than Plautus, ranks very high among the poets; he was exclusively a
tragic writer, and undoubtedly a very good one: not a trace, however,
is to be met with among the Romans of anything like the Satyric plays.
In the beginning of the seventh century, Terence introduced quite a
different manner, which, if compared with Ennius and Pacuvius, and
Plautus above all, is infinitely more modern: he is already quite free
from the πῖνος of antiquity, as there are good grounds for believing
that his writings have never been revised.--Somewhat younger was
Cæcilius Statius, a Campanian, whose comic skill and playfulness are
praised by Cicero, who, however, finds fault with his language: his
fragments, especially a larger one in Gellius, give us no great idea of
him. A far greater poet was L. Attius (not Accius, nor Actius either),
who lived to so great an age so that even Cicero still knew him. His
was a truly tragic genius; and he not only composed after the Greek
models, especially after Æschylus,--what we have left to us in this
style is so beautiful, that it may very well be placed by the side of
what the Greek has written,--but he also wrote _prætextatæ_, that is
to say, historical pieces in the manner of Shakspeare, which are not
tied down to the unities of time or place. He came much nearer to the
form of the Greek dramas than his predecessors had done; at least the
anapæsts of four feet in his choruses were strictly according to the
rules of Greek verse: in his own tragedies also, the _senarii_ and
anapæsts seem to have been the prevailing measures, and not the long
verses of Ennius and Pacuvius; and though indeed the _senarii_ are
not formed quite so accurately as in Greek metres, they are much more
so than in Terence. His anapæsts are already metrical, and not merely
rhythmical; whereas, on the contrary, the _prætextatæ_ were composed
in long rhythmical _octonarii_, part of which were iambic and part
trochaic. In him we have a proof how much quicker the ear of the Romans
had already become. It was not so with his contemporary Lucilius, from
Suessa Aurunca, who indeed made use of a hexameter of dactyls and
spondees, but with much greater licence than even Ennius had done,
as the hexameters which can only be scanned according to rhythm,
are really _sermoni propiora_: of the laws of Greek versification,
he either had no knowledge whatever, or he entirely set them at
naught. Most of his books were written in hexameters, some of them
in trochaics. Wit and raciness his satires must have had in a high
degree; we might indeed have been reconciled to his slovenly manner
and have enjoyed him, instead of scornfully turning up our noses at
him, as Horace did.--About the same time, the lyric poet Lævius may
have written, who perhaps reached the highest point of gracefulness and
sweetness in the native style.
Prose was still in a quite neglected state; a fragment of C.
Lælius,[110] which has lately come to light, shows how uncouth and
harsh it then was, even harsher than in the times of Cato: only C.
Gracchus wrote prose in measured periods, which nearly approached
perfection. The orators of that age either did not write at all, or
they wrote in a dreadfully stiff style, much worse than they spoke.
The historians before Sisenna had as little claim to the name of
writers, as our knightly authors of the sixteenth century, Schärtlin
von Burtenbach and others. The Roman historians were yet inferior to
them; for the knights were men of action, whilst these were men of the
school, and even then not worth much.
The manners and mode of life had but one aim, that of making money:
even before the civil wars, people had become exceedingly immoral. The
immense riches which had been heaped together by means of plunder and
robbery, were squandered in luxury; the old ways having been abandoned
in everything, Greek fashions were copied as much as possible. The
orator L. Crassus was the first who sent for marble pillars from
Greece, though indeed he had only four set up in his house; before
that, the houses were built of brick plastered over, or of peperino:
the furniture was equally mean. The condition of Italy was wretched
beyond description. Samnium was a wilderness, and Strabo says that even
as late as in his day, no towns there were able to thrive. And yet the
misery had not reached its greatest height, but things were still to
become much worse.
Cicero was in his eight and twentieth year when Sylla died; he had
already made several speeches, and awakened great attention. Older than
he, and not altogether free from envy, but rather inclined to keep
down the younger man, was Q. Hortensius. The latter was in no way to
be compared with Cicero, and being fully tainted with the villainy of
his age, he was ever ready to sell his convictions for money. Among
Cicero’s contemporaries, in those awful times, a number of able men
of very different kinds sprang up. Such upheavings of party spirit
generally have this effect: the _Ligue_ indeed quite blighted the study
of antiquity in France; but it sharpened the wit and quickened the
minds of the people; the Thirty Years’ War did nothing but destroy,
whilst the Seven Years’ War gave a new impulse to Germany, and awakened
the Muses. Sallust was a great deal younger than Cicero, being as yet
a mere boy; but he was a full-grown man when Cicero was still in the
pride of his strength.
COUNTER-REVOLUTION. LEPIDUS. SERTORIUS. POMPEY.
Sylla was still living when M. Æmilius Lepidus, as the head of
the democracy, rose against Q. Lutatius Catulus, the head of the
aristocracy. This movement was one of those convulsions which will
always follow such great events, owing to the infatuation of those who
do not understand the things which have happened. Lepidus was working
_acta Sullæ rescindere_; this counter-revolution aimed at nothing less
than drawing the legions out of the military colonies, dismissing the
senators of Sylla, and putting into their places the children of the
proscribed. (Of those who had been outlawed, hardly one had escaped.)
Lepidus’ whole undertaking was an impracticable one; nor did either his
abilities or his moral worth fit him for such a task. He had himself
taken a part in the struggles of Sylla’s times; and, as we may gather
from the fragments of Sallust’s History, he had purchased confiscated
estates for a mere trifle, and thus enriched himself. In the French
revolution, many people were forced to buy such estates, so as to
bind them to the interests of the revolution; just in the same way,
Sylla had gained over thousands who would otherwise have been hostile
to him, by letting them have estates of the proscribed at a bargain.
Lepidus, however, may have been a worthless man, in which case the
split would be a matter of course: he set himself up as the avenger of
the old Romans who had been ruined. Any party which rules by bloodshed,
must necessarily split: many who had shared in the intoxication of
the moment, were afterwards ashamed of it, and now banded themselves
together in the cause of humanity. Catulus, the colleague of Lepidus,
was an honest man, and devoted heart and soul to Sylla. He undoubtedly
had approved of his atrocities in some measure; but he himself was
a man of honour to whom no foul deed could be imputed; he had kept
himself pure from the purchase of ill-gotten property. As he was a
person of great experience, he was looked upon as a judicious adviser,
and enjoyed on the whole a great deal of consideration; whilst Lepidus,
on the contrary, was not respected at all.
Elements of agitation were not wanting. The old inhabitants of the
military colonies were driven from their abodes, with the exception of
those who, like Ofellus in Horace, kept their estates as tenants of the
new _colonus_ (of these there were probably a great number). Thousands
from the Etruscan and Umbrian municipal towns roamed about as beggars,
ready to fight at any time for whatever cause might engage them: many
soldiers of Sylla, who had already run through the land which they had
gotten, were likewise to be had. The senate, seeing in the enterprise
of Lepidus the beginning of fresh misery, made Catulus and Lepidus
swear not to take up arms against each other. This answered so long as
they were in Rome. In those days,--owing perhaps to a regulation of
Sylla’s,--it was the custom for the consuls not to leave Rome during
their year of office, and it was only after its expiration that they
went to their provinces. As soon then as his consulship was over,
Lepidus betook himself into Gaul, and the war broke out; he himself
in Etruria, and in Cisalpine Gaul M. Brutus, a kinsman of the last
Brutus, had gathered together a great number of desperadoes. An attempt
of his on Rome was foiled, Catulus having been wise enough to get
reinforcements; and thus the whole undertaking burst like a bubble.
After a slight engagement, Lepidus himself gave up all hope, and fled
to Sardinia where he died. His soldiers at first roved about for some
time in Gaul, under his lieutenant M. Perperna; afterwards, they went
to Sertorius in Spain. M. Brutus was defeated by Pompey, and put to
death.
Infinitely more important was the war of Sertorius, of which we should
have been glad to have read a circumstantial account in Sallust. What
was the number of books in his _Historiæ_, we can no longer tell
exactly: we have many quotations from the first five; but these could
by no means have been all. From the fragments of the speeches, we may
presume, that they went down from the war of Lepidus, to which without
doubt the history of Sisenna reached, to the end of the war of Pompey
in Asia. In this work, Sallust may in some degree have adopted the form
of annals, which otherwise he could not bear. It was the last of his
works, the Catiline having been the first.
Sertorius was a Sabine of by no means high birth, of Nursia, a
_præfectura_ where Vespasian also was born, and which even long
afterwards was proverbial for its old-fashioned sternness (_durities
Nursina_). It is a kind of Alpine valley in the midst of the Apennines
(_val di Norcia_), and it only lost its freedom owing to the French
revolution, before which time it was a small democratic republic,
which even had the right of judging cases of life and death without
any further appeal to Rome. On the whole, the different parts of the
States of the Church were quite on a different footing; thus also
Tivoli had such a free municipal constitution.[111] There is no book
which can give us any insight into this state of things in Italy; it is
quite unknown. The papal legate, or delegate, arbitrarily interfered,
just like the proconsuls of old, though he had no formal powers of
government. Some states were under the sternest baronial despotism;
others had wretched communal constitutions; others again were real
republics. In the march of Ancona, the towns had a diet with great
privileges, a system, under which the country was very well off; but
there were other places indeed in which the magistrates did just what
they liked, there being no check upon them. In the States of the
Church alone, there were probably a hundred petty commonwealths whose
only point of union was the Pope. All this was done away with by the
Revolution, and remained so, the system of præfects being introduced
instead.
To this very day, the people of the Val di Norcia are looked upon
as rough mountaineers, and indeed also as what the Italians call
_facinorosi_. When they come to other parts of the country, they are
very apt, from their wild habits, to become malefactors and banditti;
but in their own home they behave very quietly, as an old Roman Abbé
has assured me. In Cicero’s day, they bore the character of having kept
up the old Sabellian manners in their purest state, like the Marsians,
Hernicans, and Vestinians.[112]
Sertorius had risen by his valour alone. In the times of Cinna, he had
delivered Rome from the freedmen of Marius; when Sylla came to Italy,
he was a _legatus_ of the consuls. And now, when in the following year
Carbo had managed affairs in Etruria in a hopelessly wretched way,
he succeeded in getting a commission out in Spain to maintain that
province for his party. Had he chanced to be at the head of Marius’
faction, (which was not the case, as he was above all intrigues,)
he would have baffled the plans of Sylla. In Spain, not merely from
policy, but because he was a man of noble mind, it was his aim to
win over the Spaniards; wherever he could remedy their grievances,
he did it, not treating them as despised provincials, but trying as
much as possible to amalgamate them with the Romans: he thought of
holding out in Spain, even when Italy was entirely lost. He had an
army in the eastern Pyrenees, on the road which leads from the country
between Perpignan and Collioure, with which he made head against the
enemy under Livius[113] Salinator: but his men, after having already
beaten off Annius whom Sylla had sent against them, were seduced to
go over to the other side; on which he was forced to flee with a few
followers who were true to him. This piece of treachery was part of
Sylla’s astonishing luck. Sertorius at first roved over the sea, where
the Romans had little power, and the pirates had greatly spread; then
he tried for some time to maintain himself in Ivica. From thence he
fled to the Lusitanians, who were the sworn foes of the Romans, and
who trusted in his honour and uprightness; but as he could not stand
his ground against overwhelming numbers, he embarked for Mauritania:
there he declared for one of the two pretenders to the crown, and
took Tangier, and got a great deal of booty. He was even thinking
of withdrawing from public life altogether, and going to the Canary
islands, so as to be out of the reach of Roman rule, and to live there
in freedom; when there now came again to him an invitation from the
Lusitanians, and with it the hope of being able to achieve something.
The Roman commanders had, as usual, given vent to their rage in Spain,
and had made the pursuit of Sertorius a pretext for plundering;
Sylla moreover was dead, and in so distant a province, the belief
that the fabric which he had built would fall to pieces, was quite
natural. Romans and Spaniards declared for Sertorius; particularly the
half-citizens (_hybridæ_), who, being the children of Roman soldiers by
Spanish women, had no franchise, but yet considered themselves as Roman
citizens, and had Roman names, and also spake both Roman and Spanish:
they were the corner-stone of his power, the link which connected
him with the Spaniards. Proscribed Romans who had hidden themselves
hitherto, now came forward to join him; the Spaniards likewise,
especially the Celtiberians, were filled with enthusiasm for him and
took up arms.
As soon as he could look upon himself as having the chief command in
Spain, he proceeded, according to a well-arranged plan, to change the
Spaniards into Romans, so that they were to take their tone from Roman
civilisation and Roman life; but he did not wish to sacrifice any of
that loftiness which the Spanish character had of its own. He gathered
from among the proscribed, and the other Romans who were scattered in
the provinces, from among the _hybridæ_, and partly also, no doubt,
from among the noble Spaniards, a senate of three hundred members,
which is spoken of in history (_Sall._ Fragm.)[114] as _Senatus
Hispanicus_; thus making a Rome out of Rome. Then he established at
Osca, a town in the north of Spain (the Huesca of the present day), an
academy, into which he got together the sons of the most distinguished
men, and had them instructed in the Roman language and grammar,
according to the ancient meaning of that word. They were also, like
the young Romans of rank, adorned with the _bulla_ and dressed in the
_prætexta_; it is evident that he secured to them the Roman franchise.
These boys were at the same time to be to him the hostages for the
fidelity of the parents, a thing which was very necessary, owing to the
capricious disposition of the Spaniards. There was moreover formed
around him a body-guard of men who, according to a custom which was
peculiar to the Spaniards, took a vow not to survive him, and therefore
in fighting for him, fought also for their own lives: this he readily
agreed to, and it was a very numerous band. He also worked on their
imagination, addressing himself to their own fancies. We need not
assume with Plutarch, that it was trickery and cunning: it is very
possible that, living among them, he shared their prejudices, when
he treated a white hind as a fairy who disclosed to him the future.
I believe that he was open to such impressions, like his master and
instructor Marius.
The war lasted eight years from his first appearance in Spain to his
death; but in fact there were not more than six years from the time
when, after the downfall of his party, he placed himself at the head of
the Spaniards. The Romans sent Q. Metellus--called _Pius_ on account of
his filial love to his father Q. Metellus Numidicus--against him into
Bætica. Metellus was at first successful; but Sertorius soon gained
more and more the advantage over him, so that the Romans gave the
command to Cn. Pompey.
Cn. Pompey, at that time, was still of the equestrian order, that is
to say, he had not yet held any office which entitled him to be chosen
into the senate; he was about thirty years old. It is very difficult to
speak at all decidedly of Pompey, as he is not one of those characters,
like Marius, Sylla, Sertorius, or Cæsar, the outlines of which are
distinct and marked; it is even hard to say whether he was a great
general or not. He was one of those whose high position depends on
their having been, if not altogether, at least to a certain degree
favoured by fortune; he had not sufficient strength and greatness of
soul to display the same bearing throughout a whole life, even in
misfortune itself. There can be no mistake as to his having greatly
distinguished himself under Sylla in the Social War, as the latter, who
certainly was a competent judge on this point, particularly esteemed
him. In the war of Sertorius, Pompey undoubtedly showed himself very
different from Metellus, although Sertorius was superior to him in
generalship; the war against the pirates was uncommonly well planned
and speedily executed; the war with Mithridates was not a difficult
one to carry on, still he was quick and resolute, and turned every
circumstance to good account. Yet from the time of his triumph over
Mithridates to the civil war against Cæsar, he appears to have been any
thing but great, either as a citizen or a statesman. In the madness
of his folly he wants to crush Cæsar, yet he is intimidated by the
factions; just in the same way, he quailed before the faction of
Clodius, and he was mean towards Cæsar, to whose superiority he was
wilfully blind: he behaved like a trimmer and a thorough coward in the
affair of Cicero’s impeachment, and he never could be trusted as a
friend. In his youth, during the war of Sylla, he showed himself cruel;
and Cicero entertains no doubt but that in his old age, he would, if
victorious, have renewed the proscriptions of Sylla. Nor is he much to
be praised for any other great qualities: in eloquence and education he
was nothing remarkable, he was even below mediocrity.
His head on his statues and busts, which we have no reason not to
believe true likenesses, has something vulgar and coarse about it;
in that of Cæsar’s, we see the full expression of his vast and quick
intellect. Pompey from weakness was at different times a different man,
and had very much fallen off in his later years, though he was not more
than fifty-six when he died: in his youth he was a much abler man.
In several campaigns, (in two of them especially,) Sertorius succeeded
so well, that Metellus had to retreat to Andalusia, and Pompey across
the Pyrenees, whilst he himself was able to return quietly into
winter-quarters. Had the Spaniards only stood by each other, he would
certainly have beaten both of these enemies; but he had just as much
to struggle against the traitors among the Spaniards as against the
Romans themselves. In two battles, on the Guadalquivir and on the
Sucro, he withstood the united forces of the two Roman generals, and in
both, one wing of each army was victorious; but as the Spaniards did
not remain true to him, he got at last into very serious difficulties,
notwithstanding all the readiness of his inventive mind. Many towns
fell away from him; but in other quarters he met with all that faithful
attachment is able to do: when Calagurris held out against a very sharp
siege, he did his utmost to relieve it, in which he was also at length
successful. Yet the cowardice and faithlessness of several towns goaded
him into an action which is a stain upon his life: he even sold their
hostages for slaves. It is true that other generals have often behaved
in the same way; but yet he ought not to have done it, as it was at
variance with his noble-heartedness, and his power was altogether a
moral one: the consequence of it was, that the attachment of the other
towns began likewise to waver.
With Sertorius was M. Perperna, a Roman of very high rank, probably a
son of the consular M. Peperna: to judge from his name, he was most
likely of Etruscan extraction, _-na_ being an Etruscan termination
which corresponds to the Roman _-ius_.[115] He had gathered together
the remnants of the soldiers of Lepidus, and had wished at first to
carry on the war by himself; but he was forced by his own troops to
lead them over from Sardinia into Spain, and to acknowledge Sertorius
as commander-in-chief. This man conspired with some other Romans
against Sertorius, who before that had already had several persons
executed for plots of this kind; owing to this circumstance, Perperna
found many who were ready to join him. Sertorius was murdered at a
feast. At his funeral, an incredible number of Spaniards, faithful to
their vow, fell by each other’s hands. Perperna was from necessity
acknowledged as general; but in the first engagement with Pompey, he
was utterly routed, taken prisoner, and put to death.[116]
SERVILE WAR. SPARTACUS. M. LICINIUS CRASSUS.
Pompey was now made consul: he was the favourite of the people, as it
was expected that he would restore the tribuneship. In no other way can
I account for this enthusiasm. It might indeed much rather have been
felt for Cæsar, whose nature was such that no worthy hearted man could
come near him without loving him, even as Cicero in truth was always
fond of him: it is a very noble want of the people, that it longs so
often to find an object for its enthusiasm. Pompey had not yet been
invested with any curule dignity; notwithstanding which, he was consul
with Crassus, a man with whom he was at that time on such ill terms,
that the Romans trembled lest the two foes should take up arms against
each other. But at the urgent entreaties of the senate they made up
their quarrel, and both of them behaved like honourable men; for during
nineteen years afterwards they never were really enemies again, and
they sometimes even appeared to be very good friends.
Crassus had gained his importance as the conqueror of Spartacus. About
three[117] years after Sylla’s death, Spartacus, a Thracian, had with
forty, others say with seventy-four gladiators, broken out of a barrack
of gladiators at Capua. There is a house at Pompeii which is very
like a barrack, with rooms in which arms were found, and which has
therefore been called the soldiers’ quarters. The very fact that there
should have been a garrison at Pompeii, seemed to me quite incredible;
but on closer examination, I recognised the arms as being of the same
description as those described by Livy as having been in use among the
Samnites, which were afterwards adopted by the Campanians, and then by
the gladiators; there is therefore no doubt but that it was a _ludus
gladiatorius_, which we must thus suppose to have been a building of
this kind, in which the gladiators were shut up at night. The number of
the gladiators had gone on increasing; as the rage for them among the
Romans had daily become greater, and such games were the surest means
by which the men of rank could make themselves popular.