I'll Love You Tomorrow

by Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

  “Tough would never hurt anyone intentionally…by the way Frank… Tough also informed me that the men in the truck were sexually molesting Buddy Quinn, and Joe was trying to save his friend.”

  “Good…but Father, you have a child’s word against a man…and we have the question of another dead man…but we have more than we had this morning.”

  Historical Reference

  Life of Cicero

  (* A translation of the Latin text of C.F.W. Mueller, 1879)

  Cicero must be regarded as essentially a man of letters. Whatever strength or weakness he may have manifested in public life; he undoubtedly forms the central figure in Roman literature. His matchless style, his rich and varied learning, and his wonderful powers of application easily made him the foremost writer of Latin prose. To the student hitherto acquainted with Cicero only through his orations and letters, he is revealed in a new character in the light of his ethical and philosophical works. For a just appreciation of the latter, a brief review of the author’s life and studies will be eminently helpful.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero was born at Arpinum in Latinum, January 3, 106 BC. His father belonged to the equestrian order and was well qualified by learning and culture to direct the training of the future orator and student of philosophy. The young Marcus, with his brother Quintus, was early taken to Rome to receive the best instruction, which the capital had to offer. Among his teachers, were the poet Archias, the famous lawyers of the Scaevola family, Phaedrous the Epicurean philosopher, Philo of the New Academy, Diodotus the Stoie, and Malo the rhetorician.

  Cicero was especially fond of Greek literature and philosophy, and gained from these sources the elegance of expression wealth of illustration so abundantly displayed in his more mature works. To oratory and law, he devoted himself with the utmost eagerness, both from his natural fondness for these subjects, and because he saw the possibility of winning by eloquence and skill as an advocate the leadership in Rome which others had acquired through valor and success on the field of battle. A brief experience in military affairs, however, formed part of his early training, for at the age of seventeen he served through one campaign in the Social War.

  Cicero’s genuine enthusiasm in his studies prompted him to tireless activity in their pursuit and to the adoption of the most thorough and practical methods known to his day. Actors, orators, rhetoricians, and philosophers were his teachers. The principles of their instruction he put in practice in declamation debate, and composition, in both Greek and Latin. The success of his later years was no mere accident, nor was it the manifestation of brilliance or genius, untrained and untaught-it was rather the natural result of the most painstaking and persistent toil. The whole soil of the man was aglow with the fire of learning. Every opportunity to secure enlarged intellectual growth and development was eagerly seized.

  In the school, the lecture, the courts and the Forum, he was an interested observer and, an eager learner. Books and men of history and life were the objects of his study. Whatever he acquired he tested for himself and used for the enlightenment of his fellows, always activated by an irresistible desire to obtain the clear light of truth and to illuminate others with its brightness. Like his rival for the palm of eloquence among the ancients, the renowned orator of the Greeks, he succeeded chiefly by his remarkable application to work and his untiring effort to realize a high ideal. Of the two masters of forensic speech, Cicero was the broader intellectual, while Demosthenes was more imperative as a speaker, carrying conviction oft-times as much by the weight of his character as by the force of his words.

  Cicero did not yield to any boyish temptation to display his immature talents for the sake of winning temporary applause, but chose rather to bide his time and offer himself as a candidate for popular favor only after rigorous training and long continued study. Accordingly, he was twenty-five when he appeared as an advocate in behalf of P. Quinetius, and a year older when he won great applause by his bold defense of sex. Roscius, who had been accused of parricide by a freedman of the dictator Sulla was defended successfully by Cicero. It was not precocity of talent, but disciplined strength and conscious power that gave him the victor’s laurels at the very beginning of his career. Too intense application to literary pursuits, however, somewhat impaired his health, and consequently, he followed the advice of friends, and sought rest and recuperation in Greece and the East. While in quest of bodily strength he improved every opportunity to hear the best teachers in Athens, Rhodes, and Asia Minor; and after an absence of two years returned to Rome in renewed physical vigor, more proficient in the orator’s art, and with a mind richly stored with the fruits of study and travel. All rivals in the race for fame were speedily distanced, and he became the acknowledged leader of the Roman bar, the most eloquent orator of his age.

  Public honors were heaped upon the rising advocate in generous profusion. In due order of time, he held the offices of Quaestor, Aedile, Practor, and Consul, each at the earliest age required by law. His learning, eloquence, devotion to duty, personal integrity, and above all, his unbounded patriotism, ensured him marked success in every public station which he was called upon to occupy. During his Consulship the liberties of Rome and the very existence of the government were jeopardized by the conspiracy of Cataline, Cicero’s defeated rival for the highest honor in the gifts of the citizens. But by the vigilance of the Consul the plot was detected, and its full extent and purpose were made known to the senate. Many of the leaders were arrested in the city and put to death, and Cataline himself, forced to fly for safety, was afterwards defeated and slain, while attempting to gain by open war what he had hoped to accomplish by assassination and secret plotting.

  In the year 58 BC, came the first serious blow to Cicero’s hopes and ambitions. Up to this time his success had been brilliant in the extreme. Born in a provincial town, without distinguished ancestors, he had made his way by force of his intellect and the persuasive power of his eloquence to the highest pinnacle of political renown. In return for his courage and patriotic devotion in the hour of Rome’s impending danger, he had been hailed, by his grateful fellow-citizens as the savior of his country. But Clodius, an unprincipled noble, enraged at Cicero for testifying against him when on trial for attending the festival of the Bona Dea at Caesar’s house, secured adoption into a plebeian family for the sole purpose that he might be elected Tribune and bring about Cicero’s banishment. Installed in office, he obtained the passage of a law ordaining exile for anyone who had ordered the death of a Roman citizen without due form of legal trial. This was aimed directly at Cicero, who had caused Lentulus, Cethegus, and others of the Catilinarian conspirators to be put to death in prison. From March 58 to August 57BC, the ex-Consul dragged out a wretched existence as an exile in Greece, forbidden on threat of death to approach within 500 miles of Rome.

  But at last the efforts of friends to procure his recall were successful. The homeward journey from Brundisium to Rome was one continuous ovation. From all side the people flocked to greet and accompany him on his way to the capital, until his final entry to the city was like the final triumph of a returning conqueror. For the time the multitude recalled with gratitude his former services, and welcomed him back, with distinguished honor to the city, which he had once saved from traitors’ hands.

  A law was passed in Pompey’s third consulship restricting the government of foreign provinces to praetors and consuls who had been at least five years out of office. To fill vacancies immediately occurring, appointments were made by lot from those not debarred by the new law. To Cicero’s intense disgust, his name came forth from the urn for the proconsulship of Ciliecia. His administration however was marked by the same energy and integrity that had characterized his conduct in more acceptable official positions. Though he reluctantly laid aside his studies to enter upon the less congenial duties of provincial governor, yet his course was marked with such intelligence and justice that all classes and orders coming under his rule looked upon him as an upright judge and a
faithful protector of his people.

  Even success in arms was added to his victories in peace, and he was hailed, by his soldiers with the title, Imperator. Encouraged by this, Cicero at last seemed to catch the true spirit of a soldier, and looked with longing eyes toward that goal of every Roman general’s ambition, the splendid honor of a triumph. The commendable record made by him in his new, and not altogether pleasing, field of labor, may be taken as a clear indication of his breathe of character, and as ample proof of the wonderful power there is in simple honesty of purpose and unfaltering industry to make one successful, even under the most unfavorable circumstances.

  That portion of Cicero’s life following his return to Rome in January 49 BC, Cicero was 55 years of age and at no time in his life had it been marked by more doubt and perplexity than any other period in his entire history. Obviously as a man of the people, Cicero had been on the battle line for a long time…now thirty years. And in that time a man of the law, makes enemies. His old adversary, Caesar was contending for power against Pompey, a man Cicero did not admire even though he had once been his colleague. Civil War with its attendant horrors was about to break out. Cicero continued to be aligned with the old Republic and he now found himself between evil and evil. Cicero had grown indifferent to the changing times and made a fatal error in judgment, choosing to support Pompey whom he found to be overrated and an inefficient leader.

  After the crushing defeat of the senatorial army at Pharsalus and the subsequent flight and death of its commander, Cicero yielded to the inevitable and accepted the clemency of the conqueror. Fortunate it was for his countrymen and for us that Cicero’s patriotism was not of that narrow, rigid sort which impelled Cato of Utica to look upon death as a welcome relief from the supremacy of one man. Cicero was indeed cast in a nobler mold and fashioned of a divine stuff. He processed more of the scholar’s spirit and a larger measure of the philosopher’s consolation and hope. Withdrawing from public gaze, he found solace in the contemplation of truth and inspiration in the ennobling pursuit of letters. Devoting himself in this time of political distress and confusion to the composition of his noblest works, he brought forth the ripened fruit of years of laborious study, and handed down to the scholars of all time the priceless inheritance of his most earnest philosophical discussions and the loftiest ethical teachings.

  But Cicero was not destined to close his life in the peaceful retirement of a scholar. Still stormier scenes awaited him, certainly the murder of Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC, was but the renewal of strife and bloodshed that were destined to end only with the founding of the new Empire. Cicero’s first impulse was to seek personal safety in Greece; but though he commenced the journey, he quickly changed his course and repaired to Rome in the earnest belief that the senatorial party would ultimately prevail. The closing year of his life was filled with stirring events. He became the leader of the senate and the people, and bent all his energies to the establishment of peace on a secure basis and the rehabilitation of the government on its former lines. Looking upon Anthony as a dangerous foe to the state, he attacked him in those fiery invectives known as the Philippines. But the temporary success of the consuls over Anthony at Mutina and the ceaseless efforts, which Cicero made to strengthen the hands of the constitutional party in the city and provinces, failed to revive the ancient spirit, and to restore the liberties of the people.

  Octavianus, at the head of his legions, forced his own election to the consulship, although but nineteen years of age, and then, uniting with Anthony and Lepidus in the formation of the second triumvirate, shattered the hopes of all who had fondly dreamed that the golden age of the republic was about to return. The current was, in fact, setting in the other direction, and a stronger arm and stouter heart than Cicero’s would have been powerless before it. Complete success for the three self-appointed lords of Rome was possible only by the destruction of their personal foes and the death of every leader of the opposition. Accordingly, the proscription of Sulla was renewed, and Cicero’s name was placed by Anthony’s command on the list to be destroyed.

  Cicero’s only safety from impending fate now lay in immediate flight. Hastening from his Tusculan villa to Astura, he embarked on board a vessel bound for Macedonia, but overcome with anguish at the thought of leaving Italy forever, he ordered the ship’s prow turned toward the land. Delaying for a little while at Circeii, he again set out on his journey by sea, only to yield once more to his fatal irresolution, or to his overmastering love for his native country, even though delay within its borders meant certain death. The soldiers found him at his Formain villa attended by his faithful slaves, who were vainly urging him to make a final effort to escape by sea from the hands of his bloodthirsty enemies. Overtaken by his pursuers under the command of Popilius Laenas, whom Cicero had once defended on a capital charge, Cicero met death calmly and courageously addressing his executioner in these words, “Here, veteran! If you think it right- strike!” The orator’s head and hands were carried to Anthony and afterwards nailed to the rostra, the scene of his former triumphs. Anthony wife, who was, at the time she was married to him, the widow of Clodius, pierced the tongue of the murdered man with a bodkin, that she might show the malignity of her hate and the keenness of her delight that the tongue which had lashed with cutting satire her two base and unprincipled husbands had been forever silenced.

  Thus perished Cicero, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, after a life varied by brilliant successes and overwhelming defeats, at one time the foremost man in Rome, at last hunted to death like a condemned criminal. It is equal folly either to bestow upon him unlimited praise or to subject him, as some have done, to merciless criticism. We must view him in the light of his own time, and measure him according to the standard of his own age. In this way the good in his life will be seen vastly to outweigh the evil. None can question his patriotism, his desire to aid his country and preserve what he believed to be her best traditions. His utter inability to stay the course of Caesar in his ambitious struggle for absolute power, and his impotency in the presence of an unscrupulous tyrant like Anthony, were as clearly apparent to Cicero himself, as they can now be to any of his detractors.

  But it is to his work in the realm of letters that we can turn with the greatest satisfaction. As an orator he is without peer in the annals of Rome, and second in the whole world. In literature and philosophy, he has fulfilled the words of Horace, and, “reared a monument more enduring than bronze, loftier than the pyramids, those moldering relics of old kings.”

  In modern times we are under greatest obligation to Cicero for bring to our knowledge, through the medium of his own works, the highest conclusions, embodied in the teachings and speculations of Greek philosophy, reached by the human intellect alone, in its attempt to determine the duty and destiny of man.

  X

  THE MURDER TRIAL OF JOE TOUGH

  “The Aim of Learning is to Prolong Human Life!”

  (Roger Bacon)

  Only an empty room has the quiet of an eternity, where the only sound is that of spatial air rushing through your ears…it was not a sound that Halliburton knew well, but today as he sat alone at the defendant’s table he felt the quiet… even though the room was partially filled.

  Who were all these coloreds and why did they stand when Halliburton came into the courtroom…maybe they thought he was the judge…maybe it was out of respect for the famous criminal attorney representing one of their own…though he didn’t know it.

  Frank Halliburton took his place at the far end of the counsel table closest to the jury box and waited, first for the coloreds to sit, second for the Commonwealth to show, third for the appearance of the defendant and fourth for the judge before the jury was assembled.

  There was nothing left to do. Halliburton was as ready as he was going to be. Soon, the trial, like a canvas with oil was going to take on a life of its own. Halliburton had never been nervous at the start of a trial, not even in the beginning. Halliburton was in a worl
d of his own in which everything had an order and a reason. Outside, men and women lived amidst all the ambiguities of existence. A trial had a beginning and it had an end, and when it was over everyone knew who had won and who had lost…it was just like in the movies.

  There had been a court appearance in which Joe Tough was required to come before the Judge and plead his guilt or innocence. Joe showed up in a new dark suit with a white shirt and no tie, furnished compliments of the orphanage along with new shoes, underwear and socks. Joe thought it may have been his birthday, except the gifts had not been wrapped.

  When Judge Thomas Merrill asked Joe how he wanted to plead…Joe deferred to Halliburton and Halliburton said simply…“Not guilty, your honor.”

  Joe was like a sheep being led to the slaughter…out in the grown-up world where he measured-up statistically… not the heights to which men would go, to convict and send him off to prison.

  The Commonwealth’s Attorney, Edwin S. Sherwin seemed particularly deceitful and deceptive in the handling of this case, which came on the eve of the fall elections…the election, which the pollsters said he was down by double digits. Sherwin would milk this one regardless of the guilt or innocence because he knew in the game of politics ink was all that mattered…and today he had the front page while his opponent was eating leathery chicken and cold peas at the Rotary Club meeting.

  The depositions of Buddy Quinn had been taken as well as the Commonwealth’s star witness to the murder of Jack Hornsby, James Delements. The murder weapon, a 36 ounce Louisville Slugger bat would be introduced complete with the victim’s blood and hair samples as well as the finger prints of the murdered Hornsby… as would be sworn to by the forensics expert, as well as the report on the autopsy.