Chapter IX: Introduction: Cicero’s Letters (6)

But nothing, assuredly, could have won him so many friends as his readiness to oblige them. This was inexhaustible, and it could not be asserted that it was interested, since, contrary to custom, he gave much and demanded nothing. Here again is one of the reasons why his friendships were so lasting, for it is always this sort of interchange that we think we have a right to demand, and the comparisons that we make, in spite of ourselves, between good offices which we render and those which we receive, which in the end disturb the most firm friendships. Atticus, who knew this well, had so contrived as to have need of nobody. He was rich, he never had law-suits, he did not seek public employments, so that a friend who was determined to recompense the services he had received could never find the opportunity,[156] and remained always under obligations to him, and his debt continued to increase, for Atticus never wearied of being useful. We have an easy means of appreciating the extent of this serviceableness, to see it close, and, so to say at work, namely, to rapidly recall the services of all sorts that he had rendered Cicero during their long intimacy. Cicero had much need of a friend like Atticus. He was one of those clever men who cannot reckon; when his account-books were presented to him he would gladly have said, like his pupil, Pliny the Younger, that he was used to another sort of literature: _aliis sum chartis, aliis litteris initiatus_. Atticus became his man of business; we know his talent for this profession. He leased Cicero’s property very dear, saved as much as he could out of the income and paid the most pressing debts. When he discovered new ones, he dared to scold his friend, who hastened to reply very humbly that he would be more careful for the future. Atticus, who did not much believe this, set to work to make up the deficit. He went to see the wealthy Balbus or the other great bankers of Rome with whom he had business relations. If the calamities of the times made it difficult to get credit, he did not hesitate to dip into his own purse. Those who know him will not think this generosity without merit. When Cicero wished to buy some estate, Atticus at first would get angry; but if his friend did not give way, he quickly went to visit it and discuss the price. If it was a question of building some elegant villa, Atticus lent his architect, corrected the plans, and overlooked the work. When the house was built, it had to be adorned, and Atticus would send to Greece for statues. He excelled in selecting them, and Cicero was inexhaustible in his praises of the Hermathenae in Pentelican marble that he had procured for him. In a villa of Cicero, we can well understand that the library was not forgotten, and it was from Atticus again that the books came. He traded in them, and kept the handsomest for his friend. The books being bought, it was necessary to arrange them, so Atticus sent his librarian Tyrannion with his workmen, who painted the shelves, pasted together the detached leaves of papyrus, put the labels on the rolls, and arranged the whole in such good order that Cicero, enchanted, wrote: “Since Tyrannion has arranged my books one would say that the house has a soul.”[157]

But Atticus did not stop at these services, which we might call external; he penetrated into the home, he knew all its secrets. Cicero kept nothing from him, and confided to him unreservedly all his domestic griefs. He tells him about the violent temper of his brother and the follies of his nephew; he consults him on the vexations that his wife and son cause him. When Tullia was of an age to marry, it was Atticus who sought her a husband. The one he proposed was the son of a rich and well-conducted knight. “Return,” he said sagely to Cicero, “return to your old flock.” Unfortunately he was not listened to. They preferred to the rich financier a broken-down nobleman, who squandered Tullia’s dowry and forced her to leave him. When Tullia was dead, of grief perhaps, Atticus went to the nurse’s to visit the little child she had left, and took care that it wanted for nothing. At the same time Cicero gave him plenty of occupation with his two divorces. After he had divorced his first wife, Terentia, it was Atticus whom he charged to get her to make a will in his favour. It was to him also that he gave the disagreeable commission to remove the second, Publilia, when she was determined to forcibly re-enter the home of her husband, who would have nothing more to do with her.

These are doubtless great services; he rendered others still more delicate, still more appreciated. It was to him that Cicero entrusted what was most dear to him in the world, his literary glory. He communicated his works to him as soon as he had written them, he took his advice in making corrections, and waited for his decision to publish them. Thus he treated him as a friend with whom one feels at home, and to whom one unbosoms oneself completely. Although he was eager that his eloquence should be taken seriously, when he was sure of being heard by Atticus only, he made no scruple of joking about himself and his works. He introduced him without reserve to all the secrets of the craft, and showed him the receipts for his most popular effects. “This time, said he gaily, I employed the whole scent-box of Isocrates, and all the caskets of the disciples.”[158] Nothing can be more curious than the way in which he related to him one day, one of his greatest oratorical successes. It was a question of celebrating the fame of the great consulship, a subject upon which, as we know, he was inexhaustible. That day he had a reason for speaking with more brilliancy than usual. Pompey was present; now Pompey had the weakness to be jealous of Cicero’s glory. It was a good opportunity to enrage him, and Cicero took care not to neglect it. “When my turn came to speak, he writes to Atticus, immortal gods! what rein I gave myself! What pleasure I took in loading myself with praises in the presence of Pompey, who had never heard me extol my consulship! If I ever called to my aid periods, enthymemes, metaphors, and all the other figures of rhetoric, it was then. I did not speak, I shouted, for it was a question of my stock subjects, the wisdom of the senate, the good-will of the knights, the union of all Italy, the smothered remains of the conspiracy, peace and plenty re-established, etc. You know my thunders when I speak of these subjects. They were so fine that day that I have no need to tell you more about them; you may often have heard the like at Athens!”[159] It is impossible to quiz oneself with greater lightheartedness. Atticus repaid these confidences by the trouble he took for the success of his friend’s works. As he had seen their birth, and had busied himself with them before they were known to the public, he almost regarded himself as their parent. It was he who took upon himself to start them in the world and make them succeed. Cicero says that he was admirably well skilled in this, and it does not surprise us. The means he most frequently employed to create a good opinion of them, was to have the finest passages read by his best readers to the clever men whom he assembled round his table. Cicero, who knew the usual frugality of his repasts, begged him to deviate from it a little on these occasions. “Have a care, he writes to him, to treat your guests well, for if they are in a bad humour with you, they will vent it on me.”[160] It was natural that Cicero should be extremely grateful for all these services; but it would be judging him ill to suppose that he was only attached to him for the benefits he received from him. He really loved him, and all his letters are full of evidences of the most sincere affection. He was always happy with him; he was never tired of associating with him; he had scarcely left him than he ardently wished to see him again. “May I die, he wrote to him, if either my house at Tusculum, where I feel so comfortable, or the Isles of the Blest could please me without you!”[161] Whatever pleasure he experienced at being _fêted_, applauded, flattered, at having around him an obsequious and admiring multitude, in the midst of this crowd and noise he always turned with regret towards his absent friend. “With all these people, he tells him, I feel myself more alone than if I had only you.”[162] All these people, in fact, are composed of political friends who change with circumstances, whom a common interest brings to you, and a rival ambition takes away again; with them Cicero is obliged to be reserved and careful, which is a torture for such an open-hearted nature. On the other hand, he can tell Atticus everything, and confide in him without restraint. So he hastens to demand his presence when the least annoyance happens to him. “I want you, he writes to him, I have need of you, I am waiting for you. I have a thousand things that disturb and vex me, and a single walk with you will relieve me.”[163] We should never end if we were to collect all those charming expressions of which the correspondence is full, and in which his heart plainly speaks. They leave no doubt about Cicero’s feelings; they prove that he regarded Atticus not only as one of those steadfast and serious friends on whose support he could count, but also, which is more surprising, as a sensitive and tender soul: “You take your share,” he tells him, “in all the troubles of others.”[164]

Here is something far removed from the notion we usually have of him, and yet we cannot resist such clear testimony. How can we contend that he had only a doubtful affection for his friends when we see all his friends contented with it? Are we to be more exacting than they, and would it not be wronging men like Brutus and Cicero to suppose that they had been dupes so long without perceiving it? On the other hand, how can we explain the fact that posterity, which only judges by the documents that the friends of Atticus have furnished it, draws from these very documents an opinion quite the reverse of that held by them? Evidently it is because posterity and contemporaries do not judge men from the same stand-point. We have seen that Atticus, who had made a rule not to engage in public affairs, did not think himself obliged to partake the dangers that his friends might run, through having taken part in them. He left them both the honours and the perils. Sensitive, obliging, devoted to them in the ordinary business of life, when a great political crisis occurred that compromised them, he stood aside, and left them to expose themselves alone. Now, when we look at the facts from a distance, and are separated from them, as we are, by several centuries, we only perceive the most important events, and especially the political revolutions, that is to say, precisely those circumstances with which the friendship of Atticus had nothing to do. Hence the severe judgment we pronounce upon it. But his contemporaries judged otherwise. Those great crises are, after all, but rare and passing exceptions; without doubt contemporaries are much struck by them, but they are still more impressed by those numberless small incidents which make up every-day life, and which posterity does not perceive. They judge of a man’s friendship by those services which are rendered every moment, and which are important by their mere number, much more than by any exceptional service which may be given on one of these great and rare occasions. This accounts for the fact that they had an opinion of Atticus so different from ours.

It is, beyond doubt, one of the characteristic traits of this person, that it was a necessity to him to have many friends, and that he took trouble to attract and retain them. We may refuse to admit, if we will, that this need was, with him, the effect of a generous and sympathetic nature, that it came from what Cicero admirably calls “the impulse of the soul that desires to love;” but, even supposing that he only thought of occupying and filling up his life, we must acknowledge that to fill it up in this manner is not a mark of a vulgar nature. This refined Epicurean, this master in the art of living at ease, knew “that life is no longer life if we cannot repose on the affection of a friend.”[165] He had given up the excitement of political strife, the triumphs of eloquence, the joys of satisfied ambition, but, as a compensation, he was determined to enjoy all the pleasures of private life. The more he confined and limited himself to it, the more particular and refined he became with regard to the pleasures it could give; as he had only left himself these, he wished to enjoy them fully, to relish them, to live on them. He needed friends, and among them the greatest minds, the noblest souls of his time. He expended all that energy which he did not employ in anything else, in procuring for himself those pleasures of society that Bossuet calls the greatest good of human life. Atticus enjoyed this good even beyond his desires, and friendship generously repaid him for all the trouble he had taken for it. It was his single passion; he was able to satisfy it completely, and friendship, after having adorned his life, has shed a lustre on his name.

III.

Atticus appears in a favourable light in private life. He is less fortunate when we study the course he followed in public affairs. On this point he has not been spared blame, and it is not easy to defend him.

We should not however be very unfavourable to him if we judged his conduct entirely according to the ideas of our days. Opinion has become less severe now on those who openly make profession of living apart from politics. So many men aspire to govern their country, and it has become so difficult to make choice among this multitude, that we are tempted to look kindly upon those who have not this ambition. Far from being blamed, they are called moderate and wise; they form an exception which is encouraged in order to lessen the number of aspirants. At Rome they thought otherwise, and it is not difficult to find reasons for this difference. There, what we may call the political body was in reality very circumscribed. Besides the slaves, who did not count, and the common people, who contented themselves with giving or rather selling their votes in the elections, and whose greatest privilege it was to be entertained at the expense of the candidates, and fed at the expense of the public treasury, there remained only a few families of ancient lineage or more recent celebrity who divided all public employments among themselves. The aristocracy of birth and of fortune was not very numerous, and scarcely sufficed to furnish the required number of officials of all sorts to govern the world. It was necessary therefore that no one should refuse to take his part, and to live in retirement was considered a desertion. It is not the same in our democracy. As all offices are open to everybody, and as, thanks to the diffusion of education, men worthy to occupy them may arise in all ranks, we need no longer fear lest the absence of a few quiet people, friends of peace and repose, will make a sensible and regrettable gap in the serried ranks of those who struggle from all quarters for power. Moreover, we think now that there are many other ways of serving one’s country besides public life. Romans of high birth knew no other; they looked upon commerce as a not very honourable means[166] that a private man might employ to make his fortune, and did not see what the state might gain by it; literature seemed an agreeable but trivial pastime, and they did not understand its social importance. It follows that among them, a man of a certain rank could only find one honourable mode of employing his activity and being useful to his country, namely, to fill political offices.[167] To do anything else was, according to their ideas, to do nothing; they gave the name of idlers to the most laborious scholars, and it did not come into their heads that there was anything worth the trouble of occupying a citizen’s time beyond the service of the state. All the ancient Romans thought thus, and they would have experienced a strange surprise if they had seen any one claim the right, as Atticus did, not to serve his country within the limits of his powers and talents. Assuredly Cato, who never rested, and who, at ninety years of age, bravely quitted his villa at Tusculum to go and accuse Servius Galba, the butcher of the Lusitanians, would have thought that to remain in his house on the Quirinal, or on his estate in Epirus in the midst of his books and statues, while the fate of Rome was being decided in the Forum or at Pharsalia, was to commit the same crime as to remain in his tent on the day of battle.

This systematic abstention of Atticus was not, then, a Roman custom; he had it from the Greeks. In those small ungovernable republics of Greece, where they knew no repose, and which passed constantly and without warning from the sternest tyranny to the most unbridled licence, we can understand that quiet and studious men should have grown weary of all this sterile agitation, and ceased to desire public employments which were only obtained by flattering the capricious multitude, and only kept on condition of obeying it. Moreover, what value could this power, so hardly acquired, so seldom preserved, have, when it was necessary to share it with the most obscure demagogues? was it really worth while to take so much trouble in order to become the successor or the colleague of Cleon? At the same time that weariness and disgust kept honourable men aloof from these paltry struggles, philosophy, more studied every day, communicated to its disciples a sort of pride which led them to the same result. Men who passed their time in meditating upon God and the world, and who endeavoured to understand the laws that govern the universe, did not deign to descend from these heights to govern states a few leagues square. Thus they constantly discussed in the schools, whether a man should occupy himself with public affairs, whether the sage ought to seek public office, and whether the active or the contemplative life was the better. A few philosophers hesitatingly gave the preference to active life, the greater number sustained the opposite opinion, and under cover of these discussions many men thought themselves authorized to create a sort of elegant indolence in voluptuous retreats embellished by letters and the arts, where they lived happily while Greece was perishing.

Atticus followed their example. Importing this custom from Greece into Rome, he openly announced his resolution not to take part in political discussions. He began by adroitly keeping aloof during all those quarrels that continually agitated Rome from the time of Cicero’s consulship to the civil wars. At the very moment when these struggles were most active he frequented all parties, he had friends on all sides, and found in these widespread friendships a new pretext for remaining neutral. Atticus was more than sixty years old when Caesar passed the Rubicon, an age when the obligation of military service ceased among the Romans. This was another reason for remaining quiet, and he did not fail to use it. “I have taken my discharge,”[168] he replied to those who wished to enrol him. He held the same course, and with the same success, after the death of Caesar; but he then disappointed public opinion still more. He was so well known to be the friend of Brutus that it was thought he would not hesitate to take his side this time. Cicero himself, who ought to have known him, reckoned upon it; but Atticus was not inconsistent with himself, and took advantage of an important occasion to let the public know that he would not be drawn in against his will. While Brutus was raising an army in Greece, some knights, his friends, started the idea of raising a subscription among the richest men of Rome to give him the means of maintaining his soldiers. They applied at first to Atticus, whose name they wished to put at the head of the list. Atticus bluntly refused to subscribe. He answered that his fortune was at the service of Brutus, if he had need of it, and asked him as a friend, but he declared at the same time that he would take no part in a political manifestation, and his refusal caused the failure of the subscription. At the same time, true to his habit of flattering all parties, he welcomed Fulvia, Antony’s wife, as well as Volumnius the superintendent of his workmen, and, sure of having friends everywhere, he waited for the result of the struggle without much fear.

The strangest thing is that this man, while so persistent in remaining neutral, was not indifferent. His biographer gives him this praise, that he always belonged to the best party,[169] and that is true; only he made it a rule not to serve his party; he was contented with giving it his good wishes. But these good wishes were the warmest imaginable. He had, though we should scarcely believe it, political passions which he dared to express in private with incredible vigour. He hated Caesar so much that he went as far as to blame Brutus for having permitted his interment.[170] He would have wished, no doubt, as the most furious demanded, that his corpse should be thrown into the Tiber. Thus he did not abstain from having preferences, and showing them to his most intimate friends. His reserve only began when it was necessary to act. He never consented to take part in the struggle; but if he did not share its danger he felt at least all its excitement. We smile at seeing him become animated and excited as if he were a real combatant; he takes his share in all successes and all reverses, he congratulates the energetic, he entreats the lukewarm, and even scolds the faltering, and permits himself to advise and reprimand those who seem to him, who did not act at all, to act too languidly. It is amusing to hear the reproaches he addresses to Cicero when he sees him hesitating to go and join Pompey; he adopts the most pathetic tone, he reminds him of his actions and his words, he entreats him in the name of his glory, he quotes his own words to him to persuade him.[171] This excess of audacity into which he allows himself to be drawn for others, sometimes produces rather comic incidents. At the moment when Pompey had just shut himself up in Brundusium, Atticus, moved by the most lively grief, wished for some attempts to be made to save him, and went so far as to ask Cicero to do some striking action before leaving. “It only requires a banner,” said he, “every one will flock to it.”[172] The worthy Cicero felt himself quite excited by these lively exhortations of his friend, and there were times when he was tempted to be bold, and when he only demanded the opportunity to strike a heavy blow. The opportunity came, and he relates in the following words how he took advantage of it. “As I arrived at my house at Pompeii, your friend Ninnius came to tell me that the centurions of three cohorts who were there, asked to see me the next day, as they wished to deliver up the place to me. Do you know what I did? I went away before daylight in order not to see them. What are, in fact, three cohorts? And if there had been more, what should I have done with them?”[173] This was speaking like a prudent man and one who knows himself well. As for Atticus we ask whether he were really sincere in the ardour that he showed for his cause when we see him obstinately refuse to serve it. Those grand passions that confine themselves so prudently in the breast, and never show themselves outwardly, are with good reason suspected. Perhaps he only wished to enliven a little that part of spectator that he had reserved for himself by taking part, up to a certain point, in the excitement of the struggle. The wise man of Epicurus always remains on the serene heights whence he tranquilly enjoys the view of shipwrecks and the spectacle of human conflicts; but he enjoys them from too far off, and the pleasure that he feels is diminished by the distance. Atticus is more skilful and understands his pleasure better; he goes into the midst of the fight itself, he sees it close, and takes part in it, while always sure that he will retire in time.

The only difficulty he found was to make everybody accept his neutrality. This difficulty was so much the greater for him as his conduct especially offended those whose esteem he was the most anxious to preserve. The republican party, which he preferred, and in which he reckoned most friends, was much less inclined to pardon him than that of Caesar. In antiquity itself, and still more in our days, great praise has been bestowed on that saying of Caesar at the beginning of the civil war: “He who is not against me is for me,” and the contrary saying of Pompey has been much blamed: “He who is not for me is against me.” However, looking at things fairly, this praise and this blame appear equally unreasonable. Each of the two rivals, when he expressed himself thus, speaks in character, and their words were suggested by their position. Caesar, however we may judge him, came to overturn the established order, and he naturally was grateful to those who gave him a free hand. What more could he reasonably ask of them? In reality, those who did not hinder him served him. But lawful order, established order, considers it has the right to call upon every one to defend it, and to regard as enemies all who do not respond to its appeal, for it is a generally recognized principle that he who does not bring help to the law when openly attacked before him, makes himself the accomplice of those who violate it. It was, then, natural that Caesar, on arriving at Rome, should welcome Atticus and those who had not gone to Pharsalia, as it was also that those in Pompey’s camp should be very much irritated against them. Atticus was not much moved by this anger: he let them talk, those thoughtless and fiery young men who could not console themselves for having left Rome, and who threatened to avenge themselves on those who had remained. What did these menaces matter to him? He was sure that he had preserved the esteem of the two most important and most respected men of the party, and he could oppose their testimony to all the indignation of the rest. Cicero and Brutus, notwithstanding the strength of their convictions, never blamed him for his conduct, and they appear to have approved of his not taking part in public affairs. “I know the honourable and noble character of your sentiments, said Cicero to him one day when Atticus thought it necessary to defend himself; there is only one difference between us, and that is, that we have arranged our lives differently. I know not what ambition made me desire public office, while motives in no way blameworthy have made you seek an honourable leisure!”[174] Again, Brutus wrote to him towards the end of his life: “I am far from blaming you, Atticus; your age, your character, your family, everything makes you love repose.”[175]

This good-will on the part of Brutus and Cicero is so much the more surprising, as they knew very well the mischief such an example might do to the cause that they defended. The republic did not perish by the audacity of its enemies alone, but also by the apathy of its partisans. The sad spectacle it offered for fifty years, the public sale of dignities, the scandalous violence that took place on the Forum every time a new law was discussed, the battles that at each new election stained the Campus Martius with blood, those armies of gladiators needed for self-defence, all those shameful disorders, all those base intrigues in which the last strength of Rome was used up, had completely discouraged honest men. They held aloof from public life; they had no more relish for power since they were forced to dispute it with men ready for every violence. It required Cato’s courage to return to the Forum after having been received with showers of stones, and having come out with torn robe and bleeding head. Thus, the more the audacious attempted, the more the timid let them alone, and from the time of the first triumvirate and the consulship of Bibulus, it was evident that the apathy of honest men would deliver the republic over to the ambitious nobles who desired to dominate it. Cicero saw this clearly, and in his letters never ceases his bitter railleries against those indolent rich men, doting on their fish-ponds, who consoled themselves for the ruin that they foresaw by thinking that they would save at least their lampreys. In the introduction to the _De Republica_ he attacks with admirable energy those who, being discouraged themselves, try to discourage others, who maintain that a man has the right to withhold his services from his country, and to consult his own welfare while neglecting that of his country. “Let us not listen,” says he in finishing, “to that signal for retreat that sounds in our ears, and would recall those who have already gone to the front.”[176] Brutus also knew the evil of which the republic was dying, and complained more than once of the weakness and discouragement of the Romans. “Believe me,” he wrote, “we are too much afraid of exile, death, and poverty.”[177] It was Atticus to whom he wrote these noble words, and yet he does not dream of applying them to him! What strange charm then did this man possess, what influence did his friendship exercise, that these two great patriots have thus belied themselves in his favour, and have so freely pardoned in him what they condemned in others?

The more we think of it, the less can we imagine the reasons he could give them to justify his conduct. If he had been one of those scholars who, wedded to their researches in history or philosophy, only dwell in the past or the future, and are not really the contemporaries of the people with whom they live, we might have understood his not taking part in their struggles since he held himself aloof from their passions; but we know that, on the contrary, he had the most lively relish for all the small agitations and obscure intrigues of the politics of his time. He was anxious to know them, he excelled in unravelling them, this was the regular food of his inquisitive mind, and Cicero applied to him by choice when he wished to know about such matters. He was not one of those gentle and timid souls, made for reflection and solitude, who have not the energy necessary for active life. This man of business, of clear and decided judgment, would, on the contrary, have made an excellent statesman. To be useful to his country he would only have needed to employ in its service a little of that activity and intelligence he had used to enrich himself, and Cicero was right in thinking that he had the political temperament. And, finally, he had not even left himself the poor resource of pretending that he sided with no party because all parties were indifferent to him, and that, having no settled opinions, he did not know which side to take. He had said the contrary a hundred times in his letters to Cicero and Brutus; he had charmed them a hundred times by the ardour of his republican zeal, and yet he remained quiet when the opportunity came of serving this government to which he said he was so much attached. Instead of making a single effort to retard its fall, he was only careful not to be crushed under its ruins. But if he did not try to defend it, did he, at least, pay it that last respect of appearing to regret it? Did he show in any way that, although he had not appeared in the combat, he felt that he shared in the defeat? Did he know, while he grew old under a power to which he was forced to submit, how to retire in a dignified sadness which forces respect even from a conqueror? No, and it is assuredly this that is most repugnant to us in his life; he showed an unpleasant eagerness to accommodate himself to the new order of things. The day after he had himself been proscribed, we see him become the friend of the proscribers. He lavishes all the charms of his mind on them, assiduously frequents their houses, attends all their _fêtes_. However habituated we may be to see him welcome all triumphant governments, we cannot get used to the notion that the friend of Brutus and the confidant of Cicero should become so quickly the familiar of Antony and Octavius. Those most disposed to indulgence will certainly think that those illustrious friendships created duties which he did not fulfil, and that it was a treason to the memory of these men who had honoured him with their friendship, to choose just their executioners as their successors.

If we are not disposed to show ourselves as indulgent towards him as Cicero and Brutus, with still more reason shall we not partake in the naïve enthusiasm that he inspires in Cornelius Nepos. This indulgent biographer is only struck, in the whole life of his hero, with the happy chance by which he escaped such great dangers. He cannot get over his surprise when he sees him, from the time of Sulla to that of Augustus, withdraw himself from so many civil wars, survive so many proscriptions, and preserve himself so skilfully where so many others perished. “If we overwhelm with praises,” says he, “the pilot who saves his vessel from the rocks and tempests, ought we not to consider admirable the prudence of a man who in the midst of those violent political storms succeeded in saving himself?”[178] Admiration is here too strong a word. We keep that for those courageous men who made their actions agree with their principles, and who knew how to die to defend their opinions. Their ill success does not injure them in our esteem, and, whatever the friend of Atticus may say, there are fortunate voyages from which less honour is drawn than from some shipwrecks. The sole praise that he thoroughly deserves is that which his biographer gives him with so much complacency, namely, that he was the most adroit man of that time; but we know that there are other forms of praise which are of more value than this.

CAELIUS

THE ROMAN YOUTH IN THE TIME OF CAESAR

There is perhaps no more curious figure than that of Caelius in the history we are studying. His life has a special interest for us. He was not, like Brutus, a brilliant exception among his contemporaries; on the contrary, he quite belongs to his time; he lived as others lived around him. All the young men of that time, the Curios, the Dolabellas, resemble him. They are all, like him, corrupted early, little concerned about their dignity, prodigal of their wealth, friends of facile pleasures; they all throw themselves into public life as soon as they can, with a restless ambition and great needs to satisfy, and with few scruples and no beliefs. His history, then, is that of all the rest, and the advantage we find in studying it is that we know at once the whole generation of which he formed part. Now, thanks to Cicero, this study is easy for us. Notwithstanding so many differences in conduct and principles, Cicero always felt a singular inclination for Caelius; he liked the conversation of this clever man who laughed at everything, and was more at ease with him than with people like Cato or Brutus, whose severity somewhat alarmed him. He defended him in the law courts when a woman whom he had loved tried to ruin him, and this speech of his is certainly one of the most interesting that remain to us. Later, when he was obliged to go to Cilicia, he chose him for his political correspondent. By a happy chance Caelius’ letters have come down to us with those of Cicero, and there are none in all this collection that are more witty and more racy. Let us collect all the details scattered through them; let us try, in collecting them, to reproduce an account of Caelius, and by it to gain an idea of what the Roman youth of that time was. It is not without interest to know them, for they played an important part, and Caesar made use of them more especially for the revolution that he wished to accomplish.

I.

Caelius did not come of an illustrious family. He was the son of a Roman knight of Puteoli, who had been in trade and acquired great wealth in Africa. His father, who had all his life no other concern than that of enriching himself, showed, as often happens, more ambition for his son than for himself: he wished him to become a politician, and as he saw that dignities were reached only through eloquence, he took him betimes to Cicero, that he might make him a great orator, if it were possible.

It was not yet the custom to confine young men to the schools of the rhetoricians, and to be contented with exercising them in imaginary cases. As soon as they had assumed the _toga virilis_, that is, when they were about sixteen years old, no time was lost in taking them to some statesman of reputation, whom they did not leave. Admitted to his most intimate society, they listened to his conversations with his friends, his disputations with his adversaries; they saw him prepare himself in silence for the great battles of eloquence, they followed him into the basilicas and the Forum, they heard him pleading causes or speaking to the assembled people, and when they had become capable of speaking themselves, they made their first appearance at his side and under his patronage. Tacitus much regrets this manly education, which, placing a young man under the conditions of reality instead of retaining him among the fictions of rhetoric, gave him a taste for real and natural eloquence which strengthened him, by throwing him from the first into the midst of real contests, and, according to his expression, taught him war on the field of battle, _pugnare in praelio discebant_.[179] This education, however, had its dangers. It taught him things that it is better to be ignorant of for a long time, it familiarized him with the scandalous and corrupt sights that public life usually offers, it gave him a too rapid maturity and inflamed him with precocious ambition. Must not a young man of sixteen, who thus lived in intimacy with old and unscrupulous statesmen, and to whom were laid bare without precaution the basest manœuvres of parties, must he not have lost something of the generosity and sensitiveness of his age? Was it not to be feared that this corrupting intercourse might end by giving him a taste for intrigue, for the worship of success, an unbridled love of power, the desire to attain a high position quickly and by any means, and as, generally, the worst means are also the quickest, the temptation to employ them by preference? This is what happened to Caelius. For three entire years, three honest and laborious years, he did not leave Cicero; but he perceived at length, that a young man like himself, who had his political fortune to make, would gain more with those who wished to destroy the government than with him who wished to preserve it, and he abandoned Cicero to attach himself to Catiline. The change was sudden, but Caelius never took the trouble to delay about these transitions. Henceforth, we can easily understand, his life took another turn; he became a seditious and turbulent man, whose biting speech in the Forum and violence in the Campus Martius were dreaded. At the election of a pontif he struck a senator. When he was appointed quaestor, every one accused him of having bought his votes. Not content with disturbing the comitia at Rome, we see him stirring up a popular tumult at Naples, we do not know why. At the same time, he did not neglect his pleasures. The debaucheries of those noisy young men of whom he was one, continually disturbed the public peace. It is said that the streets of Rome were unsafe when they returned at night from their suppers, and that, after the manner of those giddy fellows that Plautus and Terence depict, they molested honest women whom they met on their road. All these follies did not go on without great expense, and the father of Caelius, although he was rich, was not of a temper to be always paying. No doubt at this time the honest merchant of Puteoli must have regretted his ambition for his son, and thought it cost him dear to have wished to make him a politician. Caelius, on his side, was not of a temper to put up with reprimands easily; he left the paternal house, and, under pretext of being nearer the Forum and business, rented a lodging on the Palatine, in the house of the famous tribune Appius Clodius, for ten thousand sesterces (£80). This was an important event in his life, for it was there that he became acquainted with Clodia.

If we relied on the evidence of Cicero we should have a very bad opinion of Clodia; but Cicero is a too partial witness to be altogether just, and the furious hatred he bore the brother renders him very much suspected when he speaks of the sister. Moreover, he partly contradicts himself when he tells us she had kept up relations with very honourable people, which would be very surprising if it were true that she had committed all the crimes that he lays to her charge. It is very difficult to believe that persons of consideration in the republic, and persons who were careful of their reputation, would have continued to see her if they had thought that she had poisoned her husband, and was the mistress of her brothers. Cicero, however, did not invent this; it was public rumour that he complacently repeated. Many people in Rome believed it, Clodia’s enemies liked to repeat it, and mischievous verses were made about it which were written upon every wall. Clodia’s reputation was, then, very bad, and it must be admitted that, notwithstanding some exaggerations, she partly deserved it. There is nothing to show that she killed her husband, as she was accused of doing; these accusations of poisoning were then widespread, and were accepted with incredible levity, but she had made him very unhappy during his life, and did not appear very much grieved at his death. It is doubtful, also, whatever Cicero may assert, that her brothers were her lovers, but it is unfortunately too certain that she had a good many others. The sole excuse that can be pleaded for her is that this way of living was then very general. Scandals of this kind had never been more common among the great ladies of Rome. Roman society was passing through a crisis whose causes, which go back a long way, deserve to be considered. We must say a few words about them, in order to account for the grave injury that public morals had received.

In a country where the family was respected as it was at Rome, women could not fail to have much importance. It was impossible that their influence, which was already so great within the house, should not attempt to show itself outside, and the honourable place they held in private life must one day tempt them to invade public life also. The ancient Romans, so jealous of their authority, had the consciousness of this danger, and neglected nothing in order to defend themselves against it. We know how they affected to treat women; there was no sort of unkind remarks they did not make about them; they got them attacked on the stage and mocked them even in their political speeches:[180] but we must not mistake the sense of these railleries and pity the objects of them too much. They are only attacked thus because they are feared, and all these pleasantries are not so much insults as precautions. These rough soldiers, these rude peasants, have learnt, in living with them, how subtle and enterprising their minds are, and in how many ways they are more capable than themselves; consequently they take a good deal of trouble to confine them to their households, and even that does not suffice to reassure them; in the household itself they must be subjugated and bridled. They affect to think and to say that they are weak and untamed beings (_indomita animalia_), incapable of governing themselves alone, and they hasten to provide for their management. They are kept, under this pretext, in a continual state of tutelage; they are always “under the hand” of their father, brother, or husband; they cannot sell, buy, trade, or do anything without a council to assist them: in acting thus the men pretend they are protecting them, in reality it is themselves they are protecting against them. Cato, their great enemy, ingenuously admits it in a moment of frankness. “Remember,” Livy makes him say _à propos_ of the _lex Oppia_, “all those regulations our ancestors made to subject wives to their husbands. Shackled as they are, you have trouble to manage them. What will happen if you give them their liberty, if you allow them to enjoy the same rights as yourselves? Do you think you will then be their masters? The day they become your equals they will be your superiors.”[181] This day arrived just about the time of which we are treating. In the midst of the weakening of ancient usages, the laws against women were not more respected than others. Cicero says that the gallant lawyers furnished them with ingenious means to free themselves from these laws without appearing to violate them.[182] At the same time, men were accustomed to see them take a more important place in society, and to recognize their influence in the government of the republic. Almost all the politicians of that time are governed by their wives or by their mistresses, thus the innumerable gallantries of Caesar must have passed in the eyes of many people, as later those of Augustus did, for profound policy, as it might be supposed that he only sought to please the women in order to lead their husbands.

Thus, by the abolition of the old laws, and by the alteration of ancient maxims, women had become free. Now, it is to be remarked that, in general, the first use made of regained liberty is to abuse it. We cannot enjoy quietly the rights of which we have been long deprived, and the first moments of liberty bring a sort of intoxication that it is difficult to check. This is what happened to the Roman society of that time, and all these irregularities that we notice in the conduct of women then are partly explained by the allurements and intoxication of their new liberty. Those who love money, like Terentia, Cicero’s wife, hasten to take advantage of the right of disposing of their fortune, that has been restored to them, they associate themselves with freedmen and agents for doubtful gains, rob their husbands without scruple, and throw themselves into speculations and trade, to which they bring, together with an almost incredible rapacity, that taste for small savings and economies which is natural to them. Those who prefer pleasure to wealth give themselves up to all pleasures with a passionate eagerness. The less bold take advantage of the facilities of divorce to pass from one amour to another under cover of the law. Others do not even take this trouble, and impudently flaunt their scandalous behaviour.

Clodia was one of the latter; but among all her vices, which she took no care to hide, we are forced to recognize in her some good qualities. She was not grasping; her purse was open to her friends, and Caelius was not ashamed to dip into it. She liked clever men, and attracted them to her house. At one time she wished to persuade Cicero, whose talents she much admired, to give up his foolish Terentia for her and to marry her; but Terentia, who suspected it, succeeded in mortally embroiling them. An old scholiast says that she danced better than it was proper for an honest woman to do.[183] This was not the only art for which she had a taste, and it has been thought possible to infer from a passage of Cicero that she also wrote verses.[184] To cultivate letters, to seek out clever men, to like refined and elegant pleasures, does not seem at first sight to be blameworthy; on the contrary, these are among us the qualities that a woman of society is obliged to possess or to feign. They thought otherwise at Rome, and, as the courtesans alone had then the privilege of following this free and accomplished life, every woman who sought this ran the risk of being confounded with them, and of being treated with the same rigour by public opinion; but Clodia did not care for public opinion. She brought into her private conduct, into her affections, the same passionateness and the same ardour that her brother did into public life. Ready for all excesses, and not blushing to avow them, loving and hating furiously, incapable of self-control, and hating all restraint, she did not belie that great and haughty family from which she was descended, and even in her vices her blood was recognized. In a country where so much respect was shown for ancient customs, in that classic land of _decorum_ (the thing and the word are Roman), Clodia took pleasure in shocking the established customs; she went out publicly with her male friends; she was accompanied by them in the public gardens or on the Appian road, constructed by her great ancestor. She boldly accosted people whom she knew; instead of timidly lowering her eyes as a well-brought-up matron should have done, she dared to speak to them (Cicero says that she even kissed them sometimes), and invited them to her repasts. Grave, staid, and rigid people were indignant; but the young, whom this freedom did not displease, were charmed, and went to dine with Clodia.[185]

Caelius was at that time one of the fashionable young men of Rome. Already he had a great reputation as an orator. He was dreaded for the satirical sharpness of his speech. He was bold to temerity, always ready to throw himself into the most perilous enterprises. He spent his money freely, and drew after him a train of friends and clients. Few men danced as well as he,[186] no one surpassed him in the art of dressing with taste, and the beauty and breadth of the purple band that bordered his toga were spoken of on all hands in Rome. All these qualities, the serious as well as the trivial, were of a nature to attract Clodia. Neighbourhood made their acquaintance more easy, and she soon became the mistress of Caelius.