BRUTUS (continued 2)

Which of the two was right? Brutus assuredly if we think of the end. We see clearly that Octavius could not be anything but an ambitious man and a traitor. The name he bore was an irresistible temptation for him; to deliver the republic to him was to destroy it. Brutus was right in thinking that Octavius was more to be dreaded than Antony, and his hatred did not mislead him, when he foresaw in this divine young man, who was so much praised by Cicero, the future master of the empire, the heir and successor of him whom he had slain. Was it really Cicero who was to blame, or only the circumstances? When he accepted the aid of Octavius was he at liberty to refuse it? The republic had not, at that time, a single 354soldier to oppose Antony, they had to take those of Octavius or to perish. After he had saved the republic, it would have been ungracious to haggle with him over thanks and dignities. Besides, his veterans demanded them in a way that did not brook refusal, and often gave them to him in advance. The senate sanctioned everything as quickly as possible, for fear that they would do without its assent. “Circumstances,” says Cicero somewhere, “gave him the command, we have only added the fasces.”^[370] Thus, before blaming Cicero’s compliance, or complaining of his weakness, they should have thought of the difficulties of his position. He tried to re-establish the republic by the help of men who had fought against it and did not love it. What reliance could he place on Hirtius, the framer of a severe law against the Pompeians, on Plancus and Pollio, old lieutenants of Caesar, on Lepidus and Octavius, each of whom wished to take his place? and yet he had no other support than they. To that great and ambitious man who, on the morrow of the Ides of March, wished to make himself master, he could only oppose a coalition of inferior or concealed ambitions. Nothing was more difficult than to steer one’s way in the midst of all these open or secret rivalries. It was necessary to curb one by the other, to flatter them in order to lead them, to content them in part in order to keep them within bounds. Hence those lavish grants or promises of honours, that profusion of praises and titles, and those exaggerated official thanks. This was a necessity imposed by the circumstances; instead of considering it a crime in Cicero to have submitted to it, they should have drawn this conclusion, namely, that to attempt another struggle by legal means, to return to Rome to arouse the ardour of the populace, to trust again in the force of memories, and the supreme power of oratory, 355was to expose oneself to useless dangers and certain disappointment. Cicero knew this well. Sometimes, no doubt, in the heat of combat, he might allow himself to be carried away by the triumphs of his eloquence, as on that day, when he wrote naïvely to Cassius: “If one could speak oftener it would not be very difficult to re-establish the republic and liberty.”^[371] But this illusion never lasted long. The momentary intoxication over, he was not long in recognizing the impotence of oratory, and was the first to say they could only place their hopes on the republican army. He never changed that opinion. “You tell me,” he wrote to Atticus, “that I am wrong in thinking that the republic depends entirely upon Brutus; nothing is more certainly true. If it can be saved at all, it can only be by him and his friends.”^[372] Cicero had undertaken this last enterprise without illusions and without hope, and solely to yield to the wishes of Brutus, who persisted in his love of constitutional resistance and pacific struggles. Brutus, then, had less right than any one to reproach him with having succumbed. Cicero was right in often recalling that interview at Velia, when his friend persuaded him, notwithstanding his hesitation, to return to Rome. This recollection was his defence; it should have prevented Brutus uttering any bitter word against him, whom he had himself led into a useless enterprise.

Cicero must have deeply felt these reproaches, yet his friendship for Brutus remained unaltered by them. He still looks to him, he calls upon him, when all seems lost in Italy. Nothing is more touching than his last cry of alarm: “We are the sport, my dear Brutus, of the licence of the soldiers and the insolence of their leader. Every one wishes to have as much authority in the republic as he has force. Men no longer know reason, measure, law, nor 356duty; they no longer care for public opinion or the judgment of posterity. Come, then, and give at length to the republic that liberty which you have gained for it by your courage, but which we cannot yet enjoy. Every one will press around you; liberty has no refuge but in your tents. This is our position at this moment; would that it might become better! If it chances otherwise I shall only weep for the republic; it ought to be immortal. As for myself, I have but a little time to live!”^[373]

A very few months afterwards, Lepidus, Antony, and Octavius, triumvirs to reconstitute the republic, as they called themselves, assembled near Bologna. They knew each other too well not to be aware that they were capable of anything, consequently they had taken minute precautions against each other. The interview took place on an island, and they arrived with an equal number of troops who were not to lose sight of them. For still greater security, and for fear that any one should carry a hidden dagger, they went so far as to search each other. After having thus reassured themselves, they held a long conference. There was no longer any question of reconstituting the republic; what occupied their attention most, besides the division of power, was vengeance, and they carefully drew up a list of those who were to be slain. Dio Cassius remarks that, as they detested each other profoundly, a man was sure, if he was closely connected with one of them, to be the mortal enemy of the other two, so that each demanded precisely the heads of the best friends of his new allies. But this difficulty did not stop them; their gratitude was much less exacting than their hatred, and in purchasing the death of an enemy with that of a few friends or even relations, they thought they made a good bargain. Thanks to these mutual concessions, they soon came to an 357agreement, and the list was drawn up. Cicero was not forgotten in it, as we can well understand; Antony urgently demanded him, and it is not probable, whatever the writers of the empire may say, that Octavius defended him with much zeal; he would have constantly recalled to him a troublesome gratitude and a glaring act of perjury.

With the death of Cicero we have reached the end of this work, since we only proposed to study the relations of Cicero and Brutus. If we wished to carry it further, and to know Brutus’ end as well, it would suffice to read the admirable narrative of Plutarch. I should be afraid of spoiling it by abridging it. In it we see that Brutus felt intense sorrow on learning that Cicero had perished. He regretted more than a friend that with him he had lost a cherished hope, which he had been unwilling to surrender. This time, however, he was bound to acknowledge that there were no longer citizens at Rome, and to despair of that base populace who thus allowed its defenders to perish. “If they are slaves,” said he sadly, “it is their own fault rather than that of their tyrants.” No confession could have cost him more. Since he had killed Caesar, his life had been nothing but a series of disappointments, and events seemed to play with all the plans he had formed. His scruples about legality had caused him to lose the opportunity of saving the republic; his horror of civil war had only served to make him begin it too late. It was not enough that he found himself forced, in spite of himself, to violate the law and fight against his fellow-citizens, he was constrained to acknowledge, to his great regret, that in expecting too much of men he was mistaken. He had a good opinion of them when he studied them from a distance with his beloved philosophers. His opinions changed when he came to deal closely with them, when he had to be a witness of the debasement of character, to detect the 358secret greed, the senseless hatreds, the cowardly fears of those whom he regarded as the bravest and most honest! He was so deeply grieved that, on learning of the last weaknesses of Cicero, he came to doubt of philosophy itself, his favourite science, which had been the delight of his life. “Of what use has it been to him,” said he, “to have written with so much eloquence for the liberty of his country, upon honour, death, exile, or poverty? In truth, I begin to have no more confidence in those studies in which Cicero was so much occupied.”^[374] In reading these bitter words, we think of those which he spoke before his death; the one explains the other, and each is a symptom of the same internal trouble, which becomes great in proportion as the experience of public affairs disenchants him more and more with men and with life. He hesitated about philosophy, when he saw the weakness of those who had studied it most deeply; when he saw the party of the proscribers triumphing, he doubted of virtue.

It was fitting that thus should perish this man of thought, who had reluctantly become a man of action, and who was thrown by the force of events out of his natural element.

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