by Cicero
To the surprise of many, no doubt, the policy Caesar chose to adopt towards his enemies was one of clemency (clementia). There were no proscriptions. Generally speaking, Caesar wanted those of his former opponents who were not sworn enemies to return to Rome and take their place in his senate. When he pardoned Cicero in September 47, he showed him conspicuous public respect. Then while he was away fighting the republicans in Africa, Cicero found himself treated with the greatest civility by Caesar’s friends, who took lessons from him in oratory and invited him to their dinner parties; and they undertook to put in a good word for him on Caesar’s return in July 46. While Cicero had no liking for dictators (he had lived through the Sullan period), by 46 this dictatorship was proving on the whole to be benevolent and even enlightened—greatly preferable, in fact, to whatever might have been expected had the republicans succeeding in recovering Italy.
Throughout this period Cicero corresponded with republican exiles, encouraging them to ask for Caesar’s pardon and return to Rome, as he himself had done; among other considerations, their return would help to justify his own early submission to Caesar. In the summer of 46 he wrote three such letters to Marcellus, using every conceivable argument to try to persuade him to return (Fam. 4.7, 4.8, 4.9). Then at a meeting of the senate in mid-September, Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (the consul of 58 whom Cicero had attacked in his invective In Pisonem of 55 BC), happened to mention Marcellus’ name (not necessarily in connection with his restoration). At the mention of the name, Marcellus’ cousin Gaius, the consul of 50, threw himself at Caesar’s feet, and the entire senate rose and approached the dictator in supplication. Caesar responded by criticizing Marcellus’ bitterness towards him and contrasting it with the fair-mindedness and good sense shown by Marcellus’ colleague Sulpicius (who, like Cicero, had reluctantly supported Pompey and obtained Caesar’s pardon, and was now serving as governor of Achaea). But then he unexpectedly declared that he would not refuse the senate’s request: apart from anything else, he said, to refuse it would augur ill for his future relations with them. The senators were invited in order of seniority to express their opinion (why this was necessary is unclear, unless Caesar simply wished to hear himself praised); all except one expressed thanks to the dictator for what he had done. The dissentient was Lucius Volcacius Tullus, the consul of 66, who was evidently hoping to ingratiate himself with Caesar by showing spite towards his enemy. When it was Cicero’s turn to be called, he was so struck by Caesar’s magnanimity and the senate’s solicitude that he decided to break his long silence, and gave an impromptu speech of thanks to Caesar. Our source for these events is Fam. 4.4, a letter which Cicero wrote to Sulpicius in Greece soon afterwards: in this letter he says that he had felt that he was witnessing ‘some semblance of reviving constitutional freedom’, and that he had decided that he would henceforward make speeches from time to time, just often enough to keep Caesar satisfied with him. (One scholar has suggested that the pardon of Marcellus was stage-managed by Caesar; that is not impossible, but seems unlikely from Cicero’s account.) Afterwards Cicero wrote up and published the speech he had given—our Pro Marcello. We should not automatically assume that he revised it when he wrote it up, since he was well capable of producing a perfect speech without advance preparation and then remembering what he had said (alternatively, his words may have been taken down as he spoke). In the letter to Sulpicius he says that his speech in the senate was a long one, and so there is at any rate no reason to think that he expanded what he had said for publication (as for example the younger Pliny would much later do with his Panegyricus).
Pro Marcello is, like any speech delivered before an autocrat (or, indeed, any poem written under one), difficult to interpret. The first question we should consider is Cicero’s sincerity. Here the letter to Sulpicius, and another written in the same period to the former Pompeian Aulus Caecina (Fam. 6.6.10), provide the answer: Cicero was genuinely moved by Caesar’s pardon of Marcellus, and saw it as a sign that everything might just come right after all. Caesar’s clemency towards his former enemies was something truly remarkable—quite different from the way in which, in Cicero’s own lifetime, Marius and Sulla, for example, had behaved. Caesar’s unexpected pardon of Marcellus, his most implacable republican enemy, was an extraordinary concession, and not at all the act of a tyrant. The two letters just cited show that Cicero considered that this was the moment for him to break his silence and come to an accommodation with a regime which was not (he supposed) going to go away, and which was turning out much better than he had ever dared hope. As for the effusiveness with which he expresses his gratitude, this should not cause surprise: he was, after all, addressing an autocrat, and anything less would have appeared grudging. In any case, this was an important moment for him: he had not spoken in public for almost six years, and he must have wanted to rise to the occasion with a speech that would demonstrate that he could still produce great oratory.
The second question to ask is whether Cicero attempts in the speech to put pressure on Caesar to follow any particular course of action. The speech does not urge him to adopt specific policies which he has not already adopted (the very general proposals mentioned at §§23 and 27 are matters which he already had in hand). It is not, therefore, a manifesto. On the other hand, it does urge him to promote peace, and to continue pardoning his enemies—in other words, to continue his existing policy of clemency. Moreover, panegyric by its nature always does contain an element of pressure (particularly if the speech is afterwards widely circulated): by enumerating his subject’s virtues, the orator lays a continuing obligation on him to give evidence of those virtues. Pro Marcello, then, does seek to put pressure on Caesar; but in view of the weakness of Cicero’s political position, such pressure did not perhaps amount to very much.
The third question is whether Cicero sees any political role for himself under the new regime. At §§32–3 he presents himself as the spokesman of the senate, and there is little doubt that that is what he intended his role to be: he would speak for the senate before Caesar, and in particular would mediate between Caesar and the former Pompeians. Unlike Cato, Cicero was a realist, and in times when he did not enjoy political independence he could be surprisingly eager to take on the role of adviser to those in power. We have a graphic demonstration of this from 62 BC in the letter he sent to Pompey shortly before Pompey returned to Rome from his conquests in the east. In that letter (Fam. 5.7) Cicero recommends himself to Pompey as a friend and political ally, ‘a not much lesser Laelius to a far greater Africanus’. In Pro Marcello, the language is different (and much more sophisticated), but the message the same: Cicero would like to be admitted to the role of adviser and confidant. Moreover, the particular stylistic brilliance of the speech would have been intended to make it clear to Caesar—who was himself an orator of the first rank—just how useful a supporter and advocate he could potentially be.
A radically different interpretation of the speech has, however, been proposed (by R. R. Dyer, JRS 80 (1990), 17–30). On this interpretation, our Pro Marcello bears little relation to whatever Cicero may have said in the senate on the occasion of Marcellus’ pardon, but is a tract probably dating from May or June of the following year. Its purpose is, first, to provoke outrage among its senatorial readers at Caesar’s despotism and, secondly, to warn Caesar that if he does not restore the republic he will be liable to assassination. The view that the speech is to be read ironically as an attack on Caesar is cited by an ancient scholiast, the Scholiasta Gronovianus (295–6 Stangl), only to be dismissed, and so far has not persuaded modern scholars either (the fullest rebuttal is that of M. Winterbottom in J. F. Miller et al. (eds.), Vertis in Usum: Studies in Honor of Edward Courtney (Munich, 2002), 24–38). One argument against it is that it depends in large part on the assumption that the exercise of clemency would of itself arouse the senators’ resentment; yet clemency is generally viewed as an unambiguously good quality in the literature of the period (as, for
example, at Cat. 1.4, where Cicero attributes the quality to himself as consul). Moreover, it is surely most improbable that Cicero should have intended as a call to tyrannicide a speech which most contemporary readers must, in view of its original context (whether or not it was rewritten later), have taken at face value as a speech in praise of Caesar.
Marcellus heard of his pardon first from his cousin Gaius and then from Cicero, and agreed to fall in with their joint wishes. His reply to Cicero (Fam. 4.11) was warm and extremely generous. It was, as E. D. Rawson has remarked, ‘such a letter as Cicero’s heart must have swelled at receiving from so great a noble’ (Cicero: A Portrait (London, 1975), 219). Even so, Marcellus expressed no great enthusiasm for returning to Rome. In around December Cicero wrote to him again urging him to hurry up and come home (Fam. 4.10). Then in the following summer he received sad news from Sulpicius (who was still governor of Achaea; in March 45 he had sent Cicero his famous consolation on the death of Cicero’s daughter Tullia (Fam. 4.5)). In a letter written at Athens on31 May 45 (Fam. 4.12), Sulpicius reported that Marcellus had been murdered. The letter is worth quoting from at length (trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey):
On 23 May I took ship from Epidaurus to Piraeus, where I met my colleague Marcus Marcellus, and spent the day there to be with him. I took leave of him the following day, intending to travel from Athens to Boeotia and wind up what remained of my assizes. He proposed, as he told me, to sail round Cape Malea towards Italy. Two days later I was about to set out from Athens, when about three o’clock in the morning a friend of his, Publius Postumius, arrived to tell me that my colleague Marcus Marcellus had been attacked with a dagger by Publius Magius Cilo, a friend of his, after dinner, and had received two wounds, one in the stomach and one in the head behind the ear. It was hoped, however, that there was a chance for his life. Magius had later committed suicide, and he himself had been sent to me by Marcellus to tell me what had occurred and ask me to send him doctors. Accordingly, I collected some doctors and set out straight away for Piraeus as day broke. I was not far away, when a boy of Acidinus’ met me on the road with a note which stated that Marcellus had breathed his last shortly before dawn. So a very eminent man has been tragically murdered by a villain. He was spared by the respect of his enemies only to meet his death at the hand of a friend.
The rest of the letter describes the arrangements Sulpicius made for Marcellus’ funeral. Writing to Atticus shortly afterwards, Cicero speculated on the reason for the murder: Magius must have been bankrupt, asked Marcellus to help him, been given a rather blunt refusal, and then attacked him in a fit of rage (Att. 13.10.3). At any rate, there was no reason to believe the rumour that Caesar was responsible (a theory which, apart from anything else, would fail to account for the suicide of Magius).
Nine months later Caesar himself was murdered, by a group of more than sixty conspirators consisting of pardoned Pompeians and Caesarians alike. He had done little towards the work of reconstruction that Cicero had vaguely alluded to in Pro Marcello, nor had he formulated any kind of constitutional settlement; instead, his behaviour had become increasingly despotic—some would say megalomaniac. He seems to have been aware of the offence he caused: after Cicero was kept waiting to see him one day, he was said to have remarked, ‘Can I doubt that I am detested, when Marcus Cicero has to sit waiting instead of being able to come and see me at his convenience? And if anyone is easygoing, he is. I am sure he must really hate me’ (Att. 14.1.2). Since the time of Pro Marcello, Cicero had indeed become disappointed in him, and he rejoiced at his demise.
Caesar’s assassination precipitated the final, bloody chapter of the republic. Once more, senators found themselves free to say what they liked. Cicero chose to make full use of that freedom, in his Philippics—and then paid for it with his life.
PRO MARCELLO
[1] The long silence, conscript fathers, which I had maintained for all this time—not from any fear, but out of a mixture of grief and diffidence*—has today been brought to an end; and today has also brought a return to my former practice of freely expressing my wishes and opinions. For such exceptional kindness, such unprecedented and unheard of clemency, such extraordinary moderation in someone who has attained absolute power over everything, and such astonishing and, one might almost say, superhuman wisdom—these are things I cannot possibly pass over in silence. [2] Now that Marcus Marcellus, conscript fathers, has been returned to yourselves and to the state, I feel that it is not just his, but my own voice and standing that have been preserved and restored to yourselves and to the state. For I was grieved and deeply distressed, conscript fathers, to see that so great a man as he, who had espoused the same cause as I myself had, did not enjoy the same good fortune; and I could not bring myself, nor did I think it right, to continue in that career which we once shared, after he, my rival and imitator in my work* as in my other interests—indeed I might say my partner on life’s journey—had been torn from my side.
So what you have done for me, Gaius Caesar, is to open up my former way of life from which I had become debarred, and for all the others here present, to raise a standard,* as it were, for optimism regarding the future of our country. [3] For it has become apparent to me in the cases of many individuals and particularly in my own case—just as it became apparent to everyone else just now when, after reminding us of how Marcus Marcellus had wronged you,* you nevertheless gave him back to the senate and the state—that you pay more heed to the authority of this order and the dignity of the state than you do to the real or imagined wrongs done to yourself.
Today Marcellus has indeed reaped the greatest possible reward for his past life, both through the unanimous acclamation of the senate and through your own important and impressive decision. And from this you must certainly understand how praiseworthy it is to bestow a favour, when there is such glory in being granted one. [4] He is indeed fortunate, in that his restoration has brought almost as much joy to everyone else as it will to him when he comes to hear of it. And it is an honour that he has rightly and deservedly obtained: for who is there who can surpass him in noble birth, integrity, learning, blamelessness of life, or in any kind of claim to praise?
There is no stream of genius large enough, no tongue or pen forceful or fluent enough I will not say to embellish your achievements, Gaius Caesar, but even to record them.* But I do nevertheless maintain, and with your permission declare, that there is no glory in all those achievements greater than that which you have this day attained. [5] I often keep in my mind’s eye, and gladly go out of my way to tell others, that all the achievements of our own commanders, all those of foreign countries and the most powerful peoples, and all those of the most illustrious kings fall short of what you have achieved, if they are compared with the scale of the campaigns you have undertaken, the number of your battles, the geographical diversity of the places in which you have fought, the speed with which you have completed your conquests,* and the variety of your wars—and, moreover, that no one could have marched through such widely separated territories in less time than you have I will not say raced across them, but conquered them.
[6] If I refused to concede that these achievements are greater, almost, than the human mind or understanding can grasp, I would be out of my mind myself; even so, there are other achievements still greater. Some people are inclined to depreciate military glory, withholding it from the leaders and sharing it instead among the rank and file, so that it no longer belongs exclusively to the commanders. It is true that in warfare the courage of the soldiers, the natural advantage of the ground, allied assistance, fleets, and supplies all make a significant contribution. Fortune, too, claims for herself, almost as of right, the greatest share; and when anything turns out favourably, she considers the success almost entirely due to herself. [7] But in the glory which you have acquired by your present action, Gaius Caesar, you have no partner: all of it, however great it may be (and it is indeed the greatest possible), all of it, I repeat, is yours. No centurion, no prefec
t, no cohort, no troop can take any of it for themselves, and even that mistress of human affairs, Fortune, does not offer herself as your partner in this glory: she yields it to you, and admits that it is wholly and exclusively yours. For accident is never an element in wisdom, nor is chance a component of sagacity.
[8] You have subdued nations barbaric in ferocity, innumerable in population, unlimited in territory, and abounding in every kind of resource: but the things which you conquered were in their nature and situation amenable to conquest. After all, no power is so strong that it cannot be weakened and broken by steel and force. But to conquer one’s own temper, to check one’s anger, to show moderation towards the conquered, to take a fallen enemy pre-eminent in birth, character, and virtue, and not merely raise him up, but actually enhance his former standing—that is the act of someone whom I would not rank with the greatest of men, but would judge akin to a god.
[9] Your military glories, Gaius Caesar, will be made famous by the pens and tongues not only of ourselves, but of virtually every nation: no age will ever cease to sing your praises. But still, deeds of that sort, even when one reads about them, somehow seem to be drowned out by the shouts of soldiers and the sound of trumpets. On the other hand, whenever we hear or read of some act of clemency, kindness, justice, moderation, or wisdom—especially when it is performed at a moment of passion, which is the enemy of good judgement, or in the hour of victory, which is by nature arrogant and proud—how we are set ablaze with approval, irrespective of whether the story is fact or fiction, so that often we find ourselves loving someone that we have never actually seen! [10] But you we do see here in front of us. We perceive your thoughts, emotions, and expression—and they tell us how you wish to see the preservation of whatever part of our state the fortune of war has spared. With what praise, then, shall we extol you, with what devotion attend you, and with what affection embrace you? I call heaven to witness that I believe the very walls of this senate-house are yearning to thank you for the fact that that great personage* will shortly take up his place here where he belongs, and where his ancestors belonged before him. For my part, when like all of you I witnessed just now the tears of the excellent Gaius Marcellus,* whose devotion to his family is so remarkable, my heart was filled with the memory of all the Marcelli: even though they are dead, by saving Marcus Marcellus you have given them back their honour, and rescued from the verge of extinction a family of the highest nobility whose numbers are now severely reduced.