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and allowing Fufius to propose a bill providing that the jury should be chosen by lot out of the decuriae. This was of course the ordinary practice; and it is clear that the consular rogation, in providing a panel chosen by the praetor, proposed an exceptional measure, which is not made very clear to us. But is it not a most daring assumption to suppose, as Mr. Beesly does, that the oligarchy 'were bent on nothing less than galvanising the comitia centuriata into a new life, for the purpose of creating by its instrumentality a Quaestio to try Clodius'? Can anyone suppose that Cicero would leave an attempt so remarkable in such obscurity, and never mention the extraordinary circumstance that the bill was moved in the comitia centuriata? 'I presume,' says Mr.. Beesly, that for a Roman such information was not necessary, because to tell him that a bill was moved by a consul was equivalent to telling him that it was moved in the comitia centuriata.' But surely this view is incompatible omnibus litteris with the account of Cicero, who invariably speaks as if the projected Quaestio could easily have been carried out except for the blunder of Hortensius. Moreover, the oligarchy are supposed to have conceived this unprecedented coup through their thirst for the blood of a man whose offence against them is in itself a hypothesis. He must have offended them because they thirsted for his blood. And why did they thirst for his blood? Because he had offended them so grievously. Similarly, that Clodius was a prominent member of the democratic party' is assumed, because there is no other way of accounting for the extraordinary acharnement of the nobles, or the interest the people took in his cause.' The fact is, that he had hitherto appeared first as the accuser of Catiline, and afterwards as one of Cicero's body-guard at the execution of Lentulus and his accomplices-not very consistent acts in a prominent member of the democratic party.' The violation of the state religion seems to have been resented in a way which we can hardly understand in a nation which certainly was mainly sceptical; but anything is possible in a state where C. Julius Caesar, notorious for scepticism and profligacy in a sceptical and profligate age, was Pontifex Maximus.* The Optimates, as we have seen,

The curious tenacity of the Romans for traditional usages, and the strange fusion of formalism and scepticism in their character, is strongly illustrated by the history of

would have held aloof but for the quixotism of Cato. Cicero, as a leading Optimate, gave evidence to upset the alibi of Clodius.* Clodius was acquitted-the second occasion during a period of five years on which the verdict of a Roman jury was meridie on lucere and during the struggle and after it raged the war of words in which Clodius was so notably worsted. Hence arose the enmity between Clodius and Cicero, not from Cicero's deposition, to which the latter never adverts as the source of Clodius' persecution. And hence the adoption of Clodius into a plebeian family, his tribunate, and the exile of Cicero. For I maintain that here, if ever, we have an instance of a political event ‚of some magnitude brought to pass by private animosity and personal pique. It is possible to sin in the writing of history by making causes too particular, but it is also possible to sin in making them too general. It is absurd to attribute the Persian invasion of Greece to a curtain-lecture of Atossa,' but there is a great temptation which chiefly besets brilliant writers like Mr. Beesly or Theodor Mommsen to absolutely discount private influences as a factor in history, to refer every phenomenon to the operation of general laws, and, exaggerating the paradox of Buckle, to speak as if it might have been predicted à priori that Caesar was bald, and that Claudius died of eating a mushroom. Yet such historians do not question the Aristotelian apophthegm (Pol. viii. 4, 1) γίνονται μὲν οὖν αἱ στάσεις οὐ περὶ μικρῶν, ἀλλ ̓ ἐκ μικρῶν, στασιάζουσι δὲ περὶ μεγάλων μάλιστα δὲ καὶ αἱ μικραὶ ισχύουσιν, ὅταν ἐν τοῖς κυρίοις γένωνται. Nor do they demur to the long list of instances adduced by him, in which private quarrels and jealousies were the occasions, though not the causes, of public events of great importance.

the prosecution of Rabirius. He, whom the eloquence of Cicero had not availed to save, was rescued by the adroitness of the praetor Metellus Celer, who struck the flag which waved from the Janiculum during the assemblies of the centuries. This was in old times the signal of an Etruscan raid. On seeing the flag struck, the burghers would rush from the debate to repel the foe. The ruse succeeded. The populace, who refused the life of Rabirius to the arguments of Cicero, gave it to the observance of an obsolete constitutional fiction.

*Cicero may have been persuaded by Terentia to depose against the alibi of Clodius. Terentia hated Clodia, whom she suspected (seemingly without much evidence, of designs on her husband. Ego illam odi is Cicero's own description of his feelings towards this publica cura of Rome.-Att. ii. 1, 5.

Moreover, Mr. Beesly's account is inconsistent with itself. If Clodius had really been the prominent leader of the popular party,' he needed not to have taken the trouble to become a tribune; he could, on the invitation of Fufius, have addressed the comitia tributa, which would have readily given ear to the acknowledged popular leader. Clodius sought the tribunate in the character of an opponent of Caesar, who seeks to deny for himself and Pompeius any participation in bringing about the adoption into a plebeian family. Cicero suspects nothing. He refuses the legatio offered by Caesar, who, on failing to gain him as an adherent, generously seeks at least to protect him from molestation. Pompeius assures Cicero of his protection, and Cicero, when it does occur to him that Clodius is his enemy, declares that—

His soul's in arms and eager for the fray.

I cannot doubt that, had Cicero chosen, the Triumvirate might have been a Quattuorvirate; † but he is faithful to his causa optima, the defection of Pompeius from which he regrets in expressive phrase (Att. ii. 21, 3, 4). His only comfort is that he has now no rival in Pompeius for the plaudits of posterity (Att. ii. 17, 2). Clodius having gained his tribunate by concealing his designs against Cicero (a strong proof that Cicero was not the object of popular resentment), at once proceeds to his revenge. After several enactments, having a tendency to conciliate the various classes of Roman society, he proposes a law enacting that anyone who had put Roman citizens to death without trial should be interdicted from fire and water. Caesar having in vain tried to gain Cicero as an adherent-having in vain sought even to afford him an opportunity for retiring from a perilous position with

* Inimicissimus Caesaris, et ut omnia ista rescindat.-Att. ii. 12, 2.

This is stated in so many words by Cicero in the or. de provinciis consularibus, § 41, me in tribus sibi coniunctissimis consularibus esse voluit. And this pronouncement is abundantly confirmed by Cicero's private letters of this period. See Att. ii. 1, 6, and 7 to the words non minus esset probanda medicina quae sanaret vitiosas partes reipublicae quam quae exsecaret; again (Att. ii. 3, 3), from the words Nam fuit apud me Cornelius, where he distinctly says that he might have been a member of the coalition, but that he preferred to adhere to the policy and party which from his boyhood he looked on as the party of patriotism and constitutionalism. In fine, he resolves that his motto shall be: εἷς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης.

honour-now abandons him to his fate. Indeed Cicero's presence in Rome as a declared opponent of the Triumvirate might have. proved an obstacle to his own departure for Gaul. Pompeius betrayed him to whom he had so often pledged his word. The treason of Pompeius and the jealousy of Hortensius well-nigh cost the world some of the noblest of the speeches and essays of Cicero, for often during his exile the victim of Clodius was on the point of self-destruction. He often regrets that he had not opposed force to force, even though he should have perished in the employment of it; and still more he deplores the fatal step which he took in leaving Rome before he was directly impeached. But he invariably attributes his fall, firstly to the treason of Pompeius against the Optimates, and consequently against himself; secondly, to the jealousy felt towards him by the rival aspirants to the leadership of the Optimate party.

The recall of Cicero cannot for a moment be ascribed to a sudden rapprochement on the part of Pompeius to the nobility. Nor is Mr. Beesly true to the authorities in saying that the terms on which the nobility accepted the overtures of Pompeius were 'the re-establishment of the senatorial government and the recall of Cicero.' The exile of Cicero was due to the jealousy of the nobility as much as to the treason of Pompeius. But jealousy is a sentiment which, though it grows terribly while its object is still in a position to excite it, yet is capable of being allayed by the humiliation of the once envied rival. Cicero recalled from exile, even with all the honours which attended his recall, was no longer the triumphant parvenu, the irresistible moqueur, unstained by a humiliation, and unabashed by a repulse. And to this must be added the effect of that essentially personal factor in history which is so completely discounted by Mr. Beesly and his school. A quarrel about the safe keeping of an Armenian princeling brought about an incurable rupture between Pompeius and Clodius, and obtained for Cicero the good offices of Pompeius in procuring his restoration. Moreover, the people, whose instincts led them to acquiesce in the punishment of a man who had undoubtedly strained the constitution, yet felt that he had amply atoned his coup d'état, and welcomed back the saviour of his country. No doubt the rabble hissed, but the people (especially the Italians)

were enthusiastic in the cause of his restoration, and Pompeius, through hatred for Clodius, enrolled himself on the same side. The Senate strained every nerve, and there seems to have been an organised whip' of Italian voters. Nor were the bravoes of Milo an unimportant factor in the result achieved.* Thus, sad to tell, the restoration of Cicero was brought about mainly by the unconstitutional means by which it might more easily have been averted.

It will be seen, therefore, that neither in his version of the conspiracy of Catiline, nor in his account of the circumstances which led to the exile of Cicero, can the view of Mr. Beesly be accepted, unless by one who has deliberately formed the theory that Cicero has cooked' his letters-has given not the record of his own shifting hopes and fears, but a series of simulated reflec tions, so contrived as to put his own position and character in the best possible light. If anyone so reads these letters, which prac tically are our only authority for this period, I cannot argue with him. We differ on ultimate principles. When Cicero, in no polemical spirit, with no thought of proving anything, calls himself, in playful passages, vindicem aeris alieni, † it seems to me to show that he looked on the Catilinarian conspiracy as a struggle on the part of deeply indebted desperadoes, who were prepared, if necessary, to blot out the accounts against them in blood. Now a far more direct attestation to the same effect in one of his speeches would go a very small way towards convincing me of the sincerity of the sentiment expressed. Such is my view of the nature of the letters, and I believe this view will force itself on every unprejudiced reader of them.

But there is one sentence in which Mr. Beesly sums up the character of Cicero, which is interesting as an outspoken statement of much that is generally only implied in other arraignments of this conspicuous personage. I protest,' he says, 'that I have a genuine sympathy for all that is amiable and attractive in the character of Cicero. But I cannot forget that he took the wrong side in the politics of his country-nay, that he hired himself to do the work of a vile party.' That he hired himself to do the work of a vile party is not true. He joined a party, and used all his splendid abilities for the support of a party, which some may

think it

* Dio. Cass. xxxix. 8.

† Att. ii. 1, 11; Fam. v. 6, 2.

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