Courrier Francais
M. JgRoME CARCOPINO, a member of the Institute, and in France at the moment without doubt the greatest authority on Roman history, has just published a book of enormous importance, Les Secrets de la Correspondance de Ciceron (L'Artisan du Livre). It is a detailed, crowded, complete study, illuminating every aspect of the subject. The importance, the literary beauty, the documentary value of Cicero's letters have been recognised for nearly two thousand years. Their perfection and variety of form have never been surpassed. They have provided information for many historians ; they are still precious for this reason. And the strongest light they throw is on the writer himself, though we have had to wait until recent times for searching studies and a new picture of Cicero.
The first biography was the life that Plutarch wrote with such pious care. How many works, both general and scholarly, since then have put Cicero on the same high pedestal ? To shatter this superficial view and to prove the falsity of the image left by Plutarch one has only to read Cicero himself. His correspondence, chef d'oeuvre of Latin literature, and indeed of literature for all time, remains the most terrible indictment that can be formulated against him. It at once becomes obvious that Cicero's character is far from being of the same stature as his talent. It is not just present-day historians who have recognised that the letters show weakness as well as greatness. A balanced judgement has been given for some time. But M. Carcopino has in his turn made an exhaustive examination of the facts.
Cicero's fine didactic treatises are familiar—treatises composed at leisure in the quiet of his study, treatises condemning luxury, voluptuousness, even the search for pleasure. He exalts sobriety, uprightness, loyalty, honour, virtue. But in the intimate letters which were not meant for the public this puritan—uttering his secret thoughts, recounting a thousand small details of his daily life—shows less austerity. One sees him chasing after good suppers and all the material satisfactions, not only works of art and finely decorated villas (he had no less than eight), but most unbridled luxury in costumes foods and wines and a profusion of servants. His desire to amass enormous riches, his cupidity which often deafened the voice of honour and made,him trespass against the most elementary decencies —an overwhelming accumulation of charges emerges from his own confessions. Face to face with his creditors, and even with his own brother, he abused confidences. He was a gross manipulator of money, licentious in his habits, a prevaricating magistrate, a self- interested husband, a too accommodating father-in-law. M. Car- oopino presents these characteristics, one by one, with cruel clarity, and after insisting on these defects in the private individual, he demonstrates the perjuries and recantations of the politician. Cicero appears as crafty and malicious, cowardly and vain, open to bribery and always ready to sell his"fnfluence and his public mandates. Thus altogether the correspondence—that " of the greatest orator of the Roman republic—shows us only a politician lacking conviction, loyalty and courage, full of the illusions of morbid vanity, carried, under the weight of errors and shortcomings, into the black depths of irreparable failure."
The chief features of this pitiless portrait have already been as- sembled by a small number of writers who have gleaned them from Cicero's intimate writings ; but never with this precision, profundity, vigour of demonstration, abundance of proof. There is not a line of Cicero's letters which M. Carcopino has not scrutinised ; not a line whose irony he has not seized on. His close argument is supported by irrefutable evidence (either in the text or the notes) or explicit quotation. All through the book there is moderation, an effort to discover the motives of Cicero's versatile and weak character, a desire for justice and impartiality.
The person really responsible for this portrait—one must not forget—is Cicero himself. He has shown himself au nature!, with all the spontaneity of an unreflecting character. He never thought that his letters would be published, or thought at least that he himself or someone devoted to him would be able to expurgate all the im- prudences. But this correspondence was made public not by a thoughtless friend, but tly an enemy, who, having banished Cicero, sent him to his death--2-who wanted, in addition, to snatch his honour from him. Also, the correspondence was intentionally mutilated—in exactly the opposite way to which its writer would have wished. It was not the unflattering portions but everything which could ex- culpate Cicero which was cut out with minute care. Who, then, made public this truncated damning correspondence ? The man, of course, whose ineffaceable bitterness it soothed, whose designs it served ;nd whose policy it justified—Octavius Augustus.
This second part of M. Carcopino's book, which is absolutely new and convincing, is of great importance. It reveals a whole unexpected world of intrigue, manoeuvre, Realpolitik ; also the date at which the correspondence was handed over to Cicero's fellow- citizens. All the original letters were in the hands of Atticus, a friend, and of Marcus Cicero, the son. And if there existed anybody to whom Cicero showed himself as simple, sincere, trusting and delicate-minded, it was Atticus. Yet Atticus betrayed his friend to profit Augustus—for the sake of tranquillity, ambition, self-interest. In so doing, Atticus dishonoured himself. And what can one say about a son who smirches his father's honour ? That Cicero was dead, perhaps, and that Marcus Cicero had to think of his own security and career. Perhaps it is a comforting thought that it is in Roman history, so often admired and admirable, that we find such examples of cowardice. Does it not make us feel a little pity' for human nature ?
Those who might have defended Cicero's honour did not defend it. But let us recognise with one of his historians that, if we are forced to think so much evil of him, it is because he has offered himself to us, because we know from him what we do not know of most men. In any case, his enemies had more malice than he, since to triumph over his thought they had to mutilate it.
HENRI MARTINEAU.
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