The Life of Cicero. Volume II.. Trollope Anthony

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1

As I shall explain a few pages farther on, four of these speeches are supposed by late critics to be spurious.

2

See Mr. Long's introduction to these orations. "All this I admit," says Mr. Long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of Roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, and extravagant compositions."

3

Pro Cn. Plancio, ca. xxx.: "Nonne etiam illa testis est oratio quæ est a me prima habita in Senatu. * * * Recitetur oratio, quæ propter rei magnitudinem dicta de scripto est."

4

Quintilian, lib. xi., ca. 1, who as a critic worshipped Cicero, has nevertheless told us very plainly what had been up to his time the feeling of the Roman world as to Cicero's self-praise: "Reprehensus est in hac parte non mediocriter Cicero."

5

Ad Att., lib. iv., 2. He recommends that the speech should be put into the hands of all young men, and thus gives further proof that we still here have his own words. When so much has come to us, we cannot but think that an oration so prepared would remain extant.

6

I had better, perhaps, refer my readers to book v., chap. viii., of Mommsen's History.

7

"Politique des Romains dans la religion;" a treatise which was read by its author to certain students at Bordeaux. It was intended as a preface to a longer work.

8

Ad Div., lib. i., 2.

9

Ad Div., lib. i., 5: "Nosti hominis tarditatem, et taciturnitatem."

10

Ad Quintum Fratrem, lib. ii., 3.

11

Ibid., lib. ii., 6.

12

Ad Att., lib. iv., 5.

13

Ad Div., lib. v., 12.

14

Very early in the history of Rome it was found expedient to steal an Etruscan soothsayer for the reading of these riddles, which was gallantly done by a young soldier, who ran off with an old prophet in his arms (Livy, v., 15). We are naively told by the historian that the more the prodigies came the more they were believed. On a certain occasion a crowd of them was brought together: Crows built in the temple of Juno. A green tree took fire. The waters of Mantua became bloody. In one place it rained chalk in another fire. Lightning was very destructive, sinking the temple of a god or a nut-tree by the roadside indifferently. An ox spoke in Sicily. A precocious baby cried out "Io triumphe" before it was born. At Spoletum a woman became a man. An altar was seen in the heavens. A ghostly band of armed men appeared in the Janiculum (Livy, xxiv., 10). On such occasions the "aruspices" always ordered a vast slaughter of victims, and no doubt feasted as did the wicked sons of Eli.

Even Horace wrote as though he believed in the anger of the gods – certainly as though he thought that public morals would be improved by renewed attention to them:

15

See the Preface by M. Guerault to his translation of this oration, De Aruspium Responsis.

16

Ca. ix.: "Who is there so mad that when he looks up to the heavens he does not acknowledge that there are gods, or dares to think that the things which he sees have sprung from chance – things so wonderful that the most intelligent among us do not understand their motions?"

17

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