This bold step on the part of Cicero has been reflected on in two different ways. Plutarch (Cic. 3) ascribes to the fear of Sulla's vengeance the departure of Cicero for Greece in the following year, though his nominal plea was bad health. This theory shows clearly how dangerous must have appeared to Plutarch the bold front shown to the powerful dictator, but can hardly be accepted as accounting for the journey to Greece, inasmuch as the tyrant threw down the dagger the very year of Cicero's absence. But again, Cicero has been accused of showing in this proceeding a readiness to coquet with democracy. Now this is an entirely misleading point of view, and rests on a misconception of the Roman Bar in the days of Cicero.

The young Roman of promise seeking to work his way into political eminence was forced to adopt the profession of an advocate. And how does the advocate distinguish himself? By winning his case; and we have seen by the passage from the De Officiis just quoted, that the more difficult and dangerous was the case to handle, the more fitted it was to supply to the daring advocate a step on the ladder of promotion. The young Roman aspirant to political distinction looked about for some one to impeach or some one to defend as his only means of gaining public notice. There was hardly a man of eminence at Rome who had not appeared both as prosecutor and as defendant. Plutarch tells us that Cato the Censor was prosecuted nearly fifty times, and he was constantly engaged in the prosecution of others.

In the year 689 (65) Cicero, in a far more democratic speech, defended the tribune Cornelius, against whom the Optimates had trumped up a charge of treason. Cicero spoke in defence of the tribune for four successive days. This speech, embellished as it was with an elaborate eulogy of Pompey, is quoted by Quintilian (iv. 3, 13) as an illustrious instance of the power with which a great orator can wield his digressions.* In another passage (viii. 3, 3', Quintilian again refers to the same speech in these words :

" Nec fortibus modo sed etiam fulgentibus armis proeliatur in causa. Cicero Corneli; qui nont consecutus esset docendo iudicem tantum et

*Cicero seems to call these rhetorical artifices kаural in one of his letters, Att. i. 14, 4 (20).

+ So the ordinary reading. Halm, after Spalding, reads nec fortibus modo sed etiam

utiliter demum ac Latine perspicueque dicendo, ut populus Romanus admirationem suam non acclamatione tantum sed etiam plausu confiteretur. Sublimitas profecto et magnificentia et nitor et auctoritas expressit illum fragorem. Nec tam insolita laus esset prosecuta dicentem, si usitata et ceteris similis fuisset oratio. Atque ego illos credo qui aderant nec sensisse quid facerent nec sponte iudicioque plausisse; sed velut mente captos et quo essent in loco ignaros erupisse in hunc voluptatis affectum.'

Such was the feeling which Cicero desired to evoke. He spoke for Cornelius as he spoke against Verres, as Whiteside spoke for O'Connell, in the pursuit of professional distinction, and to establish his growing fame as an unrivalled speaker and pleader. Quintus, in his Commentariolum Petitionis, emphatically urges the vast importance of a reputation as a speaker.* Yet modern historians see in these speeches evidence that Cicero at first attached himself to the democratic party, which he was bribed to abandon by the promised support of the Optimates in his canvass for the consulship. This charge would certainly have been met and rebutted by Cicero in some of his works if it had ever been made against him in his own time. He would doubtless have been astonished if he could have foreseen that this would be one of the verdicts of history for which,' as he says,† I feel much more reverence than for the chit-chat of the present age.' We may well exclaim, as did the orator himself in this same speech, O callidos homines, O rem excogitatam, O ingenia metuenda!

We should not have thought it necessary to refer to the calumnies which beset Cicero on the very threshold of public life, but that it is so very important to show how futile is the appeal to his

fulgentibus armis proeliatur (sc. is qui dicit): <an> in causa Corneli Cicero consecutus esset... confiteretur?

* Friedrich Cauer (Ciceros politisches Denken, 1893, p. 71) points out that this view hardly does full justice to Cicero. In both the speech for Roscius and for Cornelius, Cicero felt he was supporting justice and right. The Sullan proscriptions were always censured by Cicero (Off. ii. 27; De Orat. iii. 12); and we may add that the courageous opposition to senatorial jobbery by the public-spirited Cornelius must have appealed to Cicero's enthusiasm. Indeed, a branch of that kind of jobbery, for attacking which Cornelius was himself attacked by the senatorial party, was restricted by Cicero's own consular law against liberae legationes.

+ Quid vero historiae de nobis ad annos DC praedicarint? Quas quidem ego multo magis vereor quam eorum hominum qui hodie vivunt rumusculos, Att. ii. 5, 1 (32).

forensic speeches as evidence for Cicero's political opinions. For these we must go first to his private letters, and secondly to his philosophical and rhetorical works. That we are not to look in these speeches for his personal opinions, we have his own evidence in a most important passage in his speech for Cluentius (139) :

'Errat vehementer si quis in orationibus nostris, quas in iudiciis habuimus, auctoritates nostras consignatas se habere arbitratur. Omnes enim illae orationes causarum ac temporum sunt, non hominum ipsorum aut patronorum. Nam, si causae ipsae pro se loqui possent, nemo adhiberet oratorem. Nunc adhibemur, ut ea dicamus, non quae nostra aucto

ritate constituantur, sed quae ex re ipsa causaque ducantur.'

Moreover, we have the same circumstances viewed from opposite, or at least very different, points of view in different speeches, as no one can fail to observe who reads the pro Sulla with the speeches in Catilinam, or who, after admiring the denunciations hurled on Verres for his oppression of Sicily, takes up the defence of M. Fonteius, charged with malversation in Gaul-a speech delivered the year after the Verrines were written.* And such contrasts, no doubt, would far more frequently appear if Cicero had oftener been a prosecutor. Hence Cicero's personal opinions should never be sought in his forensic speeches. Even in his political speeches one must not expect a too accurate record of his real convictions. Who, for instance, could for a moment believe that in the speech against the wise and moderate Agrarian Law of Rullus † Cicero was speaking otherwise than as an advocate?

Compare also with the language of the Catilinarian speeches the very temperate portrait of Catiline in the pro Caelio (§ 12).

This Law, in at least one of its aims, was conceived in a spirit of wise and moderate statesmanship. But the principle of drafting off the idle population of Rome as colonists of the public domain was the pet scheme of the Gracchi, and was identified with the democratic programme. Cicero, therefore, as an optimate, was bound to oppose it, the more so as the extensive powers assigned to the Commissioners seemed distinctly menacing to the State; and he has shown amazing adroitness in turning the passions of the people against a scheme with which he must to a great extent have sympathised. Surely the etiquette of party government must have rendered every Englishman familiar with such acts. Afterwards, in 694 (60), when it was not a party question, he spoke strongly in favour of a similar Agrarian Law proposed by Flavius.Att. i. 19, 4 (25). This passage is well worth reading. It expresses Cicero's real opinions on the Agrarian Question: cp. Addenda to Commentary, Note III., and Friedrich Cauer (Ciceros politisches Denken, 1893, pp. 94-105).

And hence we may estimate the priceless value of the private letters and the works on philosophy and rhetoric. As an instance of an unprejudiced expression of his real opinion in his rhetorical treatises, one recalls his high praise* of Sulpicius, whose defection from the ranks of the Optimates must have made him politically very distasteful to one whose ideal statesmen were Metellus Numidicus,† and Q. Lutatius Catulus. That the public letters are by no means so trustworthy might be expected a priori; and we have among them letters in which one can hardly believe that the expressed sentiment is sincere-for instance, the letter to Antonius (Att. xiv. 13 b, Ep. 717), in which he uses such very temperate expressions to describe his feelings towards his old enemy Clodius.

In his private letters, however, we expect to find his real opinions. But his private letters, though a fountain of light to those who read them with intelligence and without a theory, may be made the source of a formal acte d'accusation against the whole character and life of Cicero in the hands of a theorist who insists on reading letters which (never intended to be published) reflect every passing light or shade which falls across the disc of the writer's mind, as so many chapters of a history which registers and stereotypes at each page the political convictions of a statesman. M. Gaston Boissier, in his admirable study of Roman society in the last days of the Republic, called Cicéron et ses amis, points out how the man of the world is really more fitted to read the letters of Cicero aright than the German professor. We think we shall not do ill in giving this passage in M. Boissier's own words:

'Ces faiblesses d'un moment, ces soupçons ridicules qui naissent d'une blessure d'amour-propre, ces courtes violences qui se calment dès qu'on réfléchit, ces injustices qu'arrache le dépit, ces bouffées d'ambition que la raison s'empresse de désavouer, une fois qu'on les a confiées à un ami, ne périssent plus. Un jour, un commentateur curieux étudiera ces confidences trop sincères, et il s'en servira pour tracer de l'imprudent qui les a faites un portrait à effrayer la postérité. Il prouvera, par des citations

De Orat. i. 131-2, iii. 31. Brut. 183, 203.

+ Pro Sest. 101. Pro Planc. 89.

De Orat. iii. 9.

exactes et irréfutables, qu'il était mauvais citoyen et méchant ami, qu'il n'aimait ni son pays ni sa famille, qu'il était jaloux des honnêtes gens, et qu'il a trahi tous les partis. Il n'en est rien cependant, et un esprit sage ne se laisse pas abuser par l'artifice de ces citations perfides. Il sait bien qu'on ne doit pas prendre à la lettre ces gens emportés, ni croire trop à ce qu'ils disent. Il faut les défendre contre eux-mêmes, refuser de les écouter quand la passion les égare, et distinguer surtout leurs sentiments véritables et persistants de toutes ces exagérations qui ne durent pas. Voilà pourquoi tout le monde n'est pas propre à bien comprendre les lettres; tout le monde ne sait pas les lire comme il faut. Je me défie de ces savants qui, sans aucune habitude des hommes, sans aucune expérience de la vie, prétendent juger Cicéron d'après sa correspondance. Le plus souvent ils le jugent mal. Ils cherchent l'expression de sa pensée dans ces politesses banales que la société exige et qui n'engagent pas plus ceux qui les font qu'elles ne trompent ceux qui les reçoivent. Ils traitent de lâches compromis ces concessions qu'il faut bien se faire quand on veut vivre ensemble. Ils voient des contradictions manifestes dans ces couleurs différentes qu'on donne à son opinion suivant les personnes auxquelles on parle. Ils triomphent de l'imprudence de certains aveux ou de la fatuité de certains éloges, parce qu'ils ne saisissent pas la fine ironie qui les tempère. Pour bien apprécier toutes ces nuances, pour rendre aux choses leur importance véritable, pour être bon juge de la portée de ces phrases qui se disent avec un demi-sourire et ne signifient pas toujours tout ce qu'elles semblent dire, il faut avoir plus d'habitude de la vie qu'on n'en prend d'ordinaire dans une université d'Allemagne. S'il faut dire ce que je pense, dans cette appréciation délicate, je me fierais peutêtre encore plus à un homme du monde qu'à un savant.'*

pp. 19-21. We may fitly add here, as connected with this point of view, the same brilliant writer's estimate of the German detractors of Cicero, such as Drumann and Mommsen-Drumann surtout ne lui passe rien. Il a fouillé ses œuvres et sa vie avec la minutie et la sagacité d'un homme d'affaires qui cherche les éléments d'un procès. C'est dans cet esprit de malveillance consciencieuse qu'il a dépouillé toute sa correspondance. Il a courageusement résisté au charme de ces confidences intimes qui nous font admirer l'écrivain et aimer l'homme malgré ses faiblesses, et, en opposant l'un à l'autre des fragments détachés de ses lettres et de ces discours, il est parvenu à dresser un acte d'accusation en règle où rien n'est omis, et qui tient presque un volume. M. Mommsen n'est guère plus doux, seulement il est moins long. Comme il voit les choses de haut, il ne se perd pas dans le détail. En deux de ces pages serrées et pleines de faits, comme il sait les écrire, il a trouvé moyen d'accumuler plus d'outrages pour Cicéron que n'en contient tout le volume de Drumann. On y voit notamment que ce prétendu homme d'Etat n'était qu'un égoïste et un myope, et que ce grand écrivain ne se compose que d'un feuilletoniste et d'un avocat. Voilà bien la même plume qui vient d'appeler Caton un don Quichotte et Pompée un caporal. Comme il