INTERNAL HISTORY, FROM THE RETURN OF CICERO FROM BANISHMENT TO THE
COMMENCEMENT OF THE CIVIL WAR.--EXPEDITION AND DEATH OF CRASSUS. B.C.
57-50.
Cicero returned from banishment an altered man. Though his return had
been glorious, he saw that his position was entirely changed, and he was
forced to yield to a power which he no longer dared to resist. He even
lent his support to the Triumvirs, and praised in public those
proceedings which he had once openly and loudly condemned. Meantime the
power of Pompey had been shaken at Rome. A misunderstanding had sprung
up between him and Crassus, and Cato and the other leaders of the
aristocracy attacked him with the utmost vehemence. The Senate began to
entertain hopes of recovering their power. They determined to support L.
Domitius Ahenobarbus, who, in B.C. 56, had become a candidate for the
Consulship for the following year, and who threatened to deprive Cæsar
of his provinces and armies. Under these circumstances Cæsar invited
Pompey and Crassus to meet him at Luca (_Lucca_) in the spring of B.C.
56. He reconciled them to each other, and arranged that they were to be
Consuls for the next year, and obtain provinces and armies, while he
himself was to have his government prolonged for another five years, and
to receive pay for his troops. On their return to Rome, Pompey and
Crassus became candidates for the Consulship; but Domitius Ahenobarbus,
supported by Cato and the aristocracy, offered a most determined
opposition. The Consul Lentulus Marcellinus likewise was resolved to use
every means to prevent their election; and, finding it impossible to
carry their election while Marcellinus was in office, they availed
themselves of the veto of two of the Tribunes to prevent the Consular
Comitia from being held this year. The elections, therefore, did not
take place till the beginning of B.C. 55, under the presidency of an
interrex. Even then Ahenobarbus and Cato did not relax in their
opposition; and it was not till the armed bands of Pompey and Crassus
had cleared the Campus Martius of their adversaries that they were
declared Consuls for the second time (B.C. 55).
They forthwith proceeded to carry into effect the compact that had been
made at Luca. They induced the Tribune C. Trebonius to bring forward two
bills, one of which gave the province of the two Spains to Pompey, and
that of Syria to Crassus; the other prolonged Cæsar's government for
five years more, namely, from the 1st of January, B.C. 53, to the end of
the year 49. Pompey was now at the head of the state; and at the
expiration of his year of office would no longer be a private man, but
with the command of an army and in possession of the imperium. With an
army he felt sure of regaining his former influence. He had now
completed the theatre which he had been some time building, and, as a
means of regaining the popular favor, he resolved to open it with an
exhibition of games of unparalleled splendor and magnificence. The
building itself was worthy of the conqueror of the East. It was the
first stone theatre that had been erected at Rome, and was sufficiently
large to accommodate 40,000 spectators. The games exhibited lasted many
days. Five hundred African lions and eighteen elephants were killed. A
rhinoceros was likewise exhibited on this occasion for the first time.
Pompey sent an army into Spain under the command of his lieutenants, L.
Afranius and M. Petreius, while he himself remained in the neighborhood
of Rome as Proconsul.
Before the end of the year Crassus set out for Syria, with the intention
of attacking the Parthians. He was anxious to distinguish himself in
war, like Pompey and Cæsar, and, though upward of sixty years of age, he
chose rather to enter upon an undertaking for which he had no genius
than to continue the pursuit of wealth and influence at home. He crossed
the Euphrates in B.C. 54, but, hesitating to proceed at once against
Parthia, he gave the enemy time to assemble his forces, and returned to
Syria without accomplishing any thing of importance. He spent the winter
in Syria, where, instead of exercising his troops and preparing for the
ensuing campaign, he plundered the temples, and employed his time in
collecting money from every quarter. In the following spring (B.C. 53)
he again crossed the Euphrates, and plunged into the sandy deserts of
Mesopotamia. He trusted to the guidance of an Arabian chieftain, who
promised to lead him by the shortest way to the enemy. But this man was
in the pay of Surenas, the Parthian general; and when he had brought the
Romans into the open plains of Mesopotamia, he seized a frivolous
pretext, and rode off to inform Surenas that the Roman army was
delivered into his hands. The Parthians soon appeared. They worried the
densely-marshaled Romans with showers of arrows; and by feigned
retreats, during which they continued to discharge their arrows, they
led the Romans into disadvantageous positions. The son of Crassus, who
had distinguished himself as one of Cæsar's lieutenants in Gaul, was
slain, and the Romans, after suffering great loss, retreated to Carrhæ,
the Haran of Scripture. On the following day they continued their
retreat; and Surenas, fearing that Crassus might after all make his
escape, invited him to an interview. He was treacherously seized, and,
in the scuffle which ensued, was slain by some unknown hand. His head
was carried to the Parthian king Orodes, who caused melted gold to be
poured into the mouth, saying, "Sate thyself now with that metal of
which in life thou wert so greedy." Twenty thousand Roman troops were
slain, and ten thousand taken prisoners, in this expedition, one of the
most disastrous in which the Romans were ever engaged. Only a small
portion of the Roman army escaped to Syria under the command of L.
Cassius Longinus, afterward one of Cæsar's assassins, who had displayed
considerable ability during the war, but whose advice Crassus had
constantly refused to follow.
The death of Crassus left Pompey and Cæsar alone at the head of the
state, and it became evident that sooner or later a struggle would take
place between them for the supremacy. The death of Julia, in B.C. 54, to
whom both her father and husband were strongly attached, broke a link
which might have united them much longer. Pompey considered that he had
been the chief means of raising Cæsar to power, and he appeared long to
have deemed it impossible that the conqueror of Mithridates could be
thrown into the shade by any popular leader. Such a result, however, was
now imminent. Cæsar's brilliant victories in Gaul were in every body's
mouth, and Pompey saw with ill-disguised mortification that he was
becoming the second person in the state. Though this did not lead him to
break with Cæsar at once, it made him anxious to increase his power and
influence, and he therefore now resolved, if possible, to obtain the
Dictatorship. He accordingly used no effort to put an end to the
disturbances at Rome between Milo and Clodius in this year, in hopes
that all parties would be willing to accede to his wishes in order to
restore peace to the city. Milo was a candidate for the Consulship and
Clodius for the Prætorship. Each was attended by a band of hired
ruffians; battles took place between them daily in the Forum and the
streets; all order and government were at an end. In such a state of
things no elections could be held, and the confusion at length became
downright anarchy, when Milo murdered Clodius on the 20th of January in
the following year (B.C. 52). The two rivals had met near Bovillæ,
accompanied, as usual, by their armed followers. A fray ensued. The
party of Milo proved the stronger, and Clodius took refuge in a house.
But Milo attacked the house, dragged out Clodius, and having dispatched
him, left him dead upon the road. His body was found by a Senator,
carried to Rome, and exposed naked to the people. They were violently
excited at the sight, and their feelings were still farther inflamed by
the harangues of the Tribunes. The benches and tables of the
Senate-house were seized to make a funeral pile for their favorite; and
not only the Senate-house, but several other public buildings, were
reduced to ashes. As the riots still continued, the Senate had no longer
any choice but to call in the assistance of Pompey. They therefore
commissioned him to collect troops and put an end to the disturbances.
Pompey, who had obtained the great object of his desires, obeyed with
alacrity; he was invested with the supreme power of the state by being
elected sole Consul on the 25th of February; and, in order to deliver
the city from Milo and his myrmidons, he brought forward laws against
violence and bribery at elections. Milo was put upon his trial; the
court was surrounded with soldiers; Cicero, who defended him, was
intimidated, and Milo was condemned, and went into exile at
Massilia.[67] Others shared the same fate, and peace was once more
restored to the state.
Pompey's jealousy of Cæsar brought him into connection with the
aristocratical party. After Julia's death he had married Cornelia, the
daughter of Metellus Scipio, whom he made his colleague on the first of
August. His next step was to strike a blow at Cæsar. He brought forward
an old law that no one should become a candidate for a public office
while absent, in order that Cæsar might be obliged to resign his
command, and to place himself in the power of his enemies at Rome, if he
wished to obtain the Consulship a second time.[68] But the renewal of
this enactment was so manifestly aimed at Cæsar that his friends
insisted he should be specially exempted from it; and as Pompey was not
yet prepared to break openly with him, he thought it more expedient to
yield. At the same time, Pompey provided that he himself should remain
in command of an army after his rival had ceased to have one, by
obtaining a senatus consultum, by which his government of the Spains was
prolonged for another five years. And, in case Cæsar should obtain the
Consulship, he caused a law to be enacted, in virtue of which no one
could have a province till five years had elapsed from the time of his
holding a public office. Such were the precautions adopted against
Cæsar, the uselessness of which time soon showed.
In the following year (B.C. 51) Pompey declared himself still more
openly on the side of the Senate; but still he shrank from supporting
all the violent measures of the Consul M. Claudius Marcellus, who
proposed to send a successor to Cæsar, on the plea that the war in Gaul
was finished, and to deprive him of the privilege of becoming a
candidate for the Consulship in his absence. The Consuls for the next
year (B.C. 50), L. Æmilius Paullus and C. Claudius Marcellus, and the
powerful Tribune C. Curio, were all reckoned devoted partisans of Pompey
and the Senate. Cæsar, however, gained over Paullus and Curio by large
bribes, and with a lavish hand distributed immense sums of money among
the leading men of Rome. It was proposed in the Senate by the Consul C.
Marcellus that Cæsar should lay down his command by the 13th of
November. But this was an unreasonable demand; Cæsar's government had
upward of another year to run; and if he had come to Rome as a private
man to sue for the Consulship, there can be no doubt that his life would
have been sacrificed. Cato had declared that he would bring Cæsar to
trial as soon as he laid down his command; but the trial would have been
only a mockery, for Pompey was in the neighborhood of the city at the
head of an army, and would have overawed the judges by his soldiery as
at Milo's trial. The Tribune Curio consequently interposed his veto
upon the proposition of Marcellus. The Senate, anxious to diminish the
number of his troops, had, under pretext of a war with the Parthians,
ordered that Pompey and Cæsar should each furnish a legion to be sent
into the East. The legion which Pompey intended to devote to this
service was one he had lent to Cæsar in B.C. 53, and which he now
accordingly demanded back; and, although Cæsar saw that he should thus
be deprived of two legions, which would probably be employed against
himself, he complied with the request. Upon their arrival in Italy, they
were not sent to the East, but were ordered to pass the winter at Capua.
Cæsar took up his quarters at Ravenna, the last town in his province
bordering upon Italy.
Though war seemed inevitable, Cæsar still showed himself willing to
enter into negotiations with the aristocracy, and accordingly sent Curio
with a letter addressed to the Senate, in which he expressed his
readiness to resign his command if Pompey would do the same. Curio
arrived at Rome on the 1st of January, B.C. 49, the day on which the new
Consuls, L. Cornelius Lentulus and C. Claudius Marcellus, entered upon
their office. It was with great difficulty that the Tribunes, M.
Antonius, afterward the well-known Triumvir, and Q. Cassius Longinus,
forced the Senate to allow the letter to be read. After a violent
debate, the motion of Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, was carried, "that
Cæsar should disband his army by a certain day, and that if he did not
do so he should be regarded as an enemy of the state." On the 6th of
January the Senate passed the decree investing the Consuls with
dictatorial power. Antonius and Cassius, considering their lives no
longer safe, fled from the city in disguise to Cæsar's army, and called
upon him to protect the inviolable persons of the Tribunes. This was the
crisis. The Senate intrusted the management of the war to Pompey,
determined that fresh levies of troops should be held, and voted a sum
of money from the public treasury to Pompey. Pompey all along had no
apprehensions as to the war; he thought it impossible that Cæsar should
ever march against him; he was convinced that his great fame would cause
a multitude of troops to flock around him whenever he wished. In
addition to this, he had been deceived as to the disposition of Cæsar's
troops: he had been led to believe that they were ready to desert their
general at the first opportunity. Consequently, when the war broke out,
Pompey had scarcely any troops except the two legions which he had
obtained from Cæsar, and on the fidelity of which he could by no means
rely.
[Footnote 67: Cicero sent to Milo at Massilia the oration which he meant
to have delivered, the one which we still have. Milo, after reading it,
remarked, "I am glad it was not delivered, for I should then have been
acquitted, and never have known the delicate flavor of these Massilian
mullets."]
[Footnote 68: Cæsar's government would expire at the end of B.C. 49, and
he had therefore determined to obtain the Consulship for B.C. 48, since
otherwise he would become a private person.]
[Illustration: Marcus Brutus.]