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Copyright © 2014. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.
Ingo Gildenhard, Louise Hodgson, et al.

Cicero, On Pompey’s Command
(De Imperio), 27–49
Latin text, study aids with vocabulary,
commentary, and translation
Gildenhard, Ingo, and Louise Hodgson. Cicero, on Pompey's Command (de Imperio), 27-49 : Latin Text, Study Aids with Vocabulary,
CICERO,
ON POMPEY’S COMMAND
(DE IMPERIO), 27-49
Cicero,
On Pompey’s Command
(De Imperio), 27-49
Latin text, study aids with

vocabulary, commentary,
and translation
Ingo Gildenhard,
Louise Hodgson, et al.
http://www.openbookpublishers.com
© 2014 Ingo Gildenhard, Louise Hodgson, et al.
The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
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and transmit the text; to adapt it and to make commercial use of it providing that
attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that he endorses
you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Gildenhard, Ingo, Hodgson, Louise, et al., Cicero, On Pompey’s Command (De Imperio),
27-49, Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/
OBP.0045
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Contents
1. Preface and acknowledgements 1
2. Introduction: why does the set text matter? 5
3. Latin text with study questions and vocabulary aid 31

The Only Way is Pompey (§27) 32
The Perfect General, Pompey the Kid, and Mr. Experience (§28) 34
His Excellence (and Excellences) (§29) 38
Witnesses to the Truth! (§30) 40
Pacifying the Pond, or: Pompey and the Pirates (§31) 42
The Pirates of the Mediterranean (§32) 44
Pirates ante portas! (§33) 46
Pompey’s Cruise Control (I): ‘I Have a Fleet – and Need for Speed’ (§34) 48
Pompey’s Cruise Control (II): ‘I Have a Fleet – and Need for Speed’ (§35) 50
‘Thou Art More Lovely and More Temperate’: Pompey’s Soft Sides (§36) 52
SPQR Confidential (§37) 54
Of Locusts and Leeches (§38) 56
Pompey the Peaceful, or: Imperialism with Gloves (§39) 58
No Sight-Seeing or Souvenirs for the Perfect General (§40) 60
Saint Pompey (§41) 62

Peace for our Time (§42) 64
Rumour and Renown: Pompey’s auctoritas (§43) 66
Case Study I: The Socio-Economics of Pompey’s auctoritas (§44) 68
Case Study II: Pompey’s auctoritas and psychological warfare (§45) 70
Auctoritas Supreme (§46) 72
Felicitas, or how not to ‘Sull(a)y’ Pompey (§47) 74
The Darling of the Gods (§48) 76
Summing Up (§49) 78
4. Commentary 81
5. Further resources 225

Chronological table: the parallel lives of Pompey and Cicero 227
The speech in summary, or: what a Roman citizen may have heard in 229
the forum
Translation of §§ 27-49 235
The protagonists: Cicero – Pompey – Manilius 243
The historical context (the contio, imperial expansion, civil wars, the
shadow of Sulla, extraordinary commands) 255
List of rhetorical terms 268
6. Bibliography 275
1. Preface and
Acknowledgements
This commentary has its origins in a neat coincidence: for the years 2015-
2017, the prose text of the OCR Latin AS-Level specifications comes from a
speech by Cicero, the pro (or de) lege Manilia (‘In support of/ About the law
of Manilius’) or (our preference) de imperio Cn. Pompei (‘On the command
of Gnaeus Pompeius’) that, for the last few years, has also been one of the
set texts first-year Classics students read at the University of Cambridge.
(Given that it is now part of the OCR examination, it’s off the Cambridge
syllabus from 2015.)
Here was a perfect opportunity to link up the study of Latin at school
and university. In the summer of 2013 a group of our so-called ‘Prelims’ –
undergraduates who arrive at Cambridge without having studied Latin or
Greek at school and spend a ‘preliminary year’ bringing their Latin up to
A-level standards, before starting our regular three-year degree programme
– signed up to hammering out a commentary on the OCR set text. And in
autumn 2013, they were joined by a group of first-year undergraduates
who arrived at Cambridge with A-level Latin, happened to have their first-
term Latin literature supervision channelled to King’s College, and thus
got co-opted into the commentary project. All contributed key ideas and
inspiring draft versions to the final product. The student co-authors, and
their College affiliation, are George Lord (Christ’s); Molly Richards (Clare);
Nnenda Chinda and Rachel Franks (Downing); Hannah Philp (Emmanuel);
Charlotte Frude, Grace Miller, Heather Shorthouse, and Samantha Tarling

(Fitzwilliam); Jake Cohen-Setton, Eleanor Hussey, Billy Robinson, and Pete
Westcott (Jesus); Qasim Alli, Ashley Chhibber, Reece Edmends, Naomi
Farhi, and Harry Strawson (King’s); Emily Dean, Charlotte Furniss-Roe,
Alice Greenwood, and Georgie Illingworth (Murray Edwards); and Bryony
Hutchinson and Alex Nelson (St. Catherine’s).
Last but not least, Louise Hodgson, who received her doctorate from
Durham University in 2013 for a dissertation on the political culture of the late
Roman republic, generously agreed to do the heavy lifting on the Introduction
and the Further Resources and kindly vetted the rest of the volume.
4 Cicero, On Pompey’s Command (De Imperio), 27–49
The commentary, then, is a work of multiple authorship. I personally

claim credit for a tweak here, an editorial intervention there; any remaining
mistakes or oversights are also mine, all mine, though fortunately their
number has been vastly reduced (once more) by John Henderson, OBP’s
summus lector. It would require a Cicero to sing his praises, so let me simply
say that you’ll find his virtus, humanitas, ingenium, and urbanitas sparkling
on every page, not least the Introduction.
Ingo Gildenhard, King’s College Cambridge
PS: The portion of the speech set for the AS-examination (§§ 27-45) covers
most of Cicero’s portrait of the perfect general but leaves out the end (§§
46-49). We are convinced that most, if not all, students would wish to read
the full account and have therefore included these additional paragraphs
in the present edition.
2. Introduction: why does
the set text matter?
Fig. 1 V. Foppa, The Young Cicero Reading, c.1464. Photograph by Sailko, 2011.
Image from Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vincenzo_
foppa,_giovane_che_legge_cicerone,_dal_banco_mediceo_di_milano_03.JPG
Born in 106 BC, Cicero reached his political maturity during a nasty period
in Roman history: the reign of Sulla (82-79 BC).1 The dictator introduced a
new practice into Roman politics: the mass-slaughter of Roman citizens by
Roman citizens – and not just on the battlefield. Once Sulla had crushed
armed resistance in the first full-blown civil war that Rome experienced
(it proved trend-setting...), he proceeded to ‘proscriptions’ – the drafting
of lists that contained the names of alleged enemies of the res publica, who
then could be killed on sight. (Mutatis mutandis, such ‘hit lists’ seem to
have remained in fashion ever since...) He used this procedure to purge
the Roman elite of his personal enemies: several thousands lost their lives,
slaughtered in cold blood. As Plutarch puts it in his Life of Sulla (31.1): ‘Sulla
now [sc. after his appointment to the dictatorship] busied himself with
slaughter and filled the city with deaths without number or limit.’
Cicero seems to have found Sulla’s civic bloodshed deeply disturbing.
Arguably, his entire political career and intellectual efforts unfolded under
the banner: ‘History Must Not Repeat Itself! Proscriptions? Never Again!’2
History, of course, did repeat itself: in 43 BC, the second triumvirate of
Caesar Octavianus (a.k.a. Octavian, the future princeps Augustus), Mark
Antony, and Lepidus again opted to ‘proscribe’ enemies: and their most
famous victim was none other than Cicero. Ironically, Cicero lost his head
at the hands of a clique he himself had helped to bring to power via his
initial support of the young Octavian and his uncompromising stance

towards Mark Antony in his last set of speeches, the Philippics. These
constituted his last-ditch effort of a lifetime dedicated to the fight against the
political ‘monsters’ (his idiom) that he perceived as threats to his beloved
res publica, which he identified with the senatorial tradition of republican
government. His speeches and treatises (and there are lots of them!) are
filled with outbursts against ‘the tyrants’ of the late republic, who abused
1 is earliest surviving speech, in defence of Publius Quinctius in a civil law suit, dates to 81.
H
2 So Flower (2006).
power, allegedly aimed at kingship, and sought to bring down the state:
Verres, Catiline, Clodius, Caesar, Mark Antony – with Sulla figuring as the
archetype of them all.
Cicero, then, went down in history as the incarnation of the free republic.
(This is no exaggeration: after Brutus had sunk his dagger into Caesar on
the Ides of March 44, he lifted his bloodied weapon in the air and called out:
‘Cicero!’) Yet in 66 BC, Cicero gave a speech, the pro lege Manilia or de imperio
Gnaei Pompei, in support of a bill designed to give extraordinary powers
to one of Sulla’s most notorious lieutenants, whom many suspected of
desiring to pick up the mantle of the former dictator. The lex proposed by the
tribune Manilius transferred supreme command of the war between Rome
and Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, to Gnaeus Pompeius (or ‘Pompey’),
already then known as ‘the Great’ (Magnus) – but also, less flatteringly, as
adulescens carnifex (‘youthful butcher’), a sobriquet he acquired for his role
in the civil wars on Sulla’s side. Admittedly, Mithridates, the ‘poison king’,
whom one scholar has hailed as ‘Rome’s deadliest enemy’, had proved
himself a real nuisance in Rome’s attempt to establish imperial control over
Asia Minor (roughly present-day Turkey).3 Hostilities dated back to the 80s
and included the genocidal slaughter of 80,000 Roman citizens and their
Italian allies during the ‘Asiatic Vespers’ in 88 BC. But despite some recent
setbacks, there was arguably no strategic need to appoint Pompey (or
anyone else) with the help of extraordinary measures. Indeed, one could
forgive those members of Rome’s ruling elite who screamed a ‘Déjà vu!’ in
protest: one of the past commanders who had had a go at Mithridates was
none other than Sulla, who after a few inconsequential victories abandoned
the campaign in order to march on Rome and sort out his internal enemies.
Wasn’t Pompey a second Sulla in the making? Had he not just celebrated an
unprecedented success over the pirates of the Mediterranean with the help
of another extraordinary command, proposed by the tribune Gabinius?

Had not Gaius Piso, in the debate over the mandate against the pirates,
threatened Pompey with a senatorial sparagmos (‘a tearing to pieces’) if he
continued to aim at kingship?4 Wouldn’t a further victory over Mithridates
inflate him from Magnus to Maximus for sure and enable him to march on
Rome with the same autocratic ambitions as his mentor Sulla?
3 or a biography that pays due attention to the lurid and the sensational see Mayor
F
(2009).
4 Plutarch, Life of Pompey 25.4. For a literary description of a sparagmos see your verse set
text, the Pentheus-episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Introduction: why does the set text matter? 9
The bill did not require Cicero’s support. No one forced him to speak, and
it was hugely popular with the people anyway. All thirty-five tribes passed
the bill, Plutarch reports (Life of Pompey 30). Besides, several senatorial
peers much more distinguished than Cicero at the time had already spoken
in its favour. So even if he felt strongly about Pompey’s appointment, he
could have just kept his silence – instead of pushing at an open door that
led him straight into a potential minefield: as he concedes in his peroration
(§ 71, the last paragraph of the speech) his intervention may well have
made him some enemies. Not only that – he decided to compound the
problem (and amplify his voice) by disseminating a written version after
the oral performance in the forum – again a deliberate choice: Cicero only
published a selection of the speeches he gave. How truly amazing to find
Cicero advocating concentration of power in one pair of hands, thus setting
a precedent for some version or other of Caesar and Augustus!
In light of all this, you may legitimately ask: why in the world did he
throw his (rhetorical) weight behind this bill, orally and, especially, in
writing? And further: how did he manage to square his endorsement of
the lex Manilia (which meant elevating Pompey above everyone else and
giving him extraordinary powers) with his republican principles and
convictions? (If he managed to do so: you’ll have to be the judge of that!) To
make headway with these questions, we need to ask ourselves what was in
it for Cicero at this particular moment in his career – and take a close look
at his portrait of the perfect general (i.e. the ‘meat’ of the set text).
The pro lege Manilia was Cicero’s first persuasive speech to the people of
Rome. He delivered it in 66 BC, at the age of 39, the year he was praetor, so
an important serving magistrate, one step from the top post of consul. At
the time, he was best known for his stunningly successful prosecution of the
pretty awful Gaius Verres in 70 BC, as recorded (with a considerable dose
of artistic licence) in his Verrine Orations. But in order to climb the highest
rank of the cursus honorum (‘the course of offices’), i.e. the consulship, he
had to start making his voice heard in the civic arena. The bill proposed by
Manilius proved just the ticket for Cicero’s debut. And Cicero knew how to
make an entry. Here is the opening paragraph of the speech (Man. 1):
Quamquam mihi semper frequens conspectus vester multo iucundissimus,

hic autem locus ad agendum amplissimus, ad dicendum ornatissimus est
visus, Quirites, tamen hoc aditu laudis, qui semper optimo cuique maxime
patuit, non mea me voluntas adhuc, sed vitae meae rationes ab ineunte
aetate susceptae prohibuerunt. Nam cum antea per aetatem nondum huius
auctoritatem loci attingere auderem statueremque nihil huc nisi perfectum

ingenio, elaboratum industria adferri oportere, omne meum tempus
amicorum temporibus transmittendum putavi.
[Although it has at all times given me a special pleasure to behold your

crowded assembly, and this place in particular has seemed to me to afford
the amplest scope for action, the fairest stage for eloquence, nonetheless,
fellow-citizens, this approach to fame, which the best have ever found most
widely open, has hitherto been barred to me, not certainly by any wish of
mine, but by that scheme of life which, from my earliest years, I had laid
down for myself. For previously, seeing that I was debarred by my youth
from aspiring to this proud position and was resolved to bring here nothing
but the mature outcome of my talent, the finished product of my industry,
I considered that my every hour should be devoted to my friends in their
hours of peril.]
The moment is dramatic: Cicero, the acknowledged ‘king of the courts’

(that’s what his devotion to imperiled friends refers to), delivers his
first-ever speech to the citizens of Rome, the Quirites, from the rostra, the
speaker’s platform from which Roman magistrates negotiated with the
Roman people (a procedure called agere cum populo; cf. ad agendum, sc. cum
populo). Before Cicero settles down to business (his promotion of Manilius’
bill and its beneficiary, i.e. Pompey), he uses the occasion to position himself
vis-à-vis his audience (cf. mihi, vester, mea ... voluntas, me, vitae meae rationes).5
The opening sentence is autobiographical with an apologetic subtext,
arising from the need to justify why this is his first-ever contio-appearance.
Cicero begins by stressing in superlative mode (iucundissimus, amplissimus,
ornatissimus, though with his usual subjective hedge in mihi ... est visus) that
his absence from the contio-scene had nothing to do with lack of esteem for
the people of Rome or this particular institution. Rather, he butters up his
audience with an elaborate captatio benevolentiae. He claims that, for him,

of all the most agreeable things the most agreeable thing ‘by far’ (multo: a
strategically placed ablative of the measure of difference) has always been
a crowded (cf. frequens) citizen-assembly. And he adds to this rose-tinted
view a more ‘objective’ recognition of the constitutional importance of this
place and setting.
Such flattery of course only renders the question more acute as to why
Cicero has never gotten round to actually delivering a speech here – until
5 For ‘ego’ (and its inflections) as a main theme of the speech see MacKendrick (1995).
now. The second half of the sentence, introduced by tamen (with the direct
address to the citizens functioning as pivot), tries to provide an answer. But
the answer we get is curious, to say the least. Cicero sets up an opposition,
or at least tension, between his inclination (voluntas) and the plan that from
his earliest youth has informed his life (vitae meae rationes). While he was
quite willing to step up, this mysterious plan prevented him from doing
so (prohibuerunt). The final word of the sentence comes very much as a
surprise. What was this plan, his audience will have started to wonder, that
kept Cicero away from the speaker’s platform? For an answer, we have to
wait for the next sentence.
Before this surprise ending to his opening sentence, Cicero embeds his
own career-choices within Rome’s political culture more generally: aditus
laudis, the gateway to fame, refers to the key ambition of every member
of Rome’s ruling elite, namely public recognition in the form of laus and
gloria, attained through the holding of public office in the service of the
res publica and, simultaneously or subsequently, military commands.
The Roman citizens elected their magistrates, and a public career was in
principle open to any citizen rich enough to pursue it; but in practice most
of the candidates who successfully stood for office hailed from families that
could boast ancestors who had held magistracies in the past. Against this
reality, Cicero, a so-called ‘new man’ (homo novus), i.e. someone without
politically successful ancestors in his family tree, validates inborn talent
(and hence merit): he claims that especially (cf. maxime) the best (cf. optimo
cuique), by stepping up to the rostra, could make a career for themselves
and acquire renown in Rome. This conflicts with Roman common sense:
Joe Public would have thought that ‘the best’ would look to performing
feats in warfare to acquire fame and recognition rather than seeking out
the rostra. Obliquely, Cicero here ranks the orator (‘public speaker’) above
the imperator (‘general’)!

What follows is even more mind-boggling: Cicero claims that only after
he had turned himself into a perfect orator, by means of a combination of
innate talent and the most strenuous training, did he consider it appropriate
to appear in such a hallowed place as the rostra to address such a worthy
audience as the Roman people! The reason why he hasn’t spoken before, it
now emerges, are his own exacting standards: the Roman people deserve
nothing but the best. Cicero didn’t appear on the rostra before he had been
crowned ‘king of eloquence’: this implies that all the other, lesser speakers
hold the people in less respect than he does – since they offer less than
perfect oratory, falling below Ciceronian standards of ingenium, labor (cf.

e-labor-atum and the explicit reference to meus labor in § 2), and industria.
Put differently, Cicero begins with the perfectus orator (himself) before
moving on to the summus imperator (Pompey). He and Pompey thereby
emerge as a complementary pair, each outstanding in his respective sphere
– a complementarity Cicero would come back to some years later when
he suggested to Pompey (who was none too pleased) that his suppression
of the Catilinarian Conspiracy at home (domi) as dux togatus (‘a military
leader dressed in the toga’, i.e. Rome’s civic apparel) compared favourably
with Pompey’s victory over Mithridates abroad on campaign (militiae). The
set up also underscores the ‘power of definition’ that comes with Cicero’s
command of eloquence: in sketching a portrait of Pompey as perfect
general, he simultaneously uses his understanding of the perfect general
to define Pompey – what, according to Cicero, Pompey should be like. Playing
(panegyric) adviser to those in power was a role Cicero rather fancied – and
also tried later to play with Caesar and Octavian.
In the pro lege Manilia, to be sure, this aspect remains rather oblique.
Cicero is at pains to stress that his principal motivation for stepping up is
the wellbeing of the res publica and the Roman people. This, at least, is what
he pronounces at the very end of the speech (§ 70):
testorque omnis deos, et eos maxime qui huic loco temploque praesident,
qui omnium mentis eorum qui ad rem publicam adeunt maxime perspiciunt,
me hoc neque rogatu facere cuiusquam, neque quo Cn. Pompei gratiam
mihi per hanc causam conciliari putem, neque quo mihi ex cuiusquam
amplitudine aut praesidia periculis aut adiumenta honoribus quaeram;
[And I call all the gods to witness – most especially the guardians of this
hallowed spot who clearly see into the hearts of all who enter upon public
life – that I am acting thus neither in deference to any man’s request nor
with any idea of winning for myself by my support of this cause the favour
of Gnaeus Pompeius, nor in the hope of gaining for myself from any man’s
high position either protection from dangers or aids to advancement.]
No, his motives, Cicero goes on to say, are entirely unselfish, focused
exclusively on public welfare – at significant personal cost (§ 71):
Quam ob rem quicquid in hac causa mihi susceptum est, Quirites, id ego
omne me rei publicae causa suscepisse confirmo; tantumque abest ut aliquam
mihi bonam gratiam quaesisse videar, ut multas me etiam simultates partim
obscuras, partim apertas intellegam mihi non necessarias, vobis non inutilis
suscepisse.
[Wherefore any effort I may have made in this cause, citizens, I protest
has been made in the cause of my country; and far from seeming to have
sought any popularity for myself, I am aware of having even incurred many
enmities, some overt and some secret, which I might have avoided, though
not without some detriment to you.]
Is Cicero protesting too much? Is he trying to pre-empt the impression that

he had been bought or was just trying to muscle in on the bill to secure the
gratitude and future goodwill of Pompey? Does the explicit denial not give
the game away? Do we have to cancel out the negatives to get at the truth?
What happens if we fiddle a bit with the prose: ‘I am acting thus neither in
deference to any a man’s request nor and with any the idea of winning for
myself by my support of this cause the favour of Gnaeus Pompeius, nor
in the hope of gaining for myself from any man’s someone’s high position
either protection from dangers or and aids to advancement’ – would that
come closer to the truth? How cynical is your reading of these concluding –
politician’s – paragraphs?
In this context we may note that not only the people, but also the ‘knights’,
Rome’s ‘moneyed elite’, Cicero’s own social order with which he seems to
have entertained mutually beneficial terms of reciprocity in his climb up
the cursus honorum,6 were very much in favour of Pompey’s appointment.
They had commercial interests in the region and sought a quick conclusion
to the hostilities so they could pursue business and ‘farm’ taxes. Indeed,
a passage in Velleius Paterculus (2.33.1), a historian writing during the
reign of Tiberius, allows the inference that Manilius had been bribed by
the knights to propose the bill.7 Whether this is true or not (and whether
Cicero was in their pocket or not), there seem to have been a range of self-
interested reasons for him to lend his rhetorical muscle to an initiative that
was popular with the people (without being unanimously opposed by the
senate), enabled him to jump on the MAJOR bandwagon in town (Gnaeus
Pompeius MAGNUS), and was bound to find favour with his most loyal
political supporters. Did it, does it, matter that this move, which could only
bump up his own chances of up-coming election into the big time, meant
6 erry (2003).
B
7 MacKendrick (1995) 11.
a mode of panegyric elevation of a single individual difficult to reconcile

with republican principles?
After this peek at the beginning and end of the speech (and Cicero’s
possible motivations for mounting the speaker’s platform), it’s time to get
the speech as a whole into view, with a particular emphasis on his portrait
of the perfect general (§§ 27-49), most of which (= §§ 27-45) is included in
your set text. Here is a basic outline:8
Paragraphs Part of the oration

1-5 I. Exordium and narratio
6-50 II. Confirmatio I
6-19 1. de genere belli
20-6 2. de magnitudine belli
27-49 3. de imperatore deligendo
28 a. scientia rei militaris
29-42 b. virtus
43-6 c. auctoritas
47-8 d. felicitas
49-50 4. Sum-up
51-63 III. Refutatio
64-71 IV. Confirmatio II and Peroratio
The structure is straightforward. Cicero starts with a few words by way of

introduction (§§ 1-3 = exordium) and briefly covers some key points of the
current military situation in Asia Minor (§§ 4-6 = narratio). In §§ 6-50 he
gives his reasons why the bill should pass: the type of war (§§ 6-19) and the
scope of the war (§§ 20-6) call for a perfect general (§§ 27-49), and the only
one who fits the bill is therefore Pompey, the greatest general of all times.
After summing up his argument (§§ 49-50), Cicero considers and dismisses
objections to the appointment of Pompey (§§ 51-63 = refutatio), reasserts the
desirability of the bill (§§ 64-68) and signs off with a rousing conclusion (§§
69-71 = peroratio). The set text (§§ 27-45) hits on the very centre of the speech,
i.e. Cicero’s portrait of the perfect general and his four principal qualities,
all of which (so Cicero claims) Pompey embodies: knowledge of military
matters (scientia rei militaris), overall excellence (virtus), commanding
8 For a more detailed outline see MacKendrick (1995) 3-6.
respect (auctoritas), and divinely sponsored success (felicitas). Let’s take a

look at each of these qualities in turn.
Scientia militaris (§ 28)

In § 28 Cicero surveys Pompey’s career, tracing his transition from school
to army, from GI to general, from general to greatest military commander
of all times. A stint in the army around the age of twenty was routine for a
Roman aristocrat with political ambitions. Cicero, too, served his time – as
it happens also under Pompey’s father Strabo.9 But after his stint in the
armed forces, he went off on a study trip to Greece and devoted himself
to excellence in (courtroom) oratory – knowing full well of course that
military achievement was the highway to public office in Rome with a
monopoly on gloria. Decades later, finally obliged to serve as pro-consul of
Cilicia in 51 BC, i.e. the very region supposedly ‘pacified’ and turned into
a Roman province by Pompey in the 60s, Cicero won a couple of minor
military encounters against uppity tribes, was hailed as imperator by his
troops, and did his futile best to convince the senate to grant him a triumph.
But what was little more than a fortuitous accident for Cicero, i.e. holding a
military command and at least staking a claim to celebrate a triumph, was
a profession for Pompey, who triumphed thrice in the course of his career.
His rise to the top did perhaps not happen quite as quickly as Cicero’s
star-struck way of putting it in § 28 suggests; and it was facilitated by such
factors as the premature death of his father (leaving Pompey in charge of
the extended social networks of the family), the chaos of the civil wars, and
his willingness to proceed by means of unconstitutional measures, which
included the raising of a private army that he put at the disposal of Sulla.10
In Cicero’s survey of Pompey’s career, these scary details are carefully
airbrushed.11
9 T here is no evidence that the two met then and there.

10 Caesar Octavianus, the future princeps Augustus, proudly followed in his footsteps. See
the opening of his Res Gestae: Annos undeviginti natus exercitum privato consilio et privata
impensa comparavi, per quem rem publicam a dominatione factionis oppressam in libertatem
vindicavi (‘In my nineteenth year, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised
an army with which I set free the state, which was oppressed by the domination of a
faction’). See further Hodgson (2014).
11 To enable you to read between the lines and properly appreciate Cicero’s artful ‘silences’
in his account of where Pompey’s astounding scientia militaris came from, we have
supplied a detailed biography under ‘Further Resources’, which should offer a neat
opportunity for a ‘compare and contrast’ exercise with the set text.
One peculiar feature of Cicero’s praise of Pompey’s unmatched scientia

militaris is his insistence that it is grounded in actual experience, rather than
the perusal of books: plura bello gessit quam ceteri legerunt (‘he has conducted
more campaigns than the rest have read of’). It is worth questioning this
piece of praise a bit, especially as it comes from Cicero.12 Depending on
the reader, it could imply very few military feats indeed; if, on the other
hand, the reader Cicero has in mind is someone like himself (who had
surely perused all the major Greek and Roman historiographers and most
of the minor ones as well) the praise turns into panegyric hyperbole. It
is perhaps unsurprising that the earliest attestation of the contrast comes
from Cicero, whose first-hand experience of military life was notoriously
limited, but who was a voracious reader. As John Henderson puts it: ‘The
ludicrous presumption that Cicero’s worth listening to when he comes on
as expert on imperial strategy in the field – as if he knows anything about
campaigning, soldiers and fighting, local barons and militias, anything he
didn’t read in books or from reports of his colleagues and rivals – has to
be underlined. Do we want a foreign office full of champion debaters or
people who have been in a helicopter or used a field latrine, etc. etc.?’
Virtus (§§ 29-42)

By the late republic, if not since time immemorial, the term virtus possessed
a range of meanings. It could signify ‘martial prowess’, refer to various other
‘excellences’, or designate ethical excellence in a technical philosophical
sense. It moreover served as a generic label for an entire set of desirable
qualities or values in contrast to the semantics of other, more sharply
defined value terms such as fortitudo (‘bravery’). We thus also find it in the
plural (omnes virtutes) or similar phrases (omne genus virtutis). This range of
meanings came in handy: since, by etymological definition, each Roman

vir worth his masculine mettle wanted to lay claim to vir-tus, it must have
been agreeable that there were different versions of virtus to choose from.13
12 H e seems to have been quite fond of it: see his speech pro Fonteio 43, where he praises the
defendant as someone to be numbered among non litteris homines ad rei militaris scientiam
sed rebus gestis ac victoriis eruditos (‘men who gained their military knowledge not from
text-books but from their operations and their victories’). The contrast famously recurs
in the speech the historian Sallust put into the mouth of Marius, where the readers
come from the established nobility, and the doers are new men like himself (Bellum
Iugurthinum 85.13).
13 As the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium puts it (3.6): nemo erit qui censeat a virtute
In fact, there are reasons to suppose that it was in part its privileged
status in the Roman system of values, which turned virtus into such a
protean concept: the Romans tussled over its definition and proprietorship.
A ready example of individuals or groups trying to spin virtus in their own
image are the controversial views over whether virtus ran in families and
could thus be handed down like a heirloom from one generation to the next
or whether (the potential for) virtus occurred randomly throughout society
or at least its upper echelon. The former was the preferred view of the
nobility, which had a vested interest in naturalizing historical achievement,
the latter that of homines novi (‘new men’), who liked to style themselves as
the standard-bearers of an excellence that the degenerate offspring of once-
great families no longer managed to uphold – according to the formula
‘novus homo-prisca virtus’ (‘new man – ancient excellence’).14 New men
naturally did not all agree either on what, precisely, ‘ancient excellence’
consisted in. Marius and Cicero, for example, were both ‘new men’; but
they could not have differed more radically in their preferred definition
of virtus. Marius emphasized military virtus, whereas Cicero preferred to
foreground other aspects, such as ‘civic ethics’ (well aware of the fact that
Roman common sense was with Marius on this).15 The different nuances
and variants of virtus in Roman culture mean that each individual instance
of the term requires careful inspection in order to spot the ideological
agenda that is afoot, and this is doubly true for as innovative a treatment as
Cicero’s in the pro lege Manilia.
The section on virtus is by far the longest of the four. It neatly falls into
two halves: §§ 29-35 (= 7 paragraphs); and §§ 36-42 (= 7 paragraphs). The
exact symmetry is programmatic: each half has equal weight. Cicero sets
up the partition in § 29, where he distinguishes between the virtutes of a
military commander that are commonly recognized as such and a further
set that could be considered ‘handmaidens’ of the first, but turn out to be
equally essential for winning the war against Mithridates. Those in the
first set are all aspects of the virtus bellandi (‘martial prowess’) and have to
recedendum (‘no one will propose the abandonment of virtus’) – even though the orator
will spin what virtus actually is and means to suit his agenda.
14 Wiseman (1971) 113.
15 A related controversy concerned the question as to whether virtus ultimately boiled
down to natural endowment or whether (and if so to what extent and how) it was
teachable. Against a strictly ‘biological’ conception of virtus, educators of all stripes
have had a professional stake in upholding the belief that, at least in part, excellence can
be taught or that innate talent is, at any rate, insufficient by itself for attaining perfection.
do with the nuts and bolts of successful warfare. Cicero specifies labor in
negotiis (‘effort in public affairs’), fortitudo in periculis (‘courage in dangers’),
industria in agendo (‘care in operating’), celeritas in conficiendo (‘speed in
finishing’) and consilium in providendo (‘good judgement in exercising
forethought’). Those in the second set all foreground ethical qualities –
qualities, in other words, that shape socio-political interactions outside
the combat zone, but are important to generate trust in Roman rule and
marshal support for Rome’s war-efforts among the allies. Cicero specifies
innocentia (‘integrity’), temperantia (‘moderation’), fides (‘trustworthiness’),
facilitas (‘ease in interpersonal relations’), ingenium (‘outstanding talent’),
and humanitas (‘human kindness’).16 It is probably fair to say (and Cicero
concedes as much in § 29) that many in the audience would not have
intuitively thought of the qualities in the second set as essential attributes
of virtus imperatoria and hence hallmarks of the perfect general. Cicero, in
other words, does something decidedly unorthodox. Why?
To begin with, he argues that the entire portfolio of virtutes, both the
‘tough’ ones and the ‘soft’ ones, are necessary to win this particular war.
Those in the first set are necessary to crush Mithridates on the battlefield;
those in the second to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local population
and thus create the conditions for a permanent peace (or ‘pacification’).
There is an eerie contemporary relevance to Cicero’s argument. The fact
that he also had some ulterior motives for making it (see below) should not
obfuscate the possibility that he may actually have a point: recent history
has again shown that it is much easier to crush combatants with superior
military force than to genuinely ‘pacify’ a region by winning over the local
populations.
Secondly, Cicero’s insistence that Pompey combined outstanding virtus
in the traditional sense of martial prowess with ethical integrity, social
humility, and overall moderation was bound to assuage fears that he

would turn into a second Sulla: someone known for his temperantia would
not make an immoderate grab for absolute power in Rome like the former
dictator, surely? (Whether Pompey actually possessed the qualities Cicero
here ascribes to him is of secondary importance for the rhetorical agenda of
the speech: but it is an interesting question for you to pursue and debate.)
16 I ngenium (which is something like ‘innate talent’ and does not presuppose a wider social
context) does not quite fit in with the others: for a possible explanation why Cicero
included it in the list see our commentary on § 42.
And finally, the emphasis on ‘soft’ qualities that are equally desirable in
the sphere of warfare (militiae) as they are at home in the sphere of domestic
politics (domi) enables Cicero to outline a portfolio of virtutes, to which
he too can stake a claim, as well as coming across as a wised-up political
analyst. With the second set, he partially assimilates his summus imperator
(‘the perfect general’) to the summus orator (‘the perfect orator/statesman’),
who was – as he obliquely hinted at in the opening paragraph of the speech
– none other than himself. This crafty scheme of self-promotion, which
enables Cicero to bask in Pompey’s reflected glory (and, conversely, make
Pompey beholden to a set of excellences Cicero himself held dear), comes
out most forcefully in § 42, where Cicero claims that dicendi gravitas et copia
(‘weighty and abundantly eloquent oratory’) possesses quaedam dignitas
imperatoria (‘a certain dignity characteristic of a general’). While ostensibly
claiming this quality for Pompey, no-one had a greater gift for weighty and
abundantly eloquent oratory than Marcus Tullius Cicero. Put differently,
as with so many definitions of virtus that of Cicero, too, is at least in part a
mirror image of the author and certainly branded as his design.
Auctoritas (§§ 43-46)

Let’s start with an attempt at definition: ‘Some exceptions notwithstanding,
auctoritas in Roman Republican usage denoted a socially legitimized
power that did not amount to binding commands and did not rely on
means of enforcement. It presumed a likely obedience to social superiors
(or acknowledged experts) in a society that presupposed a hierarchical
order in all its segments, an obedience that emanated from the bottom-
up.’17 That’s quite a mouthful – and more a gloss than a definition. But the
Greek historiographer Cassius Dio, for one, would have appreciated the
difficulty of pinning down auctoritas more precisely. He encountered the

same quandary upon reporting that the Augustan senate, when a poorly
attended session was not quorate to pass a piece of legislation, would state
its opinion in what he terms ‘an act of auctoritas’ (expressing a senatorial
preference that carries the weight of the prestige attached to this particular
body but was not legally binding, in short: ‘an ineffective resolution’).18
17 N ippel (2007) 27.

18 Balsdon (1951) 43.
Writing in his native tongue, he has to concede that Greek lacks a term to
render auctoritas adequately (55.3.4-5):
ἐβουλεύοντο μὲν καὶ ἥ γε γνώμη συνεγράφετο, οὐ μέντοι καὶ τέλος τι ὡς

κεκυρωμένη ἐλάμβανεν, ἀλλὰ αὐκτώριτας ἐγίγνετο, ὅπως φανερὸν τὸ
βούλημα αὐτῶν ᾖ. τοιοῦτον γάρ τι ἡ δύναμις τοῦ ὀνόματος τούτου δηλοῖ·
ἑλληνίσαι γὰρ αὐτὸ καθάπαξ ἀδύνατόν ἐστι.
[... the senators would proceed with their deliberations and their decision
would be recorded, though it would not go into effect as if regularly passed,
but instead, their action was what was termed auctoritas, the purpose of
which was to make known their will. For such is the general force of this
word; to translate it into Greek by a term that will always be applicable is
impossible.]
Dio is right. His inability to translate auctoritas is a symptom of the fact that
Greek and Roman culture evolved quite distinct vocabularies and ways of
thinking about the phenomenon that we would refer to as ‘power’ – which
we may loosely define, for present purposes, as ‘the (value-neutral) ability to
impose one’s will in a given situation’. Interestingly enough, Ulrich Gotter has
argued that just as Greek has no straightforward lexical equivalent for Latin
auctoritas, Latin (unlike Greek) has no straightforward lexical equivalent to
English ‘power’ (or the equivalent Greek terms archê and kratos).19 Surveying
the range of terms to do with power – in the main: potestas (‘a socially or
institutionally sanctioned form of power that attached to social roles (such
as the pater familias) and public offices’), imperium (‘the right to issue orders
that attached to certain public offices’), auspicium (‘the right to consult the
will of the gods that attached to certain public offices’), auctoritas (‘prestige
derived from past achievements’), dignitas (‘social rank and standing’), opes
(‘unsanctioned means to impose one’s will on others’), potentia (‘unsanctioned
means to impose one’s will on others’), and vis (‘illegitimate use of force’) –
he notes that none of them signifies ‘power’ in the abstract, general sense of
the English word (or archê and kratos in Greek):
19 T he Greek terms have continued to define the way Western culture understands and
categorizes political systems: they are part of mon-archy = ‘power’ (-archy from archê)
is in the hands of ‘one’ (monos in Greek); aristo-cracy = power (-cracy from kratos) is in
the hands of ‘the best’ (aristoi in Greek); or demo-cracy = power (-cracy from kratos) is in
the hands of the people (demos in Greek). Question: in whose hands does power lie in a
‘republic’ (from Latin res publica = ‘the public thing’, ‘civic affairs’)?
all of these notions were deeply rooted in a normative discourse. Generally

speaking, they can be divided into acceptable and unacceptable forms of
asserting one’s will. It is true that potentia, opes, and vis are as unspecific
as equivalent Greek terms. But they all carry highly negative connotations,
implying as they do the irregular or illegitimate potential for, or assertion of,
power. The other terms refer to legitimate forms of commanding or enforcing
obedience and, in principle, can be reduced to the complementary pair of
potestas and auctoritas. Dignitas provided auctoritas with legitimacy. And
imperium and auspicium were specifications of potestas. The semantic range
of neither potestas nor auctoritas is sufficiently abstract and general to render
adequately any of the Greek terms for power.20
These observations deserve pondering in their own right, not least because
the Greek and Roman ways of thinking about and conceptualizing power
have left such a deep imprint on Western thought more generally, in the
wider context of the classical tradition.21 And they also offer an excellent,
broader frame for a more specific discussion of auctoritas and its place
within Rome’s political culture.
The centre of auctoritas in republican Rome was the senate – a body
consisting of former office-holders (i.e. former holders of public potestas),
who here brought to bear their collected experience and wisdom on public
affairs, especially those to do with international diplomacy or warfare. The
senate had no executive powers (they relied on magistrates to enact their
advice or recommendations) or legislative rights (the privilege to pass
laws rested with the people). And yet, they were a significant, at times
the significant, force in the administration of the res publica, especially
when it stood more or less united – owing to the prestige and respect they
commanded, in short because of their collective auctoritas (as well as, of
course, other sources of influence such as social networks and wealth). ‘In
most cases ... auctoritas senatûs ... meant that the magistrates were supposed
to present all issues of public importance to the senate and then follow
the advice given to them by the senate. It is impossible to define whether
this advice was binding in a de iure or a de facto sense... Or, as Mommsen
put it: “auctoritas as a term which evades any strict definition corresponds
to the senate’s powerful position which is very effective on the one hand
20 G otter (2008) 199; acceptable, unacceptable, irregular, illegitimate, and legitimate are our
italics to help underscore the point that none of the Latin terms captures the abstract,
value-neutral sense of ‘power’ in English or archê and kratos in Greek.
21 See Silk, Gildenhard and Barrow (2014), especially § 26 (‘Forms of Government’).
but cannot be defined in legal terms on the other hand. Auctoritas is more
advice than command but it is advice that one cannot properly avoid”.’22
In his philosophical (!) writings, Cicero too identified the senate as the
principal ‘site’ of auctoritas in Roman politics. In the ‘balanced’ constitution
he outlines in the de Re Publica (‘On the Commonwealth’), written in the late
50s, the magistrates had potestas, the people represented libertas (‘liberty’),
and the senate possessed auctoritas.23 Likewise in the ideal constitution he
outlines in the subsequent de Legibus (‘On the Laws’), where he specifies
that potestas ought to lie ‘with the people’ (in populo) and auctoritas ‘with
the senate’ (in senatu).24
The senate could exercise its auctoritas as a collective best when it stood
united. That was not the case with the lex Manilia. Some distinguished
senators, such as Quintus Hortensius and Quintus Catulus, former consuls
both and hence beacons of auctoritas, opposed the bill. As a counterweight,
Cicero calls upon the auctoritas of those senators who supported the
legislation (§ 68):
quod si auctoritatibus hanc causam, Quirites, confirmandam putatis, est

vobis auctor vir bellorum omnium maximarumque rerum peritissimus, P.
Servilius, cuius tantae res gestae terra marique exstiterunt ut, cum de bello
deliberetis, auctor vobis gravior esse nemo debeat; est C. Curio, summis
vestris beneficiis maximisque rebus gestis, summo ingenio et prudentia
praeditus, est Cn. Lentulus in quo omnes pro amplissimis vestris honoribus
summum consilium, summam gravitatem esse cognovistis, est C. Cassius,
integritate, veritate, constantia singulari. qua re videte horumne auctoritatibus
illorum orationi qui dissentiunt respondere posse videamur.
[And if you think that our side of the argument, citizens, should be confirmed
by authorities, you have the authority of Publius Servilius, a man of the
greatest skill in all wars, and in affairs of the greatest importance, who has
performed such mighty achievements by land and sea, that, when you are
deliberating about war, no one’s authority ought to have more weight with
you. You have the authority of Caius Curio, a man who has received great
kindnesses from you, who has performed great exploits, who is endowed
with the highest abilities and wisdom; and of Cnaeus Lentulus, in whom all
of you know there is (as, indeed, there ought to be from the ample honours
which you have heaped upon him) the most eminent wisdom, and the
22 N ippel (2007) 18. The concluding reference is to Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, vol.
III/2, 1034.
23 See de Re Publica 2.57.
24 d e Legibus 3.28.
greatest dignity of character; and of Caius Cassius, a man of extraordinary

integrity, and valour, and virtue. Consider, therefore, whether we do not
seem by the authority of these men to give a sufficient answer to the speeches
of those men who differ from us.]
But this is not the only way in which auctoritas figures in the pro lege Manilia.
At the beginning of the speech, Cicero identifies the people (!) as the
ultimate source of auctoritas in Roman politics – right in the teeth of his own
constitutional theory! Cicero starts by saying that he did not dare to intrude
upon the authority of this place (huius auctoritatem loci) until he had honed his
eloquence to perfection (§ 1). He follows this by acknowledging that his
efforts in the law courts have received their most honourable reward in the
people’s approbation (ex vestro iudicio), with his election to the praetorship (§
2). This serves him as point of departure for some more general statements
about the reciprocity between magistrates and the people (§ 2):
Nam cum propter dilationem comitiorum ter praetor primus centuriis

cunctis renuntiatus sum, facile intellexi, Quirites, et quid de me iudicaretis, et
quid aliis praescriberetis. Nunc cum et auctoritatis in me tantum sit, quantum
vos honoribus mandandis esse voluistis, et ad agendum facultatis tantum,
quantum homini vigilanti ex forensi usu prope cotidiana dicendi exercitatio
potuit adferre, certe et si quid auctoritatis in me est, apud eos utar qui eam mihi
dederunt, et si quid in dicendo consequi possum, eis ostendam potissimum,
qui ei quoque rei fructum suo iudicio tribuendum esse duxerunt.
[For when, on account of the adjournment of the comitia, I was three times
elected the first praetor by all the centuries, I easily perceived, O Romans,
what your opinion of me was (quid de me iudicaretis), and what conduct you
enjoined to others. Now, when there is that authority in me which you,
by conferring public offices on me (nunc cum et auctoritatis in me tantum
sit, quantum vos honoribus mandandis esse voluistis), have chosen that there
should be, and all that facility in pleading which almost daily practice in
speaking can give a vigilant man who has habituated himself to the forum,
at all events, if I have any authority (certe et si quid auctoritatis in me est), I
will employ it before those who have given it to me (apud eos utar qui eam
mihi dederunt); and if I can accomplish anything by speaking, I will display
it to those men above all others, who have thought fit, by their decision (suo
iudicio), to confer honours on that qualification.]
Here Cicero identifies the decision or approval (iudicium, iudicare) of the

Roman people, who voted him into public office, as the (one and only)
source of his auctoritas – and endows the place itself where magistrates
interact with the citizen body with ‘authority’ (auctoritas). This is curious:
technically speaking, his election to the praetorship has given him potestas
(‘power associated with public office’), not auctoritas. So what is going
on here? The solution to the riddle can be found in Cicero’s portrait of
the perfect general – one of whose four principal hallmarks is precisely
auctoritas. And in § 43 Cicero reiterates the idea that the ultimate source
of auctoritas is the people – though now with reference to Pompey: the
‘judgements’ of the Roman people, he claims, i.e. their decisions to vote
Pompey into office or grant him extraordinary commands, represent
Pompey’s greatest source of auctoritas; and he leaves no doubt that Pompey
will honour this investment with extraordinary service on behalf of the
people. By some minor conceptual fiddling at the outset of the speech,
where he uses auctoritas instead of potestas (and thereby transfers a quality
conventionally associated with the senate to the people), Cicero manages
to set up a triangular relationship between Pompey, the perfect general
(and his auctoritas), himself, the perfect orator (and his self-proclaimed
auctoritas), and his audience, the Roman people (according to the Cicero of
the pro lege Manilia, the ultimate source of any auctoritas).25
Still, the most graphic image of auctoritas in the speech is not the auctoritas
of the people (despite Cicero’s conceptual alchemy), or that of individual
senators (let alone the senate as a whole) but that of the perfect military
commander and hence of Pompey. As §§ 43-46 of the set text suggests, it
was enormous – and arguably incompatible with the central importance
of senatorial auctoritas, which was designed to envelop short-term elected
officials after their year in office: the key constraint of a club with life-
time membership with strict rules for rising up the ranks ‘in house’ – all
of which Pompey bypassed with supreme sangfroid in his rise to the top
(see our commentary on § 28). In this context, you may wish to chew over
what Augustus said in the Res Gestae Divi Augusti (‘The Deeds of the Divine
Augustus’): once he had become princeps in 27 BC, he surpassed everyone

in auctoritas, even though the potestas attached to the magistracies he held
did not exceed that of his colleagues in office: post id tempus auctoritate
omnibus praestiti, potestatis autem nihilo amplius habui quam ceteri qui mihi
25 T
he insistence on the people as the ultimate source of prestige, and on the obligation
of service Cicero feels he has incurred by winning a public election, fits into his self-
promotion as a homo novus (‘a new man’ without any consuls in his lineage). Unlike
the ‘arrogant’ established senatorial families, he does not consider election to high
public office as part of his birthright; rather, he presents success at election as grounded
entirely in the judgement of the people of Rome, who, with their votes, express approval
for merit.
quoque in magistratu conlegae fuerunt (34.3).26 This raises the question: what
are the conditions in which auctoritas (the prestige and respect ascribed
to an individual to the point that one follows him willingly) turns into a
proto-autocratic form of power?
Felicitas (§§ 47-48)

The fourth quality of Cicero’s portrait of the perfect general is felicitas,
which can be glossed with ‘divinely sponsored success’. To be sure, along
with the tail end of the section on auctoritas Cicero’s treatment of felicitas has
not made it into the set text. Yet to exclude it from consideration entirely
carries risk. The effect on your understanding of Cicero’s agenda would
in all likelihood resemble the attempt to sit on a four-legged chair from
which one leg has been removed: it’s bound to be shaky. Cicero placed
felicitas in the last, climactic position for a reason. If scientia militaris and
virtus are qualities very much focused on the individual (his biography/
education, his personal talents), the notion of auctoritas presupposed a
wider socio-political context; felicitas, in turn, widens the horizon still
further: as divinely sponsored luck/success, it implies a supernatural frame
of reference. Cicero thus proceeds from individual to community to the
world at large.
Now public discourse in many, if not most societies (including
postmodern ones, such as our own) often takes it for granted that one or more
supernatural beings exist, are extraordinarily powerful (if not omnipotent),
and show an interest in human affairs.27 As Simon Jenkins noted not too
long ago in The Guardian: ‘Religious institutions are manifestly alive and
kicking in both national and international politics. World leaders, even
democrats such as Tony Blair and George Bush, appeal to supernatural
entities to validate their politics.’28 Republican Rome was no exception:

references to the gods are standard in Roman oratory, and prayers
frequent. The term orator itself has religious connotations: its etymological
affinity with orare (to pray) situates the speaker and his discourse within
a supernatural context.29 The platform from which members of the ruling
26 F or Augustus and auctoritas see Galinsky (1996), Chapter 1: ‘A Principal Concept:

Auctoritas’.
27 The following is based on Gildenhard (2011) 266-67.
28 Friday June 30, 2006, 34.
29 See Pina Polo (1996) 19, as well as, on the semantics of oratio more generally, Gavoille
(2007).
elite addressed the populace during public assemblies was a sacred space;30
and the senate frequently met in temples. In Cicero’s speeches, too, the
gods figure prominently. Invocations of the di immortales regularly occur
at charged moments of pathos or outrage; numerous orations of his begin
or end in prayers; and strategic oaths underscore his truthfulness or non-
partisan devotion to the good of the commonwealth.
Like all belief-systems, Rome’s civic religion, i.e. the religious beliefs
and practices that formed an integral part of Roman politics and had
co-evolved with the political culture of the res publica, had certain
preferences: it endorsed some ways of configuring the divine sphere and
frowned on others. The area of most concern to us here is the question
to what extent a human being could resemble, perhaps even turn into, a
god: any such ‘boundary crossing’ was irreconcilable with the principle of
oligarchic equality that underwrote the republican tradition of senatorial
government. Republican Rome did not even have a cult for Romulus, the
city’s founder, and the first time a human being underwent deification
after his death (as happened to Julius Caesar), the res publica was well on
its way to becoming a monarchy.
Rome’s civic religion, then, maintained a strict divide between the
human and the divine. Attempts at crossing the boundary, in whatever form,
while feasible in theory (there existed, in principle, no religious objections
to humans becoming gods: in literary texts, it happened all the time), were
politically incorrect moves in the field of power.31 Still, for outstanding
aristocrats, to tiptoe across, or, as the case may be, boldly step over the
dividing line of human and divine or to claim a special relationship with
a supernatural being or, more generally, the supernatural sphere formed
tempting means of self-promotion during the last centuries of the republic.
Inspiration came from the East, in both theory and practice. Poets and
other litterateurs cultivated a variety of Greek literary genres that explored

different forms in which humans could become ‘godlike’, including
outright apotheosis. In the context of imperial expansion, the Romans also
encountered the cults that bestowed religious honours upon living rulers –
a practice that had started to proliferate in the wake of Alexander the Great.32
t Man. 70, for instance, Cicero calls on those gods, qui huic loco temploque praesident
30 A
(‘who guard this sacred place’).
31 Feeney (1998) 108-10.
32 Habicht (1970), Price (1984), Badian (1996), Mikalson (1998) (esp. ch. 3: ‘Twenty years of
the divine Demetrios Poliorcetes’), Chaniotis (2003). Flower (2006) 31-4 offers a useful
reminder that the transition from deified human to disgraced dead could be a quick one.
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had much use for honeymooning, but felt full of business.
"We had a carriage to ourselves by the kindness of the guard—a

Barnstaple man. And we talked. And when I got out of the train at Exeter, I
left her; and I've never seen her again and never shall. She was a stranger
woman to me for evermore."
He was silent for a time, but Dinah said nothing.
"It was her work, not mine. She'd got a dim sense of what she owed me,
I suppose, or else a fear of something. Yet, looking back, I often wondered
she troubled to tell me the truth, for she knew well enough I was much too
inexperienced and ignorant to have found it out. She might have lied.
Perhaps it was a case where a lie would have been best—if a lie's ever best.
Anyway it's to her credit, I suppose, that she told me. Not that she would
have done so if she'd known how I should take it. She reminded me of her
nest-egg and how I'd asked her how she came by it, and how she'd said an
uncle left it to her under his will. 'That's not true,' she said to me. 'And I
don't want to begin our married life with a secret between us, specially as it
happens to be such a trifle. I dare say some fools would pull a long face,'
she said, 'but you ain't that sort, else you'd never have fallen in love with
me.' Then she told me that for two years she'd been the mistress of a
gentleman at Bristol—a rich, educated man in business there. He'd kept her
till he was going to be married, and they parted very good friends and he
gave her a thousand pounds. He'd used her very well indeed and never
talked any nonsense about marrying her, or anything like that. It was just a
bargain, and he had what he wanted and so had she. Then she bent across
the carriage and put her arms round my neck and kissed me. But she kissed
a stone. I kept my head. I didn't go mad. I didn't curse or let on.
"I put her arms off me and bade her sit down and let me think; and all
the passion I felt against her kept inside me. I was man enough for that. She
looked a pretty thing that day. In pink she was, and if ever a man could
swear he looked at a virgin, he might have sworn it afore her grey eyes.
"I told her it was all up; and she kept her nerve too. A funny sort of
scene for any onlooker, to watch a newly-married man and woman starting
on their honeymoon and lost to all but a future bargain. Guard looked in and
had a laugh sometimes when the train stopped, and we ruled our faces and
grinned back at him.
"She began by trying hard to change me. She poured out a flood of
reasons; she used her quick brains as she'd never used them afore. But she
kept as keen and cool as a dealer to market, and when she found I wasn't
going on with it, she bided still a bit and then asked me what I was going to
do.
"That I couldn't tell her for the minute. 'Us'll begin at the beginning,' I
said, 'and have every step clear. You've got my name now, and you're my
wife in the law, and you've got your rights. And I shan't come between you
and them. But my love for you is dead. I don't hate you, because, I suppose,
women are mostly built like you and I won't waste my strength hating you.
You've gone. You're less to me now than the trees passing the window.
You'll live your life and I'll live mine,' I said to her; 'but you're outside mine
in future and I'm outside yours.'
"'That can't be,' she said. 'I've got a claim, and if you turn me down,
though I pray to God you won't—but if you do, you've got to think of my
future as well as your own.' I granted that and promised her she need not
trouble for herself. Being what I am, for good or evil, I saw very quick this
blow would fall on me, not her. She wouldn't miss me so long as everything
else was all right, and my feelings were such that I wasn't particular mindful
of myself, or my ruined hopes at that minute. I got a sudden, fierce longing
to cut a loss and be out of it. And that first driving impulse in me—to get
away from her and breathe clean air—stuck to me after twenty-four hours
had passed. Once knowing what she'd been, my love for her went out like a
candle. That may be curious, but so it was. I didn't fight myself over it, or
weaken, or hunger for her back. Never once did I. She was gone and
couldn't have been more gone if she'd dropped dead at my feet. All my
passion was a passion to get out of her sight.
"She tried with every bit of her cleverness to change me. Yes, she tried
hard, and I saw the wonder of her brains as I'd never even yet seen them.
She made a lot clear. She scorned the thing we call sin. She said to give a
man what she'd given was no more than to give another woman's baby a
drink from her breast if it was thirsty. She talked like that. She said she
never loved the man as she loved me, and she prayed very earnest indeed
for me to take a higher line and not be paltry. But it was all wind in the trees
for me and didn't shake me by a hair."
He stopped for a moment and Dinah asked him a question. She had
followed him word by word, her mouth open, her eyes fixed upon his face.
"If she'd told you before instead of after, would it have made a
difference?"
"Yes, it would," he said. "God's my judge, it would have made all the
difference between wanting her and loathing her. I'm the sort of man that
could no more have brooked it than I'd willingly touch a foul thing. That
may be silliness and a narrow understanding of life. Where women are
concerned, I may have wanted better bread than is made of wheat—I don't
know and I don't care; but that's me. And nothing could change me. She
tried hard enough—part for my own sake, I do believe, and part for hers.
She was wonderful and I'll grant it. She knew me well enough to waste not
a minute of her time in coaxing, or tears, or any foolery. She just kept to the
argument as close and keen as a man, and if she was feeling as much as me,
which ain't likely, she certainly didn't show it.
"She said a strange thing—bare-faced it seemed to me then, but I dare

say in strict fairness to her, I might have been shook by it. She reminded me
that it was what that blasted, rich man had taught her had made her what
she was. She said he'd lifted her above her class and woke up her brains and
educated her with books and lessons; and that what had drawn me was just
what she had to thank him for. She said, 'You'd never have looked at me
twice for myself. A pretty face means nothing to you. It was my sharpened
sense took you; and now you turn round and fling me off for just what made
you marry me.' Cunning as a snake she was—the wisdom and the poison
both. Or so it seemed to me. But what she said didn't alter the facts. Nothing
could alter them, and I wasn't built to take any man's leavings.
"She worked at me till we were very nearly to Exeter. Then she stopped
and said it was up to me to say what I intended. And I told her as to that she
needn't fear, because I'd do all that was right, and more. Her talk, you see,
had done this much. It made me understand that from her point of view—
hateful though it was—she had her rights. And so I bade her take her
luggage to one inn and I'd go to another; and next day I wrote to her that
she'd get a letter from me when I'd looked all round and decided what was
proper to do. She left me still hoping; I could see that. But she didn't hope
no more when she got my letter."
"You never went back on it?"
"Only once, for five minutes, that first night in bed, turning over my
future life and hers. For five minutes a thought did creep in my mind, and
for five minutes it stuck. It was such a thought as might have been expected
I dare say—a sort of thought any man might think; but it stank in five
minutes, and I shook it out. And the thought was how would it be if I said to
her she must give up her nest-egg and get rid of it for evermore, and then I
—— But what real difference did that make? None."
"Perhaps she wouldn't have let it go," said Dinah.
He nodded. It was another woman's view.
"Perhaps she wouldn't. She earned it—eh? Anyway the idea was too
dirty for me. Next morning I wrote and said what I was going to do. It was
pretty definite and that was where people said I was mad; but, looking back,
I can swear I'd do pretty much the same again. The thought was to be quick
—quick and away and out of it. Everything I'd done up to then tumbled
down that day. It was all gone together—not only her, but everything. I dare
say that was curious, but that's how I felt. I only asked for the clothes on my
back, and to get away in 'em and never see a bit of the past no more and
begin again."
"You'd feel like that."
"I did. I took a line she couldn't quarrel with. She made a fight; but
business was her god, and though I was a fool in her eyes, that didn't make
her inclined to play the fool. She hadn't to drive a bargain, or any such
thing. I cut the ground from under her feet, threw up the lot, handed her
over the business, lock, stock and barrel, and was gone, like a dead man out
of mind, so soon as I'd signed the proper papers."
"She let you?"
"She couldn't do no otherwise, and as what I planned was well within

her sense of what was right and proper, she made no question. She pointed
out that she'd lost a good bit in any case with a mystery like this hanging
over her; and she also wrote, when all was fixed up, that she hoped I'd live
to change my mind and come back to her and very thankful she would be if
I was to. I dare say she truly thought I would.
"We were in Exeter for a week and came and went from a lawyer's—but
never there together. I ordained to give her what I'd got and leave her to do
as she pleased. She was sorry I saw it like that; but the sense of the woman
never allowed nothing to come between her and reason. The lawyer tried to
change me too. He was a very kindly man. But it went through. She took
over the dairy and carried on my engagements to my aunt, and no doubt
developed the shop same as I meant to. She gave out I'd gone away for a bit
and might be back in a month. I don't suppose anybody ever heard more,
and when I didn't come back, she had a search made for me all very right
and regular; but I'd gone beyond finding, and she carried on; and no doubt
the nine days' wonder died in course of time. Only my aunt knew I'd gone
of my own accord; but why I'd gone, only one creature beside my wife ever
knew; and that was her mother; and I doubt not she sided with her daughter.
I dare say there's a lot more the other side could tell; but I made a clean cut.
I dropped every creature and began again out of their reach. That's the story
of me, Dinah. I've most forgotten many of the details myself now. It's seven
and a half years agone. I saw in a North Devon paper my old aunt was dead,
and so Minnie's free of them payments and standing alone. Half my savings
she had also."
There was silence between them for more than a minute. Then Dinah
spoke, went back to his first word and asked a question.
"D'you call that being married?"
"Yes—that's my marriage. There ain't much more to tell. I was for going
to Canada, and started unknown with fifty pounds of money, which was all
I kept. I was going to get a state-aided passage from London and begin
again out there. It sounds a big thing to fling over the whole of your life,
like as if you was taking off a suit of old clothes; but it didn't seem big to
me then—only natural and proper. I comed even to like it. But chance
willed different, and the accident of meeting a stranger in the train kept me
in England after all. Chance done me a very good turn then. A farmer got in
the train at Taunton and between Taunton and Bath, fate, or what you like to
call it, willed I went to that man. We got talking, and I told him I was going
abroad, being skilful at cows and the butter and milk business. He got
interested at that and reckoned I might be such a man as he needed; but I
said plainly that I was cutting losses, and my past must bide out of sight,
and I'd best to go foreign in my opinion. By that time, however, he'd got a
fancy he'd trust me. He was a very good man and a judge of character,
which most good men are not in my experience. I found after that he was a
rare sort of chap—the best and truest friend to me—such a man as inclined
me slowly to think the better of the world again. He only asked me one
question and that was if, on my honour, I could tell him I'd done no
dishonest or wicked thing from which I was trying to escape. And I swore
by God I had not. He believed me, and when, a day or two later, I told him
the whole story, he didn't say whether in his judgment I'd done right or
wrong, but he granted that I'd done right from my point of view and thought
no worse of me for it. I hesitated a bit at his offer; but I liked him,
somehow, from the first, and I was cruel tired, and the thought of getting to
work right away was good to me. Because I knew by then that there was
nothing like working your fingers to the bone to dull pain of mind and make
you sleep.
"My life with him is another tale. I look back upon it with nothing but
content. I did well by him, and he was as good as a father to me. It's near
eighteen months ago he died, and his two sons carried on. Very nice men,
and they wanted me to stop; but I couldn't bide when the old chap dropped
out. He left me two hundred pounds under his will, Dinah; and his sons
didn't object that I should take it, for they were well-to-do and liked me.
Then I saw Joe's advertisement in the paper and had a fancy to come back
alongside where I was born."
"And Mrs. Maynard never found you?"

"No; but she isn't Mrs. Maynard. Maynard's not my name and Lawrence
ain't my name."
She sighed.
"Man!" she said, "you be sinking and sinking—oh, my God, you be

sinking out of my sight! I thought you was one creature, and now you be
turning into a far-away thing under my eyes."
"I don't feel like that. I'm Lawrence Maynard to myself, Dinah. T'other
be dead and in his grave. My name was Courtier. There's some of the family
about on Dartmoor yet. My great-grandfather was a Frenchman—a soldier
took in the wars more than a hundred year ago. And the moor folk traded at
the war prisons to Princetown, so he got to know a good few at prison
market. Then he was tokened to a farmer's daughter, and after the peace he
married her and stopped in England and started a family."
"What's your other real name then?"
"Gilbert, same as my father."
"Us must be going," she said.
"Shall I tell her to hot some more tea for you?"
"No—I don't want no tea."
He drank his cold cup at a draught and pressed her to eat a little; but she
shook her head.
"I'll see you home by New Bridge and then get up back through the
woods, Dinah."
"I can travel alone."
"No, you mustn't do that."
She said very little during the long tramp through a night-hidden land.
The darkness, the loneliness, the rustle of the last dead leaves and the
murmur of the wind chimed with her thoughts. She seemed hardly
conscious of the man at her side. He strove once or twice to talk, but found
it vain and soon fell into silence. At New Bridge Dinah spoke.
"You'll always be 'Lawrence' to me," she said. "Tell me this. When are
you going to see me again, after I've thought a bit?"
"Like you to want to. We can meet somewhere."
"You love me?"
"Yes; as I never thought I could love anything. But how should you love
me any more?"
She did not answer immediately. For some distance they walked by the
river. Then they reached a fork of the road where their paths divided; for
here Dinah climbed to the left by a steep lane that would bring her to Lower
Town and home, while Maynard must ascend into the woods.
They stopped.
"Will you do this?" she said. "Will you put the story of your life before
Enoch Withycombe?"
"Why, Dinah?"
"To get his opinion on it—all—every bit."
"Yes, if you like."
"I do like. I'm very wishful to know what a man such as him would
say."
"If he's well enough, I'll see him to-morrow. It's been in my mind to tell
him about myself before to-day."
"I wish you had."

"He shall hear it. I set great store by his sense. He might—— Can you
get home from here? I'll come with you if you like."
"No."
"You've forgiven me?"
"I'll think and think. Be there anything to forgive?"
"I don't know. And yet I do. Yes—you think—then you'll find you've
got to forgive me for ever loving you, Dinah."
"You're life—you're life to me," she said. "Don't say small things like
that. I'm only being sorry for all you've had to suffer all these years and
years. I'll go on being sorry for you a long time yet. Then I'll see if I'm
angry with you after. I can only think of one thing at a time."
She tramped up the hill and he stood, until her footfall had ceased. Then
he went his own way and had climbed to within half a mile of Buckland,
when a strange thing happened. He heard the winding of a hunter's horn.
Through the darkness, for all listening ears at Holne or Leusden, Buckland
or the neighbour farms and hillsides to hear, came the melodious note. It
rang out twice, clear and full; and kennelled hounds a mile distant caught it
and bayed across the night—a farewell, good to the heart of Enoch
Withycombe if he had heard them.
CHAPTER XXI
FUNERAL
Enoch Withycombe had always promised to sound his horn again in

sight of his end, and three days after he woke the echoes of the Vale he
died. On the night that his music vibrated over hill and valley for the last
time, Melinda had pushed his chair to the cottage door. When Lawrence
called on the following Sunday afternoon, though he sat for a while beside
his bed, the old hunter had already drifted into a comatose state, and the
story Maynard had hoped to tell was never heard by him.
A bitter grey day dawned for a funeral attended by unusual mourners.

The dead sportsman's master had made a promise and he kept it. Hounds
did not meet that day; but the master, the huntsman and the whipper-in both
clad in pink, and two brace of hounds were at the grave side—a bright flash
of colour in the sombre little crowd that assembled.
Melinda Honeysett and her brother, Jerry, were chief mourners, while
behind them came the fox-hunters; and of those who followed, some took it
amiss to see such an addition to a funeral; while others held it most seemly
and fitting.
Indeed for many days afterwards the question was heavily debated, and
Arthur Chaffe and Ben Bamsey, who were both at the grave side,
considered squire and parson alike to blame for an impropriety; while Joe
Stockman, who came with Susan, Maynard and Thomas Palk, highly
approved of the innovation. John Bamsey and Lawrence were among the
bearers. They had also helped to carry the dead man from his home to the
grave, for it was a walking funeral. Half a dozen private carriages followed
it, and Melinda was bewildered to arrange the many gifts of flowers that
came to her from her father's old friends of the countryside.
"Fox-hunters have long memories seemingly," said Jerry to his sister, as

they read the cards attached to wreath and cross.
After the funeral was ended and when Enoch lay beside his wife, on the
north of the church tower beneath a naked sycamore, it happened that
Maynard found Dinah Waycott beside him in the press of the people. She
had come with the Bamseys and, knowing that he would be there, now
reached his side, bade him "good day," and unseen put a letter into his hand.
For a moment he picked up the thread of their conversation, where they

had left it on the night by Dart River a week before.
"I couldn't tell him—he was too far gone next day," he said quietly,
taking her letter.
"No matter," she answered, and then moved away.
The crowd drifted down the lanes and up the lanes. The men in pink
mounted their horses and rode away with the hounds. Enoch's old master
also departed on horseback, as did a dozen other men and several women.
Soon only Melinda and Jerry were left to see the grave filled in and dispose
the wreaths upon it. Mr. Chaffe kept them company. He cheered them by
saying that never in his long experience, save once, had he known any man
of the people enjoy such splendid and distinguished obsequies.
"A magnificent funeral despite the hounds," he said, "and Buckland did
ought to be proud of it. There was a journalist from a Plymouth newspaper
there, Jerry, so you'll be able to keep a printed history, with all the names,
for future generations of your family to read aloud."
But Jerry was weeping and paid no heed; while his sister also, now that
the strain had passed and the anticlimax come, hid not her tears.
Soosie-Toosie, her father and the two labouring men walked home
together and Joe uttered a vain lament.
"A thousand pities the man's sailor son, Robert, couldn't be there," he
said. "It would have been a fine thing for him to see what his father was
thought of. And he'd have supported Melinda. She stood up very well and
firm; but I know she'll miss him a terrible lot—her occupation gone you
may say; for there's nobody leaves such a gap as an invalid that's called for
your nursing for years. When the place is suddenly emptied of such a one,
you feel as if the bottom was knocked out of your life, same as I did when
my wife went."
Joe was in a mood unusually pensive and his daughter felt anxious. She
tried to rally him, but failed.
"I'm looking forward," he said. "In that great rally of neighbours there
was a lot of old blids from round about—a good few up home eighty years
old I shouldn't wonder; and such was the bitter cold in the churchyard that
you may be certain death was busy sowing his seeds. I hope to God I be all
right, and I thank you for making me put on my heavy clothes, Soosie."
Palk walked behind them and talked fitfully to Maynard.
"'Twill ruin Christmas," said Thomas. "He was a famous man and
there'll be a gloom fall over the place now he's dropped out."
"It won't make any difference," answered the younger.
"It may make a valiant lot of difference, and that nearer home than you
think for," answered Palk.
But Maynard shook his head.
"There's nothing in it. Joe won't offer for her—Mrs. Honeysett—if that's
what you're thinking; and if he did, 'tis doubtful if she'd take him. I've heard
her tell about him to her father."
"And what did she tell?"
"Nothing but good. She knows his worth and all that. But Enoch didn't
set very high store on master. I wondered why sometimes."
"Did you? I lay he knew him better than what you do. And he knew this
—that a man who worked his only child like Stockman works his would
make his wife a proper beast of burden."
"Everybody's selfish. I dare say when the news of the rise reaches us
presently, you'll think better of him."
Then Stockman called Lawrence and Susan fell back to the horseman.
"He wants to tell Maynard about some ideas he's got, and it will distract
his mind to do so," she explained.
"Be master under the weather about Mr. Withycombe, or is he only

pretending?" asked Thomas bluntly.
"He's a very feeling creature is father," answered the woman. "He didn't
care much for poor Mr. Withycombe, and Mr. Withycombe never quite saw
father's good points, like most of the people do; but father's down-daunted
to-day. 'Tis a landmark gone; and death's death; and he's fearful that another
old person here and there may be took presently, along of the cruel cold in
the churchyard."
"The wind curdled down off the Beacon like knives," admitted Palk.
"Mrs. Honeysett kept her face very steady."
"She did. But she's a brave creature."
"She've got the cottage for her life, however."
"Yes. Squire's left it to her for naught, so long as she likes to bide there."
"A deep thought—how long she will bide there."
"Yes, it is. Jerry will be gone, come presently; but she'll have a
neighbour. There's a widow man and his daughter took the cottage—the
haunted house that joins hers. He's a new gardener to Buckland Court and
don't fear ghosts."
"So I heard tell."
They were silent and then Thomas, now on very friendly terms with
Susan, asked a question.
"Will it make a difference to Mr. Stockman, Mrs. Honeysett being set

free of her father, miss?"
"I couldn't tell you, Tom. I've axed myself that question. But I'm not in
father's thoughts."
His caution made him hesitate to speak again, but he knew that another
question would go no farther than his listener.
"And if I may venture to put it, would you like to see him wed, miss?"
Susan slowed her steps that no sound of their voices might reach Joe.
Her eyes were on his back as she answered.
"Yes, I think I would. A wife would add to his peace and comfort."
"She might add to yours."
"She might; but I'm not troubling as to that. Still, if she was a nice
woman, I dare say she would."
"A wife—nice or otherwise—would open your father's eyes," declared

Thomas. "In all respect I say it; but where you be concerned, he's got to
make such a habit of you, and got to take you so terrible much like he takes
his breakfast, or his boots, or any other item of his life, that it would be a
very good thing for his character if he found out what you was."
"He don't undervalue me I hope," answered Susan. "Because a man

don't say much, it don't follow he don't feel much, Thomas."
"But he do undervalue you cruel, and for that reason I'd be very pleased
indeed if he was to get a woman for himself. Because no female he'm likely
to find will show your Christian power of taking everything lying down. In
fact no woman as ever I heard tell about can rise to such heights in that
partickler as you; and your father have got so used to you, like a good pixy
about the place, ready and willing to work night and day; and if he was up
against another woman, he'd very soon have the surprise of his life."
"If a wife was so fond of him as what I am, she'd treat him so faithful as
what I do," argued Soosie-Toosie; but Thomas assured her that she was
mistaken.
"Don't think it," he said. "No wife ever I heard tell about would drudge
for nought same as you. However, I be going beyond my business, and no
doubt you'll tell me so. But 'tis only on your account, I assure you."
"I know it, Tom, and I thank you for your good opinion. But father's
built in a higher mould than you and me. He's born to command, and I'm
born to obey. Us generally do what's easiest, to save trouble; and if he was
to marry again, he'd still be born to command, and any woman, knowing
him well enough to take him, would understand that."
"They might, or they might not," argued Mr. Palk. "When a man goes
courting, he hides a lot in that matter and, strong though the governor may
be, there's women very well able to hold their own against any man born;
and Melindy Honeysett is one. But it may happen. The mills of God may be
grinding for it; and then master would look at you, and the scales would fall
from his eyes I expect."
As soon as he was alone, Lawrence Maynard read the letter from Dinah.
It was the first time he had ever seen her writing, and he found it a large,
free hand with a hopeful slope upwards at the end of each line.
But the note was very brief. She committed herself to no opinions and
only begged Lawrence to come to her in Lizwell Woods, a mile or two from
her home, on the following Sunday afternoon.
"I'll be where the Webburn rivers run together, so soon after three
o'clock as I may," she said.
CHAPTER XXII
AT WATERSMEET
Dinah was first at the tryst and doubted not that Maynard would come.
The lonely, naked woods swept round her and she sat on a fallen trunk not
far from where the Webburn sisters shot the grey forest with light and
foamed together beneath the feet of trees. The day was dull and windy with
rain promised from the south. Withered beech leaves whirled about Dinah's
feet in little eddies, then rushed and huddled away together in hurtling
companies—with a sound like a kettle boiling over, thought Dinah. Her
mind was not wholly upon Maynard, for Joe Stockman's gloomy prophecy
had come true in one case and Mr. Bamsey was indisposed from a chill
caught at the funeral. As yet they were not concerned for him; but he had
grown somewhat worse since the preceding day and Faith had sent Jane to
fetch the doctor. Jane never declined a commission that would take her into
Ashburton.
A smudge of black appeared in the woods and Maynard stood on the

east bank of the river. Dinah rose and waved to him; then he ascended the
stream until a place for crossing appeared. Here he leapt from stone to stone
and was soon beside her. They wandered away and he found a spot
presently, where the ground was dry with fallen needles from a pine above
it.
"Sit here," he said, "a little while."
She had not spoken till now, save to tell him her foster-father was ill.
But when they sat side by side, with the bole of the great pine behind them
and its lower boughs sweeping about them to the ground, she answered all
the questions he wanted to put in one swift action. For a moment she looked
at him and her face glowed; and then she put her arms round his neck and
kissed him.
"Dinah—d'you mean it?" he said. "Oh, d'you mean all that?"

"I want you; I can't live my life without you, Lawrence."
"After what I've told you?"
His arms were round her now and he had paid her fiercely for her kiss.
"What is marriage? I've been puzzling about it. I've been puzzling about
it for years, for it seems years since you told me you was married. And if
you knew what I'd been feeling, or how I fought not to kiss you at the
funeral, you'd be sorry for me. But you've only been sorry for yourself I
expect, you selfish man."
He did not answer. He had released her, but was still holding one of her
hands.
"I'd make you a good wife, Lawrence," she said.
"By God you would!"
"And what is marriage then? Why d'you tell me you're married to her—
any more than I'm married to John Bamsey—or anybody?"
"Marriage is a matter of law, and a man can only marry one wife."
"And what's a wife then?"
"The woman you are married to—she that's got your name."
"Would you say your wife was married?"
"Certainly she is."
"A widow then?"
"Not a widow if her husband is alive."
"Then why d'you say that Gilbert Courtier died when Lawrence
Maynard came to life? If Gilbert Courtier's dead, then his wife is a widow."
Her literal interpretation was not a jest. He perceived that Dinah
presented no playful mood. She was arguing as though concerned with
facts, and not recognising any figurative significance in what he had told
her about himself. For a moment, however, he could hardly believe she was
in earnest.
"If it was as easy as that," he said.
"How d'you feel to it then?"
"I feel to it as you do, with all my heart. God knows what I want—one
thing afore all things and above all things: and that's to have you for my
own—my own. And whether I can, or can't, my own you will be from this
hour, since you want to be my own, Dinah."
"And I will have it so. You're my life now—everything."
"But you can't make me less than I am. It's no good saying that Gilbert
Courtier's dead; and though I change my name for my own comfort, that's
not to change it against the facts."
"D'you want to go back to it then?"
"Not I. I'll never go back, and 'tis no odds to me what I'm called; but a
wife's a wife, and my wife must stand safe within the law—for her own
safety—and her husband's honour."
She stared at this.
"D'you feel that?"
"I do, Dinah."
"That things like safety, or the law, matter?"
"To you—not to me."
"What do I know about the law—or care? D'you think I'm a coward?
You've only got one name for me, and ban't the name I love best in the
world good enough? Who else matters to you, if you're Lawrence Maynard
to me? And what else matters to you if I love you? Words! What are words
alongside the things they stand for? I want you, same as you want me. And
whose honour's hurt?"
"You feel all that?"
"Not if you don't. But you do."
His own standards failed for the time and he said somewhat more than
he meant. Such love as Dinah's, such certainty as Dinah's, made doubt, built
on old inherited instincts, look almost contemptible. Trouble of old had
shaken these deep foundations; now happiness and pride at his splendid
achievement similarly shook them.
"Yes I do," he said. "There's naught else on God's earth; I'd let all go
down the wind afore I'd lose what I've won. I can keep off words as easy as
you; and the word that would come between me and such love as I've got
for you was never spoke and never will be. Words are dust and can go to the
dust. But——"
He had recollected a fact beyond any power of words to annul.
"There's a hard and fast reality, Dinah, and we've got to take it into
account, for it can't be argued down, or thought away."
"Then let it go—same as everything else have got to go. There's only
one thing matters, I tell you, and we feel the same about it. Love's far too
strong for all other realities, Lawrence. There's only one reality: that you
and me are going to live together all our lives. What fact can stand against
that? If facts were as big as the Beacon, they're naught against that fact. You
be my own and I'm your own, and what else signifies?"
"You make me feel small," he said, "and love so big as that would make
any man feel small, I reckon. And for the minute I'll put away the ways and
means and machinery, that always have to be set running when a man wants
to wed a woman."
"What's machinery to us? We didn't love each other by machinery and
us shan't wed by machinery."
"Us can't wed without machinery."
"You say that! Ban't us wed a'ready? Be the rest of it half so fine as
what brought us together, and made us know that our lives couldn't be lived
apart? Ban't you wed to me, Lawrence?"
"I am," he said, "and only death will end it. But there's more than that
for you; and so there's got to be more for me. And if I'm going to be small
now and talk small, it's for you I do, not for myself. You're a sacred thing to
me and holy evermore mind."
"And you be sacred to me," she said. "You've made all men sacred and
holy to me; and you've made me feel different to the least of 'em, because
they be built on the same pattern as you. I swear I feel kinder and better to
everybody on earth since I know you loved me so true."
"It's this, then—a bit of the past. When I first came here I felt, somehow,
that in Stockman I'd had the good luck to hit on just such another as my old
master up country. He seemed to share the same large outlook and
understanding, and I found him a man so friendly and charitable with his
neighbours that I told him about myself, just like I told the other; and he
was just the same about it—generous and understanding. In fact, he went
further than my old master, and agreed with me right through, and said it
was a very manly thing to have done, and that if more people had the pluck
to cut a loss, the world would go smoother. He praised me for what I'd
done, and I remember what he said. He said, 'To let sleeping dogs lie be a
very wise rule; and to let sleeping bitches lie be still wiser.' But I know a lot
more about Joe Stockman now than I did then; and though I've got no
quarrel with him, yet, if the time was to come again, I wouldn't tell him.
He'd never tell again, or anything like that; but he knows it, and if I was to
say to him that I held I wasn't married and wanted another, he'd laugh at
me."
Dinah admitted that Mr. Stockman was a serious difficulty.

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This is the fourth volume of the Classics Textbooks series:

ISSN: 2054-2437 (Print)

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-077-2

ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-078-9

1. Preface and acknowledgements 1

2. Introduction: why does the set text matter? 5

3. Latin text with study questions and vocabulary aid 31

Saint Pompey (§41) 62

5. Further resources 225

Charlotte Frude, Grace Miller, Heather Shorthouse, and Samantha Tarling

The commentary, then, is a work of multiple authorship. I personally

Ingo Gildenhard, King’s College Cambridge

initial support of the young Octavian and his uncompromising stance

of another extraordinary command, proposed by the tribune Gabinius?

Quamquam mihi semper frequens conspectus vester multo iucundissimus,

auctoritatem loci attingere auderem statueremque nihil huc nisi perfectum

[Although it has at all times given me a special pleasure to behold your

The moment is dramatic: Cicero, the acknowledged ‘king of the courts’

audience with an elaborate captatio benevolentiae. He claims that, for him,

the imperator (‘general’)!

perfect oratory, falling below Ciceronian standards of ingenium, labor (cf.

Is Cicero protesting too much? Is he trying to pre-empt the impression that

a mode of panegyric elevation of a single individual difficult to reconcile

Paragraphs Part of the oration

The structure is straightforward. Cicero starts with a few words by way of

8 For a more detailed outline see MacKendrick (1995) 3-6.

respect (auctoritas), and divinely sponsored success (felicitas). Let’s take a

Scientia militaris (§ 28)

9 T here is no evidence that the two met then and there.

One peculiar feature of Cicero’s praise of Pompey’s unmatched scientia

Virtus (§§ 29-42)

meanings came in handy: since, by etymological definition, each Roman

humility, and overall moderation was bound to assuage fears that he

Auctoritas (§§ 43-46)

difficulty of pinning down auctoritas more precisely. He encountered the

17 N ippel (2007) 27.

ἐβουλεύοντο μὲν καὶ ἥ γε γνώμη συνεγράφετο, οὐ μέντοι καὶ τέλος τι ὡς

all of these notions were deeply rooted in a normative discourse. Generally

quod si auctoritatibus hanc causam, Quirites, confirmandam putatis, est

greatest dignity of character; and of Caius Cassius, a man of extraordinary

Nam cum propter dilationem comitiorum ter praetor primus centuriis

Here Cicero identifies the decision or approval (iudicium, iudicare) of the

Augustus’): once he had become princeps in 27 BC, he surpassed everyone

8 For a more detailed outline see MacKendrick (1995) 3-6.

9 T here is no evidence that the two met then and there.

17 N ippel (2007) 27.

26 F or Augustus and auctoritas see Galinsky (1996), Chapter 1: ‘A Principal Concept: