The Life of Cicero, Volume One. Anthony Trollope
"novus homo," a new man, and therefore not noble till he had achieved nobility himself. A man was noble who could reckon a Consul, a Prætor, or an Ædile among his ancestors. Such was not the case with Cicero. As he filled all these offices, his son was noble—as were his son's sons and grandsons, if such there were.
It was common to Romans to have three names, and our Cicero had three. Marcus, which was similar in its use to the Christian name of one of us, had been that of his grandfather and father, and was handed on to his son. This, called the prænomen, was conferred on the child when a babe with a ceremony not unlike that of our baptism. There was but a limited choice of such names among the Romans, so that an initial letter will generally declare to those accustomed to the literature that intended. A. stands for Aulus, P. for Publius, M. generally for Marcus, C. for Caius, though there was a Cneus also. The nomen, Tullius, was that of the family. Of this family of Tullius to which Cicero belonged we know no details. Plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in extremes, some declaring that he had been a fuller, and others that he had been descended from a prince who had governed the Volsci. We do not see why he may not have sprung from the prince, and also have been a fuller. There can, however, be no doubt that he was a gentleman, not uneducated himself, with means and the desire to give his children the best education which Rome or Greece afforded. The third name or cognomen, that of Cicero, belonged to a branch of the family of Tullius. This third name had generally its origin, as do so many of our surnames, in some specialty of place, or trade, or chance circumstance. It was said that an ancestor had been called Cicero from "cicer," a vetch, because his nose was marked with the figure of that vegetable. It is more probable that the family prospered by the growing and sale of vetches. Be that as it may, the name had been well established before the orator's time. Cicero's mother was one Helvia, of whom we are told that she was well-born and rich. Cicero himself never alludes to her—as neither, if I remember rightly, did Horace to his mother, though he speaks so frequently of his father. Helvia's younger son, Quintus, tells a story of his mother in a letter, which has been, by chance, preserved among those written by our Cicero. She was in the habit of sealing up the empty wine-jars, as well as those which were full, so that a jar emptied on the sly by a guzzling slave might be at once known. This is told in a letter to Tiro, a favorite slave belonging to Marcus, of whom we shall hear often in the course of our work. As the old lady sealed up the jars, though they contained no wine, so must Tiro write letters, though he has nothing to say in them. This kind of argument, taken from the old familiar stories of one's childhood and one's parents, could be only used to a dear and familiar friend. Such was Tiro, though still a slave, to the two brothers. Roman life admitted of such friendships, though the slave was so completely the creature of the master that his life and death were at the master's disposal. This is nearly all that is known of Cicero's father and mother, or of his old home.
There is, however, sufficient evidence that the father paid great attention to the education of his sons—if, in the case of Marcus, any evidence were wanting where the result is so manifest by the work of his life. At a very early age, probably when he was eight—in the year which produced Julius Cæsar—he was sent to Rome, and there was devoted to studies which from the first were intended to fit him for public life. Middleton says that the father lived in Rome with his son, and argues from this that he was a man of large means. But Cicero gives no authority for this. It is more probable that he lived at the house of one Aculeo, who had married his mother's sister, and had sons with whom Cicero was educated. Stories are told of his precocious talents and performances such as we are accustomed to hear of many remarkable men—not unfrequently from their own mouths. It is said of him that he was intimate with the two great advocates of the time, Lucius Crassus and Marcus Antonius the orator, the grandfather of Cicero's future enemy, whom we know as Marc Antony. Cicero speaks of them both as though he had seen them and talked much of them in his youth. He tells us anecdotes of them;[33] how they were both accustomed to conceal their knowledge of Greek, fancying that the people in whose eyes they were anxious to shine would think more of them if they seemed to have contented themselves simply with Roman words and Roman thoughts. But the intimacy was probably that which a lad now is apt to feel that he has enjoyed with a great man, if he has seen and heard him, and perhaps been taken by the hand. He himself gives in very plain language an account of his own studies when he was seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. He speaks of the orators of that day[34]: "When I was above all things anxious to listen to these men, the banishment of Cotta was a great sorrow to me. I was passionately intent on hearing those who were left, daily writing, reading, and making notes. Nor was I content only with practice in the art of speaking. In the following year Varius had to go, condemned by his own enactment; and at this time, in working at the civil law, I gave much of my time to Quintus Scævola, the son of Publius, who, though he took no pupils, by explaining points to those who consulted him, gave great assistance to students. The year after, when Sulla and Pompey were Consuls, I learned what oratory really means by listening to Publius Sulpicius, who as tribune was daily making harangues. It was then that Philo, the Chief of the Academy, with other leading philosophers of Athens, had been put to flight by the war with Mithridates, and had come to Rome. To him I devoted myself entirely, stirred up by a wonderful appetite for acquiring the Greek philosophy. But in that, though the variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether suppressed. In that year Sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of our greatest orators, Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius Julius, were cruelly killed." This was the time of the civil war between Marius and Sulla. "In the same year I took lessons from Molo the Rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." In the next chapter he tells us that he passed his time also with Diodatus the Stoic, who afterward lived with him, and died in his house. Here we have an authentic description of the manner in which Cicero passed his time as a youth at Rome, and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by lessening the superlatives. Nothing in it, however, is more remarkable than the confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the subtle argumentation of the Greek philosophers, his clear common sense quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion.
But before these days of real study had come upon him he had given himself up to juvenile poetry. He is said to have written a poem called Pontius Glaucus when he was fourteen years old. This was no doubt a translation from the Greek, as were most of the poems that he wrote, and many portions of his prose treatises.[35] Plutarch tells us that the poem was extant in his time, and declares that, "in process of time, when he had studied this art with greater application, he was looked upon as the best poet, as well as the greatest orator in Rome." The English translators of Plutarch tell us that their author was an indifferent judge of Latin poetry, and allege as proof of this that he praised Cicero as a poet, a praise which he gave "contrary to the opinion of Juvenal." But Juvenal has given no opinion of Cicero's poetry, having simply quoted one unfortunate line noted for its egotism, and declared that Cicero would never have had his head cut off had his philippics been of the same nature.[36] The evidence of Quintus Mucius Scævola as to Cicero's poetry was perhaps better, as he had the means, at any rate, of reading it. He believed that the Marius, a poem written by Cicero in praise of his great fellow-townsman, would live to posterity forever. The story of the old man's prophecy comes to us, no doubt, from Cicero himself, and is put into the mouth of his brother;[37] but had it been untrue it would have been contradicted.
The Glaucus was a translation from the Greek done by a boy, probably as a boy's lesson It is not uncommon that such exercises should be treasured by parents, or perhaps by the performer himself, and not impossible that they should be made to reappear afterward as original compositions. Lord Brougham tells us in his autobiography that in his early youth he tried his hand at writing English essays, and even tales of fiction.[38] "I find one of these," he says, "has survived the waste-paper basket, and it may amuse my readers to see the sort of composition I was guilty of at the age of thirteen. My tale was entitled 'Memnon, or Human Wisdom,' and is as follows." Then we have a fair translation of Voltaire's romance, "Memnon," or "La Sagesse Humaine." The old lord, when he was collecting his papers for his autobiography, had altogether forgotten his Voltaire, and thought that he had composed the story! Nothing so absurd as that is told of Cicero by himself or on his behalf.
It may be as well to say here what there may be to be said as to Cicero's poetry generally. But little of it remains to us, and by that little it has been admitted