The other accident was equally fatal to the bond of union which had bound the three men together. Late in the year, after his Consulship, b. c. 54, Crassus had gone to his Syrian government with the double intention of increasing his wealth and rivalling the military glories of Cæsar and Pompey. In the following year he became an easy victim to Eastern deceit, and was destroyed by the Parthians, with his son and the greater part of the Roman army which had been intrusted to him.52 We are told that Crassus at last destroyed himself. I doubt, however, whether there was enough of patriotism alive among Romans at the time to create the feeling which so great a loss and so great a shame should have occasioned. As far as we can learn, the destruction of Crassus and his legions did not occasion so much thought in Rome as the breaking up of the Triumvirate.
Cicero's daughter Tullia was now a second time without a husband. She was the widow of her first husband Piso; had then, b. c. 56, married Crassipes, and had been divorced. Of him we have heard nothing, except that he was divorced. A doubt has been thrown on the fact whether she was in truth ever married to Crassipes. We learn from letters, both to his brother and to Atticus, that Cicero was contented with the match, when it was made, and did his best to give the lady a rich dowry.53
In this year Cicero was elected into the College of Augurs, to fill the vacancy made by the death of young Crassus, who had been killed with his father in Parthia. The reader will remember that he had in a joking manner expressed a desire for the office. He now obtained it without any difficulty, and certainly without any sacrifice of his principle. It had formerly been the privilege of the augurs to fill up the vacancies in their own college, but the right had been transferred to the people. It was now conferred upon Cicero without serious opposition.
Chapter III
MILO
b. c. 52, ætat. 55.
The preceding year came to an end without any consular election. It was for the election expected to have taken place that the services of Curio had been so ardently bespoken by Cicero on behalf of Milo. In order to impede the election Clodius accused Milo of being in debt, and Cicero defended him. What was the nature of the accusation we do not exactly know. "An inquiry into Milo's debts!" Such was the name given to the pleadings as found with the fragments which have come to us.54 In these, which are short and not specially interesting, there is hardly a word as to Milo's debts; but much abuse of Clodius, with some praise of Cicero himself, and some praise also of Pompey, who was so soon to take up arms against Cicero, not metaphorically, but in grim reality of sword and buckler, in this matter of his further defence of Milo. We cannot believe that Milo's debts stood in the way of his election, but we know that at last he was not elected. Early in the year Clodius was killed, and then, at the suggestion of Bibulus – whom the reader will remember as the colleague of Cæsar in the Consulship when Cæsar reduced his colleague to ridiculous impotence by his violence – Pompey was elected as sole Consul, an honor which befell no other Roman.55 The condition of Rome must have been very low when such a one as Bibulus thought that no order was possible except by putting absolute power into the hands of him who had so lately been the partner of Cæsar in the conspiracy which had not even yet been altogether brought to an end. That Bibulus acted under constraint is no doubt true. It would be of little matter now from what cause he acted, were it not that his having taken a part in this utter disruption of the Roman form of government is one proof the more that there was no longer any hope for the Republic.
But the story of the killing of Clodius must be told at some length, because it affords the best-drawn picture that we can get of the sort of violence with which Roman affairs had to be managed; and also because it gave rise to one of the choicest morsels of forensic eloquence that have ever been prepared by the intellect and skill of an advocate. It is well known that the speech to which I refer was not spoken, and could not have been spoken, in the form in which it has reached us. We do not know what part of it was spoken and what was omitted; but we do know that the Pro Milone exists for us, and that it lives among the glories of language as a published oration. I find, on looking through the Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, that in his estimation the Pro Milone was the first in favor of all our author's orations – "facile princeps," if we may collect the critic's ideas on the subject from the number of references made and examples taken. Quintilian's work consists of lessons on oratory, which he supports by quotations from the great orators, both Greek and Latin, with whose speeches he has made himself familiar. Cicero was to him the chief of orators; so much so that we may almost say that Quintilian's Institutio is rather a lecture in honor of Cicero than a general lesson. With the Roman school-master's method of teaching for the benefit of the Roman youth of the day we have no concern at present, but we can gather from the references made by him the estimation in which various orations were held by others, as well as by him, in his day. The Pro Cluentio, which is twice as long as the Pro Milone, and which has never, I think, been a favorite with modern readers, is quoted very frequently by Quintilian. It is the second in the list. Quintilian makes eighteen references to it; but the Pro Milone is brought to the reader's notice thirty-seven times. Quintilian was certainly a good critic; and he understood how to recommend himself to his own followers by quoting excellences which had already been acknowledged as the best which Roman literature had afforded.
Those who have gone before me in writing the life of Cicero have, in telling their story as to Milo, very properly gone to Asconius for their details. As I must do so too, I shall probably not diverge far from them. Asconius wrote as early as in the reign of Claudius, and had in his possession the annals of the time which have not come to us. Among other writings he could refer to those books of Livy which have since been lost. He seems to have done his work as commentator with no glow of affection and with no touch of animosity, either on one side or on the other. There can be no reason for doubting the impartiality of Asconius as to Milo's trial, and every reason for trusting his knowledge of the facts.
b. c. 52, ætat. 55.
When the year began, no Consuls had been chosen, and an interrex became necessary – one interrex after another – to make the election of Consuls possible in accordance with the forms of the constitution. These men remained in office each for five days, and it was customary that an election which had been delayed should be completed within the days of the second or third interrex. There were three candidates, Milo, Hypsæus, and Q. Metellus Scipio, by all of whom bribery and violence were used with open and unblushing profligacy. Cicero was wedded to Milo's cause, as we have seen from his letter to Curio, but it does not appear that he himself took any active part in the canvass. The duties to be done required rather the services of a Curio. Pompey, on the other hand, was nearly as warmly engaged in favor of Hypsæus and Scipio, though in the turn which affairs took he seems to have been willing enough to accept the office himself when it came in his way. Milo and Clodius had often fought in the streets of Rome, each ruffian attended by a band of armed combatants, so that in audacity, as Asconius says, they were equal.
On the 20th of January Milo was returning to Rome from Lanuvium, where he had been engaged, as chief magistrate of the town, in nominating a friend for the municipality. He was in a carriage with his wife Fausta, and with a friend, and was followed, as was his wont, by a large band of armed men, among whom were two noted gladiators, Eudamus and Birria. At Bovillæ, near the temple of the Bona Dea, his cortege was met by Clodius on horseback, who had with him some friends, and thirty slaves armed with swords. Milo's attendants were nearly ten times as numerous. It is not supposed by Asconius that either of the two men expected the meeting, which may be presumed to have been fortuitous. Milo and Clodius passed each other without words or blows – scowling, no doubt; but the two gladiators who were at the end of the file of Milo's men began to quarrel with certain of the followers of Clodius. Clodius interfered, and was stabbed in the shoulder