The Life of Cicero. Volume II.

The De Partitione Oratoria Dialogus follows, of which we have already spoken, written when he was an old man, and was in the sixty-first year of his life. It was the year in which he had divorced Terentia, and had been made thoroughly wretched in private and in public affairs. But he was not on that account disabled from preparing for his son these instructions, in the form of questions and answers, on the art of speaking.

We next come to the Brutus; or, De Claris Oratoribus, a dialogue supposed to have been held between Brutus, Atticus, and Cicero himself. It is a continuation of the three books De Oratore. He there describes what is essential to the character of the optimus orator. He here looks after the special man, going back over the results of past ages, and bringing before the reader's eyes all Greek and Roman orators, till he comes down to Cicero. I cannot but say that the feeling is left with the reader that the orator optimus has been reached at last in Cicero's mind.

We must remark, in the first place, that he has chosen for his friend, to whom to address his piece, one whom he has only known late in life. It was when he went to Cilicia as governor, when he was fifty-six years old, that he was thrown by Atticus into close relations with Brutus. Now he has, next to Atticus, become his most chosen friend. His three next treatises, the Orator, the Tusculan Disquisitions, and the De Natura Deorum, have all been graced, or intended to be graced, by the name of Brutus. And yet, from what we know, we can hardly imagine two men less likely to be brought together by their political ambition. The one compromising, putting up with the bad rather than with a worse, knowing that things were evil, and contented to accept those that were the least so; the other strict, uncompromising, and one who had learned lessons which had taught him that there was no choice among things that were bad! And Brutus, too, had told Cicero that his lessons in oratory were not to his taste. There was a something about Cicero which enabled him to endure such rebukes while there was aught worthy of praise in the man who rebuked him; and it was to this something that his devotion was paid. We know that Brutus was rapacious after money with all the greed of a Roman nobleman, and we know also that Cicero was not. Cicero could keep his hands clean with thousands around him, and with thousands going into the pockets of other men. He could see the vice of Brutus, but he did not hate it. He must have borne, too, with something from Atticus of the same kind. The truth seems to me that to Cicero there was no horror as to greediness, except to greed in himself. He could hate it for himself and yet tolerate it in others, as a man may card-playing, or rackets, or the turf. But he must have known that Brutus had made himself the owner of all good gifts in learning, and took him to his heart in consequence. In no other way can I explain to myself the feeling of subservience to Brutus which Cicero so generally expresses: it exists in none other of his relations of life. Political subservience there is to Pompey; but he can laugh at Pompey, and did not dedicate to him his treatises De Republica, or De Legibus. To Appius Claudius he was very courteous. He thought badly of Appius, but hardly worse than he ought to have done of Brutus. Of Cælius he was fond, of Curio, of Trebatius. To Pætus he was attached, to Sulpicius and Marcellus. But to none of them did he ever show that deference which he did to Brutus. I could have understood this feeling as evinced in the political letters at the end of his life, and have explained it to myself by saying that the "ipsissima verba" have not probably come to us. But I cannot say that the name of Brutus does not stand there, written in imperishable letters on the title-pages of his most chosen pieces. If this be so, Brutus has owed more to his learning than the respect of Cicero. All ages since have felt it, and Shakespeare has told us that "Brutus is an honorable man."

There is a dispute as to the period of the authorship of this treatise. Cicero in it tells us of Cato and of Marcellus, and therefore we must suppose that it was written when they were alive. Indeed, he so compares Cæsar and Marcellus as he could not have done had they not both been alive. But Cato and Marcellus died b. c. 46, and how then could the treatise have been written in b. c. 45? It should, however, be remembered that a written paper may be altered and rewritten, and that the date of authorship and that of publication cannot be exactly the same. But the time is of but little matter to those who can take delight in the discourse. He begins by telling us how he had grieved when, on his return from Cilicia, he had heard that Hortensius was dead. Hortensius had brought him into the College of Augurs, and had there stood to him in the place of a parent. And he had lamented Hortensius also on behalf of Rome. Hortensius had gone. Then he goes on to say that, as he was thinking of these things while walking in his portico, Brutus had come to him and Pomponius Atticus. He says how pleasantly they greeted each other; and then gradually they go on, till Atticus asks him to renew the story he had before been telling. "In truth, Pomponius," he says, "I remember it right well, for then it was that I heard Deiotarus, that truest and best of kings, defended by our Brutus here," Deiotarus was that Eastern king whose defence by Cicero himself I have mentioned when speaking of his pleadings before Cæsar. Then he rushes off into his subject, and discusses at length his favorite idea. It must still be remembered that neither here are to be traced any positive line of lessons in oratory. There is no beginning, no middle, and no end to this treatise. Cicero runs on, charming us rather by his language than by his lessons. He says of Eloquence that "she is the companion of peace, and the associate of ease."²⁵⁸ He tells us of Cato, that he had read a hundred and fifty of his speeches, and had "found them all replete with bright words and with great matter; * * * and yet no one in his days read Cato's speeches!"²⁵⁹ This, of course, was Cato the elder. Then we hear how Demosthenes said that in oratory action was everything: it was the first thing, the second, and the third. "For there is nothing like it to penetrate into the minds of the audience – to teach them, to turn them, and to form them, till the orator shall be made to appear exactly that which he wishes to be thought.²⁶⁰ * * * The man who listens to one who is an orator believes what he hears; he thinks everything to be true, he approves of all."²⁶¹ No doubt! In his power of describing the orator and his work Cicero is perfect; but he does not describe the man doing that which he is bound to do by his duty.

He tells us that nothing is worse than half a dozen advocates – which certainly is true.²⁶² Further on he comes to Cæsar, and praises him very highly. But here Brutus is made to speak, and tells us how he has read the Commentaries, and found them to be "bare in their beauty, perfect in symmetry, but unadorned, and deprived of all outside garniture."²⁶³ They are all that he has told us, nor could they have been described in truer words. Then he names Hortensius, and speaks of him in language which is graceful and graphic; but he reserves his greatest strength for himself, and at last, declaring that he will say nothing in his own praise, bursts out into a string of eulogy, which he is able to conceal beneath dubious phrases, so as to show that he himself has acquired such a mastery over his art as to have made himself, in truth, the best orator of them all.²⁶⁴

Perhaps the chief charm of this essay is to be found in the lightness of the touch. It is never heavy, never severe, rarely melancholic. If read without reference to other works, it would leave on the reader's mind the impression that though now and again there had come upon him the memory of a friend who had gone, and some remembrance of changes in the State to which, as an old man, he could not give his assent; nevertheless, it was written by a happy man, by one who was contented among his books, and was pleased to be reminded that things had gone well with him. He writes throughout as one who had no great sorrow at his heart. No one would have thought that in this very year he was perplexed in his private affairs, even to the putting away of his wife; that Cæsar had made good his ground, and, having been Dictator last year, had for the third time become Consul; that he knew himself to be living, as a favor, by Cæsar's pleasure. Cicero seems to have written his Brutus as one might write who was well at ease. Let a man have taught himself aught, and have acquired the love of letters, it is easy for him then, we might say, to carry on his work. What is it to him that politicians are cutting each other's throats around him? He has not gone into that arena and fought and bled there, nor need he do so. Though things may have gone contrary to his views, he has no cause for anger, none for personal disappointment, none for personal shame; but with Cicero, on every morning as he rose he must have remembered Pompey and have thought of Cæsar. And though Cæsar was courteous to him, the courtesy of a ruler is hard to be borne by him who himself has ruled. Cæsar was Consul; and Cicero, who remembered how majestically he had walked when a few years since he was Consul by the real votes of the people, how he had been applauded for doing his duty to the people, how he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with Brutus and with Atticus. Yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been expected from a happy mind. But we must remark that at its close – in its very final words – he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. Even in the middle of a sentence it is brought to a close, and the reader is left to imagine that something has been lost, or that more might have been added.

The last of these works is the Orator. We have passed in review the De Oratore, and the Brutus; or, De Claris Oratoribus. We have now to consider that which is commonly believed to be the most finished piece of the three. Such seems to have become the general idea of those scholars who have spoken and written on the subject. He himself says that there are in all five books. There are the three De Oratore; the fourth is called the Brutus, and the fifth the Orator.²⁶⁵ In some MSS. this work has a second title, De Optimo Genere Dicendi – as though the five books should run on in a sequence, the first three being on oratory in general, the fourth as to famous orators, while the last concluding work is on the best mode of oratory. Readers who may wish to carry these in their minds must exclude for the moment from their memory the few pages which he wrote as a preface to the translations from Æschines and Demosthenes. The purport is to show how that hitherto unknown hero of romance may be produced – the perfect orator.

Here as elsewhere we shall find the greatest interest lies in a certain discursive treatment of his subject, which enables him to run hither and thither, while he always pleases us, whatever attitude he may assume, whatever he may say, and in whatever guise he may speak to us. But here, in the last book, there does seem to be some kind of method in his discourse. He distinguishes three styles of eloquence – the simple, the moderate, and the sublime, and explains that the orator has three duties to perform. He must learn what on any subject he has to say; he must place his arguments in order, and he must know how to express them. He explains what action should achieve for the orator, and teaches that eloquence depends wholly on elocution. He tells us that the philosophers, the historians, and the poets have never risen to his ideas of eloquence; but that he alone does so who can, amid the heat and work of the Forum, turn men's minds as he wishes. Then he teaches us how each of the three styles should be treated – the simple, the moderate, and the sublime – and shows us how to vary them. He informs us what laws we should preserve in each, what ornaments, what form, and what metaphors. He then considers the words we should use, and makes us understand how necessary it is to attend to the minutest variety of sound. In this matter we have to acknowledge that he, as a Roman, had to deal with instruments for listening infinitely finer than are our British ears; and I am not sure that we can follow him with rapture into all the mysteries of the Pœon, the Dochmius, and the Dichoreus. What he says of rhythm we are willing to take to be true, and we wonder at the elaborate study given to it; but I doubt whether we here do not read of it as a thing beyond us, by descending into which we should be removing ourselves farther from the more wholesome pursuits of our lives.

There are, again, delightful morsels here. He tells us, for instance, that he who has created a beautiful thing must have beauty in his soul,²⁶⁶– a charming idea, as to which we do not stop to inquire whether it be true or not. He gives us a most excellent caution against storing up good sayings, and using them from the storehouse of our memory: "Let him avoid these studied things, not made of the moment, but brought from the closet."²⁶⁷ Then he rises into a grand description of the perfect orator: "But that third man is he, rich, abundant, dignified, and instructed, in whom there is a divine strength. This is he whose fulness and culture of speech the nations have admired, and whose eloquence has been allowed to prevail over the people.²⁶⁸ * * * Then will the orator make himself felt more abundantly. Then will he rule their minds and turn their hearts. Then will he do with them as he would wish."²⁶⁹

But in the teeth of all this it did not please Brutus himself. "When I wrote to him," he said to Atticus, "in obedience to his wishes, 'De Optimo Genere Dicendi,' he sent word, both to you and me, that that which pleased me did not satisfy him."²⁷⁰ "Let every man kiss his own wife," says Cicero in his letter in the next words to those we have quoted; and we cannot but love the man for being able to joke when he is telling of the rebuff he has received. It must have been an additional pang to him, that he for whom he had written his book should receive it with stern rebuke.

At last we come to the Topica; the last instructions which Cicero gives on the subject of oratory. The Romans seem to have esteemed much the lessons which are here conveyed, but for us it has but little attraction. He himself declares it to have been a translation from Aristotle, but declares also that the translation has been made from memory. He has been at sea, he says, in the first chapter, and has there performed his task, and has sent it as soon as it has been done. There is something in this which is unintelligible to us. He has translated a treatise of Aristotle from memory – that is, without having the original before him – and has done this at sea, on his intended journey to Greece!²⁷¹ I do not believe that Cicero has been false in so writing. The work has been done for his young friend Trebatius, who had often asked it, and was much too clever when he had received it not to recognize its worth. But Cicero has, in accordance with his memory, reduced to his own form Aristotle's idea as to "invention" in logic. Aristotle's work is, I am informed, in eight books: here is a bagatelle in twenty-five pages. There is an audacity in the performance – especially in the doing it on board ship; but we must remember that he had spent his life in achieving a knowledge of these things, and was able to write down with all the rapidity of a practised professor the doctrines on the matter which he wished to teach Trebatius.

This later essay is a recapitulation of the different sources to which an orator, whether as lawyer, advocate, philosopher, or statesman, may look for his arguments. That they should have been of any great use to Trebatius, in the course of his long life as attorney-general about the court of Augustus, I cannot believe. I do not know that he rose to special mark as an orator, though he was well known as a counsellor; nor do I think that oratory, or the powers of persuasion, can be so brought to book as to be made to submit itself to formal rules. And here they are given to us in the form of a catalogue. It is for modern readers perhaps the least interesting of all Cicero's works.

There is left upon us after reading these treatises a general idea of the immense amount of attention which, in the Roman educated world, was paid to the science of speaking. To bring his arguments to bear at the proper moment – to catch the ideas that are likely to be rising in the minds of men – to know when the sympathies may be expected and when demanded, when the feelings may be trusted and when they have been too blunted to be of service – to perceive from an instinctive outlook into those before him when he may be soft, when hard, when obdurate and when melting – this was the business of a Roman orator. And this was to be achieved only by a careful study of the characters of men. It depended in no wise on virtue, on morals, or on truth, though very much on education. How he might please the multitude – this was everything to him. It was all in all to him to do just that which here in our prosaic world in London we have been told that men ought not to attempt. They do attempt it, but they fail – through the innate honesty which there is in the hearts of men. In Italy, in Cicero's time, they attempted it, and did not fail. But we can see what were the results.

The attention which Roman orators paid to their voices was as serious, and demanded the same restraint, as the occupations of the present athlete. We are inclined to doubt whether too much of life is not devoted to the purpose. It could not be done but by a people so greedy of admiration as to feel that all other things should be abandoned by those who desire to excel. The actor of to-day will do it, but it is his business to act; and if he so applies himself to his profession as to succeed, he has achieved his object. But oratory in the law court, as in Parliament, or in addressing the public, is only the means of imbuing the minds of others with the ideas which the speaker wishes to implant there. To have those ideas, and to have the desire to teach them to others, is more to him than the power of well expressing them. To know the law is better than to talk of knowing it. But with the Romans so great was the desire to shine that the reality was lost in its appearance; and so prone were the people to indulge in the delight of their senses that they would sacrifice a thing for a sound, and preferred lies in perfect language to truth in halting syllables. This feeling had sunk deep into Cicero's heart when he was a youth, and has given to his character the only stain which it has. He would be patriotic: to love his country was the first duty of a Roman. He would be honest: so much was indispensable to his personal dignity. But he must so charm his countrymen with his voice as to make them feel while they listened to him that some god addressed them. In this way he became permeated by the love of praise, till it was death to him not to be before the lamps.

The "perfect orator" is, we may say, a person neither desired nor desirable. We, who are the multitude of the world, and have been born to hold our tongues and use our brains, would not put up with him were he to show himself. But it was not so in Cicero's time; and this was the way he took to sing the praises of his own profession and to magnify his own glory. He speaks of that profession in language so excellent as to make us who read his words believe that there was more in it than it did in truth hold. But there was much in it, and the more so as the performers reacted upon their audience. The delicacy of the powers of expression had become so great, that the powers of listening and distinguishing had become great also. As the instruments became fine, so did the ears which were to receive their music. Cicero, and Quintilian after him, tell us this. The latter, in speaking of the nature of the voice, gives us a string of epithets which it would be hopeless to attempt to translate: "Nam est et candida, et fusca, et plena, et exilis, et levis, et aspera, et contracta, et fusa, et dura, et flexibilis, et clara, et obtusa; spiritus etiam longior, breviorque."²⁷² And the remarkable thing was, that every Roman who listened would understand what the orator intended, and would know too, and would tell him of it, if by error he had fallen into some cadence which was not exactly right. To the modes of raising the voice, which are usually divided into three – the high or treble, the low or bass, and that which is between the two, the contralto and tenor – many others are added. There are the eager and the soft, the higher and the lower notes, the quicker and the slower. It seems little to us, who know that we can speak or whisper, hammer our words together, or drawl them out. But then every listener was critically alive to the fact whether the speaker before him did or did not perform his task as it should be done. No wonder that Cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. Then the strength of body had to be matured, lest the voice should fall to "a sick, womanly weakness, like that of an eunuch." This must be provided by exercise, by anointing, by continence, by the easy digestion of the food – which means moderation; and the jaws must be free, so that the words must not strike each other. And as to the action of the orator, Cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly as do the words themselves. In all this we find that Quintilian only follows his master too closely. The hands, the shoulders, the sides, the stamping of the foot, the single step or many steps – every motion of the body, agreeing with the words from his mouth, are all described.²⁷³ He attributes this to Antony – but only because, as he thinks of it, some movement of Antony's has recurred to his memory.

To make the men who heard him believe in him was the one gift which Cicero valued; not to make them know him to be true, but to believe him to be so. This it was, in Cicero's time, to be the optimus orator.

Since Cicero's time there has been some progress in the general conduct of men. They are less greedy, less cruel, less selfish – greedy, cruel, and selfish though they still are. The progress which the best among us have made Cicero in fact achieved; but he had not acquired that theoretic aversion to a lie which is the first feeling in the bosom of a modern gentleman; therefore it was that he still busied himself with finding the optimus orator.