This Was Cicero

IF politicians have a way of looking askance at newspapers, editors occasionally contemplate politics with a jaundiced eye. Mr. Haskell, who for a lifetime has been admirably identified with the Kansas City Star, sees the politicians of history playing an unchanging part. In his theory the elements of politics are permanent, the combinations forever in flux. Business is always cannily appreciative of order; men of property will ever defend their ramparts; within the masses abides the eternal sense of the advantages of change. Deals and counter-deals between the three are constantly upsetting the equilibrium of society. So it was in the beginning, is now, and, apparently, ever shall be.

Mr. Haskell’s complex and accurate understanding of American politics gives virility and vividness to his conception of old Rome. He sees Cicero clearly. The new man from Arpinum comes to town. He rises to unquestioned supremacy at the bar, crashes the gate of the Four Hundred, establishes himself on Nob Hill, deals with the bosses in the interest of conservation and cautious reform. Then the kindly, cultivated, and cautious amateur, gifted beyond all men with learning and eloquence, is swept into the torrential politics of the times and sinks into the maelstrom.

The story is picturesquely told in the cant of our day. The point of view is fresh and invigorating. Cataline (in the teeth of all the Schools) is a commonplace politician, running true to form; the rakehell, Clodius, is a gangster of the Five Points; Crassus, an easy boss; Atticus, to whom the world owes an endless debt for filing Cicero’s letters, is a wise guy who keeps out of the way and pushes his business deals to the point of offending the politicos. The portrait of Caesar is exceptionally interesting: the man of genius looking far down the centuries but never for a moment neglecting the instant need of things. Pompey is his foil, capable but indolent, the arrivé who, once made, becomes the stereotyped pattern of the Stuffed Shirt,

Some of us will find especial fascination in the picture of Cicero’s personal life: his pompous vanity; his love of comfort, which never saps his passion for work; his gentle patriotism; his adoration of his accomplished daughter, sold in marriage to the infamous Dolabella; his fraternal affection for Quintus Cicero, and his lifelong ties to Atticus, brother of his heart.

“A statesman,” remarked Tom Reed, “is a dead politician.” Among living politicians is there really no idealism, no inner urge to strike and strike again for conscience? In this reviewer’s youth, Grover Cleveland answered this question. But Mr. Haskell’s laboratory has been city politics with its sewer contractors, its big bosses and little henchmen, its boodle and its graft. Were there not in the Roman Republic, even in the final stage of its corruption, some gleams of noble ends, some ampler realization of the scope and significance of human destiny?

ELLERY SEDGWICK