The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 | Page 7

political and moral sentiments of the time to find Cicero even
contemplating such a conjunction.
After this, for two years, there is a break in the correspondence. Atticus
had probably returned to Rome, and if there were letters to others (as
no doubt there were) they have been lost. A certain light is thrown on
the proceedings of the year of candidature (B.C. 64) by the essay "On
the duties of a candidate," ascribed to his brother Quintus, who was
himself to be a candidate for the prætorship in the next year (B.C. 63).
We may see from this essay that Pompey was still regarded as the
greatest and most influential man at Rome; that Catiline's character was
so atrocious in the eyes of most, that his opposition was not to be
feared; that Cicero's "newness" was a really formidable bar to his
election, and that his chief support was to be looked for from the
individuals and companies for whom he had acted as counsel, and who
hoped to secure his services in the future. The support of the nobles
was not a certainty. There had been a taint of popularity in some of
Cicero's utterances, and the writer urges him to convince the consulars
that he was at one with the Optimates, while at the same time aiming at
the conciliation of the equestrian order. This was, in fact, to be Cicero's
political position in the future. The party of the Optimates--in spite of
his disgust at the indifference and frivolity of many of them--was to be

his party: his favourite constitutional object was to be to keep the
equites and the senate on good terms: and his greatest embarrassment
was how to reconcile this position with his personal loyalty to Pompey,
and his views as to the reforms necessary in the government of the
provinces.
[Sidenote: The Consulship, B.C. 63.]
For the momentous year of the consulship we have no letters. His
brother Quintus was in Rome as candidate and then prætor-designate;
Atticus was also in Rome; and the business, as well as the dignity of a
consul, were against anything like ordinary correspondence. Of the
earlier part of the consulship we have little record. The speeches
against Rullus were delivered at the beginning of the year, and commit
Cicero pretty definitely to a policy as to the ager publicus--which was,
to his disgust, entirely reversed by the triumvirs in B.C. 59--but they do
not shew any sense of coming trouble. Cicero, however, throughout his
consulship took a very definite line against the populares. Not only did
he defend Rabirius Postumus, when accused by Cæsar of the
assassination of Saturninus, and address the people against offering
violence to L. Roscius on account of the unpopular lex theatralis,[6]
but he even resisted the restoration to their civil rights of the sons of the
men proscribed by Sulla, avowedly on the ground of the necessity of
maintaining the established order, though he knew and confessed the
justice of the proposal.[6]
[Sidenote: The Conspiracy of Catiline.]
Any movement, therefore, on the side of the popular party had now his
opposition with which to reckon. He professes to have known very
early in his year of office that some more than usually dangerous
movement was in contemplation. We cannot well decide from the
violent denunciation of Catiline contained--to judge from extant
fragments--in the speech in toga candida, how far Cicero was really
acquainted with any definite designs of his. Roman orators indulged in
a violence of language so alien from modern ideas and habits, that it is
difficult to draw definite conclusions. But it appears from Sallust that
Catiline had in a secret meeting before the elections of B.C. 64,

professed an intention of going all lengths in a revolutionary
programme and, if that was the case, Cicero would be sure to have had
some secret information on the subject. But his hands were partly tied
by the fact that the comitia had given him a colleague--C.
Antonius--deeply implicated in Catiline's policy, whatever it was.
Pompey, whom he regarded as the champion of law and order, was in
the East: and Catiline's candidature--and it was supposed his policy
also--had had the almost open support of the richest man in Rome, M.
Licinius Crassus, and of the most influential man of the populares, C.
Iulius Cæsar. In the house of one or the other of them, indeed, the
meeting at which Catiline first unfolded his purposes was believed to
have been held. Still Catiline had not been guilty of any overt act which
enabled Cicero to attack him. He had, indeed, been informed, on very
questionable authority, that Catiline had made a plot to assassinate him
while holding the elections, and he made a considerable parade of
taking precautions for his safety--letting it be