supposed to be admirers of a nation whom their countrymen
so thoroughly despised. Crassus therefore took care to vaunt
his preference for everything Roman, while Antonius thought
the safer plan would be to have it supposed that he was
wholly ignorant of the exotic article.
There were two schools we may almost call them parties
of education at Rome in those days. The one was the
Latin, the other the Greek school. 1 The first who opened a
school for instruction in Latin literature there was Lucius
Plautius, about the time when young Cicero removed from
Arpinum to the capital, and he wished to become a student
at his lectures, which were well attended. But he reluctantly
yielded to the advice of friends, who thought that he had
better devote himself exclusively to Greek. Perhaps the
wiser plan would have been to allow a boy of such industry
and aptitude to study both ; but if the choice lay between the
two, beyond all doubt they acted rightly in giving preference
to Greek, for Latin literature was then still in its infancy, and
the language had not been enriched by the prose of Cicero,
Sallust, Varro, and Livy, and by the poetry of Lucretius,
Virgil, Catullus, and Horace. The only Latin poets who
had then written were Pacuvius, Nsevius, and Ennius, and
the only Latin histories were the dry and meagre annals of
Fabius Pictor, Calpurnius Piso, and others.
Greek, however, had become at this time the fashionable
study at Rome, and occupied something of the same posi-
tion in a course of education that French does amongst
ourselves.! And Cicero tells us that the language was culti-
vated in Latium, or, as we should say, in the provinces, even
more zealously than in the capital. It was considered the
accomplishment of a gentleman, and Greek phrases and
1 About half-a- century before Cicero who idled away their time there for whole
was boi n the Senate passed a resolution days together (ibi homines adolescentnlos
banishing philosophers and rhetoricians dies tolas desidere). They declared that
from Rome. The then censors brought they did not like the novelty, and called
the subject again under the notice of the on the Senate to mark its displeasure
Senate, saying that men who called them- against both teachers and pupils. They
selves "Latin rhetoricians" had intro- were ordered to shut up their "schools
duced a new kind of learning, and their of impudence" (Indiim
schools were frequented by young men DC Orat. iii. 24.
B.C. 106-91. INTIMACY WITH ARCHIAS. 9
Greek quotations were everywhere current in good society.
vEven the sturdy Cato the Censor, who despised the nation
and their effeminate character, and who had deemed their
literature beneath the attention of a Roman, at last gave
way to the prevailing Graeco-mania, and, according to a well-
known story, applied himself in extreme old age to the
study of the language.^ Cicero, as might be expected from
his exquisite taste, was passionately fonxLofLGreek literature ;
and his letters abound m expressions and quotations which
prove his intimate familiarity with the rich treasures it
contains. One practical reason for learning that language
thoroughly was, that he might be able to converse with his
Greek teachers, who seem to have been able to speak Latin
only imperfectly, and in some cases perhaps not at all.
Phsedrus, the Epicurean, was one of his instructors, and he
speaks~of him in terms of peculiar regard.
He became also a pupil of the. poet Archias. He was a
Greek who had come to Rome from Antioch when Cicero
was five years old, and, according to the usual custom of
those days, resided in the house of a Roman patron, the
wealthy Lucullus. His reputation as a poet depends exclu-
sively on the speech which Cicero in later years delivered
in defence of his former teacher and friend, for not a line
of his verses has been preserved ; but we know that he
composed laudatory poems in honour of some of the noble
families of Rome.
His intimacy with Archias may have awakened in Cicero
the desire to be himself also a poet. We are told by
Plutarch that when very young he composed a poem called
Pontius Glaucus, the hero of which was a fisherman of
Boeotia, who, having eaten a certain plant, went mad and
sprang into the sea, where he was changed into a sea-god,
the place from which he made the fatal spring being after-
wards known as the Glaucus-leap. He translated also into
Latin verse two Greek poems on astronomy or subjects
connected with that science the Phaenomena and Prog-
nostica, or Diosemeia of Aratus, whose works were very
popular at Rome. Although he had not the poetic faculty
in the proper sense of the word, and frankly acknowledged
this himself, he had great facility in the composition of
TO THE BOYHOOD. CHAP. i.
verses, and amused himself with it at different periods of his
life. Some of his productions were long poems, such as the
Marius, which seems to have been written during the life
of that hero, 1 and was an epic celebration of his life and
exploits; and the poems on his Consulship (de suo Consulatu)
and his own Times (de suis Temporibus). It was in one of
these, most probably the Consulship, that the unfortunate
lines occurred,
Cedant arma togae, concedat laurea laudi, 2
and,
O fortunatum natam me consule Romam !
the jingle of which provoked the ridicule of Juvenal, Quin-
tilian, and Seneca, as well as of the wits of his own day,
who were never tired of laughing at him for them, and his
enemies took care that nobody should forget them. He
however clung to them with true parental fondness for a
deformed offspring ; and in his treatise De Officiis calls the
verse beginning Cedant arma togce " a capital line which I
hear is attacked by the wicked and the envious." He must
have heard of it often enough. Of his poem on Marius
Quintus Mucius Scsevola the Augur had such a favourable
opinion, that in some complimentary lines he declared that
it would endure for endless ages, saying, " Canescet saeclis
innumerabilibus." But the old lawyer was neither a poet
nor a prophet.
When Rousseau once sent to Voltaire a copy of an ode
addressed to Posterity, the sneering critic wittily remarked,
Void ime lettre qui riarrivera jamais a son adresse, and
Cicero's epic has met with a similar fate. Both Plutarch
and Pliny the younger lavish panegyrics upon his poetry,
and Middleton goes so far as to declare that the fragments
that time has spared us " are sufficient to convince us that
his poetical genius, if it had been cultivated with the same
care, would not have been inferior to his oratorical." He
adds that " the world always judges of things by compari-
1 Drumann (Gesch. Roms, v. 221) so that probably one version of the line
ingeniously fixes the date of this poem was concedat laurea lingua, which ex-
as B.C. 87, when Cicero therefore was presses more distinctly the meaning that
nineteen years old. military is inferior to civil glory. But
there is more of alliterative jingle in the
2 Plutarch renders laudi by TTJ yXwrrr;, laurea laudi.
JOT. 1-16. REPUTATION AS A POET. n
son, and because he was not so great a poet as Virgil and
Horace, he was decried as none at all." But Middleton is
as extravagant in his praise as Cicero's detractors were unjust
in their censure. He never could have been a great poet,
for he had not the divinns afflatus, so finely expressed by
Ovid in the line
Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo !
without which there is no real poetry ; and he knew it,
frankly confessing that his brother Ouintus would have made
a much better poet than himself. But he had a decided
talent for vigorous versification, and the specimens that we
find scattered amongst his writings show that he was far
superior in point of style and harmony, in choice of diction
and facility of expression, to the poets who had hitherto
written in the Latin language. Their compositions are full
of the most uncouth barbarisms, from which Cicero's poetical
works appear to have been \vholly free, and I do not doubt
that Roman poetry was indebted to him in no slight degree
for the advance it made in the hands of Catullus, Virgil,
Horace, and Ovid. It was no small service to weed away
such monstrous words and expressions as deface the writings
of Pacuvius, Naevius, Attius, and Ennius, who were the
authors most in vogue when Cicero first exercised his
youthful genius in the art of poetical composition. 1
At the age of sixteen, according to the custom of the
Roman youth, Cicero was with the usual ceremonies brought
before the Praetor in the Forum ; and there, in his presence,
he formally laid aside the toga prcetexta, his boyish dress, and
assumed the toga pura or virilis, which indicated that he
had arrived at the age of adolescence, and was introduced
1 One of the lines of Pacuvius was nothing is now known but the names.
XT . 7- Limon apparently a series of epi-
11 ' ' mCUrV1Cer ~ grams on distinguished men, in hexa-
meter verse. Four lines are quoted by
The following is a list of the poetical Suetonius in his Vita Terentii. 8. Ma-
works of Cicero, so far as they are rius. 9. De suo Consulatu. 10. De
known: i. Translations of passages suis Temporibus, in three books. n.
from Homer into Latin verse, scattered Elegia Tamelastis, mentioned by Strvius
throughout his works. 2. The Phaeno- in Virg. Eclog. i. 58. 12. Libellus
mena of Aratus. 3. The Prognostica Jocularis, quoted by Quint, viii. 6.
(AtotrT^em) of Aratus. 4-6. The Al- 13. Pontius Glaucus.
cyones, Uxorius, Nilus, poems of which
i2 THE BOYHOOD. CHAP. i.
into public life. This, however, did not imply that his edu-
cation was finished, any more than in the case of the change
of dress so dear to an English boy when he assumes the
dignity of a coat instead of a jacket ; and Ovid expressly
tells us, with reference to such an occasion
Et studium nobis, quod fuit ante manet.
The change, however, in the case of a Roman boy was much
more serious and important. It showed that he had -reached
an age when he might engage in the active business of life
the precise period when he began to do so of course
varying according to his temperament and abilities. The
toga prcetexta which he had hitherto worn was a white robe
with a coloured border, which was also the dress of the
Roman magistrates, as distinguished from the plain robe
which was worn by unofficial persons, and called the toga
pura. And it is impossible not to notice the significance of
the costume. The embroidered robe was symbolical of
success in the struggle of life, and of the attainment of rank
and station in the republic. We may well believe that the
boy was clothed in it as a sort of uniform to awaken in his
mind the stirrings of ambition, and point out the path to
future eminence.
The custom was for the young man to be conducted by
his father or other near relation to the Forum, when he was
presented to the Praetor, whose tribunal or court was there,
and the ceremony of change of dress was performed. He
then received the congratulations of his relatives and friends
who accompanied him, amidst the applause of the surround-
ing crowd ; for there never was any lack of idlers in the
Forum, and, indeed, so numerous were they, that old Cato
the Censor once proposed that the ground should be paved
with sharp stones to make it a less agreeable lounge. After
this the youth was conducted along the Via Sacra, which
ran through the Forum up to the Capitol, and a sacrifice was
offered at the altar of Jupiter, whose magnificent temple
crowned the hill. The rest of the day was spent in festivi-
ties at home ; and the hero of the hour, now no longer a
boy but a man, received presents as on a birthday amongst
ourselves.
B.C. 106-91.
THE BOYHOOD.
We have good reason to believe that, whether Cicero's
father had returned to Arpinum or not after bringing his
sons to Rome, he was present on this interesting occasion,
for his son expressly tells us that immediately afterwards he
introduced Cicero to Ouintus Mucius Scaevola the Augur
the most profound lawyer of his day in Rome that he
might have the benefit of his instruction in the science of
which that accomplished jurist was so great a master.
CHAPTER II.
THE STUDENT.
TEL 17-25. B.C. 90-82.
THE contrast between ancient and modern manners is so
great that it is very difficult to realise it, and bring clearly
before the mind's eye the usages of social life that belong to
a remote antiquity. Law was taught in a very different
manner in republican Rome from that to which we are
accustomed in England. There were no chambers of
pleaders or conveyancers, to which the young student might
resort to copy precedents and answer cases, having first
obtained admission there by the payment of an honorarium.
Nor were there, so far as we know, public lectures on law
like those of our inns of court, open to those who might
choose to attend them. And yet there was a practice at
Rome which bore a certain analogy to both these methods
of instruction, and to a certain extent combined the advan-
tages of both. It was this : those who aspired to fill the
great offices of state knew that they could only climb the
ladder of ambition by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens.
The object, therefore, of every public man was to cultivate
popularity, and there were two modes of cultivating it with
success, both of which, however, might be, and sometimes
were, combined. The one was by undertaking gratuitously
the defence of the accused, and advocating causes in courts
of justice; the other, by giving gratuitous advice on points
of law to those who required their assistance. For this
purpose the house of a Roman jurisconsult was always open,
not only to suitors but to students, who came there to listen
to the responsa prudentum or legal opinions, which were
delivered not in the stiff formal manner of a modern consulta-
tion, but in the easy mode of familiar conversation, some-
JET. 17-25. ATTENDANCE ON ORATORS. 15
times during a walk in the peristylium of the house, and
sometimes during a saunter in the Forum. It was thus that
Cicero attached himself to Scaevola the Augur as a kind of
pupil ; and that so assiduously, that in his own emphatic
language he declares that he hardly ever quitted his side.
He used to take notes of his lectures, and commit his
maxims and sayings to memory ; following him to the courts
when he pleaded as an advocate, and to the Rostra when
he harangued the people. He thus received practical lessons
in eloquence and law, and formed himself for the career
which he had marked out for himself, and in which he was
destined to acquire such deathless fame. After the death
of this great lawyer he transferred himself to another of the
same family and name for he, too, was called Ouintus
Mucius Scaevola, and was the cousin of the Augur who
had filled the office of Consul, and was Pontifex Maximus.
He was the first who attempted to give a scientific form to
the Jus Civile, by writing a systematic treatise upon it ; and
Cicero with grateful enthusiasm calls him the most eloquent
of lawyers, and the most learned of orators. His time was
now incessantly occupied. He lost no opportunity of at-
tending the speeches of the different orators and pleaders in
the Forum and the courts ; he watched the gestures of the
best actors, like yEsop and Roscius ; and every day was
spent in reading, writing, and practising declamation. Philo-
sophy and oratory seem to have been the two chief objects
of his study ; but if of any man before Bacon appeared that
might be said, which the great master of modern philosophy
claimed for himself, that he " had taken all knowledge for his
province," it might be truly declared of the youthful Cicero.
His appetite for knowledge was insatiable, and his desire for
distinction boundless. No one ever lived to whom the hope
of future distinction furnished a stronger motive for exertion.
Perhaps at no other place and at no other time, except at
Athens in the palmy days of her great orators, have such
opportunities been afforded for the study of eloquence as
existed then at Rome. The constitution of the republic
imperatively required that those who looked to high office in
the state should be practised speakers. The two great
avenues of distinction were the Army and the Bar. And by
16 THE STUDENT. CHAP. n.
the Bar I do not mean the profession of an advocate in the
narrow and limited sense which it bears amongst ourselves ;
but every kind of display of eloquence in the Forum, whether
in a speech in the courts of law before the Praetor, or in a
concio or harangue addressed to the people. Even the suc-
cessful soldier had to cultivate oratory to give him a fair
chance of civic honours. Each of the successive steps in the
ascending hierarchy of office, from the qusestorship to the
consulship, could only be attained by securing the votes of
the people under a system which amounted almost to uni-
versal suffrage ; and to be able to speak well was then, as
in all ages and times, the surest passport to popular favour.
Pompey and Caesar were both orators ; and Caesar indeed
was considered one of the very best speakers of his day.
Cicero therefore devoted himself to the study of that art,
of success in which he was soon to show himself the most
splendid example. He diligently declaimed at home, and
there noted down the passages which had most struck him
in the Greek orators, or the speeches he had heard delivered ;
taking care at the same time to cultivate his style by written
composition, and the perusal of works of rhetoric. But every
kind of literature engaged his attention. I have spoken of
his attempts in poetry ; and rhetoric, dialectics, philosophy,
and law, by turns attracted him, and occupied his busy hours.
Nodes et dies, he says, in omnium doctrinarum meditatione
versabar}
But he did not confine himself to the pursuit of studies
fitted to qualify him for success in the Forurn and the Senate.
In his nineteenth year he quitted them for the active life of
the camp, and became for a time a soldier. This was a most
valuable part of the education of a Roman gentleman ; and
it was almost necessary in the case of those who looked for-
ward to high office. As one of the great magistrates of the
republic, and especially as Consul, he might have to com-
mand the Roman legions and conduct a campaign ; when,
if he failed, and victory deserted his standard, he was liable
to be called to a severe account by the sovereign people.
It was therefore essential to know something of the art of
war, which can only be taught by active service in the field ;
1 Brutus, c. 90.
B.C. 90-82. MILITAR Y ED UCA TION. 1 7
and the constant quarrels in which the republic was engaged
both in Italy and abroad gave ample opportunity for this.
Rome was rapidly accomplishing her destiny as the future
mistress of the world. The whole of Italy was subject to
her sway ; but the relation of the different towns and com-
munities there to herself was anomalous and undefined. The
inhabitants had not the rights of Roman citizens, except in
some special cases, as in that of Arpinum ; and they were
looked upon rather as the dependants and tributaries of the
Republic than part of the Republic itself. This state of
things was of course galling to their pride, and they chafed
under a sense of injustice. They had to furnish soldiers for
the Roman armies, but could not vote in the election of a
Roman magistrate. The discontent at last broke out into
open war, which has been variously called the Marsian, the
Italian, or the Social War. It was during this war that
Cicero, then in his nineteenth year, served in his first and
only campaign, under the Consul Cneius Pompeius Strabo,
the father of Pompey the Great ; and in one of his speeches
he mentions an incident that occurred in his presence to show
how courtesy may be shown even to an enemy in the field.
A conference of the two generals took place midway be-
tween the hostile camps, when Scato the leader of the
Marsians asked the brother of the Consul who attended the
meeting how he should address him, upon which Sextus
Pompeius replied " as a friend by inclination : as an enemy
from necessity."
About this time Philo, the philosopher of the school of
the Academy, came from Athens to Rome accompanied by
several distinguished Athenians, who had quitted their
country owing to the troubles occasioned by the war with
the Mithridates. On his return from the Italian campaign,
Cicero attached himself to him as a pupil, embracing the
study of philosophy all the more warmly, inasmuch as the
confusion that prevailed at Rome at this period during the
deadly struggle between Marius and Sylla seemed to have
annihilated the ordinary business of the courts of law. But
there was another mode of study of a practical kind to
which he did not fail to devote himself with a prescient
knowledge of its importance to his own future career. The
c
i8
THE STUDENT.
CHAP. II.
Forum resounded with the speeches of orators who inflamed
the passions of the people ; and amongst these Sulpicius the
Tribune was pre-eminent as a popular demagogue. Amidst
the crowd who listened to them as they thundered from the
Rostra, stood a tall thin youth with outstretched neck and
eager eyes, gazing with rapt attention on the speakers, and
learning from them the art how to sway by the charm of
eloquence the fierce democracy of Rome. This is no fancy
portrait, but one which Cicero has drawn of himself in a
most interesting passage where he describes his own personal
appearance, and mentions how constant an attendant he was
at the harangues that were then daily delivered in the Forum. 1
It may be interesting to attempt a description of this
celebrated spot as it appeared in the days of Cicero ; but
we must take care not to be
misled by the ruins of build-
ings which now meet the eye
of the spectator as he gazes
down upon it from the heights
of the Capitol. The Arch of
Titus was not there then,
nor "the Colosseum, two of
the most conspicuous objects
in view.
The Forum was oblong in
shape, and on the northern side
at the eastern corner stood the
Temple of Concord, of which
(or of a temple bearing the
same name, but built at a later
period) some columns still re-
main. Close to this, but a little
in front, stood the Rostra, fac-
ing the Forum, the base of
which has within the last few
years been discovered and laid
bare. In front of this, again,
stood the Duilian column a
pillar ornamented with the brazen beaks of ships taken by
1 Brut. 91.
20 THE STUDENT. . CHAP, n
Caius Duilius in the first naval victory gained by the Romans
over the Carthaginians. Along the whole length of the Forum,
and almost in the middle, dividing it into two parts, run the
Via Sacra (the Sacred Way), which led from the southern
extremity to the Capitol, along which the Roman generals
marched in solemn procession to the temple of Jupiter Capi-
tolinus when they enjoyed the honour of a triumph. The
pavement consisted of large flat polygonal blocks of stone,
like slabs of slate irregularly placed, which look as fresh
now, after the lapse of twenty-five centuries, as if they had
been laid down yesterday. By the side of this, and between
it and the Palatine Hill, at a distance from the Capitol of
about two-thirds of its whole length, stood the temple of
Jupiter Stator, or Jupiter the Stayer of Flight, to which, as
some antiquarians think, belonged those two graceful
pillars which rivet the gaze of every beholder, and which
have long been the admiration and the despair of the archi-
tect. There were long rows of shops or booths, called
tabern(z y which formed colonnades at the sides of the Forum ;
and it was from one of these that Virginius snatched the
butcher's knife which he plunged into the bosom of his
daughter to save her from dishonour.
During the reign of terror that ensued when Marius and
Cinna formed a coalition, and, amidst the horrors of a pro-
scription, slaked their sanguinary rage with the noblest blood
of Rome, it was as dangerous to have been a public speaker
as it was at Athens when Antipater demanded that the
people should give up their orators, and Demosthenes fled
to ^Egina to perish there by his own hand rather than be
dragged to execution. Antonius, Catulus, and Julius were
put to death, and not long afterwards Scaevola, Carbo, and
Antistius met a similar fate. Crassus would no doubt have
fallen by the hand of the executioner or assassin if he had
been still alive, but he had died four years before. In this