CHAPTER XXI. THE CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE

MARCUS PORCIUS CATO

Pompey, in quitting the centre of affairs, could not fail to augur that

his removal would be the signal for the revival of party passions, and

that a few more years’ experience of the miseries of anarchy would demand

his recall with fuller powers for the settlement of affairs. The nobles,

on their part, having been compelled to submit to his extraordinary

appointment, now cast about for the means of turning his absence to their

advantage. They had placed him at their head, and he had betrayed them;

they now looked for a stouter and more faithful champion, and prepared

themselves, when the time should serve, to strike a blow for ascendency,

the shock of which should be felt on the Euphrates, and daunt the

conqueror of Syria and Pontus.

The chiefs whom they had hitherto consulted had mortified them by their

conciliatory temper, their timidity or their languor. Catulus they

respected, but they distrusted his firmness: Lucullus, whose aid they

next invoked, disregarded their solicitations. Hortensius was sunk in

pride and indolence. There were among them many personages of inferior

fame and influence, the Silani, the Scribonii, the Marcii, the Domitii,

the Scipios and Marcelli, who might make good officers, but wanted the

genius for command. But there was one man, still in their ranks, young in

years, a plebeian by extraction, unknown in civil or military affairs,

in whose unflinching zeal and dauntless courage they felt they could

securely confide. Judgment, indeed, and tact he sorely needed; but these

were qualities which the nobles held in little regard, and neither he nor

they were sensible of this grievous deficiency.

This man was Marcus Porcius Cato, the heir of the venerable name of the

censor Cato, his great-grandfather, a name long revered by the Romans for

probity and simplicity. The slave of national prejudices Cato believed,

like his illustrious ancestor, in the mission of a superior caste to

govern the Roman state, in the natural right of the lords of the human

race to hold the world in bondage, in the absolute authority of the

husband over the wife, the parent over the child, the master over the

servant. In his principles Cato was the most bigoted of tyrants. Yet

never were these awful dogmas held by a man whose natural temper was more

averse to the violence and cruelty by which alone they can be maintained,

and in vain did Cato strive to fortify himself against the instincts of

humanity within him by abstract speculation and severe self-discipline.

Born in the year 95, he had witnessed the termination of the Social War,

and resented, as a mere boy, the compromise in which that mighty struggle

resulted. Nevertheless his feelings had revolted from the atrocious

measures with which Sulla had avenged it, and alone of his party, he

sighed over their most brilliant victories and lamented the bloody

execution they did upon their enemies.

From the early days of his boyhood Cato had unremittingly trained himself

in the austere pattern of the ancient manners, already becoming obsolete

in the time of the censor. Inured to frugality and the simplest tastes,

he raised himself above the temptations of his class to rapine and

extortion. Enrolling himself in the priesthood of the god Apollo, he

acknowledged perhaps a divine call to the practice of bodily self-denial,

in which, in the view of the ancients, the religious life mainly

consisted. He imbibed the doctrines of the stoic philosophy, the rigidity

of which was congenial to his temper, and strove under their guidance to

square his public conduct by the strictest rules of private integrity. If

he failed, it was through the infirmity of nature, not the inconsistency

of vanity or caprice; but, doubtless, the exigencies of public affairs

drove him, as well as other men of less eminent pretensions, to many a

sordid compromise with his own principles, while in private life the

strength to which he aspired became the source of manifold weakness.

It made him proud of his own virtues, confident in his judgments,

inaccessible to generous impulses, caustic in his remarks on others, a

blind observer of forms, and a slave to prejudices. A party composed of

such men as Cato would have been ill-matched with the ranks of crafty

intriguers opposed to them on every side; but when the selfish, indolent,

and unprincipled chose themselves a champion of a character so alien from

their own, the hollowness of the alliance and the hopelessness of the

cause became sufficiently manifest.

[Sidenote: [67 B.C.]]

During the progress of the intrigues for the appointment of Pompey to

his maritime command, his creatures had not ceased to worry the senate

by the advocacy of fresh measures for the reformation of administrative

abuses. In the year 67, a certain C. Cornelius, formerly quæstor to

the great imperator, proposed, being at the time tribune, an enactment

to limit the usury which the wealthy nobles demanded for the loans

negotiated with them at Rome by the agents of the provinces. Laws indeed

already existed for regulating this practice, but the wants of the needy

and the cupidity of the capitalists had combined to disregard them,

and the senate had ventured to assume the prerogative of the people in

dispensing with their provisions in favour of personages of its own

order. This daring encroachment Cornelius offered at the same time to

repress. His measure was both popular and just. The senators could not

oppose it by argument, but they gained one of the tribunes to intercede

against it. But Cornelius was supported by the people, who encouraged

him to persist in reading the terms of his rogation in spite of the

official veto. A tumult ensued in the comitium, and, terrified by the

sound of blows, Pompey, we may presume, engaged his instrument to desist

from the direct attack, and allow the matter to be compromised. The

senate acquiesced, but the offence was deeply resented, and speedily

punished. No sooner had Cornelius quitted his functions as tribune,

than he was accused of _majestas_ for having disregarded the veto of

a colleague. The crime was manifest, and the culprit might despair of

defending himself against the powerful influences arrayed against him,

when Manilius, the same who had devoted himself to the service of Pompey,

caused the tribunal to be surrounded by bands of armed ruffians, and

the accusers to be threatened with violence unless they desisted from

their suit. The consuls interfered with a military force and gave them

the means of escaping over the roofs of the neighbouring houses. In the

following year the process was renewed, and Cicero, as the mouthpiece

of Pompey, was retained to defend the criminal. The advocate pleaded

the favour with which his client was regarded by Pompey himself, and

either this consideration or the fear of further violence, or perhaps the

cooling down of men’s passions after so long an interval, gained him an

acquittal. But the attempt, only too successful, of Manilius to overawe

by force the administration of justice, deserves to be remarked for its

fatal significance. From henceforth we shall find it repeated day by day

with aggravated violence. Consuls and tribunes will vie with one another

to destroy the foundation of all social confidence. Already the senate

and the people are committed to a struggle, which must eventually involve

the interference of a power paramount to both. Far-sighted men see

already the shadows of monarchy advancing upon them, which the mission of

Pompey to the East, long, distant, and perilous, seems the readiest means

of retarding, and possibly of averting.

Cicero’s speech for Cornelius was a triumph of artifice and ingenuity.

But the fame of his eloquence was already established by his harangue in

favour of the bill of Manilius, and the favour of the people had already

raised him to the prætorship for the year 66 by the unanimous suffrages

of the centuries. After the failure of the attack upon the refractory

tribune, faction slept for a short season, or prepared itself in silence

for a fiercer outburst of animosity.[b]

CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR

Though the restoration of the tribunate and the withdrawal of the

judicial power had given a rude shock to the senatorial oligarchy, they

still remained masters of Rome. But a chief was growing up who was

destined to restore life to the Marian party, to become master of the

Roman world, and to be acknowledged as the greatest man whom Rome ever

produced.

C. Julius Cæsar was born of an old patrician family in the year 100 B.C.

He was therefore six years younger than Pompey and Cicero. His father,

C. Cæsar, did not live to reach the consulship. His uncle Sextus held

that high dignity in 91 B.C., just before the outbreak of the Social

War. But the connection on which the young patrician most prided himself

was the marriage of his aunt Julia with C. Marius; and at the early age

of seventeen he declared his adhesion to the popular party by espousing

Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, who was at that time absolute master of

Rome. We have already noticed his bold refusal to repudiate his wife,

and his narrow escape from Sulla’s assassins. His first military service

was performed under M. Minucius Thermus, who was left by Sulla to take

Mytilene. In the siege of that place he won a civic crown for saving a

citizen. On the death of Sulla he returned to Rome, and, after the custom

of ambitious young Romans, he indicted Cn. Dolabella, for extortion in

Macedonia. The senatorial jury acquitted Dolabella as a matter of course;

but the credit gained by the young orator was great; and he went to

Rhodes to study rhetoric under Molo, in whose school Cicero had lately

been taking lessons. It was on his way to Rhodes that he fell into the

hands of Cilician pirates. Redeemed by a heavy ransom, he collected

some ships, attacked his captors, took them prisoners, and crucified

them at Pergamus, according to a threat which he had made while he was

their prisoner. About the year 74 B.C. he heard that he had been chosen

as one of the pontifices, and he instantly returned to Rome, where he

remained for some years, leading a life of pleasure, taking little part

in politics, but yet, by his winning manners and open-handed generosity,

laying in a large store of popularity, and perhaps exercising an unseen

influence over the events of the time.

[Sidenote: [74-64 B.C.]]

It was in 67 B.C., as we have seen, that Pompey left the city to take

the command against the pirates. At the same time, Cæsar, being in

his thirty-third year, was elected quæstor, and signalised his year

of office by a panegyric over his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius.

His wife Cornelia died in the same year, and gave occasion to another

funeral harangue. In both of these speeches the political allusions were

evident; and he ventured to have the bust of Marius carried among his

family images for the first time since the dictatorship of Sulla.[c]

Cæsar had in 65 obtained the ædileship, in conjunction with Bibulus, the

candidate of the nobles. That office, which had properly the care of the

public edifices, was charged also with providing for the amusements of

the people. It required an enormous outlay of money, and men ambitious

of higher honours spared no expense to eclipse one another in the

splendour they lavished upon it. The ædiles defrayed the charge of the

gladiatorial shows, and on this occasion Cæsar gained immense applause

by the profusion of silver bullion with which he decorated the furniture

and implements of the arena. Already deeply plunged in debt, he continued

to borrow on the credit of his genius and rising fortunes. If his

wealthy colleague equalled him in munificence, there seemed more merit

in the generosity of the penniless adventurer, and Bibulus was obliged

to liken himself to Pollux, who though he possessed a temple at Rome in

conjunction with his twin-brother, heard it always designated by the

name of Castor, and never by his own. Cæsar could rely on the clamorous

support of the populace thus attuned to his most stirring appeals. The

display of the bust of Marius had already irritated the faction of Sulla,

but now a greater insult was inflicted upon them.

Among his conspicuous acts of munificence as ædile, Cæsar had adorned

the Forum and the Capitol with pictures and statues: he had erected

halls and porticoes for the gratification of the people, and these too

he had adorned with monuments of taste and luxury. One morning there

suddenly appeared among the new ornaments of the Capitol the statue

of Marius, surrounded by the trophies of his Cimbrian and Jugurthine

victories. The people shouted with delight; the nobles scowled with

indignation. The author of the deed did not proclaim himself, but neither

friends nor foes could err in ascribing it to the daring ædile. Catulus

determined to bring the offender to punishment for this direct breach of

law. The remembrance of the murder of his father, the noblest victim of

the Marian proscriptions, inflamed the bitterness of his animosity. He

accused Cæsar of throwing off the mask from his ulterior designs; of no

longer subverting the republic with mines, but of assailing it with the

battering-ram. Cæsar defended himself before the senate, and succeeded

in foiling his accuser; but he owed his triumph neither to the favour

nor the justice of his audience, but to the temper of the people, on

which the nobles dared not make an experiment. It would appear from the

historians that the trophies of Marius retained possession of their place

in front of the Capitol, an indication of the popular strength which must

have shaken the nerves even of Cato himself.

The nobles could at least retaliate. On quitting the ædileship, Cæsar

demanded a public mission to reduce Egypt to the form of a province, in

virtue of the will of the king Ptolemy Alexander. This country, through

which all the commerce of the East already passed into Europe, was

reputed the wealthiest in the world. Pouring into the royal treasury an

annual tribute of 14,800 talents, it offered a magnificent prey to the

rapacious republic, and to the fortunate proconsul through whose hands

these golden harvests should pass. Crassus and Cæsar disputed this rich

booty; but neither the one nor the other succeeded in obtaining it. The

senate mustered all its forces to baffle both claimants, and was enabled,

perhaps by their division, to succeed. It employed a tribune named

Papius to enact that all foreigners, and especially Cæsar’s clients,

the Transpadane Gauls, should be removed from the city, and thus boldly

cleared the Forum of the tumultuary partisans, by whose hands, if not by

whose votes, the reckless demagogue might hope to extort the prize.

[Illustration: JULIUS CÆSAR

(From a statue)]

[Sidenote: [64 B.C.]]

Instead of this brilliant mission Cæsar was invited (64) to preside

in the tribunal, to which was committed the inquisition into cases

of murder. Hitherto he had done no more than protest against the

dictatorship of Sulla; he now determined to brand it with legal stigma.

Among the cases which he caused to be cited before him were those of two

political offenders, men who had imbrued their hands in the blood of

the victims of the proscription. One of these named Bellienus was the

centurion who had stabbed Ofella, the other was a more obscure assassin.

He condemned these wretched ruffians, only to strike terror into higher

quarters. He induced a tribune named Labienus to accuse an aged senator,

Rabirius, of the slaughter of the tribune Saturninus; and by making it a

criminal, and not a political, charge, he forbade the accused to withdraw

himself from the process by voluntary exile. Cicero and Hortensius

defended the culprit, but failed to move the judges. Rabirius appealed to

the people. Labienus attacked, and Cicero again defended him, while the

senators used every effort to excite the compassion of the populace. But

the people exulted in the audacious injustice of the whole proceeding:

for it was well known, first, that Rabirius had not killed Saturninus;

secondly, that the real slayer had been rewarded, and the deed solemnly

justified by competent authority; and, thirdly, that the transaction had

occurred not less than thirty-six years before, and deserved to be buried

in oblivion with the birth of a new generation. The appeal of Rabirius

would inevitably have been rejected but for the adroitness of the prætor,

Metellus Celer, who suddenly struck the flag which floated from the

Janiculum while the tribes were assembled for public business. In ancient

times the striking of the flag was the signal that the Etrurians were

advancing to attack the city. Immediately all business was suspended,

the comitia dissolved, and the citizens rushed to man the walls. The

formality still remained in force among a people singularly retentive

of traditional usages; and now the multitude which had just shouted

clamorously for innocent blood, laughed at the trick by which its fury

was baffled, and acquiesced in the suspension of the proceedings. Cæsar

had gained his point in alarming and mortifying the senate, and allowed

the matter to drop, which he never perhaps seriously intended to push to

extremity.

[Sidenote: [63 B.C.]]

The same Labienus, devoting himself with zeal to the service of the

patron he had chosen, induced the people in the next place to demand

the abolition of Sulla’s law, by which they had been deprived of the

election of pontiffs. On recovering this prerogative they acquitted their

debt to Cæsar by nominating him chief of the college, thereby placing

him at the head of a great political engine, and rendering his person

inviolable. Neither the notorious laxity of his moral principles, nor

his contempt, of which few could be ignorant, for the religious belief

of his countrymen, hindered Cæsar’s advancement to the highest office of

the national worship. It was enough that he should perform the stated

functions of his post, and maintain the traditional usages upon which the

safety of the state was popularly deemed to depend. Cæsar’s triumph was

the more complete, as it was a victory over Catulus, who had competed

with him for this dignity, and who, knowing his pecuniary embarrassments,

had offered to buy off his opposition by a loan. Cæsar rejected the bribe

with scorn, and declared that he would borrow still more largely to gain

the prize. The nobles were straining every nerve to implicate him in a

charge of conspiracy against the state, and the chief pontificate was

necessary to insure his safety. When the hour of election arrived he

addressed his mother, as he left his house, with the words, “This day

your son will be either supreme pontiff, or else an exile.”

The crime which it had been sought to fasten upon Cæsar was of the

deepest dye and most alarming character. For some years past the city

had been kept in feverish anxiety by rumours of a plot, not against any

particular interest or party, but against the very constitution of the

social fabric. The nobles had sounded the alarm, and their agents had

insinuated complicity in some wild and treasonable enterprise against

Cæsar, Crassus, and many other august citizens, objects of dislike and

fear to the existing government. The fact of such a conspiracy was indeed

speedily revealed, and it discovers to us in the most striking manner

the frightful corruption of the times. Into its actual connections and

ramifications we shall presently inquire; but first it will be well to

trace its origin and motives, in order to explain the way in which the

senate proposed to take advantage of it.

L. SERGIUS CATILINA AND HIS TIMES

[Sidenote: [65-63 B.C.]]

The generation of statesmen which had grown up at the feet of the Scipios

and the Gracchi, though it had exchanged much of the simple dignity of

the old Roman character for a tasteless affectation of Hellenic culture,

was still for the most part imbued with sentiments of honour and probity,

devoted to the welfare of the state, and only ambitious to shine at

the head of a commonwealth of freemen. But its children, born and bred

under the relaxation of all principle induced by the civil dissensions,

were fearfully devoid of every moral principle. The vast accession of

wealth and power which accompanied the conquest of the East overthrew

whatever barriers poverty and simplicity of manners might still have set

against the torrent of selfish indulgence. The acquisition of wealth,

moreover, had only served to precipitate expense and prodigality. A few

crafty usurers swept into their coffers the plunder won by a multitude of

spendthrifts.

Political and private gambling had reduced thousands of the well born to

the condition of mere needy adventurers, while the advantages of birth

and station served only to make them more dangerous and their manners

more seductive. Among these restless and accomplished bravos none was so

conspicuous or so able as L. Sergius Catilina. His descent was one of

the most ancient in Rome, and he had served with distinction among the

nobles ranged under Sulla’s banner. His valour indeed from the first had

been tinged with brutal ferocity, and the stories currently reported of

him, believed as they undoubtedly were by his own contemporaries, may

give us at least an idea of the crimes which were possible at the period.

It has been already mentioned that he was accused of assassinating his

brother from private malice, and of getting his name inscribed on the

list of proscription for the sake of obtaining his confiscated estate.

All Rome had seen him waving on the top of a pike the head of the

murdered Gratidianus. It was rumoured that, wanting to marry the fair but

profligate Orestilla, who waived his suit through jealousy of his son by

a former consort, the father had sacrificed the youth without scruple to

his passion.

Though loaded with the infamy of such crimes, Catiline had entered

on the career of public honours, had obtained the prætorship for the

year 68, had succeeded from thence to the government of Africa, and

upon his return in 66 was about to offer himself for the consulship.

Publius Clodius, a stripling, not less profligate, but as yet less

notorious, crossed his path with a charge of malversation in his

province. Presently the rumour ran that Catiline, thus disconcerted,

formed a plot with Autronius Pætus, just deprived of the consulship for

bribery, with Calpurnius Piso and other dissolute nobles, to murder the

successful candidates, and to seize the powers of the state. The names

both of Crassus and Cæsar were whispered in connection with this bloody

enterprise. The former, it was said, was to be created dictator, the

latter his master of the horse. When it was asked upon what military

resources the rash intriguers relied, it was answered that Piso, who

had acquired the command of one of the Iberian provinces, was charged

to organise an armed force in that quarter, with which to balance the

legions of the senate under Pompey. The scheme, it was alleged, was

opportunely detected, the chief conspirators discovered and marked. Piso

shortly afterwards was cut off in his province by banditti, or possibly

by assassins; but the proceedings with which the culprits were menaced

were stayed by the intervention of a tribune, and the circumstances of

the plot were never formally revealed.

Such however was the influence of Catiline, or such the interest which

his presumed machinations could excite among the lawless and ambitious

even in the heart of the commonwealth, that not only was the government

unable to convict him upon this flagrant charge, but he did not shrink

from suing for the consulship itself for the following year, and that

too while yet unabsolved from the accusation of Clodius. The man and the

times must be more particularly described to make the story of Catiline

credible to any other age than his own. For passing strange must it

appear that, notwithstanding the atrocities by which he was disgraced,

Catiline had been able to connect himself with many eminent public men,

by whom his suits had been openly supported. Cicero himself, a man of

unsullied personal purity, was prepared, for the sake of his alliance in

their common competition for the consulship, to defend his cause against

Clodius, and only escaped the disgrace of appearing as his advocate by

the charges themselves being dropped, as it would seem, by the venal

accuser. But it was over the corrupt patrician youth that he exercised

the most extraordinary ascendency. Through dissipation he led them

into the darkest crimes. He taught them to depend upon him as a trusty

associate in every wickedness, and whether in bilking a creditor or

negotiating a loan, in planning a seduction or compassing a murder, his

boldness and invention were never found to fail them. Catiline was their

friend, their champion, and their idol. They vaunted his bodily strength

and vigour, his address in bodily exercises, his iron frame which could

endure alike the excesses of debauch and the rudest toils of war. He

became the model of the youthful aspirants to fashionable distinction,

which then demanded not only splendour in dress and furniture, but skill

in the use of the sword and eminence in all martial accomplishments. But

these exercises could not fail to have a brutalising effect; for they

connected such as sought distinction in them with the slaves, criminals,

and hired ruffians who fought in the arena. Such men, admired as

consummate masters of their art, became the friends and companions of the

young nobility, who drank with them one day in the wineshop, and shouted

over their agonies in the theatre on the morrow.

The long career of conquest which Rome had enjoyed had tended to throw

all her noblest energies into the sole profession of arms, which is

naturally inclined above all others to measure excellence by success, and

to confound virtue with valour. When the Roman returned from the wars for

a short breathing time to his own country, he beheld few objects around

him which were calculated to allay the fever of his excited imagination.

His pride was fed by trophies and triumphs, by the retinue of captive

slaves which attended him, by the spoils of conquered palaces which

decorated his home. In the intervals of danger and rapine few cared to

yield themselves to the vapid enjoyments of taste and literature, or

could refrain from ridiculing the arts which had failed to save Greece

from subjugation. The poets, historians, and philosophers of Rome were

few in number, and exercised but a transient influence on a small circle

of admirers. Nor were the habits of civil life such as to soften the

brutal manners of the camp. The Romans knew nothing of the relations

of modern society, in which the sexes mutually encourage each other in

the virtues appropriate to each, and where ranks and classes mingle

unaffectedly together under the shelter of a common civilisation. The

Romans lived at first in castes, afterwards in parties; even in the

public places there was little fusion or intercourse of ranks, while

at home they domineered over their clients as patrons, their slaves as

masters, their wives and children as husbands and fathers.

The instruction of boyhood was general in the upper ranks, but it was

imparted by slaves, who corrupted the temper of their pupils far more

than they improved their understanding; and when, already exhausted

by premature indulgence, they were married while young from motives

of convenience, they were found incapable of guiding and elevating

their still more neglected consorts. The women were never associated

in their husbands’ occupations, knew little of their affairs, and were

less closely attached to their interests than even their bondmen. They

seldom partook of their recreations, which accordingly degenerated for

the most part into debauches. Systematically deprived of instruction,

the Roman matron was taught indeed to vaunt her ignorance as a virtue.

If in the first century B.C., those Sabine housewives were no longer to

be found who shut themselves up in their apartments and spun wool among

their handmaids, yet to exercise their intellects or cultivate their

tastes passed almost for a crime. To know Greek and Latin books, to

sing and dance, to make verses, to please with conversation,--these,

in the opinion of the historian Sallust, were no better than seductive

fascinations, such as formed the charm and fixed the price of the

courtesan. Rarely therefore did any woman break through this mental

bondage, without losing in character what she gained in intellect and

attraction. In either case she was almost equally despised. The men’s

indifference to the conduct of their spouses is a frightful feature in

the social aspect of the times. Their language, it has been observed, had

no word to express the sentiment of jealousy. The laws which gave them

such facility of divorce show how little regard they had for the dearest

interests of the married state; just as their common practice of adoption

proves the weakness among them of the paternal sentiment.

Thus did the morose and haughty Roman stand isolated and alone in the

centre of his family and of society around him; nor did he strive to

exalt his moral nature by sympathy with the divinity above him. A century

indeed had scarcely elapsed since Polybius had lauded the character of

the Romans for the earnestness of its religious sentiment. Undoubtedly

the moral sanctions of religion had at that time been strongly felt; the

gods were actually regarded as the avengers of crime and the patrons

of virtue. Even then however the principle of setting up the deity as

a model for imitation, which alone is efficacious for elevating and

purifying the soul, was unknown or disregarded. The coarse and sensuous

pagans of Greece and Rome gloated over the wretched stories of lust and

violence ascribed to the objects of their worship, and if they feared

their power never dreamed of adoring their goodness or their justice.

Their religious practices therefore were not moral actions, but merely

adopted as charms to preserve them from the caprice or ill-nature of

their divinities. From this debasing superstition even their strongest

intellects could not wholly release themselves, while in the seventh

century the vulgar at least were as devoutly addicted to it as at any

former period. Indeed the general relaxation of positive belief in the

minds of the educated class was accompanied, as is not unfrequently the

case in the history of nations, by still more grovelling prostration on

the part of the ignorant multitude.

THE CONSPIRACY

[Sidenote: [63 B.C.]]

Such a state of society already trembled on the verge of dissolution,

and reflecting men must have shuddered at the frailness of the bands

which still held it together, and the manifold energies at work for its

destruction. Catiline’s designs, suspended for a moment, were ripening

to another crisis; and the citizens pointed with horror to the victim

of a guilty conscience, stalking through the streets with abrupt and

agitated gait, his eyes bloodshot, his visage ashy pale, revolving in his

restless soul the direst schemes of murder and conflagration. Involved

in ruinous debt, his last hope of extrication had been the plunder of a

province. The spoils of the prætorship had been wrested from him by the

rapacity of his judges or his accuser, and access to the consulship was

denied him. But his recent escape confirmed him in the assurance that

he was too noble a culprit to be convicted; he scarcely deigned to veil

his intrigues, while he solicited the aid of men of the highest families

in the city. The young Roman prodigals invoked “new tables,” or a clear

balance sheet; and it cannot be doubted that their aims were rather

personal than political--that they yearned for the extinction of their

debts first, and the division of public offices afterwards.

Among these conspirators were two nephews of Sulla. Autronius and

Cassius had been candidates for the consulship; Bestia was a tribune

elect; Lentulus and Cethegus, both members of the Cornelian house,

were nobles of high distinction, though lost in character; even the

consul Antonius was suspected of privity to their designs, and a secret

inclination in their favour. They counted upon the support of the men who

had been disgraced or impoverished by Sulla, and hoped to inflame the

turbulence and lust of rapine which animated the dregs of the populace.

They expected moreover the armed assistance of many of the disbanded

veterans, who had already squandered, with the recklessness of fortunate

adventurers, the possessions they had so suddenly acquired. They proposed

to solicit and excite the hostile feelings towards their conquerors,

still prevalent among the Italian races. Finally they resolved to seize

the gladiators’ schools at Capua; and some of them would not have

scrupled to arm a new insurrection of slaves and criminals. This last

measure was the only enormity to which Catiline would not consent. He

was urged to it more especially by Lentulus; and when a proposal so base

was discovered in the handwriting of one of the Cornelii, it crowned the

horror and indignation of the Roman people.

Meanwhile among the senatorial faction there were not wanting statesmen

who watched the coming storm with secret satisfaction. Too much of

their power, they felt, had been surrendered to their military patron,

and they longed for an opportunity to resume it in his absence. They

fretted at the contempt into which they had fallen; the consulship and

pontificate had become the prey of any daring adventurers, the example

of usurpation had now descended to mere cut-throats and robbers: they

would check it once and forever by a single retribution: they would give

the great Pompey himself to understand that they could save and rule

the state without him. The marked progress of Cicero in general esteem

formed an important element in their calculations. By placing him in the

consul’s chair they hoped to secure him for their instrument, and to

employ his zeal, his abilities, and his honest intentions in the great

work they contemplated--the restoration of their own ascendency. At the

instigation of these crafty advisers the nobles now joined with the

people in promoting Cicero’s elevation. He had been prætor in the year

65, but he had refused to quit the glories of the Forum and the tribunals

for the sordid emolument of a province. In the following year he was

designated for the consulship by the general voice of the citizens, and

the insignificance of Antonius, the colleague assigned to him, showed

that to him alone all parties looked for the salvation of the state.

During the early part of his career the new consul proposed various

salutary measures, and devoted himself assiduously to the interests of

the oligarchy with which he now first began to feel himself connected.

As the year 63 advanced the presumed schemes of Catiline withdrew

attention from every other business, the conspirator only waiting for

the issue of the consular comitia, at which he still pretended to seek a

legitimate election. When his suit was once more rejected and Silanus and

Murena chosen, he no longer meditated delay. One of his accomplices named

Curius had betrayed the secret, if such it could still be called, to his

mistress Fulvia; she had already communicated it to Cicero, and by his

instructions obtained from her paramour every particular of the intended

outbreak. The information was laid before the senate, and a decree was

immediately passed, enjoining the consuls “to provide for the safety of

the state!” But in the suppression of so formidable a conspiracy every

step was hazardous. We have seen how illustrious were the names enlisted

in it. The time had passed when the consul could venture, after the

manner of an Ahala or an Opimius, to draw his sword, call the citizens to

follow him, and rush boldly upon the men whom the senate had denounced

as its foes. Though the nobles still claimed this power for their chief

magistrate in the last resort, it contravened a principle which the

people would never consent to surrender, which gave to every citizen

accused of a capital crime the right of appealing to the tribes. Cæsar

and Crassus, if not themselves connected with the conspirators, were

doubtless on the watch to thwart the slightest stretch of prerogative

against them. On the other hand the danger was becoming imminent. The

conspirators had almost completed their preparations, and collected their

magazines of arms. They had fixed the day for the intended outbreak, and

assigned to each man his proper post and office. The veterans of Etruria,

of Samnium, and Umbria, long since solicited by their emissaries, were

flocking to their appointed rendezvous. The fleet in the port of Ostia

was supposed to be gained, and insurrections were promised both in Africa

and Spain. All the legions of the republic were with Pompey in the East,

or dispersed in other provinces; the city itself was not defensible for

a day, and even the fortresses on the Capitoline and Janiculum retained

only the tradition of their ancient strength. Rome had neither a garrison

nor a police; all her citizens were soldiers, and with no foreign enemy

to fear she had neglected to provide against the dangerous ambition

of her own children. At the moment concerted the various bodies of

insurgents were to advance against her, and their accomplices within the

city were to fire it in a hundred places.

[Illustration: ROMAN CHAIRS AND TABLE]

Fortunately for the state, two proconsuls, Marcius Rex and Metellus

Creticus, arrived at this moment from the East with some legionary

forces, and awaited at the gates of the city the triumph which they

demanded of the Senate. Marcius was immediately directed against Mallius,

Catiline’s lieutenant in Etruria; Metellus was ordered to make head

against the insurgents in Apulia. Some hasty levies were despatched at

the same time to check the advance of the men of Picenum. Measures were

promptly taken for removing the gladiators from Capua, and distributing

them in small numbers among the neighbouring towns. Rome was placed,

according to the modern phrase, in a state of siege. Citizens were

enrolled and armed guards posted at the gates, the walls and streets

patrolled; Cicero assumed command.

Both parties were equally ready for the encounter when the consul boldly

summoned the arch conspirator to discover himself. On the 7th of November

he had convened the senators in the temple of Jupiter Stator. Catiline

appeared in his place: his fellow senators shrank from contact with him,

and left a vacant space on the benches around him. Suddenly the consul

rose, and poured forth the torrent of his indignant eloquence:

“How long then, Catiline, how long will you abuse our patience? What, are

you quite unmoved by the guard which keeps night-watch on the Palatine,

by the patrols of the city, by the consternation of the people, by

the rushing of all good citizens together, by this fortress-temple in

which the senate is assembled, by the fear and horror of the senators

themselves? Think you that all your schemes are not open to us as the

day? Alas for our times! alas for our principles! The senate knows the

plot; the consul sees it--and the man still lives! Lives! did I say?

Aye, and comes into the midst of us, partakes of our public councils,

observes and marks us, one by one, for slaughter. And yet we, the

consuls, who have received the senators’ last decree for the preservation

of the state--we into whose hands has been thrust the sword of Scipio,

of Opimius, of Ahala, still suffer it to sleep in its scabbard! Yes, I

still wait, I still delay; for I wish you not to perish till you cease to

find a citizen so perverse as to excuse or defend you. Then, and not till

then, the sword shall descend upon you. Meanwhile live, as you now live,

tracked by enemies, surrounded by guards; all our eyes and ears shall be

fixed upon you as they long have been, and watch you when you think not

of it. Renounce then your designs; they are discovered and frustrated.

Shall I tell you what they were? Remember how on the 20th of October I

announced that Manlius was to rise on the 27th; was I wrong? That the

28th was fixed for the massacre; was it not averted only by my vigilance?

On the 1st of November would you not have seized Præneste, and did you

not find it apprised and guarded? I track your deeds, I follow your

steps, I know your very thoughts.

“Let me tell you whither you repaired last night. Was it not to the house

of Læca? There you met your accomplices, you assigned them each their

places--who should remain at Rome, who with yourself should quit it; you

marked out the quarters to be fired: you only lingered still a moment

because I still lived. Then two Roman knights offered to rid you of that

anxiety, and to kill me in my bed before the dawn of the morrow. All this

I discovered, almost ere your meeting was dissolved: I doubled my guards,

I shut the door against the wretches whom you sent so early to salute me;

aye, the same wretches whom I had already designated to many as the men

who were coming to murder me. You call upon me to impeach you; you say

you will submit to the judgment of the senators; you will go into exile

if it be their pleasure. No, I will not impeach you; I will not subject

myself to the odium of driving you into banishment; though if you wait

only for their judgment, does not their silence sufficiently declare

their sentiments? But I invite, I exhort you to go forth from the city!

Go where your armed bands await you! join Manlius, raise your ruffians,

leave the company of honest citizens, make war against your country! Yet

why do I invite you to do that which you have already determined to do;

for which the day is fixed, and every disposition made?”

[Illustration: CICERO UPBRAIDING CATILINE IN THE SENATE]

And then turning to the senators the orator explained the meaning of

this strange address. He dared not bring the criminal to justice: he had

too many friends even in the senate itself; too many timid people would

declare his guilt unproved; too many jealous people would object to

rigorous measures, and call them tyrannical and regal. But as soon as he

should actually repair to Mallius’ camp, there would no longer be room

for doubt. The consul pledged his word from that moment to lay the proof

of the conspiracy before them, to crush the movement, and to chastise the

guilty. And in order to assure them that he could do so, he pointed to

the knights, who at his bidding were crowding the area and steps of the

temple, and listening in violent agitation at the door, ready at his word

to dart upon his victim, and tear him in pieces before the eyes of the

senate.

Catiline had kept his seat throughout this terrible infliction, agitated

by rage and apprehension, yet trusting to the favour of his numerous

connections, and relying on the stolid incredulity of the mass of the

audience; for the habitual use of exaggerated invective had blunted the

force of truth, and rendered the senators callous for the most part even

to the most impassioned oratory. The appearance perhaps of the consul’s

myrmidons, and the fear, not of any legal sentence, but of popular

violence, at last made him start to his feet. He muttered a few broken

sentences, in a tone of deprecation, appealing to his birth, rank, and

aristocratic sentiments, in gage of his loyalty, and in contrast to the

specious pretensions of the base-born foreigner, his accuser. But the

senators, encouraged or awed by the presence of the knights, murmured

and groaned around him, calling him an enemy and a parricide. Then at

last losing all self-command, Catiline, rushed wildly out of the chamber,

exclaiming: “Driven to destruction by my enemies, I will smother the

conflagration of my own house in the ruin of the city.”

Catiline fled to his house, shut himself up alone, and for a moment

deliberated. At nightfall he quitted the city and threw himself into

the quarters of his armed adherents in Etruria. He left behind him

instructions for his accomplices in the city, in which he charged them

not to quit their posts, but watch their opportunity to assassinate

the consul if possible, at all events to make all ready for a domestic

outbreak as soon as his preparations should be complete for attacking the

city from without. To Catulus, whom he regarded as a personal friend,

or on whom he wished perhaps to throw the suspicions of the senators,

he addressed a letter of exculpation, while he secured, as he said, his

own personal safety in the ranks of a hostile army, recommending to his

fidelity and friendship the care of his dearest interests. Cicero had

reason to exult in the success of his first harangue, which cleared the

way before him. Catiline had openly avowed himself a public enemy; but

his associates still refused to disclose themselves; and the consul’s

next step was to drive them, by similar threats and sarcasms, to an

overt act of rebellion. But for the most part they remained firmly at

their posts, as their leader had enjoined them. One youth, the son of a

senator, quitted the city to join Catiline. His father, informed of his

treason, pursued and arrested him, and caused his slaves to slay him

upon the spot. But Lentulus, Cethegus, and Bestia continued still in

Rome, sometimes threatening to impeach Cicero for the exile of a citizen

without judgment pronounced, and meanwhile planning a general massacre

of the magistrates during the approaching confusion of the Saturnalia.

Cicero, served by a legion of spies, tracked all their movements; but he

dared not strike, while still devoid of written proofs against them. The

imprudence of the conspirators at last placed such documents in his hands.

There happened to be at the time in Rome certain envoys of the

Allobroges, a Gallic people, who had long vainly sued for justice from

the republic, under the cruel exactions to which they had been subjected

by the government in the province. The wild mountaineers whose cause

they pleaded had risen more than once to extort their claims by arms;

their discontent, swelling under repeated disappointment, was ready

once more to explode at any favourable opportunity, while the senate,

full of more important and more alarming affairs, still treated them

with contemptuous neglect. So favourable was the moment that the

conspirators addressed the envoys through a citizen well known to them,

named Umbrenus, disclosing their contemplated plan for the overthrow of

the government, and offering them a dire revenge as the price of their

nation’s assistance. They at once embraced the proposal and promised the

aid of their countrymen. But presently, awed by their deep impression

of the invincibility of the consuls and imperators, they sought the

counsel of Fabius Sanga, the patron of their tribe in Rome. By him they

were persuaded to reveal the negotiation to Cicero, who caused them

to affect the deepest interest in the conspiracy, and to extract from

the traitors a written engagement for the price of their alliance.

Lentulus, Cethegus, and Statilius affixed both their names and seals to

the document required. On receiving it the envoys quitted the city in

company with Volturcius, one of the conspirators, deputed to conclude

the negotiation with the Allobroges in their own country. The consul,

kept duly informed of all their proceedings, caused them to be waylaid at

the foot of the Milvian bridge, three miles beyond the gates, and they

immediately surrendered their despatches. While this was in progress

the consul summoned the chief conspirators into his presence. They came

without mistrust; surrounding them with his lictors and archers, he led

them directly to the senate. In the face of the assembled Fathers he

produced the fatal letters; and the culprits, overwhelmed with confusion,

acknowledged their guilt by their silence. Lentulus, who had fondly

flattered himself on the strength of a reputed oracle of the Sibyls that,

after Cinna and Sulla he should be the third Cornelius to reign in Rome,

was compelled to abdicate the prætorship on the spot, and, placed with

his associates in the custody of the most dignified senators, to await

the decision of their fate.

Meanwhile, the examination being closed, Cicero addressed the people,

who crowded in agitation and alarm around the doors of the curia, upon

the rumour of the awful disclosures going on within. To the multitude

the wary consul submitted no judicial proof of the culprit’s designs. He

contented himself with declaring the evidence upon which they had been

convicted to be their correspondence with Catiline, a public enemy, and

their detected intercourse with the hostile Allobroges. This sufficed to

brand them as pledged to succour an invader, to harbour him within the

city, to deliver Rome to the fury of Etrurians and Gauls. But to prove

their ulterior designs would have involved the discovery of the consul’s

secret sources of information, it would have been unbecoming the dignity

of the government, and inconsistent with the politic reserve of an

aristocratic assembly.

CÆSAR AND THE CONSPIRACY

[Sidenote: [63-62 B.C.]]

The conspiracy thus critically arrested has been represented, in

accordance with the evidence before us, as the work of mere private

cupidity or ambition. But the ruling party sought to incriminate in

it their public adversaries. They had already studied to implicate

both Cæsar and Crassus in the presumed machinations of Catiline at an

earlier period. They now repeated the effort with increased virulence,

and Catulus himself was foremost in urging Cicero to produce testimony

against Cæsar. Such testimony might doubtless have been suborned; loose

surmises might at least have been construed into grave presumptions.

But to such a project the consul steadily refused to lend himself. He

was sensible perhaps that Cæsar’s popularity would in fact screen from

justice every culprit associated with him, and in giving him the charge

of Statilius, one of the criminals, Cicero openly declared himself

convinced of his innocence. Indeed the great difficulty was still to be

overcome, and the consul would not permit himself recklessly to enhance

it. Nine of the conspirators had been denounced, five were convicted and

confined; but the nature of their punishment yet remained for decision.

The law of the republic, as interpreted at least by the patricians,

invested the chief magistrate with power of life and death, on the senate

issuing its ultimate decree. On this authority alone bold men had slain

presumed criminals, and the senate had loudly applauded them.

But against such a stretch of prerogative the commons had always

protested. They had resented such daring deeds, and retaliated them

with violence. They had constantly appealed to the principle of Roman

law, which forbade any citizen to be put to death except by a vote of

the tribes. Nor could the tribes themselves, however sternly disposed,

deprive a citizen, as long as he retained his rights as such, of liberty

to evade sentence by voluntary exile. To the people, accordingly, Cicero

could not venture to appeal, nor would he assume on the other hand the

responsibility of acting on the mere decree of his own order. Hitherto,

even while defying the spirit of the laws, he had scrupulously adhered

to their forms. He had abstained from arresting the conspirators in

their own houses, to avoid the violation of a citizen’s domicile. He

had not given Lentulus in charge to his lictors; but had led him before

the senate with his own hand, because none but a consul might put a

prætor under restraint. Finally, he had caused the criminals to be

declared _perduelles_, or public enemies, in order to strip them of the

prerogatives of citizenship, before proceeding to their punishment.

He now threw himself once more on the senate itself. He restored to

the assembly the sword which it had thrust into his hands. The fathers

met in the temple of Concord, the ground-plan of which may yet be

traced under the brow of the Capitoline, and from the memorials still

preserved to us, we may picture to ourselves a vivid representation of

the debate which followed. While strong patrols traversed the streets,

and the knights armed and in great multitudes surrounded the place of

assembly, the consul-designate, Silanus, invited first to deliver his

opinion, pronounced boldly for death. All the consulars, successively,

followed on the same side. It seemed as if the meeting would have been

unanimous, for Crassus had absented himself, and Cæsar, it might be

thought, conscious of his own complicity or at least of the suspicions

to which he was subjected, would desire to efface the stigma in the

blood of the convicted traitors. But he, taking counsel only of his own

boldness and spirit, of the claims of his party, and indeed of his own

natural clemency, declared in a speech of remarkable power, for perpetual

imprisonment, and with confiscation. He allowed indeed that the culprits

were justly liable to the extreme penalty; but to free and high-minded

men, degradation, he contended, was worse than death, which he dared to

characterise as mere oblivion. This speech made a great impression upon

the assembly. Those who were next asked their opinion voted one after the

other with Cæsar.

Among them was Quintus Cicero, the consul’s own brother; Silanus himself

thought fit to explain away the sentiments he had just delivered in

accordance with the last speaker. Cicero then rose to stem the current,

and demonstrated with all his eloquence the impossibility of stopping

at the point recommended by Cæsar after having gone so far, and both

offended and alarmed so many dangerous enemies. But this appeal to the

fears of the assembly rather increased than allayed their anxiety to

escape from the immediate responsibility. Cicero’s real influence with

them was never great. A master in the Forum, he was only a minister

in the senate. There he was too generally regarded as a mere bustling

politician, who used the means put into his hands by others for his

own glory or advancement. The senators would have little heeded his

counsel, had it not been reinforced by an energetic speech from Cato,

who pronounced for the execution of the criminals in a tone of deep

conviction and unflinching courage. Once more the audience was swayed

round to the side of severity, and Cato’s influence was openly avowed by

the language of the fatal decree itself, which was expressed in his own

words. The knights, who waited impatiently for the result, were furious

at the obstruction Cæsar had thrown in the way of justice, and when he

appeared on the steps of the temple could hardly be restrained from

assassinating him. Some of the younger senators carried him off in their

arms, and among them C. Scribonius Curio was conspicuous for his spirit

and courage.

The knights, it was said, had looked to Cicero for the signal to

consummate their vengeance; but the consul had turned away. He was

giving orders for the immediate execution of the senate’s decree, in

order to prevent the interference of the tribunes, or a rescue by main

force. He went in person to the house where Lentulus was detained on the

Palatine, and brought him to the Tullianum, the prison under the Capitol,

whither the prætors at the same time conducted the other criminals. The

executioners were at hand. Lentulus was strangled first, and Cethegus,

Gabinius, Statilius, and Ceparius suffered the same fate successively.

When the consul, who had attended to the last, traversed the Forum on his

route homeward, he exclaimed to the crowds through which he made his way,

“They have lived,” and the people shuddered in silence.

[Illustration: BASE OF A ROMAN COLUMN]

Cicero had performed, as he well knew, an action, the fame of which

must resound through all ages, and for the moment the head of the

aspiring Arpinate swam with the conviction that his name was now linked

indissolubly with the greatest crisis in the history of Rome. The

execution took place on the 5th of December [Feb. 7th, 62] and he had yet

another month of office before him, and Catiline was in arms in Etruria.

While he turned from the contemplation of his own glory to finish his

work, the nobles could dwell with grim satisfaction on an exploit, which

proved, as they conceived, to them that they could defend themselves

henceforth without the aid of a military chief. The patron they suspected

and feared had withdrawn from their presence to collect his forces and

assail their prerogative from a distance. He had left them exposed to

the attacks of the Marians, whose courage had revived in his absence.

But, trusting in themselves alone, they had checked opposition, crushed

sedition, and strangled revolution. Should the survivors appeal, on his

return to Pompey, they at once threw down the gauntlet and defied the

commander of their own legions. We shall see how rash their hot-brained

courage was, and how soon they cooled in the presence of the avenger whom

they had evoked. But those among them who already apprehended his calling

them to account, were prepared at least to make a sacrifice of Cicero,

assured that he would accept the victim and pardon the offence.

The successes of the generals of the senate had doubtless inspired Cicero

with confidence to accomplish the act, which he regarded as the eternal

glory of his consulate, and the salvation of his country. The presence of

the troops of the republic had repressed the movements of insurrection in

every quarter. In Etruria alone was the resistance serious and obstinate.

Cicero had purchased the co-operation of his colleague Antonius, whose

vacillation had given confidence to the conspirators, by ceding to him

the province of Macedonia. He had placed him at the head of the troops

destined to act against Catiline in person; but he had furnished him with

firmer and more faithful lieutenants in Sextius and Petreius. While this

army covered Rome, another under Metellus occupied the Cisalpine, and

cut off the rebel’s communications with his Gallic allies. Catiline had

assembled twenty thousand men, but only one-quarter of this number were

regularly equipped. Menaced both in front and rear he turned alternately

from the one opponent to the other, and was trying to shake the loyalty

of Antonius, when the news of the death of his associates threw him into

despair. He was now assured that the senate would never retreat from

its position, and even the gaining of Antonius could only postpone by

a few days the ruin which must eventually overwhelm him. His men too

deserted from him by whole cohorts, and he soon found himself at the head

of no more than four thousand followers. He attempted to penetrate the

Apennines, and evading the forces of Metellus, gain the Alps and excite

an insurrection in Gaul. But the defiles were closed against him, and

again he threw himself on Antonius. The consul himself affected sickness

and entrusted his legions to Petreius. The armies met not far from

Pistoria.[b]

Catiline, when he saw that he was surrounded by mountains and by hostile

forces, that his schemes in the city had been unsuccessful, and that

there was no hope either of escape or of succour, thinking it best,

in such circumstances, to try the fortune of a battle, resolved upon

engaging as speedily as possible with Antonius. Having, therefore,

assembled his troops, he addressed them in the following manner:

“I am well aware, soldiers, that words cannot inspire courage; and that

a spiritless army cannot be rendered active, or a timid army valiant, by

the speech of its commander. Whatever courage is in the heart of a man,

whether from nature or from habit, so much will be shown by him in the

field; and on him whom neither glory nor danger can move, exhortation is

bestowed in vain; for the terror in his breast stops his ears.

“I have called you together, however, to give you a few instructions,

and to explain to you at the same time my reasons for the course which I

have adopted. You all know, soldiers, how severe a penalty the inactivity

and cowardice of Lentulus has brought upon himself and us; and how,

while waiting for reinforcements from the city, I was unable to march

into Gaul. In what situation our affairs now are, you all understand as

well as myself. Two armies of the enemy, one on the side of Rome, and

the other on that of Gaul, oppose our progress; while the want of corn

and of other necessaries prevents us from remaining, however strongly

we may desire to remain, in our present position. Whithersoever we would

go, we must open a passage with our swords. I conjure you, therefore, to

maintain a brave and resolute spirit; and to remember, when you advance

to battle, that on your own right hands depend riches, honour, and glory,

with the enjoyment of your liberty and of your country. If we conquer,

all will be safe; we shall have provisions in abundance; and the colonies

and corporate towns will open their gates to us. But if we lose the

victory through want of courage, those same places will turn against

us; for neither place nor friend will protect him whom his arms have

not protected. Besides, soldiers, the same exigency does not press upon

our adversaries, as presses upon us; we fight for our country, for our

liberty, for our life; they contend for what but little concerns them,

the power of a small party.

“We might, with the utmost ignominy, have passed the rest of our days

in exile. Some of you, after losing your property, might have waited at

Rome for assistance from others. But because such a life to men of spirit

was disgusting and unendurable, you resolved upon your present course.

If you wish to quit it you must exert all your resolution, for none but

conquerors have exchanged war for peace. To hope for safety in flight,

when you have turned away from the enemy the arms by which the body is

defended, is indeed madness. In battle, those who are most afraid are

always in most danger; but courage is equivalent to a rampart.

“When I contemplate you, soldiers, and when I consider your past

exploits, a strong hope of victory animates me. Your spirit, your age,

your valour, give me confidence--to say nothing of necessity, which makes

even cowards brave. To prevent the numbers of the enemy from surrounding

us, our confined situation is sufficient. But should Fortune be unjust to

your valour, take care not to lose your lives unavenged; take care not to

be taken and butchered like cattle, rather than, fighting like men, to

leave to your enemies a bloody and mournful victory.”[102]

When he had thus spoken, he ordered, after a short delay, the signal

for battle to be sounded, and led down his troops, in regular order, to

the level ground. Having then sent away the horses of all the cavalry,

in order to increase the men’s courage by making their danger equal, he

himself on foot, drew up his troops suitably to their numbers and the

nature of the ground. As a plain stretched between the mountains on the

left, with a rugged rock on the right, he placed eight cohorts in front,

and stationed the rest of his force, in close order, in the rear. From

among these he removed all the ablest centurions, the veterans, and the

stoutest of the common soldiers that were regularly armed, into the

foremost ranks.

On the other side, Caius Antonius, who, being lame, was unable to be

present in the engagement, gave the command of the army to Marcus

Petreius, his lieutenant-general. Petreius ranged the cohorts of

veterans, which he had raised to meet the present insurrection, in front,

and behind them the rest of his force in lines. Then, riding round among

his troops, and addressing his men by name, he encouraged them, and bade

them remember that they were to fight against unarmed marauders, in

defence of their country, their children, their temples, and their homes.

Being a military man, and having served with great reputation, for more

than thirty years, as tribune, prefect, lieutenant, or prætor, he knew

most of the soldiers and their honourable actions, and, by calling these

to their remembrance, roused the spirits of the men.

When he had made a complete survey, he gave the signal with the trumpet,

and ordered the cohorts to advance slowly. The army of the enemy followed

his example; and when they approached so near that the action could be

commenced by the light-armed troops, both sides, with a loud shout,

rushed together in a furious charge. They threw aside their missiles,

and fought only with their swords. The veterans, calling to mind their

deeds of old, engaged fiercely in the closest combat. The enemy made an

obstinate resistance; and both sides contended with the utmost fury.

Catiline, during this time, was exerting himself with his light troops in

the front, sustaining such as were pressed, substituting fresh men for

the wounded, attending to every exigency, charging in person, wounding

many an enemy, and performing at once the duties of a valiant soldier and

a skilful general.

When Petreius, contrary to his expectation, found Catiline attacking him

with such impetuosity, he led his prætorian cohort against the centre of

the enemy, amongst whom, being thus thrown into confusion, and offering

but partial resistance, he made great slaughter, and ordered, at the

same time, an assault on both flanks. Manlius and the Fæsulan, sword in

hand, were among the first that fell; and Catiline, when he saw his army

routed, and himself left with but few supporters, remembering his birth

and former dignity, rushed into the thickest of the enemy, where he was

slain, fighting to the last.

When the battle was over, it was plainly seen what boldness, and what

energy of spirit, had prevailed throughout the army of Catiline; for,

almost everywhere, every soldier, after yielding up his breath, covered

with his corpse the spot which he had occupied when alive. A few,

indeed, whom the prætorian cohort had dispersed, had fallen somewhat

differently, but all with wounds in front. Catiline himself was found,

far in advance of his men, among the dead bodies of the enemy; he was not

quite breathless, and still expressed in his countenance the fierceness

of spirit which he had shown during his life. Of his whole army, neither

in the battle, nor in flight, was any free-born citizen made prisoner,

for they had spared their own lives no more than those of the enemy.

Nor did the army of the Roman people obtain a joyful or bloodless

victory; for all their bravest men were either killed in the battle, or

left the field severely wounded.

Of many who went from the camp to view the ground, or plunder the slain,

some, in turning over the bodies of the enemy, discovered a friend,

others an acquaintance, others a relative; some, too, recognised their

enemies. Thus, gladness and sorrow, grief and joy, were variously felt

throughout the whole army.[d]

While the generals of the republic were still hunting the common enemy

in the Apennines, and even before the execution of Lentulus, the leaders

of the senate had been quarrelling among themselves, as if they had no

one to fear either within or without the city. The election of consuls

for the ensuing year had fallen upon D. Junius Silanus and L. Licinius

Murena. We have seen that Catiline had presumed to offer himself; but a

worthier candidate, the great jurist Sulpicius, was also disappointed,

and resenting the notorious bribery employed by his rivals, had rushed

to prosecute Murena. Bribery there had been probably on all sides, and

Rome could ill afford at such a moment to waste her energies in a

private squabble. Cicero, intent upon his schemes for the frustration

of the conspiracy, could not endure that the public attention should be

withdrawn to the miserable intrigues of the rival candidates, and stepped

forward to defend Murena. But Cato, insensible to every argument from

expediency, and unable to see two sides of any question, supported the

suit of the accuser with headlong pertinacity. A part of Cicero’s speech

was directed to undermine the influence of so virtuous an advocate.

“Would you know, judges, what sort of person a sage of the Porch is? He

concedes nothing to favour, he never pardons. Compassion, he says, is

frivolousness and folly; the wise only are beautiful, though crooked and

deformed; he only is rich though a beggar, a lord though a slave; but

we, he declares, who are no sages, are no better than runaways, outlaws,

enemies, and madmen. All faults, he affirms, are equal; every error is a

heinous sin; to wring a fowl’s neck without just reason is as bad as to

strangle one’s father. The wise man never doubts, never repents, is never

deceived, can never change his mind.” And in this strain he continued to

the infinite amusement of his audience, who were well pleased to hear

the philosopher bantered. Cato joined good-humouredly in the laugh. “How

witty a consul we possess,” was the only remark he made. Nor did he

afterwards retain any feeling of displeasure against the orator who both

defeated his prosecution and turned him into ridicule.[103]

THE RISE OF JULIUS CÆSAR

[Sidenote: [62 B.C.]]

In the midst of their contentions amongst themselves for the highest

magistracy, the nobles had allowed Cæsar to obtain the prætorship,

the second rank in the scale of office. Pompey had despatched one of

his creatures, Metellus Nepos, from Asia to secure one place in his

interest on the bench of tribunes. Cato had refused to be nominated to

another; and he was journeying into Lucania to avoid the turmoil of

the elections, in which he declined to take a part, when he met the

Pompeian candidate on the road, and learned the object of his return. He

now felt it incumbent upon him, as a true patriot, to watch and check

the intrigues of the dangerous proconsul. Hastily retracing his steps,

he presented himself to the people for election, and obtained a seat

in the tribunate in conjunction with Metellus and others. Jealousies,

suspicions, and preparations for violence were rife on all sides. The

people were alarmed for the safety of their favourite Cæsar, and after

the execution of Lentulus, when he was once detained longer than usual

in the senate, surrounded the curia with hostile cries, insisting on his

being produced to satisfy them of his safety. The Marian chief indeed was

himself far from daunted. He laughed to scorn the new-born courage of

the nobles. On the 1st of January the chief men and dignitaries of the

state were wont to ascend the Capitol, and there offer their greetings

to the new consuls. Cæsar, however, instead of assisting in this act of

official courtesy, took advantage of the absence of his colleagues and

rivals to address the people in the Forum, and to propose that Catulus

should be deprived by their vote of the honours due to him as restorer of

the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Since its destruction by fire in the

time of Sulla, it had taken twenty years to rebuild that august edifice,

the glory of the city and the empire; and the work had now been brought

to completion by Catulus, to whom, as prince of the senate, the most

dignified of all the citizens, that honourable duty had been assigned.

Catulus might now expect that his name, as the restorer of the structure,

should be engraved upon its front; and no noble Roman would fail to

prize such a commemoration of his services as dearly as a consulship

or a triumph. Cæsar now charged him with peculation, and insisted on

the production of his accounts; meanwhile, he urged the people to

resolve that the final consummation of the work should be transferred

to Pompey. But the nobles, on hearing what was passing, rushed from

the presence of the consuls with all their friends and adherents into

the Forum, and succeeded in averting the blow. The name of Lutatius

Catulus was duly inscribed upon the proudest monument of the national

pride, and bore witness to the glory of the most blameless hero of the

later commonwealth, till the temple was again destroyed in the wars of

Vitellius and Vespasian.

Nor was this the only defiance hurled against the senate on that

memorable day. Nepos, the tribune, had put himself in communication with

Cæsar, and combined with him to insult the dominant faction, even in the

moment of its victory. The execution of the conspirators had already

been denounced as a murder, ere the echoes had died away of the shouts

amidst which it had been perpetrated. Cicero, on resigning the fasces,

presented himself to harangue the people, and detail the events of his

consulship. It was a proud day for him, and he was prepared to enjoy

it. But Nepos abruptly interposed: “The man,” he said, “who condemned

our fellow-citizens unheard, shall not be listened to himself”; and

he required him to confine himself to the customary oath, that he had

done nothing contrary to the laws. “I swear,” exclaimed Cicero, “that

I have saved the state.” The nobles shouted applause: Cato hailed him

as “the father of his country”; and the general acclamations of the

people overwhelmed every opposing whisper. The nobles were elated by

the unaccustomed sounds of popular applause; but Nepos threatened the

recall of Pompey, ostensibly to oppose Catiline, who was still in arms,

but really to bear down the free act of the senate. Cato vowed that

while he lived no such rogation should pass. A scuffle ensued in which

Cato proceeded to actual violence; his colleague declared his sanctity

violated, and fled to his patron’s camp. The senate declared his office

vacant (for the tribune was forbidden by law to quit the city); and at

the same time suspended Cæsar from his functions.

The prætor refused to quit his tribunal till compelled by a military

force, whereupon he dismissed his lictors, divested himself of the

ensigns of office, and retired with dignity to his pontifical dwelling.

The populace now assembled to avenge the insult cast upon their

favourite. A riot ensued, which compelled the consuls to retrace their

steps, not without obsequious expressions of respect and deference

towards him. Cicero had become already sobered from the intoxication

of his recent triumph. The cold distance Pompey observed towards his

party mortified and alarmed him. Crassus loudly accused him of having

calumniated him, and the enmity of Crassus was not to be despised.

Finally a tribune had just seemed to menace him with impeachment,

notwithstanding the decree of the senate which had forbidden any action

to be brought against those who had aided in the punishment of the

conspirators. These resentments the discreet consular now studied to

allay. He sought to appease Crassus; he proclaimed aloud the zeal which

Cæsar had displayed in being the first, as he attested, to disclose to

him Catiline’s machinations; and he who had lately exclaimed, “Let arms

give place to the gown,” now prostrated himself before Pompey, whom

he exalted above Scipio, begging only for himself the humble place of

a Lælius. He even sought allies for himself among the accomplices of

Catiline. P. Sulla, one of the conspirators, was defended by Cicero,

and acquitted in the face of manifest proofs. The orator struggled

to maintain that union between the two privileged orders of the

commonwealth, the senators and knights, the cherished aim of his policy,

which seemed at last to be accomplished on the steps of the temple of

Concord. But when the nobles spurned the knights haughtily from them;

when Cato, reckless of the misery of the provincials, repulsed the prayer

of the publicans of Asia, who sought relief from their contract with the

treasury, on account of the deep impoverishment of the revenues they had

undertaken to farm, insisting that they should be held to the strict

letter of their bargain; when the chasm between the two orders seemed

once more to open before his eyes, having now to choose between the class

to which he belonged by birth and natural sympathies and that to which

his genius had exalted him, Cicero weakly threw himself upon the former,

and proclaimed himself the creature of the aristocracy which despised

him. The concessions he had made came too late to save either himself or

them. The friends of Catiline still devoted him to their direst revenge;

the demagogues lashed the people into fury against him; Cæsar smiled at

his mistakes, while Crassus scarcely disguised the rancour of his hate

under the veil of frigid courtesy.

[Illustration: RUINS OF THE PALACE OF THE CÆSARS, ROME]

The nobles committed indeed no greater error than when they inflamed the

enmity of Crassus by divulging their suspicions of him, and at the same

time shrank from disarming it by force. Assuredly they should have made

him their friend, and this they might have done perhaps at a trifling

sacrifice of their vanity. Crassus was liked by none, but few could

afford to despise him; while his ambition might have been kept within

bounds by the concession of legitimate honours and dignities, and the

show of listening to his counsels. At the moment when Pompey was passing

over to the people, Crassus might have been retained on the side of the

oligarchy from which he had never wholly estranged himself. His immense

riches, the sources of which lay close at hand, gave him clients in

the senate as well as among the knights: his slaves, his freedmen, his

debtors and his tenants constituted an army in the heart of the city,

to sway the debates of the Forum and overawe its seditions. But when

the nobles refused to support him in his suit for the consulship, they

drove him to league himself with his popular competitor Pompey: when they

denounced him as a confederate of Catiline, they threw him into the arms

of Cæsar. By lending money to the Marian spendthrift, Crassus thought

that he made him his own; but in fact he bound himself to the fortunes of

his rival, from whose entire success he could alone hope to be repaid.

Cæsar’s suspension from his prætorship had only served to attach his

party more closely to him; an incident soon occurred by which it was

hoped to sow discord between them. P. Clodius, the corrupt accuser of

Catiline, a turbulent intriguer like so many members of his house,

had ingratiated himself with the people by his popular manners.

This beardless youth, already alike notorious for his debts and his

gallantries, had introduced himself into Cæsar’s house in female attire

during the celebration of the rites of the Bona Dea, which should have

been studiously guarded from male intrusion. A servant-maid discovered

him and uttered a cry of alarm; the mysteries were hastily veiled

and the intruder expelled; but the assembled matrons rushing hastily

home revealed each to her husband the scandal and the sin. The nobles

affected grave alarm; the pontiffs were summoned and consulted, and

the people duly informed of the insult offered to the deity. As chief

of the sacred college, Cæsar could not refrain from lending himself to

the general clamour; but his position was delicate. On the one hand

the presumed delinquent was an instrument of his own policy, while on

the other his own honour and that of his wife Pompeia were compromised

by the offence.[104] He disappointed everybody. He divorced his wife,

not because she was guilty, but because “the wife of Cæsar,” as he

said, “should be above suspicion.” But he refused to countenance the

measures which the consuls took, by direction of the senate, for the

conviction of the reputed culprit; and it may be suspected that the

money with which Clodius bribed his judges was a loan negotiated with

Crassus by Cæsar himself. Cicero for his part had been lukewarm in an

affair, the barefaced hypocrisy of which he was perhaps too honourable to

countenance; but, urged by his wife Terentia, a violent woman who meddled

much in his affairs, and was jealous at the moment of a sister of the

culprit, he clearly disproved his allegation of absence from the city,

and thus embroiled himself, to no purpose, with an able and unscrupulous

enemy. The senate believed their cause gained; the proofs indeed were

decisive, and they had assigned at their own request a military guard to

the judges to protect them from the anticipated violence of a Clodian

mob; but to their consternation, on opening the urns, the votes for an

acquittal were found to be thirty-one opposed to twenty-five. “You only

demanded a guard, then,” exclaimed Catulus with bitter irony, “to secure

the money you were to receive.” Cicero attributed to Crassus the scandal

of this perversion of justice; the nobles sneered at the corruption of

the knights, and the gulf which separated the two orders yawned more

widely than ever.

THE RETURN OF POMPEY

[Sidenote: [62-61 B.C.]]

The profanation of the mysteries had occurred in December of the year

62, but the Clodian process, retarded by various intrigues, did not take

place for some months. Meanwhile, before the end of January, Pompey had

returned from the East, and reached the gates of the city. He appeared

there as an imperator, to solicit a triumph, at the head of a small

detachment of his legionaries; but no sooner had he touched land at

Brundusium than he had dismissed the mass of his victorious army, with

the promise of estates which he made no doubt of obtaining for them from

the senate. All parties were in anxious expectation of the use he would

make of his power in quelling the feuds of the city, and some perhaps

apprehended that he would extinguish the legitimate powers themselves

from the perversion of which they sprang. All were amazed at the

generosity or arrogance with which he divested himself of the support

of his soldiers, and trusted to the glory of his name for maintaining

his ascendency in the commonwealth. The senators indeed regarded it as a

weakness, and presumed that their adversary cowered under the imposing

attitude they had assumed. The laws forbade him to enter the city while

he yet retained the military command, but both the senate and the people

held meetings in the Field of Mars to hear him recount his exploits, and

to collect from his own mouth the policy he proposed to adopt. Of his own

actions he spoke magniloquently; but when he touched on domestic affairs

his language was studiously moderate and conciliatory. He declared his

deep respect for the great council of the nation; but withheld a word

of approval of their recent or their pending measures. In order to draw

him out Crassus was induced to utter an encomium on Cicero’s conduct in

his consulship; and upon that hint, Cicero himself rose to improve the

occasion, and enlarged with his usual copious rhetoric on the dangers

from which he had saved the state. He spoke, as he alone could speak, of

the dignity of the senate, the loyalty of the knights, the favour of the

Italians, the paralysis of every element of disaffection, the cheapness

of provisions, the security of the commonwealth. The senate responded to

the speaker’s satisfaction; it was the crowning day of Cicero’s vanity,

yet one triumph was wanting to it--Pompey would not be drawn into any

indication of his views.

Pompey seems to have held himself aloof from the proceedings relative

to Clodius. Cæsar was also anxious to extricate himself from them, and

the expiration of his prætorship had opened to him an honourable retreat

in the province of the Further Spain. But there were two impediments in

his way; the one lay in the deep embarrassment of his debts; the other

was a decree of the senate, passed on purpose to retain him at home, by

which the magistrates were forbidden to go to their provinces before

the decision of the Clodian process. Cæsar’s private means had been

long exhausted. The friends who had continued to supply his necessities

had seemed to pour their treasures into a bottomless gulf; so vast was

his expenditure in shows, canvasses, and bribes; so long and barren the

career of public service through which this ceaseless profusion had to

be maintained. At this period when the bold gamester was about to throw

his last die, he could avow, that he wanted 250,000,000 sesterces (above

£2,000,000 or $10,000,000) to be “worth nothing.” Before he could enter

on the administration of his province he had pressing creditors to

satisfy, and expensive preparations to make. Every other resource had

been drained, but Cæsar could apply to Crassus for a loan. The wealthiest

of the Romans hated the Great Captain who had just returned to the city,

and he saw in Cæsar the readiest instrument for lowering his estimation.

He held in pawn the treasures of Iberia. The sum required was 830 talents

(£200,000) and this was placed at once in Cæsar’s hands. With the other

impediment the proprietor ventured to deal in a more summary manner. He

had reason to apprehend that a scheme was in contemplation to retain him

at home by a political impeachment; but he knew that once at the head of

his legions his foes would not dare recall him, and he trusted to reap

such a harvest both of treasure and reputation as would screen him from

the effects of their malice on his return.

The evasion of Cæsar and the escape of Clodius mortified the senate,

which wreaked its sullen humour on Pompey by delaying the official

ratification of his acts, and the satisfaction of his veterans. It had

conceded the honour of a triumph to Lucullus in spite of the impediments

opposed thereto by his successor in the eastern command, and still more

recently, by conferring a similar distinction on Metellus, together with

the surname of Creticus, it had expressed its approbation of the conduct

of the very general against whom Pompey had made war for disobedience to

his orders. Now that the conqueror of Mithridates had himself returned

to claim the last reward of military prowess, it seems to have harassed

him with mortifying delays, for it was not till the end of September,

nine months after his return to Rome, that his triumph was actually

celebrated. Meanwhile he had been compelled to intrigue for the election

of a creature of his own to the consulship; and while he thus bought the

interest of Afranius, a weak and frivolous friend, he was mortified by

the appointment of Metellus Celer, a decided enemy, as his colleague.

His vanity was perhaps in some measure indemnified by the glories of his

triumph, which lasted two days, amidst a display of spoils and trophies

such as Rome had never before witnessed. The proconsul boasted that he

had conquered twenty-one kings, and that Asia, which he had found the

farthest province of the empire, he had left its centre. Banners borne in

the procession announced that he had taken 800 vessels, 1000 fortresses

and 900 towns; thirty-nine cities he had either founded or restored; he

had poured 20,000 talents (about £5,000,000 sterling) into the treasury,

and nearly doubled the national revenues. Above all he plumed himself,

says Plutarch, on having celebrated his third triumph over a third

continent. For though others before him had triumphed three times, Pompey

by having gained his first over Libya, his second over Europe, and this

the last over Asia, seemed in a manner to have brought the whole world

within the sphere of his conquests.

But on descending from his chariot the hero found himself alone in the

city in which he had once been attended by such crowds of flatterers and

admirers. Lucullus, stimulated beyond his wont by the presence of his

rival, attacked his conduct in every particular; the senate was cold or

hostile; even Cicero discovered that his idol was formed of ordinary

clay. When the new consuls entered on their office Afranius was no match

for his far abler colleague, and the ratification of the proconsul’s acts

was still petulantly withheld. Pompey had disposed of crowns, he had made

and unmade kingdoms, he had founded municipal commonwealths, in short

he had regulated everything at his sovereign pleasure, from the Ægean

to the Red Sea. It concerned his honour to show to his friends and foes

throughout the East, that he was not less powerful in the city than he

had pretended to be in the camp. He demanded a public ratification, full,

prompt, and unquestioning. But Lucullus, supported by Cato, demanded

that each separate act should be separately discussed. Such a method of

proceeding could not fail to result in numerous checks and mortifications

to him; even the delay would suffice to show that he had fallen from his

vaunted supremacy. Pompey chose rather to forego altogether the formal

ratification of arrangements which he knew were not likely to be in

fact disturbed. At the same time he instructed a tribune named Flavius

to demand lands for his veterans. Cato and Metellus again opposed him;

then violence ensued, and the tribune complaining that his sanctity was

profaned, dragged the consul to prison. The senate insisted upon sharing

the insult offered to its chief, and Pompey, ashamed of the insolence of

his own creature, gave way once more, and withdrew his demands for a more

favourable opportunity. But he was deeply chagrined at the treatment he

had experienced, which dishonoured him in the eyes of his soldiers and

of all Asia. Then, too late, he began perhaps to regret the disbanding

of his legions. Repulsed by the nobles he betook himself once more to

the people, and sought by popular arts to revive the prestige of his

arms. But the first place in their regards was no longer vacant. Cæsar

was securely lodged in their hearts, and with him the newcomer must be

content to share a divided empire.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[102] [Of course, this is not Catiline’s speech; Sallust[d] composed

it in order to represent what under the circumstances Catiline might

appropriately have said to his troops. Most speeches found in the ancient

historians are of a similar character; few of them have been drawn from

documents.]

[103] [Compare the words of Velleius Paterculus,[e] “To praise Cato for

his honesty would be rather derogatory to him than otherwise; but to

accuse him of ostentatiously displaying it would be just.”]

[104] [According to Appian,[f] when Clodius had invaded the rites of the

Bona Dea “he had laid a blemish upon the chastity of Cæsar’s wife.”]

[Illustration: A ROMAN STATESMAN]

[Illustration]