The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics)

by Cicero

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  Think of the good sense which our forefathers showed in this matter. After the Senate had conceded that power* to the plebs, the weapons fell from their hands, the rebellion was extinguished, and a compromise was found which enabled lesser folk to imagine that they were equal to the leading men. That alone was what saved the country. ‘But’, you say, ‘there were two Gracchi.’ Yes, and you could count as many as you like in addition to them. When ten tribunes* are appointed, you will find some dangerous specimens in every age, and perhaps more who are unreliable rather than sound. Still, the highest class is not the target of resentment, and the common people do not engage in dangerous contentions over their rights. That is why either the kings should 25 never have been expelled, or else the plebs had to be given actual, not just nominal, freedom. In fact that freedom was given in such a way that the common people were induced by many excellent regulations to acquiesce in the aristocrats’ authority.

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  My own case, my dear and admirable Quintus, while it came up against the power of the tribunes, involved no quarrel with the tribunate itself. The plebs were not incited* to resent my position; no, the jails were thrown open, slaves were stirred up* against me, and the threat of military force was also employed. What I had to face was not that poisonous wretch but a political crisis of the most serious kind. Had I not given way,* the country would not have enjoyed the benefit of my services for long. This was proved by the sequel; for what free citizen—nay, what slave worthy of freedom, did not have my safety at heart? Nevertheless, if what I 26 did for the safety of the country* had not, in the event, won universal approval, if the hatred of the frenzied mob had been inflamed and thus led to my banishment; and if the power of the tribunes had incited the people against me, as it was incited by Gracchus against Laenas and by Saturninus against Metellus, I would have put up with it, my dear Quintus. I would have been comforted not so much by the philosophers living in Athens whose metier was consolation, as by the eminent men* who, exiled from that city, preferred to be deprived of their ungrateful country rather than to continue living in a place of wickedness.

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  As for Pompey,* in that one matter you are not so enthusiastic about him. But you’re not taking sufficient account, I think, of the fact that he had to decide not just what was best but also what was necessary. He realized that this country could not be deprived of the tribunes’ office. Our people had eagerly pressed to have it when it was an unknown quantity; so how could they do without it now that they knew what it was? It was the duty of a sensible citizen, when dealing with a cause which was not intrinsically disastrous* and was too popular to be opposed, not to leave it in the hands of a demagogue. That would have been disastrous.

  You realize, Quintus, that in a talk of this kind one has to say ‘Precisely’ or ‘Absolutely right’ to enable the speaker to pass on to a new topic.

  QUINTUS: Well actually I don’t agree with you; still, I’d like you to move on to the rest of your talk.

  MARCUS: So you stand fast and refuse to budge from your previous opinion?

  ATTICUS: Well really I must say I take pretty much the same view as Quintus. But let’s hear the rest of what you have to say.

  MARCUS: Next then, all magistrates are granted ‘the right to take auspices and to conduct trials’ [10] —trials with the proviso that the people should have the power to hear appeals, auspices to allow the adjournment of numerous futile meetings by means of justifiable postponements.* Often the gods have used the auspices* to check a wrongful initiative on the part of the people.

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  The stipulation that ‘the Senate is to be made up of former magistrates’ [10] is certainly a democratic measure in that no one can enter the highest body unless he has been elected by the people (for the censors can no longer co-opt). But this defect is immediately mitigated by a confirmation of the Senate’s authority, for my law goes on to say ‘Its decrees shall be binding’. The fact is that 28 if the Senate controls public policy, and if everyone supports its decrees, and if the other orders allow the state to be directed by the guidance of the highest order, then a constitutional compromise takes place whereby the power is vested in the people, but authority in the hands of the Senate. As a result of that compromise the moderate and harmonious condition of the state described earlier is preserved, especially if the next law is observed, the next law being ‘The order shall be of unblemished behaviour and shall set an example to the rest’ [10].

  QUINTUS: That’s a splendid law, Marcus; but your insistence on the Senate’s unblemished behaviour carries very wide implications and needs to be interpreted by a censor.

  ATTICUS: To be sure, the whole order is behind you and cherishes most happy memories of your consulship; but if I may say so, this law may well exhaust* not just the censors but the whole company of judges!

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  MARCUS: No more of that, Atticus! We’re not talking about the present Senate or the men of today but about those of the future— if, indeed, anyone will be prepared to obey these laws. Since the law ordains totally unblemished behaviour, no one with any blemishes will even get into that order.* That, of course, is hard to achieve except through a special kind of education and training.* On that point I shall perhaps say something later, depending on time and opportunity.

  ATTICUS: The opportunity will certainly be available, since you 30 are going through the laws in order; and the length of the day provides lots of time. But even if you leave out the bit about education and training, I shall ask you to take it up again.

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  MARCUS: Very well, Atticus. Bring it up, and the same goes for anything else that I leave out.

  ‘It shall set an example to the rest’ [10]. If we achieve that, we achieve everything. For just as the whole state is apt to be infected by the vicious desires of its leaders, so it is healed and set right by their restraint. When Lucius Lucullus, that great man whom we all knew, was criticized for the luxury of his villa at Tusculum, he is supposed to have given a very neat reply. He had, he said, two neighbours, a Roman knight who lived further up the hill and a freedman who lived below him. Their villas were luxurious; so he was entitled to have whatever was permitted to his social inferiors. Do you not see, Lucullus, that their greed was inspired by you? They would not have been permitted such indulgence if you hadn’t gone in for it yourself. Who would tolerate such people, on seeing their houses crammed with statues and pictures, some of which are public property and others are of a sacred and holy kind? We would all put a stop to their acquisitiveness if it weren’t for the fact that those who ought to do so are guilty of the same greed. The vices of the leading citizens are not so serious an evil (though in themselves they are a serious evil) as the fact that those men beget a host of imitators.* If you’re prepared to go back over the records of history, it is plain that the state has taken its character from that of its foremost men. Whatever changes have taken place in the conduct of its leaders have been reproduced in the lives of the people. That is a much sounder idea than the opinion of our friend Plato,* who maintains that changes in the nature of states follow from changes in the vocal style of its musicians. I believe that changes in the conduct of states mirror changes in the lives and life-style of the aristocracy. Corrupt leaders do a more deadly disservice to their country in that they not only contract vices themselves but also infect the community. They are a menace, not just because they are corrupt themselves but because they corrupt others. They do more damage by their example than by their misdemeanours. Actually this law, which extends to the senatorial order as a whole, could be narrowed in its scope; for few, indeed very few, are so eminent in prestige and position that they can corrupt or correct the moral character of the state.

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  These observations are enough for now. They have been elaborated in greater detail in that other work.* So let’s move on to what remains to be covered.

  Next comes the matter
of votes, which according to my law ‘shall be disclosed to the aristocracy and shall reflect the free choice of the people’ [10].

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  ATTICUS: I was listening very carefully, I assure you. Yet I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the law or the terms in which you formulated it.

  MARCUS: I’ll explain it, Titus, and in doing so I’ll enter on a difficult question which has been discussed often and at length. In assigning magistracies, judging legal cases, and passing laws and bills, is it better for votes to be registered openly or in secret?

  QUINTUS: Is there any doubt about that? I’m afraid I may disagree with you again.

  MARCUS: I don’t think you will, Quintus. For my opinion is the same as the one which I know you have always held, namely that when it comes to voting nothing could be better than a vocal declaration. But we have to see whether that is practicable.

  QUINTUS: If you don’t mind my saying so, Marcus, that reservation is especially misleading to the man in the street, and inimical to the public interest—I mean when something is said to be right and proper but to be impracticable—in other words that one must give in to the people. The people can be overridden when a strict procedure is adopted; moreover, it is better to be overwhelmed by force when defending a good cause than to acquiesce in a bad one. As everyone knows, the ballot has removed all the aristocracy’s power. When the people enjoyed liberty, they never wanted that law. They only clamoured for it when they were ground down by the dominant power of the leading citizens. (That is why among the judgements pronounced on really powerful men, those recorded orally are more adverse than those written on tablets.) Hence the leaders should have been deprived of their excessive licence in putting bad measures to the vote; the people should not have been presented with a subterfuge whereby the tablet ensured the secrecy of a wrong-headed vote thus keeping the aristocracy in the dark about what each man thought. That is why no good man has ever been prevailed on to introduce or support a proposal like yours.

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  There are four ballot laws* in existence. The first has to do with allotting magistracies, i.e. the Gabinian Law, proposed by a vulgar and insignificant fellow. Two years later came the Cassian Law about people’s courts, introduced by Lucius Cassius—a man of high birth but one who (if I may say so without offending his family) left the respectable side and, by his populist policies, went hunting for bits of approving gossip. The third is the law of Carbo about adopting and rejecting measures. He was a wicked troublemaker who, even when he returned to the respectable side, failed to protect himself from its members. Oral voting seemed to survive in only one type of case, which Cassius himself had excluded, namely treason trials. Gaius Coelius introduced the ballot for this type of trial too; yet he regretted as long as he lived that he had damaged the country simply to destroy Gaius Popillius. In this town our grandfather showed remarkable courage throughout his life in resisting Marcus Gratidius, who was proposing a ballot law, even though he was married to Gratidius’ sister (our grandmother). Gratidius caused a storm in a teacup,* as they say; (later his son,* Marius, caused a storm in the Aegean sea.*) When the matter was reported to the Senate, the consul Marcus Scaurus said to our grandfather, ‘I wish, Marcus Cicero, you had chosen to help me by employing your energy and integrity in the highest councils of the land rather than in a country town.’

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  Therefore, since we are not now merely reviewing the laws of the Roman people, but are either reviving ones that have vanished or writing new ones, I think you should say, not what can be obtained from the present community, but what is best. Your much-admired Scipio bears the blame for the Cassian Law, for it is supposed to have been brought in on his recommendation.* If you bring in a ballot law, you yourself will be responsible. I don’t like it, nor does our friend Atticus, to judge from his expression.

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  ATTICUS: I have never liked any populist measure. I hold that the best government is the type set up by Marcus here when he was consul—the type that is controlled by the aristocracy.

  MARCUS: Well you, I notice, have thrown out my law without a ballot! Nevertheless, though Scipio made an adequate defence of his position in those other books, here I am giving the people only that amount of freedom which will allow a thriving aristocracy to use its authority. This is the way I have framed the law on Voting: ‘The details shall be disclosed to the aristocracy and shall reflect the free choice of the people’’[10]. This law implies the intention that it should supersede all the laws passed more recently—laws which use every device to conceal the vote, preventing anyone from inspecting a tablet, asking how a person has voted, or soliciting his support. The Marian Law* even made the gangways narrow. If these measures are designed to prevent bribery, as on the whole they are, I do not object to them. If, however, laws will never succeed in eliminating bribery, then by all means let the people have the ballot as a guarantee of liberty, provided the vote is disclosed* and actually displayed to the best and most unimpeachable citizens. In that way liberty will exist precisely in the sense that the people are given the opportunity to do the aristocracy an honourable favour.

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  As a result, Quintus, the situation you mentioned a moment ago is now brought about, namely that fewer men will be condemned by the ballot than used to be condemned by the voice, because the people are content to have the constitutional power. Provided they retain that, in other respects their will is handed over to authority and influence. So, leaving aside the corrupt purchase of votes, you see, don’t you, that if canvassing is silenced the people will be at a loss, when they come to vote, about what the aristocracy thinks. The consequence is that, thanks to my law, the appearance of liberty is given to the people, the authority of the aristocracy is retained, and the cause of quarrelling is removed.

  Next comes a statement about who is to have ‘the right to preside over meetings of the people or the Senate’ [10]. That is 40 followed by an important, and in my view an admirable, law: ‘Proceedings with the people and in the Senate shall be conducted with decent restraint,’ that is, in a quiet, disciplined manner. The presiding magistrate controls and shapes not only the attitude and will but almost the facial expression of those over whom he presides. (Exerting this influence*) is not difficult except in the case of the Senate. For a senator is not the sort of man whose mind needs to be directed by the presiding official; he is keen to command attention in his own right. Three things are required of him: that he should be present (for when members are present in force the business acquires an extra importance); that he should speak in his proper turn* (that is, when he is invited to do so), and at moderate length, so as not to run endlessly on fn]. Brevity in expressing one’s thoughts is a highly praiseworthy quality, not just in a senator but in any speaker. One ought never to make a long speech,* except when the Senate is going wrong (which happens most frequently as the result of improper influence) and no magistrate is attempting to save the situation (then it is a service to waste the entire day*), or when the issue is so important as to call for abundant eloquence on the part of a speaker to exhort or to inform the house. Our friend Cato is a great expert in both kinds of speech.

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  The law adds: ‘He shall have a grasp of public affairs’* [11]. It is essential for a senator to be familiar with the state of the country (that has wide implications—knowing what it has in the way of troops, how well off it is financially, what allies, friends, and tributaries the country has, what laws, conditions, and treaties apply to each), to understand legislative procedure, and to be aware of traditional precedent. You can now appreciate the whole range of knowledge, application, and memory without which no senator can be properly equipped for his job.

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  Then there are the people’s assemblies. Here the first and most important rule is ‘there must be no violence’ [11]. Nothing is more damaging to a state, nothing so contrary to justice and law, nothing less appropriate to a
civilized community, than to force through a measure by violence* where a country has a settled and established constitution. The law further requires that a magistrate imposing a veto should be obeyed. There is nothing more admirable than that; for it is better to obstruct a good proposal than to acquiesce in a bad one [11].