B.C. 106-91.

THE BOYHOOD.

13

We have good reason to believe that, whether Cicero's father had returned to Arpinum or not after bringing his sons to Rome, he was present on this interesting occasion, for his son expressly tells us that immediately afterwards he introduced Cicero to Quintus Mucius Scævola the Augurthe most profound lawyer of his day in Rome that he might have the benefit of his instruction in the science of which that accomplished jurist was so great a master.

THE contrast between ancient and modern manners is so great that it is very difficult to realise it, and bring clearly before the mind's eye the usages of social life that belong to a remote antiquity. Law was taught in a very different manner in republican Rome from that to which we are accustomed in England. There were no chambers of pleaders or conveyancers, to which the young student might resort to copy precedents and answer cases, having first obtained admission there by the payment of an honorarium. Nor were there, so far as we know, public lectures on law like those of our inns of court, open to those who might I choose to attend them. And yet there was a practice at Rome which bore a certain analogy to both these methods of instruction, and to a certain extent combined the advantages of both. It was this: those who aspired to fill the great offices of state knew that they could only climb the ladder of ambition by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens. The object, therefore, of every public man was to cultivate popularity, and there were two modes of cultivating it with success, both of which, however, might be, and sometimes were, combined. The one was by undertaking gratuitously the defence of the accused, and advocating causes in courts of justice; the other, by giving gratuitous advice on points of law to those who required their assistance. For this purpose the house of a Roman jurisconsult was always open, not only to suitors but to students, who came there to listen to the responsa prudentum or legal opinions, which were delivered not in the stiff formal manner of a modern consultation, but in the easy mode of familiar conversation, some

ET. 17-25.

ATTENDANCE ON ORATORS.

15

times during a walk in the peristylium of the house, and sometimes during a saunter in the Forum. It was thus that Cicero attached himself to Scævola the Augur as a kind of pupil; and that so assiduously, that in his own emphatic language he declares that he hardly ever quitted his side. He used to take notes of his lectures, and commit his maxims and sayings to memory; following him to the courts when he pleaded as an advocate, and to the Rostra when he harangued the people. He thus received practical lessons in eloquence and law, and formed himself for the career which he had marked out for himself, and in which he was destined to acquire such deathless fame. After the death of this great lawyer he transferred himself to another of the same family and name-for he, too, was called Quintus Mucius Scævola, and was the cousin of the Augur-who had filled the office of Consul, and was Pontifex Maximus. He was the first who attempted to give a scientific form to the Jus Civile, by writing a systematic treatise upon it; and Cicero with grateful enthusiasm calls him the most cloquent of lawyers, and the most learned of orators. His time was now incessantly occupied. He lost no opportunity of attending the speeches of the different orators and pleaders in the Forum and the courts; he watched the gestures of the best actors, like sop and Roscius; and every day was spent in reading, writing, and practising declamation. Philosophy and oratory seem to have been the two chief objects of his study; but if of any man before Bacon appeared that might be said, which the great master of modern philosophy claimed for himself, that he "had taken all knowledge for his province," it might be truly declared of the youthful Cicero. His appetite for knowledge was insatiable, and his desire for distinction boundless. No one ever lived to whom the hope of future distinction furnished a stronger motive for exertion.

Perhaps at no other place and at no other time, except at Athens in the palmy days of her great orators, have such opportunities been afforded for the study of eloquence as existed then at Rome. The constitution of the republic imperatively required that those who looked to high office in the state should be practised speakers. The two great avenues of distinction were the Army and the Bar.

And by

the Bar I do not mean the profession of an advocate in the narrow and limited sense which it bears amongst ourselves; but every kind of display of eloquence in the Forum, whether in a speech in the courts of law before the Prætor, or in a concio or harangue addressed to the people. Even the successful soldier had to cultivate oratory to give him a fair chance of civic honours. Each of the successive steps in the ascending hierarchy of office, from the quæstorship to the consulship, could only be attained by securing the votes of the people under a system which amounted almost to universal suffrage; and to be able to speak well was then, as in all ages and times, the surest passport to popular favour. Pompey and Cæsar were both orators; and Cæsar indeed was considered one of the very best speakers of his day.

Cicero therefore devoted himself to the study of that art, of success in which he was soon to show himself the most splendid example. He diligently declaimed at home, and there noted down the passages which had most struck him in the Greek orators, or the speeches he had heard delivered; taking care at the same time to cultivate his style by written composition, and the perusal of works of rhetoric. But every kind of literature engaged his attention. I have spoken of his attempts in poetry; and rhetoric, dialectics, philosophy, and law, by turns attracted him, and occupied his busy hours. Noctes et dies, he says, in omnium doctrinarum meditatione versabar.1

But he did not confine himself to the pursuit of studies fitted to qualify him for success in the Forum and the Senate. In his nineteenth year he quitted them for the active life of the camp, and became for a time a soldier. This was a most valuable part of the education of a Roman gentleman; and it was almost necessary in the case of those who looked forward to high office. As one of the great magistrates of the republic, and especially as Consul, he might have to command the Roman legions and conduct a campaign; when, if he failed, and victory deserted his standard, he was liable to be called to a severe account by the sovereign people. It was therefore essential to know something of the art of war, which can only be taught by active service in the field;

1 Brutus, c. 90.

B.C. 90-82.

MILITARY EDUCATION.

17

and the constant quarrels in which the republic was engaged both in Italy and abroad gave ample opportunity for this. Rome was rapidly accomplishing her destiny as the future. mistress of the world. The whole of Italy was subject to her sway; but the relation of the different towns and communities there to herself was anomalous and undefined. The inhabitants had not the rights of Roman citizens, except in some special cases, as in that of Arpinum; and they were looked upon rather as the dependants and tributaries of the Republic than part of the Republic itself. This state of things was of course galling to their pride, and they chafed under a sense of injustice. They had to furnish soldiers for the Roman armies, but could not vote in the election of at Roman magistrate. The discontent at last broke out into open war, which has been variously called the Marsian, the Italian, or the Social War. It was during this war that Cicero, then in his nineteenth year, served in his first and only campaign, under the Consul Cneius Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompey the Great; and in one of his speeches he mentions an incident that occurred in his presence to show how courtesy may be shown even to an enemy in the field.

A conference of the two generals took place midway between the hostile camps, when Scato the leader of the Marsians asked the brother of the Consul who attended the meeting how he should address him, upon which Sextus Pompeius replied "as a friend by inclination: as an enemy from necessity."

About this time Philo, the philosopher of the school of the Academy, came from Athens to Rome accompanied by several distinguished Athenians, who had quitted their country owing to the troubles occasioned by the war with the Mithridates. On his return from the Italian campaign, Cicero attached himself to him as a pupil, embracing the study of philosophy all the more warmly, inasmuch as the confusion that prevailed at Rome at this period during the deadly struggle between Marius and Sylla seemed to have annihilated the ordinary business of the courts of law. But there was another mode of study of a practical kind to which he did not fail to devote himself with a prescient knowledge of its importance to his own future career.

C

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