theory that Caesar should eagerly follow the banner on which was inscribed novae tabulae? He was now plunged in a sea of debt; he had lavished unheard-of sums in the attempt to climb into popular favour, and he had as yet reaped no reward. Pompeius was on the point of returning from the East. When he said to his mother on the Ides of March, 691 (b. c. 63), after lavishing a fortune on his suit for the Pontificate, domum se nisi pontificem non reversurum, he spoke the words of a desperate man.*

As to the argument which has satisfied many, that Cæsar would not have stooped to accept a position subordinate to Catiline, we should remember that we moderns are very prone to exaggerate the proportions of Caesar as a historical figure in the eyes of his countrymen, while his contemporaries, on the other hand, were more likely to underrate his dimensions. Looking back on his marvellous career, and reflecting on the momentous issues which followed the civilization of the West, we feel that Caesar still

Like a Colossus,

doth bestride the narrow world

and can hardly recall in imagination the time when he was no very imposing personage in the eyes of his contemporaries. On Ep. xlvi. (Att. ii. 19) I have pointed out how the Commentators have insisted on making Caesar 'the tyrant,' and Pompeius one of his supporters,' whereas the whole context shows that it is Pompeius who is the dominus, and Caesar one of his advocati, in the eyes of the people of Rome, though at that time, 695 (b. c. 59), Caesar no doubt actually did see his way to that supreme position,

There is one argument against the guilt of Caesar which seems to some to be of great weight. If,' it is urged, 'Caesar had been a Catilinarian, Cicero must have known it; and it is certain that Cicero would have mentioned it in some of those letters before the outbreak of the civil war, in which he weighs the characters of the rival leaders, and the probable issues of the conflict.' But Cicero had made up his mind about the policy of Caesar. Caesar is to him a perditus civis, a tyrannus; his action is a furor, a scelus. He had done of late so many illegal acts that the question what he was fourteen years ago was irrelevant. Besides, I think Cicero does hint at Caesar's complicity with Catiline, when he dwells on his vita, mores, ANTEFACTA, Att. is. 2a, 2. This unproved surmise was a mere drop in the ocean compared with his subsequent acts. The negative evidence which rests on the silence of Cicero concerning this one illegality of Caesar cannot be set against the positive proofs of Mommsen and others. The whole question of Cicero's attitude towards Caesar before the war is discussed in Appendix A.

which he cannot have dreamed of in the year 691 (b.c. 63).* Probably, had the rash attempt of Catiline succeeded, Caesar would have had an earlier opportunity of showing his true greatness-his admirable fitness to use success, and to wield power however absolute.

Next to the consulship, the most interesting episode in this period of the life of Cicero is his exile. Professor Beesly again points out the inherent improbabilities in the vulgar account.' 'We are asked to believe,' he says, 'that stained with the blood of the popular leaders, Cicero was respected and beloved by the vast majority of Roman citizens, and that the troubles which subsequently befell him were simply the result of a personal quarrel with Clodius.' He sees in this account a tendency 'so easy, and to the vulgar mind so agreeable, to attribute the Persian invasion of Greece to a curtain-lecture of Atossa's, or the English Reformation to the pretty face of Anne Boleyn.' There is much that is both new and true in what he has advanced, and I think we may admit that Cicero was not a favourite with the populace after his suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy. Indeed he admits as much himself in some passages of his letters-for instance, in that one in which he says that the fact that his deposition in disproof of the alibi of Clodius did not avail to procure a conviction has actually been of service to him with the populace. 'The plethora of my unpopularity,' he says, 'has undergone depletion, and the operation has not been painful.'† And it seems probable, too, that the people were opposed to his restoration, which was procured by a 'whip' of Italian voters. It is certainly true that there was an attempt made to impede the rebuilding of his house, and that he had to walk about the city with a guard of armed men. But here his enemies are the mere mob, whom he calls sordem urbis et faecem. With the more respectable elements of the popular party I think there is evidence that the picturesque career and demeanour of the great novus homo was not without its effect on the imagination. When, being prevented by the tribune Metellus Nepos from addressing the people on laying

* Suetonius (Iul. 9) quotes from a letter of Cicero to Axius the words Caesarem in consulatu confirmasse regnum de quo aedilis cogitarat. If this is really a sentiment of Cicero's, it is one of the least sagacious of his political reflections.

† Missus est sanguis invidiae sine dolore.-Att. i. 16, 11.

down his office, he swore that he had saved the state, I fancy there

really was a general burst of responsive enthusiasm. The Catili- vid Eurally

narian conspiracy at one time wore a very threatening aspect, made more sinister by the empty vapourings of Catiline, and Cicero had put it down without calling on Pompeius to unsheath his sword. No attempt to upset the constituted government by force recommended itself much to the law-abiding Roman who had won his empire by subordination of self to State, of imagination to reason. The Roman citizen presents the strongest contrast to the Parisian, who will die behind his barricade for an idea.

But I return to the circumstances which led to the exile of Cicero. Some time in the year 692 (b.c. 62) Clodius was found in woman's clothes in the house of Caesar, one of the praetors, where the women were celebrating the rights of the Bona Dea, from which all tes males were rigorously excluded. We find the first notice of this event in a letter of Cicero to Atticus, written on January 1, 693 (b.c. 61). For this last reason, and because Clodius is spoken of as quaestor designatus at the time, which would place the crime in one of the later months of the year, it has generally been inferred that the outrage took place in December 692 (b. c. 62). On the other hand, Ovid assigns May 1st as the date of the festival of the Bona Dea. Hence Mr. Beesly infers that Clodius must have ventured on this daring escapade in May, that seven months were allowed to elapse before any notice was taken of the crime, and that it was then made use of merely as a pretext for venting on Clodius the political rancour of the oligarchy, to whom (he suggests) Clodius must have given some fresh offence, as we should probably find if we had the history of the year 692, of which we are ignorant, owing to a break in the continuity of Cicero's correspondence. But Mr. Beesly's assumption is utterly unwarranted. The Bona Dea, on whose rites Clodius intruded, was worshipped on the night of the 3rd and 4th December, as has been demonstrated by Marquardt (iii. 331-2). Marquardt quotes Plutarch (Cic. xix.) to the effect that on the night after Cicero had disclosed the plot of Catiline he was brought home to the house of a neighbour, because Cicero's own house was occupied by the rites of the Bona Dea. Cicero, as we know, made his celebrated disclosures on December 3; therefore the rites of the Bona Dea

were going on during the night of December 3-4. The Bona Dea to whom Ovid refers was quite different. Her sacrifices were held on May 1st in a temple on the Aventine, whereas the rites which Clodius violated were held in a private house. The latter sacrifice, however, was a public sacrifice (pro populo), because it could only be held in the house of an officiating consul or praetor urbanus. Caesar, at the time of Clodius' crime, was both pontifex and praetor urbanus (Marq. iii. 332). Thus vanishes Mr. Beesly's incredible hypothesis that Cicero should have told the whole story of the sacrilege without hinting that the crime was seven months old. But even without this demonstrative proof the evidence of Cicero is unmistakable. In a letter written on January 1, 693 (b. c. 61) (Att. i. 12), he says:-'I suppose you must have heard that P. Clodius was detected in the disguise of a woman in C. Caesar's house when the sacrifice was going on, and that he was allowed to escape safe from the house through the aid of a servant maid; and that the outrage has caused immense indignation. I am sure you will be sorry for it.' On February 1, of the same year, again writing to Atticus, he says (and it will be observed that the accurate rendering of the word instaurassent accounts for at least some delay): I suppose you must have heard that while sacrifice was being offered at the house of Caesar, a man effected an entrance in woman's clothes, and that it was only after the vestal virgins had performed the sacrifice afresh, instaurassent (the first having been polluted by the intrusion of Clodius), that Cornificius—not one of us consulars, observe-brought the matter before the Senate. The Senate referred the matter to the Pontifices, who pronounced that sacrilege had been done. So the consuls were directed by the Senate to bring in a bill to hold an inquiry into the matter. Caesar has divorced his wife. The consul Piso, through friendship for Clodius, is doing his best to shelve the bill which he is himself obliged to bring forward by order of the Senate. Messalla, the other consul, is in favour of strong measures. The partisans of the good cause, yielding to the prayers of Clodius, are standing aloof. Gangs of bravoes are being got up. I myself, though I had been a perfect Lycurgus at first, am gradually cooling down. Cato is straining every nerve for the prosecution. In a word, I am afraid that this cause, defended by the democrats, while the Optimates stand aloof from the prosecution, will work great mischief to the State.'

Surely this whole passage is completely opposed to the theory that the prosecution of Clodius was the result of spite on the part of the oligarchy, who trumped up an almost forgotten charge against a person who had rendered himself politically obnoxious to them. On the contrary, the Optimates were desirous of standing aloof from the prosecution altogether until pushed into it by the foolish obstinacy of Cato. In the course of the debate, however, Clodius was imprudent enough to try conclusions with 'Tear-'em the ex-consul,' and found him far too cunning of fence, and keen of thrust. Cicero, true to the programme of his party, which he strongly condemns Cato for neglecting, would have gladly stood apart, but that Clodius brought an odious taunt against his cherished consulship: me tantum comperisse omnia criminabatur (Att. i. 14, 5). This was the ill-omened word that began to be bruited about against the Father of his country even during his consulship, that in suppressing the Catilinarian conspiracy he had been wont to declare that he had received information' to this or that effect, that he required neither trial nor proof, that he had information' which justified his acts. So ill-sounding was this word in his ears, that in a letter to his colleague Antonius (Fam. v. 5, 2), written but a short time before this, Cicero actually avoids the word comperi for this reason, contra etiam esse aliquid abs te profectum ex multis audivi, nam comperisse me non audeo dicere ne forte id ipsum verbum ponam, quod abs te aiunt falso in me conferri-Clodius had used the hated word, and Cicero (Att. i. 16, 1)—cum ille ad ronciones confugisset in iisque meo nomine ad invidiam uteretur; di immortales quas ego pugnas et quantas strages edidi!

It was then that Hortensius, feeling that no panel could fail to convict Clodius, hit on the expedient of facilitating matters, and obviating the hostility of the tribune Fufius, by giving up the consular bill, which empanelled a jury to be chosen by the praetor,

So I have translated the expression cynicus consularis in Ep. xxxvi. (Att. ii. 9, 1), borrowing the phrase from the sobriquet of Mr. Roebuck. The word refers to Cicero's biting repartees. The common rendering of the phrase 'the consular cynic' is not a translation at all. Cicero had nothing in common with the cynic philosophy but his biting tongue, under the lash of which Catiline tottered half stunned and paralysed from the Senate, and Clodius magnis clamoribus afflictus conticuit et concidit (Att. i. 16, 10). The term 'cynical,' in its modern sense, as applied to the cold man of the world, devoid alike of beliefs and enthusiasms, is perhaps, of all words in our language, the one least applicable to the character of Cicero.