PREFACE

The object of this book is to give the English-speaking public, in a convenient form, as faithful and readable a copy as the translator was capable of making of a document unique in the literature of antiquity. Whether we regard the correspondence of Cicero from the point of view of the biographer and observer of character, the historian, or the lover of belles lettres, it is equally worthy of study. It seems needless to dwell on the immense historical importance of letters written by prominent actors in one of the decisive periods of the world's history, when the great Republic, that had spread its victorious arms, and its law and discipline, over the greater part of the known world, was in the throes of its change from the old order to the new. If we would understand—as who would not?—the motives and aims of the men who acted in that great drama, there is nowhere that we can go with better hope of doing so than to these letters. To the student of character also the personality of Cicero must always have a great fascination. Statesman, orator, man of letters, father, husband, brother, and friend—in all these capacities he comes before us with singular vividness. In every one of them he will doubtless rouse different feelings in different minds. But though he will still, as he did in his lifetime, excite vehement disapproval as well as strong admiration, he will never, I think, appear to anyone dull or uninteresting. In the greater part of his letters he is not posing or assuming a character; he lets us only too frankly into his weaknesses and his vanities, as well as his generous admirations and warm affections. Whether he is weeping, or angry, or exulting, or eager for compliments, or vain of his abilities and achievements, he is not a phantasm or a farceur, but a human being with fiercely-beating pulse and hot blood.

The difficulty of the task which I have been bold enough to undertake is well known to scholars, and may explain, though perhaps not excuse, the defects of my work. One who undertakes to express the thoughts of antiquity in modern idiom goes to his task with his eyes open, and has no right at every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his unhappy fate. So also with the particular difficulties presented by the great founder of Latin style—his constant use of superlatives, his doubling and trebling of nearly synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning in such common words as officium, fides, studium, humanitas, dignitas, and the like—all these the translator has to take in the day's work. Finally, there are the hard nuts to crack—often very hard—presented by corruption of the text. Such problems, though, relatively with other ancient works, not perhaps excessively numerous, are yet sufficiently numerous and sufficiently difficult. But besides these, which are the natural incidents of such work, there is the special difficulty that the letters are frequently answers to others which we do not possess, and which alone can fully explain the meaning of sentences which must remain enigmatical to us; or they refer to matters by a word or phrase of almost telegraphic abruptness, with which the recipient was well acquainted, but as to which we are reduced to guessing. When, however, all such insoluble difficulties are allowed for, which after all in absolute bulk are very small, there should (if the present version is at all worthy) be enough that is perfectly plain to everyone, and generally of the highest interest.

I had no intention of writing a commentary on the language of Cicero or his correspondents, and my translation must, as a rule, be taken for the only expression of my judgment formed after reading and weighing the arguments of commentators. I meant only to add notes on persons and things enabling the reader to use the letters for biographical, social, and historical study. I should have liked to dedicate it by the words Boswellianus Boswellianis. But I found that the difficulties of the text compelled me to add a word here and there as to the solution of them which I preferred, or had myself to suggest. Such notes are very rare, and rather meant as danger signals than critical discussions. I have followed in the main the chronological arrangement of the letters adopted by Messrs. Tyrrell and Purser, to whose great work my obligations are extremely numerous. If, as is the case, I have not always been able to accept their conclusions, it is none the less true that their brilliant labours have infinitely lightened my task, and perhaps made it even possible.

I ought to mention that I have adopted the English mode of dating, writing, for instance, July and August, though Cicero repudiated the former and, of course, never heard of the latter. I have also refrained generally from attempting to represent his Greek by French, partly because I fear I should have done it ill, and partly because it is not in him as in an English writer who lards his sentences with French. It is almost confined to the letters to Atticus, to whom Greek was a second mother-tongue, and often, I think, is a quotation from him. It does not really represent Cicero's ordinary style.

One excuse for my boldness in venturing upon the work is the fact that no complete translation exists in English. Mr. Jeans has published a brilliant translation of a selection of some of the best of the letters. But still it is not the whole. The last century versions of Melmoth and Herbenden have many excellences; but they are not complete either (the letters to Brutus, for instance, having been discovered since), and need, at any rate, a somewhat searching revision. Besides, with many graces of style, they may perhaps prove less attractive now than they did a century ago. At any rate it is done, and I must bear with what equanimity nature has given me the strictures of critics, who doubtless will find, if so minded, many blemishes to set off against, and perhaps outweigh, any merit my translation may have. I must bear that as well as I may. But no critic can take from me the days and nights spent in close communion with Rome's greatest intellect, or the endless pleasure of solving the perpetually recurring problem of how best to transfer a great writer's thoughts and feelings from one language to another:

 
"Cæsar in hoc potuit iuris habere nihil."
 

INTRODUCTION

Ground covered by the Correspondence.

The correspondence of Cicero, as preserved for us by his freedman Tiro, does not open till the thirty-ninth year of the orator's life, and is so strictly contemporary, dealing so exclusively with the affairs of the moment, that little light is thrown by it on his previous life. It does not become continuous till the year after his consulship (b.c. 62). There are no letters in the year of the consulship itself or the year of his canvass for the consulship (b.c. 64 and 63). It begins in b.c. 68, and between that date and b.c. 65 there are only eleven letters. We have, therefore, nothing exactly contemporaneous to help us to form a judgment on the great event which coloured so much of his after life, the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy and the execution of the conspirators, in the last month of his consulship. But setting aside the first eleven letters, we have from that time forward a correspondence illustrating, as no other document in antiquity does, the hopes and fears, the doubts and difficulties, of a keen politician living through the most momentous period of Roman history, the period of the fall of the Republic, beginning with Pompey's return from the East in b.c. 62, and ending with the appearance of the young Octavian on the scene and the formation of the Triumvirate in b.c. 43, of whose victims Cicero was one of the first and most illustrious. It is by his conduct and speeches during this period that Cicero's claim to be a statesman and a patriot must be judged, and by his writings in the same period that his place in literature must chiefly be assigned. Before b.c. 63 his biography, if we had it, would be that of the advocate and the official, no doubt with certain general views on political questions as they occurred, but not yet committed definitely to a party, or inclined to regard politics as the absorbing interest of his life. In his early youth his hero had been his fellow townsman Marius, in whose honour he composed a poem about the time of taking the toga virilis. But it was as the successful general, and before the days of the civil war. And though he served in the army of Sulla in the Marsic war (b.c. 90-88), he always regarded his cruelties with horror, however much he may have afterwards approved of certain points of his legislation. It was not till the consulship that he became definitely a party man¹ and an Optimate, and even then his feelings were much distracted by a strong belief—strangely ill-founded—that Pompey would be as successful as a statesman as he had been fortunate as a general. For him he had also a warm personal attachment, which never seems to have wholly died out, in spite of much petulance of language. This partly accounts for the surrender of b.c. 56, and his acquiescence in the policy of the triumvirs, an acquiescence never hearty indeed, as far as Cæsar and Crassus were concerned, but in which he consoled himself with the belief that nothing very unconstitutional could be done while Pompey was practically directing affairs at Rome.

The various nature of the Correspondence.

It is through this period of political change and excitement that the correspondence will take us, with some important gaps indeed, but on the whole fullest when it is most wanted to shew the feelings and motives guiding the active politicians of the day, or at any rate the effect which events had upon one eager and acute intellect and sensitive heart. One charm of the correspondence is variety. There is almost every sort of letter. Those to Atticus are unstudied, spontaneous, and reflect the varying moods of the writer. At times of special excitement they follow each other day by day, and sometimes more than once in the same day; and the writer seems to conceal nothing, however much it might expose him to ridicule, and to the charge of fickleness, weakness, or even cowardice. Those addressed to other friends are sometimes familiar and playful, sometimes angry and indignant. Some of them are careful and elaborate state papers, others mere formal introductions and recommendations. Business, literature, and philosophy all have their share in them; and, what is so rare in ancient literature, the family relations of the writer, his dealings with wife, son, and daughter, brother and nephew, and sons-in-law, are all depicted for us, often with the utmost frankness. After reading them we seem to know Cicero the man, as well as Cicero the statesman and orator. The eleven letters which precede the consulship are happily, from this point of view, addressed to Atticus. For it was to Atticus that he wrote with the least concealment, and with the confidence that any detail, however small, which concerned himself would be interesting to his correspondent. It is well, therefore, that, though we thus come into his life when it was more than half over, we should at once hear his genuine sentiments on whatever subjects he may be speaking. Besides his own, we have about ninety letters to Cicero from some of the chief men of the day—Pompey, Cæsar, Cato, Brutus, Antony, and many others. They are of very various excellence. The best of them are by much less known men. Neither Pompey nor Cæsar were good letter-writers, or, if the latter was so, he was too busy to use his powers.

Cicero's position previous to the beginning of the Correspondence in b.c. 68.

The letters begin, then, in b.c. 68, when Cicero was in his thirty-seventh year. He was already a man of established reputation both as a pleader and a writer. Rhetorical treatises (b.c. 86), translations from Xenophon and Plato (b.c. 84), and from the poems of Aratus (b.c. 81), had given evidence of a varied literary interest and a promise of future eminence, while his success as an advocate had led to the first step in the official cursus honorum by his becoming a quæstor in b.c. 75. The lot assigned Lilybæum as his sphere of work, and though the duties of a quæstor in Sicily were not such as to bring a man's name much before the Roman public, Cicero plumes himself, as was not unusual with him, on the integrity and energy which he displayed in his administration. He has indeed the honesty to tell against himself the story of the acquaintance who, meeting him at Puteoli on his return journey, asked Quæstor, b.c. 75. him what day he had left Rome and what was the news there. When he answered rather crossly that he had just come from Sicily, another acquaintance put in with "Why, of course. Didn't you know he has just been quæstor at Syracuse!" At any rate he had done sufficiently well in Lilybæum to give him his next step, the ædileship to which he was elected b.c. 70, and to induce the Sicilians to apply to him, when in that year they desired the prosecution of the extortionate Verres. His energy and success in this business raised him, without question, to the first rank of advocates, and pledged him to a righteous policy in regard to the government of the provinces.

Cicero's Boyhood and Education.

Still Cicero was a novus homo, and the jealous exclusiveness of the great families at Rome might yet prevent his attainment of the highest office of all. When the correspondence opens he is a candidate for the prætorship, which he obtained without difficulty, at the head of the poll. But his birth might still be a bar to the consulship. His father, M. Tullius, lived at Arpinum, an ancient city of the Volscians and afterwards of the Samnites, which had long enjoyed a partial, and from b.c. 188 a complete, Roman franchise, and was included in the Cornelian tribe. Cicero's mother's name was Helvia, of whom we know nothing but the one anecdote told by Quintus (Fam. xvi. 26), who says that she used to seal the wine jars when they were emptied, so that none might be drained without her knowing it—a testimony to her economy and careful housewifery. His father had weak health and resided almost entirely in his villa at Arpinum, which he had considerably enlarged, much devoted to study and literature (de Leg. ii. 1). But though he apparently possessed considerable property, giving him equestrian rank, and though Cicero says that his family was very ancient, yet neither he nor any of his ancestors had held Roman magistracies. Marcus and his brother Quintus were the first of their family to do so, and both had to depend on character and ability to secure their elections. But though the father did nothing for his sons by holding curule office himself, he did the best for their education that was possible. Cicero calls him optimus et prudentissimus, and speaks with gratitude of what he had done for his sons in this respect. They were sent early to Rome to the house of C. Aculeo, a learned jurisconsult, married to a sister of Helvia; and attended—with their cousins, the sons of Aculeo—the best schools in the city.² The young Marcus shewed extraordinary ability from the first, and that avidity for reading and study which never forsook him. As a young man he diligently attended the chambers of renowned jurisconsults, especially those of the elder and younger Scævola, Crassus, and Antonius, and soon found that his calling in life was oratory. It was not till he was twenty-eight years old, however—when he had already written much and pleaded many cases—that he went on a visit of between two and three years to Greece, Asia, and Rhodes, to study in the various schools of rhetoric and philosophy, and to view their famous cities (b.c. 79-77). It was after his return from this tour that his age (he was now thirty-one) made the seeking of office at Rome possible. From that time his election to the several offices—quæstorship, ædileship, prætorship, consulship—followed without any repulse, each in the first year of his age at which he was legally capable of being elected.