The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1. Marcus Cicero
he had never quarrelled. He was the only one who could get on with the crusty uncle Cæcilius. In the delicate matter of his sister Pomponia's differences with her husband Quintus Cicero, he seems to have acted with kindness as well as prudence; and though he married late in life (b.c. 56, when he was in his fifty-third year), he appears to have made an excellent husband to Pilia and a very affectionate father to his daughter. His unwearied sympathy with the varied moods of Cicero—whether of exultation, irritation, or despair—and the entire confidence which Cicero feels that he will have that sympathy in every case, are creditable to both. It is only between sincere souls that one can speak to the other as to a second self, as Cicero often alleges that he does to Atticus.
Quintus Tullius Cicero.
Of Quintus Cicero, the next most important correspondent in this volume, we get a fairly clear picture. Four years younger than his famous brother (b. b.c. 102), he followed him at the due distance up the ladder of official promotion to the prætorship, to which he was elected in the year of his elder's consulship. There, however, Quintus stopped. He never seems to have stood for the consulship. He had no oratorical genius to give him reputation in the forum, nor were his literary productions of any value, either for style or originality. His abilities for administration, as shewn in his three years' government of Asia, appear to have been respectable, but were marred by faults of temper, which too often betrayed him into extreme violence of language. In military command he shewed courage and energy in defending his camp in the rising of the Gauls in the winter of b.c. 54-53; but he spoilt the reputation thus gained by the mistake committed in the autumn of b.c. 53, which cost the loss of a considerable number of troops, and all but allowed the roving Germans to storm his camp. He remained another year in Gaul, but did nothing to retrieve this mistake. In military affairs fortune rarely forgives. In politics he seems to have contented himself generally with saying ditto to his brother. And this continued to be the case up to Pharsalia. After that, finding himself on the losing side, he turned somewhat fiercely upon the brother, whom he regarded as having misled him; and for a time there was a miserable breach between them, which, however, did not last very long. When the end came it found the brothers united in heart as in misfortune. His private happiness was marred by an uncongenial marriage. Pomponia—sister of Atticus—seems to have been as high-tempered as her husband, and less placable. The constant quarrels between them exercised the patience both of Cicero and Atticus, and crops up all through the correspondence. One effect of them was the loss of all control over their son, who, being called upon to smooth over the differences between father and mother, naturally took up at an early age a line of his own, and shewed a disposition to act independently of his elders.
Terentia.
The letters to Terentia do not fill much space in the correspondence, and are rarely interesting. Married about b.c. 80, Cicero seems to have lived in harmony with her at least till the time of his return from exile, during which unhappy period he acknowledges the activity of her exertions in support of his recall, and the drain which his ruin was making upon her resources. Terentia had a large private fortune, and apparently used it liberally in his service. Nevertheless, immediately on his return from exile, there seems to have been some cause of coldness between the husband and wife. He darkly alludes to certain domestic troubles in the first letter to Atticus written from Rome (vol i., p. 189), and repeats the hint in the next (p. 193). When he landed at Brundisium it was Tullia, not Terentia, who came to meet him (p. 187), and for some time after she appears to be presiding in his house rather than Terentia (see pp. 224, 257). Whatever the cause of this coldness was, however, it appears to have been removed for a time. He kept up a correspondence with her while he was in Cilicia (b.c. 51-50), and though he does not seem pleased at her having arranged the marriage of Tullia with Dolabella, he addresses her warmly when about to return, and was met by her on landing. During the five or six months that followed, before Cicero left Italy to join Pompey, there is no indication of any alienation: but the short notes from Pompey's camp, and in the first half of b.c. 47, are cold and conventional, and on his return to Brundisium after Pharsalia, and during his lengthened stay there, he appears to have declined to allow her to come and see him. Soon after his return to Rome, in September, b.c. 47, matters came to a climax. Perhaps some of the mischief was caused by the mismanagement or dishonesty of Terentia's steward, Philotimus, of whom we hear a good deal in the letters from Cilicia: but whatever was the origin of the quarrel, Cicero asserts that on his return he found his affairs in a state of utter disorder. It may well have been that, like other adherents to the losing cause, he had to suffer from loss of any property that could be easily laid hands on in Rome, and that Terentia had had no power to save it. But Cicero, rightly or wrongly, attributed the embarrassment which he found awaiting him to his wife. He says in a letter to Gnæus Plancius:22 "I should not have taken any new step at a time of such general disaster had I not on my return found my private affairs in as sorry a position as the public. The fact is, that when I saw that, owing to the criminal conduct of those to whom my life and fortunes ought, in return for my never-to-be-forgotten services, to have been their dearest object, there was nothing safe within the walls of my house, nothing that was not the subject of some intrigue, I made up my mind that I must arm myself by the faithful support of new marriage connexions against the perfidy of the old." This is a lame excuse for a man of sixty separating from the companion of his whole manhood, and in the eyes of Roman Society it was rendered still more questionable by a prompt marriage with a young girl, rich, and his own ward: from whom, however, he soon again divorced himself, angered, it is said, by her want of feeling at the death of Tullia. Terentia long survived her husband, living, we are told, to be over a hundred years old. Divorce was, of course, not regarded in these days of the Republic as it had once been, or as it is now among ourselves; still we should have been glad, both for his fame and his happiness, if the few years remaining to him had not had this additional cloud. A man of sixty embarking on such matrimonial enterprise is not a dignified spectacle, or one pleasing to gods and men.
The other correspondents may be dismissed in few words.
P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther.
P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, to whom some of the longest letters are addressed, represents the high aristocracy, to which Cicero wished to commend himself, though seeing keenly the weakness which underlay their magnificence. The part played by Lentulus in politics had been showy, but never founded on steadfast principle. He owed his earlier promotions to Cæsar's influence, but in his consulship of b.c. 57 had taken the side of the aristocracy in promoting the recall of Cicero, though he had gone against their sentiment by supporting Pompey's appointment to the cura annonæ. But as he was going to Cilicia in b.c. 56, Lentulus wished to have the lucrative task of restoring Ptolemy Auletes to the throne of Egypt, from which he had been righteously driven by his subjects. Therefore it was all to the good that Pompey should have business at home preventing him from taking this in hand. How Lentulus was baulked in this desire will appear in the letters. He no doubt had his full share of the Lentulitas distinguishing his family. But all was forgiven by Cicero to a man who had promoted his recall, and he takes great pains to justify to Lentulus his own change of policy in regard to the triumvirs after b.c. 56. When the civil war began Lentulus joined Domitius at Corfinium, and with him fell into Cæsar's hands, and was dismissed unharmed. He afterwards joined Pompey in Epirus, intent on succeeding Cæsar as Pontifex Maximus, as soon as the latter had been satisfactorily disposed of. After Pharsalia he sought refuge at Rhodes, but was refused sanctuary by the islanders, and was eventually put to death, though we do not know by whom (Att. xi. 13; Fam. ix. 18).
M. Fadius Gallus, M. Marius, L. Lucceius, C. Scribonius Curio, C. Trebatius Testa.
M. Fadius Gallus, the Epicurean, and M. Marius, the valetudinarian and wit, were among friends valued for their personal and agreeable qualities rather than for any public or political importance attaching to them. The same may be said of L. Lucceius, of whose Roman history Cicero thought so well, that he wrote a remarkable letter begging for an honourable place in it for his consulship, as Pliny did to Tacitus.