Although it is impossible to be blind to the numerous faults of Cicero, few men have been more maligned and misrepresented, and the judgment of antiquity has been, upon the whole, generally unfavourable. He was vain, vacillating, inconstant, constitutionally timid, and the victim of a morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warmhearted. His amiability, acted upon by timidity, led him to set too high a value on public esteem and favour; and this weakened his moral sense and his instinctive love of virtue. That he possessed heroism is proved by his defence of Roscius, although the favourite of the terrible Sulla was his adversary. He was not entirely destitute of decision, or he would not so promptly have expressed his approbation of Cæsar's assassins as tyrannicides. He had resolution to strive against his over-sensitiveness, and wisdom to see that mental occupation was its best remedy; for in the midst of the distractions and anxieties of that eventful and critical year which preceded the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa an almost incredible number of works proceeded from his pen.1

There are many circumstances to account for his political inconsistency and indecision. He had an early predilection for the aristocratic party; but he saw that they were narrow-minded and behind their age. All the patricians, except Sulla and his small party, were on the popular side. He was proud of his connexion with Marius; and his friend Sulpicius Rufus, whom he greatly admired, joined the Marians. For these reasons, Cicero was inconsistent as a politician. Again, during periods of revolutionary turbulence, moderate men are detested by both sides; and yet it was impossible for a philosophic temper, which could calmly and dispassionately weigh the merits and demerits of both, to sympathize warmly with either. Cicero saw that both were wrong: he was too temperate to approve, too honest to pretend a zeal which he did not feel, and, therefore, he was undecided.

Again, having a large benevolence, and a firm faith in virtue,

'He wrote during that year the De Officiis, De Divinatione, De Fato, Topica, and the lost treatise De Gloria, besides a vast number of Letters.

he was unconscious of guile himself, and thought no evil of others. He therefore mistook flattery for sincerity, and compliments for kindness. He was vain; but vanity is a weakness not inconsistent with great minds, and in the case of Cicero it was fed by the unanimous voice of public approbation.

As an advocate his delight was to defend, not to accuse.1 In three only of his twenty-four orations did he undertake the office of an accuser.

Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot and died as a philosopher.

1 Pro Muræna, 3.

CHAPTER X.

CICERO NO HISTORIAN-HIS ORATORICAL STYLE DEFENDED-ITS PRINCIPAL CHARM -OBSERVATIONS ON HIS FORENSIC ORATIONS-HIS ORATORY ESSENTIALLY JUDICIAL-POLITICAL ORATIONS-RHETORICAL TREATISES-THE OBJECT OF HIS PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS-CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMAN PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATUREPHILOSOPHY OF CICERO-HIS POLITICAL WORKS-LETTERS-HIS CORRESPONDENTS -VARRO.

SUCH were the life and character of Cicero. The place which he occupies in a history of Roman literature is that of an orator and philosopher. It has been already stated that he had some taste for poetry: in fact, without imagination he could scarcely have been so eminent as an orator; but though the power which he wielded over prose was irresistible, he had not fancy enough to give a poetical character to the language.

Nor had he, notwithstanding the versatility of his talents, any taste for historical investigation. He delighted to read the Greek historians, for the same purpose for which he studied the Attic orators, merely as an instrument of intellectual cultivation; but he was ignorant of Roman history, because he took no interest in original research. His countrymen1 expected from him an historical work, but he was unfit for the task. It is plain from his "Republic," how little he knew as an antiquarian.

The greatest praise of an orator's style is to say that he was successful. The end and object of oratory is to convince and persuade to rivet the attention of the hearer, and to gain a mastery over the minds of men. If, therefore, any who study the speeches of Cicero in the closet find faults in his style, they must remember the very faults themselves were suited to the object which he was carrying into execution. During the process of raising the public taste to the highest standard, he carried

1 De Leg., introduction.

HIS ORATORICAL STYLE DEFENDED.

333

his hearers with him: he was not too much in advance; he did not aim his shafts too high; they hit the head and heart. Senate, judges, people understood his arguments, and felt his passionate appeals. Compared with the dignified energy and majestic vigour of the Athenian orator, the Asiatic exuberance of some of his orations may be fatiguing to the sober and chastened taste of the modern classical scholar; but in order to form a just appreciation, he must transport himself mentally to the excitements of the thronged Forum-to the senate composed, not of aged, venerable men, but statesmen and warriors in the prime of life, maddened with the party spirit of revolutionary times-to the presence of the jury of judices, as numerous as a deliberative assembly, whose office was not merely calmly to give their verdict of guilty or not guilty, but who were invested as representatives of the sovereign people with the prerogative of pardoning or condemning.

Viewed in this light, his most florid passages will appear free from affectation-the natural flow of a speaker carried away with the torrent of his enthusiasm. The melodious rise and fall of his periods are not the result of studied effect, but of a true and musical ear. Undoubtedly, amongst his earlier orations, are to be found passages somewhat too declamatory and inconsistent with the principles which he afterwards laid down when his taste was more matured, and when he undertook to write scientifically on the theory of eloquence. Nor must it be concealed that some of the staid and stern Romans of his own days were daring enough, notwithstanding his popularity and success, to find the same fault with him. "Suorum temporum homines," says Quintilian, "incessere audebant eum ut tumidiorem et Asianum' et redundatem et in repetitionibus nimium et in salibus

1

Poverty and barrenness were most probably instrumental in producing the diffuseness and exuberance of the Asiatic and Rhodian schools. Their literature and philosophy were deficient in matter, and they sought to hide this defect by the external ornaments of language. For a long time Athens, strong in her pure classic taste, successfully resisted this influence; and in the time of Cicero the tastes of the two schools were in direct opposition. But the flowers of rhetoric are captivating: another generation saw the supremacy of rhetoric at Rome; and the days of Petronius Arbiter (Satyr. book ii.) witnessed the migration of Asiatic taste to Athens.

aliquando frigidum et in compositione fractum et exsultantem et pene viro molliorem."

But it is not only the brilliance and variety of expression, and the finely-modulated periods, which constituted the principal charm of Ciceronian oratory, and rendered it so effective. Its effectiveness was mainly owing to the great orator's knowledge of the human heart, and of the national peculiarities of his countrymen. Its charm was owing to his extensive acquaintance with the stores of literature and philosophy, which his sprightly wit moulded at will, to the varied learning which his unpedantic mind made so pleasant and popular, to his fund of illustration at once interesting and convincing. Even if his knowledge, because it spread over so wide a surface, was superficial, in this case profoundness was unnecessary.

In a work like the present it is only possible to devote a few brief observations to the most important of his numerous orations, in which, according to the criticism of Quintilian, he combined the force of Demosthenes, the copiousness of Plato, and the elegance of Isocrates. Knowledge of law, far superior to that possessed by the great orators of the day,' distinguishes his earliest extant oration, the defence of P. Quinctius. Hortensius was

the defendant's counsel. Nævius, the defendant, who had unjustly possessed himself of the property of the plaintiff's deceased brother, was a deserter from the Marians, and therefore a protégé of Sylla; but, notwithstanding these disadvantages, Cicero gained his cause. In the masterly defence of S. Roscius,3 Cicero again defied Sulla. His client was accused of parricide: there was not a shadow of proof, and Cicero saved the life of an innocent man. The noble enthusiasm with which he inveighs against tyranny in this oration strikingly contrasts with the language, full of sweetness, in which he describes Roman rural life. The pas sage on parricide was too glowing and Asiatic for the taste of his

1 Cicero tells us (de Orat. i. 57, 58) that Galba, Antony, and Sulpicius were ignorant of jurisprudence; that the chief requisites were elegance, wit, pathos, &c. For legal knowledge they trusted to jurisconsults. In the oration pro Muræna, even he himself sneers at a technical knowledge of law. 2 Delivered B. c. 81.

8 B. C. 80.