Cicero

Cicero

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cicero, by Rev. W. Lucas Collins
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Title: Cicero Ancient Classics for English Readers
Author: Rev. W. Lucas Collins
Release Date: March 5, 2004 [EBook #11448]
Language: English
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Ancient Classics for English Readers edited by the
REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.

CICERO
by the
REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
AUTHOR OF 'ETONIANA', 'THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS', ETC.

I have to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. Forsyth's well-known

'Life of Cicero', especially as a guide to the biographical materials
which abound in his Orations and Letters. Mr. Long's scholarly
volumes have also been found useful. For the translations, such as they
are, I am responsible. If I could have met with any which seemed to me
more satisfactory, I would gladly have adopted them.
W.L.C.

CONTENTS.
I. BIOGRAPHICAL--EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION, II. PUBLIC
CAREER--IMPEACHMENT OF VERRES, III. THE CONSULSHIP
AND CATILINE, IV. EXILE AND RETURN, V. CICERO AND
CAESAR, VI. CICERO AND ANTONY, VII. CHARACTER AS
POLITICIAN AND ORATOR, VIII. MINOR CHARACTERISTICS,
IX. CICERO's CORRESPONDENCE, X. ESSAYS ON 'OLD AGE'
AND 'FRIENDSHIP', XI. CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY, XII. CICERO'S
RELIGION.

CICERO.

CHAPTER I.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION.
When we speak, in the language of our title-page, of the 'Ancient
Classics', we must remember that the word 'ancient' is to be taken with
a considerable difference, in one sense. Ancient all the Greek and
Roman authors are, as dated comparatively with our modern era. But as
to the antique character of their writings, there is often a difference
which is not merely one of date. The poetry of Homer and Hesiod is
ancient, as having been sung and written when the society in which the
authors lived, and to which they addressed themselves, was in its
comparative infancy. The chronicles of Herodotus are ancient, partly
from their subject-matter and partly from their primitive style. But in
this sense there are ancient authors belonging to every nation which has
a literature of its own. Viewed in this light, the history of Thucydides,
the letters and orations of Cicero, are not ancient at all. Bede, and

Chaucer, and Matthew of Paris, and Froissart, are far more redolent of
antiquity. The several books which make up what we call the Bible are
all ancient, no doubt; but even between the Chronicles of the Kings of
Israel and the Epistles of St. Paul there is a far wider real interval than
the mere lapse of centuries.
In one respect, the times of Cicero, in spite of their complicated politics,
should have more interest for a modern reader than most of what is
called Ancient History. Forget the date but for a moment, and there is
scarcely anything ancient about them. The scenes and actors are
modern--terribly modern; far more so than the middle ages of
Christendom. Between the times of our own Plantagenets and Georges,
for instance, there is a far wider gap, in all but years, than between the
consulships of Caesar and Napoleon. The habits of life, the ways of
thinking, the family affections, the tastes of the Romans of Cicero's day,
were in many respects wonderfully like our own; the political
jealousies and rivalries have repeated themselves again and again in the
last two or three centuries of Europe: their code of political honour and
morality, debased as it was, was not much lower than that which was
held by some great statesmen a generation or two before us. Let us be
thankful if the most frightful of their vices were the exclusive shame of
paganism.
It was in an old but humble country-house, neat the town of Arpinum,
under the Volscian hills, that Marcus Tullius Cicero was born, one
hundred and six years before the Christian era. The family was of
ancient 'equestrian'[1] dignity, but as none of its members had hitherto
borne any office of state, it did not rank as 'noble'. His grandfather and
his father had borne the same three names--the last an inheritance from
some forgotten ancestor, who had either been successful in the
cultivation of vetches (_cicer_), or, as less complimentary traditions
said, had a wart of that shape upon his nose. The grandfather was still
living when the little Cicero was born; a stout old conservative, who
had successfully resisted the attempt to introduce vote by ballot into his
native town, and hated the Greeks (who were just then