Political Speeches (Oxford World's Classics)

by Cicero

  The lex Manilia was passed, by all thirty-five tribes, and Pompey began operations against Mithridates. But at Rome, the political battles continued. As soon as Manilius left office in December (the tribunician year ran from 10 December one year to 9 December the next), he was attacked by Pompey’s enemies. He was prosecuted under the extortion law; he had not been a provincial governor, so presumably he was being charged as an accessory. The case came before Cicero, as praetor in charge of the extortion court, and he scheduled the trial to begin on the last day of the year. His reason for doing this is uncertain; he may have wanted to place himself in a position in which he would not have to support either side. If he were too closely identified with Manilius, he might further incur the hostility of the conservatives in the senate (it is quite possible that Manilius himself was more offensive to conservative opinion than his bill was; Cicero avoids talking about him in De imperio, mentioning him only at §69). The supporters of Manilius, however, objected that the date set by Cicero did not allow for the customary ten-day interval between the formal bringing of the charge and the opening of the trial. They therefore had the trial postponed until early in 65, and forced Cicero to agree to act as Manilius’ defence counsel. When the trial finally took place, the charge had been changed to treason. It is unclear whether in the event Cicero did speak for the defence. The trial aroused strong feelings; there were violent demonstrations, and the senate asked the consuls to attend and keep order. Manilius was condemned; he is never heard of again.

  Meanwhile, in the east, Pompey had forced Mithridates to flee from Pontus to the Crimea. He then compelled Tigranes to surrender Armenia (66), organized Bithynia and Pontus as a single Roman province (65–64), annexed Syria (which had been under the control of Tigranes) and organized it as a province (64–63), and finally occupied Judaea, capturing Jerusalem (63). During 63, just before he arrived at Jerusalem, he received news that Mithridates had been overthrown by his son Pharnaces, and had committed suicide. According to the standard version (which is, however, open to question), Mithridates had attempted to kill himself with poison, but had been unable to do so because, by taking minute doses over many years, he had made himself immune; so instead he had ordered a Celtic bodyguard to run him through with a sword.

  Cicero maintained good relations with both Pompey and Lucullus, and was elected in 64 to the consulship of 63. In 63 he proposed that a thanksgiving to the gods be held in Pompey’s honour, and also arranged for Lucullus to celebrate his long-delayed triumph. Lucullus then helped Cicero during the Catilinarian crisis, and Cicero set aside time during it to take on the defence of one of Lucullus’ relations, Lucius Licinius Murena, the consul-elect of 62 and the son of the Murena who had fought the Second Mithridatic War. He also defended, in 62, a client of Lucullus’, the poet Archias, who had written a historical poem in several books on Lucullus’ war against Mithridates. Pompey returned to Rome at the end of 62, disbanded his army, and held a triumph. The senate, however, was persuaded by Lucullus not to ratify the arrangements that Pompey had made for the settlement of the new eastern provinces and the client kingdoms beyond, and this drove him in 60 to form the alliance with Caesar and Crassus known as the ‘first triumvirate’. Pompey’s settlement was then ratified en bloc in 59. In that year Lucullus retired from public life; in 58 he was the only one of Cicero’s friends to advise him against going into exile. In his later years he was famous for his luxurious living. But at the end of his life he fell victim to mental illness (possibly Alzheimer’s disease), and he died in 57 or 56. In 45 Cicero made him the central character of the second book of his Academica, entitled Lucullus.

  Scholars have traditionally criticized Cicero and the senate for putting too much power into one man’s hands, and so destabilizing the republic and hastening its end. But it is difficult to see what else could have been done: other commanders had all failed, and the situation was critical. Moreover, the results surely justified the appointment. Pompey’s defeat of Mithridates and settlement of the east was an extraordinary achievement, the greatest of his career; and when he returned to Rome he did not seize power, as Sulla had done, or revenge himself upon his enemies, or insist on further commands. When civil war finally broke out in 49, he was on the side of the legitimate government. So even though the republic was in due course to collapse, Cicero’s judgement in 66 that Pompey should be appointed to the Mithridatic command—however opportunistic that judgement may have been—was surely the correct one.

  DE IMPERIO CN. POMPEI

  [1] Although I have always particularly enjoyed the sight of you thronging this place, and have always thought that the spot where I am now standing* is the most distinguished one in which a magistrate may transact business with you and the most honourable one in which a private citizen may address you, nevertheless, citizens, this means of becoming famous, which has always been fully available to every decent citizen, has until now been closed to me, not because of any wish of mine to avoid it, but rather because of the path I set myself when I embarked upon my career. For until now I have never dared to speak from this place of influence, and I was determined that I should never present anything here that was not the fruit of my mature powers and the product of long practice: hence I judged that I would do better to devote the whole of my time instead to defending my friends in their hour of need.* [2] So, while this place has never been short of men ready to defend your interests, my exertions, which have been honestly and irreproachably devoted to defending private citizens, have now received the highest possible reward through the choice that you yourselves have made. For when, because of successive reruns of the election, I was formally declared, three times over, as the first of the candidates to be elected to a praetorship, and by the votes of all the centuries,* then it was made very clear to me, citizens, both what you had concluded about me personally and what you were recommending to others. Now, since I possess as much authority as, by electing me to this office, you have wished me to have, and since I also possess as much skill in legal advocacy as anyone who is reasonably energetic could acquire from almost daily practice in speaking in the courts, I will accordingly deploy whatever authority I have among those who have bestowed it upon me, and similarly, if I can achieve anything by my oratory, I will display it before those people particularly who in choosing me have judged that that art too is deserving of some reward. [3] And I am aware that I have especially good reason to be happy because, despite having no experience of making the type of speeches that are required from those who stand before you on this platform, the subject on which I now have the opportunity to address you is one on which no one could fail to be eloquent. This is because my subject is the outstanding and unique merit of Gnaeus Pompeius—a subject on which it is more difficult to finish speaking than to begin. In making my speech, therefore, my task will not be to strive after abundance so much as moderation.

  [4] I will begin at the point from which this whole situation came about. A serious and dangerous war, directed against your revenue-payers and allies, is being pursued by two extremely powerful kings, Mithridates and Tigranes, of whom the former has been left unpunished and the latter provoked to aggression, while each believes that he has been offered a golden opportunity of taking over Asia.* Every day the Roman equestrians, men of honour who have great sums invested in the collection of your revenues, receive letters from Asia; and because I am closely connected with that order, they have brought to me their concerns about the danger to the national interest and to their own property. [5] They have told me that in Bithynia, which is now a province of yours,* settlements have been burnt to the ground; that the kingdom of Ariobarzanes,* which borders with territories that pay you revenue, is entirely in enemy hands; that Lucius Lucullus, having achieved great things, is retiring from the war; that his successor* is not adequately equipped to undertake a war on such a scale; that one man is wanted and demanded by all our allies and the citizens there as commander for this war; that this same one man is dreaded by the
enemy; and that he is the only person to whom this applies.

  [6] So you can see what the situation is; and now you must decide yourselves what is to be done. It seems to me best first to discuss the character of the war, then its scale, and finally the choice of a commander.

  The character of this war is such as ought particularly to stir your hearts and set them ablaze with a determination to see the matter through to the end. It is a war in which the glory of the Roman people is at stake—a glory handed down to you from your ancestors, a glory conspicuous in all areas of life, but particularly so in the military sphere. A war in which the safety of our friends and allies is at stake—something for which your ancestors undertook many great and important wars in the past. A war in which the largest and most reliable revenues of the Roman people are at stake, the loss of which would entail the loss of both the means of enjoying peace and the means of making war. A war in which the property of many of your fellow-citizens is at stake—something which you ought to have regard for, for the sake of the individuals concerned and also for the sake of the country.

  [7] More than other peoples, you have always sought after glory and been eager for renown. It is therefore imperative that you wipe out that mark of disgrace incurred in the earlier Mithridatic war, which has now stained the reputation of the Roman people deeply and for much too long. For disgrace it is that that man* who, on a single day in so many cities throughout the whole of Asia, by a single message and a single word of command ordained that the Roman citizens in Asia should be killed and butchered, has not only still paid no penalty commensurate with his crime, but more than twenty-two years later is still sitting on his throne. And as king, he is not content to hide away in some dark corner of Pontus or Cappadocia, but wishes to break out from the kingdom he inherited and range over the territories that pay you revenue—in the bright light, that is, of Asia. [8] What has happened is that our commanders in their struggle with that king have so far brought back only the trappings of victory, not victory itself. Lucius Sulla held a triumph over Mithridates, and so did Lucius Murena*—both men of courage and outstanding commanders—but the result of their triumphs was that the king, though driven back and defeated, nevertheless remained on his throne. All the same, these generals should be given praise for what they achieved and pardon for what they left unachieved, seeing that Sulla was recalled from that war to Italy by the national interest, and Murena by Sulla.*

  [9] Mithridates, however, devoted all the time that followed not to effacing the memory of the first war, but to making preparations for a fresh one. He constructed and fitted out enormous fleets and assembled vast armies from whatever countries he could, and made out that he was preparing for a war against the kingdom of the Bosporus,* which adjoined his own territory. He then sent envoys with letters all the way to Spain to the chiefs* with whom we were then at war: his intention was that war would be conducted according to a single plan by two enemy armies on land and sea in the two places in the world that are the furthest apart and most different from each other, and that you, engaged in a struggle on two fronts, would find yourselves fighting for possession of the empire itself. [10] However, the danger in the west, from Sertorius in Spain, which was much the tougher and more intractable of the two, was repelled by the inspired strategy and outstanding bravery of Gnaeus Pompeius. In the east, on the other hand, the war was managed by the eminent Lucius Lucullus in such a way as to suggest that his great and glorious achievements in the early stages were due not to luck but to his own abilities, while the more recent happenings there should be attributed not to any fault on his part but to bad luck. But I am going to talk about Lucullus later on, citizens, and you will find that my words will neither deny him any of the glory that belongs to him nor attribute to him any that does not.

  [11] As for the honour and glory of your empire, since that is the point with which I began, please consider what your feelings on this subject ought to be. Our ancestors often undertook wars merely because our merchants and ship-owners had been somewhat roughly handled: so how, I ask you, ought you to feel when so many thousands of Roman citizens have been killed at a single command and on a single occasion? Merely because their envoys had been a little insolently addressed, your forefathers wanted Corinth, the light of all Greece, to be extinguished:* will you, then, allow a king to go unpunished who put a legate of the Roman people, an ex-consul, in chains, flogged and subjected him to every kind of torture, and then killed him?* They could not tolerate the freedom of Roman citizens being limited: will you ignore the fact that their lives have been taken from them? They took action when the rights of an embassy were violated by mere speech: will you overlook the torture and murder of a legate? [12] It was an achievement of the most glorious kind for them to hand down to you so magnificent an empire: you must now ensure that you do not incur a corresponding disgrace by proving unable to protect and safeguard what you have inherited.

  Again, when the lives of your allies are placed in extreme, critical danger, how, I ask you, should you react? King Ariobarzanes, the friend and ally of the Roman people, has been driven out of his kingdom; two kings,* sworn enemies not just of yourselves but of your friends and allies too, threaten the whole of Asia; and all the cities throughout Asia and Greece are compelled by the scale of the danger to look to you for help. They do not dare to ask you for one particular commander, especially seeing that you have already sent someone else.* Indeed, they are convinced they would get into serious trouble if they suggested it. [13] And yet they see and feel, just as you do, that there is one man who possesses the highest qualifications, and that he is nearby—which makes them all the more distressed at being without him. His mere proximity and his reputation, even though it is for a naval war that he has come,* has resulted, they feel, in the enemy’s onslaughts being checked and slowed down. These people are unable to speak openly, and so it is in silence that they ask you to decide that they also are worthy of having their safety put in the hands of this great man. Moreover, they ask you this all the more fervently because the commanders we send to other provinces tend to be the sort of men whose arrival in allied cities, even where they do protect them from the enemy, scarcely differs from a hostile assault—whereas this man, as the allies had heard before but now see with their own eyes, displays such moderation, such kindness, and such humanity that they have come to the conclusion that the people who are the luckiest are those with whom he delays the longest.

  [14] So if our ancestors fought wars against Antiochus, Philip, the Aetolians, and the Carthaginians* purely for their allies’ sake, having received no injury themselves, just think how eager you ought to be to defend the safety of your allies and the prestige of your empire when you have been injured—and especially when your most important revenues are at stake! The revenues of the other provinces, citizens, are scarcely large enough to make it worth our while governing those provinces; but Asia, on the other hand, is so rich and fertile that it easily surpasses all other territories in the productiveness of its soil, the variety of its crops, the extent of its pasturage, and the size of its exports. Therefore, citizens, if you wish to hold on to something that is useful in time of war and desirable in time of peace, you must defend this province not just from disaster but also from the fear of disaster. [15] In other areas of life, loss occurs only when a disaster actually takes place; but in the case of revenues, it is not just the occurrence of some evil but the actual fear of it that brings disaster. For when an enemy army is not far away, even if there has as yet been no incursion, the livestock is abandoned, the soil is no longer cultivated, and merchant shipping comes to a halt. As a result, the harbour duty, the tithes, and the grazing tax* produce no revenue; and so a single rumour of danger, a single foreboding of war, can often cause the loss of an entire year’s income. [16] What, then, do you suppose are the feelings of those who pay us the revenues or those who farm and collect them, when two kings are nearby with enormous armies, when a single cavalry raid can in an instant ca
rry off an entire year’s revenue, and when the tax-farmers conclude that it is extremely dangerous to keep on the large staffs that they maintain in the salt-works, in the fields, in the harbours, and in the guard-posts?* Do you really think you can continue to enjoy these benefits without keeping those who procure them for you free not only, as I have just said, from disaster, but also from the fear of disaster?

  [17] There is another point you must not overlook, one I left until last when I started to discuss the character of the war. This relates to the property owned by many Roman citizens—whose interests, citizens, you in your wisdom must take carefully into account. First of all, those honourable and distinguished gentlemen, the tax-farmers, have moved their business and their funds to that province, and their property and interests ought in themselves to be a concern of yours. For if we have always believed that our revenues are the sinews of the state, then we certainly ought to describe the order which farms those revenues as the mainstay of the other orders. [18] Secondly, there are energetic and industrious people from the other orders, some of whom do business in Asia in person—and you ought to protect their interests while they are away—while others have large sums invested in the province. It will therefore be a mark of your humanity to save this large number of citizens from ruin, and a mark of your wisdom to appreciate that the national interest would be affected by the ruin of so many of them.

  In the first place, you should not imagine that a military victory at a later date will enable you to recover the revenues that the tax-farmers have lost: because of the disaster they have suffered, they are in no position to bid for a fresh contract, and new bidders, in view of what has happened, will be deterred from coming forward. [19] In the second place, we should remember the lesson that this same Asia and this same Mithridates taught us at the beginning of our hostilities with him,* since we learned it the hard way. What happened was that a great many people lost large sums in Asia, and their resulting inability to meet their financial obligations caused a collapse of credit at Rome. It is in fact impossible for many people in the same country to lose their fortunes without dragging still more people down with them, and you should take action to protect the state from this danger. Believe me, and believe the evidence of your own eyes! This whole system of credit and finance which operates here at Rome, here in this very forum, is tied up with and inseparable from the money invested in Asia: if that is lost, then our finances here are inevitably involved in the same general collapse.