CAESAR AND CICERO

I CICERO AND THE CAMP OF CAESAR IN GAUL

Cicero was not wrong when he said one day to Caesar: “After our time, there will be great debates about you, as there have been among ourselves.”^[235] It is certain that he is that historical personage whom men still discuss with most heat. None has excited more sympathy or roused more animosity, and it must be admitted that there seems to be something in him to justify both the one and the other. He cannot be admired or blamed without some reservations, and he always attracts on some side those whom he repels on another. The very people who hate him the most, and who cannot pardon him the political revolution that he accomplished, are forced into a secret admiration for him when they think of his victories, or read his writings.

The more complex and disputable his character, the more necessary it is, in order to form a just idea of him, to interrogate those who were in a position to know him. Although Cicero was almost all his life separated from Caesar by grave disagreements, twice he had occasion to maintain a close intercourse with him: during the Gallic war he was his political ally and his assiduous correspondent; after Pharsalia he became his friend again, and acted as intermediary between the conqueror and those he had condemned 210to exile. Let us inquire what he says of him at these two periods of his life when he saw him most closely, and let us collect from his correspondence, through which we become so well acquainted with the eminent men of that time, the information it contains about him who was the greatest of all.

I.

I must first recall the events which led Cicero to desert the aristocratic party to which he had been attached since his consulship, in order to serve the triumvirs, and how the courageous friend of Hortensius and of Cato became so subservient to Pompey and Caesar. It is not an honourable period in his life, and his most convinced admirers say as little about it as possible. However, there is some interest, perhaps even some profit, in pausing upon it for a moment.

Cicero’s return from the exile to which he had been condemned after his consulship by the efforts of Clodius, was a veritable triumph. Brundusium, where he disembarked, celebrated his arrival by public rejoicings. All the citizens of the free towns that bordered the Appian Way, waited for him on the road, and the heads of families with their wives and children came from all the neighbouring farms to see him pass. At Rome, he was received by an immense multitude crowded on the public squares, or ranged on the steps of the temples. “It seemed,” said he, “that all the city was drawn from its foundations to come and salute its liberator.”^[236] At his brother’s house, where he was going to live, he found the most eminent members of the senate awaiting him, and at the same time congratulatory addresses from all the popular societies of the city. It is probable that some who had signed these, 211had voted with the same eagerness the preceding year for the law that exiled him, and that many clapped their hands on his return who had applauded his departure; but the people have occasionally these strange and generous impulses. It sometimes happens that they break away by a sudden bound from the malice, distrust, and narrowness of party spirit, and, at the very moment when passions seem most inflamed and divisions most clearly marked, they unite all at once to render homage to some great genius or to some great character, which, we know not how, has compelled their recognition. Usually, this gratitude and admiration last but a short time; but, should they endure only a day, they do eternal honour to him who has been their object, and the glory they leave behind is sufficient to illumine a whole life. Therefore we must pardon Cicero for having spoken so often and with so much effusiveness of this glorious day. A little pride was here both legitimate and natural. How could a soul so sensitive to popular applause have resisted the intoxication of a triumphal return? “I do not feel as though I were simply returning from exile,” said he, “I appear to myself to be mounting to heaven.”^[237]

But he was not long in descending again to earth. Whatever he may have thought at first, he soon recognized that this city which welcomed him with so much rejoicing was not changed, and that he found it much the same as when he left it. Anarchy had reigned there for three years, an anarchy such as we have difficulty in imagining, notwithstanding all the examples that our own revolutions have given us. Since the triumvirs had let loose the rabble in order to seize upon the government of the republic, it had become entirely master. A daring tribune, a deserter from the aristocracy, and one who bore the most illustrious name in Rome, Clodius, had taken upon himself to lead it, and as 212far as possible, to discipline it. He had displayed in this difficult work many talents and much audacity, and had succeeded well enough to deserve to become the terror of honest people. When we speak of the Roman mob, we must not forget that it was much more frightful than our own, and was recruited from more formidable elements. Whatever just dismay the populace that emerges all at once from the lowest quarters of our manufacturing cities, on a day of riot, may cause us, let us remember that at Rome, this inferior social stratum descended still lower. Below the vagabond strangers and the starving workmen, the ordinary tools of revolutions, there was all that crowd of freedmen demoralized by slavery, to whom liberty had given but one more means for evil-doing; there were those gladiators, trained to fight beast or man, who made light of the death of others or themselves; there were, still lower, those fugitive slaves, who were indeed the worst of all classes, who, after having robbed or murdered at home, and lived by pillage on the road, came from all Italy to take refuge and disappear in the obscurity of the slums of Rome, an unclean and terrible multitude of men without family, without country, who, outlawed by the general sentiment of society, had nothing to respect as they had nothing to lose. It was among these that Clodius recruited his bands. Enlistments were made in open day, in one of the most frequented spots in Rome, near the Aurelian steps. The new soldiers were then organized in decuries and centuries, under energetic leaders. They assembled by districts in secret societies, where they went to receive the password, and had their centre and arsenal at the temple of Castor. When the day arrived, and a popular manifestation was wanted, the tribunes ordered the shops to be closed; then, the artisans were thrown on the public streets, and all the army of the secret societies marched together towards the Forum. There 213they met, not the honest folks, who, feeling themselves the weaker party, stayed at home, but the gladiators and herdsmen whom the senate had fetched to defend them from the wilds of Picenum or Gaul, and then the battle commenced. “Imagine London,” says M. Mommsen, “with the slave population of New Orleans, the police of Constantinople, and the industrial condition of modern Rome, and think of the political state of Paris in 1848: you will have some idea of republican Rome in its last days.”

No law was any longer respected, no citizen, no magistrate was secure from violence. One day the fasces of a consul were broken, the next a tribune was left for dead. The senate itself, led away by these examples, had at last lost that quality which Romans lost the last, its dignity. In that assembly of kings, as a Greek had called it, they debated with revolting coarseness. Cicero surprised no one when he gave his adversaries the names of swine, filth, rotten flesh. Sometimes the discussions became so heated that the noise reached that excited crowd that filled the porticoes near the curia, which then took part in them, with so much violence that the terrified senators hastened to fly.^[238] We can easily understand that it was much worse in the Forum. Cicero relates that, when they were tired of insulting, they spat in each other’s faces.^[239] When a man wished to address the people, he had to take the rostrum by storm, and he risked his life in trying to keep his place there. The tribunes had found a new way of obtaining unanimity of votes for the laws that they proposed: namely, to beat and drive away all who took it into their heads not to agree with them. But contests were nowhere more violent than on the Campus Martius on election days. Men were driven to regret the time when they trafficked publicly in the votes of the electors. Now, they did not 214even take the trouble to buy public offices; they found it more convenient to seize them by force. Each party went before daylight to the Campus Martius. Collisions took place on the roads leading to it. Each party hastened to arrive before its adversaries, or, if these were already established there, attacked them in order to dislodge them: naturally the appointments belonged to those who remained masters of the place. In the midst of all these armed bands there was no security for any one. Men were obliged to fortify themselves in their houses for fear of being surprised. They could only go out with a train of gladiators and slaves. To go from one quarter of the city to another, they took as many precautions as if they had to traverse a desert country, and they met at the turning of a street with the same fear they would have had at the corner of a wood. In the midst of Rome there were real battles and regular sieges. It was an ordinary manœuvre to set fire to the houses of their enemies at the risk of burning down a whole quarter, and, towards the end, no election or popular assembly took place without bloodshed. “The Tiber,” says Cicero, speaking of one of these combats, “was full of the corpses of the citizens, the public sewers were choked with them, and they were obliged to mop up with sponges the blood that streamed from the Forum.”^[240]

Such were the obscure convulsions in which the Roman republic perished, and the shameful disorders that sapped its remaining strength. Cicero well knew that bloody anarchy and the dangers he was about to run, and had therefore resolved, before re-entering Rome, to be prudent, so as not to run the risk of having to leave it again. His was not one of those minds that misfortune strengthens, and that feel a kind of pleasure in struggling against ill-fortune. Exile had discouraged him. During the long weariness of his sojourn 215in Thessaly, he had made a sad review of the past. He had reproached himself for his occasional courage and independence, for his boldness in combating the powerful, and for the mistake he had made in joining himself too closely to the party which he had judged the best, but which was evidently the weakest, as though to act thus had been a crime. He came back thoroughly resolved to entangle himself as little as possible with any one, to disarm his enemies by concession, and to keep on good terms with everybody. This was the course he followed on his arrival, and his first speeches are masterpieces of policy. It is plain that he still leans towards the aristocracy which had taken an active part in his restoration, and to praise it he has noble expressions of patriotism and gratitude; but already he commences to flatter Caesar, and he calls Pompey “the most virtuous, the wisest, the greatest of the men of his age or of any age.”^[241] At the same time, he tells us himself, he took good heed not to appear in the senate when irritating questions were to be discussed, and was very careful to escape from the Forum as soon as the debate became too heated. “No more violent remedies,” he replied to those who tried to urge him to some brilliant action; “I must put myself on diet.”^[242]

However, he soon perceived that this adroit reserve was not sufficient to ward off all danger. While he was rebuilding his house on the Palatine, which had been destroyed after his departure, the bands of Clodius threw themselves on the workmen and dispersed them, and, emboldened by this success, set fire to the house of his brother Quintus, which was close by. A few days later, as he was walking on the Via Sacra, he heard all at once a great noise, and on turning round saw sticks raised and naked swords. It was the same 216men who came to attack him. He had great difficulty in escaping into the vestibule of a friendly house while his slaves fought bravely before the door to give him time to escape. Cato would not have been moved by this violence; Cicero must have been very much frightened; above all it taught him that his system of prudent reserve did not sufficiently assure his safety. It was, in fact, probable that no party would expose itself to defend him as long as he had only compliments to give it, and as he could not stand alone and without support in the midst of all these armed factions, it was really necessary that, in order to find the support he needed, he should consent to attach himself more closely to one of them.

But which should he choose? This was a grave question in which his interests were at variance with his sympathies. All his inclinations were evidently for the aristocracy. He had closely attached himself to it about the time of his consulship, and since that time he had professed to serve it, and it was for it that he had just braved the anger of the people and exposed himself to exile. But this very exile had taught him how the most honourable course was also the least safe. At the last moment, the senate had not found better means of saving him than to make useless decrees, to put on mourning, and go and throw themselves at the feet of the consuls. Cicero thought that this was not enough. Seeing himself so ill-defended, he had suspected that people who did not take his interests in hand more resolutely were not very sorry for his misfortunes; and perhaps he was not wrong. The Roman aristocracy, whatever he had done for it, could not forget he was a “new” man. The Claudii, the Cornelii, the Manlii, always looked with a certain displeasure on this insignificant townsman of Arpinum, whom the popular vote had made their equal. Still they might have pardoned his good fortune if he had 217borne it with more modesty; but we know his vanity; though it was only ridiculous, the aristocracy, whom it offended, thought it criminal. They could not tolerate the legitimate pride with which he constantly recalled that he was only a parvenu. They thought it strange that, when attacked by insolence, he dared to reply by raillery; and quite recently they had shown themselves scandalized that he had forgotten himself so far as to buy the villa of Catulus at Tusculum, and to go and live on the Palatine in the house of Crassus. Cicero, with his usual shrewdness, very clearly discerned all these sentiments of the aristocracy, and even exaggerated them. Since his return from exile he had yet other grievances against them. They had taken much trouble to get him recalled; but had not foreseen the splendour of his return, and it did not seem that they were very well pleased with it. “Those who have clipped my wings,” said Cicero, “are sorry to see them grow again.”^[243] From this moment his good friends in the senate would do nothing more for him. He had found his finances much embarrassed, his house on the Palatine burnt, his villas at Tusculum and Formiae plundered and destroyed, and they decided with reluctance to indemnify him for these losses. What irritated him still more, was that he saw clearly that they did not share in his anger against Clodius. They showed themselves cool or remained silent during his violent fits of anger. A few even, the most adroit, affected to speak only with esteem of this factious tribune, and did not blush to give him their hand in public. Whence came their regard for a man who had so little for them? It was that they hoped to make use of him, and that they secretly nourished the thought of calling in the mob to the help of the endangered aristocracy. This alliance, although less usual than that of the mob with despotism, was not impossible, 218and the bands of Clodius, if they could be enlisted, would have permitted the senate to hold the triumvirs in check. Cicero, who perceived this policy, feared to become its victim; he bitterly regretted then the services he had tried to render to the senate, and which had cost him so dear. In recalling the dangers to which he had exposed himself in order to defend it, the obstinate and unsuccessful struggles that he had maintained for four years, the ruin of his political position and the disasters of his private fortune, he said with sorrow: “I see clearly now that I have been only a fool (scio me asinum germanum fuisse”).^[244]

It only remained for him then to turn to the triumvirs. This was the advice given to him by his friend the prudent Atticus, and his brother Quintus, whom the burning of his house had rendered cautious contrary to his habit; this was the resolution he was himself tempted to take every time he ran some fresh danger. Nevertheless, he had some trouble in making up his mind. The triumvirs had been heretofore his most cruel enemies. Without speaking of Crassus, in whom he detected an accomplice of Catiline, he well knew that it was Caesar who had let Clodius loose against him, and he could not forget that Pompey, who had sworn to defend him, had lately abandoned him to the vengeance of his two friends; but he had no choice of alliances, and since he dared no longer trust the aristocratic party, he was forced to put himself under the protection of others. He had then to resign himself to his fate. He authorized his brother to pledge him to Caesar and Pompey, and prepared himself to serve their ambition. His first act, after his return, had been to demand for Pompey one of those extraordinary powers of which he was so greedy: by his exertions Pompey had been entrusted for six years with the victualling of Rome, and on this occasion he had been 219invested with an almost unlimited authority. A short time after, although the public treasury was exhausted, he had a sum of money granted to Caesar for the payment of his legions, and permission to have ten lieutenants under his orders. When the aristocracy, who understood with what design Caesar was carrying out the conquest of Gaul, wished to prevent him continuing it, it was again Cicero who demanded and obtained for him permission to finish his work. It was thus that the old enemy of the triumvirs became their usual defender before the senate. The support that he consented to give was not useless to them. His great name and his eloquence drew towards him the moderate men of all parties, those whose opinion was wavering and their convictions undecided; those, above all, who, wearied with a too tempestuous liberty, sought everywhere a firm hand that might give them repose; and these, joined to the personal friends of Caesar and Pompey, to the tools that the rich Crassus had made by bribery, and to the ambitious men of all sorts who foresaw the advent of the monarchy and wished to be the first to salute it, formed in the senate a majority of which Cicero was the head and the orator, and which rendered to the triumvirs the important service of giving a legal sanction to that power which they had gained by violence and exercised illegally.

Cicero had at length obtained repose. His enemies feared him, Clodius dared no longer risk attacking him, his familiarity with the new masters was envied, and yet this skilful conduct, which gained for him the thanks of the triumvirs and the congratulations of Atticus, did not fail at times to disturb him. It was in vain for him to say to himself that “his life had regained its splendour,” he did not feel less remorse in serving men whose ambition he knew, and whom he knew to be dangerous to the liberty of his country. In the midst of the efforts that he made to satisfy 220them, he had sudden awakenings of patriotism which made him blush. His private correspondence bears everywhere the trace of the alternations of mood through which he passed. One day he wrote to Atticus in a light and resolute tone: “Let us give up honour, justice, and fine sentiments.... Since those who can do nothing will not love me, let us try to make ourselves loved by those who can do everything.”^[245] But shame seized him the next day, and he could not avoid saying to his friend: “Is anything sadder than our life, mine above all? If I speak according to my convictions I pass for a madman; if I listen to my interests, I am accused of being a slave; if I am silent, they say I am afraid.”^[246] Even in his public speeches, notwithstanding the restraint he puts on himself, we can feel his secret dissatisfaction. It seems to me that we discover it above all in that extraordinary tone of bitterness and violence which was then habitual to him. Never, perhaps, did he pronounce more passionate invectives. Now this excess of violence towards others often comes from a mind ill at ease. What made his eloquence so bitter at this time was that uneasy feeling which a man has who is in the wrong path and has not the courage to leave it. He did not forgive his old friends their raillery and his new ones their demands; he reproached himself secretly for his base concessions; he had a spite against others and against himself, and Vatinius or Piso suffered for all the rest. In this condition of mind he could not be a safe friend for anybody. It happened sometimes that he suddenly turned on his new friends, and gave blows so much the more disagreeable that they were not expected. Sometimes he diverted himself by attacking their best friends, to show others and prove to himself that he had not entirely lost his liberty. People had been very much surprised to hear him, in a speech in which he defended Caesar’s interests, 221praise to excess Bibulus, whom Caesar detested. One day even he seemed quite ready to return to those whom he had called honest men before he abandoned them. It seemed to him a good opportunity to break with his new party in a formal manner. The friendship of the triumvirs had become very cool. Pompey was not pleased with the success of that Gallic war which threatened to make his own victories forgotten. Cicero, who heard him speak without restraint against his rival, thought he might without danger give some satisfaction to his irritated conscience, and wished by a brilliant stroke to deserve the pardon of his old friends. Taking advantage of some difficulty that was raised in regard to the carrying out of Caesar’s agrarian law, he formally announced that on the Ides of May he would speak on the sale of the Campanian lands which by this law were distributed among the people. The effect of his declaration was very great. The allies of the triumvirs were as much offended as they were surprised, and the aristocratic party hastened to welcome with transports of joy the return of the eloquent deserter, but in a few days everything turned against him. At the very moment when he decided on this brilliant stroke, the alliance between the triumvirs that was thought to be broken, was renewed at Lucca, and, amid a concourse of their flatterers, they once more divided the world between them. Cicero, then, was about to find himself again alone and without support in the presence of an angry and all-powerful enemy who threatened to deliver him up again to the vengeance of Clodius. Atticus scolded; Quintus, who had pledged himself for his brother, complained roughly that his promises were being broken. Pompey, although he had secretly encouraged the defection, affected to be more angry than anybody. The unhappy Cicero, attacked on all sides, and trembling at the passions which he had raised, hastened to submit, and promised everything that 222was required. Thus this attempt at independence only made his slavery heavier.

From this moment he seems to have resolutely accepted his new position, from a feeling that he could not change it. He resigned himself to heap more and more exaggerated praises on the vain Pompey, who never had enough. He consented to become the agent of Caesar with Oppius and Balbus, and to supervise the public buildings he was constructing. He went further, and was willing at the request of his powerful protectors to give his hand to men whom he regarded as his greatest enemies. This was not a small sacrifice for a man who had such strong aversions; but from the time that he joined their party so decidedly, he was obliged to accept their friendship as he defended their plans. They began to take steps to reconcile him to Crassus. This was a great matter which was not done in a day, for when it was thought that their old enmity was appeased, it broke out all at once in a discussion in the senate, and Cicero abused his new ally with a violence that surprised himself. “I thought my hatred exhausted,” said he naïvely, “and did not imagine any remained in my heart.”^[247] He was then asked to undertake the defence of Vatinius; he consented with a pretty good grace, although he had pronounced a furious invective against him the year before. The advocates in Rome were accustomed to these sudden changes, and Cicero had done the same thing more than once. When Gabinius returned from Egypt, after having restored King Ptolemy against the formal command of the senate, Cicero, who could not abide him, thinking it a good opportunity to ruin him, prepared to attack him; but Pompey came to beg him urgently to defend him. He dared not refuse, changed his part, and submitted to speak in favour of a man whom he detested and a cause which he 223considered bad. He had at least the consolation of losing his case, and although he was always anxious for success, it is probable that this failure did not give him much pain.

But he well understood that so much deference and submission, all these notorious self-contradictions to which he was forced, would end by rousing public opinion against him. Therefore, about this time, he decided to write an important letter to his friend Lentulus, one of the chiefs of the aristocracy, which he probably intended to be circulated, and in which he explains his conduct.^[248] In this letter, after having related the facts in his own way and sufficiently abused those whom he had abandoned, a convenient and common mode of anticipating their complaints and making them responsible for the mischief he was about to do them, he ventures to present, with singular candour, a sort of apology for his political instability. The reasons he gives to justify it are not always very good; but we must believe that better cannot be found, since they have not ceased to be used. Under the pretence that Plato has somewhere said, “one must not do violence to one’s country any more than to one’s father,” Cicero lays it down as a principle, that a politician ought not to persist in wishing for what his fellow-citizens do not wish, nor lose his pains in attempting useless opposition. Circumstances change, one must change with them, and suit oneself to the wind that blows, so as not to go to pieces on the rocks. Besides, is that really to change? Cannot one in the main wish for the same thing and serve one’s country under different banners? A man is not fickle for defending, according to circumstances, opinions that seem contradictory if by opposite routes he marches to the same goal, and do we not know “that we must often shift the sails when we wish to arrive in port”? 224These are only the general maxims which an inventive politician can make up to hide his weaknesses, and there is no need to discuss them. The best way to defend Cicero is to remember in what a time he lived, and how little fitted he was for that time. This elegant literary man, this skilful artist, this friend of the arts of peace, had been placed, by a caprice of fate, in one of the most stormy and troubled periods of history. What could a man of leisure and study do among those deadly struggles where force was master, a man who had no arms but his words, and who always dreamed of the pleasures of peaceful times and the pacific laurels of eloquence? A more manly soul than his would have been needed to make head against these assaults. Events stronger than himself confounded his designs every instant and played with his hesitating will. On his entry into public life he had taken for his motto, leisure and honour, otium cum dignitate; but these two things are not easy to unite in revolutionary times, and almost always one of the two is lost when we are too anxious to preserve the other. Resolute characters, who know this well, make their choice between them at once, and, according as one is a Cato or an Atticus, one decides from the very first day either for leisure or for honour. The undecided, like Cicero, pass from one to the other, according to circumstances, and thus jeopardize both. We have arrived at one of those painful moments in his life when he sacrifices honour to leisure; let us not be too severe upon him, and let us remember that, later, he sacrificed not only his leisure, but even his life, to save his honour.

II.

One of the results of the new policy of Cicero was to give him an opportunity of becoming well acquainted with 225Caesar. Not that they had been hitherto strangers to one another. The taste of both for letters and the similar nature of their studies, had united them in their youth, and from these early relations, which men never forget, there had remained some natural sympathy and good-will. But as in later life they had attached themselves to opposite parties, circumstances had separated them. In the Forum, and in the senate, they had acquired the habit of always being of opposite opinions, and naturally their friendship had suffered from the vivacity of their dissensions. Yet Cicero tells us that, even when they were most excited against each other, Caesar could never hate him.^[249]

Politics had separated them, politics reunited them. When Cicero turned towards the party of the triumvirs their intimate relations recommenced; but this time their position was different, and their connection could no longer have the same character. The old school-fellow of Cicero had become his protector. It was no longer a mutual inclination or common studies, it was interest and necessity that united them, and their new ties were formed by a sort of reciprocal agreement in which one of the two gave his talents and a little of his honour, that the other might guarantee him repose. These are not very favourable circumstances, it must be admitted, to produce a sincere friendship. However, when we read Cicero’s private correspondence, in which he speaks unreservedly, we cannot doubt but that he found many charms in these relations with Caesar which seemed to him at first to be so difficult. Probably this was because he compared them with those which he had at the same time to keep up with Pompey. Caesar at least was affable and polite. Although he had the gravest affairs on his hands, he found time to think of his friends and to joke with them. Victorious as he was, 226he allowed them to write to him “familiarly and without subserviency.”^[250] He answered with amiable letters, “full of politeness, kind attentions and charm,”^[251] which delighted Cicero. Pompey, on the contrary, seemed to take a pleasure in wounding him by his lofty airs. This pompous and vain man, whom the adoration of the Orientals had spoilt, and who could not avoid assuming the deportment of a conqueror merely in going from his house at Alba to Rome, affected an imperious and haughty tone which alienated everybody. His dissimulation was still more displeasing than his insolence. He had a sort of dislike of communicating his projects to others; he hid them even from his most devoted friends, who wished to know them in order to support them. Cicero complains more than once that he could never discover what he wanted; it even happened that he was completely deceived as to his real intentions and made him angry, thinking he was doing him a service. This obstinate dissimulation passed, no doubt, for profound policy in the eyes of the multitude; but the more skilful had no difficulty in discerning its motive. If he did not express his opinion to anybody, it was because most frequently he had no opinion, and, as it very commonly happens, silence with him only served to cover the fact. He went at random, without fixed principles or settled system, and never looked beyond present circumstances. Events always took him by surprise, and he showed clearly that he was no more capable of directing them than of foreseeing them. His ambition itself, which was his dominant passion, had no precise views or decided aims. Whatever dignities were offered to satisfy it, it was plainly seen that he always desired something else; this was perceived without his saying it, for he tried very awkwardly to hide it. His ordinary stratagem was to pretend indifference, 227and he wished to be forced to accept what he most ardently desired. We can well understand that this pretence when too often repeated deceived nobody. Upon the whole, as he had successively attacked and defended all parties, and after having often appeared to desire an almost royal authority, had not endeavoured to destroy the republic when he had the power to do so, it is impossible for us to discover now what plan he had conceived, or even if he had conceived any distinct plan at all.

It is not so with Caesar. He knew the object of his ambition, and saw distinctly what he wished to do. His plans were settled even before he entered public life;^[252] in his youth he had formed the design to become master. The spectacle of the revolutions on which he had looked had given rise to the thought; the confidence that he had in his own capacity, and in the inferiority of his enemies, gave him strength to undertake it, and a sort of superstitious belief in his destiny, not uncommon in men who attempt these great adventures, assured him in advance of success. Therefore he marched resolutely towards his end, without showing undue haste to attain it, but without ever losing sight of it. To know exactly what one wants is not a common quality, above all in those troubled times in which good and evil are mingled, and yet success only comes to those who possess it. What, above all, gave Caesar his superiority was, that in the midst of those irresolute politicians who had only uncertain projects, hesitating convictions, and occasional ambitions, he alone had a deliberate ambition and a settled design. One could not approach him without coming under the influence of that tranquil 228and powerful will, which had a clear idea of its projects, the consciousness of its own strength, and the confidence of victory. Cicero felt it like the rest, notwithstanding his prejudices. In presence of such consistency and firmness he could not avoid making unfavourable comparisons with the perturbation and inconsistency of his old friend. “I am of your opinion about Pompey, he hinted to his brother, or rather you are of mine, for I have sung the praises of Caesar for a long time.”^[253] In fact, it was sufficient to approach a man of real genius to recognize the emptiness of this semblance of a great man, whose easy successes and air of inflated majesty had imposed so long upon the admiration of fools.

We must not, however, suppose that Caesar was one of those stubborn men who will not give way to circumstances, and never consent to alter anything in the plans they have once conceived. No one, on the contrary, knew how to bend to necessity better than he. His aim remained the same, but he did not hesitate to take the most diverse means to attain it, when it was necessary. One of these important modifications took place in his policy, precisely at the period with which we are occupied. What distinguishes Caesar from the men with whom he is usually compared, Alexander and Napoleon, has been well stated by M. Mommsen, namely, that originally he was a statesman rather than a general. He did not, like them, come from the camp, and he had as yet merely passed through it when, by force of circumstances and almost in spite of himself, he became a conqueror. All his youth was passed in Rome in the turmoil of public life, and he only set out for Gaul at an age at which Alexander was dead and Napoleon vanquished. He had evidently formed the plan of making himself master without employing arms; he reckoned upon 229destroying the republic by a slow and internal revolution, and by preserving as much as possible, in so illegal an attempt, the outward form of legality. He saw that the popular party had more taste for social reforms than for political liberties, and he thought, with reason, that a democratic monarchy would not be repugnant to it. By multiplying dissensions, by becoming the secret accomplice of Catiline and Clodius, he wearied timid republicans of a too troubled liberty and prepared them to sacrifice it willingly to repose. He hoped in this way that the republic, shaken by these daily attacks, which exhausted and tired out its most intrepid defenders, would at last fall without violence and without noise. But, to our great surprise, at the moment when this skilfully-planned design seemed on the point of succeeding, we see Caesar suddenly give it up. After that consulship in which he had governed alone, reducing his colleague to inaction and the senate to silence, he withdraws from Rome for ten years, and goes to attempt the conquest of an unknown country. What reasons decided him to this unexpected change? We should like to believe that he felt some disgust for that life of base intrigues that he led at Rome, and wished to invigorate himself in labours more worthy of him; but it is much more likely that, after having seen clearly that the republic would fall of itself, he understood that he would require an army and military renown to gain the mastery over Pompey. It was, then, without enthusiasm, without passion, designedly and on calculation, that he decided to set out for Gaul. When he took this important resolution, which has contributed so much to his greatness, he was forty-four.^[254] Pascal thinks it was very late to begin, and that he was too old to 230interest himself in the conquest of the world. It is, on the contrary, as it seems, one of the most admirable efforts of that energetic will that, at an age when habits are irrevocably fixed, and when a man has definitely entered on the road he must follow to the end, Caesar suddenly commenced a new life, and, leaving in a moment the business of popular agitator that he had followed for twenty-five years, set himself to govern provinces and lead armies. This spectacle, indeed, is more surprising now than it was then. It is no longer the custom to turn oneself into an administrator or a general at fifty, and these things seem to us to demand a special vocation and a long apprenticeship; history shows us that it was otherwise at Rome. Had they not just seen the voluptuous Lucullus, on his way to command the army of Asia, learn the art of war during the voyage, and conquer Mithridates on his arrival? As to administration, a rich Roman learnt it in his own home. Those vast domains, those legions of slaves that he possessed, the management of an immense fortune which often surpassed the wealth of several kingdoms of our days, familiarized him early with the art of government. It was thus that Caesar, who had as yet only had occasion to practise himself in the government of provinces and the command of armies during the year of his praetorship in Spain, had no need of further study to be able to conquer the Helvetii and to organize the conquered countries, and that he found himself at the very first attempt an admirable general and an administrator of genius.

It was at this epoch that his intimate relations with Cicero recommenced, and they lasted as long as the Gallic war. Cicero often had occasion to write to him to recommend people who wished to serve under his command. The ambition of the young men at that time was to set out for Caesar’s camp. Besides the desire of taking part in great 231deeds under such a general, they had also the secret hope of enriching themselves in those distant countries. We know with what charms the unknown is usually adorned, and how easy it is to lend it all the attractions we wish. Gaul was for the imagination of that time what America was to the sixteenth century. It was supposed that in those countries that no one had visited there lay immense treasures, and all who had their fortune to make hastened to Caesar to have their share of the booty. This eagerness was not displeasing to him; it bore witness to the fascination his conquests exercised, and helped his designs, and accordingly he readily invited men to come to him. He wrote gaily to Cicero, who had begged a commission for some unknown Roman: “You have recommended M. Offius to me; if you like I will make him King of Gaul, unless he prefers to be lieutenant of Lepta. Send me whom you will that I may make him rich.”^[255] Cicero had with him at that moment two persons whom he loved very much and who had great need of being enriched, the lawyer Trebatius Testa and his own brother Quintus. It was a good opportunity, and he sent them both to Caesar.

Trebatius was a young man of much talent and great zeal for study, who had attached himself to Cicero and did not leave him. He had early left his poor little town of Ulubrae, situated in the midst of the Pontine marshes, for Rome,—Ulubrae the deserted, vacuae Ulubrae, whose inhabitants were called Ulubran frogs. He had studied law, and, as he had become very learned in it, no doubt he rendered many services to Cicero, who does not appear ever to have known much of law, and who found it more convenient to laugh at it than to learn it. Unfortunately, consultations being gratuitous, lawyers did not make their fortune at Rome. Accordingly Trebatius was poor, in 232spite of his knowledge. Cicero, who liked him unselfishly, consented to deprive himself of the pleasure and use that he found in his society, and sent him to Caesar with one of those charming letters of recommendation that he knew so well how to write, and in which he displayed so much grace and wit. “I do not ask of you,” he says, “the command of a legion, or a government for him. I ask for nothing definite. Give him your friendship, and if afterwards you care to do something for his fortune and his glory I shall not be displeased. In fact, I abandon him to you entirely; I give him to you from hand to hand as they say, and I hope he will find himself well off in those faithful and victorious hands.”^[256] Caesar thanked Cicero for the present that he had made him, which could not fail to be very valuable to him, “for,” he wittily remarked, “among the multitude of men who surround me, there is not one who knows how to prepare a suit.”^[257]

Trebatius left Rome reluctantly; Cicero said that he had to turn him out of doors.^[258] The first sight of Gaul, which resembled very little the France of to-day, was not cheering. He passed wild countries, among half-subdued and threatening people, and in the midst of these barbarian surroundings which oppressed his heart, he always thought of the pleasures of that cultivated city that he had just left. The letters that he wrote were so disconsolate, that Cicero, forgetting that he had felt the same regrets during his own exile, reproached him gently for what he called his foolishness. When he arrived at the camp his ill-humour was redoubled. Trebatius was not a warrior, and it is very likely that the Nervii and the Atrebates frightened him very much. He arrived just at the moment when Caesar was setting out on the expedition to Britain, and refused, one 233knows not on what pretext, to accompany him: perhaps he alleged, like Dumnorix, that he feared the sea; but, even in remaining in Gaul there was no want of danger and tedium. Their winter quarters were not comfortable; they suffered from cold and rain under that inclement sky. In summer they had to take the field, and his terror recommenced. Trebatius was always complaining. What added to his discontent was that he had not found all at once the advantages he had expected. He had set out unwillingly, and wished to return as quickly as possible. Cicero said that he had looked on the letter of recommendation that he had given him to Caesar as a bill of exchange payable to bearer.^[259] He thought he had only to present himself in order to take the money, and return. It was not only money he went to look for in Gaul; he expected to find there a post of distinction and importance. He wished to approach Caesar and make himself appreciated. Cicero writes to him: “You would much rather be consulted than covered with gold.”^[260] Now, Caesar was so busy that he was difficult to approach, and he did not at first pay any great attention to this learned lawyer who came to him from Rome. He contented himself with offering him the title and emoluments of a military tribune, without the duties, of course. Trebatius did not think this a sufficient reward for the length of his journey and the dangers of the country, and thought of returning. Cicero had much trouble to prevent this rash conduct. I do not think there is any part of his correspondence more amusing and more lively than the letters he wrote to Trebatius to induce him to remain. Cicero is at his ease with this obscure young man, for whom he had such a lively affection. He dares to laugh freely, which he does not do with everybody, and he laughs all the more readily as he knows Trebatius was 234low-spirited, and he wishes to console him. It seems to me that this trouble that he takes to cheer up an unhappy friend makes his pleasantries almost touching, and that his good heart here lends one more charm to his wit. He quizzes him good-naturedly in order to make him laugh, and jokes about things that he knows the good Trebatius does not mind being bantered on. For instance, one day he asks him to send him all the details of the campaign: “For an account of a battle,” he says, “I trust above all the most timorous;”^[261] probably because, having held themselves aloof from the fight, they will have been better able to see the whole. Another time, after having expressed some fear at seeing him exposed to so many dangers, he adds: “Happily I know your prudence; you are much bolder in presenting writs than in harassing the enemy, and I remember that, although you are a good swimmer, you would not cross over into Britain for fear of taking a bath in the ocean.”^[262]

To soothe his impatience he threatens him with the wags. Was it not to be feared that if he returned, Laberius would put him in one of his farces? A frightened lawyer travelling in the train of an army, and exercising his profession among the barbarians, would make a funny figure in a comedy; but, to silence the wags he had only to make his fortune. Let him return later, he would certainly return richer; Balbus had said so. Now, Balbus was a banker; he did not speak in the sense of the Stoics, who affirm that one is always rich enough when one can enjoy the spectacle of the sky and the earth; he spoke as a Roman and meant that he would return well furnished with crown-pieces, more romano bene nummatum. Trebatius remained, and he did well to do so. Caesar was not long in noticing him, and was pleased with his friendship. He got accustomed 235to camp life, and in time became a little less timid than he was on his arrival. It is probable that he returned rich, as Balbus had predicted, for if they did not find all the treasures they went to seek in Gaul, Caesar’s liberality was an inexhaustible mine that enriched all his friends. At a later period Trebatius passed through trying times, and yet preserved the reputation of an honest man; this was an act of justice that all parties did him, although they were not much in the habit of doing justice. He had the rare good fortune to escape all the perils of the civil wars, and was still living in the time of Horace, who addressed one of his most agreeable satires to him. We see in it that he was then an amiable and indulgent old man who readily laughed and amused himself with the young. He talked to them, no doubt, about that grand epoch of which he was one of the last survivors, of the Gallic war in which he had taken part, of Caesar and his captains whom he had known. By the privilege of his age he could speak of Lucretius to Virgil, of Cicero to Livy, of Catullus to Propertius, and formed a sort of link between the two most illustrious periods of Latin literature.

The other person whom Cicero sent to Caesar was his brother Quintus. As he holds a large place in Cicero’s life, and played a rather important part in the Gallic war, it will be proper, I think, to say a few words about him. Although he listened to the same lectures and learned from the same masters as his brother, he never had any taste for eloquence, and always refused to speak in public. “One orator,” he said, “is enough in a family, and even in a city.”^[263] He was of a hard and yet changeable disposition, and gave way to violent fits of anger without reason. In spite of an appearance of great energy he was soon discouraged, and although he always affected to be 236the master, he was led by those about him. These faults, that Cicero bewailed to himself although he tried to excuse them, prevented Quintus succeeding in his public career, and troubled his private life.

He had been early married to Pomponia, the sister of Atticus. This marriage that the two friends had hoped would draw closer their connection very nearly broke it. The couple found that their characters matched too well: both were hasty and passionate, and they could never agree, and the unbounded ascendency that Statius, a slave, had over his master’s mind completed the disunion of the household. In connection with this, it would be easy to show, from Cicero’s letters, what influence the slave often exercised in ancient families; a much greater one than is commonly supposed. Now that the servant is free, it would seem natural that he should take a more important place in our houses than before. But the contrary has happened; he has lost in influence what he has gained in dignity. When he became independent his master ceased to have any obligations towards him. They now live together bound by a temporary contract, which, by imposing reciprocal obligations, appears irksome to both sides. As this fragile bond may be broken at any moment, and as these allies of one day may become indifferent to each other or enemies on the next, there is no longer any ease or confidence between them, and they pass all the time during which chance brings them together in surrounding themselves with defences, and in watching one another. It was quite otherwise in antiquity when slavery was flourishing. Then, it was not for a short time only, it was for a whole life-time that they were united; accordingly, they set themselves to know each other, and to adapt themselves one to the other. To gain the master’s favour was the important thing for the future of the slave, and he took trouble to gain it. As he had no 237position to defend, or dignity to preserve, he gave himself up to him entirely. He flattered and served his worst passions without scruple, and at last made himself necessary to him. Once confirmed in this intimacy, by his constant subserviency, by private and secret services which his master was not afraid to demand, and which he never refused to give, he ruled the family, so that, however strange it may appear at first sight, it is true to say that the servant was never nearer being master than when he was a slave. This is what happened to Statius. Through the knowledge that he had of the defects of Quintus, he had insinuated himself so well into his confidence that the whole family gave way to him. Pomponia alone resisted, and the annoyance she suffered for this reason made her still more insupportable. She constantly worried her husband with unfriendly remarks; she refused to appear at the dinners that he gave on the pretext that she was only a stranger at home, or if she consented to be present, it was only to make the guests the witnesses of the most unpleasant scenes. It was, no doubt, one day when she was more peevish and cross-grained than usual that Quintus composed these two epigrams, the only examples that remain of his poetic talent.

“Trust your ship to the winds, but do not give up your soul to a woman. There is less safety in a woman’s words than in the caprices of the waves.”

“No woman is good; or if by chance you find a good woman, I know not by what strange fate a bad thing has become good in a moment.”

These two epigrams are not very gallant, but we must excuse them in the unfortunate husband of the shrewish Pomponia.

The political career of Quintus was not brilliant any more than his private life was happy. He owed the offices which 238he obtained more to the illustrious name of his brother than to his own merit, and did nothing to make himself worthy of them. After he had been aedile and praetor, he was appointed governor of Asia. To be invested with an unlimited authority was a severe test for a character like his. Absolute power turned his head; his violence, which nothing now restrained, knew no bounds; like an oriental despot he only talked of burning and hanging. He wished above all to obtain the glory of being a great lover of justice. Having had occasion to order two parricides to be sewn up in a sack and thrown into the water in the lower part of his province, he wished to give the same spectacle to the other part on his visit to it, that there might be no jealousy between them. He sought therefore to seize a certain Zeuxis, an important person, who had been accused of killing his mother, and who had been acquitted by the tribunals. On the arrival of the governor, Zeuxis, who guessed his intentions, fled, and Quintus, vexed at losing his parricide, wrote him most friendly letters to induce him to return. Usually, however, he dissembled less and spoke more openly. He sent word to one of his lieutenants to seize and burn alive a certain Licinius and his son who had embezzled. He wrote to a Roman knight named Catienus “that he hoped to have him suffocated one day in the smoke, with the applause of the province.”^[264] It is true that when he was reproached with having written these furious letters, he replied that they were simple jokes, and that he had wished to laugh for a moment, but it was a strange way of joking, and shows his barbarous nature. Quintus had none the less an enlightened mind, he had read Plato and Xenophon, he spoke Greek admirably well, he even wrote tragedies in his leisure hours. He had all the appearance of a polished and civilized man, but it was only the appearance. Even 239among the most well-bred Romans, civilization was often only on the surface, and under their polished exterior we often find the rough and savage soul of a pitiless race of soldiers.

Quintus came back from his province with a rather bad reputation, but, what is more surprising, he did not come back rich. Apparently he had embezzled less than his colleagues, and was not able to bring back enough money to restore his fortune, which was very much embarrassed by his extravagance; for he liked to buy and to build, like his brother; he had a taste for rare books, and probably also could refuse nothing to his favourite slaves. The exile of Cicero completed the confusion of his affairs, and at the time of his brother’s return Quintus was quite ruined. This did not prevent him, at the time of his greatest financial distress, rebuilding his house at Rome, and buying a country house at Arpinum and another in the suburbs, constructing in his villa at Arcae, baths, porticoes, fish-ponds, and such a fine road that it was taken for a work of the state. It is true that the poverty of a Roman of that time would make the fortune of many of our nobles. However, a day came when Quintus was altogether in the hands of his creditors, and when he could borrow no more. Then it was that he bethought him of the last resource of embarrassed debtors: he went to Caesar.

It was not, then, only the love of glory that attracted Quintus to Gaul; he went there, like so many others, to get rich. Up to that time, the results had not answered to men’s expectations, and they had not found among people like the Belgae and Germani all the treasures that they looked for; but they were not yet discouraged; rather than give up their brilliant fancies, after each disappointment, they put farther off that enchanted country where they thought they must find riches. As at this moment 240they were going to attack Britain, it was in Britain that they placed it. Every one expected to make a fortune there, and Caesar himself, by what Suetonius says, hoped to bring back many pearls.^[265] These expectations were deceived once more; in Britain were neither pearls nor gold mines. They had a great deal of trouble to take a few slaves who were not of much value, for it was no use thinking of making them men of letters and musicians. For all wealth, these men only possessed heavy chariots, from which they fought with courage. Accordingly Cicero wrote humorously to Trebatius, who sent him news of this ill-luck of the army: “Since you find there neither gold nor silver, my opinion is that you should carry off one of those British chariots, and should come to us at Rome without stopping.”^[266] Quintus was very much of the same opinion. Although he had been well received by Caesar, who had appointed him his lieutenant, when he saw that wealth did not come as quickly as he expected, he lost courage, and, like Trebatius, he had for a moment the idea of returning; but Cicero, who did not joke this time, prevented him.

He did him a very great service, for it was precisely during the winter that followed the war in Britain that Quintus had the opportunity of performing the heroic action that commended his name to the respect of military men. Although he read Sophocles with ardour and had written tragedies, he was at bottom only a soldier. In the presence of the enemy, he became himself again, and displayed an energy that had not been suspected in him. In the midst of populations which were in revolt, in entrenchments hastily raised in one night, and with a single legion only, he was able to defend the camp Caesar had entrusted to him, and to make head against innumerable enemies, who had just destroyed a Roman army. He replied in firm language 241to their insolent boasts. Although he was ill, he displayed incredible activity, and it was only after a sedition among his soldiers that he could be induced to take care of himself. I have no need to relate the details of this affair that Caesar has told so well in his Commentaries, and which is one of the most glorious incidents of the Gallic war. This grand feat of arms raises Quintus in our esteem; it effaces the meannesses of his character, and helps him to play with a little more credit the ungrateful and difficult part of younger brother of a great man.

III.

Cicero had clearly foreseen that, although Caesar in writing his Commentaries professed only to prepare materials for history, the perfection of his work would prevent sensible men from attempting to re-write it. Accordingly Plutarch and Dio have taken care not to re-write it; they are contented to epitomize it, and now we only know the Gallic war by the narrative of him who was the hero of it. However perfect the narrative may be, or rather because of its very perfection, we have much difficulty in contenting ourselves with it. It is the characteristic of these great works, which, as we might think, ought to exhaust public curiosity, on the contrary, to make it more active. By interesting us in the facts which they relate, they excite in us the desire to know them better, and one of the surest marks of their success is that they do not suffice for the readers, and make them wish to know more than they tell. This desire, for fresh details on the most important events of history, it is which renders Cicero’s letters to Trebatius and to his brother so valuable for us. Although they are fewer in number and shorter than we could wish, they have the merit of adding some information to that which Caesar 242gives on his campaigns. As they are more familiar than a narrative composed for the public, they introduce us farther into the private life of the conqueror of Gaul, and they permit us to see him in his tent, at those times of leisure and repose, of which he has not thought of speaking to us himself. This is certainly an interesting spectacle, it is the true complement of the Commentaries, and we cannot do better than carefully collect the scattered details they contain, in order to become well acquainted with Caesar and his surroundings.

I imagine that Caesar’s army did not resemble those old Roman armies that are depicted to us in such grave and temperate guise, always trembling under the rod of the lictors, and submissive at all times to an inflexible discipline. It was, doubtless, sternly controlled in time of danger, and never complained of this. No other army has ever undergone greater fatigues and executed greater deeds; but when the danger was over discipline relaxed. Caesar allowed his soldiers rest, and sometimes diversion. He let them decorate themselves with splendid arms, and even adorn themselves with studied elegance. “What does it matter if they use perfumes?” he said, “they will know very well how to fight.”^[267] And in fact these soldiers, whom the Pompeians called effeminate, are the same who, though dying of hunger at Dyrrhachium, declared that they would eat the bark of the trees rather than let Pompey escape. They were recruited for the most part among those Cisalpine Gauls from whom Roman civilization had not taken the good qualities of their race, an amiable and brilliant people who loved war and carried it on gaily. The chiefs very much resembled the common soldiers; they were lively and ardent, full of resources in critical moments, and trusted more to inspiration than to routine. It is to be remarked 243that no one of them had gained his reputation in earlier wars. Caesar seems to have wished that their military glory should come from him only. A few, and among these Labienus, perhaps the greatest of them, were his political friends, old conspirators like himself, who, after his example, and without any more preparation, from popular agitators had become excellent generals. Others, on the contrary, like Fabius Maximus and Servius Galba, bore illustrious names; they were partisans whom he secured in the aristocracy, or hostages that he took from it. The greater number, Crassus, Plancus, Volcatius Tullus, Decimus Brutus, and later Pollio, were young men whom he treated with marked preference, and whom he readily trusted in perilous enterprises. He liked the young by personal preference, and also by policy: as they did not yet belong to any party, and had not had time to attach themselves to the republic by serving it, he hoped they would have less difficulty in accustoming themselves to the new régime that he wished to establish.

These lieutenants, whose number varied, did not alone form the ordinary retinue of a proconsul. We must remember to add that crowd of young Romans, sons of illustrious houses, destined by their birth for public office, who came to serve their apprenticeship in war under him. They were called his tent-comrades, contubernales. Soldiers like the rest, and exposing themselves on the day of battle, they became after the fight the friends, the companions of the chief whom they followed in all his expeditions, as the clients accompanied their patron in the city. They were present at his receptions, took part in all his recreations and diversions, sat at his table, surrounded him when he sat on the judgment-seat; they formed, in sum, what was called the cohort, we should almost say the court, of the praetor (praetoria cohors). Scipio Africanus, it is said, invented 244this means of adding splendour to the public display of the supreme power in the eyes of the conquered nations, and after him governors had taken great care to preserve all this pomp which added to their prestige. These were not all; by the side of these military men there was room for men of very various abilities and positions. Able financiers, intelligent secretaries, and even learned lawyers might be necessary for the administration of those vast countries that a proconsul governed. Thus Trebatius himself, the pacific Trebatius, was not out of place in the train of an army, and he had opportunities of exercising his profession even among the Nervii and the Belgae. If we add to these men, to whom their high offices gave a certain importance, a crowd of inferior officers or subaltern servants, such as lictors, ushers, scribes, interpreters, apparitors, doctors, men-servants, and even soothsayers, we shall have some idea of that truly royal retinue which a proconsul always carried about with him.

Caesar’s train must have been even more magnificent than that of others. The ten legions that he commanded, the extent of country that he had to conquer and govern, explain the great number of officers and persons of all sorts by whom he was surrounded. Moreover, he naturally loved magnificence. He readily welcomed all who came to see him, and always found some office to give them in order to retain them. Even in those wild countries he took pleasure in astonishing them by his reception. Suetonius relates that he took with him everywhere marquetry or mosaic floors, and that he had always two tables laid at which rich Romans who visited him and provincials of distinction took their places.^[268] His lieutenants imitated him, and Pinarius wrote to Cicero that he was delighted with the dinners his brother gave him.^[269] Caesar did not care much for these 245sumptuous repasts, and these rich dwellings, on his own account. We know that he was temperate, that in case of need he could sleep well in the open air, and eat rancid oil without blinking; but he had a taste for display and luxury. Although the republic still existed, he was almost a king; even in his camps in Britain and Germany he had assiduous followers and courtiers. He could only be approached with difficulty; Trebatius made the attempt, and we know that it was a long time before he could reach him. No doubt Caesar did not receive men with that stiff and solemn majesty that repelled them in Pompey; but, however gracious he might wish to be, there was always something in him that inspired respect, and it was felt that that ease of manner that he affected with everybody proceeded from a superiority which was sure of itself. This defender of the democracy was none the less an aristocrat who never forgot his birth, and willingly spoke of his ancestors. Had they not heard him, at the commencement of his political life, at the very time when he attacked with most vivacity the institutions of Sulla, and tried to get back their ancient powers for the tribunes, had they not heard him pronounce over his aunt a funeral oration full of genealogical fictions, in which he complacently related that his family was descended at once from the kings and the gods? But in this he only followed the traditions of the Gracchi, his illustrious predecessors. They also defended public interests with ardour, but they called to mind the aristocracy from which they had sprung by the haughty elegance of their manners. We know that they had a court of clients at their rising, and that they were the first who thought of making distinctions between them which resembled the public and private admissions to the court of Louis XIV.

The most remarkable thing in those around Caesar was 246their love of letters. Assuredly they belonged no longer to the times when Roman generals burnt masterpieces of art, or took a pride in being ignorant. Since Mummius and Marius, letters had succeeded in penetrating even the camps, which, as we know, are not their usual abode. Nevertheless, I do not think that so many enlightened men of letters, so many men of culture and men of fashion have ever been seen united in any other army. Almost all Caesar’s lieutenants were private friends of Cicero, and they took pleasure in maintaining a constant intercourse with him who was regarded as the official patron of literature at Rome. Crassus and Plancus had learnt eloquence in pleading at his side, and in what remains to us of the letters of Plancus, we recognize, by a certain oratorical exuberance, that he had profited by his lessons. Trebonius, the conqueror of Marseilles, professed to relish his witticisms very much, and even published a collection of them. Cicero, however, to whom this admiration was not displeasing, thought that his editor had put too much of himself into the introduction under pretence of preparing the effect of the jokes and making them easier to understand. “They have exhausted their laughter,” he said, “when they get to me.” Hirtius was a distinguished historian, who undertook later to finish the Commentaries of his chief. Matius, a devoted friend of Caesar, who showed himself worthy of this friendship by remaining faithful to him, translated the Iliad into Latin verse. Quintus was a poet also, but a tragic poet. During the winter that he had to fight the Nervii, he was seized with such an ardour for poetry, that he composed four pieces in sixteen days: but this was to treat tragedy in a somewhat military fashion. He sent the one he thought the best, the Erigone, to his brother; but it was lost on the road. “Since Caesar has commanded in Gaul,” said Cicero, “the Erigone alone has not been able 247to travel in safety.”^[270] It is surprising no doubt to meet all at one time with so many generals who are also men of letters; but what is still more astonishing is that all those Roman knights who followed the army, and whom Caesar made his commissaries and purveyors, collectors of stores, and farmers of the taxes, seem to have loved literature more than their habits and occupations usually admit. We find one of those he employed in offices of this kind, Lepta, thanking Cicero for sending him a treatise on rhetoric as though he were a man capable of appreciating the present. The Spaniard Balbus, that intelligent banker, that skilful administrator, who was able to put the finances of Rome into such good order, and what was still more difficult, those of Caesar, loved philosophy with more enthusiasm than one would expect in a banker. He hastened to have Cicero’s works copied before they were known to the public, and although he was by character the most discreet of men, he went so far as even to commit indiscretions in order to be the first to read them.

But among all these lettered men, it was Caesar who had the most decided taste for letters: they suited his cultivated nature; they seemed to him, no doubt, the most agreeable exercise and relaxation of an accomplished mind. I should not, however, venture to say that his love for them was wholly disinterested, when I see that this taste assisted his policy so wonderfully. He was compelled to gain public favour by every means; now, nothing attracts the general judgment more than the superiority of intelligence united with that of force. His principal works were composed with this intention, and we might say, from this point of view, that his writings were part of his actions. It was not only to please a few idle men of letters that, during the latter part of his stay in Gaul, he wrote his Commentaries with such a 248rapidity as to astonish his friends. He wished to prevent the Romans forgetting his victories; he wished, by his admirable manner of narrating them, to renew, and if possible, to increase, the effect they had produced. When he composed his two books De Analogia, he calculated that people would be struck by seeing the general of an army, who, according to the expression of Fronto, “busied himself with the formation of words while arrows were cleaving the air, and sought the laws of language amid the din of clarions and trumpets.” He knew very well the advantage that his reputation would draw from these very diverse performances, and how great would be the surprise and admiration at Rome when they received at the same moment a treatise on grammar, and the news of a new victory, from such a distance. The same thought also made him eager for Cicero’s friendship. If his refined and distinguished nature found a great pleasure in keeping up some intercourse with a man of so much cultivation, he was not ignorant of the power this man exercised over public opinion, and how far his praises would resound when they came from this eloquent mouth. We have lost the letters that he wrote to Cicero; but as Cicero was delighted with them, and it was not very easy to please him, we must believe that they were filled with flatteries and caresses. Cicero’s answers were also full of the most lively protestations of friendship. He declared at that time that Caesar came in his affections immediately after his children, and indeed almost in the same rank; he bitterly deplored all the prejudices that had up till then kept him apart from him, and he resolved to make him forget that he was one of the last who had entered into his friendship. “I shall imitate,” said he, “the travellers who have risen later than they wished to do; they double their speed, and make such good haste that they arrive at their destination before those who have 249travelled part of the night.”^[271] They vied with each other, as it were, in compliments; they overwhelmed one another with flatteries, and emulated each other in works in verse and prose. On reading the first accounts of the expedition to Britain, Cicero exclaimed in a transport of enthusiasm: “What prodigious events! what a country! what people! what battles, and above all, what a general!” He wrote off immediately to his brother: “Give me Britain to paint; furnish me with the colours, I will use the brush.”^[272] And he had seriously taken in hand an epic poem on this conquest, which his occupations prevented him completing as quickly as he wished. Caesar, on his part, dedicated his treatise De Analogia to Cicero, and on this occasion said to him in splendid phrases: “You have discovered all the resources of eloquence, and are the first to use them. In virtue of this you have deserved well of the Roman name, and you do honour to our country. You have obtained the most illustrious of all honours, and a triumph preferable to those of the greatest generals, for it is better to extend the boundaries of the mind than to enlarge the limits of the empire!”^[273] This, coming from a victorious general like Caesar, was the most delicate flattery for a man of letters.

Such were the relations that Cicero kept up with Caesar and his officers during the Gallic war. His correspondence, which preserves the memory of them, makes us better acquainted with the tastes and preferences of all these men of cultivation, and shows them to us in a very living fashion and draws us closer to them. This is, assuredly, one of the greatest services it could render to us. We seem, when we have read it, to be able to understand of what kind the meetings of these men must have been, and can imagine ourselves present at their conversations. We are entitled to 250suppose that Rome took up very much of their thoughts. From the depths of Gaul, they had their eyes upon it, and it was to make a little stir there that they took so much trouble. While marching over so many unknown countries from the Rhine to the Ocean, all these young men hoped that they would be talked about at those feasts and assemblies where men of the world discussed public affairs. Caesar himself, when he crossed the Rhine on his wooden bridge, reckoned upon striking the imaginations of all those idlers who met together in the Forum, at the rostrum, to learn the news. After the landing of his troops in Britain, we see him hastening to write to his friends, and especially to Cicero;^[274] not that he had much leisure at that moment, but he looked upon it no doubt as an honour to date his letter from a country where no Roman had yet set foot. If he was anxious to send glorious news to Rome, they were also very glad to receive it from Rome. All the letters that arrived were read with eagerness; they seemed as it were to carry even to Germany and Britain a whiff of that fashionable life, which those who have enjoyed can never forget or cease to regret. It was not enough for Caesar to read the journals of the Roman people, which contained a dry summary of the principal political events, and a concise report of the proceedings of the assemblies of the people. His messengers constantly traversed Gaul, bringing him letters accurate and full of the most minute details. “He is told everything,” said Cicero, “small as well as great.”^[275] This news, impatiently waited for, and commented on with pleasure, must have been the usual subject of his conversations with his friends. I 251suppose that, at that sumptuous table of which I have spoken, after literature and grammar had been discussed, and they had listened to the verses of Matius or Quintus, the conversation turned especially upon Rome, of which these elegant young men, who regretted its pleasures, were never tired of talking. Certainly, if we could have heard them chatting about the last news, the political disorders, or, what interested them more, the private scandals of the city, telling the last rumours afloat, and quoting the most recent jokes, we should have found it difficult to believe that we were in the heart of the country of the Belgae, or near to the Rhine or the Ocean, or on the eve of a battle. I imagine that we should have rather fancied we were present at a party of clever men in some aristocratic house on the Palatine or in the rich quarter of Carinae.

Cicero’s letters render us yet another service. They show us the prodigious effect that Caesar’s victories produced at Rome. They excited as much surprise as admiration, for they were discoveries as well as conquests. What was known before him of those distant countries? A few ridiculous fables that traders related on their return, to give themselves importance. It was through Caesar that they were first really known. He first dared to attack, and he vanquished those Germans who have been depicted as giants, whose very looks caused terror; he first adventured as far as Britain, where it was said the night lasted three entire months, and all the wonders that had been related gave as it were a tinge of the marvellous to his victories. Nevertheless, not everybody willingly gave way to this fascination. The most clear-sighted of the aristocratic party, who felt, though indistinctly, that it was the fate of the republic that was being decided on the banks of the Rhine, wished to recall Caesar, and to appoint in his place another general, who might not perhaps complete the conquest of Gaul, but 252who would not be tempted to carry out that of his own country. Cato, who pushed everything to extremes, when the senate was asked to vote a thanksgiving to the gods for the defeat of Ariovistus, dared to propose, on the contrary, that they should deliver up the conqueror to the Germans. But these objections did not change public opinion, which declared itself in favour of him who had just conquered with such rapidity so many unknown countries. The knights, who had become the financiers and merchants of Rome, congratulated themselves on seeing immense countries opened up to their operations. Caesar, who wished to attach them to him, invited them to follow him, and his first care had been to open them a road across the Alps. The common people, who love military glory and who freely give way to enthusiasm, were never tired of admiring him who extended the limits of the Roman world. On the news of each victory, Rome had public rejoicings, and offered thanksgivings to the gods. After the defeat of the Belgae, the senate, under pressure of public opinion, was compelled to vote fifteen days of solemn thanksgiving, which had never been done for anybody. Twenty days was decreed, when the success of the expedition against Germany was reported, and twenty more after the taking of Alesia. Cicero usually demanded these honours for Caesar, and he became the mouthpiece of the public admiration when he said in his noble language: “This is the first time we have dared to attack the Gauls, hitherto we have been content to repulse them. The other generals of the Roman people regarded it as sufficient for their glory to prevent them invading us; Caesar has gone to seek them out in their own homes. Our general, our legions, our arms have overrun those countries of which no history has ever spoken, of whose name the world was ignorant. We had only a footpath in Gaul; now the boundaries of these nations have 253become the frontiers of our own empire. It is not without the signal favour of Providence that nature gave the Alps for a rampart to Italy. If the entrance had been free to this multitude of barbarians, Rome never would have been the centre and the seat of the empire of the world. Now let insurmountable mountains sink. From the Alps to the Ocean Italy has nothing now to fear.”^[276]

These magnificent eulogies, for which Cicero has been so much blamed, are easily understood however, and, whatever politicians may say, it is easy to explain the enthusiasm that so many honest and sensible people then felt for Caesar. That which justified the unreserved admiration that his conquests caused, was less their grandeur than their necessity. They might threaten the future, at that moment they were indispensable. They later endangered the liberty of Rome, but they assured her existence then.^[277] The patriotic instinct of the people let them divine what prejudice and fear, although quite legitimate, hid from the aristocracy. They understood in a confused way all the dangers that might soon come from Gaul, if they did not hasten to subdue it. It was not, in truth, the Gauls who were to be feared—their decadence had already commenced, and they no longer thought of making conquests—it was the Germans. Dio is quite wrong in asserting that Caesar wantonly stirred up wars for the sake of his glory. Whatever advantage he drew from them, we may certainly say that he rather submitted to them than provoked them. It was not Rome that went to seek the Germans at that time, but rather the Germans who came boldly towards her. When Caesar was appointed proconsul, Ariovistus occupied part of the country of the Sequani and wished to seize the rest. His compatriots, attracted by the fertility of this fine 254country, were crossing the Rhine every day to join him, and twenty-five thousand had come at one time. What would have happened to Italy if, while Rome was losing her strength in intestine struggles, the Suevi and the Sicambri had established themselves on the Rhone and the Alps? The invasion averted by Marius a century before was recommencing; it might have caused the downfall of Rome then as it did four centuries later, if Caesar had not arrested it. His glory is to have thrown back the Germans beyond the Rhine, as it was to the honour of the empire to have kept them there for more than three hundred years.

But this was not the sole or even the greatest effect of Caesar’s victories. In conquering Gaul, he rendered it entirely and for ever Roman. That marvellous rapidity with which Rome then assimilated the Gauls can only be understood, when we know in what a state she had found them. They were not altogether barbarians like the Germans; it is to be remarked that their conqueror, who knew them well, does not call them so in his Commentaries. They had great cities, a regular system of taxation, a body of religious beliefs, an ambitious and powerful aristocracy, and a sort of national education directed by the priests. This culture, although imperfect, if it had not entirely enlightened their minds, had at least awakened them. They were frank and inquisitive, intelligent enough to know what they were deficient in, and sufficiently free from prejudice to give up their usages when they found better ones. From the very beginning of the war, they succeeded in imitating the Roman tactics, in constructing siege machines, and in working them with a skill to which Caesar does justice. They were still rude and unpolished, but already quite inclined for a superior civilization for which they had the desire and instinct. This explains how they did so readily accept it. They had fought for 255ten years against the domination of the foreigner; they did not hesitate for a day to adopt his language and usages. We may say that Gaul resembled those lands, parched by a burning sun, which drink in with such avidity the first drops of rain; so completely did she imbibe the Roman civilization for which she longed before she knew it, that after so many centuries, and in spite of so many revolutions, she has not yet lost the mark of it; and this is the only thing that has endured to the present time in this country where everything changes. Caesar, then, did not only add a few new territories to the possessions of Rome; the present that he made her was greater and more useful; he gave her an entire people, intelligent, and civilized almost as soon as conquered, which, becoming Roman in heart as well as in language, sinking her interests in those of her new nationality, enlisting in her legions to defend her, and throwing herself with a remarkable ardour and talent into the study of the arts and letters, shed a new lustre over her, and for a long time gave a new youth and a return of vigour to the failing empire.

While these great events were passing in Gaul, Rome continued to be the theatre of the most shameful disorders. There was no longer any government; scarcely did they succeed in electing magistrates, and there was a fight every time the people assembled in the Forum or in the Campus Martius. These disorders, of which honest men were ashamed, added still more to the effect that Caesar’s victories produced. What a contrast was there between the battles fought with Ariovistus or Vercingetorix and those combats of gladiators that stained the streets of Rome with blood! And how glorious appeared the taking of Agendicum or Alesia to people who were only occupied with the siege of Milo’s house by Clodius or the assassination of Clodius by Milo! All the statesmen who had remained 256in Rome, Pompey as well as Cicero, had lost something of their dignity by mixing themselves up in these intrigues. Caesar, who had withdrawn in time, was the only man who had risen amidst the general degradation. Therefore all those whose heart was wounded by these sad spectacles, and who had some care for Roman honour, kept their eyes fixed upon him and his army. As happened at certain moments of our own revolution, military glory consoled honest men for scandals and distress at home. At the same time, the excess of the evil caused men to seek an efficacious remedy everywhere. The idea began to spread that, in order to obtain repose, it was necessary to create a strong and durable power. After Cicero’s exile, the aruspices had predicted that the monarchy was about to recommence,^[278] and one did not need to be a prophet to anticipate this. A few years later, the evil having increased still more, the republican party itself, notwithstanding its repugnance, was forced to have recourse to the violent remedy of a temporary dictatorship. Pompey was appointed sole consul, but Pompey had shown more than once that he had neither the vigour nor the resolution necessary to overcome anarchy entirely. A stronger arm and a more determined will had to be sought elsewhere, and all eyes turned naturally towards the conqueror of Gaul. His glory pointed him out for this part; the hopes of some and the fears of others called him to fulfil it; men’s minds became accustomed every day to the idea that he would be the heir of the republic, and the revolution that delivered up Rome to him was more than half accomplished when he crossed the Rubicon.

257

II THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED

AFTER PHARSALIA

The civil war interrupted the intercourse that Cicero had kept up with Caesar during the Gallic war. He hesitated for a long time to take part in it, and it was after long indecision that the stings of conscience, the fear of public opinion, and above all the example of his friends decided him at length to start for Pompey’s camp. “As the ox follows the herd,” said he, “I go to join the good citizens;”^[279] but he went half-heartedly and without hope. After Pharsalia he did not think it was possible to continue the struggle: he said so openly in a council of the republican chiefs held at Dyrrhachium, and he hastened to return to Brundusium to hold himself at the disposal of the conqueror.

What regret must he not have felt, if his thoughts went back several years, and he remembered his triumphal return from exile! In that very town, where he had been received with so much rejoicing, he was constrained to disembark furtively, to conceal his lictors, to avoid the crowd, and only go out at night. He passed eleven months there, the saddest of his life, in isolation and anxiety. He was distressed on all sides, and his domestic affairs did not cause him less sorrow than public events. His absence had completed the disorder of his pecuniary affairs. When they were most involved, he had been so imprudent as to lend 258what ready money he had to Pompey: the poniard of the King of Egypt had at the same time carried off the debtor and put an end to his power of paying. While he was trying to procure some resources by selling his furniture and plate, he discovered that his wife was acting in concert with his freedmen to despoil him of what remained; he learnt that his brother and his nephew, who had gone over to Caesar, sought to justify themselves at his expense, and were working to ruin him in order to save themselves; he saw Tullia, his beloved daughter, again, but he found her sad and ill, lamenting at the same time the misfortunes of her father, and the infidelity of her husband. To these very real misfortunes were joined at the same time imaginary troubles, which caused him as much suffering; above all, he was tormented by his habitual irresolution. Scarcely had he set foot in Italy when he repented having come. According to his habit, his restless imagination always puts things at their worst, and he is ingenious in finding some reason for discontent in everything that happens to him. He laments when Antony wishes to force him to leave Italy; when he is allowed to remain, he still laments, because this exception made in his favour may injure his reputation. If Caesar neglects to write to him, he is alarmed; if he receives a letter from him, however friendly it may be, he weighs all its expressions so carefully that he discovers at last some motive for fear; even the broadest and most complete amnesty does not entirely remove his fears. “When a man pardons so easily,” he says, “it is because he defers his vengeance.”^[280]