On His Consulship
De Consulatu Suo
Headnote
De Consulatu Suo was Cicero’s epic poem in three books of hexameter verse, written around 60 BC to celebrate his own consulship of 63 and the suppression of the conspiracy of Catiline. In it he cast the events of that year on the largest possible scale: the prodigies and portents that heralded the crisis, the warnings of the haruspices, the divine machinery by which the plot was at last exposed, and his own central place in the salvation of the state. To set one’s consulship to epic was a striking and immodest ambition, and the poem became notorious in antiquity for precisely that — its unembarrassed self-praise. The single line of fragment 7, with its jingling natam/natam, was mocked by later writers as the very emblem of Ciceronian vanity, and his enemies never tired of quoting it back at him.
Almost nothing of the poem survives. The substantial fragment 2 — some eighty lines in which the Muse Urania reviews the prodigies of 63 BC: the comets and the eclipsed moon, the lightning that struck the Capitol and toppled the bronze she-wolf nursing the twins, the Etruscan seers’ warnings, and the statue of Jupiter re-erected to face the sunrise so that the conspiracy should be brought to light at the very hour of its raising, by the disclosure of the Allobroges — is preserved because Cicero himself quotes it in De Divinatione 1.17–22, where it serves as an illustration of divination. Beyond that, only the two celebrated single lines survive, fragments 6 and 7, handed down by later authors. The standard fragment numbers (here 2, 6, and 7) are retained.
First, Jupiter, kindled with the fire of the upper air,
turns and floods the whole world with his light,
and with his divine mind reaches out to seek the heavens and the lands,
which hold deep within them the senses and the lives of men,
fenced about and shut within the vaults of the eternal sky.
And should you wish to know the motions of the stars
and the courses of the wanderers that are set among the constellations —
which stray only in word and in the false names the Greeks give them,
but in truth are borne along on a fixed glide and through a measured space —
you will see at once that all is marked out by a divine mind.
For first, in your consulship, the swift motions of the stars
and the heavy gatherings of constellations in glittering blaze
you too beheld, when on the Alban mount you purified
the snow-clad summits and with glad milk made offering at the Latin feast:
you saw the comets quivering in their clear blaze;
and you judged that much was set in turmoil by the slaughter of the night,
since the Latin rites fell, near enough, upon an evil season,
when the moon hid her bright face in clotted light
and was suddenly blotted out on the starry night.
And what of the torch of Phoebus, grim herald of war,
which flew toward the great height in a blaze of fire,
making for the steep regions of the sky and its settings?
Or when a citizen, struck by the terrible lightning,
gave up his living eyes under a clear and cloudless sky?
Or when the earth shook itself with its teeming body?
And now by night were seen shapes various and dread
that gave warning of war and of upheavals,
and across the lands many seers poured out their oracles
from frenzied breasts, foretelling grim disasters;
and the things that came to pass at last by their long-prepared descent,
these the father of the gods himself, again and again,
sang from the sky and the earth in lasting and clear signs.
Now what the Lydian seer of the Tyrrhenian race
had once declared, when Torquatus and Cotta were consuls,
all of it fixed your year, gathering it together, brings to its appointed end.
For the father who thunders on high, leaning on starry Olympus,
once made for his own hills and temples
and hurled his fires upon the Capitoline seats.
Then the ancient image of bronze, the venerated work of Natta,
fell, and the laws slipped away from their old sanction,
and the lightning’s blaze destroyed the likenesses of the gods.
Here was the woodland nurse of the Roman name,
the wolf of Mars, who with her swollen teats
washed the small sons born of the seed of Mavors with life-giving dew:
she, when the lightning struck in its flaming blow, fell down
together with the boys, and left the prints of their feet torn from her.
Then who, turning the writings and records of the art,
did not draw forth grim utterances from the Etruscan scrolls?
All of them gave warning of a vast destruction and plague
springing from a high-born line, civil war advancing;
then with unwavering voice they proclaimed the ruin of the laws,
and bade men snatch the temples and the gods, and the city,
from the flames, and dread the horrible carnage and slaughter;
and that these things were held fixed by a grave fate, and grounded fast,
unless first, shaped in beauty, set up on a lofty column,
the sacred image of Jupiter should look toward the bright sunrise:
then it would come to pass that the people and the holy Senate
could discern the hidden plots, if, turned toward the rising of the sun,
the seat of the fathers and the people might see them from there.
This image, long delayed and much postponed,
in your consulship was set at last upon its high seat,
and in the one fixed and appointed hour of its raising
Jupiter from the lofty column was making bright his sceptre,
and the ruin readied for the fatherland by fire and sword
lay open, by the voices of the Allobroges, to the fathers and the people.
Rightly, then, did the men of old, whose records you keep,
who ruled peoples and cities by measure and by virtue,
and rightly too your own forebears, whose piety and faith
stood foremost, and whose wisdom far surpassed all others,
above all reverence the gods in their living power.
These things, indeed, they saw deep down with shrewd care,
the men who held their leisure gladly for becoming studies,
and in the shaded Academy and the gleaming Lyceum
poured out the bright arts of a fertile mind.
From among them, snatched away in the first flower of your youth,
the fatherland set you down in the midst of virtue’s heavy labor.
Yet you, easing your anxious cares with rest,
have given what is free of the fatherland’s claim to study and to us.
turns and floods the whole world with his light,
and with his divine mind reaches out to seek the heavens and the lands,
which hold deep within them the senses and the lives of men,
fenced about and shut within the vaults of the eternal sky.
And should you wish to know the motions of the stars
and the courses of the wanderers that are set among the constellations —
which stray only in word and in the false names the Greeks give them,
but in truth are borne along on a fixed glide and through a measured space —
you will see at once that all is marked out by a divine mind.
For first, in your consulship, the swift motions of the stars
and the heavy gatherings of constellations in glittering blaze
you too beheld, when on the Alban mount you purified
the snow-clad summits and with glad milk made offering at the Latin feast:
you saw the comets quivering in their clear blaze;
and you judged that much was set in turmoil by the slaughter of the night,
since the Latin rites fell, near enough, upon an evil season,
when the moon hid her bright face in clotted light
and was suddenly blotted out on the starry night.
And what of the torch of Phoebus, grim herald of war,
which flew toward the great height in a blaze of fire,
making for the steep regions of the sky and its settings?
Or when a citizen, struck by the terrible lightning,
gave up his living eyes under a clear and cloudless sky?
Or when the earth shook itself with its teeming body?
And now by night were seen shapes various and dread
that gave warning of war and of upheavals,
and across the lands many seers poured out their oracles
from frenzied breasts, foretelling grim disasters;
and the things that came to pass at last by their long-prepared descent,
these the father of the gods himself, again and again,
sang from the sky and the earth in lasting and clear signs.
Now what the Lydian seer of the Tyrrhenian race
had once declared, when Torquatus and Cotta were consuls,
all of it fixed your year, gathering it together, brings to its appointed end.
For the father who thunders on high, leaning on starry Olympus,
once made for his own hills and temples
and hurled his fires upon the Capitoline seats.
Then the ancient image of bronze, the venerated work of Natta,
fell, and the laws slipped away from their old sanction,
and the lightning’s blaze destroyed the likenesses of the gods.
Here was the woodland nurse of the Roman name,
the wolf of Mars, who with her swollen teats
washed the small sons born of the seed of Mavors with life-giving dew:
she, when the lightning struck in its flaming blow, fell down
together with the boys, and left the prints of their feet torn from her.
Then who, turning the writings and records of the art,
did not draw forth grim utterances from the Etruscan scrolls?
All of them gave warning of a vast destruction and plague
springing from a high-born line, civil war advancing;
then with unwavering voice they proclaimed the ruin of the laws,
and bade men snatch the temples and the gods, and the city,
from the flames, and dread the horrible carnage and slaughter;
and that these things were held fixed by a grave fate, and grounded fast,
unless first, shaped in beauty, set up on a lofty column,
the sacred image of Jupiter should look toward the bright sunrise:
then it would come to pass that the people and the holy Senate
could discern the hidden plots, if, turned toward the rising of the sun,
the seat of the fathers and the people might see them from there.
This image, long delayed and much postponed,
in your consulship was set at last upon its high seat,
and in the one fixed and appointed hour of its raising
Jupiter from the lofty column was making bright his sceptre,
and the ruin readied for the fatherland by fire and sword
lay open, by the voices of the Allobroges, to the fathers and the people.
Rightly, then, did the men of old, whose records you keep,
who ruled peoples and cities by measure and by virtue,
and rightly too your own forebears, whose piety and faith
stood foremost, and whose wisdom far surpassed all others,
above all reverence the gods in their living power.
These things, indeed, they saw deep down with shrewd care,
the men who held their leisure gladly for becoming studies,
and in the shaded Academy and the gleaming Lyceum
poured out the bright arts of a fertile mind.
From among them, snatched away in the first flower of your youth,
the fatherland set you down in the midst of virtue’s heavy labor.
Yet you, easing your anxious cares with rest,
have given what is free of the fatherland’s claim to study and to us.
Principio aetherio flammatus Iuppiter igni vertitur et totum conlustrat lumine mundum menteque divina caelum terrasque petessit, quae penitus sensus hominum vitasque retentant, aetheris aeterni saepta atque inclusa cavernis. Et si stellarum motus cursusque vagantis nosse velis quae sint signorum in sede locatae, quae verbo et falsis Graiorum vocibus errant, re vera certo lapsu spatioque feruntur, omnia iam cernes divina mente notata. Nam primum astrorum volucris te consule motus concursusque gravis stellarum ardore micanti tu quoque, cum tumulos Albano in monte nivalis lustrasti et laeto mactasti lacte Latinas, vidisti et claro tremulos ardore cometas; multaque misceri nocturna strage putasti, quod ferme dirum in tempus cecidere Latinae, cum claram speciem concreto lumine luna abdidit et subito stellanti nocte perempta est. Quid vero Phoebi fax, tristis nuntia belli, quae magnum ad columen flammato ardore volabat, praecipitis caeli partis obitusque petessens? Aut cum terribili perculsus fulmine civis luce serenanti vitalia lumina liquit? Aut cum se gravido tremefecit corpore tellus? Iam vero variae nocturno tempore visae terribiles formae bellum motusque monebant, multaque per terras vates oracla furenti pectore fundebant tristis minitantia casus; atque ea quae lapsu tandem cecidere vetusto, haec fore perpetuis signis clarisque frequentans ipse deum genitor caelo terrisque canebat. Nunc ea Torquato quae quondam et consule Cotta Lydius ediderat Tyrrhenae gentis haruspex, omnia fixa tuus glomerans determinat annus. Nam pater altitonans stellanti nixus Olympo ipse suos quondam tumulos ac templa petivit et Capitolinis iniecit sedibus ignis. Tum species ex aere vetus venerataque Nattae concidit, elapsaeque vetusto numine leges, et divom simulacra peremit fulminis ardor. Hic silvestris erat Romani nominis altrix, Martia, quae parvos Mavortis semine natos uberibus gravidis vitali rore rigabat: quae tum cum pueris flammato fulminis ictu concidit atque avolsa pedum vestigia liquit. Tum quis non, artis scripta ac monumenta volutans, voces tristificas chartis promebat Etruscis? Omnes civilem generosa ‹AB›stirpe profectam vier ingentem Cladem pestemque monebant, tum legum exitium constanti voce ferebant, templa deumque adeo flammis urbemque iubebant eripere et stragem horribilem caedemque vereri; atque haec fixa gravi fato ac fundata teneri, ni prius excelsum ad columen formata decore sancta Iovis species claros spectaret in ortus: tum fore ut occultos populus sanctusque senatus cernere conatus posset, si solis ad ortum conversa inde patrum sedes populique videret. Haec tardata diu species multumque morata consule te tandem celsa est in sede locata, atque una fixi ac signati temporis hora Iuppiter excelsa clarabat sceptra columna, et clades patriae flamma ferroque parata vocibus Allobrogum patribus populoque patebat. Rite igitur veteres, quorum monumenta tenetis, qui populos urbisque modo ac virtute regebant, rite etiam vestri, quorum pietasque fidesque praestitit et longe vicit sapientia cunctos, praecipue coluere vigenti numine divos. Haec adeo pcnitus cura videre sagaci otia qui studiis laeti tenuere decoris, inque Academia umbrifera nitidoque Lyceo fuderunt claras fecundi pectoris artis. E quibus ereptum primo iam a flore iuventae te patria in media virtutum mole locavit. Tu tamen anxiferas curas requiete relaxans, quod patriae vacat, id studiis nobisque sacrasti.
Let weapons give way to the toga, the laurel yield to praise.
Cedant arma togae, concedat laurea laudi!