Note 289 — LIFE OF CICERO. (continued 2)

Cæsar defeated Antonius at the battle of Actium, B.C. 31. Cicero’s son Marcus was made an augur, and he was consul with Cæsar in B.C. 30. He was afterwards proconsul of Asia. The time of his death is unknown. Cicero’s son had neither ambition nor ability. All that is certainly known of him is that he loved eating and drinking, for neither of which had his father any inclination. There are two letters of the son to Tiro extant (Cicero, Ad Diversos, xvi. 21, 25).

The Life of Cicero is only a sketch of Cicero’s character, but a better sketch than any modern writer has made. It does not affect to be a history of the times, nor does it affect to estimate with any exactness his literary merit. But there is not a single great defect in his moral character that is not touched, nor a virtue that has not been signalized. Those who would do justice to him and have not time to examine for themselves, may trust Plutarch at least as safely as any modern writer.

If in these notes I have occasionally expressed an unfavourable opinion directly or indirectly, I have expressed none that I do not believe true, and none for which abundant evidence cannot be produced, even from Cicero’s own writings. It is a feeble and contemptible criticism that would palliate or excuse that which admits not of excuse. It is a spurious liberality that would gloss over the vices and faults of men because they have had great virtues, and would impute to those who tell the whole truth a malignant pleasure in defaming and vilifying exalted merit. This assumed fair dealing and magnanimity would deprive us of the most instructive lessons that human life teaches—that all men have their weaknesses, their failings and their vices, and that no intellectual greatness is a security against them. “It is not absolutely railing against anything to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever” (Montaigne). The failings of a great man are more instructive than those of an obscure man. They exhibit the weak points at which any man may be assailed, and in some of which no man is impregnable. Cicero’s writings have made us as familiar with him as with the writers of our own country, and there is hardly a European author of modern times who is more universally read than Cicero in some or other of his numerous compositions. His letters alone, which were never intended for publication, and were written to a great variety of persons as the events of the day prompted, furnish a mass of historical evidence, which, if we consider his position and the times in which he lived, is not surpassed by any similar collection. He is thus mixed up with the events of the most stirring and interesting period of his country’s history; and every person who studies that history must endeavour to form a just estimate of the character of a man who is both a great actor in public events and an important witness.

The Life of Cicero by Middleton is a partial work: the evidence is imperfectly examined and the author’s prejudices in favour of Cicero have given a false colouring to many facts. The most laborious life of Cicero is by Drumann (Geschichte Roms, Tullii), in which all the authorities are collected. In the ‘Penny Cyclopædia’ (art. ‘Cicero’) there is a good sketch of Cicero’s political career; and in the ‘Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology,’ edited by Dr. W. Smith, a very complete account of Cicero’s writings, distributed under their several heads.