James Leigh Strachan-Davidson

“ From the time when he returned from Spain to the end of his life, it was a principle of Cæsar's policy that Cicero must be brought over to his side. Sometimes he tries to attract him by friendly offers and delicate acts of kindness, sometimes to drive him by well-directed strokes of chastisement. The means employed might differ, but in pursuit of the end Cæsar never wearied; he knew full well that the great orator must be either a useful ally or a dangerous enemy, and that he could not afford to neglect him. ”

“ The power of the people was nullified by the dangerous fiction that the whole nation could assemble in the Forum, and that an affirmative answer to the question put by a magistrate to such a casual gathering made the proposal into law, absolute and indefeasible. The machinery, like that of the French plébiscite, was fitted not to express the popular will, but to give opportunities for a despotism. Unlimited power would be lodged in the hands of any magistrate who could organise the city rabble, if only he were unchecked in his right of initiating proposals. ”

“ Self-conceit shuts the eyes of the Nobles to dangers, and leads them to disregard public opinion outside their own ranks as the mere babble of the multitude; lack of sympathy and intelligence makes them slow to read the necessities of the time, and they are apt to be affected by a certain lordly apathy which prevents their seriously exerting themselves to frame a policy or to adapt themselves to changing social conditions. These are all natural and inherent defects which every oligarchy has to dread. ”

“ To dream of clearing in a single generation the space that lies between the Roman Knight and the consul is an insolence which is to be suppressed by the united force of the Nobility, and which is looked on with disfavour even amongst the ranks from which the candidate is struggling to emerge. ”

“ For my own part, since I drew near to the city, I have been incessantly planning and speaking and acting for peace; but a strange madness has possessed not only bad men, but even those who are esteemed good, so that all desire to fight, while I cry out in vain that nothing is more wretched than a civil war. ”

“ It was like a change of doctors, he remarks to Atticus; [9] Appius had adopted a lowering treatment, and was vexed to see Cicero feeding the patient up again.
A Roman province was a unity, merely as the Persian Empire was a unity, in the sense that it all had one master. If we look at its internal organisation, a province is rather an aggregate of isolated commonwealths. Every acre of ground is part of the territory of some State, and each State has its own laws, its own courts of justice, its own treasury, and its own power of self-taxation. ”

“ A senator, who gave false witness or conspired to bribe a jury or himself took money for the condemnation of an innocent man, might be put on his trial for the offence; any other citizen was irresponsible. This monstrous immunity was not only publicly defended by Cicero, [8] the favourite champion of the equestrian order, but was acquiesced in even by its greatest enemy, Sulla, who "when he reconstituted the court for the trial of these offences, forasmuch as he had found the Commons of Rome free from such responsibility did not venture to entangle them in fresh liabilities." ”

“ No one who hears me, if he be but a citizen and a freeman, will be so unfair as not to judge that the question is not of punishment for me, but of reward." [39]
Cicero's demands for a free decision of the people were of course absurd. Cæsar's object was, not to give the Roman People an opportunity of expressing its opinion about the execution of Lentulus, but merely to coerce or to muzzle a dangerous political opponent. Cicero had rejected his offers, and though Cæsar had no wish to hurt Cicero unnecessarily, he had decided that the blow should fall. ”

“ You write that at Rome there is dead silence; so I supposed; but here in the fields men are by no means silent; the very fields themselves rebel against your tyranny. If you come to this 'far Læstrygonia'—to Formiæ, I mean—you will see how men chafe under it, how indignant they grow, how they detest our friend the Great One. His surname will soon be as much out of date as that of Crassus the Rich. ”

“ To Crassus he could point out how necessary it was for the fortunes of the democratic party that Pompey should be estranged once for all from the Senate; and as for Pompey himself, the insults and provocations to which he had been subjected for the last eighteen months, and the embarrassments of his present position, rendered him very open to the offers which Cæsar was prepared to make. If the three could agree on common action, they might hope to overbear all opposition, and hope would be almost a certainty if the adherence of Cicero could likewise be secured. ”

“ During the latter half of the second century 150-100 B.C. the Nobility shows in a less favourable light. It failed to deal with the complicated questions which presented themselves as the result of conquest, especially the agrarian question and the question of the Italian allies. Thus the statesmen who undertook to solve these problems naturally drifted into opposition, and from opposition into revolution. The Roman constitution gave fatal facilities for such a development. It had the theory of popular sovereignty without any machinery for realising that sovereignty in fact. ”

“ How can you find a victim more sweet for Publius Lentulus, that Lentulus who tried to slaughter you in the arms of your wives and children and to bury you beneath the ashes of our country, than by sating with the blood of Lucius Flaccus that bitter hatred which he had for all of us. ”

“ With Cicero's views as to the "harmony of the orders," it was very necessary that he should be on good terms with the tax-farmers. They submitted, we find, with a good grace to the cutting off of their usurious interest, and Cicero' repaid them, "full measure and running over with complimentary speeches and invitations to dinner." He sums up his relations with them in answer to Atticus' inquiries"—I pet them, and show them attentions, I make much of them in the way of praise and compliments; I take good care that they do not oppress any one." ”

“ As consul he had the legal right to propose measures to the people, but only provided that his initiative was not lawfully impeded. His colleague had an absolute right to forbid him. The whole business of the lightning was indeed a constitutional fiction, and absurd enough in itself; but it was not more absurd than the other fiction, [14] that by reading a bill to the handful of partisans whom he could collect in the Forum, Cæsar had obtained the sanction of the nine hundred thousand Roman citizens who were scattered through Italy. ”

“ There was no occasion for the Nobles to assert by law their exclusive right to the highest offices, for the electors would hardly look at any candidate who had not ancestral claims on their attention. It was perfectly legal indeed, for "the son of a Roman Knight"—in other words, for one who did not belong to the official caste—to contend for high office with a Noble; but he would find that the stars in their courses fought against the "new man." ”

“ He had fought on the side of Sulla in the Civil War, but he had no loyalty to his caste; as the richest man in Rome and the foremost in all lucrative speculations, he was the natural representative of the capitalists and bankers. Cicero himself was fast rising into the position of a second leader of the party. He had fully resolved to win his way by his own talents and energy to the highest grade in the State. For the last three generations only one "new man" had succeeded in attaining the consulship, and this one was his fellow-townsman, Caius Marius. ”

“ During the three generations which elapsed between the first consulship of Marius and the battle of Actium the Roman armies were organised on a principle intermediate between the militia system of the earlier Republic and the permanent standing armies of the Empire. The soldier, during this period of transition, is a volunteer and not a conscript. He is no longer a citizen serving his time in the ranks, but a professional. ”

“ The Roman tax-farmers had at least an equal claim to the title. Cicero is a very friendly witness when the Roman Knights are concerned, and we may be sure that he is within the truth when he tells us that a conscientious governor was often sorely perplexed by their demands. When his brother was governor of Asia, Cicero wrote to him: "If we set ourselves in opposition to the publicans we alienate both from ourselves and from the State an order, to which we are under obligations, and which by our efforts has been attached to the constitution. ”

“ The society of the ancient world was founded on slavery, and in attempting to reconstruct the picture we cannot afford to neglect the background. At this epoch we already find traces of that secret power exercised by the slaves and freedmen of the leading statesmen, which grew to so scandalous a height under the Empire. We have seen in the first chapter the odious domination of Sulla's freedman, Chrysogonus. The first Cæsar was too strong a man to allow himself to be governed by his servants, but of the dependents of Pompey we hear only too much. ”

“ Tiro was beloved by the whole family. Quintus writes to him in the most cordial tone; he scolds him, if he is remiss in correspondence, and tells him that he will have to employ his old master to plead his cause, and that it will require all Cicero's eloquence to get him acquitted. [45] Young Marcus, Cicero's son, is likewise very affectionate in his expressions. There is a pleasant letter [46] from the lad in which he banters Tiro about his purchase of a farm: "You will have to give up all your fine city ways. You have become a country Roman. ”

“ There was observed among them a strict understanding that any one who had thought himself at liberty to treat with indignity a single Roman Knight should be treated as a malefactor by the whole order. ”

“ Pompey's surrender dealt a fatal blow to Cicero's ideal party, and indeed to Cicero's position as an independent statesman. For the next eight years we shall find Roman politics dominated by the coalition, and when that coalition breaks up all controversies have to be decided on the battle-field. Cicero becomes almost powerless, and his statesmanship suffers an eclipse, from which it fully emerges only after Cæsar's death. ”

“ Every man was "noble" who could count curule magistrates among his ancestors, and he was most noble whose hall showed the greatest number of family portraits of consuls and censors. Power and influence accrued to the men who had led the Roman armies in their triumphal march over the civilised world, and this power and influence they handed on to their descendants. There was likewise among the Romans a strong public opinion in favour of a man's sitting in the seat of his fathers. ”

“ A certain Scaptius, armed with strong letters of introduction from Marcus Brutus, applied to Cicero for an appointment as prefect in Cyprus, where he was owed money by the State of Salamis. Cicero refused absolutely on two grounds: in the first place he would never give such an office to any one who was trading in his province; secondly, Scaptius had already shown how he understood the functions of prefect. He had been entrusted by Appius with a troop of horse which he had employed to blockade the Senate of Salamis in their council-chamber, until five of them had actually died of starvation. ”

“ The world was divided into provinces, each of which was destined to be prey of one member after another of the official caste at Rome. The short period of eleven years between the dictatorship of Sulla and the first consulship of Pompey has for its typical administrators the three men whose names Juvenal selects out of all past history when he wishes to gibbet the most shameless and notorious plunderers of the provinces—Dolabella, Antonius, and Verres. ”