till they were victorious,—though they both perished in their victory. It is difficult now to reach any correct idea as to what might have been the result had Antony been overwhelmed at Mutina; nor is that the idea with which we are now dealing. It is the force of the words with which this old man endeavoured to rouse his country to new efforts and their efficacy in doing this on which I am insisting. We know what it is for an orator with a party at his back to contend with an opposite party and opposing orators. But here there was one man,-one who had come to be almost despised as worn out, impracticable now and belonging to an effete order, but still a man in earnest as to his country against all the power that Cæsar had left behind him. The reader feels himself almost constrained to think that a fifteenth Philippic might have changed the current of the world.

As Cicero could be strong in words, so could he be sweet,—so sweet that the student becomes lost in the melody of the sound as though he were listening to the trill of a nightingale or vacantly delighting himself with the music of the linnet. I would ask a reader who does not read Latin to test the music of such words as the following, hearing them from the lips of one who understands the language. To me they are so sweet that I can fancy that even without this assistance a lover of soft sounds must pause upon them with delight. "Quid denique virtus valeret, quæ in tempestate sæva quieta est, et lucet in tenebris, et pulsa loco manet tamen, atque hæret in patria, splendetque per se semper, neque unquam alienis sordibus obsolescit." I will venture to add to these a few words, in the original, out of one of the treatises on Rhetoric, as being wonderfully sweet to the ears without reference to the sense. "His autem de rebus sol me ille admonuit ut brevior essem, qui ipse jam præcipitans, me quoque hæc præcipitem pæne evolvere coegit." I might be tempted to add passages of the like nature without stint, were it not rather my duty to fill these few pages with my own English than with Cicero's Latin. To give an idea of this melody in a translation is, I think, beyond the power of letters.

But there are rare gems of which the charm is in the sense and of which some inadequate idea may be given by an English version. There was an old poet of Asia named Archias, who is said to have been one of Cicero's schoolmasters, and who in return for certain panegyric verses was made, rightly or wrongly, a Roman citizen. His claim to the great and awful privilege was called in question at law, and Cicero, who then enjoyed proconsular authority, was thought to derogate a little from his high position when he undertook to defend his old friend's case before the judges. This he did happily (1) Pro Publio Sestio, C. xxviii. The words are spoken in praise of Cato's virtue. (2) De Oratore, Lib. III. C. lv. The speaker simply says that as the sun is setting quickly so must he somewhat quickly bring his discourse to an end.

for Archias, for he succeeded; we are strongly tempted to think in opposition to the true law, but very happily also for all coming ages. He founded his client's defence chiefly, not on any right which Archias had to the honour, but on the merits of literature generally, and thus he has left us a most exquisite essay on the subject. Among other passages is the following, which I think contains stronger arguments in favour of reading than I have ever found elsewhere, though it may be in twenty times the number of lines: "For other recreations do not belong to all seasons nor to all ages nor all places. These pursuits nourish our youth and delight our old age; they adorn our prosperity and give a refuge and a solace to our troubles. They charm us at home. They are not in our way when we are abroad. They go to bed with us. They travel about with us. They accompany us when we escape into the country." These words,those, at least, which came from Cicero, should be at the fingers' ends of every boy and known to every girl. The old man who has taken them home to himself need never be at a loss in his age. Upon him who has known nothing of them and never felt their influence years must indeed be a heavy burden.

us.

But to those who are anxious to learn with what horrors life was stained, not in Rome only, but in the Italian States allied by citizenship to Rome, let me recommend the oration spoken in defence of Aulus Cluentius Avitus, when Cicero was Prætor. It is I think of all his speeches the longest, and with its many elaborate details of private life must have inflicted upon him immense labour. How at such a time, when his hands were full of public work, he could have undertaken such a task can now only be matter of wonder to It seems incredible that a woman could have lived as Sassia lived or a man as Oppianicus. Their murders and their marriages; their avarice, their incests, and the horror of all their acts, were such that the reader is led to doubt whether some morbid imagination has not been at work to create the ugliest picture which words could draw. I cannot tell the story. Indeed it would take many pages. But there it is in Cicero's oration. Oppianicus was banished, but Sassia seems to have lived on in prosperity, a wealthy matron, with all her frightful family around her. Cicero speaks with horror of the crimes which he describes; but he does not speak of them as though they must have been all but impossible.

Nothing can exceed our orator's humour, or his sound practical utility, or the grandeur of sentiment to which he will rise, sometimes in a word or two. One Plancius, who had been made ædile, was put on his trial for bribery by a beaten rival,-that being the Roman way of petitioning against an election, and Cicero undertook the defence. In the course of his speech he deals with the position of

(1) Pro Archiâ, C. vii.

the Roman magistrates in general, and speaks of his own quæstorship. He had flattered himself that he had been a good quæstor, even a great quæstor,--so great that when he returned from Sicily, which had been the scene of his quæstorial duties, he thought that all the Roman world would be talking of him. He had made, he tells us, food plentiful in the midst of scarcity; he had been affable to men in business, just to the merchants, liberal to the town's people; he had never robbed the allies; he had been diligent in every duty. The gratified Sicilians had invented new honours for such a young quæstor; and, if so, what would not Rome do for one so virtuous ? When in his travels homeward he had come to Puteoli, a sort of Brighton or Biarritz at which the world of fashion was then taking its ease, some friend asked him on what day he had left Rome, and· whether there was anything new there. "I am returning from my province," said Cicero proudly. "Ah, from Africa." "No indeed," said the unrecognised young Solon, beginning to wax angry; “I am fresh from Sicily." "What," said a bystander, "do you not know that our Cicero has been quaestor at Syracuse?" But he had not been quæstor at Syracuse. Sicily was divided under two quæstors, and he had been at Lilybæum. Then, he tells us, he made up his mind to be angry no more, and just to be one of the others at the waters. The same story has been often told with other incidents, but never told with a better grace than here by Cicero of himself.1

In support of what I have said as to Cicero's common sense I might name numberless passages, but I will quote only the two following as to political distinctions, and as to the value of evidence at ordinary trials. In the first he tells us that the citizens of Rome were divided into two orders, and these he defines, the Conservatives and Liberals of these days, not quite as we should define them, but as they might be defined by a cautious member of the Conservative party. He calls them Optimates and Populares; and then describes the Optimates as being all who are not criminal, not of vicious life, not devoted to lust, not encumbered by debt.2 In the latter passage he tells us that if judges will believe all that witnesses tell them, not even the Goddess Safety herself could make a good man safe. In what follows, as he addressed himself to the Roman judges who had to decide on facts in criminal cases, he may be supposed under our laws to address himself to jurors. Any fool, he says, has an ear and can hear. In what then does the real judge,—or the capable juryman,—differ from the simple listener? "In weighing that which the witness says and subjecting it to the test of probability; in being able to perceive with what authority, with what fairness of spirit, with what modesty, with (1) Pro Plancio, C. xxvi. (2) Pro Public Sestio, C. xlv.

what faith, with what scruple, with what regard for reputation, with what carefulness, and with what conscientiousness, the man's evidence has been given." 1

In both eulogy and censure Cicero was accustomed to allow himself all the scope which language could give him. His personages are like the characters in many novels, either angels or fiends;but his superlatives are produced in language so charming, or so forcible, that we are tempted to forgive the exaggeration. Eulogy cannot go beyond that with which he speaks of Pompey in his oration Pro Lege Manilia,-which in consequence of the grace of its language has been so commonly read in our schools. I have already given the exquisite passage (p. 404) in which he describes the public virtue of Cato, and have spoken in my former paper of the flattery he bestowed on Cæsar. As regards language it is all so beautiful that we would not like to lose a word; but here, as with some of the finest odes of Horace, though the skill is admirable and the sounds as sweet as those of running waters, the spirit which induced the words is despicable to us. To have told Augustus that he was a god-Augustus who, in the softness of his early youth, in that period of his life when a man surely should be tender, had agreed to the murder of his benefactor Cicero as a make-weight in a bargain -makes Horace almost odious to us. It is the same with Cicero. When Cicero praises Cæsar we have to remember that he must either have done nothing or have done that, either have spoken as he did speak or have held his tongue, and to endeavour to forgive him because of the evil days on which he had fallen.

But of all Cicero's praise his self-praise is the most frequent, the most ample, and I must also add the most eloquent. There are moments in which he rises so high and with such a flight that he carries us away with him, as does Horace also when in his eulogy of himself he assures us that he will never "altogether die." See the third Catiline, in which Cicero tells his countrymen that the monument which he requires is to be built up for him in their perpetual memory of his great deeds.2 The passage is so grand that the reader cannot be angry with the man who spoke it. And when he assures the people after his return from exile that he will revenge himself upon his enemies only by renewed service to his country, one cannot stop to inquire whether it could have been right that any man should attribute to himself so much that was upright and good. Quintilian, who admired Cicero thoroughly, found himself bound to quarrel with him on this head. But as his eulogy is delightful, so is his abuse awful. I will not quote special passages,

3

(1) Pro Manlio Fonteio, C. ix.

(3) Ad Quirites post reditum, C. ix.

(2) In Catilinam, III. C. xi.

(4) Quint., Lib. XI. C. i. "Reprehensus est in hac parte non mediocriter Cicero."

but will simply refer any curious reader to the diatribe against Vatinius, one of Caesar's creatures; and to that against the unfortunate proconsul Piso. There are wonderful morsels also in the Philippics dealing with Antony's private character; but the words which he uses with regard to Gabinius and Piso, the men who were consuls in the year of his banishment, beat all that I know elsewhere in the science of invective.

In this short account of Cicero's speeches I should not have passed over that which he composed in defence of Milo when Milo was tried and condemned for the murder of Clodius, were it not that the speech spoken was certainly not the oration which exists. As we have it now it is surpassed by nothing that Cicero spoke or wrote either in grace or power. But in this instance he was quelled by the Clodian faction, who would not listen to his words, and he did not utter the words he had prepared. Rome was then at its worst, and was no longer free even to Cicero, and in its then form makes us almost own that a Cæsar was needed. Milo is reputed to have said afterwards in his banishment that if Cicero had spoken for him such words as those written, he would not then have been enjoying the delicious sardines of Marseilles. But no words, however godlike, would have saved Milo.

Were I to say that of all orators who ever lived Cicero was the foremost, I should be assuming to myself a right of judgment which I do not possess; but I think I am justified in saying that history tells us of no such effects of oratory as those produced by him. The Rome of Cicero was much bigger than the Athens of Demosthenes, and the matters in dispute of greater interest. Here, among ourselves who have perhaps studied oratory, or at any rate practised it, more than other people, we are often told that no member of Parliament can talk another member out of a vote. The marvel was with Cicero that he could turn a whole senate, a bench of judges, a gathered crowd of the people, a chosen body of priests, or a single despot with equal power and apparently with equal certainty. There can be little doubt that the judges were desirous of acquitting Verres, but they could not do it against his words. The people were clamorous to slay Otho because he had injured them in their theatre; but Cicero was stronger with them than their sense of injury. When Cæsar had spoken in the Senate against the execution of the Catiline conspirators, the Senate was minded to spare them. Even those who had already advocated severity, recoiled from their opinions in fear of Cæsar,-till Cicero spoke, and then the unhappy men were doomed. We now in these days know how Mr. Gladstone can rise in Demosthenic wrath, with what ready skill Lord Beaconsfield can snap an advantage, how sonorous is the roll of Mr. Bright's gracious voice. Going back a little, we remember Lord