CHAPTER IX.

PROSE WRITERS-INFLUENCE OF CICERO UPON THE LANGUAGE-HIS CONVERSE WITH HIS FRIENDS-HIS EARLY LIFE-PLEADS HIS FIRST CAUSE-IS QUESTOR, ÆDILE, PRÆTOR AND CONSUL-HIS EXILE, RETURN, AND PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATIONHIS VACILLATING CONDUCT-HE DELIVERS HIS PHILIPPICS-IS PROSCRIBED AND ASSASSINATED-HIS CHARACTER.

As oratory gave to Latin prose-writing its elegance and dignity, Cicero is not only the representative of the flourishing period of the language, but also the instrumental cause of its arriving at perfection. Circumstances may have been fafavourable to his influence. The national mind may have been in that stage of progress which only required a master-genius to develop it; but still it was he who gave a fixed character to the language, who showed his countrymen what eloquence especially was in its combination of the precepts of art and the principles of natural beauty; what the vigour of Latin was, and and of what elegance and polish it was capable.

His age was not an age of poetry; but he paved the way for poetry by investing the language with those graces which are indispensable to its perfection. He freed it from all coarseness and harshness, and accustomed the educated classes to use language, even in their every-day conversation, which never called up gross ideas, but was fit for pure and noble sentiments. Before his time, Latin was plain-spoken, and therefore vigorous; but the penalty which was paid for this was, that it was sometimes gross and even indecent. The conversational language of the upper classes became in the days of Cicero in the highest degree refined: it admitted scarcely an offensive expression. The truth of this assertion is evident from those of his writings which are of the familiar character-from his graphic Dialogues, in which he describes the circumstances as naturally as

PHILOSOPHICAL CONVERSATIONS.

321

if they really occurred; from his letters to Atticus, in which he lays open the secret thoughts of his heart to his most intimate friend, his second self. Cicero purified the language morally as well as æsthetically. It was the licentious wantonness of the poets which degraded the pleasures of the imagination by pandering to the passions at first in language delicately veiled, and then by open and disgusting sensuality.

It is difficult for us, perhaps, to whom religion comes under the aspect of revelation separate from philosophy, and who consider the philosophical investigation of moral subjects as different from the religious view of morals, to form an adequate conception of the pure and almost holy nature of the conversations of Cicero and his distinguished contemporaries. To them philosophy was the contemplation of the nature and attributes of the Supreme Being. The metaphysical analysis of the internal nature of man was the study of immortality and the evidence for another life. Cato, for example, read the Phædo of Plato in his last moments in the same serious spirit in which the Christian would read the words of inspiration. The study of ethics was that of the sanctions with which God has supported duty and enlightened the conscience. They were the highest subjects with which the mind of man could be conversant. For men to meet together, as was the habitual practice of Cicero and his friends, and pass their leisure hours in such discussions, was the same as if Christians were to make the great truths of the gospel the subjects of social converse.

Again, if we examine the character of their lighter conversations, when they turned from philosophy to literature,--it was not mere gossip on the popular literature of the day-it was not even confined to works written in their native tongue-it embraced the whole field of the literature of a foreign nation. They talked of poets, orators, philosophers, and historians, who were ancients to them as they are to us. They did not then think the subject of a foreign and ancient literature dull or pedantic. They did not consider it necessary that conversation should be trifling or frivolous in order to be entertaining.

Nor was the influence which Cicero exercised on the literature

of his day merely extensive, but it was permanent. The great men of whom he was the leader and guide caught his spirit. His influence survived until external political causes destroyed eloquence, and its place was supplied by a cold and formal rhetoric: it was felt almost until the language was corrupted by the admixture of barbarisms. It may be discerned in the soldierlike plainness of Cæsar, in the Herodotean narrative of Livy, and its sweetness without its diffuseness occasionally adorns the reflective pages of Tacitus.

It is difficult in a limited space to do justice to Cicero, even as a literary man; such was his versatility of genius, such his indefatigable industry, so vast the range of subjects which he touched and adorned. Of course, therefore, it is impossible to do more than rapidly glance at the leading events of his political career, or at his public character, since his history is, in fact, a history of his stirring and critical times.

M. TULLIUS CICERO (BORN B. C. 106.)

On the banks of the noiseless and gently-flowing1 Liris (Garigliano,) near Arpinum, the birthplace of Marius,2 lived a Roman knight named M. Tullius Cicero. A competent hereditary estate enabled him to devote his time to literary pursuits. He had two sons: the elder, who bore his father's name, was born January 3rd, B. C. 106. The other, Quintus, was about four years younger. As both, and Marcus especially, displayed quick talents and a lively disposition, and gave promise of inheriting their father's taste for learning, he migrated to Rome when Marcus was about fourteen years of age. The boys were educated with their cousins, the young Aculei.3 Q. Ælius taught

Hor. Od. I. xxxi.

Cicero, notwithstanding his opposite politics, admired Marius, to whom he was distantly related, and thought it an honour to have been born near Arpinum. He quotes a saying of Pompey's (Cic. de Leg. ii. 3,) that Arpinum had produced two citizens who had preserved Italy. Valerius Maximus thinks that Arpinum, in this respect, enjoyed a singular privilege:Conspicuæ felicitatis Arpinum unicum, sive litterarum gloriosissimum contemptorem, sive abundantissimum fontem intueri velis.

3 De Orat. ii. 1.

• Brut. 56.

EARLY LIFE OF CICERO.

323

them grammar; learned Greeks instructed them in philosophy; and the poet Archias exercised them in the technical rules of verse, although he did not succeed in giving them the inspiration of poetry. Quintus prided himself on his poetic skill; and a poem by him, on the twelve zodiacal signs, is still extant.1 Cicero also had in his boyhood some poetical taste; and there is great elegance in the translations from the Greek which we meet with in his works. He wrote a poem in hexameters, entitled "Pontius Glaucus," as a sort of juvenile exercise, which was extant in the time of Plutarch; and also when he was a young man in praise of Marius.

After assuming the toga virilis at sixteen years of age, M. T. Cicero attended the forum diligently; and, by carefully exercising himself in composition, made the eloquence of the celebrated orators whom he heard his own, whilst from the lectures and advice of Q. Mucius Scævola, he acquired the principles of Roman jurisprudence.

He served but little in the armies of his country: his only campaign was made under the father of Pompey the Great in the social war. During the remainder of this period, Molo, the Rhodian rhetorician, instructed him in oratory, whilst Diodotus the Stoic, Phædrus the Epicurean, and Philo, who had presided over the New Academy at Athens, were his masters in philosophy. The various schools, the principles of which he thus imbibed, led to the eclecticism which characterizes his philosophical creed. The bloody era of the Marian and Sullan war was passed by him in study: he did not interfere in politics, and the fruits of his retirement are extant in the treatise de Inventione Rhetorica.

At twenty-five, he pleaded his first cause,3 and in the following year defended S. Roscius of Ameria; but his constitution was not strong enough to bear great exertion. His friends, therefore, induced him to travel, and he determined to pass some time at Athens.4 There was also another reason for this recommendation. His courageous defence of Roscius had proPro Quint. B. c. 81.

1 Meyer, Anthol. Rom. 66. 4 B. C. 79.

2

B. c. 89.

voked the enmity of Chrysogonus, a creature of Sulla, and it was therefore dangerous for him to remain at Rome. He was accompanied by his brother Quintus,' and found Pomponius Atticus residing there, who afterwards became his most intimate friend. From Athens he travelled to Asia and Rhodes, employing his time in the cultivation of oratory, his principal study at Athens having been philosophy. From Asia he returned to Rome2 with improved health and an invigorated constitution; where he found a powerful rival, as an orator, in Hortensius, who was then at the zenith of his popularity.

As soon as he was old enough, he was elected quæstor, and the province of Sicily was allotted to him. In the exercise of this office, the unusual mildness and integrity of his administration endeared him to the provincials; whilst the judgment with which he regulated the supplies of corn from the granary of Rome, gained him equal credit with his fellow-countrymen. It was during his stay in Sicily that his love of antiquarianism was gratified by the discovery of the tomb of Archimedes. On his return home he resumed his forensic practice: and in B. c. 70 was the champion of his old friends, the Sicilians, and impeached Verres, who had been prætor of Syracuse, for oppression and mal-administration. In the following year he was elected curule ædile by a triumphant majority. In the celebration of the games which belonged to the province of this magistrate, he exhibited great prudence by avoiding the lavish expenditure in which so many were accustomed to indulge, whilst, at the same time, no one could accuse him of meanness and illiberality.

6

In the year B. C. 67, he obtained the prætorship, and notwithstanding the judicial duties of his office, defended Cluentius. Hitherto his speeches had been entirely of the judicial kind. He now for the first time distinguished himself as a deliberative orator, and supported the Manilian law which conferred upon Pompey, to the discomfiture of the aristocratic party, the command in chief of the Mithridatic war.

The great object of his ambition now was the consulship, which