Cicero's causes of discontent.
But there were other sources of unhappiness,
such as the continued disloyalty of his nephew,
his own resolution to divorce Terentia, and a
continual uneasiness as to his own position. The
Pompeians were still strong in Africa when he
returned to Rome, and might conceivably be
successful against Caesar. In that case he looked
forward to acts of retaliation on the part of the
victors, in which he would certainly have his
share of suffering. Nothing could be more
miserable, he thought, than the state of suspense;
and he was astonished at the gaiety with which men
who had so much at stake could crowd the games at
Praeneste.
1 Even after the news reached Rome of
Caesar's victory at Thapsus, he imagines that the
clemency which had hitherto characterized the
Caesarians would in their hour of victory give
place to a vindictive cruelty, which had been only
concealed while the result was doubtful.
2 The
constitution he thinks had totally collapsed:
things were going from bad to worse: his very
house at Tusculum may before long be torn from him
for the benefit of some veteran of Caesar's.
3
He himself has no place in politics, is ashamed of
surviving the Republic, and can find no
consolation for the general débâcle in the
personal kindness of Caesar to himself.
4
Victory in a civil war, he reflects, forces the
victors to be ruthless and cruel in spite of
themselves. The conqueror does not do what he
wishes, but what he must: for he has to gratify
those by whose aid he has won the victory. In fact
the disorganization and confusion are so great and
universal, that every man thinks that the worst
possible position is that in which he happens to
be.
5
These are the views of the political situation
which Cicero communicates to his
friends—mostly leading Pompeians now
living in exile. Yet he is constrained to confess
that it is possible for a member of his party to
live at Rome unmolested: "You may not perhaps be
able to say what you think: you may
certainly hold your tongue.
Caesar's moderation great, but the
constitution in abeyance. |
For authority of
every kind has been committed to one man. He
consults nobody but himself not even his friends.
There would not have been much difference if he
whom we followed had been master of the
Republic."
6
Nor could he deny that Caesar himself acted with
magnanimity and moderation, even increasingly
so.
7 Still, nothing could make up to
him for the loss of
dignitas implied by power being in the
hands of one man, and the senate being no longer
the real governing body. Though after the battle
of Thapsus, and still more after Munda, one source
of anxiety was removed—that of his own
precarious position should Caesar be
defeated—the other grievance, that of
the constitution being in abeyance, grew more and
more offensive to him. "I am ashamed of being a
slave," he writes in January, B.C. 45. "What," he
says in March, "have I to do with a forum, when
there are no law courts, no senate-house, and when
men are always obtruding on my sight whom I cannot
see with any patience?"
8 Again and again he asserts
that there is no form of constitution
existing.
9 A number of lesser annoyances served
gradually to complete his indignant discontent. We
have no allusion to Caesar's triumph after Munda,
or to the scene at the Lupercalia so graphically
described in the second Philippic (§ 85),
when Antony offered him the crown. But we are told
of disgust at his nephew being made a member of
the college of Luperci, revived and re-endowed by
Caesar; of his own annoyance at being kept waiting
in Caesar's antechamber;
10 of his disapproval of Caesar's
plans for enlarging the city; and, worst of all,
of his statue being placed in the temple of
Quirinus, and carried among the figures of the
gods in the opening procession in the circus.
11
Finally, in January, B.C. 44, he tells Manius
Curius: "You could scarcely believe how
disgraceful my conduct appears to me in
countenancing the present state of things."
12 And, indeed,
Cicero had not only countenanced it by his
presence, he had written more than once to Caesar
in an almost more friendly and
cordial strain. Once indeed he composed letter
which even Caesar's agents Balbus and Oppius
thought too strong. They advised him not to send
it; and though Cicero was annoyed at the advice,
and explained to Atticus that of course it was
mere
κολακεία,
yet he followed suggestion.
13
