinces of Rome "Cæsar's estates." "Sardinia," he says, [5] "is the worst farm which Cæsar owns, but he does not neglect it for all that." It is clear that it could not be in the interests of a master that anyone except himself should shear his sheep. No despot, unless he were a man of feeble will and character would tolerate such vicegerents as we have seen the Roman Republic tolerate in Verres and Appius Claudius. ”

“ All the horrors of the barbarian invasion and all the darkness of the Middle Ages were not a price too heavy to pay for the infusion of fresher and stronger blood, and the revival of the sense of dignity in mankind. ”

“ This easy life was rudely cut short by a great and unexpected calamity. Cicero's daughter Tullia, died suddenly at Rome about the end of March in the year 45 B.Cc. Tullia was her father's darling, the only one of his family of whose conduct he never complains, his consolation in all his troubles, and his tender and sympathising companion in all his pursuits. Cicero was overwhelmed with grief, and sought refuge in tears and seclusion. "In this desolate spot," he writes [39] to Atticus from Astura soon after his bereavement, "I avoid speaking a word to any one. ”

“ Among those who are yet to be born there will be controversy, as there has been amongst ourselves; some will extol your deeds, others perchance will find something wanting, and ttiat the one thing needful, unless you quench the coal of civil war, by giving life to our State, so that men may ascribe the first to the inexorableness of destiny, the second to the providence of your design. ”

“ Your life is there, there, I say, where it will be fresh in the memory of all ages, where posterity will cherish it, where eternity itself will claim it for its own. It is the approval of that time to come which you must court, to its good-will you must commend yourself. ”

“ Though Cicero has no pretensions to be considered a thinker of original and inventive genius in the region of philosophy, it was no small achievement thus to mould the Latin tongue to be a vehicle for Greek philosophic thought. ”

“ It has much already to wonder at in you, now it asks for something to praise. Future generations will listen awe-struck, doubtless, as they hear or read the tale of all your conflicts and all your triumphs. ”

“ Never in the history of the race has such an opportunity been laid in the hands of a legislator; but a man was wanting to take advantage of it. That Cæsar, with all his genius, could not rise to the height of this task is a matter for sorrow, not for anger. ”

“ Consider how fortune has buffeted us already. We have been bereft of those things which men should hold not less dear than their children—our country, our reputation, our dignity,—everything which made life honourable. ”

“ Early in the morning I hide myself away in a thick wood and do not quit it till evening. Next to yourself my best friend is solitude." He attempted to beguile his grief by a project of erecting a shrine for Tullia, and so deifying her memory. His letters are full of schemes for the purchase of gardens near Rome suitable for the purpose. It does not appear that Cicero's wish was ever realised, and the disturbances after Cæsar's death interrupted all his plans. ”

“ Bitter as things are to hear of, they are a thousand times worse to see. At any rate you have escaped being present in the Campus Martius at eight o'clock in the morning when the elections for quæstors were being held. The curule chair of Fabius, whom they were pleased to call consul, was duly set. There comes a messenger to say the man is dead, and away goes his chair. Thereupon, Cæsar, who had taken the auspices for an assembly by tribes, held an assembly by centuries instead. ”

“ We must look for its perfect work in the subjects of the later Empire, ground down by an intolerable burden of taxation, with souls which had lost all nobler political interests, trusting to hired soldiers to fight for them, no longer capable of managing their own concerns nor of striking a blow in defence of their own hearths. ”

“ At twelve o'clock he returned a consul duly elected to hold office till the 1st of January, that is to say, for the remainder of the day of election. So you are to know that in the consulship of Caninius no one breakfasted. It must be granted that his consulship was remarkably free from crime, owing to his marvellous vigilance, for during his term of office he never closed an eye. This seems a joke to you. Yes, for you are far away: if you were here to see it, you could not refrain from tears. ”

“ Another notable instance of clemency, the pardon of Marcus Marcellus, who, as consul in the year 51, had taken a prominent part in the opposition to Cæsar, overpowered the resolution of Cicero not to open his lips again in the Senate. "This day," he writes [23] to Servius Sulpicius, "seemed to dawn so fairly on me, that I fancied I could see, as it were, some vision of the Republic springing to life again. ”

“ In legislation, the assent of the people had already become merely formal, and so it remained; but in elections some power of choice had hitherto really lain with the voters. This was now taken away by the Dictator, who granted letters of recommendation to his candidates, and so had them returned without opposition. The elections indeed might as well not have been held at all. Cæsar lost no opportunity of degrading the Republican magistracies in the eyes of the people. Sometimes the State was left for months without consuls or printors, and Cæsar nominated prefects to do their work ”

“ Even when he doubts whether its practical results will not prove worthless, he sets down as clear gain "the exultation in the deed, and the exaction of the penalty desired by our hatred and indignation." ”

“ Whether the work is good or bad, is nothing to the point; it could not have been attempted by anyone who had abandoned himself to despair." [41]
Almost all Cicero's philosophical works belong to this (45 B.C.) and the following year. His writing was hardly interrupted by Cæsar's death and ceased only with his own recall to the active labours of a statesman at the end of the year 44. ”

“ He can do this the more easily at present, because his most intimate friends are almost every day in my company. Many things drop out in the course of conversation which my hearers are good enough to consider not devoid of wit and neatness. ”

“ Cæsar was wont to say of Marcus Brutus; "whatever he wills, he wills it strongly." [50] Such wills Cæsar had set in deadly opposition to himself and his policy.
In the latter part of the year 45 we find Cicero engaged, though with little hope of any profitable result, on a letter of political advice addressed to Cæsar. His model was to be a treatise dedicated to Alexander by Aristotle. "There is nothing in it," he writes, [51] "which may not become a good citizen, but a citizen such as the facts of the time admit of ”

“ He has relieved many from their distress, and he has shown himself humane in these bad times, and so the good-will of honest men goes with him to a notable degree." Cicero's social intercourse with the younger Cæsarians was cheerful and pleasant ”

“ The reference is to Pompey's son Cnæus, who was killed in Spain. Cassius was much in dread of him. "You know how foolish he is, and how apt to mistake cruelty for manliness. He always thought we were laughing at him, and I few repartees delivered in boorish fashion at point of sword. ↑ See below, p. 378 ↑ Ad Fam., ix., 15, 4. ↑ One would fain hope that the person meant is not Cæsar himself. ”