Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
did not stand very high with the multitude, would be thought
guilty of the greatest cowardice and want of manliness.
Whilst Cicero was doubting what course to take, a portent
happened to the women in their sacrificing. For on the altar,
where the fire seemed wholly extinguished, a great and bright
flame issued forth from the ashes of the burnt wood; at which
others were affrighted, but the holy virgins called to Terentia,
Cicero's wife, and bade her haste to her husband, and command
him to execute what he had resolved for the good of his country,
for the goddess had sent a great light to the increase of his
safety and glory. Terentia, therefore, as she was otherwise in
her own nature neither tender-hearted nor timorous, but a woman
eager for distinction (who, as Cicero himself says, would rather
thrust herself into his public affairs, than communicate her
domestic matters to him), told him these things, and excited him
against the conspirators. So also did Quintus his brother, and
Publius Nigidius, one of his philosophical friends, whom he
often made use of in his greatest and most weighty affairs of
state.
The next day, a debate arising in the senate about the
punishment of the men, Silanus, being the first who was asked
his opinion, said, it was fit they should be all sent to the
prison, and there suffer the utmost penalty. To him all
consented in order till it came to Caius Caesar, who was
afterwards dictator. He was then but a young man, and only at
the outset of his career, but had already directed his hopes and
policy to that course by which he afterwards changed the Roman
state into a monarchy. Of this others foresaw nothing; but
Cicero had seen reason for strong suspicion, though without
obtaining any sufficient means of proof. And there were some
indeed that said that he was very near being discovered, and
only just escaped him; others are of opinion that Cicero
voluntarily overlooked and neglected the evidence against him,
for fear of his friends and power; for it was very evident to
everybody, that if Caesar was to be accused with the
conspirators, they were more likely to be saved with him, than
he to be punished with them.
When, therefore, it came to Caesar's turn to give his opinion,
he stood up and proposed that the conspirators should not be put
to death, but their estates confiscated, and their persons
confined in such cities in Italy as Cicero should approve, there
to be kept in custody till Catiline was conquered. To this
sentence, as it was the most moderate, and he that delivered it
a most powerful speaker, Cicero himself gave no small weight,
for he stood up and, turning the scale on either side, spoke in
favor partly of the former, partly of Caesar's sentence. And
all Cicero's friends, judging Caesar's sentence most expedient
for Cicero, because he would incur the less blame if the
conspirators were not put to death, chose rather the latter; so
that Silanus, also, changing his mind, retracted his opinion,
and said he had not declared for capital, but only the utmost
punishment, which to a Roman senator is imprisonment. The first
man who spoke against Caesar's motion was Catulus Lutatius.
Cato followed, and so vehemently urged in his speech the strong
suspicion about Caesar himself, and so filled the senate with
anger and resolution, that a decree was passed for the execution
of the conspirators. But Caesar opposed the confiscation of
their goods, not thinking it fair that those who had rejected
the mildest part of his sentence should avail themselves of the
severest. And when many insisted upon it, he appealed to the
tribunes, but they would do nothing; till Cicero himself
yielding, remitted that part of the sentence.
After this, Cicero went out with the senate to the conspirators;
they were not all together in one place, but the several
praetors had them, some one, some another, in custody. And
first he took Lentulus from the Palatine, and brought him by the
Sacred Street, through the middle of the marketplace, a circle
of the most eminent citizens encompassing and protecting him.
The people, affrighted at what was doing, passed along in
silence, especially the young men; as if, with fear and
trembling; they were undergoing a rite of initiation into some
ancient, sacred mysteries of aristocratic power. Thus passing
from the market-place, and coming to the gaol, he delivered
Lentulus to the officer, and commanded him to execute him; and
after him Cethegus, and so all the rest in order, he brought and
delivered up to execution. And when he saw many of the
conspirators in the market-place, still standing together in
companies, ignorant of what was done, and waiting for the night,
supposing the men were still alive and in a possibility of being
rescued, he called out in a loud voice, and said, "They did
live;" for so the Romans, to avoid inauspicious language, name
those that are dead.
It was now evening, when he returned from the market-place to
his own house, the citizens no longer attending him with
silence, nor in order, but receiving him, as he passed, with
acclamations and applauses, and saluting him as the savior and
founder of his country. A bright light shone through the
streets from the lamps and torches set up at the doors, and the
women showed lights from the tops of the houses, to honor
Cicero, and to behold him returning home with a splendid train
of the most principal citizens; amongst whom were many who had
conducted great wars, celebrated triumphs, and added to the
possessions of the Roman empire, both by sea and land. These,
as they passed along with him, acknowledged to one another, that
though the Roman people were indebted to several officers and
commanders of that age for riches, spoils, and power, yet to
Cicero alone they owed the safety and security of all these, for
delivering them from so great and imminent a danger. For though
it might seem no wonderful thing to prevent the design, and
punish the conspirators, yet to defeat the greatest of all
conspiracies with so little disturbance, trouble, and commotion,
was very extraordinary. For the greater part of those who had
flocked in to Catiline, as soon as they heard the fate of
Lentulus and Cethegus, left and forsook him, and he himself,
with his remaining forces, joining battle with Antonius, was
destroyed with his army.
And yet there were some who were very ready both to speak ill of
Cicero, and to do him hurt for these actions; and they had for
their leaders some of the magistrates of the ensuing year, as
Caesar, who was one of the praetors, and Metellus and Bestia,
the tribunes. These, entering upon their office some few days
before Cicero's consulate expired, would not permit him to make
any address to the people, but, throwing the benches before the
Rostra, hindered his speaking, telling him he might, if he
pleased, make the oath of withdrawal from office, and then come
down again. Cicero, accordingly, accepting the conditions, came
forward to make his withdrawal; and silence being made, he
recited his oath, not in the usual, but in a new and peculiar
form, namely, that he had saved his country, and preserved the
empire; the truth of which oath all the people confirmed with
theirs. Caesar and the tribunes, all the more exasperated by
this, endeavored to create him further trouble, and for this
purpose proposed a law for calling Pompey home with his army, to
put an end to Cicero's usurpation. But it was a very great
advantage for Cicero and the whole commonwealth that Cato was at
that time one of the tribunes. For he, being of equal power
with the rest, and of greater reputation, could oppose their
designs. He easily defeated their other projects, and, in an
oration to the people, so highly extolled Cicero's consulate,
that the greatest honors were decreed him, and he was publicly
declared the Father of his Country, which title he seems to have
obtained, the first man who did so, when Cato gave it him in
this address to the people.
At this time, therefore, his authority was very great in the
city; but he created himself much envy, and offended very many,
not by any evil action, but because he was always lauding and
magnifying himself. For neither senate, nor assembly of the
people, nor court of judicature could meet, in which he was not
heard to talk of Catiline and Lentulus. Indeed, he also filled
his books and writings with his own praises, to such an excess
as to render a style, in itself most pleasant and delightful,
nauseous and irksome to his hearers; this ungrateful humor, like
a disease, always cleaving to him. Nevertheless, though he was
intemperately fond of his own glory, he was very free from
envying others, and was, on the contrary, most liberally profuse
in commending both the ancients and his contemporaries, as
anyone may see in his writings. And many such sayings of his are
also remembered; as that he called Aristotle a river of flowing
gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to
speak, it would be in language like theirs. He used to call
Theophrastus his special luxury. And being asked which of
Demosthenes's orations he liked best, he answered, the longest.
And yet some affected imitators of Demosthenes have complained
of some words that occur in one of his letters, to the effect
that Demosthenes sometimes falls asleep in his speeches;
forgetting the many high encomiums he continually passes upon
him, and the compliment he paid him when he named the most
elaborate of all his orations, those he wrote against Antony,
Philippics. And as for the eminent men of his own time, either
in eloquence or philosophy, there was not one of them whom he
did not, by writing or speaking favorably of him, render more
illustrious. He obtained of Caesar, when in power, the Roman
citizenship for Cratippus, the Peripatetic, and got the court of
Areopagus, by public decree, to request his stay at Athens, for
the instruction of their youth, and the honor of their city.
There are letters extant from Cicero to Herodes, and others to
his son, in which he recommends the study of philosophy under
Cratippus. There is one in which he blames Gorgias, the
rhetorician, for enticing his son into luxury and drinking, and,
therefore, forbids him his company. And this, and one other to
Pelops, the Byzantine, are the only two of his Greek epistles
which seem to be written in anger. In the first, he justly
reflects on Gorgias, if he were what he was thought to be, a
dissolute and profligate character; but in the other, he rather
meanly expostulates and complains with Pelops, for neglecting to
procure him a decree of certain honors from the Byzantines.
Another illustration of his love of praise is the way in which
sometimes, to make his orations more striking, he neglected
decorum and dignity. When Munatius, who had escaped conviction
by his advocacy, immediately prosecuted his friend Sabinus, he
said in the warmth of his resentment, "Do you suppose you were
acquitted for your own meets, Munatius, and was it not that I so
darkened the case, that the court could not see your guilt?"
When from the Rostra he had made an eulogy on Marcus Crassus,
with much applause, and within a few days after again as
publicly reproached him, Crassus called to him, and said, "Did
not you yourself two days ago, in this same place, commend me?"
"Yes," said Cicero, "I exercised my eloquence in declaiming upon
a bad subject." At another time, Crassus had said that no one
of his family had ever lived beyond sixty years of age, and
afterwards denied it, and asked, "What should put it into my
head to say so?" "It was to gain the people's favor," answered
Cicero; "you knew how glad they would be to hear it." When