Still the government of a province was suited, neither to the taste nor the talents of Cicero, and he urged all his friends before his departure, as well as in nearly every letter he subsequently wrote, not to allow the command to be extended beyond the year which the law of Pompey required, or the year itself to be lengthened out by the caprice of the pontifical college; for the length of the Roman year at this time varied according as it was the pleasure of that body to insert more or lees intercalary days in the mouth of February, and the Pontifices were guided in this not by any fixed rule, but by private motives, lengthening or shortening tho year to favour a friend or injure an enemy.
Cicero left the city about the 1st of May, and on his arrival at Tarentum paid a visit to Pompey, with whom he had a confereuce on the serious aspect of affairs, and was assured by Lim that be was prepared for the dangers which threatened them. In the middle of Jane he proceeded from Brundisium to Coreyra and Actium, thence partly by land and partly by water to Athens, where he spent ten days, and then crossed in fifteen days to Ephesus, touching at several islands on the way. He had here a foretaste of the duties he would have to perform; for among the deputations which waited upon him at his landing was one from the citizens of Salamis in Cyprus, to lay before him their complaints egainat the extortion and cruelty of a Roman citizen named Scaptius, who had claimed from the city a large sum upon a bond, together with an accumulation of interest at the rate of forty-eight per cent.; and who had used the military authority he had held under the late governor, Appius, to besiege the senate of Salamis in their council-room, until five had died of starvation. As Brutus had recommended the Interests of Scaptius to Appius, who was his father-in-law, so he now laboured to place him in the same degree of favour with Cicero, and was seconded in this suit by the letters of Attlee,'; but the extortion raised Cicero'e indignation, and he resisted the claims of Scaptma, though Brutus, In order to move him the more effectually, at last confessed what lie had all along dissembled, that the debt was really his own, and Scripting only his agent in It.
Cicero however was the friend of justice up to a certain point only, for when he refused the usurious interest, Scaptius in a private inter view told him that though the principal was only 100 talents, the Salaminians through some mistake believed it to be 200, and suggested that Cicero might safely give an award for the larger sum. Cicero himself give. us this in his letters to Attieus (v. 21), adding that be assented to the proposal, but was unable to effect the object became. he found the Salaminians more precisely acquainted with the accounts than Saipan had anticipated. This same Brutus, whose character is so commonly put forward as one of the finest examples of Roman virtue, had applied for the assistance of Cicero in another affair of a nature somewhat similar. The King of Cappadocia, whose empty coffin proved how dearly he paid for the protection of the Roman senate, owed him, he said, a very large sum of money. But Cicero was unable to render him the least assistance in the recovery of this money, as the king owed a much larger sum to Pompey, whose position in the political world at Rome gave him a higher claim, and yet was unable to pay him the full interest of the debt. These instances afford a good example of the miseries which resulted from the Roman form of provincial government. But Cilieia had felt these miseries in a degree more than usually severe under the late governor Applue, the traces of whose extortion were visible everywhere, and could only be compared, says Cicero, to the track of • wild beast. Indeed be found employment enough in healing the wounds which Appius had inflicted. Cicero appears not to have concealed his
feelings upon this subject : at any rate the accounts which reached Applus led him to believe that Cicero was encouraging his enemies at Rome in their determination to bring him to public) trial; nor could he believe the protestations of Cicero to the contrary, when be found his prosecutor Dolabella was about to be married to Cicero's daughter. He again expostulated, but Cicero replied to his coinplaiuts by die claiming all knowledge of any such matrimonial negociation, the falsehood of which is demonstrable from the letters which ho wroto at the came period to Atticue. But Appius and Pompey were allied by the marriage of their children, and the latter induced Cicero to promito everything from the province that could be of service to the accused, so that the guilty governor was acquitted without difficulty. The military proceedings of Cicero were not of a very interesting nature. He had proceeded at once on his arrival in the province to the south-eastern frontier, which was threatened by the Parthians ; but the Roman officer who commanded hi the adjoining province of Syria had so completely occupied the attention of the enemy, that Cicero's troops never came in eight of them. Being unwilling how ever to let the army return into winter-quarters without effecting anything, he attacked somo of the mountain tribes of Amanue, whose position bad hitherto protected them, and took a number of prisoners; while his troops had a pretext for saluting him 'impemtor. lie was also successful in the siege of a robber-fort called Pinder:issue, for which his friends at Rome obtained him the honour of a public thanksgiving. His other services in Cilieia include nothing deserving especial notice, and ho was happy when the year of his appointment expired, and enabled him to return to Italy. lie landed at Brundisinm towards the end of November, displaying his laurel-wreathed fasces, for his friends, and among them Pompey, flattered him with the notion that his eminent military services deserved nothing less than a triumph. But when he reached the neighbourhood of Rome on the 4th of January, he found matters of a more serious nature in agitation. The senate had just passed a decree that Cresar should dismiss his army, and when M. Antony and another tribune opposed their vote to it, proceeded to that vote which gave the consuls and other magis trates a power above all the laws. The tribunes fled to the camp of Omar, who, considering this decree as equivalent to a declaration of war, advanced with a rapidity which destroyed all the errangemeuts of the senate. The consuls fled from Rome, accompanied in their flight by Cicero and the leading men of the aristocracy, iu the hope of defending the southern part of the peninsula. With this view the principal senators had particular districts assigned to them, Cicero undertaking to guard the coast south of Formim and the country around Capua ; but the rapid advance of Caesar drove Cicero from his purpose. He disavowed the military engagement he had undertaken to fulfil ; made different excuses for not joining Pompey in his march to Brundisium ; and finally, when Cresar made himself master of Corfinium, and by his magnanimous liberation of Lentulus Spinther, and other senators, gave the lie to those reports of his cruel intentions which his enemies industriously circulated, Cicero deemed it a favourable opportunity to open a negoeiation with Creasr, under the pretext of thanking him for his generosity to his friend Lentulue. In the middle of March Pompey sailed from Brundisium, abandoning Rome and Italy to his opponent. The return of Caesar from Brun disium to the capital afforded an opportunity for an interview, in which it appears to have been stipulated that Cicero should remain iu Italy, and observe a strict neutrality.