ordered that Vettius, since upon his confession he had carried a dagger with a murderous intent, should be thrown into prison; and they significantly added a resolution, that whoever let him out would act as an enemy of the state. The resolution and order of the Senate were brought before a meeting of the people, at which Cæsar, in spite of what the Senate had ordered, had the hardihood to introduce Vettius from gaol, and permit him to address the multitude from the honourable post of the Rostra-a place from which, Cicero tells us, Cæsar, when he was prætor, had not allowed Catulus to speak, but compelled him to stand on a lower platform. Vettius put a bold face on the matter, and now accused some of the noblest of the senators whom he had not previously named, such as Lucullus, Fannius, Domitius Ahenobarbus, and others; but he made no allusion to Brutus, whom in the senate-house he had specially denounced as privy to the conspiracy. He did not mention the name of Cicero, but said that an eloquent ex-consul, who lived near the consul,1 had told him that the times required a Servilius Ahala or a Brutus. This, of course, sufficiently pointed at Cicero. He afterwards added that Piso, Cicero's son-in-law, and M. Laterensis, were privy to the plot. Vettius was immediately sent back to prison; and notwithstanding the public assurance that had been given him of personal safety, he was to have been arraigned before Crassus, as prætor, on an indictment for attempt to murder; and Cicero says that he intended, if condemned, to earn a pardon by making a fuller confession, and implicate more parties in the conspiracy. But in the meantime it was given out that he had destroyed himself in prison. Perhaps he had: but his death was as mysterious as were those of Wright and Pichegru in the Temple when Bonaparte was First Consul. Cicero afterwards charged Vatinius the tribune with having caused him to be strangled; and if this was true, there is little doubt that Vatinius acted on instructions from a higher quarter.

In giving to Atticus the substance of the above narrative (except as to the death of Vettius, which had not then hap

1 Cæsar was not only consul but pontifex maximus, and as such inhabited the house of the Collegium Pontificum,

by the side of the Via Sacra, apparently just under the Palatine Hill, where Cicero's house stood.

ÆT. 46.

DESPONDENCY.

179

pened), Cicero declared that he had no fears for himself. The greatest good-will was shown to him; but he was utterly weary of life. No one was more unfortunate than himself, no one more fortunate than Catulus, both in the glory of his life and the happiness of his death before this evil time. However, he kept, he said, his mind firm and undisturbed, and was determined to preserve his reputation with honour. Pompey told him to be under no apprehension from Clodius, and in the most marked manner assured him of his friendship.

While he was at his Antian villa this year he chiefly studied history, though he declared that nobody was lazier than himself. He wrote to Atticus that he intended to make a collection of anecdotes of his contemporaries in the style of Theopompus; but he does not appear to have completed, or, at all events, published the work, which would have been a most welcome help to our knowledge of the men of his day. He promised his friend a rustic welcome at his villa. near Arpinum, and said that, in the controversy, Which is the best kind of life-the life of action or the life of contemplation? the former of which was maintained by Dicæarchus, and the latter by Theophrastus-he thought that he practically sided with both. Certainly, he says, he had abundantly satisfied Dicæarchus, and would in future seek happiness more in the bosom of his family, which not only offered him repose, but blamed him for not having always sought it.

We now come to the most melancholy period of Cicero's life -melancholy, not so much from the nature and extent of the misfortune that overtook him, as from the abject prostration of mind into which he was thrown.

We fail to recognise the orator and statesman-the man who braved the fury of Catiline, and in the evening of his life hurled defiance at Antony-in the weeping and moaning exile. He was not deficient in physical courage; he met a violent death with calmness and fortitude; but he wanted strength of character and moral firmness to support adversity.

The consuls of the new year (B.C. 58) were Piso and Gabinius, two men whose character Cicero has painted in the >blackest colours. Piso was a near relative of Cicero's own son-in-law, Calpurnius Piso Frugi, and his daughter Calpurnia was the wife of Cæsar. He was of morose aspect, and rough unpolished manners, but dissolute to the last degree. If we may credit the picture drawn of him and his colleague Gabinius by Cicero, two such infamous men never disgraced the office of consul. They were sunk in the lowest and most monstrous debauchery. He calls Gabinius in scorn, amongst other opprobrious epithets, a "curled dancer," and says that Piso might be taken for one of a gang of Cappadocian slaves. Both had been strongly supported by Cæsar and Pompey in their canvass for the consulship. They lent themselves readily

B.C. 58.

BLOW AIMED AT CICERO.

181

to Clodius's wishes, who, having entered upon the office of tribune in December, proceeded with consummate skill to execute his design of crushing Cicero. His first care was to ingratiate himself with the three orders-the Senate, the Knights, and the People. With this view he proposed several laws in the interest of each respectively, and, in order to secure the two consuls, he bribed them with the offer of proposing a special law to the people to confer upon them select provincial governments, instead of letting them take their chance as usual by lot. Piso thus got Achaia, Thessaly, Peloponnesus, Macedonia, and Boeotia; and Gabinius, Syria, Babylon, and Persia. We can well imagine the visions of plunder that rose before their eyes at such a prospect.

Everything was now ripe for the final blow. At a meeting of the people in their comitia, Clodius came forward and proposed the following law: "Be it enacted, that whoever has put to death a Roman citizen uncondemned in due form of trial, shall be interdicted from fire and water." Cicero's name was not mentioned; but it was a bill of pains and penalties against him; and he called it therefore a privilegium—that is, a law not of general but special application. He saw at once the imminent peril in which he stood. If it passed, he was undone for there was doubt that Clodius would see it executed to the letter. His only chance of safety lay in exciting the sympathy of the sovereign people, and enlisting their compassion on his side. For this purpose he dressed himself in mourning and went about the streets beseeching the pity of the populace, as if he were canvassing for their votes at an election. The whole equestrian class put on mourning also. All Italy seemed moved at the thought of Cicero's danger. Deputations of burghers came up from distant towns to Rome to implore the consuls to protect him. When he appeared as a suppliant in the Forum or the streets, he was accompanied by large bodies of friends in mourning, for twenty thousand of the noblest youths in Rome testified their attachment and their sorrow by changing their dress.1 As the procession moved along it was insulted and mobbed by Clodius and a gang of ruffians who pelted Cicero with stones and mud. It is difficult for us to realise the scenes of lawless riot of

1 Cicero says viginti mille, but it is probably an exaggeration.

which the streets and Forum of Rome were the witness in those days. They were not unlike the bloody feuds that raged in the streets of Genoa and Venice and Verona in the middle ages.

The Senate met and passed a resolution that the whole house should go into mourning. But Gabinius (Piso being absent on the plea of ill health) interfered, and, by virtue of his executive power as consul, prohibited such a mark of respect. Knights and senators flung themselves at his feet in vain; and Clodius was at the door with an armed rabble ready to enforce the consul's orders. Upon this numbers of the senators tore open their robes, and with cries of indignation rushed out of the senate-house. Cicero attempted to gain Piso on his side. He went to his house, accompanied by his son-in-law, Piso Frugi, the consul's relative, and there had an interview with him. But it led to nothing. Piso said that Gabinius could not do without Clodius, and as for himself, he must stand by his colleague, as Cicero had stood by Antonius when he was consul: every one must take care of his own safety.

In the meantime, what was Pompey doing? Where was the friendship he had so often professed for Cicero ?—where were the promises he had made when he swore that he would defend him against Clodius with his life? Whether it was from fear or treachery, or both, he abandoned him to his fate. He had retired to his villa called Albanum, near the modern town of Albano, about twenty miles from Rome, not, we may well believe, because he credited the reports which Clodius and his partisans spread, that his life was threatened by Cicero's friends, but because he wished to take no active part in the disgraceful proceedings that were going on, and to avoid the importunities of the most distinguished men at Rome, praying him to exert his influence to put a stop to them. But Lucullus and Torquatus and Lentulus, who was then prætor, and other noblemen, hastened to him, and urgently entreated him not to abandon his friend, with whose safety the welfare of the state was bound up. Pompey coldly referred them to the consuls, saying that he, as a private individual, would not enter on a contest with an armed tribune of the people; but if the consuls and the Senate were willing