Under Which King?

WE resume our gleanings from the correspondence of Cicero in the spring of 703 (B. C. 51), about a year after Milo’s banishment to Marseilles. In the course of this year, the ex-consul had received at the hands of his fellow-citizens one honor which he had long coveted, and one which he had done his best to avoid. The reader will remember his once having said laughingly to Atticus that he would scorn any bribe, except the augurship. Cicero was made augur now, in place of the younger Crassus, killed in the Parthian war. Pompey proposed his name, and Hortensius consecrated him ; but he did not get much good out of the highly aristocratic distinction of a seat in the augural college and a vote in the ecclesiastical courts. Like so many of our mundane wishes, this of Cicero’s was gratified just a trifle too late.

In the same winter, that of 702-3, the Senate passed a law requiring an interval of five years after the close of each consulate before the ex-consul could assume in person the government of a province ; and providing also that the provinces should be administered for the next five years by consulars who had not yet acted as governors. Cicero came under the latter head, and received the province of Cilicia, in Asia Minor, to which had been added certain districts in Phrygia and Pampliylia, together with the island of Cyprus. He had also the command of two legions, which constituted none too large an army, by the way, wherewith to hold in check the restless, adroit, and never thoroughly subdued Parthians. He succeeded Appius Claudius, the brother of his old foe, whose management of the province had been rather more than commonly unscrupulous; and Quintus Cicero, already detached, as we observe, from the service of Cæsar, was one of His four legates or lieutenants. The two young Ciceros, with their tutor, were taken along, that they might have a glimpse, under these fine auspices, of Athens and the more famous Greek islands, while Tullia, already at twenty-five divorced from her spendthrift second husband, Crassipes, remained in Italy with her mother ; and Terentia herself, in connection with her sharp freedman, Philotimus, — whom Cicero had somewhat heedlessly made the agent of a portion of his Roman property, — was left free to pursue those pecuniary speculations to which, as the years advanced, she became more and more addicted.

The only money matter which appears to have weighed on the mind of the departing proconsul, prone by nature, as we know, to carry burdens of that sort lightly, was a debt to Cæsar of 800,000 sesterces, or about $35,000. The sum was considerable, but Cicero’s preoccupation about it seems to have arisen chiefly from an honorable unwillingness to remain under pecuniary obligation to a man of whose political designs he felt a growing distrust.

“ It is of the last importance to me,” he writes to Atticus, when on his journey, “ that the matter of the 800,000 sesterces, as well as the other small debt, should be arranged before you leave Rome. It was you who first aroused my anxiety on this head, and I rely on you to help me out.” This means, of course, “ You must raise the money to pay Cæsar,” which Atticus had every facility for doing.

The five years for which Cæsar had had his imperium in Gaul extended would not expire until 704, but that country was virtually subdued, and Marcus Marcellus, one of the new consuls, member of a stanch old optimate family, was for recalling the victorious general to Rome, on the ground that the work for which his extraordinary powers had been granted him was done. But neither his colleague, Sulpicius, nor Pompey, who was nominal proconsul and commander of the forces in Spain, and had been sole consul at Rome up to August of the preceding year, dared venture on so decisive a step. Cæsar remained in North Italy with his magnificently disciplined and enthusiastically devoted legions, and had already intimated his intention of assuming the privilege which both Pompey and he had already enjoyed, and standing, though absent from Rome, for the consulate of the ensuing year. Everything goes to show that the plan of his grand coup d’état was rapidly maturing in the luminous mind of the usurper ; nor can we wonder, in view of the issues about to be decided, that Cicero should have chafed as he did at the notion of vegetating for a year in Asia Minor. More than a year — more than the precise number of 355¹ days from the time of assuming office — he vowed by all the gods he would not stay ; and if we did not know beforehand the tragic sequel of the story, we should be amused by the vehement iteration of the commands laid, in every missive, upon every correspondent, to prevent, by all means, fair or foul, the possible extension of his term of office.

Cicero’s firstletter to Atticus, after he had started for his province, is dated at Minturnæ, in the beginning of May, 703. It is eminently private and confidential, but how the actors in the unpleasant little domestic scene which it describes come to life under the writer’s graphic pen! “And now for the postcript concerning your sister,” — Quintus’s wife, — “ written crosswise on your last letter. The case was this : My brother met me at Arpinum, and we had, in the first place, a good deal of conversation about you ; after which I alluded to the talk which you and I had had at the Tusculanum concerning your sister. Never was man more amenable than he then seemed with regard to her. I could not detect the slightest symptom of ill-feeling. So much for that day. On the next we left Arpinum ; circumstances obliging Quintus to remain at his Arcanum, while I proceeded to Aquinum. However, we arranged to lunch at the Arcanum (you know that farm of his) ; and when we arrived, Quintus said in the most courteous manner, 'Now, Pomponia, do you invite the ladies, and I will fetch the boys.’ Nothing, so far as I saw, could have been kinder than his words, his looks, and his whole intention. But her answer, given in my hearing, was, ' I am only a guest here myself.’ I suppose she alluded to the fact that Statius had preceded us to see about the lunch. ‘ Hear that,’ says Quintus.

‘ But ’t is only a specimen of what I have to bear every day.’ A trifle, do you say? I do not think so. It, struck me very disagreeably, she looked and spoke with such absurd asperity. However. I did not betray any offense. She declined to take her place at table with the rest of us, and when Quintus sent her something she refused to touch it. To cut a long story short, he was as mild as possible, and she as cantankerous. Certain things occurred beside, which angered me, I think, more than they did Quintus. . . . What would you have ? In my opinion, her behavior that day was outrageous, and you may tell her so, if you like.”

The next letter, dated at Pompeii, May 10th, is interesting because it records Cicero’s last glimpse in life of one of his most distinguished contemporaries, a man whom he had admired, emulated. surpassed, suspected, but in the main always liked ; from whom he parted in the fullest amity, with no presentiment that the end was so near. “ While I was in the villa at Cumæ ” (the same in one corner of which he had studied while the workmen were still busy), “ I had the very great pleasure of a visit from Hortensius. He begged for my commands” (at Rome), “and I laid all sorts of injunctions upon him, but especially that he should do everything in his power to prevent my term of office from being extended. I want you to jog his memory about this, and also to tell him how gratified I was that he came to see me. ... We had a sort of little Rome at Cumæ, there were so many people there.”

Cicero gratefully recurs, later on in the same letter, to the effort it must have cost Hortensius to come to Cumæ, in his delicate state of health: yet when he got a letter from Cœlius, in June of the next year, which closed with the words, “ Hortensius is dying while I write this,” he received a very sorrowful Shock. “ I know you will grieve for Hortensius,” he writes to Attic us. " To me his death was a sharp blow. I had looked forward to enjoying his friendship as never before.” At fifty-six, Cicero could still look forward, but he did not long retain his relish for the future. He had himself barely eight more years to live, and almost all the eminent actors in the great piece where his part had been cast were destined to disappear before him.

Cicero passed three days—from the 18th to the 21st of May — at Tarentum as the guest of Pompey, who was out of civil office in Rome just now, and residing in the far south for his health. We observe a striking rapprochement between the two old optimates on this occasion. Pompey had, indeed, done all that in him lay, during his third and last consulate, to secure a clean administration. Private differences faded before the presentiment of a common danger, and not for years had Cicero felt himself so heartily in sympathy with “ the Emir.” “ I left that great statesman,” he writes to Atticus, “ prepared to resist to the uttermost the aggressions which we all are dreading.” And to the gay and cynical Cœlius he wrote later from Athens, in allusion to the same visit: “ There is no reason why you should be able to foresee the future any more than the rest of us, — any more than I can myself, who passed several days with Pompey, during which we talked of nothing but public affairs. I cannot tell you all we said, — I must not; but rest assured of one thing: Pompey is a noble citizen, who will give himself heart and soul to the defense of the republic.” I think that Cœlius was the man to have whistled softly — if the Romans ever whistled — when he read of the surprising unanimity of these sessions at Tarentum.

From Athens, where he had had an enthusiastic reception, he writes to Atticus on the 27th of June: ‘‘ You are always in my thoughts here ; and though I do not need the associations of these scenes to remind me of you, every memory is quickened as I retrace your footsteps, and in fact we talk of nobody else. But you, I suppose, would prefer to hear something about my doings. Very well, then. Up to this time, I and my suite have cost nothing whatever, either to the city or to private individuals. I have not even taken of my host wliat the Julian law ² allows me. My people all understand that this is a matter which touches my honor, and so far they have behaved very well. The Greeks cannot say enough in praise of my scrupulousness. For the rest, I have done what I thought you would approve, but I ’ll not praise myself until this business is finished. ... It is a great delight to be in Athens, — I mean for the sake of the city itself, and its monuments, and your popularity here, and the general good-will toward me. We have some lively philosophical discussions, — if Aristo, with whom I am lodged, can be called a philosopher. Your Zeno, or rather our Zeno, I yielded to Quintus ; but the two houses are so near that we are together all day long.”

Cicero rendered a graceful service, while at Athens, to the Epicurean sect, from whose philosophy — we have his own word for it. — he vehemently dissented. The site of their founder’s house, of which some vestiges yet remained, had been granted by the Areopagus to a certain Memmius, a creature of Cæsar’s, banished from Rome, as the reader may recall, for his connection with the great bribery cases of the year 700. Memmius was preparing to build there, to the extreme disgust, of the disciples of Epicurus, and Cicero wrote him a most tactful and charming letter, entreating him to respect their feelings, and abandon the site.

But this interval of æsthetic dalliance in Athens was necessarily short. There is a note from Tralles, July 25th, announcing Cicero’s excellent first reception in Asia, — “ a letter all dust and hurry ; my next shall be nicer; ” and finally, on the 3d of August, he writes from Laodicea, which was within his province : “ Here I arrived on the last day of July; so put a mark against, that day in your calendar, to show when my year begins. My coming had been eagerly anticipated. I was warmly welcomed ; but you never would believe how the duties of my office bore me. You know my turn of mind ; there is no sufficient field for my energies here, — no opportunity for real distinction. Fancy me delivering judgment in Laodicea while Plotius is pleading at Rome ! But after all, what I long for is the splendor of the city, the Forum, my own home, and yourself. However, I will do my best, provided it, last only a year. The slightest extension would be the death of me ; but that can easily be prevented if you are at Rome. You ask what I am about. Well, I am spending a deal of money, for one thing, living as I do. I am perfectly satisfied with my resolve ” (to make no requisitions of the people). " The disinterestedness which you recommend is a marvelous fine thing; so much so that I expect to have to borrow to pay my debt to you. I do nothing to aggravate the wounds which Appius ” (his predecessor) “inflicted on the province, but there they are ; they cannot be covered up.”

The distress which he encountered on all hands was indeed extreme. Taxes had been so crushing as everywhere to compel the sale of land to rapacious speculators, like those who were, alas ! the agents of Brutus the honorable in Cyprus, in a certain affair of which we shall hear more anon. Now Cicero, in the prospectus of his administration which he had published before leaving Rome, had announced, among other honest intentions, his purpose of limiting the rates of interest and usury to the legal twelve per cent., — Brutus got forty-eight ! — so that the harassed Laodiceans naturally flocked to him as a deliverer, and overwhelmed him with their complaints. All he could do for the moment was to hear the most pressing of these, and make some provisional arrangement for the relief of the sufferers. In his double proconsular capacity of chief justice and military commander, he conceived it his duty first to see after the defenses of the territory, and then to right the wrongs of the people. He therefore made straight for the camp of the legions at Iconium, in Lycaonia, halting only for a day or two in each of the chief towns, where he purposed to return and hold court during the winter months, when military operations, especially among the mountains of the interior. would be out of the question.

The misery which he beheld, however, and which he felt in every nerve of his sensitive being, caused him to issue yet more stringent and in fact almost fanatical regulations for economy on the part of his suite. The quæstor and the lieutenants were allowed only four beds among them, and had often to camp out for the night. The self-indulgent Quintus grumbled in private, we may be sure: he was capable, as he afterward proved, of graver treachery than this, but he had fought with Cæsar in Gaul, and fought well, and was thoroughly used to the makeshifts of a soldier’s life. There is, indeed, something very striking about the instinctive military ability, the hereditary taste and universal aptitude for the business of war, among the heirs of the victorisque arma Quirini, evinced by the fact that even so preëminently literary and citified a Roman as Marcus Cicero should have addressed himself to it quite naturally when the occasion required, and conducted it admirably well.

He had frankly owned, before setting out for Cilicia, that he hoped the Parthians would keep quiet. They were not so obliging, and he got news at Iconium, through a messenger from Antiochus, a friendly native king, that they were meditating a combined attack upon the Roman forces. There is no occasion here to describe the series of manœuvres by which their raid was repelled. The whole course of events is fully set forth in the letters, not to Atticus only, but to Cœlius and to Cato, and set forth with no little self-complacency by the novice in war. Cicero was efficiently helped in his campaign by Caius Cassius, quæstor to Bibulus, the new proconsul in the neighboring province of Syria, the same who was afterward to become notorious in connection with the plot against Cæsar, and whose name now begins to figure, along with that of Marcus Brutus, in this vivid correspondence.

The Parthian rising having been virtually quelled by the first of October, 703, Cicero determined to put a handsome finish upon his military record by taking the aggressive against certain fierce and troublesome hill-tribes who infested the mountain district known as “ Free Cilicia,” and were a standing menace to the more peaceable inhabitants. Quintus and the other legates entered into the project with enthusiasm. The principal camp of the mountaineers was surprised on the dark night of the 12th of October, their force cut to pieces, and three towns and six castles of theirs afterwards taken and demolished. The spot at the foot of the mountain, beside the river Issus. where the Roman troops encamped after their victory, and where Cicero had the gratification of being hailed as Imperator by his men, was already famous in history. The altars were yet standing there which commemorated the victory over Darius of the immortal Alexander. “ A somewhat greater general,”Cicero observes dryly to Atticus, “ than either you or I.”One stronghold the mountaineers yet held, —a certain town upon a crag, hearing the barbaric and slightly absurd name of Pindenessus. To this our Imperator proceeded to lay regular siege, according to the most approved fashion of the day. and on the 19th of December was able to write in high good humor : " Early Saturday morning, the Pindenessians gave themselves up on the fifty-seventh day ³ after we had invested the place. ‘ Who the deuce are the Pindenessians ? ' methinks you say. 'I never so much as heard of them.' Is that my fault ? Can I turn Cilicia into Macedonia or Ætolia ? ”

But though he made light of his military exploits in private, Cicero was well resolved to have a supplicatio, or public thanksgiving, at Rome for his victories, and he saw no reason, the more he thought of it, why he should not have a triumph also. Others had been granted this keenly coveted honor for achievements no more important than this. The supplicatio was voted without much difficulty, although Cato opposed even that, as we gather from a stiff, pompous. and at the same time exceedingly wily note of his, dated at Rome some time in the succeeding May, and replying to one of Cicero’s, in which he had formally laid claim to the honor in question. After saying that he believed he had done Cicero full justice during the debate in the Senate, the stubborn old optimate proceeded in the following involved and exasperating manner: “I am glad your thanksgiving was voted ; that, is to say, if it suits you to have the immortal gods congratulated on a matter which was in no wise fortuitous, and where the national safety was maintained by your own ability and resolution, rather than that we should refer this boon to yourself. Perhaps, however, you regard a thanksgiving merely as preliminary to a triumph, and so would rather we attributed our good fortune to chance than to you. In that case, it may be observed, first, that a. triumph does not always follow a thanksgiving ; and second, that it might be thought more honorable than any triumph to have the Senate decide that a province had been defended and preserved in its allegiance rather by the mild and blameless character of its governor’s administration than by military prowess or special divine favor. And such is, in fact, my own opinion.” Cicero thought he saw through this, and he resented it. He makes the somewhat bitter observation to Atticus, later on, that Cato had seen no moral objection to a supplicatio of twenty days in the case of his own son-in-law, Bibulus, who had not once been in action ; nevertheless, he returned Cato his full measure of ceremonious compliments. But before the time for a triumph came, that had happened which had killed the desire for it, even in his own ardent mind.

From the first of January onward, Cicero was principally occupied, as he had foreseen he should be. in holdingassizes, — a miserably harassing and ungrateful business. Take the case, before mentioned, of the city of Salamis in Cyprus versus Scaptius and Matinius, who presently turned out to be only the agents of a much greater personage. The litigants appeared before Cicero in Tarsus, and there was plain proof of the most flagrant extortion, accompanied by circumstances of peculiar barbarity. The Salaminians had borrowed a certain sum, — nominally of Scaptius and Matinius, — and had given their bond for the payment of interest at fortyeight per cent. Under the previous proconsul, Scaptius had held a small military command, and so had been able to collect this monstrous interest at the point of the sword. From this command Cicero had removed him. and when he petitioned to be reinstated had simply referred him to his own decree, which provided that no man engaged in business of any description should have troops at his disposal. He was, moreover, inflexible in his ruling that no more than twelve per cent, compound interest could legally be collected of the Salaminians, There had lately been an attempt to get an exception made of the Salaminian case by special legislation at Rome, but the motion, which had passed the Senate, — it is greatly to be feared, under pressure from Brutus himself, — had been neutralized by a counter-motion, and in any case no mere decree of the Senate had the force of a law like the Gabinian,1 which hacl received the sanction both of Senate and people ; so that Cicero, who understood Roman law if anybody did, knew that his ground was impregnable. Then men of Salamis were only too happy to pay twelve per cent. compound interest. Indeed, they informed Cicero that, fully expecting the usual tribute to be levied by the new governor, they had raised money for this purpose, and deposited it in their treasury, subject to his own call: but that since he had refused to accept this money, they would, if he pleased, apply it to the payment of their debt. Scaptius then contrived privately to inform the proconsul that there was a good deal of uncertainty as to the amount of the original debt; that in fact it was not as large as the Salaminians now fancied ; and that if the interest were to be thus ruthlessly cut down, he, Scaptius, would have to insist on a principal sum of two hundred talents, instead of a hundred and six. Cicero replied to this piece of effrontery by ordering the accounts to be produced in his presence, from examination of which it plainly appeared that the sum lent the Salaminians had been one hundred and six talents, and no more. The Salaminians offered their money in open court, but Scaptius refused to take it; and it was at this point that Cicero learned, to his intense disgust, that Marcus Brutus was the real creditor.

Atticus, who may possibly not have understood all the circumstances, had evidently written in the sense of urging Brutus ’s claim, and Cicero replies with natural irritation, dating from Laodicea early in May, 704: “Now, then, for your Brutus, — well, our Brutus, if you prefer. I tell you I have done everything in my power to forward his interests, both in my province and in the kingdom.”(Cappadocia, which was under Cicero’s protection, and whose king, Ariobarzanes, was also in debt to Brutus, and much more heavily yet to Pompey.) “As for the Salaminians, . . . the money was actually counted out. and Scaptius would not take it. And what do you mean by saying that Brutus is not avaricious ? Why, there was the forty-eight per cent, nominated in the bond ! It never could have been paid, and if it could I would not have suffered it. ... I think I could convince Brutus himself that I acted properly. Cato. I am sure I could. As for you, I don’t know. I recur to your letter. Is it you, Atticus, the eulogist of my integrity and refinement, whom I hear, ‘ with your own lips,’as Ennius says, requesting me to assign Scaptius a troop of horse for purposes of extortion ? Would you, if you were here with me, as you sometimes say you pine to be, permit me to do such a thing, even were I inclined ? ’ He need have had no more than fifty men,’do you say? Spartacus had considerably less than fifty in the beginning. What harm might not that number of ruffians have done in a defenseless island ? Nay, what harm had they not already done ? ”

“ If Brutus,” he writes on another occasion, for the ease tormented him much, — “ if Brutus thinks I ought to have allowed him forty-eight per cent., when I had fixed the rate in the entire province at twelve, and the sharpest usurers had acquiesced; if he objects to the exclusion of tradesmen from the prefecture, which I enforced in the case of my own friend Torquatus, and your friend Lænius, and of Pompey himself in the person of Sextus Statius ; if he resents the recall of that cavalry troop, why then I shall be sorry to have angered him, but I shall be much more sorry that he is not the man I took him for.”

Cicero, however, refused the seemingly reasonable request of the Salaminians that they might, be allowed to deposit their money in a temple, and thus prevent further interest from accruing, and in the end the final adjudication of the case was relegated to his successor in the province. That his conscience was not altogether at ease about so leaving it is evident from his own words:

“I entreated the Salaminians to withdraw their claim,” — to be allowed to deposit the money,— “and they consented ; but what is going to become of them if a man like Paulas is sent, here ? So much I did for Brutus.” From our point of view he did more than enough, but the sense of officia, which included social and party obligations, was almost stronger among the Romans than it is among ourselves.⁴

At no time of his life were Cicero’s letters, as a whole, more animated and amusing than during this dignified captivity of his in Cilicia. Beside the regular dispatches to Atticus there are sparkling notes to sundry of the wits of Rome, as, for instance, one, in February, to a certain Pætus, — a name which always implies distinction, — who had evidently written congratulating Cicero on his victories : " You speak as though I were a general of the first order! Really I never suspected you of such an acquaintance with military affairs. It is evident that you know by heart your Pyrrhus and Cineas. I intend to follow your advice to the extent of always having a bit of a navy on the coast, which they do say is the best of all defenses against the Parthian cavalry. If you think I am jesting, you don’t know the sort of commander with whom you have to deal. Why, I have illustrated in this campaign, of mine the whole of that Cyropædia which I wore to tatters when I read it. My hope is, however, that we shall soon be making better jokes than these, face to face. " And there is a word to one Yolumnius, making comical complaint that all sorts of bad puns and the like were basely attributed to him, Cicero, in his absence, and begging this friend, who knew what good things he could say, to look after his “salt-works ” a little; that is to say, the estate in bon mots which he had actually left in Rome.

But more interesting, in some respects, than all the rest is the correspondence of this year with M. Cœlius Rufus, many of whose own letters, by a rare chance, have also been preserved, and constitute one of the chief authorities for the course of events at Rome during that memorable period. Cœlius was, perhaps, the least estimable character among Cicero’s intimate friends, but he was none the less an agreeable fellow, and an exceedingly piquant correspondent. He was a thorough man of the world, — knew everybody, and possessed a power of two-edged irony hardly less fine than Cicero’s own. “Domitius hates me as if I were his best friend,” he remarks of our old acquaintance Ahenobarbus.

The record of Cœlius was already a miscellaneous one. Twelve years before, when little more than a boy, he had been ‘‘out” with Catiline, but he afterwards became a conspicuous member of that following of Cicero’s among the young men of fashion, which included also Curio and Publius Crassus. The cause célèbre in which Cicero defended him so brilliantly had made notorious the fact that though Cœlius might never have attempted to poison the too famous Clodia, he had at one time enjoyed her most distinguished favor. Now, however, both he and Curio had thrown themselves into practical politics. Curio stood successfully for the tribunate, and Cœlius, having been elected curule ædile for the ensuing year, was very anxious that Cicero should procure him, in Cilicia, some panthers for the shows he was proposing to give. “ I have laid my commands on the pantherhunters,” is the reply of the proconsul: “ but the beasts are said to be very scarce, and what there are complain that they are the only individuals for whom snares are laid in my province, and announce their intention of emigrating to Caria.”

Cœlius tells all the Roman news, — who dies, who is married, above all who is divorced. In the latter category he presently mentions that dashing nobleman and kindred spirit of his own, Dolabella, — a special favorite with Terent ia, too. — who was destined to win Tullia’s hand in her father’s absence. to the great disquiet of the latter, and her own future anguish. But there are many shrewd comments on public affairs as well. Early in October, 703, Cœlius writes from Rome, “I have political news for you to-day, though nothing very agreeable.” And he proceeds to give the text of a decree passed by the Senate, sitting in the Temple of Apollo, on the last day of September, which provided that no action should be taken with regard to Cæsar’s command before the 1st of March ensuing, but that on that day the then consuls should bring forward a measure for the recall of the veterans from Gaul, and any attempt to impede legislation was formally prohibited. “ People take much encouragement.”Cœlius continues, “from the fact that Pompey is known to have said that he could not, in justice, have taken any action about Cæsar’s provinces before March, but should not hesitate to do so after that date. When somebody asked him what would happen supposing a protest [intercessio] were entered even then, he replied that if Cæsar instructed any of his agents to oppose the decree, it would be quite the same thing as if he defied it in person. 'But suppose.' remarked another, 'that he should wish to be consul and keep his army too ! ’ ‘ Suppose,’ replied Pompey, blandly, ‘ that my own son should threaten me with a stick ! ’ From all this it is gathered that Pompey and Cæsar are now quite at odds; so I do not see but Cæsar is reduced to the alternative either of staying where he is and abandoning his canvass, or of coming home if he wants to be consul. Curio will oppose him resolutely.”Six weeks later, however, Cœlius writes that Curio’s course appears to him a little ambiguous ; and then follows a gap in the correspondence, extending over all the winter months ; but there must have been letters from Cœlius during this period which have not been preserved, for we find Cicero writing to him from Laodicea in the first days of May, 704: “ The last page of your letter was written so vilely that I could hardly make it out. Do you really mean to say that Curio is defending Cæsar ? Great heavens! Who would ever have expected it, except myself ?— for as I live the thought had occurred to me. I wish we were where we could have a good laugh over this together.”

It was true enough, and no laughing matter either, as events presently proved. Cæsar had bought Curio — at a high price, to be sure — by paying his debts, to the tune of several millions,⁵ out of the spoils of Gaul; and the clever youngtribune played his new part with consummate ability, and proved himself capable of disconcerting at all points the feeble tactics of his former party. The line he took was the plausible and popular one of insisting that the two great generals and former triumvirs should be placed exactly on a par ; and that, if Cæsar were recalled from the north, Pompey should likewise be deprived of his legions in the south. Pompey had fancied himself sure of the consuls for 704, one of whom, Marcellus, was cousin to the Marcellus of the previous year, and a man of like principles and traditions. But the other consul, though an Æmilius Paulus, was already Cæsar’s man, won over by the same unanswerable argument which had been employed with Curio ; and one of the two censors of that year, the last chosen by the people, was Calpurnius Piso, Cæsar’s father-in-law. The result was a dead-lock in the Senate, which lasted throughout the summer and autumn. Only when the tentative measure was finally carried that one legion should be withdrawn from either general to serve in the perpetual Parthian war. Pompey’s mode of complying was to demand back a legion which he had previously lent to Cæsar, while the latter not only surrendered cheerfully both Pompey’s legion and another, but sent them away laden with presents, and singing their leader’s praises all along their march. In the end, neither of these legions ever went to Parthia. The consul Marcellus ordered them into camp at Capua, and they were about all the troops that Pompey found at his disposal in the south of Italy, when the crisis of the next winter came.

All this appears from Cicero’s correspondence of 704, beside many matters of more intimate interest to himself. It could not greatly have reassured him, concerning Tullia’s third marriage, to get a note of congratulation from Cœ on her betrothal with Dolabella, couched in these off-hand terms : " I make you my compliments on the alliance of a most eligible gentleman ; for such, upon my honor, I consider him. There are certain respects, indeed, in which he has hitherto been his own worst enemy ; but he is older now than he was, and his habits are already improved, through the influence of your example and authority and the chastity of Tullia. Very soon, I make no doubt, he will be all that he should be. He is neither pertinacious in his vices, nor incapable of appreciating better things. In a word, I like him immensely, which is of course the principal point ! ” Later on in the same letter, Cœlius makes an equally airy allusion, his first, to the possibility of civil war: “ Whether we fight for the republic, or let things take their course, concerns you, ye rich old men ! ” The cynical reference is plain. Men who had lived as Curio, Dolabella, and Cœlius himself were in no position to furnish the sinews of war, and had nothing to lose in any case.

This letter was written in June, and must have crossed one from Cicero, dated in the first days of the same month, and containingthe famous burst of sentiment with regard to Rome, “ Urbem, urbem, mi Rufe, cole,”etc. “O my Rufus, adore the city, and live in the sunshine thereof. All my life long I have held it base and contemptible for a man ever to leave it who hadit in his power to win distinction there. I knew this well, and I wish I had stuck to my conviction. I have got nothingout of my province, by Heaven ! fit to compare with the pleasure of one little walk and talk with you.” Even his triumph, if he gets it, he says later on, will never console him for this last period of absence. But what if Cicero had known that, save for one flying visit to the suburbs in the ensuing January, he would not see his beloved capital for three more years, nor ever live there again until her ancient polity was dead and cold, and the sway of a dictator definitely accepted ?

The letters to Atticus of this period are fuller even than usual of domestic details. Cicero sends greeting to Atticus’ little daughters, Cæcilia and Pomponia, the latter of whom he has never seen. He is glad that Pilia, Atticus’ wife, approves of Dolabella, God grant that matter may end well ! He himself had had other views for Tullia, and cannot help regretting Tiberius Nero, the father of the future emperor, who had made proposals to himself in Cilicia. But it is plain, he thinks, that the ladies had been conquered by the charm of Dolahella’s polished manner. He must, if possible, manage on the home journey to show the two young Ciceros Rhodes, where he had studied rhetoric. He compares the characters of the boys. They get on well together, preciselyh hecause their temperaments are so unlike. One, his own Cicero, requires the spur, the other the rein. Both, as is natural, find their tutor, Dionysius, unnecessarily severe. The son of Quintus, who was the elder by about two years, had received the toga virilis at his uncle’s hands in Laodicea, but he turned against his illustrious relative afterward in the most violent manner. There is also, in almost every one of these last letters from Cilicia, some word of tender solicitude concerning the precarious health of Cicero’s accomplished and well-beloved freedman Tiro, whose loyalty and devotion present so striking a contrast to the fickleness of some of his master’s own kith and kin, — the reflection of whose exquisite character sheds a softening light on every page where his name occurs. Per contra, there is an explosion of righteous wrath, in one letter, against the freedman Philotimus, who, in rendering an account of his stewardship, had presented bills to an amount that left Cicero his debtor. “ That’s an astounding thief ! I intend to get rid of him ! ” But the stinging discovery was yet to be made that Philotimus and Terentia were in partnership.

Meanwhile the moment Cicero touched the shores of Greece, he began to encounter the most alarming rumors about Cæsar’s progress: that he had flatly refused to quit his province, that he had already advanced with four legions as far as Piacenza. The last report was premature, but common talk foreshadowed with sufficient accuracy the resistless course of events. Finally, on the 16th of October, Cicero indited at Athens a long and entirely unreserved letter to Atticus, in which he reviewed the whole situation, and faced with the whimsical candor which belonged to him at such times the ugly dilemma which awaited himself: —

“ I anticipate such a struggle as we have never yet seen, unless indeed the god who got me out of the Parthian war better than I had any reason to expect should show some regard for the republic. In this respect, however, I shall be no worse off than everybody else ; so pray let that pass, and give your attention to my own particular problem. Don’t you know how anxious I have always been to be guided by your friendly advice, and that it was yourself who admonished me to keep well with both leaders ? Not,” adds the writer, quoting a Greek verse, “ that you could ever have persuaded me to be false to my country. Still, somehow or otner, you did manage to convince me that I ought to adhere to the one because of the favors he had done me. and to the other on account of his intrinsic worth, and I accordingly proceeded to make myself so pleasant that I became a prime favorite with both. We reasoned in this way : it never could harm the state for me to adhere to Pompey’s side, nor could I embroil myself with Pompey through sympathy with Cæsar, while the two men were fast allies. But now, as you hint, and as I see, there is going to be a terrible break between them, and they both count on me. Or it may be that one ” (Cæsar) “ only affects to do so, but Pompey, at least,, feels perfectly sure of me, and with reason ; he knows that I approve his present policy. I got letters from each of them, along with your own, from which it would appear that they both value my support above everything else. Now what am I to do? I don’t mean in the last extremity, for if there is to be war. I would rather lose with Pompey than win with Cæsar; but with regard to the questions which will be coming up about the time of my arrival. — whether Cæsar’s claim of absence is to be allowed, or whether he shall be required to dismiss his army. ‘Marcus Tullius has the floor.' How can I say, ‘ Be kind enough to wait until I have consulted with Atticus ’ ? There will be no room for shuffling. Shall I oppose Cæsar ? What then becomes of all our pledges of friendship ? For I supported a similar claim, at his own request, at Ravenna. At his own request, say I ? Yes, and at that of our Gnæus too, in that divine third consulate of his! On the other hand, if I defend Cæsar’s claim, I shall have Pompey to deal with; and not Pompey only,” and Cicero takes refuge once more in his favorite Homeric quotation about the men and women of Troy and the reproaches of Polydamus. “ Whom do I mean this time ? Why, you yourself, the eulogist of my actions and my writings. Whenever the matter of Cæsar’s provinces was broached, during the late consulates of the Marcelli. I was able to evade the difficulty, but now I am brought squarely to the point. The best way will be for me to adduce, as an unanswerable reason for remaining outside the city, the necessity of arranging for my triumph, and so give the fools an opportunity to speak first! But even so, they will have my opinion out of me at all costs. You will jeer, no doubt, if I say that I wish I had stayed in my province ; but with such a crisis as this impending, it would have been much better, detestable as it was there.”⁶

“ If there, is to he war, I would rather lose with Pompey than win with Cæar.” We have no right to question the sincerity of Cicero in this declaration, since, after a thousand fluctuations of feeling, he eventually acted upon it ; but civil strife was to him the most, frightful of all evils, and he did not yet seriously believe that it would come to that. He had a strong and, as the event proved, quite exaggerated confidence in his own power of mediation between the rivals. Counsels of peace, if backed by his eloquence, must, he still fancied, prevail. Cœlius, indeed, had reiterated, in the last letter which Cicero received from him before his return, that if one or other of the chiefs did not go to the Parthian war, hostilities would inevitably break out at home. ” Both are fully equipped and ready for the fray ; and Fortune is preparing a monstrous fine show, — bairing the danger of it for your return.” But who knew whether Cœlius meant all that he said ?

Cicero heard nothing to reassure him on his arrival in Italy, but he hoped against hope until Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, three months later. His state of mind was like that of many a good conservative — both North and South — in America, during the months that preceded the fall of Sumter.

Terentia met him at Brindisi, as Tullia had done on the more hopeful occasion of his return from exile. He mentions the fact rather coldly to Atticus. He had requested his wife to come, and she had entered the gates of the city just as he arrived in port, so that they met in the Forum. But there is no lack of feeling when he speaks, immediately afterward, of the grief it was to him to leave Tiro behind at Patræ, too ill to travel; and to the same Tiro we find him writing most affectionately on the 27th of November, only three days after his arrival in Italy. He writes on his boy’s behalf as well as his own, and gives a very gracious message from Terentia; for Tiro seems to have been equally beloved by every member of the Cicero family. “ I need not tell you to get well as fast as possible : I know how prudent you are, how temperate, how fond of me. I know you will do your uttermost to be with me as soon as may be ; yet do not make too great haste. ... I have ordered Curio to pay the doctor’s bills, and to see that you have all that you require. I gave him carte-blanche, in fact, and have left a horse and mule for you at Brindisi. I fear there will be great disturbances in Rome at the new year, but I mean to act with extreme circumspection.” On the 9th of December, Cicero had advanced as far as the villa of a friend near Herculaneum; and there would seem to have been a large party of Cicero’s in the house, for the postscript of a long letter written to Atticus on that day contains these significant words about Dolabella : “My new son-in-law makes himself very agreeable to me, as well as to Tullia and Terentia. He is clever and cultivated, and we must be content with that, making the best of other things.” On the next day, December 10th, Cicero had an interview of two hours with Pompey, who was making a giro in Southern Italy, and was rather sharply criticised by some of the more earnest optimates for absenting himself from Rome at so critical a moment. He was very complimentary to the returned pro-consul on this occasion, spoke of his coveted triumph as a matter of course, advised him to keep out of Rome to avoid offending the tribunes, and alluded rather negligently to the possibility that there would be fighting. It is plain that Pompey’s airs of majestic security were as distasteful to Cicero as ever, and especially disquieting now. “ But still.” he says to Atticus, “ as matters now stand, it is not open to me to inquire, as you say in Greek. ‘ Which is the boat of the sons of Atreus ? ’ for my boat is unquestionably the one of which Pompey is captain. ' Ditto to Pompey,’ is all I can say, if I have to opine; but privately I shall entreat him to come to an arrangement.”

Cicero had had a certain sentiment about reaching Rome on his birthday, January 3d, but he had promised Pompey to halt with him at the Alban villa of the latter, the scene, as we may remember, of a particularly unpleasant interview between these two, before Cicero went into exile. He found it somewhat difficult to arrange his plans, however, because he did not wish to visit Pompey on the day of the feast of the Compitalia, for fear of incommoding the family ; and in the end Pompey forestalled his purpose, and met him at Lavernium, below Formiæ. Once more they had a tête-à-tête discussion, which lasted from two o’clock in the afternoon until dark, but they came to no very satisfactory conclusion. Pompey’s chief concern for the moment appeared to be about a ferocious attack which the tribune Mark Antony — already a prominent Cæsarite — had made upon him and his whole character and policy on the 21st of December. “ What,” says Pompey, “ are we to expect from him ” (Cæsar), “if he gets possession of the government, when a poor miserable fellow like this quæstor of his ventures to say such things ? ” “ I am in torment night and day ” is the ominous last word to Atticus for the year 704.

The fourth day of January, the first of his own fifty-eighth year, found Cicero once more at the gates of the city of his love. Inside the walls it was not etiquette for him to go, so long as there remained any question of his triumph. But everybody of importance waited on him, and nothing, he says to Tiro, could have been handsomer than his reception. “Yet have I fallen into the very flames of civil discord, and only too probably of war.” One of the new consuls was the Marcellus of the previous year, reëlected; but his colleague, Lentulus, like so many more of the aristocrats at Rome, had a lurking hope that war, if it came, would afford him some irregular means of restoring his desperate fortunes. It was the worst feature of Cæsar’s policy that he played upon the necessities of these men as unscrupulously as Catiline himself could have done, even tempting them by the promise of tabulœ novœ, — that is to say, of legalizing a general repudiation of their debts, — were he successful.

Only two days after Cicero’s arrival before the gates of Rome, the crisis came. By the united exertions of Cato and Metellus Scipio, — whose beautiful daughter Cornelia, widow of the younger Crassus, Pompey had married after Julia’s death, — the great question was finally put to the vote, and a decree passed the Senate by a small majority providing that Cæesar should immediately lay down his arms, or be declared a public enemy ; that Domitius Ahenobarbus should take command in Cisalpine Gaul; and that the consuls, prætors, tribunes, and consulars should see that the republic received no detriment. That very night, the tribunes, Antony and Cassius, went off in disgust to join Cæsar at Ravenna; and with them went Curio, and who but Cœlius Rufus himself, now as ever the political farceur, who changed his party as lightly as he changed his toga, with none of the searchings of heart and sense of mortal disruption which assailed our friend in hours like these. Cicero writes fully of it all to Tiro on the 12th of January, in a sorrowful but loving epistle, signed by the whole family, Tully, Cicero, Terentia, and Tullia. Cœsar’s attitude, he said, had been most insolent; “ his letters to the Senate were harsh and menacing, and my own Curio urged him on.” This, though he had jested at the first rumor of it, was, after all, the defection which cut Cicero most deeply, for Curio’s was the mind which he himself had delighted to form. After speaking of the proclamation of martial law, “ Never,” he says, " was the state in greater danger, and never had the baser sort an abler leader. Pompey, too, is now pushing forward his preparations with much diligence, but it is late for him to begin to fear Cæsar.⁷ . . . Southern Italy is already divided into military districts ” (for purposes both of recruiting and defense), " and I take command at Capua.”The cherished vision of his own triumph melted silently away, as the sky grew lurid with the light of the imminent struggle. The next letter to Tiro is dated Capua, January 27th, and contains in the statement that Cæsar had successively occupied Rimini, Pesaro, Ancona, and Arezzo Cicero’s first allusion to the far-famed passage of the Rubicon. The latter was one of three small streams—the critics have never fully decided which one — that meander through the territory between Ravenna and Rimini, but at all events it formed the boundary of Cisalpine Gaul ; and one is confidently shown, in the market-place at Rimini, the stone from which the great conqueror first harangued his legions after the decisive step. Later on in the same letter, Cicero is glad to be able to inform Tiro that Labienus, one of Cæsar’s ablest generals, has broken with his commander-in-chief, and repaired to Pompey ; but he has also to tell him — and he kindly entreats him not to take the news too much to heart — that Dolabella is with Cæsar. “You must needs know this, but do not let it vex you so as to put back your recovery.” Tullia was but a few months married, and Dolabella was amiable still, and full of protestations of personal regard for his new relatives; but the first installment of her dowry was already spent, and her father’s house, when he had one, appears to have been her home henceforth, during the short remnant of her troubled life.

Just at present, however, while Cicero turned his back on Rome, and proceeded to the unhopeful business of attempting to levy troops for the defense of the republic against Cæsar, among those Campanian colonies who owed their lands to him, Terentia and Tullia were left. at Rome, in the charge of Atticus, who was himself protected, as ever, by the broad ægis of his consistent neutrality.

A facile and brilliant correspondent is always in danger of writing too many letters. There is no doubt whatever that Cicero’s fame as a partisan, if not a patriot. would have stood fairer before the world could he have controlled the impulse to pour himself out, and stayed the stylus a little during the distracting four months that followed. But as a matter of fact this is precisely the period of his life of which we possess the minutest record. Every mental debate is fully reported, every revulsion of feeling chronicled, as it occurs. Literary expression of some sort was the breath of his nostrils, and there was no room, alas ! during that miserable spring of 49 B. c., whether for forensic or philosophical composition, still less for dreaming under the Formian pines, as he had done in happier days, or counting the breaking waves upon the silver sands of Astura.

There are sixty-nine letters to Atticus alone, written between January 25th, when Cicero reached his recruiting station at Capua, and June 7th, when he finally embarked at Gaeta, to follow Pompey into Greece. Of these, twenty-two were written in the month of February, and twenty-four in March. During this time he had the mortification of seeing deplorably compromised, by the folly of its management, the cause which, on the whole, he considered the good one, — to which, at all events, he felt bound to adhere. When the news of Cæsar’s advance was confirmed, the consuls left Rome in such a panic that they neglected to take the public treasure with them. Pompey recommended them to go back for it. and they retorted by advising him to go and seek Cæsar at Picenum. Nobody understood. Pompey’s tactics at the time, and it is no easier to account for them now. He was extremely popular still in the far south, where little more than a year before the entire population had offered up vows to Heaven for his recovery from an illness of which, for his own fame’s sake, it now seems to us that he would better have died. He appeared to be executing a series of mysterious manœuvres with his two legions in Apuleia. In reality he was falling back steadily upon Brindisi, and had already abandoned all thought of meeting Cæsar upon Italian soil.

Meanwhile, his rival advanced from victory to victory, showing everywhere the same sagacity and moderation, granting always the most liberal terms to the vanquished. Cæsar could be cruel, too, when occasion required, but he was never cruel for cruelty’s sake, and now he showed himself as merciful as a victorious warrior may be. Domitius, the general recently appointed by the Senate, was at Corfinium, a strong city in the Abruzzi. He had vainly entreated Pompey to reinforce him there, and now, about the middle of February, Cæsar laid siege to the place, and it fell. The cohorts of Domitius went over in a body to Cæsar, giving up their commander, who was treated very generousĺy. “ I know,”writes the insinuating Spaniard, Balbus, in a letter to Cicero, which the latter incloses to Atticus, “that you must approve of Cæsar’s course at Corfinium. Surely the best thing that can happen, in a case like this, is to have the affair concluded without bloodshed.”Cicero did approve; Cæsar’s was a policy entirely after his own humane heart, and he had all the time to struggle against that instinctive sympathy, that profound personal predilection for the man. to which he had so gladly yielded during the first triumvirate. “ Do you not see,”he writes to Atticus from Formiæ, on the 1st of March, “ what sort of a man it is into whose hands the republic has fallen, — how keen, how vigilant, how competent? And by Heaven, if he goes on in this way, taking neither life nor property, he is going to be adored by those who dreaded him most. I have talked a great deal with the men of my district, both the townspeople and the farmers. All they really care about is the safety of their fields and their cottages, and their little misery of money. And, look you, everything is so turned topsy-turvy that they fear where they formerly trusted, and love where they used to fear.”

On the other hand. Cicero saw only too much reason to apprehend that if Pompey were to regain the ascendency, it would be a case of Sylla’s proscriptions over again. “It is not the cause to which I adhere,” he writes, a fortnight after the last date, “ but my own sense of obligation, just as in Milo’s case and in " — The next name is illegible. " Is not the cause a good one, then? Oh, yes, it is the best of causes, but, mark my words, it will be atrociously conducted. The first step will be to starve out Rome and the country generally; then will follow burning, devastation, and the robbery of the rich. . . .

'If only he ’ (Pompey) 'will be firm ! ’ you say. Oh, make yourself easy. He is firmer than we used to think. I give you my word that if he wins there will not be a tile left in Italy.” Whatever the news may be from Brindisi,—whither Cæsar had followed Pompey immediately after the surrender of Corfinium, — Cicero thinks he would like to get out of the country: to support Pompey, if the latter is forced to retreat ; to avoid the horrible scenes which would certainly accompany his advance. This letter, more vivaciously written, for all the seriousness of its purport, than most of those belonging to this anxious time, closes quite in the bantering strain of other days : “ Why did you not invite me to go with you to Epirus ? I am not a bad sort of companion. I am rather angry with you, but farewell. Go and anoint yourself and take your constitutional, while I must to bed. Your letters make one drowsy.”

All this while, over and above the wear and tear of his internal conflict, Cicero had to brace himself against the ingenious arguments and affectionate, almost impassioned entreaties of those of his own old friends who had gone over to the winning side. Trebatius, the lawyer, whom he himself had placed with Cæsar, conveyed by letter the earnest request of the conqueror that Cicero would at least remain neutral. Cicero replied, by the same channel, — “For I would not write to Cæsar himself,”he says, “since he had not written me,” — that such a course would be rather difficult ; but still, that he was residing quietly on his estates, and would continue to do so while any hope of peace remained. This was early in February, before the attack on Corfinium. Then came the letter of the banker Balbus, already cited ; and Dolabella wrote pressingly in the same strain, and Cœlius Rufus, with more feeling than might have been expected of him. “ Did you ever see a man more fatuous than your Pompey, more absurd and ineffectual in his strategy ? And on the other hand, have you ever heard or read of a general at once more brilliant in action and more temperate in victory than our Cæsar ? ” And later, “ Oh, Cicero, I pray and beseech you, for your children’s sake and that of your own fortune, do nothing further to compromise your interests and safety. I call gods and men and our friendship to witness that I have always warned you what the event would be.” He says he has been urging Cæsar himself to write ; and Cæsar did write more than once, brief, soldierly notes, dignified but very friendly, and worded with marvelous tact; never hinting at coercion, but dwelling on his own need of Cicero’s counsels. Even we can feel the commanding charm of the writer as we read, and what must not their recipient have felt? Cæsar found time for one of these masterly little missives even on the rapid march from Corfinium to Brindisi. The news from the latter place, which Cicero had been awaiting so impatiently, was not long delayed. Cæsar arrived at the Adriatic port on the 18th of March, to find that Pompey had embarked for Greece the day before. Italy was virtually surrendered, and for the shadowy remnant of the optimate party, also, alea jacta erat. Through Trebatius the indefatigable and Dolabella, Cicero gets the earliest information about Cæsar’s probable movements. His plan of campaign for the spring does not, it appears, include the immediate pursuit of Pompey. He will pay a flying visit to Rome, and then proceed rapidly to Spain, to surprise, and if possible overpower, the forces there under command of Pompey’s lieutenants, Afranius and Varro. Three legions are also to be sent with Curio into Sicily, where Cato, as proconsul of the island, is at the head of the loyal force. All this, as we know, was punctually accomplished, but Cato retreated before Curio’s advance, and the latter passed on into Egypt, to fall in the desert only a few months later, — his age being barely thirty, — fighting Pompey’s ally, the Numidian king. The least of Cæsar’s care was plainly for the two legions and the motley crowd of camp followers who had gone with Pompey to Greece. Of these last were sundry senators with their wives and their suites, among whom there is vouchsafed us one more fleeting glimpse of the celebrated Clodia.

Cicero knew, in the depths of his heart, that he too would have to cross the Adriatic. On the very day of the flight from Brindisi, possessed by a mournful presentiment, he had written to Atticus from the Formian villa, where he had once more gathered his family about him: “It seems to me that I have been mad from the beginning, and the most poignant thought of all is that I did not go with Pompey to his ruin simply and doggedly, like any private soldier. ... I feel my old affection for the man revive, and with it an intolerable sense of yearning. Books, letters, philosophy, have lost their charm. Day and night, like the bird of Plato, I sit staring seaward, longing to take wing and depart.”

Nevertheless, with the certainty that there would be no fighting in Greece for the present, a breathing space was afforded him. He would have time to go, as he had greatly desired, up to the old family place at Arpinum, and give his boy the gown of manhood there, among his own townspeople. Atticus, whose counsels to his friend at this critical period had been slightly vague and contradictory, if we may judge from a rather ironical review and collation of the same given in the remainder of the letter last quoted, had greatly favored the removal to Arpinum. Once in that secluded spot, among the hills, he hoped that Cicero would keep quiet, and in due time make his peace with Cæsar. Cicero himself had probably an undefined hope that some honorable mode of reconciling his own conflicting sympathies might yet be afforded him. At all events, these two did meet at or near Formiæ, and this is the account of the interview which Cicero sends to Atticus from Arpinum about April 1st: —

“ In both particulars your counsels were implicitly followed : the tenor of my talk was such as rather to compel his respect than to conciliate his favor, and I obstinately refused to go to Rome. I made a mistake in expecting to find him in a facile temper. Quite the contrary. He said that he stood condemned by my actions, and that my staying away would deter other senators from Rome. I told him that their case was very different from mine ; and after a good deal had passed between us, 'Come, then,’ says he. 'and negotiate for a peace.’ 'On my own terms ? ’ I inquired. ‘ Is it for me,’he replied, 'to dictate to you ? ’ 'Well, then,’ said I, 'I shall take the ground that the Senate disapproves both of the expedition to Spain and of sending troops into Greece, and I shall strongly deprecate the position in which Pompey has been placed.’ 'I could not suffer anything of the sort,’ said he. 'So I supposed,’ was my answer, 'and therefore I will not go ; for if I did, I should have no choice but to say t his and more to the same purpose.’ Finally, as a last resource, he requested me to take a little more time for deliberation, which I could not refuse to do, and so we parted. He cannot have been very well pleased witli me, but I was better pleased with myself ” (what a touch of nature is here ! ) “than I had been for a long time. For the rest, ye gods, what a following he had ! What a VEKUia ” (troop of shadows), “ to use your favorite expression, an abandoned lot, a desperate cause ; . . . but there are six legions of them, and he so alert, so intrepid! I see no end to our troubles.”

From Arpinum Cicero went for a few days to the Laterium of Quintus, hard by, that ivy-draped villa whose atmosphere of drowsy rusticity must have been strangely disturbed by the vehement debate of the brothers. Quintus was, for the moment, bitterly anti-Cæsarian, and insisted on an instant departure for Pompey’s camp. Marcus, on the other hand, had just then a passing purpose of withdrawing to Malta, and there awaiting the issue of the Spanish campaign. His wife and daughter were urging this, though the latter would have him do nothing against his honor. From Cumæ, whither he repaired before the end of April, after making all possible provision for the comfort of his family at Arpinum, Cicero wrote to Atticus concerning the darling of his heart, now close upon the time of her confinement : " I commend my interests to you, knowing all the while that you love me too well to need any such recommendation. God knows I have nothing to say ; I am simply sitting and whistling for a wind : and yet I have everything to say concerning your infinite kindnesses to me in the past, and that greatest of them all, your tender and unremitting devotion to my Tullia. Believe me, she feels it no less than I do, and hers is a glorious nature. How she bears up alike against public calamity and private trouble ! How bravely she parted from me ! Ours is the warmest affection, the most perfect sympathy, yet her one care is for my integrity and my good fame. But no more of this, or my own self-command will give way.” And again, a week or two later, Cicero writes from the same place: “ You will ask what has become of all the spirit which I displayed in my last letter. Oh, it is all there, the same as ever, if only there were nothing at stake but my life.”

Previous to the departure of Curio for Sicily, which Cato had not force enough to hold, and evacuated at the news of the young general’s approach, the latter paid Cicero a farewell visit at the Cumanum. A good deal of thentalk is reported by Cicero to Atticus. The junior’s tone was always courteous, if now a trifle patronizing; and after it became quite evident that agreement between them on the burning question of the day was impossible, they still discussed the situation freely and without heat, like the finished men of the world they both were. They did not meet again.

Caesar was already on his rapid way to Spain, and had left Antony his vicegerent in Italy, with the title of proprætor, so that Cicero, to his disgust, now came under the jurisdiction of the latter. Cicero enters into particulars to Atticus about Antony’s style of traveling, which it is not necessary to repeat, and sums up the degrading story by the significant remark, " To think what a vile death we are dying ! ” On one occasion, Atticus receives an oily note of Antony’s, qualified by Cicero as ‘‘odious,” in which the passage occurs, “ I really cannot suppose that you are meaning to cross the sea, fond as you are of Dolabella, and of that extremely distinguished woman, his wife, highly as we all think of you ; for, upon my word, it would seem as though your dignity and fortune were dearer to your friends than to yourself.” Under the same cover goes the last appeal of Cæsar himself to Cicero : “ Nothing could happen more painful to me than for you to condemn my course. I ask you, by our old friendship, not to do so. And what, in fine, can better become a quiet and honorable citizen than to hold himself aloof from civil broils ? Dated April 16, 705. On the march.” Observe the immeasurable difference in tone between the two letters ! Antony even went so far, later, as to intimate that Cicero might not be allowed to leave the country, but the threat was an empty one. The vice-governor had plainly exceeded his master’s orders.

On the 20th of May Cicero writes that Tullia has given birth to a seven months’ child, and that he is thankful to have her confinement over before he goes, though the infant is a poor, puny boy. “ I am now delayed,” he adds, “ only by the unprecedented calms.” Finally, June 7th, from the port of Gaeta, he writes to his wife in a resolutely matter-of-fact and cheerful tone: “ I have cast off all the carking care which has beset me about you, poor soul, and especially about our daughter, who is dearer to us than life. . . . The ship is apparently a good one, and I am writing this on board. You will hear constantly of me through the friends to whose kindness I have earnestly commended both Tullia and yourself. I should counsel you to be brave, if I did not already know that you are braver than any man. . . . My advice to you would be to keep to those of our villas which are farthest from the military encampments. Your best way would be to establish yourself at the farm at Arpinum with the city servants, if corn becomes dearer. Our jewel of a Cicero sends you his best love. Etiam et etiam, vale.”

One of the sharpest annoyances of that wretched winter had come from a passing rumor that the other young Cicero, Quintus’s son, had sought to curry favor with Cæsar, during the few days which the conqueror had spent in Rome, by shamelessly reporting the conversations of his father and uncle during their conferences at the Laterium. The story was afterward denied. Curio made light of it when he was at Cumæ, and Cicero put it out of his mind, but it was destined to be revived in a more tangible form.

There is a letter of Cicero’s written from Rome more than three years later, and addressed to that Marius who was his highly prized neighbor at Pompeii, which begins with a vivid reminiscence of a certain day which these two had passed together ; it was May 12th, by the then reckoning,⁸ in the spring of 705. Their grave and intimate conversation is recalled, and the anxiety of Marius at that time that Cicero, while as far as possible consulting his personal safety, should do nothing unworthy of his hitherto spotless fame as a patriot. From these recollections he passes naturally to a review of his own course at that critical juncture, endeavoring to show — and showing, apparently, to his own satisfaction — the thread of consistency w hich ran through all his obvious vacillations. The letter, though very interesting, is too long to be quoted entire. The story is told, of course, as well as it can be told for Cicero, and the narrative seems dispassionate and ingenuous ; but such is the fallibility of human nature, and especially of the artistic nature, that elaborate pieces of self-examination, long after the fact, are always a little suspect. ” I have bored you with this lengthy review,” he says in conclusion, ‘‘ because I know’ your deep devotion both to the republic and to me, and I wanted you perfectly to understand the motives of my conduct. My first and dearest desire was that the state should be stronger than any individual. But after it had come to pass, by whosesoever fault, that one man had acquired a power which it was impossible successfully to resist, then I wanted peace. When the one general on whom we could rely was dead, and his army annihilated, I would fain, since I could not bring the others to my way of thinking, have put an end to the war on my own responsibility. And now, if we still have a state, I am still a citizen; and if not, my exile is more supportable here than it would be in Rhodes or Mytilene.”

If Cicero kept his promise of writing frequently from Greece, his letters have not been preserved. There are no more than half a dozen in all from the seat of war, and these are comparatively brief. His reception was not a pleasant one. Cato told him bluntly that he was out of place in such a scene, and would have done much better to stay behind, and make the best terms possible with Cæsar; while the generalissimo, the titular leader, the “noble citizen,” appears to have relished even less the presence of so keen a critic in his disorderly camp.

The course of events during that fatal year is familiar to all the world. Three months sufficed Cæsar for the reduction of Spain. In the autumn he was back in Rome, crowned with fresh laurels, ami leading troops flushed with unparalleled victory. He had been created dictator in his absence by whatever shadow of a Senate still sat in Rome, but, mindful of Sylla, he resigned the name after bearing it eleven days, and caused himself to be elected sole consul, with some semblance of legal form. The 1st of January, 706, saw him en route for Epirus, where Pompey, gathering himself for a supreme effort, successfully resisted his first onset at Dyrrachium. There was a moment after that when the issue of the struggle between the two great captains appeared doubtful, but the advantage thus won by the Pompeians was frittered away with the fatuity which had attended all the latter moves of the foredoomed general. “ From that hour,” says Cicero in the letter last quoted, “ the greatest of men became a nonentity in the field.” And Plutarch observes, with the touch of mysticism that he loves, “The soldiers of Pompey routed and defeated the enemy, but the d™mon of Cæsar prevented the completion of the victory by taking advantage of the caution of Pompey and his want of confidence in his own success.”

The fight raged with varying fortunes through the spring and until the 9th of August, the memorable day of Pharsalia. Cicero at that time lay ill of a fever at Dyrrachium, but his seventeen-year-old boy was present at the decisive engagement, serving in the cavalry. Plutarch is responsible for the story that when the news of the disaster and of Pompey’s headlong flight reached the seaboard, Cato, who was also at Dyrrachium, with ships and men to the number of fifteen cohorts, offered the command of this force to Cicero, on the ground that he, as a consular, would properly take precedence of himself, Cato, who was only a prætorian. But Cicero declined the offer, whereupon Sextus, the son of Pompey, who was also present, called him a traitor, and would have drawn his sword upon him had not Cato interfered. Immediately afterward Cicero returned to Brindisi, while Cato embarked his troops and set out to follow Pompey into Egypt. Cato’s defense of Cicero — supposing this tale to be true — was doubtless touched with the same grain of disrespect which had been latent in the remark that the latter had better never have quitted Italy. Cato was always letting appear his own unflattering impression that counsels of perfection in the matter of patriotism were not for Cicero. The latter was more generous in his judgment of him, and wrote to Atticus, two years later, when invited to prepare a few words ⁹ concerning the Suicide at Utica for a banquet to be given at the Athenian’s house: “I do not see how I am to write about Cato anything which those guests of yours will care, or yet endure, to read. Even were I content to slur over his wellknown opinions, the counsels he gave, the hopes he cherished for the republic, I must needs give the warmest praise to his dignity and firmness, and that in itself would be a bad hearing for them. If I praise the man at all, I must praise him especially for this : that he foresaw the present state of things, did what he could to prevent it. and died rather than behold it.”

That there was, however, some sort of a violent scene at Dyrrachium which precipitated Cicero’s return may, I think, be inferred from his own later letters, in more than one of which he reproaches himself bitterly for having too hastily abandoned Greece and the remnant of the republican army. Yet we know now that his instinct was right; that the cause of so-called freedom was indeed irrevocably lost at Pharsalia, and all the waste and bloodshed worse than vain of the subsequent lingering hostilities. When Pompey had fallen, a few weeks later, not in the field, alas! but by the hand of a treacherous assassin, Cicero wrote from Brindisi, November 27, 706 : “ I have never doubted how it would end with Pompey; there was such a profound persuasion everywhere, on the part both of kings and peoples, of the utter hopelessness of his cause, that wherever he had betaken himself it would have been the same. Yet I cannot choose but mourn the catastrophe, knowing him as I did for a pure, honorable, and high-minded man.”

If this tribute seems a little languid and perfunctory, a chilling finis to a lifelong alliance, we may remember that Cicero’s adhesion to Pompey had ever been the indorsement of a party leader rather than any spontaneous devotion to the man. And then the last year in Greece must have been terribly disenchanting. But there was one person, at least, by whom the “ great one ” was mourned with a passion proportionate to the adulation he had commanded in the hour of his most majestic ascendency. It was that daughter of the Metelli whom he had so lately married, and of whom Plutarch has left us a singularly attractive picture : —

“This young woman possessed many charms beside her youthful beauty, for she was well instructed in letters, in playing on the lyre, and in geometry, and she had been accustomed to listen to philosophical discourses with profit. She had also a disposition free from all affectation and pedantic display, faults which such acquirements generally breed in women.” Pompey had been reproached for Ids absorption in this girlish bride, for “ wearing chaplets ” when his country was in peril, just as he had before been accused of neglecting the public service to bask in the smiles of Cæsar’s brilliant daughter. But Julia almost died of the fright she received at seeing blood on Pompey’s toga, which she fancied was his own, and Cornelia repaid his fondness by unstinted devotion. She had followed him to Greece, and could in no wise be dissuaded from going with him to Egypt. From the deck of the trading-vessel on which they had escaped, she was an agonized witness of his murder. She obtained his ashes from the weird pyre which one of his bolder followers reared upon the Libyan sands, took them with her to the Alban villa, and interred them there, and went mourning all the remnant of her days for that husband who was not even her first, and might almost have been her grandfather. There was another woman, also, we are told, one Flora, — not Pompey’s wife nor the wife of any man, but fair enough to have been modeled for the goddess in a temple shrine, — who, when he had put an end to their brief liaison, “ did not take it as such women usually do, but shut herself up, and was ill for a long time through grief at the loss of her lover.”

Whatever we may think of Pompey, — and for a man so conspicuously placed and so long remembered, his is a character which baffles the student strangely and eludes his analysis, — one quality must be freely conceded him : the power, undiminished apparently up to the day of his grievous end, of securing a species of adoration from the women with whom he lived.

Harriet Waters Preston.