Cicero and His Friends

Caesar and Cicero

I — Cicero and the Camp of Caesar in Gaul

Cicero was not wrong when he said one day to Caesar: “After our time, there will be great debates about you, as there have been among ourselves.”235 It is certain that he is that historical personage whom men still discuss with most heat. None has excited more sympathy or roused more animosity, and it must be admitted that there seems to be something in him to justify both the one and the other. He cannot be admired or blamed without some reservations, and he always attracts on some side those whom he repels on another. The very people who hate him the most, and who cannot pardon him the political revolution that he accomplished, are forced into a secret admiration for him when they think of his victories, or read his writings.

The more complex and disputable his character, the more necessary it is, in order to form a just idea of him, to interrogate those who were in a position to know him. Although Cicero was almost all his life separated from Caesar by grave disagreements, twice he had occasion to maintain a close intercourse with him: during the Gallic war he was his political ally and his assiduous correspondent; after Pharsalia he became his friend again, and acted as intermediary between the conqueror and those he had condemned to exile. Let us inquire what he says of him at these two periods of his life when he saw him most closely, and let us collect from his correspondence, through which we become so well acquainted with the eminent men of that time, the information it contains about him who was the greatest of all.

I

I must first recall the events which led Cicero to desert the aristocratic party to which he had been attached since his consulship, in order to serve the triumvirs, and how the courageous friend of Hortensius and of Cato became so subservient to Pompey and Caesar. It is not an honourable period in his life, and his most convinced admirers say as little about it as possible. However, there is some interest, perhaps even some profit, in pausing upon it for a moment.

Cicero’s return from the exile to which he had been condemned after his consulship by the efforts of Clodius, was a veritable triumph. Brundusium, where he disembarked, celebrated his arrival by public rejoicings. All the citizens of the free towns that bordered the Appian Way, waited for him on the road, and the heads of families with their wives and children came from all the neighbouring farms to see him pass. At Rome, he was received by an immense multitude crowded on the public squares, or ranged on the steps of the temples. “It seemed,” said he, “that all the city was drawn from its foundations to come and salute its liberator.”236 At his brother’s house, where he was going to live, he found the most eminent members of the senate awaiting him, and at the same time congratulatory addresses from all the popular societies of the city. It is probable that some who had signed these, had voted with the same eagerness the preceding year for the law that exiled him, and that many clapped their hands on his return who had applauded his departure; but the people have occasionally these strange and generous impulses. It sometimes happens that they break away by a sudden bound from the malice, distrust, and narrowness of party spirit, and, at the very moment when passions seem most inflamed and divisions most clearly marked, they unite all at once to render homage to some great genius or to some great character, which, we know not how, has compelled their recognition. Usually, this gratitude and admiration last but a short time; but, should they endure only a day, they do eternal honour to him who has been their object, and the glory they leave behind is sufficient to illumine a whole life. Therefore we must pardon Cicero for having spoken so often and with so much effusiveness of this glorious day. A little pride was here both legitimate and natural. How could a soul so sensitive to popular applause have resisted the intoxication of a triumphal return? “I do not feel as though I were simply returning from exile,” said he, “I appear to myself to be mounting to heaven.”237

But he was not long in descending again to earth. Whatever he may have thought at first, he soon recognized that this city which welcomed him with so much rejoicing was not changed, and that he found it much the same as when he left it. Anarchy had reigned there for three years, an anarchy such as we have difficulty in imagining, notwithstanding all the examples that our own revolutions have given us. Since the triumvirs had let loose the rabble in order to seize upon the government of the republic, it had become entirely master. A daring tribune, a deserter from the aristocracy, and one who bore the most illustrious name in Rome, Clodius, had taken upon himself to lead it, and as far as possible, to discipline it. He had displayed in this difficult work many talents and much audacity, and had succeeded well enough to deserve to become the terror of honest people. When we speak of the Roman mob, we must not forget that it was much more frightful than our own, and was recruited from more formidable elements. Whatever just dismay the populace that emerges all at once from the lowest quarters of our manufacturing cities, on a day of riot, may cause us, let us remember that at Rome, this inferior social stratum descended still lower. Below the vagabond strangers and the starving workmen, the ordinary tools of revolutions, there was all that crowd of freedmen demoralized by slavery, to whom liberty had given but one more means for evil-doing; there were those gladiators, trained to fight beast or man, who made light of the death of others or themselves; there were, still lower, those fugitive slaves, who were indeed the worst of all classes, who, after having robbed or murdered at home, and lived by pillage on the road, came from all Italy to take refuge and disappear in the obscurity of the slums of Rome, an unclean and terrible multitude of men without family, without country, who, outlawed by the general sentiment of society, had nothing to respect as they had nothing to lose. It was among these that Clodius recruited his bands. Enlistments were made in open day, in one of the most frequented spots in Rome, near the Aurelian steps. The new soldiers were then organized in decuries and centuries, under energetic leaders. They assembled by districts in secret societies, where they went to receive the password, and had their centre and arsenal at the temple of Castor. When the day arrived, and a popular manifestation was wanted, the tribunes ordered the shops to be closed; then, the artisans were thrown on the public streets, and all the army of the secret societies marched together towards the Forum. There they met, not the honest folks, who, feeling themselves the weaker party, stayed at home, but the gladiators and herdsmen whom the senate had fetched to defend them from the wilds of Picenum or Gaul, and then the battle commenced. “Imagine London,” says M. Mommsen, “with the slave population of New Orleans, the police of Constantinople, and the industrial condition of modern Rome, and think of the political state of Paris in 1848: you will have some idea of republican Rome in its last days.”

No law was any longer respected, no citizen, no magistrate was secure from violence. One day the fasces of a consul were broken, the next a tribune was left for dead. The senate itself, led away by these examples, had at last lost that quality which Romans lost the last, its dignity. In that assembly of kings, as a Greek had called it, they debated with revolting coarseness. Cicero surprised no one when he gave his adversaries the names of swine, filth, rotten flesh. Sometimes the discussions became so heated that the noise reached that excited crowd that filled the porticoes near the curia, which then took part in them, with so much violence that the terrified senators hastened to fly.238 We can easily understand that it was much worse in the Forum. Cicero relates that, when they were tired of insulting, they spat in each other’s faces.239 When a man wished to address the people, he had to take the rostrum by storm, and he risked his life in trying to keep his place there. The tribunes had found a new way of obtaining unanimity of votes for the laws that they proposed: namely, to beat and drive away all who took it into their heads not to agree with them. But contests were nowhere more violent than on the Campus Martius on election days. Men were driven to regret the time when they trafficked publicly in the votes of the electors. Now, they did not even take the trouble to buy public offices; they found it more convenient to seize them by force. Each party went before daylight to the Campus Martius. Collisions took place on the roads leading to it. Each party hastened to arrive before its adversaries, or, if these were already established there, attacked them in order to dislodge them: naturally the appointments belonged to those who remained masters of the place. In the midst of all these armed bands there was no security for any one. Men were obliged to fortify themselves in their houses for fear of being surprised. They could only go out with a train of gladiators and slaves. To go from one quarter of the city to another, they took as many precautions as if they had to traverse a desert country, and they met at the turning of a street with the same fear they would have had at the corner of a wood. In the midst of Rome there were real battles and regular sieges. It was an ordinary manœuvre to set fire to the houses of their enemies at the risk of burning down a whole quarter, and, towards the end, no election or popular assembly took place without bloodshed. “The Tiber,” says Cicero, speaking of one of these combats, “was full of the corpses of the citizens, the public sewers were choked with them, and they were obliged to mop up with sponges the blood that streamed from the Forum.”240

Such were the obscure convulsions in which the Roman republic perished, and the shameful disorders that sapped its remaining strength. Cicero well knew that bloody anarchy and the dangers he was about to run, and had therefore resolved, before re-entering Rome, to be prudent, so as not to run the risk of having to leave it again. His was not one of those minds that misfortune strengthens, and that feel a kind of pleasure in struggling against ill-fortune. Exile had discouraged him. During the long weariness of his sojourn in Thessaly, he had made a sad review of the past. He had reproached himself for his occasional courage and independence, for his boldness in combating the powerful, and for the mistake he had made in joining himself too closely to the party which he had judged the best, but which was evidently the weakest, as though to act thus had been a crime. He came back thoroughly resolved to entangle himself as little as possible with any one, to disarm his enemies by concession, and to keep on good terms with everybody. This was the course he followed on his arrival, and his first speeches are masterpieces of policy. It is plain that he still leans towards the aristocracy which had taken an active part in his restoration, and to praise it he has noble expressions of patriotism and gratitude; but already he commences to flatter Caesar, and he calls Pompey “the most virtuous, the wisest, the greatest of the men of his age or of any age.”241 At the same time, he tells us himself, he took good heed not to appear in the senate when irritating questions were to be discussed, and was very careful to escape from the Forum as soon as the debate became too heated. “No more violent remedies,” he replied to those who tried to urge him to some brilliant action; “I must put myself on diet.”242

However, he soon perceived that this adroit reserve was not sufficient to ward off all danger. While he was rebuilding his house on the Palatine, which had been destroyed after his departure, the bands of Clodius threw themselves on the workmen and dispersed them, and, emboldened by this success, set fire to the house of his brother Quintus, which was close by. A few days later, as he was walking on the Via Sacra, he heard all at once a great noise, and on turning round saw sticks raised and naked swords. It was the same men who came to attack him. He had great difficulty in escaping into the vestibule of a friendly house while his slaves fought bravely before the door to give him time to escape. Cato would not have been moved by this violence; Cicero must have been very much frightened; above all it taught him that his system of prudent reserve did not sufficiently assure his safety. It was, in fact, probable that no party would expose itself to defend him as long as he had only compliments to give it, and as he could not stand alone and without support in the midst of all these armed factions, it was really necessary that, in order to find the support he needed, he should consent to attach himself more closely to one of them.

But which should he choose? This was a grave question in which his interests were at variance with his sympathies. All his inclinations were evidently for the aristocracy. He had closely attached himself to it about the time of his consulship, and since that time he had professed to serve it, and it was for it that he had just braved the anger of the people and exposed himself to exile. But this very exile had taught him how the most honourable course was also the least safe. At the last moment, the senate had not found better means of saving him than to make useless decrees, to put on mourning, and go and throw themselves at the feet of the consuls. Cicero thought that this was not enough. Seeing himself so ill-defended, he had suspected that people who did not take his interests in hand more resolutely were not very sorry for his misfortunes; and perhaps he was not wrong. The Roman aristocracy, whatever he had done for it, could not forget he was a “new” man. The Claudii, the Cornelii, the Manlii, always looked with a certain displeasure on this insignificant townsman of Arpinum, whom the popular vote had made their equal. Still they might have pardoned his good fortune if he had borne it with more modesty; but we know his vanity; though it was only ridiculous, the aristocracy, whom it offended, thought it criminal. They could not tolerate the legitimate pride with which he constantly recalled that he was only a parvenu. They thought it strange that, when attacked by insolence, he dared to reply by raillery; and quite recently they had shown themselves scandalized that he had forgotten himself so far as to buy the villa of Catulus at Tusculum, and to go and live on the Palatine in the house of Crassus. Cicero, with his usual shrewdness, very clearly discerned all these sentiments of the aristocracy, and even exaggerated them. Since his return from exile he had yet other grievances against them. They had taken much trouble to get him recalled; but had not foreseen the splendour of his return, and it did not seem that they were very well pleased with it. “Those who have clipped my wings,” said Cicero, “are sorry to see them grow again.”243 From this moment his good friends in the senate would do nothing more for him. He had found his finances much embarrassed, his house on the Palatine burnt, his villas at Tusculum and Formiae plundered and destroyed, and they decided with reluctance to indemnify him for these losses. What irritated him still more, was that he saw clearly that they did not share in his anger against Clodius. They showed themselves cool or remained silent during his violent fits of anger. A few even, the most adroit, affected to speak only with esteem of this factious tribune, and did not blush to give him their hand in public. Whence came their regard for a man who had so little for them? It was that they hoped to make use of him, and that they secretly nourished the thought of calling in the mob to the help of the endangered aristocracy. This alliance, although less usual than that of the mob with despotism, was not impossible, and the bands of Clodius, if they could be enlisted, would have permitted the senate to hold the triumvirs in check. Cicero, who perceived this policy, feared to become its victim; he bitterly regretted then the services he had tried to render to the senate, and which had cost him so dear. In recalling the dangers to which he had exposed himself in order to defend it, the obstinate and unsuccessful struggles that he had maintained for four years, the ruin of his political position and the disasters of his private fortune, he said with sorrow: “I see clearly now that I have been only a fool (scio me asinum germanum fuisse”).244

It only remained for him then to turn to the triumvirs. This was the advice given to him by his friend the prudent Atticus, and his brother Quintus, whom the burning of his house had rendered cautious contrary to his habit; this was the resolution he was himself tempted to take every time he ran some fresh danger. Nevertheless, he had some trouble in making up his mind. The triumvirs had been heretofore his most cruel enemies. Without speaking of Crassus, in whom he detected an accomplice of Catiline, he well knew that it was Caesar who had let Clodius loose against him, and he could not forget that Pompey, who had sworn to defend him, had lately abandoned him to the vengeance of his two friends; but he had no choice of alliances, and since he dared no longer trust the aristocratic party, he was forced to put himself under the protection of others. He had then to resign himself to his fate. He authorized his brother to pledge him to Caesar and Pompey, and prepared himself to serve their ambition. His first act, after his return, had been to demand for Pompey one of those extraordinary powers of which he was so greedy: by his exertions Pompey had been entrusted for six years with the victualling of Rome, and on this occasion he had been invested with an almost unlimited authority. A short time after, although the public treasury was exhausted, he had a sum of money granted to Caesar for the payment of his legions, and permission to have ten lieutenants under his orders. When the aristocracy, who understood with what design Caesar was carrying out the conquest of Gaul, wished to prevent him continuing it, it was again Cicero who demanded and obtained for him permission to finish his work. It was thus that the old enemy of the triumvirs became their usual defender before the senate. The support that he consented to give was not useless to them. His great name and his eloquence drew towards him the moderate men of all parties, those whose opinion was wavering and their convictions undecided; those, above all, who, wearied with a too tempestuous liberty, sought everywhere a firm hand that might give them repose; and these, joined to the personal friends of Caesar and Pompey, to the tools that the rich Crassus had made by bribery, and to the ambitious men of all sorts who foresaw the advent of the monarchy and wished to be the first to salute it, formed in the senate a majority of which Cicero was the head and the orator, and which rendered to the triumvirs the important service of giving a legal sanction to that power which they had gained by violence and exercised illegally.

Cicero had at length obtained repose. His enemies feared him, Clodius dared no longer risk attacking him, his familiarity with the new masters was envied, and yet this skilful conduct, which gained for him the thanks of the triumvirs and the congratulations of Atticus, did not fail at times to disturb him. It was in vain for him to say to himself that “his life had regained its splendour,” he did not feel less remorse in serving men whose ambition he knew, and whom he knew to be dangerous to the liberty of his country. In the midst of the efforts that he made to satisfy them, he had sudden awakenings of patriotism which made him blush. His private correspondence bears everywhere the trace of the alternations of mood through which he passed. One day he wrote to Atticus in a light and resolute tone: “Let us give up honour, justice, and fine sentiments.... Since those who can do nothing will not love me, let us try to make ourselves loved by those who can do everything.”245 But shame seized him the next day, and he could not avoid saying to his friend: “Is anything sadder than our life, mine above all? If I speak according to my convictions I pass for a madman; if I listen to my interests, I am accused of being a slave; if I am silent, they say I am afraid.”246 Even in his public speeches, notwithstanding the restraint he puts on himself, we can feel his secret dissatisfaction. It seems to me that we discover it above all in that extraordinary tone of bitterness and violence which was then habitual to him. Never, perhaps, did he pronounce more passionate invectives. Now this excess of violence towards others often comes from a mind ill at ease. What made his eloquence so bitter at this time was that uneasy feeling which a man has who is in the wrong path and has not the courage to leave it. He did not forgive his old friends their raillery and his new ones their demands; he reproached himself secretly for his base concessions; he had a spite against others and against himself, and Vatinius or Piso suffered for all the rest. In this condition of mind he could not be a safe friend for anybody. It happened sometimes that he suddenly turned on his new friends, and gave blows so much the more disagreeable that they were not expected. Sometimes he diverted himself by attacking their best friends, to show others and prove to himself that he had not entirely lost his liberty. People had been very much surprised to hear him, in a speech in which he defended Caesar’s interests, praise to excess Bibulus, whom Caesar detested. One day even he seemed quite ready to return to those whom he had called honest men before he abandoned them. It seemed to him a good opportunity to break with his new party in a formal manner. The friendship of the triumvirs had become very cool. Pompey was not pleased with the success of that Gallic war which threatened to make his own victories forgotten. Cicero, who heard him speak without restraint against his rival, thought he might without danger give some satisfaction to his irritated conscience, and wished by a brilliant stroke to deserve the pardon of his old friends. Taking advantage of some difficulty that was raised in regard to the carrying out of Caesar’s agrarian law, he formally announced that on the Ides of May he would speak on the sale of the Campanian lands which by this law were distributed among the people. The effect of his declaration was very great. The allies of the triumvirs were as much offended as they were surprised, and the aristocratic party hastened to welcome with transports of joy the return of the eloquent deserter, but in a few days everything turned against him. At the very moment when he decided on this brilliant stroke, the alliance between the triumvirs that was thought to be broken, was renewed at Lucca, and, amid a concourse of their flatterers, they once more divided the world between them. Cicero, then, was about to find himself again alone and without support in the presence of an angry and all-powerful enemy who threatened to deliver him up again to the vengeance of Clodius. Atticus scolded; Quintus, who had pledged himself for his brother, complained roughly that his promises were being broken. Pompey, although he had secretly encouraged the defection, affected to be more angry than anybody. The unhappy Cicero, attacked on all sides, and trembling at the passions which he had raised, hastened to submit, and promised everything that was required. Thus this attempt at independence only made his slavery heavier.

From this moment he seems to have resolutely accepted his new position, from a feeling that he could not change it. He resigned himself to heap more and more exaggerated praises on the vain Pompey, who never had enough. He consented to become the agent of Caesar with Oppius and Balbus, and to supervise the public buildings he was constructing. He went further, and was willing at the request of his powerful protectors to give his hand to men whom he regarded as his greatest enemies. This was not a small sacrifice for a man who had such strong aversions; but from the time that he joined their party so decidedly, he was obliged to accept their friendship as he defended their plans. They began to take steps to reconcile him to Crassus. This was a great matter which was not done in a day, for when it was thought that their old enmity was appeased, it broke out all at once in a discussion in the senate, and Cicero abused his new ally with a violence that surprised himself. “I thought my hatred exhausted,” said he naïvely, “and did not imagine any remained in my heart.”247 He was then asked to undertake the defence of Vatinius; he consented with a pretty good grace, although he had pronounced a furious invective against him the year before. The advocates in Rome were accustomed to these sudden changes, and Cicero had done the same thing more than once. When Gabinius returned from Egypt, after having restored King Ptolemy against the formal command of the senate, Cicero, who could not abide him, thinking it a good opportunity to ruin him, prepared to attack him; but Pompey came to beg him urgently to defend him. He dared not refuse, changed his part, and submitted to speak in favour of a man whom he detested and a cause which he considered bad. He had at least the consolation of losing his case, and although he was always anxious for success, it is probable that this failure did not give him much pain.

But he well understood that so much deference and submission, all these notorious self-contradictions to which he was forced, would end by rousing public opinion against him. Therefore, about this time, he decided to write an important letter to his friend Lentulus, one of the chiefs of the aristocracy, which he probably intended to be circulated, and in which he explains his conduct.248 In this letter, after having related the facts in his own way and sufficiently abused those whom he had abandoned, a convenient and common mode of anticipating their complaints and making them responsible for the mischief he was about to do them, he ventures to present, with singular candour, a sort of apology for his political instability. The reasons he gives to justify it are not always very good; but we must believe that better cannot be found, since they have not ceased to be used. Under the pretence that Plato has somewhere said, “one must not do violence to one’s country any more than to one’s father,” Cicero lays it down as a principle, that a politician ought not to persist in wishing for what his fellow-citizens do not wish, nor lose his pains in attempting useless opposition. Circumstances change, one must change with them, and suit oneself to the wind that blows, so as not to go to pieces on the rocks. Besides, is that really to change? Cannot one in the main wish for the same thing and serve one’s country under different banners? A man is not fickle for defending, according to circumstances, opinions that seem contradictory if by opposite routes he marches to the same goal, and do we not know “that we must often shift the sails when we wish to arrive in port”? These are only the general maxims which an inventive politician can make up to hide his weaknesses, and there is no need to discuss them. The best way to defend Cicero is to remember in what a time he lived, and how little fitted he was for that time. This elegant literary man, this skilful artist, this friend of the arts of peace, had been placed, by a caprice of fate, in one of the most stormy and troubled periods of history. What could a man of leisure and study do among those deadly struggles where force was master, a man who had no arms but his words, and who always dreamed of the pleasures of peaceful times and the pacific laurels of eloquence? A more manly soul than his would have been needed to make head against these assaults. Events stronger than himself confounded his designs every instant and played with his hesitating will. On his entry into public life he had taken for his motto, leisure and honour, otium cum dignitate; but these two things are not easy to unite in revolutionary times, and almost always one of the two is lost when we are too anxious to preserve the other. Resolute characters, who know this well, make their choice between them at once, and, according as one is a Cato or an Atticus, one decides from the very first day either for leisure or for honour. The undecided, like Cicero, pass from one to the other, according to circumstances, and thus jeopardize both. We have arrived at one of those painful moments in his life when he sacrifices honour to leisure; let us not be too severe upon him, and let us remember that, later, he sacrificed not only his leisure, but even his life, to save his honour.

II

One of the results of the new policy of Cicero was to give him an opportunity of becoming well acquainted with Caesar. Not that they had been hitherto strangers to one another. The taste of both for letters and the similar nature of their studies, had united them in their youth, and from these early relations, which men never forget, there had remained some natural sympathy and good-will. But as in later life they had attached themselves to opposite parties, circumstances had separated them. In the Forum, and in the senate, they had acquired the habit of always being of opposite opinions, and naturally their friendship had suffered from the vivacity of their dissensions. Yet Cicero tells us that, even when they were most excited against each other, Caesar could never hate him.249

Politics had separated them, politics reunited them. When Cicero turned towards the party of the triumvirs their intimate relations recommenced; but this time their position was different, and their connection could no longer have the same character. The old school-fellow of Cicero had become his protector. It was no longer a mutual inclination or common studies, it was interest and necessity that united them, and their new ties were formed by a sort of reciprocal agreement in which one of the two gave his talents and a little of his honour, that the other might guarantee him repose. These are not very favourable circumstances, it must be admitted, to produce a sincere friendship. However, when we read Cicero’s private correspondence, in which he speaks unreservedly, we cannot doubt but that he found many charms in these relations with Caesar which seemed to him at first to be so difficult. Probably this was because he compared them with those which he had at the same time to keep up with Pompey. Caesar at least was affable and polite. Although he had the gravest affairs on his hands, he found time to think of his friends and to joke with them. Victorious as he was, he allowed them to write to him “familiarly and without subserviency.”250 He answered with amiable letters, “full of politeness, kind attentions and charm,”251 which delighted Cicero. Pompey, on the contrary, seemed to take a pleasure in wounding him by his lofty airs. This pompous and vain man, whom the adoration of the Orientals had spoilt, and who could not avoid assuming the deportment of a conqueror merely in going from his house at Alba to Rome, affected an imperious and haughty tone which alienated everybody. His dissimulation was still more displeasing than his insolence. He had a sort of dislike of communicating his projects to others; he hid them even from his most devoted friends, who wished to know them in order to support them. Cicero complains more than once that he could never discover what he wanted; it even happened that he was completely deceived as to his real intentions and made him angry, thinking he was doing him a service. This obstinate dissimulation passed, no doubt, for profound policy in the eyes of the multitude; but the more skilful had no difficulty in discerning its motive. If he did not express his opinion to anybody, it was because most frequently he had no opinion, and, as it very commonly happens, silence with him only served to cover the fact. He went at random, without fixed principles or settled system, and never looked beyond present circumstances. Events always took him by surprise, and he showed clearly that he was no more capable of directing them than of foreseeing them. His ambition itself, which was his dominant passion, had no precise views or decided aims. Whatever dignities were offered to satisfy it, it was plainly seen that he always desired something else; this was perceived without his saying it, for he tried very awkwardly to hide it. His ordinary stratagem was to pretend indifference, and he wished to be forced to accept what he most ardently desired. We can well understand that this pretence when too often repeated deceived nobody. Upon the whole, as he had successively attacked and defended all parties, and after having often appeared to desire an almost royal authority, had not endeavoured to destroy the republic when he had the power to do so, it is impossible for us to discover now what plan he had conceived, or even if he had conceived any distinct plan at all.

It is not so with Caesar. He knew the object of his ambition, and saw distinctly what he wished to do. His plans were settled even before he entered public life;252 in his youth he had formed the design to become master. The spectacle of the revolutions on which he had looked had given rise to the thought; the confidence that he had in his own capacity, and in the inferiority of his enemies, gave him strength to undertake it, and a sort of superstitious belief in his destiny, not uncommon in men who attempt these great adventures, assured him in advance of success. Therefore he marched resolutely towards his end, without showing undue haste to attain it, but without ever losing sight of it. To know exactly what one wants is not a common quality, above all in those troubled times in which good and evil are mingled, and yet success only comes to those who possess it. What, above all, gave Caesar his superiority was, that in the midst of those irresolute politicians who had only uncertain projects, hesitating convictions, and occasional ambitions, he alone had a deliberate ambition and a settled design. One could not approach him without coming under the influence of that tranquil and powerful will, which had a clear idea of its projects, the consciousness of its own strength, and the confidence of victory. Cicero felt it like the rest, notwithstanding his prejudices. In presence of such consistency and firmness he could not avoid making unfavourable comparisons with the perturbation and inconsistency of his old friend. “I am of your opinion about Pompey, he hinted to his brother, or rather you are of mine, for I have sung the praises of Caesar for a long time.”253 In fact, it was sufficient to approach a man of real genius to recognize the emptiness of this semblance of a great man, whose easy successes and air of inflated majesty had imposed so long upon the admiration of fools.

We must not, however, suppose that Caesar was one of those stubborn men who will not give way to circumstances, and never consent to alter anything in the plans they have once conceived. No one, on the contrary, knew how to bend to necessity better than he. His aim remained the same, but he did not hesitate to take the most diverse means to attain it, when it was necessary. One of these important modifications took place in his policy, precisely at the period with which we are occupied. What distinguishes Caesar from the men with whom he is usually compared, Alexander and Napoleon, has been well stated by M. Mommsen, namely, that originally he was a statesman rather than a general. He did not, like them, come from the camp, and he had as yet merely passed through it when, by force of circumstances and almost in spite of himself, he became a conqueror. All his youth was passed in Rome in the turmoil of public life, and he only set out for Gaul at an age at which Alexander was dead and Napoleon vanquished. He had evidently formed the plan of making himself master without employing arms; he reckoned upon destroying the republic by a slow and internal revolution, and by preserving as much as possible, in so illegal an attempt, the outward form of legality. He saw that the popular party had more taste for social reforms than for political liberties, and he thought, with reason, that a democratic monarchy would not be repugnant to it. By multiplying dissensions, by becoming the secret accomplice of Catiline and Clodius, he wearied timid republicans of a too troubled liberty and prepared them to sacrifice it willingly to repose. He hoped in this way that the republic, shaken by these daily attacks, which exhausted and tired out its most intrepid defenders, would at last fall without violence and without noise. But, to our great surprise, at the moment when this skilfully-planned design seemed on the point of succeeding, we see Caesar suddenly give it up. After that consulship in which he had governed alone, reducing his colleague to inaction and the senate to silence, he withdraws from Rome for ten years, and goes to attempt the conquest of an unknown country. What reasons decided him to this unexpected change? We should like to believe that he felt some disgust for that life of base intrigues that he led at Rome, and wished to invigorate himself in labours more worthy of him; but it is much more likely that, after having seen clearly that the republic would fall of itself, he understood that he would require an army and military renown to gain the mastery over Pompey. It was, then, without enthusiasm, without passion, designedly and on calculation, that he decided to set out for Gaul. When he took this important resolution, which has contributed so much to his greatness, he was forty-four.254 Pascal thinks it was very late to begin, and that he was too old to interest himself in the conquest of the world. It is, on the contrary, as it seems, one of the most admirable efforts of that energetic will that, at an age when habits are irrevocably fixed, and when a man has definitely entered on the road he must follow to the end, Caesar suddenly commenced a new life, and, leaving in a moment the business of popular agitator that he had followed for twenty-five years, set himself to govern provinces and lead armies. This spectacle, indeed, is more surprising now than it was then. It is no longer the custom to turn oneself into an administrator or a general at fifty, and these things seem to us to demand a special vocation and a long apprenticeship; history shows us that it was otherwise at Rome. Had they not just seen the voluptuous Lucullus, on his way to command the army of Asia, learn the art of war during the voyage, and conquer Mithridates on his arrival? As to administration, a rich Roman learnt it in his own home. Those vast domains, those legions of slaves that he possessed, the management of an immense fortune which often surpassed the wealth of several kingdoms of our days, familiarized him early with the art of government. It was thus that Caesar, who had as yet only had occasion to practise himself in the government of provinces and the command of armies during the year of his praetorship in Spain, had no need of further study to be able to conquer the Helvetii and to organize the conquered countries, and that he found himself at the very first attempt an admirable general and an administrator of genius.

It was at this epoch that his intimate relations with Cicero recommenced, and they lasted as long as the Gallic war. Cicero often had occasion to write to him to recommend people who wished to serve under his command. The ambition of the young men at that time was to set out for Caesar’s camp. Besides the desire of taking part in great deeds under such a general, they had also the secret hope of enriching themselves in those distant countries. We know with what charms the unknown is usually adorned, and how easy it is to lend it all the attractions we wish. Gaul was for the imagination of that time what America was to the sixteenth century. It was supposed that in those countries that no one had visited there lay immense treasures, and all who had their fortune to make hastened to Caesar to have their share of the booty. This eagerness was not displeasing to him; it bore witness to the fascination his conquests exercised, and helped his designs, and accordingly he readily invited men to come to him. He wrote gaily to Cicero, who had begged a commission for some unknown Roman: “You have recommended M. Offius to me; if you like I will make him King of Gaul, unless he prefers to be lieutenant of Lepta. Send me whom you will that I may make him rich.”255 Cicero had with him at that moment two persons whom he loved very much and who had great need of being enriched, the lawyer Trebatius Testa and his own brother Quintus. It was a good opportunity, and he sent them both to Caesar.

Trebatius was a young man of much talent and great zeal for study, who had attached himself to Cicero and did not leave him. He had early left his poor little town of Ulubrae, situated in the midst of the Pontine marshes, for Rome,—Ulubrae the deserted, vacuae Ulubrae, whose inhabitants were called Ulubran frogs. He had studied law, and, as he had become very learned in it, no doubt he rendered many services to Cicero, who does not appear ever to have known much of law, and who found it more convenient to laugh at it than to learn it. Unfortunately, consultations being gratuitous, lawyers did not make their fortune at Rome. Accordingly Trebatius was poor, in spite of his knowledge. Cicero, who liked him unselfishly, consented to deprive himself of the pleasure and use that he found in his society, and sent him to Caesar with one of those charming letters of recommendation that he knew so well how to write, and in which he displayed so much grace and wit. “I do not ask of you,” he says, “the command of a legion, or a government for him. I ask for nothing definite. Give him your friendship, and if afterwards you care to do something for his fortune and his glory I shall not be displeased. In fact, I abandon him to you entirely; I give him to you from hand to hand as they say, and I hope he will find himself well off in those faithful and victorious hands.”256 Caesar thanked Cicero for the present that he had made him, which could not fail to be very valuable to him, “for,” he wittily remarked, “among the multitude of men who surround me, there is not one who knows how to prepare a suit.”257

Trebatius left Rome reluctantly; Cicero said that he had to turn him out of doors.258 The first sight of Gaul, which resembled very little the France of to-day, was not cheering. He passed wild countries, among half-subdued and threatening people, and in the midst of these barbarian surroundings which oppressed his heart, he always thought of the pleasures of that cultivated city that he had just left. The letters that he wrote were so disconsolate, that Cicero, forgetting that he had felt the same regrets during his own exile, reproached him gently for what he called his foolishness. When he arrived at the camp his ill-humour was redoubled. Trebatius was not a warrior, and it is very likely that the Nervii and the Atrebates frightened him very much. He arrived just at the moment when Caesar was setting out on the expedition to Britain, and refused, one knows not on what pretext, to accompany him: perhaps he alleged, like Dumnorix, that he feared the sea; but, even in remaining in Gaul there was no want of danger and tedium. Their winter quarters were not comfortable; they suffered from cold and rain under that inclement sky. In summer they had to take the field, and his terror recommenced. Trebatius was always complaining. What added to his discontent was that he had not found all at once the advantages he had expected. He had set out unwillingly, and wished to return as quickly as possible. Cicero said that he had looked on the letter of recommendation that he had given him to Caesar as a bill of exchange payable to bearer.259 He thought he had only to present himself in order to take the money, and return. It was not only money he went to look for in Gaul; he expected to find there a post of distinction and importance. He wished to approach Caesar and make himself appreciated. Cicero writes to him: “You would much rather be consulted than covered with gold.”260 Now, Caesar was so busy that he was difficult to approach, and he did not at first pay any great attention to this learned lawyer who came to him from Rome. He contented himself with offering him the title and emoluments of a military tribune, without the duties, of course. Trebatius did not think this a sufficient reward for the length of his journey and the dangers of the country, and thought of returning. Cicero had much trouble to prevent this rash conduct. I do not think there is any part of his correspondence more amusing and more lively than the letters he wrote to Trebatius to induce him to remain. Cicero is at his ease with this obscure young man, for whom he had such a lively affection. He dares to laugh freely, which he does not do with everybody, and he laughs all the more readily as he knows Trebatius was low-spirited, and he wishes to console him. It seems to me that this trouble that he takes to cheer up an unhappy friend makes his pleasantries almost touching, and that his good heart here lends one more charm to his wit. He quizzes him good-naturedly in order to make him laugh, and jokes about things that he knows the good Trebatius does not mind being bantered on. For instance, one day he asks him to send him all the details of the campaign: “For an account of a battle,” he says, “I trust above all the most timorous;”261 probably because, having held themselves aloof from the fight, they will have been better able to see the whole. Another time, after having expressed some fear at seeing him exposed to so many dangers, he adds: “Happily I know your prudence; you are much bolder in presenting writs than in harassing the enemy, and I remember that, although you are a good swimmer, you would not cross over into Britain for fear of taking a bath in the ocean.”262

To soothe his impatience he threatens him with the wags. Was it not to be feared that if he returned, Laberius would put him in one of his farces? A frightened lawyer travelling in the train of an army, and exercising his profession among the barbarians, would make a funny figure in a comedy; but, to silence the wags he had only to make his fortune. Let him return later, he would certainly return richer; Balbus had said so. Now, Balbus was a banker; he did not speak in the sense of the Stoics, who affirm that one is always rich enough when one can enjoy the spectacle of the sky and the earth; he spoke as a Roman and meant that he would return well furnished with crown-pieces, more romano bene nummatum. Trebatius remained, and he did well to do so. Caesar was not long in noticing him, and was pleased with his friendship. He got accustomed to camp life, and in time became a little less timid than he was on his arrival. It is probable that he returned rich, as Balbus had predicted, for if they did not find all the treasures they went to seek in Gaul, Caesar’s liberality was an inexhaustible mine that enriched all his friends. At a later period Trebatius passed through trying times, and yet preserved the reputation of an honest man; this was an act of justice that all parties did him, although they were not much in the habit of doing justice. He had the rare good fortune to escape all the perils of the civil wars, and was still living in the time of Horace, who addressed one of his most agreeable satires to him. We see in it that he was then an amiable and indulgent old man who readily laughed and amused himself with the young. He talked to them, no doubt, about that grand epoch of which he was one of the last survivors, of the Gallic war in which he had taken part, of Caesar and his captains whom he had known. By the privilege of his age he could speak of Lucretius to Virgil, of Cicero to Livy, of Catullus to Propertius, and formed a sort of link between the two most illustrious periods of Latin literature.

The other person whom Cicero sent to Caesar was his brother Quintus. As he holds a large place in Cicero’s life, and played a rather important part in the Gallic war, it will be proper, I think, to say a few words about him. Although he listened to the same lectures and learned from the same masters as his brother, he never had any taste for eloquence, and always refused to speak in public. “One orator,” he said, “is enough in a family, and even in a city.”263 He was of a hard and yet changeable disposition, and gave way to violent fits of anger without reason. In spite of an appearance of great energy he was soon discouraged, and although he always affected to be the master, he was led by those about him. These faults, that Cicero bewailed to himself although he tried to excuse them, prevented Quintus succeeding in his public career, and troubled his private life.

He had been early married to Pomponia, the sister of Atticus. This marriage that the two friends had hoped would draw closer their connection very nearly broke it. The couple found that their characters matched too well: both were hasty and passionate, and they could never agree, and the unbounded ascendency that Statius, a slave, had over his master’s mind completed the disunion of the household. In connection with this, it would be easy to show, from Cicero’s letters, what influence the slave often exercised in ancient families; a much greater one than is commonly supposed. Now that the servant is free, it would seem natural that he should take a more important place in our houses than before. But the contrary has happened; he has lost in influence what he has gained in dignity. When he became independent his master ceased to have any obligations towards him. They now live together bound by a temporary contract, which, by imposing reciprocal obligations, appears irksome to both sides. As this fragile bond may be broken at any moment, and as these allies of one day may become indifferent to each other or enemies on the next, there is no longer any ease or confidence between them, and they pass all the time during which chance brings them together in surrounding themselves with defences, and in watching one another. It was quite otherwise in antiquity when slavery was flourishing. Then, it was not for a short time only, it was for a whole life-time that they were united; accordingly, they set themselves to know each other, and to adapt themselves one to the other. To gain the master’s favour was the important thing for the future of the slave, and he took trouble to gain it. As he had no position to defend, or dignity to preserve, he gave himself up to him entirely. He flattered and served his worst passions without scruple, and at last made himself necessary to him. Once confirmed in this intimacy, by his constant subserviency, by private and secret services which his master was not afraid to demand, and which he never refused to give, he ruled the family, so that, however strange it may appear at first sight, it is true to say that the servant was never nearer being master than when he was a slave. This is what happened to Statius. Through the knowledge that he had of the defects of Quintus, he had insinuated himself so well into his confidence that the whole family gave way to him. Pomponia alone resisted, and the annoyance she suffered for this reason made her still more insupportable. She constantly worried her husband with unfriendly remarks; she refused to appear at the dinners that he gave on the pretext that she was only a stranger at home, or if she consented to be present, it was only to make the guests the witnesses of the most unpleasant scenes. It was, no doubt, one day when she was more peevish and cross-grained than usual that Quintus composed these two epigrams, the only examples that remain of his poetic talent.

“Trust your ship to the winds, but do not give up your soul to a woman. There is less safety in a woman’s words than in the caprices of the waves.”

“No woman is good; or if by chance you find a good woman, I know not by what strange fate a bad thing has become good in a moment.”

These two epigrams are not very gallant, but we must excuse them in the unfortunate husband of the shrewish Pomponia.

The political career of Quintus was not brilliant any more than his private life was happy. He owed the offices which he obtained more to the illustrious name of his brother than to his own merit, and did nothing to make himself worthy of them. After he had been aedile and praetor, he was appointed governor of Asia. To be invested with an unlimited authority was a severe test for a character like his. Absolute power turned his head; his violence, which nothing now restrained, knew no bounds; like an oriental despot he only talked of burning and hanging. He wished above all to obtain the glory of being a great lover of justice. Having had occasion to order two parricides to be sewn up in a sack and thrown into the water in the lower part of his province, he wished to give the same spectacle to the other part on his visit to it, that there might be no jealousy between them. He sought therefore to seize a certain Zeuxis, an important person, who had been accused of killing his mother, and who had been acquitted by the tribunals. On the arrival of the governor, Zeuxis, who guessed his intentions, fled, and Quintus, vexed at losing his parricide, wrote him most friendly letters to induce him to return. Usually, however, he dissembled less and spoke more openly. He sent word to one of his lieutenants to seize and burn alive a certain Licinius and his son who had embezzled. He wrote to a Roman knight named Catienus “that he hoped to have him suffocated one day in the smoke, with the applause of the province.”264 It is true that when he was reproached with having written these furious letters, he replied that they were simple jokes, and that he had wished to laugh for a moment, but it was a strange way of joking, and shows his barbarous nature. Quintus had none the less an enlightened mind, he had read Plato and Xenophon, he spoke Greek admirably well, he even wrote tragedies in his leisure hours. He had all the appearance of a polished and civilized man, but it was only the appearance. Even among the most well-bred Romans, civilization was often only on the surface, and under their polished exterior we often find the rough and savage soul of a pitiless race of soldiers.

Quintus came back from his province with a rather bad reputation, but, what is more surprising, he did not come back rich. Apparently he had embezzled less than his colleagues, and was not able to bring back enough money to restore his fortune, which was very much embarrassed by his extravagance; for he liked to buy and to build, like his brother; he had a taste for rare books, and probably also could refuse nothing to his favourite slaves. The exile of Cicero completed the confusion of his affairs, and at the time of his brother’s return Quintus was quite ruined. This did not prevent him, at the time of his greatest financial distress, rebuilding his house at Rome, and buying a country house at Arpinum and another in the suburbs, constructing in his villa at Arcae, baths, porticoes, fish-ponds, and such a fine road that it was taken for a work of the state. It is true that the poverty of a Roman of that time would make the fortune of many of our nobles. However, a day came when Quintus was altogether in the hands of his creditors, and when he could borrow no more. Then it was that he bethought him of the last resource of embarrassed debtors: he went to Caesar.

It was not, then, only the love of glory that attracted Quintus to Gaul; he went there, like so many others, to get rich. Up to that time, the results had not answered to men’s expectations, and they had not found among people like the Belgae and Germani all the treasures that they looked for; but they were not yet discouraged; rather than give up their brilliant fancies, after each disappointment, they put farther off that enchanted country where they thought they must find riches. As at this moment they were going to attack Britain, it was in Britain that they placed it. Every one expected to make a fortune there, and Caesar himself, by what Suetonius says, hoped to bring back many pearls.265 These expectations were deceived once more; in Britain were neither pearls nor gold mines. They had a great deal of trouble to take a few slaves who were not of much value, for it was no use thinking of making them men of letters and musicians. For all wealth, these men only possessed heavy chariots, from which they fought with courage. Accordingly Cicero wrote humorously to Trebatius, who sent him news of this ill-luck of the army: “Since you find there neither gold nor silver, my opinion is that you should carry off one of those British chariots, and should come to us at Rome without stopping.”266 Quintus was very much of the same opinion. Although he had been well received by Caesar, who had appointed him his lieutenant, when he saw that wealth did not come as quickly as he expected, he lost courage, and, like Trebatius, he had for a moment the idea of returning; but Cicero, who did not joke this time, prevented him.

He did him a very great service, for it was precisely during the winter that followed the war in Britain that Quintus had the opportunity of performing the heroic action that commended his name to the respect of military men. Although he read Sophocles with ardour and had written tragedies, he was at bottom only a soldier. In the presence of the enemy, he became himself again, and displayed an energy that had not been suspected in him. In the midst of populations which were in revolt, in entrenchments hastily raised in one night, and with a single legion only, he was able to defend the camp Caesar had entrusted to him, and to make head against innumerable enemies, who had just destroyed a Roman army. He replied in firm language to their insolent boasts. Although he was ill, he displayed incredible activity, and it was only after a sedition among his soldiers that he could be induced to take care of himself. I have no need to relate the details of this affair that Caesar has told so well in his Commentaries, and which is one of the most glorious incidents of the Gallic war. This grand feat of arms raises Quintus in our esteem; it effaces the meannesses of his character, and helps him to play with a little more credit the ungrateful and difficult part of younger brother of a great man.

III

Cicero had clearly foreseen that, although Caesar in writing his Commentaries professed only to prepare materials for history, the perfection of his work would prevent sensible men from attempting to re-write it. Accordingly Plutarch and Dio have taken care not to re-write it; they are contented to epitomize it, and now we only know the Gallic war by the narrative of him who was the hero of it. However perfect the narrative may be, or rather because of its very perfection, we have much difficulty in contenting ourselves with it. It is the characteristic of these great works, which, as we might think, ought to exhaust public curiosity, on the contrary, to make it more active. By interesting us in the facts which they relate, they excite in us the desire to know them better, and one of the surest marks of their success is that they do not suffice for the readers, and make them wish to know more than they tell. This desire, for fresh details on the most important events of history, it is which renders Cicero’s letters to Trebatius and to his brother so valuable for us. Although they are fewer in number and shorter than we could wish, they have the merit of adding some information to that which Caesar gives on his campaigns. As they are more familiar than a narrative composed for the public, they introduce us farther into the private life of the conqueror of Gaul, and they permit us to see him in his tent, at those times of leisure and repose, of which he has not thought of speaking to us himself. This is certainly an interesting spectacle, it is the true complement of the Commentaries, and we cannot do better than carefully collect the scattered details they contain, in order to become well acquainted with Caesar and his surroundings.

I imagine that Caesar’s army did not resemble those old Roman armies that are depicted to us in such grave and temperate guise, always trembling under the rod of the lictors, and submissive at all times to an inflexible discipline. It was, doubtless, sternly controlled in time of danger, and never complained of this. No other army has ever undergone greater fatigues and executed greater deeds; but when the danger was over discipline relaxed. Caesar allowed his soldiers rest, and sometimes diversion. He let them decorate themselves with splendid arms, and even adorn themselves with studied elegance. “What does it matter if they use perfumes?” he said, “they will know very well how to fight.”267 And in fact these soldiers, whom the Pompeians called effeminate, are the same who, though dying of hunger at Dyrrhachium, declared that they would eat the bark of the trees rather than let Pompey escape. They were recruited for the most part among those Cisalpine Gauls from whom Roman civilization had not taken the good qualities of their race, an amiable and brilliant people who loved war and carried it on gaily. The chiefs very much resembled the common soldiers; they were lively and ardent, full of resources in critical moments, and trusted more to inspiration than to routine. It is to be remarked that no one of them had gained his reputation in earlier wars. Caesar seems to have wished that their military glory should come from him only. A few, and among these Labienus, perhaps the greatest of them, were his political friends, old conspirators like himself, who, after his example, and without any more preparation, from popular agitators had become excellent generals. Others, on the contrary, like Fabius Maximus and Servius Galba, bore illustrious names; they were partisans whom he secured in the aristocracy, or hostages that he took from it. The greater number, Crassus, Plancus, Volcatius Tullus, Decimus Brutus, and later Pollio, were young men whom he treated with marked preference, and whom he readily trusted in perilous enterprises. He liked the young by personal preference, and also by policy: as they did not yet belong to any party, and had not had time to attach themselves to the republic by serving it, he hoped they would have less difficulty in accustoming themselves to the new régime that he wished to establish.

These lieutenants, whose number varied, did not alone form the ordinary retinue of a proconsul. We must remember to add that crowd of young Romans, sons of illustrious houses, destined by their birth for public office, who came to serve their apprenticeship in war under him. They were called his tent-comrades, contubernales. Soldiers like the rest, and exposing themselves on the day of battle, they became after the fight the friends, the companions of the chief whom they followed in all his expeditions, as the clients accompanied their patron in the city. They were present at his receptions, took part in all his recreations and diversions, sat at his table, surrounded him when he sat on the judgment-seat; they formed, in sum, what was called the cohort, we should almost say the court, of the praetor (praetoria cohors). Scipio Africanus, it is said, invented this means of adding splendour to the public display of the supreme power in the eyes of the conquered nations, and after him governors had taken great care to preserve all this pomp which added to their prestige. These were not all; by the side of these military men there was room for men of very various abilities and positions. Able financiers, intelligent secretaries, and even learned lawyers might be necessary for the administration of those vast countries that a proconsul governed. Thus Trebatius himself, the pacific Trebatius, was not out of place in the train of an army, and he had opportunities of exercising his profession even among the Nervii and the Belgae. If we add to these men, to whom their high offices gave a certain importance, a crowd of inferior officers or subaltern servants, such as lictors, ushers, scribes, interpreters, apparitors, doctors, men-servants, and even soothsayers, we shall have some idea of that truly royal retinue which a proconsul always carried about with him.

Caesar’s train must have been even more magnificent than that of others. The ten legions that he commanded, the extent of country that he had to conquer and govern, explain the great number of officers and persons of all sorts by whom he was surrounded. Moreover, he naturally loved magnificence. He readily welcomed all who came to see him, and always found some office to give them in order to retain them. Even in those wild countries he took pleasure in astonishing them by his reception. Suetonius relates that he took with him everywhere marquetry or mosaic floors, and that he had always two tables laid at which rich Romans who visited him and provincials of distinction took their places.268 His lieutenants imitated him, and Pinarius wrote to Cicero that he was delighted with the dinners his brother gave him.269 Caesar did not care much for these sumptuous repasts, and these rich dwellings, on his own account. We know that he was temperate, that in case of need he could sleep well in the open air, and eat rancid oil without blinking; but he had a taste for display and luxury. Although the republic still existed, he was almost a king; even in his camps in Britain and Germany he had assiduous followers and courtiers. He could only be approached with difficulty; Trebatius made the attempt, and we know that it was a long time before he could reach him. No doubt Caesar did not receive men with that stiff and solemn majesty that repelled them in Pompey; but, however gracious he might wish to be, there was always something in him that inspired respect, and it was felt that that ease of manner that he affected with everybody proceeded from a superiority which was sure of itself. This defender of the democracy was none the less an aristocrat who never forgot his birth, and willingly spoke of his ancestors. Had they not heard him, at the commencement of his political life, at the very time when he attacked with most vivacity the institutions of Sulla, and tried to get back their ancient powers for the tribunes, had they not heard him pronounce over his aunt a funeral oration full of genealogical fictions, in which he complacently related that his family was descended at once from the kings and the gods? But in this he only followed the traditions of the Gracchi, his illustrious predecessors. They also defended public interests with ardour, but they called to mind the aristocracy from which they had sprung by the haughty elegance of their manners. We know that they had a court of clients at their rising, and that they were the first who thought of making distinctions between them which resembled the public and private admissions to the court of Louis XIV.

The most remarkable thing in those around Caesar was their love of letters. Assuredly they belonged no longer to the times when Roman generals burnt masterpieces of art, or took a pride in being ignorant. Since Mummius and Marius, letters had succeeded in penetrating even the camps, which, as we know, are not their usual abode. Nevertheless, I do not think that so many enlightened men of letters, so many men of culture and men of fashion have ever been seen united in any other army. Almost all Caesar’s lieutenants were private friends of Cicero, and they took pleasure in maintaining a constant intercourse with him who was regarded as the official patron of literature at Rome. Crassus and Plancus had learnt eloquence in pleading at his side, and in what remains to us of the letters of Plancus, we recognize, by a certain oratorical exuberance, that he had profited by his lessons. Trebonius, the conqueror of Marseilles, professed to relish his witticisms very much, and even published a collection of them. Cicero, however, to whom this admiration was not displeasing, thought that his editor had put too much of himself into the introduction under pretence of preparing the effect of the jokes and making them easier to understand. “They have exhausted their laughter,” he said, “when they get to me.” Hirtius was a distinguished historian, who undertook later to finish the Commentaries of his chief. Matius, a devoted friend of Caesar, who showed himself worthy of this friendship by remaining faithful to him, translated the Iliad into Latin verse. Quintus was a poet also, but a tragic poet. During the winter that he had to fight the Nervii, he was seized with such an ardour for poetry, that he composed four pieces in sixteen days: but this was to treat tragedy in a somewhat military fashion. He sent the one he thought the best, the Erigone, to his brother; but it was lost on the road. “Since Caesar has commanded in Gaul,” said Cicero, “the Erigone alone has not been able to travel in safety.”270 It is surprising no doubt to meet all at one time with so many generals who are also men of letters; but what is still more astonishing is that all those Roman knights who followed the army, and whom Caesar made his commissaries and purveyors, collectors of stores, and farmers of the taxes, seem to have loved literature more than their habits and occupations usually admit. We find one of those he employed in offices of this kind, Lepta, thanking Cicero for sending him a treatise on rhetoric as though he were a man capable of appreciating the present. The Spaniard Balbus, that intelligent banker, that skilful administrator, who was able to put the finances of Rome into such good order, and what was still more difficult, those of Caesar, loved philosophy with more enthusiasm than one would expect in a banker. He hastened to have Cicero’s works copied before they were known to the public, and although he was by character the most discreet of men, he went so far as even to commit indiscretions in order to be the first to read them.

But among all these lettered men, it was Caesar who had the most decided taste for letters: they suited his cultivated nature; they seemed to him, no doubt, the most agreeable exercise and relaxation of an accomplished mind. I should not, however, venture to say that his love for them was wholly disinterested, when I see that this taste assisted his policy so wonderfully. He was compelled to gain public favour by every means; now, nothing attracts the general judgment more than the superiority of intelligence united with that of force. His principal works were composed with this intention, and we might say, from this point of view, that his writings were part of his actions. It was not only to please a few idle men of letters that, during the latter part of his stay in Gaul, he wrote his Commentaries with such a rapidity as to astonish his friends. He wished to prevent the Romans forgetting his victories; he wished, by his admirable manner of narrating them, to renew, and if possible, to increase, the effect they had produced. When he composed his two books De Analogia, he calculated that people would be struck by seeing the general of an army, who, according to the expression of Fronto, “busied himself with the formation of words while arrows were cleaving the air, and sought the laws of language amid the din of clarions and trumpets.” He knew very well the advantage that his reputation would draw from these very diverse performances, and how great would be the surprise and admiration at Rome when they received at the same moment a treatise on grammar, and the news of a new victory, from such a distance. The same thought also made him eager for Cicero’s friendship. If his refined and distinguished nature found a great pleasure in keeping up some intercourse with a man of so much cultivation, he was not ignorant of the power this man exercised over public opinion, and how far his praises would resound when they came from this eloquent mouth. We have lost the letters that he wrote to Cicero; but as Cicero was delighted with them, and it was not very easy to please him, we must believe that they were filled with flatteries and caresses. Cicero’s answers were also full of the most lively protestations of friendship. He declared at that time that Caesar came in his affections immediately after his children, and indeed almost in the same rank; he bitterly deplored all the prejudices that had up till then kept him apart from him, and he resolved to make him forget that he was one of the last who had entered into his friendship. “I shall imitate,” said he, “the travellers who have risen later than they wished to do; they double their speed, and make such good haste that they arrive at their destination before those who have travelled part of the night.”271 They vied with each other, as it were, in compliments; they overwhelmed one another with flatteries, and emulated each other in works in verse and prose. On reading the first accounts of the expedition to Britain, Cicero exclaimed in a transport of enthusiasm: “What prodigious events! what a country! what people! what battles, and above all, what a general!” He wrote off immediately to his brother: “Give me Britain to paint; furnish me with the colours, I will use the brush.”272 And he had seriously taken in hand an epic poem on this conquest, which his occupations prevented him completing as quickly as he wished. Caesar, on his part, dedicated his treatise De Analogia to Cicero, and on this occasion said to him in splendid phrases: “You have discovered all the resources of eloquence, and are the first to use them. In virtue of this you have deserved well of the Roman name, and you do honour to our country. You have obtained the most illustrious of all honours, and a triumph preferable to those of the greatest generals, for it is better to extend the boundaries of the mind than to enlarge the limits of the empire!”273 This, coming from a victorious general like Caesar, was the most delicate flattery for a man of letters.

Such were the relations that Cicero kept up with Caesar and his officers during the Gallic war. His correspondence, which preserves the memory of them, makes us better acquainted with the tastes and preferences of all these men of cultivation, and shows them to us in a very living fashion and draws us closer to them. This is, assuredly, one of the greatest services it could render to us. We seem, when we have read it, to be able to understand of what kind the meetings of these men must have been, and can imagine ourselves present at their conversations. We are entitled to suppose that Rome took up very much of their thoughts. From the depths of Gaul, they had their eyes upon it, and it was to make a little stir there that they took so much trouble. While marching over so many unknown countries from the Rhine to the Ocean, all these young men hoped that they would be talked about at those feasts and assemblies where men of the world discussed public affairs. Caesar himself, when he crossed the Rhine on his wooden bridge, reckoned upon striking the imaginations of all those idlers who met together in the Forum, at the rostrum, to learn the news. After the landing of his troops in Britain, we see him hastening to write to his friends, and especially to Cicero;274 not that he had much leisure at that moment, but he looked upon it no doubt as an honour to date his letter from a country where no Roman had yet set foot. If he was anxious to send glorious news to Rome, they were also very glad to receive it from Rome. All the letters that arrived were read with eagerness; they seemed as it were to carry even to Germany and Britain a whiff of that fashionable life, which those who have enjoyed can never forget or cease to regret. It was not enough for Caesar to read the journals of the Roman people, which contained a dry summary of the principal political events, and a concise report of the proceedings of the assemblies of the people. His messengers constantly traversed Gaul, bringing him letters accurate and full of the most minute details. “He is told everything,” said Cicero, “small as well as great.”275 This news, impatiently waited for, and commented on with pleasure, must have been the usual subject of his conversations with his friends. I suppose that, at that sumptuous table of which I have spoken, after literature and grammar had been discussed, and they had listened to the verses of Matius or Quintus, the conversation turned especially upon Rome, of which these elegant young men, who regretted its pleasures, were never tired of talking. Certainly, if we could have heard them chatting about the last news, the political disorders, or, what interested them more, the private scandals of the city, telling the last rumours afloat, and quoting the most recent jokes, we should have found it difficult to believe that we were in the heart of the country of the Belgae, or near to the Rhine or the Ocean, or on the eve of a battle. I imagine that we should have rather fancied we were present at a party of clever men in some aristocratic house on the Palatine or in the rich quarter of Carinae.

Cicero’s letters render us yet another service. They show us the prodigious effect that Caesar’s victories produced at Rome. They excited as much surprise as admiration, for they were discoveries as well as conquests. What was known before him of those distant countries? A few ridiculous fables that traders related on their return, to give themselves importance. It was through Caesar that they were first really known. He first dared to attack, and he vanquished those Germans who have been depicted as giants, whose very looks caused terror; he first adventured as far as Britain, where it was said the night lasted three entire months, and all the wonders that had been related gave as it were a tinge of the marvellous to his victories. Nevertheless, not everybody willingly gave way to this fascination. The most clear-sighted of the aristocratic party, who felt, though indistinctly, that it was the fate of the republic that was being decided on the banks of the Rhine, wished to recall Caesar, and to appoint in his place another general, who might not perhaps complete the conquest of Gaul, but who would not be tempted to carry out that of his own country. Cato, who pushed everything to extremes, when the senate was asked to vote a thanksgiving to the gods for the defeat of Ariovistus, dared to propose, on the contrary, that they should deliver up the conqueror to the Germans. But these objections did not change public opinion, which declared itself in favour of him who had just conquered with such rapidity so many unknown countries. The knights, who had become the financiers and merchants of Rome, congratulated themselves on seeing immense countries opened up to their operations. Caesar, who wished to attach them to him, invited them to follow him, and his first care had been to open them a road across the Alps. The common people, who love military glory and who freely give way to enthusiasm, were never tired of admiring him who extended the limits of the Roman world. On the news of each victory, Rome had public rejoicings, and offered thanksgivings to the gods. After the defeat of the Belgae, the senate, under pressure of public opinion, was compelled to vote fifteen days of solemn thanksgiving, which had never been done for anybody. Twenty days was decreed, when the success of the expedition against Germany was reported, and twenty more after the taking of Alesia. Cicero usually demanded these honours for Caesar, and he became the mouthpiece of the public admiration when he said in his noble language: “This is the first time we have dared to attack the Gauls, hitherto we have been content to repulse them. The other generals of the Roman people regarded it as sufficient for their glory to prevent them invading us; Caesar has gone to seek them out in their own homes. Our general, our legions, our arms have overrun those countries of which no history has ever spoken, of whose name the world was ignorant. We had only a footpath in Gaul; now the boundaries of these nations have become the frontiers of our own empire. It is not without the signal favour of Providence that nature gave the Alps for a rampart to Italy. If the entrance had been free to this multitude of barbarians, Rome never would have been the centre and the seat of the empire of the world. Now let insurmountable mountains sink. From the Alps to the Ocean Italy has nothing now to fear.”276

These magnificent eulogies, for which Cicero has been so much blamed, are easily understood however, and, whatever politicians may say, it is easy to explain the enthusiasm that so many honest and sensible people then felt for Caesar. That which justified the unreserved admiration that his conquests caused, was less their grandeur than their necessity. They might threaten the future, at that moment they were indispensable. They later endangered the liberty of Rome, but they assured her existence then.277 The patriotic instinct of the people let them divine what prejudice and fear, although quite legitimate, hid from the aristocracy. They understood in a confused way all the dangers that might soon come from Gaul, if they did not hasten to subdue it. It was not, in truth, the Gauls who were to be feared—their decadence had already commenced, and they no longer thought of making conquests—it was the Germans. Dio is quite wrong in asserting that Caesar wantonly stirred up wars for the sake of his glory. Whatever advantage he drew from them, we may certainly say that he rather submitted to them than provoked them. It was not Rome that went to seek the Germans at that time, but rather the Germans who came boldly towards her. When Caesar was appointed proconsul, Ariovistus occupied part of the country of the Sequani and wished to seize the rest. His compatriots, attracted by the fertility of this fine country, were crossing the Rhine every day to join him, and twenty-five thousand had come at one time. What would have happened to Italy if, while Rome was losing her strength in intestine struggles, the Suevi and the Sicambri had established themselves on the Rhone and the Alps? The invasion averted by Marius a century before was recommencing; it might have caused the downfall of Rome then as it did four centuries later, if Caesar had not arrested it. His glory is to have thrown back the Germans beyond the Rhine, as it was to the honour of the empire to have kept them there for more than three hundred years.

But this was not the sole or even the greatest effect of Caesar’s victories. In conquering Gaul, he rendered it entirely and for ever Roman. That marvellous rapidity with which Rome then assimilated the Gauls can only be understood, when we know in what a state she had found them. They were not altogether barbarians like the Germans; it is to be remarked that their conqueror, who knew them well, does not call them so in his Commentaries. They had great cities, a regular system of taxation, a body of religious beliefs, an ambitious and powerful aristocracy, and a sort of national education directed by the priests. This culture, although imperfect, if it had not entirely enlightened their minds, had at least awakened them. They were frank and inquisitive, intelligent enough to know what they were deficient in, and sufficiently free from prejudice to give up their usages when they found better ones. From the very beginning of the war, they succeeded in imitating the Roman tactics, in constructing siege machines, and in working them with a skill to which Caesar does justice. They were still rude and unpolished, but already quite inclined for a superior civilization for which they had the desire and instinct. This explains how they did so readily accept it. They had fought for ten years against the domination of the foreigner; they did not hesitate for a day to adopt his language and usages. We may say that Gaul resembled those lands, parched by a burning sun, which drink in with such avidity the first drops of rain; so completely did she imbibe the Roman civilization for which she longed before she knew it, that after so many centuries, and in spite of so many revolutions, she has not yet lost the mark of it; and this is the only thing that has endured to the present time in this country where everything changes. Caesar, then, did not only add a few new territories to the possessions of Rome; the present that he made her was greater and more useful; he gave her an entire people, intelligent, and civilized almost as soon as conquered, which, becoming Roman in heart as well as in language, sinking her interests in those of her new nationality, enlisting in her legions to defend her, and throwing herself with a remarkable ardour and talent into the study of the arts and letters, shed a new lustre over her, and for a long time gave a new youth and a return of vigour to the failing empire.

While these great events were passing in Gaul, Rome continued to be the theatre of the most shameful disorders. There was no longer any government; scarcely did they succeed in electing magistrates, and there was a fight every time the people assembled in the Forum or in the Campus Martius. These disorders, of which honest men were ashamed, added still more to the effect that Caesar’s victories produced. What a contrast was there between the battles fought with Ariovistus or Vercingetorix and those combats of gladiators that stained the streets of Rome with blood! And how glorious appeared the taking of Agendicum or Alesia to people who were only occupied with the siege of Milo’s house by Clodius or the assassination of Clodius by Milo! All the statesmen who had remained in Rome, Pompey as well as Cicero, had lost something of their dignity by mixing themselves up in these intrigues. Caesar, who had withdrawn in time, was the only man who had risen amidst the general degradation. Therefore all those whose heart was wounded by these sad spectacles, and who had some care for Roman honour, kept their eyes fixed upon him and his army. As happened at certain moments of our own revolution, military glory consoled honest men for scandals and distress at home. At the same time, the excess of the evil caused men to seek an efficacious remedy everywhere. The idea began to spread that, in order to obtain repose, it was necessary to create a strong and durable power. After Cicero’s exile, the aruspices had predicted that the monarchy was about to recommence,278 and one did not need to be a prophet to anticipate this. A few years later, the evil having increased still more, the republican party itself, notwithstanding its repugnance, was forced to have recourse to the violent remedy of a temporary dictatorship. Pompey was appointed sole consul, but Pompey had shown more than once that he had neither the vigour nor the resolution necessary to overcome anarchy entirely. A stronger arm and a more determined will had to be sought elsewhere, and all eyes turned naturally towards the conqueror of Gaul. His glory pointed him out for this part; the hopes of some and the fears of others called him to fulfil it; men’s minds became accustomed every day to the idea that he would be the heir of the republic, and the revolution that delivered up Rome to him was more than half accomplished when he crossed the Rubicon.

II — The Victor and the Vanquished

After Pharsalia

The civil war interrupted the intercourse that Cicero had kept up with Caesar during the Gallic war. He hesitated for a long time to take part in it, and it was after long indecision that the stings of conscience, the fear of public opinion, and above all the example of his friends decided him at length to start for Pompey’s camp. “As the ox follows the herd,” said he, “I go to join the good citizens;”279 but he went half-heartedly and without hope. After Pharsalia he did not think it was possible to continue the struggle: he said so openly in a council of the republican chiefs held at Dyrrhachium, and he hastened to return to Brundusium to hold himself at the disposal of the conqueror.

What regret must he not have felt, if his thoughts went back several years, and he remembered his triumphal return from exile! In that very town, where he had been received with so much rejoicing, he was constrained to disembark furtively, to conceal his lictors, to avoid the crowd, and only go out at night. He passed eleven months there, the saddest of his life, in isolation and anxiety. He was distressed on all sides, and his domestic affairs did not cause him less sorrow than public events. His absence had completed the disorder of his pecuniary affairs. When they were most involved, he had been so imprudent as to lend what ready money he had to Pompey: the poniard of the King of Egypt had at the same time carried off the debtor and put an end to his power of paying. While he was trying to procure some resources by selling his furniture and plate, he discovered that his wife was acting in concert with his freedmen to despoil him of what remained; he learnt that his brother and his nephew, who had gone over to Caesar, sought to justify themselves at his expense, and were working to ruin him in order to save themselves; he saw Tullia, his beloved daughter, again, but he found her sad and ill, lamenting at the same time the misfortunes of her father, and the infidelity of her husband. To these very real misfortunes were joined at the same time imaginary troubles, which caused him as much suffering; above all, he was tormented by his habitual irresolution. Scarcely had he set foot in Italy when he repented having come. According to his habit, his restless imagination always puts things at their worst, and he is ingenious in finding some reason for discontent in everything that happens to him. He laments when Antony wishes to force him to leave Italy; when he is allowed to remain, he still laments, because this exception made in his favour may injure his reputation. If Caesar neglects to write to him, he is alarmed; if he receives a letter from him, however friendly it may be, he weighs all its expressions so carefully that he discovers at last some motive for fear; even the broadest and most complete amnesty does not entirely remove his fears. “When a man pardons so easily,” he says, “it is because he defers his vengeance.”280

At last, after a sojourn of nearly a year in that noisy and pestilential town, he was permitted to leave Brundusium. He returned to his fine country houses that he liked so much, and where he had been so happy; he found his books again, he resumed his interrupted studies, he could appreciate again those precious things which we enjoy without thinking about them while they are ours, and only begin to appreciate when we have lost them for a moment, namely, security and leisure. He thought that nothing could equal the charm of those first days passed tranquilly at Tusculum after so many storms, and of that return to the quiet pleasures of the mind for which he felt then that he was in reality made. “Know,” he wrote to his friend Varro, “that since my return I have been reconciled to my old friends: I mean my books. In truth, if I fled from them, it was not because I was angry with them, but I could not see them without some confusion. It seemed to me that in engaging in such stirring affairs, with doubtful allies, I have not followed their precepts faithfully enough. They forgive me, they recall me to their company; they tell me that you have been wiser than I not to leave them. Now that I am restored to their favour, I really hope that I shall support more easily the evils that oppress us and those with which we are threatened.”281

His conduct henceforth was clearly marked out. He owed it to the great party he had served and defended to hold aloof from the new government. He must seek in philosophy and letters a useful employment for his activity, and create an honourable retreat far from public affairs in which he could no longer take part with honour. He well understood this when he said: “Let us preserve at least a partial liberty by knowing how to hide ourselves and keep silence.”282 To keep silence and hide, was indeed the programme that suited him best, as it did all those who had submitted after Pharsalia. We shall see how far he was faithful to it.

I

It is very difficult to relinquish politics all at once. The conduct of public affairs and the exercise of power, even when they do not entirely content the mind, give a secondary importance to other things, and life appears aimless to him who can no longer employ himself in them. This is what happened to Cicero. He was certainly very sincere when, on leaving Brundusium, he undertook “to hide himself entirely in literature”; but he had promised more than he was able to perform. He soon wearied of repose, and the pleasures of study at length seemed a little too quiet; he listened with more curiosity to outside rumours, and, in order to hear them better, quitted Tusculum and returned to Rome. There he insensibly resumed his old habits; he returned to the senate; his house was again open to all who loved and cultivated letters; he began again to frequent the houses of the friends he had in Caesar’s party, and by their means resumed intercourse with Caesar himself.

They were easily reconciled, notwithstanding all their motives for ill will. The taste for intellectual pleasures which united them was stronger than all political antipathy. The first irritation over, they approached each other with that ease that the habit and experience of society give, forgetting or appearing to forget all the disagreements that had separated them. Nevertheless these relations had become more difficult than ever for Cicero. It was not only a protector that he had found in his old fellow-student, it was a master. There was no longer between them, as formerly, an agreement or understanding that created reciprocal obligations; there was the victor to whom the laws of war permitted everything, and the vanquished who owed his life to his clemency. The difficulty of the position was greater, because the more right the conqueror had to be exacting the more public opinion commanded the conquered to be reserved. It may be supposed that, at the time of the Gallic war, Cicero defended Caesar’s projects through friendship or conviction; but since he had shown that he disapproved his cause by boldly expressing his opinions during the civil war, the deference he might show to his wishes was nothing more than a sort of base flattery, and a discreditable way of earning his pardon. Already his sudden return from Pharsalia had been much blamed. “I am not forgiven for living,”283 said he. He was forgiven still less for his familiar relations with Caesar’s friends. Good citizens murmured at seeing him visit so assiduously the house of Balbus, go and dine with the voluptuous Eutrapelus in company with Pansa or Antony, and by the side of the actress Cytheris, take part in the sumptuous feasts that Dolabella gave with the money of the vanquished; on all sides the malevolent had their eyes open to his weaknesses. He had, then, to satisfy at once all parties, to hold with the conquerors and the conquered for the sake of his reputation or his safety, to live near the master without being too confident, and without ever offending him, and in these dangerous relations to make what he owed to his honour agree with what was needful for his repose. It was a delicate situation, from which an ordinary man would have had perhaps some trouble to extricate himself, but which was not beyond the dexterity of Cicero. To get out of it he had in his favour one marvellous quality which prevented him from appearing too humble and too base, even when he was constrained to flatter. Madame de Sévigné has said somewhere: “Wit is a dignity.” This saying is true in every sense; nothing helps one more to pass through difficult times without baseness. When a man preserves his wit before an absolute master, when he dares to joke and smile in the midst of the silence and terror of others, he shows by this that the greatness of him to whom he speaks does not intimidate him, and that he feels himself sufficiently strong to support it. To remain master of oneself in his presence is still a way of braving him, and it seems to me that an exacting and suspicious despot ought to be almost as displeased with those who dare to be witty before him as with those he may suspect of having courage. There is, then, below that courage of the soul that inspires energetic resolutions, but near it, that courage of the mind which is not to be despised, for it is often the sole courage possible. After the defeat of the men of resolution, the men of wit have their turn, and they still do some service when the others can no longer do anything. As they are crafty and supple, as they can raise their head quickly after necessity has forced them to bend it, they maintain themselves with a certain amount of honour in the ruin of their party. Their raillery, however discreet it may be, is a sort of protestation against the silence imposed on all, and it at least prevents the loss of liberty of speech after having lost the liberty of action. Wit is not then such a trivial thing as people affect to consider it; it also has its grandeur, and it may be that, after a great disaster, when all is silent, downcast, and discouraged, it alone maintains human dignity, which is in great danger of perishing.

Such was, very nearly, the part Cicero played at this time, and we must acknowledge that it was not wanting in importance. In that great city, submissive and mute, he alone dared to speak. He began to do so early, he was still at Brundusium, not knowing if he should obtain his pardon, when he frightened Atticus by the freedom of his remarks. Impunity naturally rendered him bolder, and after his return to Rome he took scarcely any other precaution than to make his raillery as agreeable and as witty as possible. Caesar liked wit even when it was exercised at his own expense. Instead of getting angry at Cicero’s jokes, he made a collection of them, and in the midst of the war in Spain, he ordered his correspondents to send them to him. Cicero, who knew this, spoke without constraint. This freedom, then so rare, drew all eyes upon him. He had never had more society round him. The friends of Caesar frequented his society readily to give themselves an air of liberality and tolerance, after the example of their chief. As he was the most illustrious survivor of the republican party after the death of Pompey and Cato, the remaining partisans of the republic crowded around him. People came to see him from all sides, and all parties met in the mornings in his vestibule. “I receive at the same time,” said he, “the visits of many good citizens who are downcast, and those of our joyful conquerors.”284

This attention no doubt had something flattering in it, and nothing must have given him more pleasure than to have regained his importance. Let us remark, however, that in regaining his position as a person of eminence, whose friendship was sought and whose house was frequented, he had already fallen short of the first part of the programme that he had laid down for himself; the share he had, about the same time, in the return of the exiles, soon made him forget the other. He had given up hiding to respond to Caesar’s advances. We are going to see how he ceased to keep silence in order to thank him for his clemency.

Caesar’s clemency is admired with good reason, and it deserves the praises awarded to it. For the first time a ray of humanity had been seen to shine in the midst of the pitiless wars of the ancient world.

No doubt about the extent of his rights had hitherto entered the mind of the conqueror; he believed them to have no limit, and exercised them without scruple. Who, before Caesar, had thought of proclaiming and practising consideration for the vanquished? He was the first who declared that his vengeance would not outlast his victory, and that he would not strike a disarmed enemy. What adds to the admiration his conduct inspires is that he gave this fine example of mildness and moderation in a time of violence, between the proscriptions of Sulla and those of Octavius; that he pardoned his enemies at the very moment that they were massacring his soldiers who were prisoners, and burning his sailors alive with their ships. We must not, however, exaggerate, and history should not be a panegyric. Without attempting to diminish Caesar’s glory, we may be allowed to ask what motive he had in pardoning the vanquished, and it is right to inquire how and within what limits he exercised his clemency.

Curio, one of his closest friends, said one day to Cicero, in a private conversation, that Caesar was cruel by nature, and that he had only spared his enemies to preserve the affection of the people;285 but the sceptic Curio was very much disposed, like Caelius, to look at people always on their bad side: he has certainly calumniated his chief. The truth is that Caesar was clement both by nature and policy: pro natura et pro instituto;286 the continuator of his Commentaries, who knew him well, says so. Now, if the heart does not change, policy often changes with circumstances. When a man is good solely by nature he is good always; but when the reflection which calculates the good effect clemency will produce, and the advantage which may be drawn from it, is added to the natural instinct that inclines to clemency, it may happen that a man may become less clement as soon as he has less interest to be so. He who becomes gentle and humane, by policy, in order to draw men towards him, would become cruel, by policy also, if he had need of intimidating them. This happened to Caesar, and when we study his life closely we find that his clemency suffered more than one eclipse. I do not think that he committed any gratuitous cruelties for the sake of committing them, as so many of his contemporaries did; but neither did he refrain when he found some advantage in them. While he was praetor in Spain he sometimes stormed towns which were willing to surrender, in order to have a pretext for sacking them. In Gaul he never hesitated to terrify his enemies by fearful vengeance; we see him behead the whole senate of the Veneti, massacre the Usipetes and the Tencteri, sell the forty thousand inhabitants of Genabum for slaves at one time, and cut off the hands of all in Uxellodunum who had taken up arms against him. And did he not keep in prison five whole years that heroic chief of the Arverni, that Vercingetorix who was an adversary so worthy of him, that he might coolly give the order to slaughter him on the day of his triumph? Even at the time of the civil war and when he was fighting his fellow-citizens, he got tired of pardoning. When he saw that his system of clemency did not disarm his enemies, he gave it up, and their obstinacy, which surprised him, at last made him cruel. As the struggle was prolonged it took darker colours on both sides. The war between the republicans exasperated by their defeats and the conqueror furious at their resistance, became merciless. After Thapsus, Caesar set the example of punishments, and his army, inspired by his anger, slaughtered the vanquished before his face. He had proclaimed, when starting on his last expedition into Spain, that his clemency was exhausted, and that all who did not lay down their arms should be put to death. Therefore the battle of Munda was terrible. Dio relates that both armies attacked with silent rage, and that instead of the war-songs that usually resounded, one only heard at intervals the words: “strike and kill.” When the fight was over the massacre began. The eldest son of Pompey, who had succeeded in escaping, was tracked in the forest for several days and killed without mercy, like the Vendean chiefs in our wars of the Bocage.

The most glorious moment of Caesar’s clemency was just after the battle of Pharsalia. He had proclaimed in advance when he entered Italy that the proscriptions would not recommence. “I will not imitate Sulla,” said he in a celebrated letter, which no doubt was widely circulated. “Let us introduce a new way of conquering, and seek our safety in clemency and mildness.”287 At first he did not belie these fair words. After the victory, he ordered the soldiers to spare their fellow-citizens, and on the battle-field itself he gave his hand to Brutus and many others. It is wrong however to think that there was a general amnesty at that moment.288 On the contrary, an edict of Antony, who governed Rome in the absence of Caesar, strictly forbade any Pompeian to return to Italy without having obtained permission. Cicero and Laelius, from whom there was nothing to fear, were alone excepted. Many others returned afterwards, but they were only recalled individually and by special decree. This was a means for Caesar to make the most of his clemency. Usually pardons thus given separately were not given gratuitously, they were almost always bought by the exiles with a part of their property. Besides, they were seldom complete at first; the exiles were allowed to return to Sicily, then to Italy, before opening to them completely the gates of Rome. These steps cleverly managed, by multiplying the number of favours granted by Caesar, did not allow public admiration to cool. Each time the chorus of flatterers recommenced their praises, and did not cease to celebrate the generosity of the victor.

There was, then, after Pharsalia, a certain number of exiles in Greece and in Asia who were waiting impatiently for permission to return home, and who did not all obtain it. Cicero’s letters do us the good office of making us acquainted with some of them. They are people of all conditions and fortunes, merchants and farmers of the taxes as well as great nobles. By the side of a Marcellus, a Torquatus and a Domitius there are entirely unknown persons like Trebianus and Toranius, which shows that Caesar’s vengeance did not stop at the heads of the party. We find also among them three writers, and it is worthy of notice that they were perhaps the most hardly treated. One of them, T. Ampius, was a fiery republican who did not show so much firmness in exile as one would have expected. He was occupied in writing a history of illustrious men, and it seems that he did not profit much by the good examples he found there. We know the other two, who are not much alike, better: they were the Etruscan Caecina, a merchant and a wit, and the scholar Nigidius Figulus. Nigidius, who was compared with Varro for the extent of his attainments, and who was, like him, at once philosopher, grammarian, astronomer, physicist, rhetorician and lawyer, had particularly struck his contemporaries by the extent of his theological researches. As he was seen to be much occupied with the doctrines of the Chaldeans and the followers of Orpheus, he passed for a great magician. It was believed that he predicted the future, and he was suspected of raising the dead. So many occupations, of such various kinds, did not prevent him taking an interest in the affairs of his country. It was not thought, then, that a scholar was excused from performing the duties of a citizen. He solicited and obtained public offices: he was praetor in difficult times, and was noticed for his energy. When Caesar entered Italy, Nigidius, faithful to the maxim of his master Pythagoras, which commands the sage to carry help to the law when it is menaced, hastened to leave his books, and was one of the principal combatants at Pharsalia. Caecina had appeared at first as firm as Nigidius, and like him was conspicuous for his republican ardour. Not content with taking up arms against Caesar, he had, besides, insulted him in a pamphlet at the beginning of the war: but he was as weak as he was violent, he could not bear exile. This frivolous and worldly man had need of the pleasures of Rome, and was disconsolate at being deprived of them. To obtain his pardon, he formed the idea of writing a new work destined to contradict the old one, and to obliterate its bad effect. He had called it his Querelae, and this title indicates well enough its character. In it he lavished eulogies on Caesar without measure, and yet he was always afraid he had not said enough. “I tremble in all my limbs,” said he to Cicero, “when I ask myself if he will be satisfied.”289 So much humiliation and baseness succeeded in softening the victor, and while he relentlessly left the energetic Nigidius, who could not flatter, to die in exile, he allowed Caecina to approach Italy, and settle down in Sicily.

Cicero had become the consoler of all these exiles, and employed his influence in ameliorating their condition. He served them all with the same zeal, although there were some among them of whom he had reason to complain; but he no longer remembered their offences when he saw their misfortunes. In writing to them he showed a graceful tact in accommodating his language to their situation and feelings, caring little whether he was consistent with himself, provided he could console them and be useful to them. He told those who lamented that they were kept away from Rome, that they were wrong in wishing to return, and that it was better simply to hear reports of the misfortunes of the republic than to see them with their eyes; he wrote in the opposite strain to those who supported exile too courageously, and would not beg for recall, to the great despair of their families. When he met with a too servile eagerness in anticipating and entreating Caesar’s kindness, he did not hesitate to blame it, and with infinite tact recalled the unfortunate to that self-respect which they had forgotten. If, on the contrary, he saw some one disposed to commit a heroic imprudence and to attempt a useless and dangerous move, he hastened to restrain this burst of idle courage, and preached prudence and resignation. He did not spare his pains during this time. He went to see the friends of the master, or if necessary, he tried to see the master himself, although it was very difficult to approach a man who had the affairs of the whole world on his shoulders. He begged, he promised, he wearied with his supplications and was almost always successful, for Caesar was anxious to draw him more and more into his party by the favours he granted him. The favour once obtained, he wished to be the first to announce it to the exile, who impatiently awaited it; he heartily congratulated him and added to his compliments a few of those counsels of moderation and silence which he readily gave to others, but which he did not always follow himself.

There was no more important personage among these exiles than the former consul Marcellus; neither was there any whom Caesar had so much reason to hate. By a sort of cruel bravado, Marcellus had had an inhabitant of Como beaten with rods, in order to show what value he set upon the rights that Caesar had granted to that city. After Pharsalia, he had retired to Mitylene and did not think of returning, when his relatives and Cicero took it into their heads to obtain his pardon. While taking the first steps they met with an unexpected obstacle: they thought they only had to entreat Caesar, and they had to begin by appeasing Marcellus. He was an energetic man whom the ill success of his cause had not dispirited, a veritable philosopher, who had reconciled himself to exile, an obstinate republican, who would not return to Rome to see her a slave. Quite a long negotiation was necessary before he would consent to allow them to crave anything for him from the conqueror, and even then he allowed it with a very bad grace. When we read the letters that Cicero wrote to him on this occasion, we greatly admire his skill, but have some difficulty in understanding the motives of his persistence. We ask with surprise why he took more interest in the return of Marcellus than did Marcellus himself. They had never been very closely connected; Cicero did not stand upon ceremony in blaming his obstinacy, and we know that those stiff and self-willed characters did not suit him. He must have had then some stronger motive than affection to be so anxious for Marcellus’ return to Rome. This motive, which he does not mention, but which we can guess, was the fear he had of public opinion. He well knew that he was reproached with not having done enough for his cause, and at times he accused himself of having abandoned it too quickly. When, in the midst of Rome, where he passed his time so gaily at those sumptuous dinners that Hirtius and Dolabella gave him, and to which he went, he said, to enliven his slavery a little; when he came to think of those brave men who had been killed in Africa and Spain, or who were living in exile in some dull and unknown town in Greece, he was angry with himself for not being with them, and the thought of their sufferings often troubled his pleasures. That is the reason why he worked with so much ardour for their return. It was of importance to him to diminish the number of those whose miseries formed a disagreeable contrast to the happiness that he enjoyed, or who appeared to condemn his submission by their haughty attitude. Every time that an exile returned to Rome, it seemed to Cicero as though he got rid of some remorse and escaped the reproaches of the ill-natured. Therefore, when he had obtained, contrary to his expectation, the pardon of Marcellus, his joy knew no bounds. It went so far as to make him forget that resolution he had taken to keep silence to which he had been faithful during two years. He spoke in the senate to thank Caesar, and delivered the celebrated speech which remains to us.290

The reputation of this speech has had very diverse fortunes. It was long unreservedly admired, and, in the last century, the worthy Rollin regarded it as the model and perfection of eloquence; but this enthusiasm has much diminished since we have become less appreciative of the art of praising princes with delicacy, and value free and open speech more highly than the most ingenious flattery. We should certainly sometimes wish for a little more dignity in this speech, and we are especially shocked at the manner in which embarrassing recollections of the civil war are treated in it. He should have said nothing of them, or have spoken out more boldly. Ought he, for example, to hide the motives that the republicans had for taking up arms and reduce the whole struggle to a conflict between two eminent men? Was it the time, after the defeat of Pompey, to sacrifice him to Caesar, and to assert with so much assurance that he would have used the victory less well? That we may be able to judge less severely the concessions that Cicero thought himself obliged to make to the victorious party, we must recall the circumstances in which this speech was delivered. It was the first time he had spoken in public since Pharsalia. In that senate, purged by Caesar and filled with his creatures, free speech had not yet been heard. The friends and admirers of the master alone spoke, and whatever excess we may find in the praises that Cicero gives him, we may rest assured that all these flatteries must have seemed lukewarm compared with those heard every day. Let us add that, as no one had yet dared to make a trial of Caesar’s forbearance, its limits were not exactly known. Now it is natural, that he who does not exactly know where rashness begins has a little dread of becoming rash. When one does not know the bounds of the liberty that is permitted, the fear of overstepping them sometimes prevents their being reached at all. Besides, this orator who spoke for an exile was himself one of the vanquished. He knew the whole extent of the rights that victory then conferred, and he did not try to hide it. “We have been defeated,” he said to Caesar, “you might legitimately put us all to death.”291 At the present time things are quite different. Humanity has lessened these pitiless rights, and the conquered, who knows it, does not give way so completely; from the moment that he does not run the same risks it is easy for him to have more courage; but when he found himself before a master who had absolute power over him, when he knew that he only held liberty and life by a favour always revocable, he could not speak with the same boldness, and it would not be just to call the reserve imposed by such a perilous position, timidity. There is yet one other way, simpler and probably truer than the others, of explaining these rather too exaggerated praises with which Cicero has been reproached, namely, to acknowledge that they were sincere. The greater the rights of the conqueror, the more becoming it was in him to renounce them, and the merit was still greater when they were renounced in favour of a man whom there were legitimate reasons for hating. Accordingly, the excitement was very great among the senators when they saw Caesar pardon his personal enemy, and Cicero shared it. What proves that all these effusions of joy and thankfulness, with which his speech is filled, were not simply oratorical embellishments, is that we find them in a letter which he addressed to Sulpicius, and which was not written for the public. “That day seemed to me so grand,” said he, relating that memorable sitting of the senate, “that I thought I saw the republic rise again.”292 This was going very far, and indeed nothing less resembled the revival of the republic than this arbitrary act of a despot in pardoning men who were only guilty of having served their country. This violent hyperbole is none the less a proof of the deep and sincere emotion that Caesar’s clemency caused Cicero. We know how open that sensitive nature was to the impressions of the moment. He usually allows himself to be seized so forcibly by admiration or hatred, that he seldom keeps within bounds in expressing them. Hence came, in the speech for Marcellus, some hyperbolical eulogies and an excess of complimentary phrases which it is easy to account for, although one would rather not have found them there.

These reservations being made, nothing remains but to admire. Cicero’s speech does not contain only flatteries, as is asserted, and those who read it carefully and without prejudice will find something else. After thanking Caesar for his clemency, he takes the liberty of telling him a few truths and giving him some advice. This second part, which is somewhat hidden now under the splendour of the other, is much more curious, although less striking, and must have produced more effect in its time. Although he revised his work before publishing it, as was usual with him, he must have preserved the movement of improvisation. If he had not at first found those grand periods, the most sonorous and pompous of the Latin tongue, it is at least probable that he has not changed very much the order of the ideas and the coherency of the speech. We feel that he becomes excited and warmed by degrees, and in proportion as he advances he becomes more daring. The success of his eloquence, of which they had been deprived so long, the applause of his friends, the admiration and surprise of the new senators who had not yet heard him, that sort of transport a man feels in speaking when he perceives he is listened to; in sum, the place itself where he was speaking, those walls of the senate house to which he alluded in his discourse, and which guarded the memory of so many eloquent and free voices,—all this put him in heart again. He forgot the timid precautions of the commencement, and boldness came with success. Was it not attacking absolute power indirectly when he said: “I am grieved to think that the destiny of the republic, which ought to be immortal, depends entirely on the life of one man who must some time die.”293 And what can we think of that other saying, still sharper, almost cruel? “You have done much to gain the admiration of men; you have not done enough to deserve their praises.”294 What must Caesar do in order that the future may praise him as much as it admires him? He must change that which exists: “The republic cannot remain as it is.” He does not explain himself, but we guess what he wants. He wants liberty, not that entire liberty that they had enjoyed up to Pharsalia, but a moderate and regulated liberty, compatible with a strong and victorious government, the sole liberty that Rome could support. It is plain that at this moment Cicero did not think it impossible to make a compromise between Caesar and liberty. Could not a man who so ostentatiously renounced one of the least disputed rights of victory be tempted to renounce the others later? And when he was seen to be so clement and generous towards private individuals, was it forbidden to think that he might one day show the same liberality to his country? However weak this hope might be, as there was then no other, an honest man and a good citizen would not let it be lost, and it was his duty to encourage Caesar by all possible means to realize it. They were not then to blame in praising him without restraint for what he had done, in order to urge him to do still more, and it seems to me that the praises Cicero heaps on him, when we think of the intention he had in giving them, lose a little of that look of slavishness with which they have been reproached.

Caesar listened to the compliments with pleasure and to the advice without anger. He was too pleased that Cicero had at last broken silence to think of being angry at what he had said. It was important to him that this statesman, on whom all eyes were fixed, should re-enter public life in some way or other. While that powerful voice persisted in remaining mute it seemed to protest against the new government. By not even attempting to contradict him, it let it be thought it had not the liberty to do so, and made the slavery appear heavier. He was then so content to hear Cicero’s voice again that he let him say what he liked. Cicero quickly perceived it and took advantage of it. From this moment, when he speaks in public, we feel that he is more at his ease. His tone becomes firmer, and he concerns himself less about compliments and eulogies. With the speech for Marcellus, he had tried what liberties he could take. Having once felt his ground, he was more sure of his steps and walked with confidence.

Such was the position of Cicero during Caesar’s dictatorship; we see clearly that it was not so humble as has been asserted, and that, in a time of despotism, he was able to render some services to liberty. These services have been generally ill appreciated, and I am not surprised at it. It is with men something as it is with works of art: when we see them at a distance we are only struck with the bold situations and well-drawn attitudes; the details and finer shades escape us. We can well understand those who give themselves up entirely to the conqueror like Curio or Antony, or those who constantly resist him like Labienus and Cato. As to those ingenious and flexible minds who fly from all extremes, who live adroitly between submission and revolt, who turn difficulties rather than force them, who do not refuse to pay with a few flatteries for the right of telling a few truths, we are always tempted to be severe towards them. As we cannot clearly distinguish their attitude at the distance from which we regard them, their smallest subserviencies appear to be cowardice, and they seem to be prostrating themselves when they are only bowing. It is only by drawing near them, that is to say by studying the facts closer, that we succeed in rendering them justice. I think that this minute study is not unfavourable to Cicero, and that he was not mistaken when he said later, speaking of this period of his life, that his slavery had not been without some honour: quievi cum aliqua dignitate.295

II

In giving an account of the relations of Cicero and Caesar after Pharsalia, I have purposely omitted to speak of the courteous contest they had about Cato. It was such a curious incident that it seems to me to be worth the trouble of being studied apart, and in order to understand better the sentiments that each of the two brought into this contest, perhaps it will not be amiss to begin by making the acquaintance of the person who was the subject of the dispute.

A sufficiently correct idea is generally formed of Cato by us, and those who attack him as well as those who admire him are very nearly agreed upon the principal features of his character. He was not one of those elusive and many-sided natures like Cicero, that it is so difficult to seize. On the contrary, no one was ever more outspoken, more uniform, than he, and there is no figure in history whose good and bad qualities are so clearly marked. The only danger for those who study him is to be tempted to exaggerate still more this bold relief. With a little intention it is easy to make an obstinate block of this obstinate man, a boor and brute of this frank and sincere man; that is to say, to draw the caricature and not the portrait of Cato. To avoid falling into this extreme, it will be proper, before speaking of him, to read again a short letter that he addressed to Cicero when proconsul of Cilicia.296 This note is all that remains to us of Cato, and I should be surprised if it did not very much astonish those who have a preconceived notion of him. There is neither rudeness nor brutality in it, but on the contrary much refinement and wit. The occasion of the letter was a very difficult one: it was a question of refusing Cicero a favour that he very much wished to obtain. He had had in his old age the aspiration to become a conqueror, and he asked the senate to vote a thanksgiving to the gods for the success of the campaign he had just made. The senate in general showed deference to this caprice, Cato almost alone resisted; but he did not wish to fall out with Cicero, and the letter he wrote to justify his refusal is a masterpiece of dexterity. He shows him that in opposing his demand, he understands the interests of his glory, better than he does himself. If he will not thank the gods for the successes Cicero has obtained, it is because he thinks that Cicero owes them to himself alone. Is it not better to give him all the honour than to attribute it to chance, or the protection of heaven? This is certainly a very amiable way of refusing, and one that did not leave Cicero an excuse for getting angry, discontented though he was. Cato, then, was a man of wit at odd moments, although at first sight we might have some difficulty in supposing so. His character had become supple by the study of Greek literature; he lived in the midst of an elegant society, and he had unconsciously taken something from it. This is what that witty letter makes us suspect, and we must remember it, and take care to read it again every time we are tempted to fancy him an ill-bred rustic.

We must, however, admit that usually he was stiff and stubborn, hard to himself, and severe on others. That was the turn of his humour; he added to it by his self-will. Nature is not alone to blame for those self-willed and absolute characters that we meet with; a certain pursuit of quaint originality and a little self-complacency, very often make us aid nature and bring it out more vigorously. Cato was led into this defect by the very name he bore. The example of his illustrious grandfather was always before his eyes, and his single study was to resemble him, without taking into account the difference of times and men. In imitating we exaggerate. There is always a little effort and excess in the virtues we try to reproduce. We take only the most salient points of the model, and neglect the others which tone them down. This happened with Cato, and Cicero justly blames him for imitating only the rough and hard sides of his grandfather. “If you let the austerity of your behaviour take a few tints of his gay and easy manners, your good qualities would be more pleasing.”297 It is certain that there was in the old Cato a dash of piquant animation, of rustic gaiety, of bantering good-nature, that his grandson did not have. He only shared with him his roughness and obstinacy, which he pushed to extremes.

Of all excesses the most dangerous perhaps is the excess of good; it is at least that of which it is most difficult to correct oneself, for the culprit applauds himself, and no one dares to blame him. Cato’s great defect was that he never knew moderation. By dint of wishing to be firm in his opinion, he became deaf to the advice of his friends and the lessons of experience. The practical conduct of life, that imperious mistress, to speak like Bossuet, had no hold upon him. His energy often went to the length of obstinacy, and his sense of honour was sometimes in fault by being too scrupulous. This extreme delicacy prevented him succeeding when he canvassed for public offices. The people were very exacting towards those who asked for their votes. During the rest of the year they allowed themselves to be driven and ill-used, but on election day they knew they were masters and took pleasure in showing it. They could only be gained by flattering all their caprices. Cicero often laughed at those unfortunate and deferential candidates (natio officiosissima candidatorum), who go in the morning knocking at every door, who pass their time in paying visits and compliments, who make it a duty to accompany the generals when they enter or leave Rome, who form the retinue of all the influential orators, and who are forced to have infinite consideration and respect for everybody. Among the common people, upon whom after all the election depended, the more honest wished to be flattered, the rest required to be bought. Cato was not the man to do either the one or the other. He would neither flatter nor lie; still less would he consent to pay. When he was pressed to offer those repasts and those presents that for so long candidates had not dared to refuse, he answered bluntly: “Are you bargaining for pleasures with debauched young men, or asking the government of the world of the Roman people?” And he did not cease repeating this maxim, “that it is only a man’s merits which must solicit.”298 A hard saying! said Cicero, and one they were not accustomed to hear at a time when all offices were for sale. It displeased the people, who profited by this venality, and Cato, who persisted in only soliciting on his merits, was almost always vanquished by those who solicited with their money.

Characters of this sort, honest and outspoken, are met with, in different degrees, in private as well as in public life, and for this reason they belong to the domain of comedy as well as to that of history. If I were not afraid of failing in respect towards the gravity of the personage I am studying, I should say that this haughty response that I have just quoted, makes me think involuntarily of one of the finest creations of our theatre. It is a Cato that Molière wished to paint in the Misanthrope. We are here only concerned with the fortune of a private individual, and not with the government of the world, we have only to do with a lawsuit; but in his position, the Cato of the Comedy speaks just like the other. He will not submit to customs that he does not approve of. Even at the risk of losing his case he will not visit the judges, and when people say to him: “And who do you then intend to solicit for you?” he answers as haughtily as Cato: “Who do I intend? Reason, my just cause, and equity.” Whatever we may feel, these personages always inspire a great respect. We have not the heart to blame them, but, nevertheless, we must have the courage to do so. Honesty, honour, liberty, all noble causes in fine, cannot well be defended with this exaggerated and strait-laced rigour. They have disadvantages enough by themselves in their struggle with corruption and licence, without making them more unpleasing still by a useless stiffness and severity. To multiply scruples is to disarm virtue. It is quite enough that she is forced to be grave; why wish to make her repulsive? Without sacrificing anything of principle, there are points on which she ought to give way to men in order to rule them. What proves that those men, who boast of never giving way, are wrong is that they are not as inflexible as they suppose, and that, in spite of their resistance, they always end by making some concessions. That austere, that stern Alceste, is a member of society after all, and of the best. He lives at court, and we can see very well what he is. I do not say only by his manners and appearance, although I imagine the man with the green ribbons dressed with taste and elegance, but by those turns of phrase he employs, by those polite evasions which are also lies, and which he will not endure in Philinte. Before breaking out against the nobleman of the sonnet he uses adroit formulas where we only catch a glimpse of the truth:

“Do you find anything amiss in my sonnet?”

“I do not say that.”

What is this “I do not say that,” which he repeats so often, but a blameworthy compliance and weakness, if we judge it with the rigour of the misanthrope? Rousseau severely reproaches Alceste for it, and I do not think that Alceste, if he remains faithful to his principles, can find any reply to Rousseau; it would not be difficult either to point out contradictions of the same kind in Cato. This stern enemy of intrigue, who at first will do nothing for the success of his candidature, ends by canvassing: he went to the Campus Martius like everybody else, to shake hands with the citizens and ask for their votes. “What!” says Cicero to him ironically, whom these inconsistencies put into good humour, “is it your business to come and ask for my vote? Is it not rather I who ought to thank a man of your merit who wishes to brave fatigue and dangers for me?”299 This stern enemy of lying did more: he had one of those slaves called nomenclatores who knew the name and profession of every citizen of Rome, and he used him like the rest, to make the poor electors believe that he knew them. “Is not this cheating and deceiving the public?” said Cicero, and he was not wrong. The saddest thing is that these concessions, that compromise the dignity and unity of a character, are of no use: they are generally made with a bad grace, and too late; they do not efface the remembrance of past rudeness, and gain nobody. Notwithstanding his tardy solicitations and the aid of his nomenclator, Cato did not attain the consulship, and Cicero severely blames the awkwardness that made him fail. No doubt he could do without being consul; but the republic had need that he should be consul, and in the eyes of many good citizens, to favour by refinements of scrupulosity and exaggerations of honour the triumph of the worst men was almost to abandon and betray it.

It is easy to understand these excesses and exaggerations in a man who intends to fly the approach of humankind, like Alceste; but they are unpardonable in one who wishes to live with men, and still more so in one who aspires to govern them. The government of men is a nice and difficult matter which requires a man not to begin by repelling those whom he is desirous of leading. Certainly he ought to intend to make them better, but it is necessary to begin by taking them as they are. The first law of politics is to aim only at the possible. Cato often overlooked this law. He could not condescend to those attentions without which one cannot govern the people; he had not sufficient flexibility of character nor that turn for honourable intrigue which make a man succeed in the things he undertakes; he wanted some of that pliancy that brings opposing pretensions together, calms jealous rivalries, and groups people divided by humours, opinions and interests around one man. He could only be a striking protest against the manners of his time; he was not the head of a party. Let us venture to say, notwithstanding the respect we feel for him, that his spirit was obstinate because his mind was narrow. He did not at first distinguish the points on which a man should give way and those that ought to be defended to the last. A disciple of the Stoics, who said that all faults are equal, that is, according to Cicero’s joke, that it is as wrong to kill a fowl needlessly as to strangle one’s father, he had applied this hard and strange theory to politics. His mind being restricted to the merest legality, he defended the smallest things with tiresome obstinacy. His admiration of the past knew no discrimination. He imitated the ancient costumes as he followed the old maxims, and he affected not to wear a tunic under his toga because Camillus did not wear one. His want of breadth of mind, his narrow and obstinate zeal were more than once hurtful to the republic. Plutarch reproaches him with having thrown Pompey into Caesar’s arms by refusing some unimportant gratifications of his vanity. Cicero blames him for having dissatisfied the knights whom he had had so much trouble to conciliate with the senate. No doubt the knights made unreasonable demands, but he should have conceded everything rather than let them give Caesar the support of their immense wealth. It was on this occasion that Cicero said of him: “He thinks he is in the republic of Plato and not in the mud of Romulus,”300 and this saying is still that which best characterizes that clumsy policy that, by asking too much of men, ends by getting nothing.

Cato’s natural character was that of opposition. He did not understand how to discipline and lead a party, but he was admirable when it was a question of making head against an adversary. To conquer him, he employed a tactic in which he often succeeded: when he saw that a decision that seemed to him fatal, was about to be taken, and that it was necessary at any price to prevent the people voting, he began to speak and did not leave off. Plutarch says that he could speak for a whole day without fatigue. Nothing deterred him, neither murmurs, cries, nor threats. Sometimes a lictor would pull him down from the rostrum, but as soon as he was free he went up again. One day the tribune Trebonius got so much out of patience with this resistance that he had him led off to prison: Cato, without being disconcerted, continued his speech while going along, and the crowd followed him to listen. It is to be remarked that he was never really unpopular: the common people, who love courage, were at last mastered by this steady coolness and this unconquerable energy. It sometimes happened that they declared themselves in his favour, contrary to their interests and preferences, and Caesar, all-powerful with the populace, dreaded nevertheless the freaks of Cato.

It is none the less true, as I have already said, that Cato could not be the head of a party, and what is more deplorable is, that the party for which he fought had no head. It was an assemblage of men of capacity and of dignified personages, none of whom had the necessary qualities to take the lead of the rest. Not to mention Pompey, who was only a doubtful and distrusted ally, among the others, Scipio repelled every one by his haughtiness and cruelty; Appius Claudius was only a credulous augur who believed in the sacred chickens; Marcellus was wanting in pliability and urbanity, and was himself aware that scarcely anybody liked him; Servius Sulpicius had all the weaknesses of a punctilious lawyer; and lastly, Cicero and Cato erred in opposite directions, and it would have been necessary to unite them both, or modify them one by the other in order to have a complete politician. There were, therefore, only brilliant personalities and no head in the republican party before Pharsalia, and we may even say that, as this jealous selfishness and these rival vanities were ill blended, there was scarcely a party.

The civil war, which was a stumbling-block for so many others, which laid bare so many littlenesses and so much cowardice, revealed, on the other hand, all the goodness and all the greatness of Cato. A sort of crisis then took place in his character. As in certain maladies the approach of the last moments gives more elevation and lucidity to the mind, so, it seems, that at the threat of that great catastrophe which was about to engulf the free institutions of Rome, Cato’s honest soul was yet further purified, and that his intelligence took a juster view of the situation from the feeling of the public dangers. While fear makes others go to extremes, he restrains the usual violence of his conduct, and, while thinking of the dangers the republic is running, he becomes all at once discreet and moderate. He who was always ready to attempt useless resistance, advises giving way to Caesar; he wishes them to grant all his demands; he resigns himself to all concessions in order to avoid civil war. When it breaks out he submits to it with sorrow, and tries by all means to diminish its horrors. Every time he is consulted he is on the side of moderation and mildness. In the midst of those young men, the heroes of the polished society of Rome, among those lettered and elegant wits, it is the rugged Cato who defends the cause of humanity. He compelled the decision, in spite of the outbursts of the fiery Pompeians, that no town shall be sacked, no citizen be killed off the field of battle. It seems that the approach of the calamities he foresaw, softened that energetic heart. On the evening of the battle of Dyrrhachium, while every one was rejoicing in Pompey’s camp, Cato alone, seeing the corpses of so many Romans lying on the ground, wept: noble tears, worthy of being compared with those that Scipio shed over the ruins of Carthage, the memory of which antiquity so often recalled! In the camp at Pharsalia, he severely blamed those who spoke only of massacre and proscription and divided among themselves in advance the houses and lands of the conquered. It is true that after the defeat, when the greater number of those wild schemers were at Caesar’s knees, Cato went everywhere to stir him up enemies and to revive the civil wars in all the ends of the earth. Just as he had wished them to yield before the battle, so was he determined not to submit when there was no more hope of freedom. We know his heroic resistance in Africa, not only against Caesar, but against the furious men of the republican party, who were always ready to commit some excess. We know how he would not accept the pardon of the victor after Thapsus, when he saw that all was lost, and killed himself at Utica.

His death made an immense impression in all the Roman world. It put to the blush those who were beginning to accustom themselves to slavery; it gave a sort of new impulse to the discouraged republicans, and revived opposition. During his life-time, Cato had not always rendered good service to his party; he was very useful to it after his death. The proscribed cause had henceforth its ideal and its martyr. Its remaining partisans united and sheltered themselves under that great name. At Rome especially, in that great, unquiet, restless city, where so many men bowed the head without submitting, his glorification became the ordinary theme of the discontented. “The battle raged round the body of Cato,” says M. Mommsen, “as at Troy it had raged around that of Patroclus.” Fabius Gallus, Brutus, Cicero, and many others no doubt whom we do not know, wrote his eulogy. Cicero began his at the request of Brutus. At first he was repelled by the difficulty of the subject: “This is a work for Archimedes,” said he;301 but as he advanced, he took a liking to his work and finished it with a sort of enthusiasm. This book has not come down to us: we only know that Cicero made a complete and unreserved apology for Cato. “he raises him to the skies,”302 says Tacitus. They had, however, disagreed more than once, and he speaks of him without much consideration in many passages of his correspondence; but, as often happens, death reconciled everything. Besides, Cicero, who reproached himself with not having done enough for his party, was happy to find an opportunity of paying his debt. His book, that the name of the author and that of the hero recommended at once, had so great a success that Caesar was uneasy and discontented about it. He took care, however, not to show his ill-humour; on the contrary, he hastened to write a flattering letter to Cicero to congratulate him on the talent he had displayed in his work. “In reading it,” he told him, “I feel that I become more eloquent.”303 Instead of employing any rigorous measure, as was to be feared, he thought that the pen alone, according to the expression of Tacitus, ought to avenge the attacks that the pen had made. By his order, his lieutenant and friend Hirtius addressed a long letter to Cicero, which was published, and in which he controverted his book. Later, as this answer was not thought sufficient, Caesar himself entered the lists, and, in the midst of the anxieties of the war in Spain, he composed the Anti-Cato.

This moderation of Caesar has been justly praised: it is not common with men who possess unlimited authority, and the Romans justly said, that it is seldom a man is contented to write when he can proscribe. The fact that he detested Cato adds to the merit of his generous conduct. He always speaks of him with bitterness in his Commentaries, and although he was accustomed to do justice to his enemies, he never misses an opportunity of decrying him. Has he not dared to assert that in taking up arms against him, Cato gave way to personal rancour and to the desire of revenging his electoral defeats,304 when he well knew that no one had more generously forgotten himself in order to think only of his country! This was because there was more than political disagreement between them, there was antipathy of character. The defects of Cato must have been particularly disagreeable to Caesar, and his virtues were those that Caesar not only did not seek to acquire, but which he could not even understand. How could he have any feeling for his strict respect for law, for his almost servile attachment to old customs? he who found a lively pleasure in laughing at ancient usages. How could a prodigal, who had formed the habit of squandering the money of the state and his own without reckoning, how could he do justice to those rigorous scruples that Cato had in the handling of the public funds, to the attention he gave to his private affairs, and to that ambition, so strange for that time, of not having more debts than assets? These were, I repeat, qualities that Caesar could not comprehend. He was, then, sincere and convinced when he attacked them. A man of wit and pleasure, indifferent to principles, sceptical in opinion, accustomed to live in a frivolous and polished society, Cato could scarcely appear to him anything else than fanatical and brutal. As there was nothing that he put above refinement and politeness of manners, an elegant vice suited him better than a savage virtue. Cato, on the contrary, although he was not a stranger to literary culture and the spirit of society, had none the less remained at bottom an old-fashioned Roman. Notwithstanding their power, society and letters could not entirely overcome that bluntness, or if you will, that brutality of manner that he owed to his constitution and his race, and of which we find something even in his finest actions. To cite only one example; Plutarch, in the admirable narrative that he has given of his last moments, relates that, when a slave refused, through affection for Cato, to give him his sword, he knocked him down with a furious blow by which his hand was covered with blood. To the eyes of a fastidious man like Caesar, this blow revealed a vulgar nature, and I am afraid prevented him understanding the grandeur of this death. The same contrast, or rather the same antipathy, is found in all their private conduct. While Caesar’s maxim was to pardon everything in his friends, and he therefore pushed complacency so far as to shut his eyes to their treasons, Cato was too exacting and particular with regard to his. At Cyprus he did not hesitate to fall out with Munatius, his life-long companion, by showing an offensive distrust of him. He was, no doubt, in his household, a model of honour and fidelity; yet he did not always maintain that respect and regard for his wife that she deserved. We know how he gave her up without ceremony to Hortensius, who had asked him for her, to take her again without scruple after Hortensius’ death. How different was Caesar’s conduct with regard to his, although he had reason to complain of her! A man had been surprised at night in his house, the affair came before the courts, he might have avenged the outrage, but he preferred rather to forget it. Called as a witness before the judges, he declared he knew nothing about it, thus saving his rival in order to preserve his wife’s reputation. He only divorced her later, when the report of the intrigue had blown over. This was acting like a well-bred man of the world. Here again, between Cato and him, it is the least scrupulous and in the main the least honourable of the two, the fickle and libertine husband, who, by reason of a certain natural delicacy, appears in a more advantageous light.

This contrast in conduct, this opposition of character, seem to me to explain the way in which Caesar writes of Cato in his book, even better than all their political disagreements. The fragments of it that survive and the testimony of Plutarch, show that he attacked him with extreme violence, and that he tried to make him at once ridiculous and odious. But it was useless, it was lost labour. People continued, notwithstanding his efforts, to read and admire Cicero’s book. Not only did Cato’s reputation survive Caesar’s insults, it increased still more under the empire. In Nero’s time, when despotism was heaviest, Thrasea wrote his history again, Seneca quotes him on every page of his books, and to the end he was the pride and model of honest men who preserved some feeling of honour and dignity in the general abasement of character. They studied his death even more than his life, for they needed then, above all, to learn how to die, and when this sad necessity presented itself, it was his example they set before their eyes, and his name that was in their mouths. To have sustained and consoled so many noble hearts in these cruel trials is assuredly a great glory, and I think that Cato would not have desired any other.

III

The conclusion to be drawn from Caesar’s conduct after Pharsalia, and from his relations with Cicero, is, that he wished at that time to draw nearer to the republican party. It was difficult for him to act otherwise. As long as it was a question of overturning the republic, he had accepted the support of everybody, and the worst men had come to him by preference. “When a man was eaten up with debts and in want of everything,” said Cicero, “and if, besides, he was shown to be a scoundrel capable of daring anything, Caesar made him his friend;”305 but all these unprincipled and unscrupulous men, excellent for upsetting an established power, were worth nothing in setting up a new one. It was impossible that Caesar’s government should inspire any confidence as long as some honourable persons, whom men were accustomed to respect, were not seen with the master and alongside these adventurers, whom they had learnt to fear. Now, honourable men were chiefly found among the vanquished. We must add that it was not Caesar’s idea that one party alone should profit by his victory. He had no ambition to work, like Marius or Sulla, for the triumph of a faction: he wished to found a new government, and he invited men of different opinions to aid him in the enterprise. It has been asserted that he sought to reconcile parties, and great compliments have been paid him for it. The praise is not altogether just: he did not reconcile them, he annihilated them. In the monarchical system, that he wished to establish,306 the old parties of the republic had no place. He had cleverly used the dissensions of the people and the senate to dominate both; the first result of his victory was to put them both aside, and we may say that after Pharsalia, there was only Caesar on one side, and the vanquished on the other. This explains how it was that, once victorious, he made use indifferently of the partisans of the senate and those of the democrats. This equality which he established between them was natural, since they had all become, equally and without distinction, his subjects. Only he well knew that in accepting the services of the old republicans he should not have instruments always tractable, and that he would be obliged to allow them a certain independence of action and speech, to preserve, at least outwardly, some appearance of a republic; but that in itself did not give him much uneasiness. He had not that invincible repugnance for liberty that princes have who are born to an absolute throne, and who only know its name to dread and detest it. He had lived with it for twenty-three years, he had become accustomed to it, he knew its importance. Therefore he did not seek to destroy it entirely. He did not silence, as he might have done, the eloquent voices that regretted the past; he did not even impose silence on that harassing opposition that tried to respond to his victories by jeers. He allowed some acts of his administration to be criticized, and permitted men to give him advice. This great mind well knew that a country becomes enervated when the citizens are rendered indifferent to public affairs, and lose the taste for attending to them. He did not think that anything solid could be established on passive and silent obedience, and in the government that he founded he wished to preserve something of public life. Cicero tells us this in a curious passage of his correspondence: “We enjoy here a profound calm,” he writes to one of his friends; “I should rather prefer, however, a little honest and salutary agitation;” and he adds: “I see that Caesar is of my opinion.”307

All these reasons decided him to take one step further on that path of generosity and clemency on which he had entered after Pharsalia. He had pardoned the greater number of those who had borne arms against him; he invited some of them to share his power. At the very time that he was recalling the greater part of the exiles, he appointed Cassius his lieutenant; he gave Brutus the government of Cisalpine Gaul, and Sulpicius that of Greece. We shall speak further on of the first two; it is important, the better to appreciate Caesar’s policy, to rapidly make known the third, and to inquire how he had become worthy of the favours of the conqueror, and in what manner he profited by them.

Servius Sulpicius belonged to an important Roman family, and was the most celebrated lawyer of his time. Cicero gives him this great praise, namely, that he was the first to bring philosophy into the law, that is to say, that he bound together all those minute rules and precise formulas of which this science is composed, by general principles and comprehensive views.308 Accordingly he does not hesitate to place him much above his predecessors, and more especially, over that great family of the Scaevolas, in which as it seemed Roman jurisprudence had been up to that time incarnate. There was, however, a difference between them and Sulpicius, which it is important to notice: the Scaevolas had given to Rome, lawyers, augurs, pontifs, that is to say, they excelled in the arts that are friendly to tranquillity and peace; but they were also very active citizens, resolute politicians, valiant soldiers who courageously defended their country against conspirators and against the foreigner. They showed themselves, in their busy life, competent for all affairs and equal to all situations. Scaevola the augur, when Cicero knew him, was still, notwithstanding his age, a vigorous old man, who rose at daybreak to meet his country clients. He was the first to arrive at the Curia, and he had always some book with him, that he read so as not to remain idle while waiting for his colleagues; but the day that Saturninus threatened the public tranquillity, this learned man who loved study so much, this infirm old man who supported himself with difficulty, and could only use one arm, seized a javelin with that arm, and marched at the head of the people to the assault of the Capitol.309 Scaevola the pontif was not only an able lawyer, he was also an upright administrator whose memory Asia never forgot. When the farmers of the taxes attacked his quaestor Rutilius, guilty of having wished to prevent them ruining the province, he defended him with an admirable eloquence and vigour that no threat could shake. He refused to leave Rome at the time of the first proscriptions, and abandon his clients and their business, although he knew the fate that was awaiting him. Wounded at the funeral of Marius, he was dispatched a few days later near the temple of Vesta.310 However, such men were not exceptional at Rome. In the best times of the republic, the complete citizen had to be at once agriculturist, soldier, administrator, financier, advocate, and even jurist. There were no specialists then, and we should be forced to make now-a-days four or five different persons out of one ancient Roman; but in the period of which we are now speaking, these diverse aptitudes that were then required in a single man were separated: each man gave himself to a special science, and we can begin to divide men of study from men of action. It is difficult to say whether the reason of this was that men had lost the energy of their character; or perhaps we should think that since the masterpieces of Greece had been made known, and each science had become more complicated, one man could not any longer bear the burden of all united? However this may be, if Sulpicius was above the Scaevolas as a lawyer, he was far from having their firmness as a citizen. Praetor or consul, he was never anything more than a man of learning and chamber practice. In circumstances that require resolution, every time it was necessary to decide and to act, he was ill at ease. We feel that this honest and gentle soul was not made to be the first magistrate of a republic in a period of revolution. His fondness for always playing the part of conciliator and arbitrator in that time of violence ended by exciting laughter. Cicero himself, although he was his friend, quizzes him a little, when he shows us this great peacemaker starting off with his little secretary, after having looked over all his lawyers’ rules, to intervene between the parties at the time these parties only desired to destroy one another.

Caesar had always thought that Sulpicius was not of a character to oppose him vigorously, and had early worked to attach him to himself. He began by making an ally in his house, and a powerful ally. It was a matter of common talk at Rome, that the worthy Sulpicius allowed himself to be led by his wife Postumia; Cicero, who likes to repeat scandals, several times tells us this. Now, Postumia’s reputation was not spotless, and Suetonius places her name on the list of those women who were loved by Caesar. She is one of a very numerous company; but this fickle man, who passed so quickly from one mistress to another, had this singular privilege, that all the women whom he abandoned, remained none the less his devoted friends. They forgave his infidelities, they continued to take an interest in all his successes, they put those immense resources of ingenuity and persistency which belong only to a woman who is in love, at the service of his policy. It was no doubt Postumia who decided Sulpicius to work for Caesar during the whole time that he was consul, and to oppose the vehemence of his colleague Marcellus who wished another governor of Gaul to be appointed. However, notwithstanding all his weaknesses, Sulpicius was none the less a sincere republican, and when the war had broken out, he declared against Caesar, and left Italy. After the defeat, he submitted like the rest, and he had resumed his usual occupations, when Caesar sought him out in his retreat in order to appoint him governor of Greece. It was certainly impossible to find a government that suited him better. A residence in Athens, at all times agreeable to the rich Romans, must have been especially so at this time when that city was the asylum of so many illustrious exiles. Sulpicius could at the same time have the pleasure of hearing the most celebrated rhetoricians and philosophers of the world, and could talk of Rome and the republic with eminent persons like Marcellus and Torquatus, and thus satisfy all his tastes at once. Nothing could have been more pleasing, we should have thought, to this scholar and man of letters, whom chance had made a statesman, than the exercise of extensive power, without danger, combined with the most refined intellectual pleasures in one of the grandest and most beautiful countries in the world. We should, therefore, have thought that Caesar had done the most agreeable thing for him, in sending him on duty to that city where the Romans usually went for pleasure. Yet it does not seem that Sulpicius appreciated these advantages. He had scarcely arrived in Greece, when he was discontented at having gone, and longed to depart. Evidently it was not the country that displeased him, he would not have thought himself better off anywhere else; but he regretted the republic. After having so timidly defended it, he could not console himself for its fall, and blamed himself for serving him who had overturned it. These feelings are clearly expressed in a letter that he wrote to Cicero from Greece. “Fortune,” he tells him, “has taken from us our most precious possessions; we have lost our honour, our dignity, and our country.... In the times in which we live, those are most happy who are dead.”311

When a timid and moderate man like Sulpicius dared speak thus, what must others not have said and thought! We can guess this when we see how Cicero writes to the greater number of them. Although he is addressing officials of the new government, he does not take the trouble to hide his opinions; he freely expresses his regrets, because he well knows they are shared by those to whom he is writing. He speaks to Servilius Isauricus, the proconsul of Asia, as to a man whom the absolute power of one does not satisfy, and who wishes some restraints to be put on it.312 He tells Cornificius, the governor of Africa, that affairs are going ill at Rome, and that many things happen there which would pain him.313 “I know what you think of the lot of honest people, and of the misfortunes of the republic,” he writes to Furfanius, the proconsul of Sicily, in recommending an exile to him.314 These persons, however, had accepted important offices from Caesar: they shared his power, they passed for his friends; but all the favours they had received from him had not thoroughly attached them to his cause. They made their reservations while serving him, and only half gave themselves up to him. Whence could this opposition come, that the new government met with among men who had at first agreed to take a share in it? It proceeded from different motives which it is easy to point out. The first, perhaps the most important, was that this government, even while loading them with honours, could not give them what the old republic would have given them. With the establishment of the monarchy an important change in all public employments was accomplished: the magistrates became subordinate officials. Formerly, those elected by the popular vote had the right to act as they pleased within the sphere of their functions. A fertile power of initiative inspired every rank of this hierarchy of republican dignitaries. From the aedile to the consul all were supreme within their own limits. They could not be so under an absolute government. Instead of governing on their own account, they were only the channels, so to say, by which the will of a single man acted to the ends of the earth. Certainly public security gained much by the cessation of those conflicts of authorities, which had continually troubled it, and it was a great advantage for the provinces that absolute power had been taken away from their greedy governors. Nevertheless, if the governed profited by these reforms, it was natural that the governors should be discontented with them. From the moment that they were only entrusted with the execution of the orders of another man the importance of their functions diminished, and this sovereign and absolute authority whose weight they always felt, finally vexed even the most submissive. If ambitious men complained of the diminution of their power, honest people did not get accustomed so easily as might have been expected to the loss of their liberty. In proportion as they left Pharsalia behind, their regrets became more lively. They began to get over the surprise of the defeat, and gradually recovered from the fear it had caused them. During the moments that immediately follow those great disasters in which men have expected to perish, they give themselves up entirely to the pleasure of living, but this pleasure is one of those to which men accustom themselves so quickly, and which are taken so much as a matter of course, that they soon cease to be sensible of it. All those terrified people who on the morrow of Pharsalia desired only tranquillity, when it had been given them, wished for something else. As long as men are uncertain of their life, they do not trouble themselves to know if they shall live free, but when once life is assured, the desire for liberty returns to all hearts, and those who served Caesar felt it like the rest. Caesar, we know, partly satisfied this desire, but this satisfaction did not last long. It is as difficult to halt on the road to liberty as on that to absolutism. One favour granted makes men desire another, and men think less of enjoying what they have obtained than of lamenting what they lack. It was thus that Cicero, who had welcomed Caesar’s clemency with transports of joy, and who saluted the return of Marcellus as a sort of restoration of the republic, soon changed his opinion and language. As we get on further in his correspondence, he becomes more bitter and more revolutionary. He who had so severely condemned those who “after having disarmed their hands did not disarm their hearts,”315 had his own heart filled with the bitterest resentment. He said on every opportunity that all was lost, that he blushed to be a slave, that he was ashamed to live. He attacked with his pitiless raillery the most useful measures and the most just acts. He laughed at the reform of the calendar, and pretended to appear scandalized at the enlargement of Rome. He went further. On the day that the senate ordered Caesar’s statue to be placed beside those of the ancient kings, he could not avoid making a cruel allusion to the manner in which the first of these kings had perished. “I am very glad,” said he, “to see Caesar so near to Romulus!”316 And yet it was scarcely a year since, in his speech for Marcellus, he had implored him in the name of the country to watch over his life, and had said with much feeling, “Your safety is ours!”

Caesar, then, had only malcontents around him. The moderate republicans, on whom he reckoned to aid him in his work, could not resign themselves to the loss of the republic. The exiles whom he had recalled to Rome were more humiliated by his clemency than grateful for it, and did not give up their resentment. His own generals, whom he loaded with riches and honours, without being able to satisfy their cupidity, reproached him for his ingratitude, and even plotted his death. The common people, at last, of whom he was the idol, and who had so cheerfully granted all his demands, the people themselves began to withdraw from him; they no longer welcomed his victories with the same applause as formerly, and seemed to be afraid that they had made him too great. When his statue was placed beside those of the kings, the multitude, who saw it pass, remained mute, and we know that the news of this unusual silence was spread by the messengers of the allied kings and nations in all the countries of the world, and caused it to be believed everywhere that a revolution was at hand.317 In the provinces of the East, where the last soldiers of Pompey were hiding, the fire of civil war, which was smouldering rather than extinct, constantly revived, and these perpetual alarms, without leading to serious danger, prevented the public tranquillity becoming settled. At Rome, Cicero’s works, in which he celebrated the glories of the republic, were read with enthusiasm; anonymous pamphlets, which had never been more violent or more numerous, were eagerly sought. As happens on the eve of great crises, every one was discontented with the present, unquiet about the future, and prepared for the unforeseen. We know in how tragical a manner this strained situation terminated. The stab of Brutus’ dagger was not altogether, as has been said, an unpremeditated incident and a chance; it was the general uneasiness of men’s minds which led to and which explains such a terrible catastrophe. The conspirators were but little over sixty in number, but they had all Rome for their accomplice.318 All this disquietude and rancour, those bitter regrets for the past, those disappointed ambitions, this baffled cupidity, this open or secret hatred, those bad or generous passions of which men’s hearts were full, armed their hands, and the Ides of March were only the deadly explosion of so much stored-up anger. Thus events frustrated all Caesar’s projects. He did not find safety in his clemency, as he thought; he failed in that work of conciliation that he had attempted with the applause of the world: he did not succeed in disarming parties. This glory was reserved for a man who had neither his breadth of genius, nor his generosity of character—for the crafty and cruel Octavius. This is not the only time that history shows us the sad spectacle of the success of ordinary men where the greatest have failed; but in enterprises of this nature success depends above all on circumstances, and it must be admitted that they singularly favoured Augustus. Tacitus tells us the principal cause of his good fortune, when he says, speaking of the establishment of the empire: “There was almost no one left who had seen the republic.”319 The men over whom Caesar aspired to reign, on the contrary, had all seen it. Many cursed it when it troubled the tranquillity of their lives by its storms and agitations; almost all regretted it as soon as they had lost it. There is, notwithstanding the perils to which it exposes men, a singular charm and attraction in the habit and exercise of liberty which cannot be forgotten when once it has been known. It was against this inextinguishable memory that the genius of Caesar was shattered. But after the battle of Actium, the men who had looked upon the grand scenes of liberty, and who had seen the republic, no longer existed. A civil war of twenty years, the most murderous of all those that have ever depopulated the world, had destroyed them almost all. The recollections of the new generation did not go further back than Caesar. The first sounds it had heard were the acclamations that saluted the conqueror of Pharsalia, of Thapsus, and of Munda; the first spectacle that had struck its eyes was that of the proscriptions. It had grown up among pillage and massacres. During twenty years it had daily trembled for its property or its life. It thirsted for security, and was ready to sacrifice everything for repose. Nothing attracted it towards the past, as the contemporaries of Caesar had been attracted. On the contrary, all the memories of the past which survived only attached it more to the government under which it lived, and when by chance it turned its eyes backwards it found many subjects for fear without any subject for regret. It was only under these circumstances that absolute power could peaceably succeed the republic.