Cicere's return was, what he himself calls it, the beginning of a new life to him. He had been made to feel in what hands the weight of power lay, and how dangerous it was to lean on the support of his aristocratical friends. Pompey had served him on the late occasion of his recall from exile, and had acted with the concurrence of Comer, so that it was a point of gratitude as well as prudence to be morn observ ant of them than ho had hitherto been. To the former ho took an early opportunity of showing his gratitude by proposing that ho should be commissioned to provide for a better supply of corn at Rome, where the unusual price of bread had already occasioned serious disturbances. For this purpose ho recommended that Pompey should be invested with absolute power over all the public, stores and corn-rents of this empire for five years. The proposition was readily accepted, and a vote passed that a law to that effect should be brought before the people. This law was favourably received by all parties, and Pompey named the proposer of the law the first among his fifteen assistant commiasionere ; an appointment which the latter accepted, with the stipulation that be thuuld not be called away from Rome. Meanwhile, although Cicero was restored to his former dignity, there was a diffi culty in the restitution of hie property. The chief delay was about his house on the Palatine Dill, which Clodius had contrived to alienate, as he hoped, irretrievably, by demolishing the building and dedicating a temple upon the ground to the goddess Liberty. The senate therefore could only make a provisional decree, that If the college of priests discharged the ground from the claims of religion, the consuls should make a contract for rebuilding the house. The pontifical college was accordingly summoned to bear the cause on the last day of September, and Cicero personally addressed them in a speech which he himself considered one of his happiest efforts, and which he thought it a duty to place as a specimen of eloquence in the hands of the Roman youth. The speech however, which now occupies a place among his works under the title ' Pro Demo sua spud Pon tifices,' as well as those bearing the names of ' De Haruspicum Responsis, post Reditum in Senatu,' and 'Ad Quirites post Reditum,' all professing to have been delivered during this year, have been pronounced by the ablest critics to be spurious. The college gave a verdict iu terms somewhat evasive ; but the senate concluded the matter by a distinct vote in Cicero's favour, and the consuls imme diately put the decree in execution by estimating the damage which bad been done to Cicero's property. In this estimate his villas near Tusculum and Formias were included. But the estimation was far below what Cicero thought himself entitled to, and he attributed this injustice to the jealousy of the aristocracy, who, as they bad formerly clipped his wings, so were now unwilling that they should grow again. Scarcely had the house upon the Palatine begun to rise, when a mob, instigated, according to Cicero, by Clodius, attacked the workmen, and afterwards set fire to the adjoining house, in which his brother Quintus lived. This riot was only one of many which at this time disgraced the city. Milo, as well as Clodius, had his armed bands, and was avowedly eeeking for an opportunity of murdering Clodius; while Cicero himself appears as a party in a forcible attack upon the Capitol for the purpose of destroying or carrying off the brazen tablets on which the law of his exile had been engraved. One of those who took an active part in tho disturbances was P. Sextius, who in his tribunate had been instrumental in the restoration of Cicero. He was brought to trial for these disturbances the following year, when Cicero, in gratitude, undertook his defence, and obtained an acquittal ; and, not satisfied with a mere verdict, he the next day made a furious attack in the senate upon a senator, Vatinius, who had been one of the chief witnesses against Sextius. Cicero was less fortunate in his defence of L. Calpurniue Bestia, who was prosecuted about the same time for bribery in the last election of prmtors. In the same year he gratified his powerful friends Pompey and Cmaar by appearing as the advocate of L. Cornelius Balbus, a native of Gades, who had received the citizenship of Rome. The legality of his franchise was the subject matter of the trial. It is somewhat strange to find Cicero so closely allied as he was at this time with Cesar, on whom he had showered his abuse on nearly every occasion ; but the fact and the disgrace of it are acknowledged by himself repeatedly in his letters to his friend Atticua. " It is a bitter pill," says he, "and I have been long swallow ing it, but farewell now to honour and patriotism." There exist two other speeches delivered by him during the same year : one of these was in the senate, on the annual debate about the appointments to the provinces, and ho employed the opportunity thus afforded in a furious attack on the private lives and public conduct of Piso and Gabinius, who had been the consuls at the time of his exile, and had assisted his enemy Clodius, and recommended their recall from the provinces they were then governing. He concluded his harangue by defending his alliance with Cesar. The other speech just referred to was made In defence of Cmlius, a man who by his open profligacy and unprincipled conduct was notorious even among his countrymen. He was charged with the crime of procuring the murder of an ambassador from Alexandria, and also of attempting to poison a sister of Clodius. Ctelins was acquitted, and lived for many years on most intimate terms with Cicero ; indeed the letters that passed between them constitute a whole book in his miscellaneous correspondence. On the return of Piso from his government of Macedonia, at the beginning of the following year, be complained of the attack which had been made upon him by Cicero in the debate about the provinces. Cicero replied to him in another invective, more violent than the former. One would hope that the speech purporting to have been spoken on this occasion was not genuine ; for if it is, no one can read it without awarding to Cicero the prize among orators for coarseness and personality ; and in fact ho takes credit to himself, in his treatise on the perfect orator (' De Oratore'), for his invective powers.
In the spring of the following year he commenced the treatise on politics (' De Republica), the loss of which the learned had long regretted, when Angelo Maio, in 1823, discovered a considerable portion of it in the Vatican library. The manuscript, which is of parchment, contained a treatise on the Psalms, in a small distinct character ; but Maio perceived underneath traces of a larger type, in which he soon recognised the style of Cicero, and the matter, nay even the title of the ' De Republica.' But to return to the narrative, the greater part of the year B.C. 54 was employed by Cicero in hie usual occupation of defending the accused. "Not a day passes," says he, iu a letter to his brother, "without my appearing in defence of some one." Among others, he defended Messius, one of Cremes lieutenants, who was summoned from Gaul to take his trial; then Drums, who was accused of prevarication, or undertaking a cause with the intention of betraying it; after that, Vatinius, the last year's pretor, and iRmiliue Scaurus, one of the consular candidates at the time, who was accused of peculation in the province of Sardinia; about the same time likewise his old friend Cn. Plancius, who had received him so gene rously in his exile, and being now chosen mdile, was amused by a disappointed competitor of bribery and corruption. All these were, as usual, acquitted; but the orations are lost, excepting the one which he delivered iu favour of Plancius, and a considerable fragment of that for Scaurus. This fragment is another of the discoveries of Maio, who found it in the year 1814, with some other fragments of Cicero's orations, in the Ambrosian library at Milan. As was the case with the
' De Republica,' the text of Cicero had been obliterated as much as possible from the parchment to make room for the Latin poem of the Christian writer Sedulius. Cicero's undertaking the defence of Vatinius, who had been always intimately allied with Cesar, and on that account had on more than one occasion been the object of Cicere'e abuse, his personal deformity being a favourite topic of raillery with the orator, at once surprised and offended the aristocratic party. They did not conceal from him their disgust, and Cicero found it necessary to make what defence he could of his political tergiversation in a long and ably written letter to his friend Lentulus Spinther, who was then governor of Cilicia (' Ad Faro.' i., 9). The compliment of an epic poem addressed to Cesar was another proof of the change in his political views; but a still more decisive piece of evidence is furnished by his conduct in relation to Gabinius, who returned at this time from his government of Syria, and was immediately overwhelmed with public prosecutions. Cicero had not forgotten that Gabinins, as one of the consuls at the time of his exile, had supported his enemy Clodius ; and he had openly avowed his opinion of his crimes in Syria —crimes, too, which, if we may believe Cicero, included murder, pecu lation, and treason, in every form ; but he was willing to sacrifice both his public and his private feelings at the intercession of Pompey. In the first trial he was called as a witness against Gabinius, but had the prudence to put his evidence in such a form as to give the highest satisfaction to the accused. In the second he became still bolder, and appeared as his advocate, but was unable to save him from conviction, fine, and banishment. The speech delivered by Cicero is not extant, and probably was never published. There is preserved however the speech made by him on the trial of C. Rabirius Poatuinus, which was an appendix to that of Gabinius. The whole estate of the latter had proved insufficient to answer the damages in which he had been cast ; and the Roman law, in such a case, gave the right of following any money illegally obtained to the parties into whose hands it had passed. Rabirius had acted at Alexandria as the agent of Gabinius with Ptole mmus, and in that capacity was said to have received part of the ten thousand talents which the king had paid the Roman general as the price of his services. As this trial followed closely upon the pre ceding, and was so intimately connected with it, the prosecutors could not spare the opportunity of rallying Cicero for the part which be had acted. In the end of the year Cicero consented to be one of Pompey's lieutenants in Spain, and •was preparing to set out thither, when he was induced to abandon the appointment, on per ceiving from his brother's letters, who was at that time serving in Gallia, that such a step would probably give umbrage to Cesar, for the recent death of Julia had already broken the chief link which held Cesar and Pompey together. At the beginning of the following year, news was received of the death of Crassus and his son Publius, with the total defeat of his army by the Parthians. By the death of young Crassus a place became vacant in the college of augurs, for which Cicero declared himself a candidate, and being nominated by Pompey and Hortensius, was chosen with the unanimous approbation of the whole college. This appointment had been for some years the highest object of Cicero's ambition; and the addition to his dignity was of service to him at this time, as ho was putting forth all his influence to further the election of his friend Milo to the consulate. The constant disturbances in the city prevented the comitia from being held until the year was closed, and in the middle of Janua.y the murder of Clodius by one of Milo's gladiators, in the presence, and at the command too, of his master, placed Milo in a different position. The fury of the people at the death of their favourite broke out in the most violent excesses, which were only aggra vated by the endeavours of Mile's powerful friends to screen him from punishment. These disturbances were at last quieted by the appointment of Pompey to the consulship, who was armed too with extraordinary powers by the senate, and finally Milo was brought to trial, condemned in spite of Cicero's eloquence, and banished from Italy. Cicero is said to have been so alarmed on the occasion, by the presence of the military whom Pompey had stationed around the court to prevent any violence, that his usual powers failed him ; and indeed the speech which is found among his works, under the title of the defence of Milo, ie very far from being that which ho actually delivered. In the two trials of Saufeius, one of Mile's confi dants, which grew out of the same affair, Cicero was more successful; and he had soon after some amends for the loss of his friend in the condemnation of two of the tribunes, who had been their common enemies, for the part they had taken in the late commotions. One of these, T. Munatius Plancus, Cicero himself prosecuted, which is the only exception, besides that of Verrea, to the principle which he laid down for himself of never acting the part of an accuser. It appears" to have been sooA after the death of Clodius that Cicero wrote his treatise 'On Laws' ('Do Legibus '), three books of which are still preserved; but the work in Its original form contained probably, like the • De Republica,' to which it is • kind of supplement, as many as eis books, for ancient authors have quoted from the fourth and fifth. But the civil and literary. pursuits of Cicero were soon interrupted by the demand for his services abroad. Among the different lams which Pompey brought forwent for checking the riolence and corruption which the candidates employed for the attainment of public office, was One which disqualified all future consuls and meters holding any province until five years after the expiration of their But before the law passed, Pompey procured an exception for himself, getting the government of Spain and Africa continued to him for five year longer ; while, to gratify Caesar on the other side, Cicero, at the special request of Pompey, induced one of his friends to bring forward a law by which Caesar's presence might be dispensed with in suing for the consulship in the following year. Thera was valid ground for this privilege being conferred upon Comer in the circumstances of the Gallic war, where the timed: of the Roman arms would have been seriously endangered by his absence. Thus Cicero and Pompey were the chief instruments in' passing the very law which they afterwards declared unconstitutional and invalid, and so brought upon their country the horrors of civil war. As the magistrates of the time being were pre cluded from provincial government by Pompey's law, it was provided that for the next period of five years the senators of consular and prictorian rank, who had not held foreign command upon the expiration of their magistracies, should divide the vacant provinces by lot : in consequence of which Cicero most reluctantly undertook the govern ment of Cilicis, with which were united Pisidia, Pamphylia, Cyprus, and three dioceses, as they were called, of the adjoining province of Asia. Thus Cicero found himself in the very position which it had ever been one of his chief objects to avoid, and his friends were the more uneasy as that quarter of the empire was threatened by the I'arthians in revenge of the late invasion of their territories by Crassus. Under these circumstances Cicero was fortunate in having among his lieutenants two such men as his brother and Pontinius. The latter had established • high military reputation by his successes and triumph over the Allobrogcs, while the merits of Quintus Cicero as a soldier had been proved and acknowledged by Caiaar in Gallia.