Roman life in the days of Cicero Part 7

One frequent subject of Cicero's letters to his friend is money. I may perhaps express the relation between the two by saying that Atticus was Cicero's banker, though the phrase must not be taken too literally. He did not habitually receive and pay money on Cicero's account, but he did so on occasions; and he was constantly in the habit of making advances, though probably without interest, when temporary embarra.s.sments, not infrequent, as we may gather from the letters, called for them. Atticus was himself a wealthy man. Like his contemporaries generally, he made an income by money-lending, and possibly, for the point is not quite clear, by letting out gladiators for hire. His biographer happens to give us the precise figure of his property. His words do not indeed expressly state whether the sum that he mentions means capital or income. I am inclined to think that it is the latter. If this be so, he had in early life an income of something less than eighteen thousand pounds, and afterwards nearly ninety thousand pounds.

I may take this occasion to say something about Cicero's property, a matter which is, in its way, a rather perplexing question. In the case of a famous advocate among ourselves there would be no difficulty in understanding that he should have acquired a great fortune. But the Roman law strictly forbade an advocate to receive any payment from his clients. The practice of old times, when the great n.o.ble pleaded for the life or property of his humbler defendants, and was repaid by their attachment and support, still existed in theory. It exists indeed to this day, and accounts for the fact that a barrister among ourselves has no _legal_ means of recovering his fees. But a practice of paying counsel had begun to grow up. Some of Cicero's contemporaries certainly received a large remuneration for their services. Cicero himself always claims to have kept his hands clean in this respect, and as his enemies never brought any charge of this kind against him, his statement may very well be accepted. We have, then, to look for other sources of income. His patrimony was considerable. It included, as we have seen, an estate at Arpinum and a house in Rome. And then he had numerous legacies. This is a source of income which is almost strange to our modern ways of acting and thinking. It seldom happens among us that a man of property leaves any thing outside the circle of his family.

Sometimes an intimate friend will receive a legacy. But instances of money bequeathed to a statesman in recognition of his services, or a literary man in recognition of his eminence, are exceedingly rare. In Rome they were very common. Cicero declares, giving it as a proof of the way in which he had been appreciated by his fellow-citizens, that he had received two hundred thousand pounds in legacies. This was in the last year of his life. This does something to help us out of our difficulty.

Only we must remember that it could hardly have been till somewhat late in his career that these recognitions of his services to the State and to his friends began to fall in. He made about twenty thousand pounds out of his year's government of his province, but it is probable that this money was lost. Then, again, he was elected into the College of Augurs (this was in his fifty-fourth year). These religious colleges were very rich. Their banquets were proverbial for their splendor.

Whether the individual members derived any benefit from their revenues we do not know. We often find him complaining of debt; but he always speaks of it as a temporary inconvenience rather than as a permanent burden. It does not oppress him; he can always find spirits enough to laugh at it. When he buys his great town mansion on the Palatine Hill (it had belonged to the wealthy Cra.s.sus), for thirty thousand pounds, he says, "I now owe so much that I should be glad to conspire if any body would accept me as an accomplice." But this is not the way in which a man who did not see his way out of his difficulties would speak.

Domestic affairs furnish a frequent topic. He gives accounts of the health of his wife he announces the birth of his children. In after years he sends the news when his daughter is betrothed and when she is married, and tells of the doings and prospects of his son. He has also a good deal to say about his brother's household, which, as I have said before, was not very happy. Here is a scene of their domestic life.

"When I reached Arpinum, my brother came to me. First we had much talk about you; afterwards we came to the subject which you and I had discussed at Tusculum. I never saw any thing so gentle, so kind as my brother was in speaking of your sister. If there had been any ground for their disagreement, there was nothing to notice. So much for that day.

On the morrow we left for Arpinum. Quintus had to remain in the Retreat; I was going to stay at Aquinum. Still we lunched at the Retreat (you know the place). When we arrived Quintus said in the politest way, 'Pomponia, ask the ladies in; I will call the servants,' Nothing could--so at least I thought--have been more pleasantly said, not only as far as words go, but in tone and look. However, she answered before us all, 'I am myself but a stranger here.' This, I fancy, was because Statius had gone on in advance to see after the lunch. 'See,' said Quintus, 'this is what I have to put up with every day.' Perhaps you will say, 'What was there in this?' It was really serious, so serious as to disturb me much, so unreasonably, so angrily did she speak and look.

I did not show it, but I was greatly vexed. We all sat down to table, all, that is, but her. However, Quintus sent her something from the table. She refused it Not to make a long story of it, no one could have been more gentle than my brother, and no one more exasperating than your sister--in my judgment at least, and I pa.s.s by many other things which offended me more than they did Quintus. I went on to Aquinum." (The lady's behavior was all the more blameworthy because her husband was on his way to a remote province.) "Quintus remained at the Retreat. The next day he joined me at Arpinum. Your sister, he told me, would have nothing to do with him, and up to the moment of her departure was just in the same mood in which I had seen her."

Another specimen of letters touching on a more agreeable topic may interest my readers. It is a hearty invitation.

"To my delight, Cincius" (he was Atticus' agent)" came to me between daylight on January 30th, with the news that you were in Italy. He was sending, he said, messengers to you, I did not like them to go without a letter from me, not that I had any thing to write to you, especially when you were so close, but that I wished you to understand with what delight I antic.i.p.ate your coming ... The day you arrive come to my house with all your party. You will find that Tyrannio" (a Greek man of letters) "has arranged my books marvelously well. What remains of them is much more satisfactory than I thought[10]. I should be glad if you would send me two of your library clerks, for Tullius to employ as binders and helpers in general; give some orders too to take some parchment for indices. All this, however, if it suits your convenience.

Any how, come yourself and bring Pilia[11] with you. That is but right.

Tullia too wishes it."

[Footnote 10: They had suffered with the rest of Cicero's property at the time of his exile.]

[Footnote 11: Pilia was the lady to whom Atticus was engaged]

CHAPTER XV.

ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS.

There were some things in which Mark Antony resembled Caesar. At the time it seemed probable that he would play the same part, and even climb to the same height of power. He failed in the end because he wanted the power of managing others, and, still more, of controlling himself. He came of a good stock. His grandfather had been one of the greatest orators of his day, his father was a kindly, generous man, his mother a kinswoman of Caesar, a matron of the best Roman type. But he seemed little likely to do credit to his belongings. His riotous life became conspicuous even in a city where extravagance and vice were only too common, and his debts, though not so enormous as Caesar's, were greater, says Plutarch, than became his youth, for they amounted to about fifty thousand pounds. He was taken away from these dissipations by military service in the East, and he rapidly acquired considerable reputation as a soldier. Here is the picture that Plutarch draws of him: There was something n.o.ble and dignified in his appearance. His handsome beard, his broad forehead, his aquiline nose, gave him a manly look that resembled the familiar statues and pictures of Hercules. There was indeed a legend that the Antonii were descended from a son of Hercules; and this he was anxious to support by his appearance and dress. Whenever he appeared in public he had his tunic gired up to the hip, carried a great sword at his side, and wore a rough cloak of Cilician hair. The habits too that seemed vulgar to others--his boastfulness, his coa.r.s.e humor, his drinking bouts, the way he had of eating in public, taking his meals as he stood from the soldiers' tables--had an astonis.h.i.+ng effect in making him popular with the soldiers. His bounty too, the help which he gave with a liberal hand to comrades and friends, made his way to power easy.

On one occasion he directed that a present of three thousand pounds should be given to a friend. His steward, aghast at the magnitude of the sum, thought to bring it home to his master's mind by putting the actual coin on a table. "What is this?" said Antony, as he happened to pa.s.s by.

"The money you bade me pay over," was the man's reply. "Why, I had thought it would be ten times as much as this. This is but a trifle. Add to it as much more."

When the civil war broke out, Antony joined the party of Caesar, who, knowing his popularity with the troops, made him his second in command.

He did good service at Pharsalia, and while his chief went on to Egypt, returned to Rome as his representative. There were afterwards differences between the two; Caesar was offended at the open scandal of Antony's manners and found him a troublesome adherent; Antony conceived himself to be insufficiently rewarded for his services, especially when he was called upon to pay for Pompey's confiscated property, which he had bought. Their close alliance, however, had been renewed before Caesar's death. That event made him the first man in Rome. The chief instrument of his power was a strange one; the Senate, seeing that the people of Rome gloved and admired the dead man, pa.s.sed a resolution that all the wishes which Caesar had left in writing should have the force of law--and Antony had the custody of his papers. People laughed, and called the doc.u.ments "Letters from the Styx." There was the gravest suspicion that many of them were forged. But for a time they were a very powerful machinery for effecting his purpose.

Then came a check. Caesar's nephew and heir, Octavius, arrived at Rome.

Born in the year of Cicero's consuls.h.i.+p, he was little more than nineteen; but in prudence, statecraft, and knowledge of the world he was fully grown. In his twelfth year he had delivered the funeral oration over his grandmother Julia. After winning some distinction as a soldier in Spain, he had returned at his uncle's bidding to Apollonia, a town of the eastern coast of the Adriatic, where he studied letters and philosophy under Greek teachers. Here he had received the t.i.tle of "Master of the Horse," an honor which gave him the rank next to the Dictator himself. He came to Rome with the purpose, as he declared, of claiming his inheritance and avenging his uncle's death. But he knew how to abide his time. He kept on terms with Antony, who had usurped his position and appropriated his inheritance, and he was friendly, if not with the actual murderers of Caesar, yet certainly with Cicero, who made no secret of having approved their deed.

For Cicero also had now returned to public life. For some time past, both before Caesar's death and after it, he had devoted himself to literature.[12] Now there seemed to him a chance that something might yet be done for the republic, and he returned to Rome, which he reached on the last day of August. The next day there was a meeting of the Senate, at which Antony was to propose certain honors to Caesar. Cicero, wearied, or affecting to be wearied, by his journey, was absent, and was fiercely attacked by Antony, who threatened to send workmen to dig him out of his house.

[Footnote 12: To the years 46-44 belong nearly all his treatises on rhetoric and philosophy.]

The next day Cicero was in his place, Antony being absent, and made a dignified defense of his conduct, and criticised with some severity the proceedings of his a.s.sailant. Still so far there was no irreconcilable breach between the two men. "Change your course," says the orator, "I beseech you: think of those who have gone before, and so steer the course of the Commonwealth that your countrymen may rejoice that you were born. Without this no man can be happy or famous." He still believed, or professed to believe, that Antony was capable of patriotism. If he had any hopes of peace, these were soon to be crushed.

After a fortnight or more spent in preparation, a.s.sisted, we are told, by a professional teacher of eloquence, Antony came down to the Senate and delivered a savage invective against Cicero. The object of his attack was again absent. He had wished to attend the meeting, but his friends hindered him, fearing, not without reason, actual violence from the armed attendants whom Antony was accustomed to bring into the senate-house.

The attack was answered in the famous oration which is called the second Philippic[13]. If I could transcribe this speech (which, for other reasons besides its length, I cannot do) it would give us a strange picture of "Roman Life." It is almost incredible that a man so shameless and so vile should have been the greatest power in a state still nominally free. I shall give one extract from it. Cicero has been speaking of Antony's purchase of Pompey's confiscated property. "He was wild with joy, like a character in a farce; a beggar one day, a millionaire the next. But, as some writer says, 'Ill gotten, ill kept.'

It is beyond belief, it is an absolute miracle, how he squandered this vast property--in a few months do I say?--no, in a few days. There was a great cellar of wine, a very great quant.i.ty of excellent plate, costly stuffs, plenty of elegant and even splendid furniture, just as one might expect in a man who was affluent without being luxurious. And of all this within a few days there was left nothing. Was there ever a Charybdis so devouring? A Charybdis, do I say? no--if there ever was such a thing, it was but a single animal. Good heavens! I can scarcely believe that the whole ocean could have swallowed up so quickly possessions so numerous, so scattered, and lying at places so distant.

Nothing was locked up, nothing sealed, nothing catalogued. Whole store-rooms were made a present of to the vilest creatures. Actors and actresses of burlesque were busy each with plunder of their own. The mansion was full of dice players and drunkards. There was drinking from morning to night, and that in many places. His losses at dice (for even he is not always lucky) kept mounting up. In the chambers of slaves you might see on the beds the purple coverlets which had belonged to the great Pompey. No wonder that all this wealth was spent so quickly.

Reckless men so abandoned might well have speedily devoured, not only the patrimony of a single citizen, however ample--and ample it was--but whole cities and kingdoms."

[Footnote 13: The orations against Antony--there are fourteen of them--are called "Philippics," a name transferred to them from, the great speeches in which Demosthenes attacked Philip of Macedon. The name seems to have been in common use in Juvenal's time (_circa_ 110 A.D.)]

The speech was never delivered but circulated in writing. Toward the end of 44, Antony, who found the army deserting him for the young Octavius, left Rome, and hastened into northern Italy, to attack Decimus Brutus.

Brutus was not strong enough to venture on a battle with him, and shut himself up in Mutina. Cicero continued to take the leading part in affairs at Rome, delivering the third and fourth Philippics in December, 44, and the ten others during the five months of the following year. The fourteenth was spoken in the Senate, when the fortunes of the falling republic seem to have revived. A great battle had been fought at Mutina, in which Antony had been completely defeated; and Cicero proposed thanks to the commanders and troops, and honors to those who had fallen.

The joy with which these tidings had been received was but very brief.

Of the three generals named in the vote of thanks the two who had been loyal to the republic were dead; the third, the young Octavius, had found the opportunity for which he had been waiting of betraying it. The soldiers were ready to do his bidding, and he resolved to seize by their help the inheritance of power which his uncle had left him. Antony had fled across the Alps, and had been received by Lepidus, who was in command of a large army in that province, Lepidus resolved to play the part which Cra.s.sus had played sixteen years before. He brought about a reconciliation between Octavius and Antony, as Cra.s.sus had reconciled Pompey and Caesar, and was himself admitted as a third into their alliance. Thus was formed the Second Triumvirate.

The three chiefs who had agreed to divide the Roman world between them met on a little island near Bononia (the modern Bonogna) and discussed their plans. Three days were given to their consultations, the chief subject being the catalogue of enemies, public and private, who were to be destroyed. Each had a list of his own; and on Antony's the first name was Cicero. Lepidus a.s.sented, as he was ready to a.s.sent to all the demands of his more resolute colleagues; but the young Octavius is said to have long resisted, and to have given way only on the last day. A list of between two and three thousand names of senators and knights was drawn up. Seventeen were singled out for instant execution, and among these seventeen was Cicero. He was staying at his home in Tusculum with his brother Quintus when the news reached him. His first impulse was to make for the sea-coast. If he could reach Macedonia, where Brutus had a powerful army, he would, for a time at least, be safe. The two brothers started. But Quintus had little or nothing with him, and was obliged to go home to fetch some money. Cicero, who was himself but ill provided, pursued his journey alone. Reaching the coast, he embarked. When it came to the point of leaving Italy his resolution failed him. He had always felt the greatest aversion for camp life. He had had an odious experience of it when Pompey was struggling with Caesar for the mastery.

He would sooner die, he thought, than make trial of it again. He landed, and traveled twelve miles towards Rome. Some afterwards said that he still cherished hopes of being protected by Antony; others that it was his purpose to make his way into the house of Octavius and kill himself on his hearth, cursing him with his last breath, but that he was deterred by the fear of being seized and tortured. Any how, he turned back, and allowed his slaves to take him to Capua. The plan of taking refuge with Brutus was probably urged upon him by his companions, who felt that this gave the only chance of their own escape. Again he embarked, and again he landed. Plutarch tells a strange story of a flock of ravens that settled on the yardarms of his s.h.i.+p while he was on board, and on the windows of the villa in which he pa.s.sed the night. One bird, he says, flew upon his couch and pecked at the cloak in which he had wrapped himself. His slaves reproached themselves at allowing a master, whom the very animals were thus seeking to help, to perish before their eyes. Almost by main force they put him into his litter and carried him toward the coast. Antony's soldiers now reached the villa, the officer in command being an old client whom Cicero had successfully defended on a charge of murder. They found the doors shut and burst them open. The inmates denied all knowledge of their master's movements, till a young Greek, one of his brother's freedmen, whom Cicero had taken a pleasure in teaching, showed the officer the litter which was being carried through the shrubbery of the villa to the sea. Taking with him some of his men, he hastened to follow. Cicero, hearing their steps, bade the bearers set the litter on the ground. He looked out, and stroking his chin with his left hand, as his habit was, looked steadfastly at the murderers. His face was pale and worn with care. The officer struck him on the neck with his sword, some of the rough soldiers turning away while the deed was done. The head and hands were cut off by order of Antony, and nailed up in the Forum.

Many years afterwards the Emperor Augustus (the Octavius of this chapter), coming unexpectedly upon one of his grandsons, saw the lad seek to hide in his robe a volume which he had been reading. He took it, and found it to be one of the treatises of Cicero. He returned it with words which I would here repeat; "He was a good man and a lover of his country."

THE END.