I know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so unreal, as the First Triumvirate. Every school-boy, almost every school-girl, knows that there was a First Triumvirate, and that it was a political combination made by three great Romans of the day, Julius C?sar, Pompey the Great, and Crassus the Rich, for managing Rome among them. Beyond this they know little, because there is little to know. That it was a conspiracy against the ordained government of the day, as much so as that of Catiline, or Guy Faux, or Napoleon III., they do not know generally, because C?sar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory that all the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be magnificent and heroic. But of the method in which this Triumvirate was constructed, who has an idea? How was it first suggested, where, and by whom? What was it that the conspirators combined to do? There was no purpose of wholesale murder like that of Catiline for destroying the Senate, and of Guy Faux for blowing up the House of Lords. There was no plot arranged for silencing a body of legislators like that of Napoleon. In these scrambles that are going on every year for place and power, for provinces and plunder, let us help each other. If we can manage to stick fast by each other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder. That, said with a wink by one of the Triumvirate—C?sar, let us say—and assented to with a nod by Pompey and Crassus, was sufficient 265for the construction of such a conspiracy as that which I presume to have been hatched when the First Triumvirate was formed.231 Mommsen, who never speaks of a Triumvirate under that name, except in his index,232 where he has permitted the word to appear for the guidance of persons less well instructed than himself, connects the transaction which we call the First Triumvirate with a former coalition, which he describes as having been made in (b.c. 71) the year before the Consulship of Pompey and Crassus. With that we need not concern ourselves as we are dealing with the life of Cicero rather than with Roman history, except to say that C?sar. who was the motive power of the second coalition, could have had no personal hand in that of 71. Though he had spent his early years in "harassing the aristocracy," as Dean Merivale tells us, he had not been of sufficient standing in men\'s minds to be put on a par with Pompey and Crassus. When this First Triumvirate was formed, as the modern world generally calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and the great military leaders, as Mommsen with greater, but not with perfect, accuracy describes it, C?sar no doubt had at his fingers\' ends the history of past years. "The idea naturally occurred," says Mommsen, "whether * * * an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be established between the democrats, 266with their ally, Crassus, on the one side, and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."233 The democracy here means C?sar. C?sar during his whole life had been learning that no good could come to any one from an effete Senate, or from republican forms which had lost all their salt. Democracy was in vogue with him; not, as I think, from any philanthropic desire for equality; not from any far-seeing view of fraternal citizenship under one great paternal lord—the study of politics had never then reached to that height—but because it was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three, should prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be more worthy than others. He had no conscience in the matter. Money was to him nothing. Another man\'s money was the same as his own—or better, if he could get hold of it. That doctrine taught by Cicero that men are "ad justitiam natos" must have been to him simply absurd. Blood was to him nothing. A friend was better than a foe, and a live man than a dead. Blood-thirstiness was a passion unknown to him; but that tenderness which with us creates a horror of blood was equally unknown. Pleasure was sweet to him; but he was man enough to feel that a life of pleasure was contemptible. To pillage a city, to pilfer his all from a rich man, to debauch a friend\'s wife, to give over a multitude of women and children to slaughter, was as easy to him as to forgive an enemy. But nothing rankled with him, and he could forgive an enemy. Of courage he had that better sort which can appreciate and calculate danger, and then act as though there were none. Nothing was wrong to him but what was injudicious. He could flatter, cajole, lie, deceive, and rob; nay, would think it folly not to do so 267if to do so were expedient.234 In this coalition he appears as supporting and supported by the people. Therefore Mommsen speaks of him as "the democrat." Crassus is called the ally of the democrats. It will be enough for us here to know that Crassus had achieved his position in the Senate by his enormous wealth, and that it was because of his wealth, which was essential to C?sar, that he was admitted into the league. By means of his wealth he had risen to power and had conquered and killed Spartacus, of the honor and glory of which Pompey robbed him. Then he had been made Consul. When C?sar had gone as Propr?tor to Spain, Crassus had found the money. Now C?sar had come back, and was hand and glove with Crassus. When the division of the spoil came, some years afterward—the spoil won by the Triumvirate—when C?sar had half perfected his grand achievements in Gaul, and Crassus had as yet been only a second time Consul, he got himself to be sent into Syria, that by conquering the Parthians he might make himself equal to C?sar. We know how he and his son perished there, each of them probably avoiding the last extremity of misery to a Roman—that of falling into the hands of a barbarian enemy—by destroying himself. Than the life of Crassus nothing could be more contemptible; than the death nothing more pitiable. "For Pompeius," says Mommsen, "such a coalition was certainly a political suicide." As events turned out it became so, because 268C?sar was the stronger man of the two; but it is intelligible that at that time Pompey should have felt that he could not lord it over the Senate, as he wished to do, without aid from the democratic party. He had no well-defined views, but he wished to be the first man in Rome. He regarded himself as still greatly superior to C?sar, who as yet had been no more than Pr?tor, and at this time was being balked of his triumph because he could not at one and the same moment be in the city, as candidate for the Consulship, and out of the city waiting for his triumph. Pompey had triumphed three times, had been Consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been victorious east and west, and was called "Magnus." He did not as yet fear to be overshadowed by C?sar.235 Cicero was his bugbear.

Mommsen I believe to be right in eschewing the word "Triumvirate." I know no mention of it by any Roman writer as applied to this conspiracy, though Tacitus, Suetonius, and Florus call by that name the later coalition of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus. The Langhornes, in translating Plutarch\'s life of Crassus, speak of the Triumvirate; but Plutarch himself says that C?sar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by joining the three men.236 Paterculus and Suetonius237 explain very clearly the nature of the compact, but do 269not use the term. There was nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation, though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been used has been so far appropriate.
b.c. 60, ?tat 47.

Cicero was the bugbear to them all. That he might have been one of them, if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of the time can doubt. Had he so chosen he might again have been a "real power in the State;" but to become so in the way proposed to him it was necessary that he should join others in a conspiracy against the Republic.

I do not wish it to be supposed that Cicero received the overtures made to him with horror. Conspiracies were too common for horror; and these conspirators were all our Cicero\'s friends in one sense, though in another they might be his opponents. We may imagine that at first Crassus had nothing to do with the matter, and that Pompey would fain have stood aloof in his jealousy. But C?sar knew that it was well to have Cicero, if Cicero was to be had. It was not only his eloquence which was marvellously powerful, or his energy which had been shown to be indomitable: there was his character, surpassed by that of no Roman living; if only, in giving them the use of his character, he could be got to disregard the honor and the justice and the patriotism on which his character had been founded. How valuable may character be made, if it can be employed under such conditions! To be believed because of your truth, and yet to lie; to be trusted for your honesty, and yet to cheat; to have credit for patriotism, and yet to sell your country! The temptations to do this are rarely put before a man plainly, in all their naked ugliness. They certainly 270were not so presented to Cicero by C?sar and his associates. The bait was held out to him, as it is daily to others, in a form not repellent, with words fitted to deceive and powerful almost to persuade. Give us the advantage of your character, and then by your means we shall be able to save our country. Though our line of action may not be strictly constitutional, if you will look into it you will see that it is expedient. What other course is there? How else shall any wreck of the Republic be preserved? Would you be another Cato, useless and impractical? Join us, and save Rome to some purpose. We can understand that in such way was the lure held out to Cicero, as it has been to many a politician since. But when the politician takes the office offered to him—and the pay, though it be but that of a Lord of the Treasury—he must vote with his party.

That Cicero doubted much whether he would or would not at this time throw in his lot with C?sar and Pompey is certain. To be of real use—not to be impractical, as was Cato—to save his country and rise honestly in power and glory—not to be too straitlaced, not over-scrupulous—giving and taking a little, so that he might work to good purpose with others in harness—that was his idea of duty as a Roman. To serve in accord with Pompey was the first dream of his political life, and now Pompey was in accord with C?sar. It was natural that he should doubt—natural that he should express his doubts. Who should receive them but Atticus, that "alter ego?" Cicero doubted whether he should cling to Pompey—as he did in every phase of his political life, till Pompey had perished at the mouth of the Nile. But at last he saw his way clear to honesty, as I think he always did. He tells his friend that C?sar had sent his confidential messenger, Balbus, to sound him. The present question is whether he shall resist a certain agrarian law of which he does not approve, but which is supported by both Pompey and C?sar, or retire from the contest and enjoy himself at his country villas, or boldly stay 271at Rome and oppose the law. C?sar assures him that if he will come over to them, C?sar will be always true to him and Pompey, and will do his best to bring Crassus into the same frame of mind. Then he reckons up all the good things which would accrue to him: "Closest friendship with Pompey—with C?sar also, should he wish it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with the people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him. But that conclusion moves me to which I came in my third book."238 Then he repeats the lines given in the note below, which he had written, probably this very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own Consulship. The lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of them is magnificent: "Stick to the good cause which in your early youth you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says, alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of his. Then he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the occasion:239 "No augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve your country." "But," he says, "we will talk of all that when you come to me for the holidays. Your bath shall be ready for you: your sister and mother shall be of the party." And so the doubts are settled.

Now came on the question of the Tribuneship of Clodius, in reference to which I will quote a passage out of Middleton, 272because the phrase which he uses exactly explains the purposes of C?sar and Pompey.
b.c. 60, ?tat 47.

"Clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge himself on Cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had formed for that purpose. His project was to get himself chosen Tribune, and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the people. But as all Patricians were incapable of the Tribunate, by its original institution so his first step was to make himself a Plebeian by the pretence of an adoption into a Plebeian house, which could not yet be done without the suffrage of the people. This case was wholly new, and contrary to all the forms—wanting every condition, and serving none of the ends which were required in regular adoptions—so that, on the first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted and privately supported by persons of much more weight than Clodius. C?sar was at the bottom of it, and Pompey secretly favored it—not that they intended to ruin Cicero, but to keep him only under the lash—and if they could not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit quiet, and let Clodius loose upon him."240

This, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in Rome at this conjunction of affairs. It had been found impossible to draw Cicero gently into the net, so that he should become one of them. If he would live quietly at his Antian or Tusculan villa, amid his books and writings, he should be treated with all respect; he should be borne with, even though he talked so much of his own Consulate. But if he would interfere with the politics of the day, and would not come into the net, then he must be dealt with. C?sar seems to have respected Cicero always, and even to have liked him; but he 273was not minded to put up with a "friend" in Rome who from day to day abused all his projects. In defending Antony, the Macedonian Proconsul who was condemned, Cicero made some unpleasant remarks on the then condition of things. C?sar, we are told, when he heard of this, on the very spur of the moment, caused Clodius to be accepted as a Plebeian.

In all this we are reminded of the absolute truth of Mommsen\'s verdict on Rome, which I have already quoted more than once: "On the Roman oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed, save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." How had it come to pass that C?sar had the power of suddenly causing an edict to become law, whether for good or for evil? Cicero\'s description of what took place is as follows:241 "About the sixth hour of the day, when I was defending my colleague Antony in court, I took occasion to complain of certain things which were being done in the Republic, and which I thought to be injurious to my poor client. Some dishonest persons carried my words to men in power"—meaning C?sar and Pompey—"not, indeed, my own words, but words very different from mine. At the ninth hour on that very same day, you, Clodius, were accepted as a Plebeian." C?sar, having been given to understand that Cicero had been making himself disagreeable, was determined not to put up with it. Suetonius tells the same story with admirable simplicity. Of Suetonius it must be said that, if he had no sympathy for a patriot such as Cicero, neither had he any desire to represent in rosy colors the despotism of a C?sar. He tells his stories simply as he has heard them. "Cicero," says Suetonius,242 "having at some trial complained of the state of the times, C?sar, on the very same day, at the ninth hour, passed 274Clodius over from the Patrician to the Plebeian rank, in accordance with his own desire." How did it come to pass that C?sar, who, though Consul at the time, had no recognized power of that nature, was efficacious for any such work as this? Because the Republic had come to the condition which the German historian has described. The conspiracy between C?sar and his subordinates had not been made for nothing. The reader will require to know why Clodius should have desired degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have been fatal to Cicero. The story has been partly told in the passage from Middleton. A Patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not be a Tribune of the people. From the commencement of the Tribunate, that office had been reserved for the Plebeians. But a Tribune had a power of introducing laws which exceeded that of any Senator or any other official. "They had acquired the right," we are told in Smith\'s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia tributa, or to the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the State;" and as matters stood at this time, no one Tribune could "veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another. When such proposition was made, it was simply for the people to decide by their votes whether it should or should not be law. The present object was to have a proposition made and carried suddenly, in reference to Cicero, which should have, at any rate, the effect of stopping his mouth. This could be best done by a Tribune of the people. No other adequate Tribune could be found—no Plebeian so incensed against Cicero as to be willing to do this, possessing at the same time power enough to be elected. Therefore it was that Clodius was so anxious to be degraded.

No Patrician could become a Tribune of the people; but a Patrician might be adopted by a Plebeian, and the adopted child would take the rank of his father—would, in fact, for all legal purposes, be the same as a son. For doing this in any 275case a law had to be passed—or, in other words, the assent of the people must be obtained and registered. But many conditions were necessary. The father intending to adopt must have no living son of his own, and must be past the time of life at which he might naturally hope to have one; and the adopted son must be of a fitting age to personate a son—at any rate, must be younger than the father; nothing must be done injurious to either family; there must be no trick in it, no looking after other result than that plainly intended. All these conditions were broken. The pretended father, Fonteius, had a family of his own, and was younger than Clodius. The great Claudian family was desecrated, and there was no one so ignorant as not to know that the purpose intended was that of entering the Tribunate by a fraud. It was required by the general law that the Sacred College should report as to the proper observances of the prescribed regulations, but no priest was ever consulted. Yet Clodius was adopted, made a Plebeian, and in the course of the year elected as Tribune.

In reading all this, the reader is mainly struck by the wonderful admixture of lawlessness and law-abiding steadfastness. If C?sar, who was already becoming a tyrant in his Consulship, chose to make use of this means of silencing Cicero, why not force Clodius into the Tribunate without so false and degrading a ceremony? But if, as was no doubt the case, he was not yet strong enough to ignore the old popular feelings on the subject, how was it that he was able to laugh in his sleeve at the laws, and to come forth at a moment\'s notice and cause the people to vote, legally or illegally, just as he pleased? It requires no conjurer to tell us the reason. The outside hulls and husks remain when the rich fruit has gone. It was in seeing this, and yet not quite believing that it must be so, that the agony of Cicero\'s life consisted. There could have been no hope for freedom, no hope for the Republic, when Rome had been governed as it was during the Consulship of C?sar; but Cicero could still hope, though faintly, and 276still buoy himself up with remembrances of his own year of office.

In carrying on the story of the newly-adopted child to his election as Tribune, I have gone beyond the time of my narration, so that the reader may understand the cause and nature and effect of the anger which Clodius entertained for Cicero. This originated in the bitter words spoken as to the profanation of the Bona Dea, and led to the means for achieving Cicero\'s exile and other untoward passages of his life. In the year 60 b.c., when Metellus Celer and Afranius were Consuls, Clodius was tried for insulting the Bona Dea, and the since so-called Triumvirate was instituted. It has already been shown that Cicero, not without many doubts, rejected the first offers which were made to him to join the forces that were so united. He seems to have passed the greater portion of this year in Rome. One letter only was written from the country, to Atticus, from his Tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. He spent his time in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as to which, though he dreaded the coming together of C?sar and Pompey and Crassus—those "graves principum amicitias" which were to become so detrimental to all who were concerned in them—he foresaw as yet but little of the evil which was to fall upon his own head. He was by no means idle as to literature, though we have but little of what he wrote, and do not regret what we have lost. He composed a memoir of his Consulate in Greek, which he sent to Atticus with an allusion to his own use of the foreign language intended to show that he is quite at ease in that matter. Atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in Greek, on the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the road. He candidly tells Atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas Posidonius, the great Greek critic of Rhodes who had been invited by him, Cicero, to read the memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he was altogether debarred 277from such an attempt by the excellence of his correspondent\'s performance.243 He also wrote three books of a poem on his Consulate, and sent them to Atticus; of which we have a fragment of seventy-five lines quoted by himself,244 and four or five other lines including that unfortunate verse handed down by Quintilian, "O fortunatum natam me consule Romam"—unless, indeed, it be spurious, as is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the orator\'s, M. Gueroult. Previous to these he had produced in hexameters, also, a translation of the Prognostics of Aratus. This is the second part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the Ph?nomena, having been turned into Latin verse by him when he was eighteen. Of the Prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by Priscian, and a passage repeated by the author, also in his De Divinatione. I think that Cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring.
b.c. 60, ?tat 47.

Among his epistles of the year there is one which might of itself have sufficed to bring down his name to posterity. This is a long letter, full of advice, to his brother Quintus, who had gone out in the previous year to govern the province of Asia as Propr?tor. We may say that good advice could never have been more wanted, and that better advice could not have been given. It has been suggested that it was written as a companion to that treatise on the duties of a candidate which Quintus composed for his brother\'s service when standing for his Consulship. But I cannot admit the analogy. The composition attributed to Quintus contained lessons of advice equally suitable to any candidate, sprung from the people, striving to rise to high honors in the State. 278This letter is adapted not only to the special position of Quintus, but to the peculiarities of his character, and its strength lies in this: that while the one brother praises the other, justly praises him, as I believe, for many virtues, so as to make the receipt of it acceptable, it points out faults—faults which will become fatal, if not amended—in language which is not only strong but unanswerable.

The style of this letter is undoubtedly very different from that of Cicero\'s letters generally—so as to suggest to the reader that it must have been composed expressly for publication whereas the daily correspondence is written "currente calamo," with no other than the immediate idea of amusing, instructing, or perhaps comforting the correspondent. Hence has come the comparison between this and the treatise De Petitione Consulatus. I think that the gravity of the occasion, rather than any regard for posterity, produced the change of style. Cicero found it to be essential to induce his brother to remain at his post, not to throw up his government in disgust, and so to bear himself that he should not make himself absolutely odious to his own staff and to other Romans around him; for Quintus Cicero, though he had been proud and arrogant and ill tempered, had not made himself notorious by the ordinary Roman propensity to plunder his province "What is it that is required of you as a governor?"245 asks Cicero. "That men should not be frightened by your journeys hither and thither—that they should not be eaten up by your extravagance—that they should not be disturbed by your coming among them—279that there should be joy at your approach; when each city should think that its guardian angel, not a cruel master, had come upon it—when each house should feel that it entertained not a robber but a friend. Practice has made you perfect in this. But it is not enough that you should exercise those good offices yourself, but that you should take care that every one of those who come with you should seem to do his best for the inhabitants of the province, for the citizen of Rome, and for the Republic." I wish that I could give the letter entire—both in English, that all readers might know how grand are the precepts taught, and in Latin, that they who understand the language might appreciate the beauty of the words—but I do not dare to fill my pages at such length. A little farther on he gives his idea of the duty of all those who have power over others—even over the dumb animals.246 "To me it seems that the duty of those in authority over others consists in making those who are under them as happy as the nature of things will allow. Every one knows that you have acted on this principle since you first went to Asia." This, I fear, must be taken as flattery, intended to gild the pill which comes afterward "This is not only his duty who has under him allies and citizens, but is also that of the man who has slaves under his control, and even dumb cattle, that he should study the welfare of all over whom he stands in the position of master!" Let the reader look into this, and ask himself what precepts of Christianity have ever surpassed it.

Then he points out that which he describes as the one great difficulty in the career of a Roman Provincial Governor.247 The 280collectors of taxes, or "publicani," were of the equestrian order. This business of farming the taxes had been their rich privilege for at any rate more than a century, and as Cicero says, farther on in his letter, it was impossible not to know with what hardship the Greek allies would be treated by them when so many stories were current of their cruelty even in Italy. Were Quintus to take a part against these tax-gatherers, he would make them hostile not only to the Republic but to himself also, and also to his brother Marcus; for they were of the equestrian order, and specially connected with these "publicani" by family ties. He implies, as he goes on, that it will be easier to teach the Greeks to be submissive than the tax-gatherers to be moderate. After all, where would the Greeks of Asia be if they had no Roman master to afford them protection? He leaves the matter in the hands of his brother, with advice that he should do the best he can on one side and on the other. If possible, let the greed of the "publicani" be restrained; but let the ally be taught to understand that there may be usage in the world worse even than Roman taxation. It would be hardly worth our while to allude to this part of Cicero\'s advice, did it not give an insight into the mode in which Rome taxed her subject people.

After this he commences that portion of the letter for the sake of which we cannot but believe that the whole was written. "There is one thing," he says, "which I will never cease to din into your ears, because I could not endure to think that, amid the praises which are lavished on you, there should be any matter in which you should be found wanting. All who come to us here"—all who come to Rome from Asia, that is—"when they tell us of your honesty and goodness of heart, tell us also that you fail in temper. It is a vice which, in the daily affairs of private life, betokens a weak and unmanly spirit; but there can be nothing so poor as the exhibition of the littleness of nature in those who have risen to the dignity of command." He will not, he goes on to say, trouble 281his brother with repeating all that the wise men have said on the subject of anger; he is sure that Quintus is well acquainted with all that. But i............