ascendancy.[1] He was a representative man, with a numerous following, and a policy which was naturally suggested to him by the circumstances of his birth, connexions and profession, and which, impracticable as it proved to be, was yet consistent, intelligible and high-minded. Born at Arpinum, he cherished like all Arpinates the memory of his great fellow-townsman Marius, the friend of the Italians, the saviour of Italy and the irreconcilable foe of Sulla and the nobles. A “municipal” himself, his chosen friends and his warmest supporters were found among the well-to-do classes in the Italian towns.[2] Unpopular with the Roman aristocracy, who despised him as a peregrinus,[3] and with the Roman populace, he was the trusted leader of the Italian middle class, “the true Roman people,” as he proudly styles them. It was they who carried his election 691, 696. 705. for the consulship[4] (63), who in 58 insisted on his recall from exile,[5] and it was his influence with them which made Caesar so anxious to win him over in 49. He represented their antipathy alike to socialistic schemes and to aristocratic exclusiveness, and their old-fashioned simplicity of life in contrast with the cosmopolitan luxury of the capital.[6] By birth, too, he belonged to the equestrian order, the foremost representatives of which were indeed still the publicani and negotiatores, but which since the enfranchisement of Italy included also the substantial burgesses of the Italian towns and the smaller “squires” of the country districts. With them, too, Cicero was at one in their dread of democratic excesses and their social and political jealousy of the nobiles.[7] Lastly, as a lawyer and a scholar, he was passionately attached to the ancient constitution. His political ideal was the natural outcome of these circumstances. He advocated the maintenance of the old constitution, but not as it was understood by the extreme politicians of the right and left. The senate was to be the supreme directing council,[8] but the senate of Cicero's dreams was not an oligarchic assemblage of nobles, but a body freely open to all citizens, and representing the worth of the community.[9] The magistrates, while deferring to the senate's authority, were to be at once vigorous and public-spirited; and the assembly itself which elected the magistrates and passed the laws was to consist, not of the “mob of the forum,” but of the true Roman people throughout Italy.[10] For the realization of this ideal he looked, above all things, to the establishment of cordial relations between the senate and nobles in Rome and the great middle class of Italy represented by the equestrian order, between the capital and the country towns and districts. This was the concordia ordinum, the consensus Italiae, for which he laboured.[11]
Cicero's election to the consulship for 63 over the heads of Caesar's nominees, Antonius and Catiline, was mainly The conspiracy of Catiline, 63 = 691. the work of the Italian middle class, already rendered uneasy both by the rumours which were rife of revolutionary schemes and of Caesar's boundless ambition, and by the numerous disquieting signs of disturbance noticeable in Italy. The new consul vigorously set himself to discharge the trust placed in him. He defeated the insidious proposals of Rullus for Caesar's aggrandizement and assisted in quashing the prosecution of Gaius Rabirius (q.v.). But with the consular elections in the autumn of 63 a fresh danger arose from a different quarter. The “conspiracy of Catiline” (see Catiline) was not the work of the popular party, and still less was it an unselfish attempt at reform; Catiline himself was a patrician, who had held high office, and possessed considerable ability and courage; but he was bankrupt in character and in purse, and two successive defeats in the consular elections had rendered him desperate. To retrieve his broken fortunes by violence was a course which was only too readily suggested by the history of the last forty years, and materials for a conflagration abounded on all sides. The danger to be feared from his intrigues lay in the state of Italy, which made a revolt against society and the established government only too likely if once a leader presented himself, and it was such a revolt that Catiline endeavoured to organize. Bankrupt nobles like himself, Sullan veterans and the starving peasants whom they had dispossessed of their holdings, outlaws of every description, the slave population of Rome, and the wilder herdsmen-slaves of the Apulian pastures, were all enlisted under his banner, and attempts were even made to excite disaffection among the newly conquered people of southern Gaul and the warlike tribes who still cherished the memory of Sertorius in Spain. In Etruria, the seat and centre of agrarian distress and discontent, a rising actually took place headed by a Sullan centurion, but the spread of the revolt was checked by Cicero's vigorous measures. Catiline fled from Rome, and died fighting with desperate courage at the head of his motley force of old soldiers, peasants and slaves. His accomplices in Rome were arrested, and, after an unavailing protest from Caesar, the senate authorized the consuls summarily to put them to death.
The Catilinarian outbreak had been a blow to Caesar, whose schemes it interrupted, but to Cicero it brought not only popularity and honour, but, as he believed, the realization of his political ideal. But Pompey was now on his way home,[12] and Return of Pompey from Asia. again as in 70 the political future seemed to depend on the attitude which the successful general would assume; Pompey himself looked simply to the attainment by the help of one political party or another of his immediate aims, which at present were the ratification of his arrangements in Asia and a grant of land for his troops. It was the impracticable jealousy of his personal rivals in the senate, aided by the versatility of Caesar, who presented himself not as his rival but as his ally, which drove Pompey once Coalition of Pompey, Caesar and Crassus, 60 = 694. more, in spite of Cicero's efforts, into the camp of what was still nominally the popular party. In 60, on Caesar's return from his proprietorship in Spain, the coalition was formed which is known by the somewhat misleading title of the First Triumvirate.[13] Pompey was ostensibly the head of this new alliance, and in return for the satisfaction of his own demands he undertook to support Caesar's candidature for the consulship. The wealth and influence of Crassus were enlisted in the same cause, and the publicani were secured by a promise of release from their bargain for collecting the taxes of Asia. Cicero was under no illusions as to the significance of this coalition. It scattered to the winds his dreams of a stable and conservative 695. republic. The year 59 saw the republic powerless in the hands of three citizens. Caesar as consul procured the ratification of Pompey's acts in Asia, granted to the publicani the relief refused by the senate, and carried an agrarian law of the new type, which provided for the purchase of lands for allotment at the cost of the treasury and for the assignment of the rich ager Campanus.[14] But Caesar aimed at more than the carrying of laws in the teeth of the senate or any party Caesar's command in Gaul. victory in the forum. An important military command was essential to him. An obedient tribune, P. Vatinius, was found, and by the lex Vatinia he was given for five years the command of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, to which
- ↑ Mommsen is throughout unfair to Cicero, as also are Drumann and Professor Beesly. The best estimates of Cicero's political position are those given by Mr Strachan-Davidson in his Cicero (1894), and by Professor Tyrrell in his Introductions to his edition of Cicero's Letters.
- ↑ Cic. Ad Att. i. 19, 4, “noster exercitus . . . locupletium.”
- ↑ Cic. Pro Sulla, 7, 22; Sall. Cat. 31, “inquilinus urbis Romae.”
- ↑ See the De petitione consulatus, passim.
- ↑ De Domo, 28, 75; Pro Plancio, 41, 97.
- ↑ Cic. Pro Quinctio, 8, 31; Pro Cluentio, 46, 153.
- ↑ Cic. In Verr. ii. 73; De Pet. Cons. i. He shared with them their dislike of Sulla, as the foe of their order; Pro Cluentio, 55, 151.
- ↑ De Legg. iii. 12.
- ↑ Pro Sestio, 65, 136; De Legg. iii. 4.
- ↑ Pro Sestio, 45.
- ↑ Ad Att. i. 18.
- ↑ For the history of the next eighteen years, the most important ancient authority is Cicero in his letters and speeches.
- ↑ Misleading, because the coalition was unofficial. The “triumvirs” of 43 were actual magistrates, “IIIviri reipublicae constituendae causa.”
- ↑ For the lex Julia Agraria and the lex Campana, see Dio Cass. xxxviii. 1; App. B.C. ii. 10; Suet. Jul. 20; Cic. Ad Att. ii. 16, 18.
