CHAPTER II CAESAR
CHAPTER III VERGIL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Of the ancient Romans, the men best known today are Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil. Whether justly or not, their writings have been accepted as models of their native Latin and for nearly two thousand years have been read by all students of that language. Furthermore, the name of Caesar is familiar even to those who have not the courage to attempt the study of Latin as one of the greatest military geniuses in history; and that of Cicero, as an orator probably better known than the great Greek, Demosthenes.
Each of the three, however, can be understood and appreciated thoroughly only by reading with increasing sympathy what he has to say in his own language, the Latin, enriched and brought to its most perfect form by Cicero as a vehicle for use in his powerful and perfect orations, and no less famous treatises. Vergil used it for the first time in a great narrative poem in dactylic hexameter. Caesar used it no less correctly for thoughts more familiar to Romans in writing the greatest of all histories of a series of military campaigns. Each was great in his own way and in his own time, and each has still his own particular influence upon the civilized world. For the very reason that their fame and influence refuse to die out, I have found it interesting to make a study of their lives. In this foreword I wish to mention certain noteworthy parallels and differences in their lives and work before proceeding to the phase with which I have dealt in my thesis, the very natural question of the women who influenced their lives.
Since Cicero was born in 106 B.C., Caesar, in 100, and Vergil, in 70, all lived in the first century before the birth of Christ, one of the most significant periods in history because of the great religious, cultural, social, and political changes taking place.
Each was affected by the gradual but widespread loss of faith in the Roman gods which prepared the way for the Christian era. Cicero and Caesar, most affected by current thought, became deeply skeptical, in common with the most thoughtful men of their time. Caesar, whose life was most strenuous at the last had not time to puzzle over such things, and seems to have been satisfied to believe only in "Fortuna", his good luck. Cicero, particularly after the death of his daughter, was profoundly interested in questions about spiritual matters, and has given us in his philosophical treatises an interesting insight into his spiritual gropings. Vergil, the latest but most conservative of the three, kept his faith, it seems, and glorified the Gods in his "Aeneid".
In common with most educated Romans of that century, all were products of the Greek culture which had "conquered" Rome. All studied under Greek teachers; Cicero, later, in Athens; and Caesar, at Rhodes. Caesar's oratorical powers, second among Romans only to those of Cicero, were perfected at Rhodes. Cicero's oratory and literary productions show Greek influence and he became so interested in Greek philosophy as to be the first Roman to express in Latin the teachings of the great Greek philosophers, before then recorded only in Greek. The influence of the Greek writers upon Vergil's work was such as to give rise to the charge, made at various times, of too great dependence upon the Greeks, especially upon Homer in the planning and writing of the "Aeneid". That charge is made, however, only when not enough thought has been given to the fact that whatever Vergil used from the Greek he made his own and so we read in the "Aeneid" most distinctly Roman Vergil and not Homer.
Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil each had the benefit of the best educational advantages of that day and was prepared for the same career, the public life of a Roman advocate and politician. Cicero and Caesar spent their lives as contemporaries on opposing sides in the very thick of Roman politics. Vergil was the friend of Caesar's great heir, Augustus, but he himself retired as far as possible from public life.
Of their private lives, which will be discussed later, it may be noted that not one of the three was either a Cincinnatus of the plow or a Nero. They lived at a time between extremes in Roman life and each reacted in a characteristic way to the changing social conditions. They were alike in two ways. Each lived a life of ease but each was free from coarse living and debauchery.
In any period of history men of great natural abilities enhanced by culture would undoubtedly been known; but Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil lived in a time when great crises arose and influenced their lives. Caesar, impressed by the teachings of Marius and the group around him, from the beginning took the side of reform in politics against the all-powerful Senate. He seems to have seen from his entrance into public life that changes in the constitution were inevitable, and it was as a natural consequence of his insight into the situation that he finally took the government of Rome into his own hands and became the great Dictator, for whom the history of Rome from the end of the Punic wars surely prepared the way.
The unsettled time in which he lived was not so well suited to the talents of Cicero. He was a man fitted to plead in the courts, to administer public office fairly for the good of Rome as he knew it. In the great crises, he did not see his way as clearly as did Caesar. For that reason, he has been called vacillating by critics who do not pause to think how infinitely hard it was to see the best thing for Rome while actor in those stirring scenes in the century before Christ.
Vergil, at 26, had no part in Roman life on the Ides of March, 44 B.C., when Caesar was killed in the midst of his great reforms, or in the following year when Cicero was great and sure of himself in his unselfish opposition to the plans of Mark Antony. Vergil had already written his first great work, the Eclogues, at his home near Mantua, but it was in the time of Augustus, with the decisive battle of Actium not yet fought, that he wrote the Georgics, and did his bit for Rome when he supported the policy of Augustus in the "Aeneid".
In the case of no one of these great Romans was his career an accident or the outcome of circumstances. Each built his life on a conscious purpose with a very definite idea from boyhood of what he wanted to be and do. Each was actuated by the driving power of a will to accomplish that purpose, and by the genius which made remarkable results possible. One question remains. In the lives and careers of these outstanding figures in the history not only of Rome but of the world, what part did women have and what influence did they exert?
To find traces of feminine influence in the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, it is natural to turn first to the facts known of his early home life and consider what is said of his mother. There is no doubt that the impress of his childhood home near Arpinum remained with him. He was loyal to his family and to his birthplace, and his loyalty seemed to become even greater as his fame increased and he became one of the greatest figures in Rome. Probably the contrast between his early home and the life in which his manhood was spent deepened his appreciation of the worthiness of his first environment. Cicero of Arpinum he has been called because throughout his life he remained more the Arpinate and a "peregrinus" rather than one in sympathy with the lives and tastes of those of equal standing in the corrupt society of the Rome of his day. In the treatise "De Legibus", written in 52 B.C., the scene is laid at Arpinum and Cicero when his fame had been won, describes the little town near the Liris "as the background against which he wished to appear."
We know that his mother's name was Helvia, that she was well-born, and of the equestrian rank and sturdy stock to which her husband also belonged. Her son's pride in his birth was shown when he wrote in "De Legibus", "Here, descended from a very ancient race, we first saw the day.(1) Plutarch relates as a story commonly told that a vision appeared to his nurse and foretold that she was nurturing a great blessing to all Romans.(2) He says further that Cicero's mother was of good family and conversation but that different origins were given for his father, also called Marcus, some saying that he was born and reared in the workshop of a fuller, others that his descent could be traced back to Tullus Atticus "who reigned with distinction among the Volsci and fought against the Romans with no small vigor."(3) Though his grandfather is the first member of the family about whom anything is known, most authorities are agreed that the Ciceros were farmers and had been of good position, even leaders, in Arpinum for many generations. Furthermore they were counted as knights and according to the Roman law had to be worth from $16,000 to $20,000.
From the fact that his descendants, though many people made a joke of the name Cicero, were not only not ashamed of it but even showed pride in it, Plutarch infers that the first of the family who got the cognomen was a man of note.(4) He accounts for the name in this way. "Cicer" in Latin means the vetch and the first Cicero had at the end of his nose a cleft or split like the cleft in the vetch.. Hannis Taylor suggests that the cognomen was derived from the cultivation of the vetch, if not from an ancestor who had a wart on his nose.(5) He adds the statement that "Tullius originally meant a spring or rivulet." When Marcus Tullius Cicero entered public life he was advised to change his name but replied that he would make the name famous.(6)
It seems that Helvia did not live to see much of "the promise or ripening powers of her son."(7) Probably her influence was felt only in his boyhood. Though the Romans laughed at the people of the country districts as rude and old-fashioned, it was in such simple homes as that of Cicero's father on the Tibrenus, an affluent of the Liris in southeastern Latium, that the ancient virtues of the Roman people were still respected and preserved. We may surmise that the mother of the family still held an honored place and that Cicero's mother helped to mold in his youth the best characteristics of her son. He himself writes in 6 B.C. of "hard work coupled with scrupulous integrity" as "the two conditions and powers with whose aid he expects to go forward to the remaining honors of public life."(8) There is every evidence to show that he lived up to that ideal. One writer, referring to the fact that when governor in Sicily at the time of a famine in Rome, he sent large cargoes to Rome without practicing extortion, says, "like few Roman officials" he "was capable of genuine moral enthusiasm."(9) It was an understood custom for Roman provincial governors to be cruel and dishonest but there is no doubt of Cicero's honest and humane treatment of the people of Sicily in 75 B.C. and of the people of Cilicia during his proconsulship in 51 B.C. Though ready to lend and borrow and careless of his accounts, he was always honorable in money matters. Though the chief aim of his life was to gain praise and glory and to gratify his vanity, he did not stoop to win elections by large expenditures of money. He was temperate in eating and drinking. His personal morality was astonishing in an age of such licentiousness that even Cato divorced his wife for her to marry Hortensius, then received her back, a rich widow, when Hortensius died. He was true to his friends, to his home and family, to his work as orator, statesman, and writer, and to his love for Rome. I do not believe that Peterson exaggerates when he writes, "It can probably be maintained with an exceptionally high degree of likelihood that if the great Romans of his day had taken a vote to decide which one among them stood highest as a representative of unselfishness in public service, of culture, and of good breeding, the outcome would have been the same at the time when the colleagues of Themistocles took their famous vote. Each one, like a true son of Romulus, might have put himself in the first place, but he would have given the second place to Cicero."(10) Such a man was not an accident but should be compared to a tree which was bent the right way when it was young.
Since Cicero's extant correspondence does not begin until 68 B.C. when he was thirty-eight years of age, his letters contain no information about his mother. Quintus Cicero has shown his mother to have been a careful housewife and a thrifty disposition by relating in a letter to Tiro in 44 B.C. the incident of her sealing empty wine flasks to prevent the possibility of their having been emptied by servants.(11) It is probable that she helped to build up or at least to maintain the substantial property which enabled Cicero's father to buy a house in the Carrinae in Rome and to spend at least from October to June(12) there in order to give his sons the advantage of studying under the best teachers, such as the Greek poet, Archias, and of acquiring that Greek culture which added to his genius enabled Cicero to mold the Latin language to the perfect form of his great prose writings.
It was through his mother's family that Cicero made some of his most valuable contacts in Rome. Her sister married C. Visellius Aculeo, of equestrian rank and no especial culture, but eminent in the Roman civil law, and for that reason well known to L. Licinius Crassus and Marcus Antonius who then were the foremost figures at the Roman bar. Both had profited by the Greek culture and learning, just beginning to be appreciated in Rome, and Antonius knew the language. Cicero heard and questioned both. The sons of Aculeo and their cousin studied under such teachers as Crassus approved. Sihler says that "Crassus seems to have taken a kindly interest in studies for whose choice he had assumed a certain responsibility."(13) With his cousins Cicero was invited to the house of Crassus and that association must have meant much to the ambitious young student.
Cicero's mother was evidently not ignorant or unintelligent and was probably ambitious for her sons but his father seems definitely to have hoped for them to enter politics and establish senatorial families, an ambition which was Cicero's from boyhood. The elder Cicero lived until about 67 B.C. and, an invalid in his later years, spent his time in quiet study in the villa three miles from Arpinum on the site of the home in which Cicero was born. He approved of Greek culture and was interested in the past and present of Rome and must have been so much in sympathy with his son that their discussions strengthened the early impressions from which Cicero derived his love for Rome and its past, and his respect for the Republican constitution, qualities which made his political life what it was. Arpinum was too far away for the changes in Roman political life to be appreciated. People in outlying districts are always conservative and Cicero, the Arpinate, never saw the situation in Rome as Caesar saw it.
In another way Cicero's political life was affected by his family. His work was made harder; but his political success was finally assured by the fact that he belonged to the equestrian rank and remained loyal to those whom he called the "true Roman people."(14) Opposed to radical reforms, he was not popular with the masses who, moreover, accepted the preeminence of the aristocracy and were not inclined to vote for a "novus homo" for the higher magistracies in Rome. Looked down upon always by the Roman aristocracy, he had to face the united opposition of the established ruling class. Political success in Rome was not easy for a man whose family was unknown. It was Cicero's influence with the Italian middle class which elected him quaestor, curule aedile, praetor, and consul at the earliest ages allowed. It was their demand for his recall which ended his exile in 57 B.C. as soon as the active opposition of Caesar was removed, and it was his strength as their leader which made Caesar wish to have his support in 49 B.C.(15)
Some time between 78 B.C. and 73 B.C., Cicero married Terentia and, in so doing, furnished a seemingly undying subject for debate for those writing upon or merely interested in the life of Cicero. The debatable question is whether Cicero or Terentia was more to be blamed for the marital troubles which ended in their divorce in 47 B.C. or early 46 B.C. The date of the marriage is not known but this trace of it occurs in 73 B.C. that, according to Plutarch, there was mention of Cicero's having Terentia's marriage portion.(16) It is hardly to be thought that he married before he returned from the East in 77 B.C., having gone there to study in 79 B.C. as a matter of precaution after having opposed a favorite of Sulla in the defense of Roscius.
Of Terentia it is known that she was well-born and possessed of a considerable fortune. If her fortune was one of her attractions, it must have been a disappointing one because she kept control of it, and exercising the privilege which Roman women were enjoying, in that changing time, of taking part in financial dealings, she had her own steward and became interested in financial enterprises which seem finally to have involved her husband's money also. Probably her social standing was her chief attraction. Though Cicero continued to be of an "equestrian consciousness", he was ambitious to win a high position in Rome and may have married Terentia because she was an aristocrat and had a substantial fortune as well. Her dowry of about $18,000 was not to be despised by an ambitious young man who had very little with which to begin life except his genius and a determination to win the praise and glory which he mentions in the oration "Pro Archia" as the one thing he desired in life.(17) His father left him the house in the Carinae in which he lived until 62 B.C. when he bought the mansion built by Crassus on the Palatine. As his father probably left him little money and his own earnings as an advocate, depending as they seem to have done on gifts, loans, and legacies from grateful clients, must have been slow in accumulating, the dowry of Terentia should have been very acceptable. The reproach of Mr. Hannis Taylor that Cicero resented not getting sufficient financial aid while with Pompey's army from "the wife whose independent fortune he had always enjoyed"(18) does not seem just. No mention is made of his using Terentia's money or of her loosening her grip upon it to aid him in any financial difficulties. Probably she was managing his property at the time with the aid of her freedman, Philotimus, whom Cicero seems with good reason to have distrusted. When Cicero began to improve his way of living in accordance with the idea he himself advances in his treatise on "Duty" that "a man of prominence should live in a house befitting his station,"(19) his first purchase, the villa at Tusculum was made with borrowed money, and, even if he had had the use of it, Terentia's property could have meant little to Cicero who in 62 B.C. paid $150,000 for the mansion on the Palatine. Apparently he received huge sums as gifts and legacies, for he owned eight villas, as Tusculum, Formiae, Antium, Astura, Sinuessa, Cumae, Puteoli, and Pompeii, besides four lodges, as stopping places while he was traveling, the family home at Arpinum, and several houses in Rome.
When the villas at Tusculum and Formiae were sacked by the bands of Clodius during his exile, the Senate allowed him $22,000 for the first and $11,000 for the other, neither sum having been considered sufficient by Cicero. That he made a great deal of money and that his credit was good in spite of his reckless expenditures and careless business methods we infer from his own statement in a letter to Sestius in 62 B.C., "Let me tell you I am so deep in debt as to desire to enter into a conspiracy myself. But my credit is good in the Forum." His very carelessness in regard to finances makes it natural to suppose that Terentia acquired some control over his money rather than he over hers.
Terentia was an ambitious woman and must have appreciated fully the possibility of the brilliant young orator's rise to fame and power. She seems to have been interested in his political career and that may have been a bond between them until that career reached the highest point to which a Roman could attain when Cicero was elected to the consulship in 64 B.C. There are some instances of her influence upon his work but there is no evidence to show that he owed his success in the slightest degree to his wife's influence.
On the night of December 3, 63 B.C., after the conspirators had been put in custody, Cicero did not go to his home but deliberated at the house of a friend because that was the night of the annual rites in honor of the Bona Dea. Since Cicero was consul and the ceremonies were held at the house of a consul or a praetor, they took place at his house. In 65 B.C. a prodigium had happened to Cicero's wife at that ritual. The sacrifice having been made, Terentia poured a libation upon the ashes. From the ashes a flame shot up, a sign that her husband would be consul in a year. Cicero was sufficiently impressed or sufficiently vain to mention the fact in a poem on his consulship.(20) On the occasion of the ritual in 63 B.C. under the same circumstances a great flame shot up and the Vestal Virgins urged Terentia, as Plutarch says, "to go with all speed to her husband and tell him to take in hand what he had resolved on behalf of his country, for the goddess was displaying a great light to lead him to safety and honour."(21) He adds, "Terentia, who generally was not a woman of mild temper nor naturally without courage, but an ambitious woman and, as Cicero himself says, more ready to share in his political perplexities than to communicate to him her domestic matters", reported this to her husband and stimulated him against the conspirators. What part Terentia had, if any, in causing the enmity between Cicero and Clodius I shall discuss later. That her aristocratic relatives aided Cicero's career there is no evidence. It is probable that her resentment aggravated the ill will between Cicero and Catiline, but it did not cause it. Cicero had real friends among the aristocrats but he made those friends by his own ability to attract people to him.
1. Cicero, Marcus Tullius, "De Legibus", translated by C.D. Yonge. Lond., Bell, 1907. Opening of second book.
2. Plutarch, Life of Cicero, tr. by Aubrey Stewart & George Long. Lond., G. Bell & Sons., 1924. V.4, ch.II
3. Plutarch, Life of Cicero, ch. I
4. Ibid.
5. Taylor, Hannis, Cicero. Chic. A.C. McClurg & Co., 1916, p. 46.
6. Ibid.
7. Sihler, Ernest Gottlieb, Cicero of Arpinum. N.Y., Yale Univ. Press, 1914. p.5.
8. Cicero, M.T. "Pro Cluentio," III.
9. Sihler, op. cit., p.64.
10. Peterson, Torsten, Cicero. Berkeley, Univ. Calif. Press, 1920, p. 20.
11. Cicero, M.T. "Ad Familiares", tr. by E.S. Shuckburg. Lond., G. Bell & Sons, 1905-9 XVI, 6.
12. Sihler, op.cit. p. 5.
13. Ibid., p. 12.
14. Taylor, op.cit., p.155.
15. Taylor, op.cit., p. 155.
16. Plutarch, op.cit., ch. VIII.
17. Cicero, M.T., "Pro Archia", edited by C.E. Bennett. Bost., Allyn & Bacon, 1922, VI, 14.
18. Taylor, op.cit., p. 318.
19. Cicero, M.T.. "De Officiis", with an English translation by Walter Miller. Lond. Heinemann, 1921. I, 138-140.
20. Sihler, op.cit., p. 162
21. Plutarch, op.cit., ch. XX