Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero by W. Warde Fowler

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A good example of the best type of Roman manners is to be found in
Plutarch's _Life_ of Gaius Gracchus, the younger contemporary of
Scipio, who had married his sister. Plutarch draws a picture of him so
vivid that by common consent it is ascribed to the memoirs of some one
who knew him. "In all his dealings with men," says the biographer, "he
was always dignified yet always courteous"; that is, while he inspired
respect, men felt also that he would do anything in his power for
them. That this was said of him by a Roman, and not invented for him
by Plutarch, seems probable because the combination is one peculiarly
Roman; so Livy, when he wishes to describe the finest type of Roman
character, says that a certain man was "haud minus libertatis alienae
quam suae dignitatis memor."[161] This same combination meets us also
in the little pictures of the social life of cultivated men which
Cicero has left us in some of his dialogues. There the speakers are
usually of the nobility, often distinguished members of senatorial
families, as in the _de Oratore_, where the chief _personae_ are
Crassus, Antonius, and Scaevola, the conservative triumvirate of the
day. They all seem grave, or but seldom gently jocular, respectful to
each other, and perhaps a trifle tedious; they never quarrel, however
deeply they may differ, and we may guess that they did not hold their
opinions strongly enough to urge them to open rupture. We seem to see
the same grave faces, with rather noses and large mouths, which meet
us in the sculptures of Augustus' Ara Pacis,[162]--full of dignity,
but a little wanting in animation.

There is one singular exception to the good manners of the period; but
as the result rather of affectation than of nature, it may help to
prove our rule. Again and again in Plutarch's _Life_ of Cato the
younger the mention of his rudeness proves the strength of the
tradition about him. It was said that this lost him the consulship,
as he declined to make himself agreeable in the style expected from
candidates[163]. Even in a letter to Cicero, an old friend, though not
actually rude, he is absurdly patronising and impertinent to a man
many years his senior, and writes in very bad taste. Probably the
enmity between him and Caesar arose or was confirmed in this way,
as Cato always made a point of being rudest to those whom he most
disliked. He fancied that he was imitating his great ancestor, and
asserting the virtue of good old Roman bluntness against modern Greek
affectation; he did not in the least see that he was himself a curious
example of Roman affectation, shown up by the real amenities of
intercourse, for which Romans had largely to thank Greece[164].

In literature too the average capacity of this aristocracy was high,
though the greatest literary figures of the age, if we except Caesar,
do not, strictly speaking, belong to it; Cicero was a novus homo, and
Lucretius and Catullus were not of the senatorial order. But the new
education, as we shall see later on, was admirably calculated to
train men in the art of speaking and writing, if not in the habit of
independent thinking; and among the nobles who reaped the full fruits
of this education every one could write in Latin and probably also
in Greek, and if he aimed at public distinction, could speak without
disgracing himself in the senate and the courts. Oratory was, in fact,
the staple product of the age, and the chief _raison d'etre_ of its
literary activity. Long ago the practice had begun of writing out
successful speeches delivered in the senate, in the courts, or at
funerals; the means of publication were easy, as a consequence of the
number of Greek slaves who could act as copyists, and thus oratory
formed the basis of a prose literature which is essentially
Roman,[165] rooted in the practical necessities of the life of the
Roman noble, though deeply tinged with the Greek ideas and forms of
expression acquired in the process of education in vogue. Treatises on
rhetoric, the art of effective expression in prose, form an important
part of it; two of them still survive from the time of Sulla,--the
_Rhetorica ad Herennium_ of an unknown author, and Cicero's early
treatise _de Inventione_. Later on Cicero wrote his admirable dialogue
_de Oratore_ and other works on the same subject, ending with his
_Brutus_, a catalogue raisonnee, invaluable to us, of all the great
Roman orators down to his own time.

In history writing the standard was not so high. The rhetorical
education made men good professional orators, but indifferent and
dilettante historians, and the example of more accurate historical
investigation and reflection set by Polybius was not followed, except
perhaps by Caelius Antipater in the Gracchan age.[166] History was
affected for the worse by the rhetorical art, as indeed poetry was
destined also to be; Sallust, though we owe much to him, was in fact
an amateur, who thought more of style and expression than of truth
and fact. Caesar, who did not profess to be a historian, but only to
provide the materials for history,[167] stands alone in making facts
more important than words, and rarely troubles his reader with
speeches or other rhetorical superfluities.[168] Biographies and
autobiographies were fashionable; of the former only those of
Cornelius Nepos, one of Cicero's many friends, have come down to us,
and none of the latter, but we know a long list of eminent men who
wrote their own memoirs, including Catulus the elder, Rutilius the
famous victim of equestrian judges, Sulla, and Lucullus. But far above
all other prose writers of the age stand two men, neither of them
Roman by birth, but yet members of the senatorial order; the one a man
of encyclopaedic learning, with what we may almost call a scientific
interest in the subjects which he treated in awkward and homely Latin,
the other a man of comparatively little learning, but gifted with so
exquisite a sense of the beautiful in expression, and at the same
time with a humanity so real and in that day so rare, that it is not
without good cause that he has recently been called the most highly
cultured man of all antiquity.[169] Of Varro's numerous works we have
unluckily but few survivals; of Cicero's we have still such a mass
as will for ever provide ample material for studying the life, the
manners, the thought of his day.

A large part of this mass consists of the correspondence of which we
are making such frequent use in these chapters. Letter-writing is
perhaps the most pleasing and genuine of all the literary activities
of the time; men took pains to write well, yet not with any definite
prospect of publication, such as was the motive a century later in
the days of Seneca and Pliny. The nine hundred and odd letters of the
Ciceronian collection are most of them neither mere communications
nor yet rhetorical exercises, but real letters, the intercourse of
intimate friends at a distance, in which their inmost thoughts can
often be seen. Cicero is indeed apt to become rhetorical even in his
letters, when writing under excitement about politics; but the most
delightful letters in the collection are those in which he writes
to his friends in happy and natural language of his daily life and
occupations, his books, his villas, his children, his joys and
sorrows. It is strange that the great historian of Rome in our time
entirely failed to see the charm and the value of these letters, as of
all Cicero's writings; his countrymen have now agreed to differ from
him, and to restore a great writer to his true position.

In philosophical receptivity too the brightest and finest minds among
this aristocracy show an ability which is almost astonishing, when we
consider that there had been no education in Rome worth the name until
the second century B.C.[170] I use the word receptivity, because the
Romans of our period never really learnt to think for themselves; they
never grappled with a problem, or struck out a new line of thought.
But so far as we can judge by Cicero's philosophical works, the only
ones of his age which have come down to us, the power to read with
understanding and to reproduce with skill was unquestionably of a high
order. The opportunities for study were not wanting; private libraries
were numerous, and all Cicero's friends who had collected books were
glad to let him have the use of them.[171] Greek philosophers were
often domesticated in wealthy families, and could discourse with the
statesman when he had leisure from public business. Much of this was
no more than fashion, and real endeavour and earnestness were rare;
but the fact remains that one philosophical system, more especially on
its ethical side, took real possession of the best type of Roman mind,
and had permanent and saving influence on it.

Stoicism was brought to Rome by Panaetius of Rhodes, the intimate
friend of Scipio, a mild and tactful Greek whose Rhodian birth gave
him perhaps some advantage in associating with the old allies of his
state. He came to Rome at a critical moment, when even the best men
were drifting into pure material self-seeking; and the results of his
teaching were during two centuries so wholesome and inspiring that we
may almost think of him as a missionary. The ground had been prepared
for him in some sense by Polybius, who introduced him to Scipio and
his circle, and who was then engaged in writing his history. From
Polybius the Romans, the best of them at least, first learnt to
realise their own empire and the great change it had wrought in the
world; to think about what they had done and the qualities that
enabled them to do it. From Panaetius they were to learn a
philosophical creed which might direct and save them in the future,
which might serve as ballast in public and private life, just when the
ship was beginning to drift in moral helplessness. He was the founder
of a school of practical wisdom, singularly well adapted to the Roman
character and intellect, which were always practical rather than
speculative; and far better suited to ordinary human life than the old
rigid and austere Stoic ethics, of which the younger Cato was the
only eminent Roman disciple. From what we know of Panaetius' ethical
teaching,--and in the first two books of Cicero's work, _de Officiis_,
we have a fairly complete view of it,--we do not find the old doctrine
that absolute wisdom and justice are the only ends to pursue, and
everything else indifferent; a doctrine which put the old-fashioned
Stoic out of court in public life. The relative element, the useful,
played a great part in the teaching of Panaetius. Though his system
is based on the highest principles to which moral teaching could then
appeal, it did not exclude the give and take, the compromise without
which no practical man of affairs can make way, nor yet the wealth and
bodily comforts that secure leisure for thought.[172]

Panaetius' mission was carried on by another Rhodian philosopher, the
famous Posidonius, who lived long enough to know Cicero himself
and many of his contemporaries; a man less inspiring perhaps than
Panaetius, but of greater knowledge and attainment; a traveller,
geographer, and a man of the world, whose writings on many subjects,
though lost to us, really lie at the back of a great part of the Roman
literary output of his time.[173] He was the disciple of Panaetius;
envoy from Rhodes to Rome in the terrible year 86; and later on the
inmate of Roman families, and the admired friend of Cicero Pompeius,
and Varro. Philosophy was only one of the many pursuits of this
extraordinary man, whose literary and historical influence can be
traced in almost every leading Roman author for a century at least;
but his philosophical importance was during his lifetime perhaps
predominant. The generation that knew him was rich in Stoics; for
example, Aelius Stilo, the master of Varro, "doctissimus eorum
temporum," as Gellius calls him;[2] Rutilius, who was mentioned just
now as having written memoirs; and among others probably the great
lawyer Mucius Scaevola. Cato, as we have seen, was not a follower of
the Roman school of Stoicism, but of the older and uncompromising
doctrine; but Cicero, though never a professed Stoic, was really
deeply influenced, and towards the end of his life almost fascinated,
by a creed which suited his humanity while it stimulated his instinct
for righteousness.[174] And, like Cicero, many other men of serious
character felt the power of Stoicism almost unconsciously, without
openly professing it.

Stoicism then was in several ways congenial to the Roman spirit, but
in one direction it had an inspiring influence which has been of
lasting moment to the world. Up to the time of Panaetius and the
Scipionic circle the Roman idea and study of law had been of a crabbed
practical character, wanting in breadth of treatment, destitute of any
philosophical conception of the moral principles which lie behind all
law and government. The Stoic doctrine of universal law ruling the
world--a divine law, emanating from the universal Reason--seems to
have called up life in these dry bones. It might be held by a Roman
Stoic that human law comes into existence when man becomes aware of
the divine law, and recognises its claim upon him. Morality is thus
identical with law in the widest sense of the word, for both are
equally called into being by the Right Reason, which is the universal
primary force.[175] It is not possible here to show how this grand and
elevating idea of law may have affected Roman jurisprudence, but we
will just notice that the first quasi-philosophical treatment of law
is found following the age of Panaetius and the Scipionic circle; that
the phrase _ius gentium_ then begins to take the meaning of general
principles or rules common to all peoples, and founded on "natural
reason";[176] and that this led by degrees to the later idea of the
Law of Nature, and to the cosmopolitanism of the Roman legal system,
which came to embrace all peoples and degrees in its rational and
beneficent influence. If the Greek had a genius for beauty, and the
Jew for righteousness, the Roman had a genius for law; and the power
of Stoicism in ennobling and enriching his native conception of it is
probably not to be easily over-estimated.

Thus behind the stormy scenes of public life in this period there is a
process going on which will be of value not only to the Roman Empire
but to modern civilisation. It was carried on more especially by two
men of the highest character, Q. Mucius Scaevola, Cicero's adviser
in his early days, and often his model in later life; and Servius
Sulpicius Rufus, his exact contemporary and lifelong friend. Neither
Scaevola nor Sulpicius were, so far as we know, professed disciples
of Stoicism; but that they applied perhaps half unconsciously the
principles of Stoicism to their own legal studies is almost certain.
The combination of legal training and Stoic influence (whether direct
or unconscious) seems to have been capable of bringing the Roman
aristocratic character to a high pitch of perfection; and it will be
pleasant to take this friend of Cicero, whose public career we can
clearly trace, and one or two of whose letters we still possess, as
our example of a really well spent life in an age when time and talent
were constantly abused and wasted.

Sulpicius and Cicero were born in the same year, 106; they went hand
in hand in early life, and remained friends till their deaths in 43,
Sulpicius dying a few months before Cicero. They were both attached
in early youth to the Scaevola just mentioned, the first of the great
series of scientific Roman lawyers. But the consulship of Cicero
made a wide divergence in their lives. In that year Sulpicius was a
candidate for the consulship and failed; and then, resigning further
attempts to obtain the highest honour, he retired for the next twelve
years into private life, devoting himself to the work which has made
his name immortal. His writings are lost; nothing remains of them but
a few chance fragments and allusions; but he was reckoned the second
of the great writers on legal subjects, and it is probable that he
contributed as much as any of them to the work of making Roman
law what it has been as a power in the world, a factor in modern
civilisation. For he treated it, as his friend said of him,[177] with
the hand and mind of an artist, laying out his whole subject and
distributing it into its constituent parts, by definition and
interpretation making clear what seemed obscure, and distinguishing
the false from the true in legal principle. In the splendid panegyric
pronounced on him in the senate after his death,[178] Cicero again
emphatically declared him to be unrivalled in jurisprudence. In
beautiful but untranslatable language he claims that he was "non magis
iuris consultus, quam iustitiae,"--an encomium which all great
lawyers might well envy; he aimed rather at enabling men to be rid of
litigation than at encouraging them to engage in it.

From such passages we might conjecture, even if we knew nothing
more about him, that Sulpicius was a man of very fine clay, of real
_humanitas_ in the widest sense of that expressive word; and this
is entirely borne out in other ways.[179] Emerging at last from
retirement, he stood again for the consulship in 52 B.C., and was
elected. The year of his office, 51, was the first in which the
enemies of Caesar, with Cato at their head, began to attack his
position and clamour for his recall from his command; this violent
hostility Sulpicius tried, not without temporary success, to restrain,
and the fact that a man of so just a mind should have taken this
line is one of the best arguments for the reasonableness of Caesar's
cause.[180] When war broke out he was greatly perplexed how to act;
his breadth of view made decision difficult, and he seems to have
been at all times more a student than a man of action. With some
heart-burnings he joined Caesar in the struggle, and accepted from him
the government of Achaia; it was at this time that he wrote the famous
letter of consolation to Cicero on the death of his beloved daughter
Tullia, which is full of true feeling and kindliness, though evidently
composed with effort, if not with difficulty. After Caesar's death he
of course acted with Cicero against Antony, and in the spring of
43, making always for peace and good-will, he gave his life for his
country in a way that claims our admiration more really than the
suicide of Cato the professional Stoic; he headed an embassy to
Antony, though dangerously ill at the time, and died in this last
effort to obtain a hearing for the voice of justice. He has a
_monumentum aere perennius_ in the speech of his old friend urging the
senate to vote him a public funeral and a statue, as one who had laid
down his life for his country.

We must now turn to consider how the mischievous side of the new Greek
culture, in combination with other tendencies of the time, found its
way into weak points in the armour of the Roman aristocracy.

The pursuit of ease and pleasure, to which the attainment of wealth
and political power were too often merely subordinated, is a leading
characteristic of the time. It is seen in many different forms, in
many different types of character; but at the root of the whole
corruption is the spirit of the coarser side of Epicureanism. As with
Roman Stoicism, so too with Roman Epicureanism, it is not so much the
professed holding of philosophical tenets that affected life; in the
case of the latter system, it was the coincidence of its popularity
with the decay of the old Roman faith and morality, and with the
abnormal opportunities of self-indulgence. Cato as a professed Stoic,
Lucretius as an enthusiastic Epicurean, stand quite apart from
the mass of men who were actuated one way or the other by these
philosophical creeds. The majority simply played with the philosophy,
while following the natural bent of their individual character; but
such dilettanteism was often quite enough to affect that character
permanently for good or evil.

"Epicureanism popularised inevitably turns to vice." Was it really
popular at Rome? Cicero tells us in a valuable passage[181] that one
Amafinius had written on it, and that a great number of copies of his
book were sold, partly because the arguments were easy to follow,
partly because the doctrine was pleasant, and partly too because men
failed to get hold of anything better. The date of this Amafinius is
uncertain, but it is probable that Cicero is here speaking of the
latter part of the second century B.C.; and he goes on to say that
other writers took up the same line of teaching, and established it
over the whole of Italy (Italiam totam occupaverunt). If this was
in the time of the Social and Civil Wars, of the proscriptions, of
increasing crime and self-seeking, we can well understand that the
doctrine was popular. We have a remarkable example of it in the life
of a public man of Cicero's own time, the object of the most envenomed
invective that he ever uttered.[182] We cannot believe a tithe of what
he says about this man, Calpurnius Piso, consul in 58; but in this
particular matter of the damage done him by Epicurean teaching we have
independent evidence which confirms it. Piso, then a young man, made
acquaintance with a Greek of this school of thought, learnt from him
that pleasure was the sole end of life, and failing to appreciate the
true meaning and bearing of the doctrine, fell into the trap. It was
a dangerous doctrine, Cicero says, for a youth of no remarkable
intelligence; and the tutor, instead of being the young man's guide to
virtue, was used by him as an authority for vice.[183] This Greek was
a certain Philodemus, a few of whose poems are preserved in the _Greek
Anthology_; and a glance at them will show at once how dangerous such
a man would be as the companion of a Roman youth. He may not himself
have been a bad man--Cicero indeed rather suggests the contrary,
calling him _vere humanus_--but the air about him was poisonous. In
his pupil, if we can trust in the smallest degree the picture drawn of
him by Cicero, we may see a specimen of the young men of the age whose
talents might have made them useful in the world, but for the strength
of the current that drew them into self-indulgence.

Not only the pursuit of pleasure, but its correlative, the avoidance
of work and duty, can be abundantly illustrated in this age; and this
too may have had a subtle connexion with Epicurean teaching, which had
always discouraged the individual from distraction in the service of
the State, as disturbing to the free development of his own virtue.
Sulla did much hard work, but made the serious blunder of retiring to
enjoy himself just when his new constitutional machinery needed the
most careful watching and tending. Lucullus, after showing a wonderful
capacity for work and a greater genius for war than perhaps any man of
his time, retired from public life as a millionaire and a quietist,
to enjoy the wealth that has become proverbial, and a luxury that is
astonishing, even if we make due allowance for the exaggeration of our
accounts of it. To his library we have already been introduced; those
who would see him in his banqueting-hall, or rather one of the many
in his palace, may turn to the fortieth chapter of Plutarch's most
interesting _Life_ of him, and read the story there told of the dinner
he gave to Cicero and Pompeius in the "Apollo" dining-room.[184]

The same cynical carelessness about public affairs and neglect of
duty, as compared with private ease or advantage, seems to have been
characteristic of the ordinary senator. Active and busy in his own
interest, he was indifferent to that of the State. There are distinct
signs that the attendance in the senate was not good. When Cicero was
away in Cilicia his correspondent writes of difficulties in getting
together a sufficient number even for such important business as the
settlement of provincial governments.[185] On the other hand, much
private business was done, and many jobs perpetrated, in a thin
senate; in 66 a tribune proposed that no senator should be dispensed
from the action of a law unless two hundred were present.[186] It was
in such a thin senate, we may be sure, that the virtuous Brutus was
dispensed from the law which forbade lending to foreign borrowers in
Rome, and thus was enabled to lend to the miserable Salaminians of
Cyprus at 48 per cent, and to recover his money under the bond.[187]
Writing to his brother in December 57, Cicero speaks of business done
in a senate full for the time of year, which was midwinter, just
before the Saturnalia, when only two hundred were present out of about
six hundred. In February 54, a month when the senate had always much
business to get through, it was so cold one day that the few members
present clamoured for dismissal and obtained it.[188] And when the
senate did meet there was a constant tendency to let things go. No
reform of procedure is mentioned as even thought of, at a time when
it was far more necessary than in our Parliament; business was talked
about, postponed obstructed, and personal animosities and private
interests seem, so far as we can judge from the correspondence of the
time, to have been predominant. With wearisome iteration the letters
speak of nothing done, of business postponed, or of the passing of
some senatus consultum, the utter futility of which is obvious even
now.[189] Even the magistrates seem to have been growing careless; we
hear of a praetor presiding in the court de repetundis who had not
taken the trouble to acquaint himself with the text of the law which
governed its procedure;[190] and that praetors were worse than
careless about their action in civil cases is proved by another law of
the same tribune Cornelius mentioned just now, "that praetors should
abide by the rules laid down in their edicts."[191]

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