CHAPTER VI.

THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA.

(621-676.)

[Sidenote: State of the Republic.]

I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had

lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism

created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to

sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good

sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from

the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at

every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but

sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.

“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of

a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline

began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who

had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi,

acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to

decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of

the best cause.

As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a

dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and

wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece

subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held

by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited

power.[625]

Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When,

freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give

themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides

troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful

men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a

veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at

other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no

longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all

were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition

to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of

things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the

ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the

depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such

a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a

generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could

neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it.”[626]

The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the

introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense

riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in

causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had

taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one

hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues,

in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had

felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on

the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into

Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt

for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence

which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true,

superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice

is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit,

and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were

loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had

taken possession of all classes.

Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and

sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two

periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain

peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty

and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly

of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his

cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s

conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in

leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a

purchaser!”[628]

Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions:

for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural

population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified;

the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of

proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the

place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by

the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that

fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly,

the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire,

without participating in the rights of Roman citizens.[629] There were,

as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies

and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state

of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the

metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected

to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were

exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation,

followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It

was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity

and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as

equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited

territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged

class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand

citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only

belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it

is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of

several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were

deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still

remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and

Norba.[631]

The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed

of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had

finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by

purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and

this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy.[632] At a later time,

when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received,

either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense

quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of

wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into

pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer

hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only

did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the

knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many

had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general

(_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the

whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the

provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance

was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made

the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.

Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the

patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly

in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there

were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the

soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a

degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of

619.[634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to

furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been

carried away for slaves by Roman collectors.[635] In the great market of

Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy.[636]

The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause

of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in

regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but

without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally

attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they

were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of

forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or

of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes

admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable

mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore

always the stigma of their origin.[638] Confined to the urban tribes,

they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population

of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a

veritable disdain: “Silence!” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does

not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he

proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not

frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken.”[639] When the

people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the

rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all

seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the

candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were

also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when,

crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by

their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.

On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal

families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to

preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves

worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made

them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that

there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a

democracy without people.

There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and

abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against

solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to

cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of

Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give

more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of

Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed

property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and

thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.

All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius

Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at

his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms,

but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles.[641]

[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621).]

II. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus alone dared to take a courageous

initiative. Illustrious by birth, remarkable for his physical advantages

as well as eloquence,[642] he was son of the Gracchus who was twice

consul, and of Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus.[643] At the

age of eighteen, Tiberius had been present, under the orders of his

brother-in-law, Scipio Æmilianus, at the ruin of Carthage, and was the

first to mount to the assault.[644] Questor of the Consul Mancinus in

Spain, he had contributed to the treaty of Numantia. Animated with the

love of virtue,[645] far from being dazzled by the splendour of the

moment, he foresaw the dangers of the future, and wished to prevent them

while there was still time. At the moment of his elevation to the

tribuneship, in 621, he took up again, with the approval of men of

eminence and philosophers of most distinction the project which had been

entertained by Scipio Æmilianus[646] to distribute the public domain

among the poor.[647] The people themselves demanded the concession with

great outcries, and the walls of Rome were daily covered with

inscriptions calling for it.[648]

Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the

germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the

deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy

without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war,

after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting

examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused

innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts.[649]

He then spoke with contempt of the slaves, of that restless, uncertain

class, invading the rural districts, useless for the recruitment of the

armies, dangerous to society, as the last insurrection in Sicily clearly

proved. He ended by proposing a law, which was simply a reproduction of

that of Licinius Stolo, that had fallen into disuse. Its object was to

withdraw from the nobility a portion of the lands of the domain which

they had unjustly seized. No landholder should retain more than five

hundred _jugera_ for himself and two hundred and fifty for each of his

sons. These lands should belong to them for ever; the part confiscated

should be divided into lots of thirty _jugera_ and farmed hereditarily,

either to Roman citizens, or to Italiote auxiliaries, on condition of a

small rent to the treasury, and with an express prohibition to alienate.

The proprietors were to be indemnified for the part of their lands which

they so lost. This project, which all the old writers judged to be just

and moderate, raised a tempest among the aristocracy. The Senate

rejected it, and, when the people were on the point of adopting it, the

tribune Octavius, gained over by the rich citizens,[650] opposed to it

his inflexible veto. Suddenly interrupted in his designs, Tiberius

embraced the resolution, as bold as it was contrary to the laws, of

obtaining a vote of the tribes to depose the tribune. These having

pronounced accordingly, the new law was published, and three triumvirs

appointed for carrying it into execution: they were, Tiberius, his

brother Caius, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius. Upon another

proposition, he obtained a decision that the money left by the King of

Pergamus to the Roman people should be employed for the expenses of

establishing those who were to receive the lands.[651]

The agrarian law had only passed by the assistance of the votes of the

country tribes.[652] Nevertheless, the popular party, in its enthusiasm,

carried Tiberius home in triumph, calling him not only the benefactor of

one city, but the father of all the peoples of Italy.

The possessors of the great domains, struck in their dearest interests,

were far from sharing in this joy. Not satisfied with having attempted

to carry off the urns at the time the law was voted, they plotted the

assassination of Tiberius.[653] In fact, as Machiavelli says: “Men value

riches even more than honours, and the obstinacy of the Roman

aristocracy in defending its possessions constrained the people to have

recourse to extremities.”[654]

The chiefs of the opposition, great landholders, such as the tribune

Octavius and Scipio Nasica, attacked in every possible way the author of

the law which despoiled them, and one day the senator Pompeius went so

far as to say that the King of Pergamus had sent Tiberius a robe of

purple and the diadem, signs of the tribune’s future royalty.[655] The

latter, in self-defence, had recourse to proposals inspired rather by

the desire of a vain popularity than the general interest. The struggle

became daily more and more embittered, and his friends persuaded him to

secure his re-election as tribune, in order that the inviolability of

his office might afford a refuge against the attacks of his enemies.

The people was convoked; but the most substantial support of Tiberius

failed him: the country people, retained by the harvest, did not obey

the call.[656]

Tiberius only sought a reform, and, unknowingly, he had commenced a

revolution. But to accomplish this he did not possess all the necessary

qualities. A singular mixture of gentleness and audacity, he unchained

the tempest, but dared not launch the thunderbolt. Surrounded by his

adherents, he walked to the comitia with more appearance of resignation

than assurance. The tribes, assembled in the Capitol, were beginning to

give their votes, when the senator Fulvius Flaccus came to warn Tiberius

that, in the meeting of the Senate, the rich, surrounded by their

slaves, had resolved on his destruction. This information produced a

considerable agitation round the tribune, and those at a distance

demanding the cause of the tumult, Tiberius raised his hand to his head

to explain by signs the danger which threatened him.[657] Then his

enemies hurried to the Senate, and, giving their own interpretation to

his gesture, denounced him as aiming at the kingly power. The Senate,

preceded by the sovereign pontiff, Scipio Nasica, repaired to the

Capitol. The mob of Tiberius was dispersed, and he himself was slain,

with three hundred of his friends, near the gate of the sacred

inclosure. All his partisans were hunted out, and underwent the same

fate, and among others Diophanes the rhetorician.

The man had succumbed, but the cause remained standing, and public

opinion forced the Senate to discontinue its opposition to the execution

of the agrarian law, to substitute for Tiberius, as commissioner for the

partition of lands, Publius Crassus, an ally of the Gracchi; the people

commiserated the fate of the victims and cursed the murderers. Scipio

Nasica gained nothing by his triumph; to withdraw him from the general

resentment he was sent to Asia, where he died miserably.

The execution of the law encountered, nevertheless, many obstacles. The

limits of the _ager publicus_ had never been well defined; few

title-deeds existed, and those which could be produced were often

unintelligible. The value of this property, too, had changed

prodigiously. It was necessary to indemnify those who had cleared

uncultivated grounds or made improvements. Most of the lots contained

religious buildings and sepulchres. According to the antique notions, it

was a sacrilege to give them any other destination. The possessors of

the _ager publicus_, supported by the Senate and the equestrian order,

made the most of all these difficulties. The Italiotes showed no less

ardour in protesting against the partition of the lands, knowing well

that it would be less favourable to them than to the Romans.

The struggles which had preceded had so excited men’s passions, that

each party, as the opportunity occurred, presented laws the most

opposite to each other. At one time, on the motion of the tribune Junius

Pennus, it is a question of expelling all foreigners from Rome (628), in

order to deprive the party of the people of auxiliaries; at another, on

that of M. Fulvius, the right of city is claimed in favour of the

Italiotes (629). This demand leads to disturbances: it is rejected, and

the Senate, to rid itself of Fulvius, sends him against the Salluvii,

who were threatening Massilia. But already the allies themselves,

impatient at seeing their rights incessantly despised, were attempting

to secure them by force, and the Latin colony of Fregellæ revolts first;

but it is soon destroyed utterly by the prætor M. Opimius (629). The

rigour of this act of repression was calculated to intimidate the other

towns; but there are questions which must be resolved, and cannot be put

down. The cause which has been vanquished ten years is on the point of

finding in the brother of Tiberius Gracchus a new champion.

[Sidenote: Caius Gracchus (631).]

III. Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred

deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After

serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the

tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his

ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of

Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of

his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of

Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not

hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs.[658] Invested

with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the

sanction of the people several laws; some directed merely against the

enemies of his brother;[659] others, of great political meaning, which

require more particular notice.

First, the importance of the tribunes was increased by the faculty of

being re-elected indefinitely,[660] which tended to give a character of

permanence to functions which were already so preponderant. Next, the

law _frumentaria_, by turn carried into effect and abandoned,[661]

gained him adherents by his granting without distinction, to all the

poor citizens, the monthly distribution of a certain quantity of wheat;

and for this purpose vast public granaries were constructed.[662] The

shortening of the time of service of the soldiers,[663] the prohibition

to enrol them under seventeen years of age, and the payment by the

treasury of their equipment, which was previously deducted from their

pay, gained him the favour of the army. The establishment of new tolls

(_portoria_) augmented the resources of the State; new colonies were

founded,[664] not only in Italy, but in the possessions out of the

peninsula.[665] The agrarian law, which was connected with the

establishment of these colonies, was confirmed, probably with the view

of restoring to the commissioners charged with its execution their

judicial powers, which had fallen into disuse.[666] Long and wide roads,

starting from Rome, placed the metropolis in easy communication with the

different countries of Italy.[667]

Down to this time, the appointments to the provinces had taken place

after the consular elections, which allowed the Senate to distribute

the great commands nearly according to its own convenience; it was now

arranged, in order to defeat the calculations of ambition and cupidity,

that the Senate should assign, before the election of the consuls, the

provinces which they should administrate.[668] To elevate the title of

Roman citizen, the dispositions of the law Porcia were put in force

again, and it was forbidden not only to pronounce capital

punishment[669] on a Roman citizen, except in case of high treason

(_perduellio_), but even for this offence to apply it without the

ratification of the people. It was equivalent to repealing the law of

provocation, the principle of which had been inscribed in the laws of

the Twelve Tables.

C. Gracchus attempted still more in the cause of equality. He proposed

to confer the right of city on the allies who enjoyed the Latin law, and

even to extend this benefit to all the inhabitants of Italy.[670] He

wished that in the comitia all classes should be admitted without

distinction to draw lots for the century called _prærogativa_, or which

had precedency in voting;[671] this “prerogative” had in fact a great

influence, because the suffrage of the first voters was regarded as a

divine presage; but these propositions were rejected. Desirous of

diminishing the power of the Senate, Gracchus resolved to oppose to it

the knights, whose importance he increased by new attributes. He caused

a law to be passed which authorised the censor to let to farm, in Asia,

the lands taken from the inhabitants of the conquered towns.[672] The

knights then took in farm the rents and tithes of those countries, of

which the soil belonged of right to the Roman people;[673] the old

proprietors were reduced to the condition of simple tenants. Finally,

Caius gave the knights a share in the judiciary powers, exercised

exclusively by the Senate, the venality of which had excited public

contempt.[674] Three hundred knights were joined with three hundred

senators, and the cognisance of all actions at law thus devolved upon

six hundred judges.[675] These measures gained for him the good-will of

an order which, hostile hitherto to the popular party, had contributed

to the failure of the projects of Tiberius Gracchus.

The tribune’s success was immense; his popularity became so great that

the people surrendered to him the right of naming the three hundred

knights among whom the judges were to be chosen, and his simple

recommendation was enough to secure the election of Fannius, one of his

partisans, to the consulship. Desiring further to show his spirit of

justice towards the provinces, he sent back to Spain the wheat

arbitrarily carried away from the inhabitants by the proprætor Fabius.

The tribunes had thus, at that epoch, a veritable omnipotence: they had

charge of the great works; disposed of the public revenues; dictated, so

to say, the election of the consuls; controlled the acts of the

governors of provinces; proposed the laws, and saw to their execution.

These measures taken together, from the circumstance that they were

favourable to a great number of interests, calmed for some time the

ardour of the opposition, and reduced it to silence. Even the Senate

became reconciled in appearance with Caius Gracchus; but under the

surface the feeling of hatred still existed, and another tribune was

raised up against him, Livius Drusus, whose mission was to propose

measures destined to restore to the Senate the affection of the people.

C. Gracchus had designed that the allies enjoying Latin rights should be

admitted to the right of city. Drusus caused it to be declared that,

like the Roman citizens, they should no longer be subject to be beaten

with rods. According to the law of the Gracchi, the lands distributed to

the poor citizens were burdened with a small rent for the profit of the

public treasury; Drusus freed them from it.[676] In rivalry to the

agrarian law, he obtained the creation of twelve colonies of three

thousand citizens each. Lastly, it was thought necessary to remove Caius

Gracchus himself out of the way, by appointing him to lead to Carthage,

to raise it from its ruins, the colony of six thousand individuals,

taken from all parts of Italy,[677] of which he had obtained the

establishment.

During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one

hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the

other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal,

compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter

enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of

these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a

third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected

consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the

nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the

town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation

of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of

deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.

The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in

the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with

extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate

tyrants--a treacherous qualification always employed against the

defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph,

they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of

a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly.

Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius

underwent a similar fate. The head of the tribune was carried in

triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The

agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to

torment the Senate.

Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the

laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and

prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,[678]

“because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent

measure.”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected

for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them

faithfully, or to have an army at command.

Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws

continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part,

inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions

of lands which had been taken from them,[680] and its effects were only

destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of

corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak,

the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less

miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a

sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred

and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they

combated with arms ideas which arms could not destroy. When, in the

midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root

in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them;

but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and

imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent

repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again

incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a

hundred others grow up in its place.

[Sidenote: War of Jugurtha (637).]

IV. An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party:

will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman

name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on

the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men

who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their

ancestors.

Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine,

had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia.

Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the

inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children,

Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in

spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman

commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him

and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon

master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death

also. The Senate sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius,

who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful

peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul,

on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to

come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of

reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the

scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:--

“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the

nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed

to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius

Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not

caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law,

but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I

acknowledge that _to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to

the kingly power_; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance

obtained by the blood of the citizens.... In these last years you

groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free

people made the tributaries of a few nobles--of those who alone are in

possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is

too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they

have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the

dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and

men.... But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic?

Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity, the most

criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good

faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic.

Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced

unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and

these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the

course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety.... Ah!

could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to

rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you

resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your

enemies as allies.”[681]

He then reminded his audience of all Jugurtha’s crimes. The latter rose

to justify himself; but the tribune C. Bæbius, with whom he was in

league, ordered the king to keep silence. The Numidian was on the point

of gathering the fruit of such an accumulation of corruptions, when,

having caused a dangerous rival, Massiva, the grandson of Masinissa, to

be assassinated at Rome, he became the object of public reprobation, and

was compelled to return to Africa. War then re-commences; the consul

Albinus lets it drag on in length. Recalled to Rome to hold the comitia,

he entrusts the command to his brother, the proprætor Aulus, whose army,

soon seduced by Jugurtha, lets itself be surrounded, and is under the

necessity of making a dishonourable capitulation. The indignation at

Rome is at its height. On the proposal of a tribune, an inquiry is

opened against all the presumed accomplices in the misdeeds of

Jugurtha; they were punished, and, as often happens under such

circumstances, the vengeance of the people passed the limits of justice.

At last, after warm debates, an honourable man is chosen, Metellus,

belonging to the faction of the nobles, and he is charged with the war

in Africa. Public opinion, by forcing the Senate to punish corruption,

had triumphed over bad passions; and “it was the first time,” says

Sallust, “that the people put a bridle on the tyrannical pride of the

nobility.”[682]

[Sidenote: Marius (647).]

V. The Gracchi had made themselves, so to say, the civil champions of

the popular cause: Marius became its stern soldier. Born of an obscure

family, bred in camps, having arrived by his courage at high grades, he

had the roughness and the ambition of the class which feels itself

oppressed. A great captain, but a partisan in spirit, naturally inclined

to good and to justice, he became, towards the end of his life, through

love of power, cruel and inexorable.[683]

After having distinguished himself at the siege of Numantia, he was

elected tribune of the people, and displayed in that office a great

impartiality.[684] It was the first step of his fortune. Having become

the lieutenant of Metellus, in the war against Jugurtha he sought to

supplant his general; and, at a later period, succeeded in allying

himself to an illustrious family by marrying Julia, paternal aunt of the

great Cæsar. Guided by his instinct or intelligence, he had learnt that

beneath the official people there existed a people of proletaries and of

allies which demanded a consideration in the State.

Having reached the consulship through his high military reputation,

backed by intrigues, he was charged with the war of Numidia, and, before

his departure, expressed with energy, in an address to the people, the

rancours and principles of the democratic party of that time.

“You have charged me,” he said, “with the war against Jugurtha; the

nobility is irritated at your choice: but why do you not change your

decree, by going to seek for this expedition a man among that crowd of

nobles, of old lineage, who counts many ancestors, but not a single

campaign?... It is true that he would have to take among the people an

adviser who could teach him his business. With these proud patricians

compare Marius, a new man. What they have heard related by others, what

they have read of, I have seen in part, I have in part done.... They

reproach me with the obscurity of my birth and fortune; I reproach them

with their cowardice and personal infamy. Nature, our common mother, has

made all men equal, and the bravest is the most noble.... If they think

they are justified in despising me, let them also despise their

ancestors, ennobled like me by their personal merits.... And is it not

more worthy to be oneself the author of his name than to degrade that

which has been transmitted to you?

“I cannot, to justify your confidence, make a display of images, nor

boast of the triumphs or consulships of my ancestors; but I can produce,

if necessary, javelins, a standard, the trappings of war, twenty other

military gifts, besides the scars which furrow my breast. These are my

images, these my nobility, not left by inheritance, but won for myself

by great personal labours and perils.”[685]

After this oration, in which is revealed the legitimate ardour of those

who, in all aristocratic countries, demand equality, Marius, contrary to

the ancient system, enrolled more proletaries than citizens. The

veterans also crowded under his standards. He conducted the war of

Africa with skill; but he was robbed of part of his glory by his

questor, P. Cornelius Sylla. This man, called soon afterwards to play so

great a part, sprung from an illustrious patrician family, ambitious,

ardent, full of boldness and confidence in himself, recoiled before no

obstacle. The successes, which cost so many efforts to Marius, seemed to

come of themselves to Sylla. Marius defeated the Numidian prince, but,

by an adventurous act of boldness, Sylla received his submission, and

ended the war. From that time began, between the proconsul and his young

questor, a rivalry which, in time, was changed into violent hatred. They

became, one, the champion of the democracy; the other, the hope of the

oligarchic faction. So the Senate extolled beyond measure Metellus and

Sylla, in order that the people should not consider Marius as the first

of the generals.[686] The gravity of events soon baffled this

manœuvre.

While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger

threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had

moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia

(in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all

their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and

adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls.[687] In their

passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged

with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul;

returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they

demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to

meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The

Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew

the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was

only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri,

followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites

the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable

of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger,

sought no longer to seize the power.[688] Marius was, contrary to the

law, named a second time consul, in 650, and charged with the war in

Gaul.

This great captain laboured during several years to restore military

discipline, practise his troops, and familiarise them with their new

enemies, whose aspect filled them with terror. Marius, considered

indispensable, was re-elected from year to year; from 650 to 654, he was

five times elected consul, and beat the Cimbri, united with the Ambrones

and Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (_Aix_), re-passed into Italy, and

exterminated, near Vercellæ, the Cimbri who had escaped from the last

battle and those whom the Celtiberians had driven back from Spain. These

immense butcheries, these massacres of whole peoples, removed for some

time the barbarians from the frontiers of the Republic.

Consul for the sixth time (654), the saviour of Rome and Italy, by a

generous deference, would not triumph without his colleague

Catulus,[689] and did not hesitate to exceed his powers in granting to

two auxiliary cohorts of Cameria, who had distinguished themselves, the

rights of city.[690] But his glory was obscured by culpable intrigues.

Associated with the most turbulent chiefs of the democratic party, he

excited them to revolt, and sacrificed them as soon as he saw that they

could not succeed. When governments repulse the legitimate wishes of the

people and true ideas, then factious men seize on them as a powerful arm

to serve their passions and personal interests; the Senate having

rejected all the proposals of reform, those who sought to raise

disorders found in them a pretext and support in their perverse

projects. L. Appuleius Saturninus, one of Marius’s creatures, and

Glaucia, a fellow of loose manners, were guilty of incredible

violences. The first revived the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, and went

beyond them in proposing the partition of the lands taken from the

Cimbri; a measure which he sought to impose by terror and murder. In the

troubles which broke out at the election of the consuls for 655, the

urban tribes came to blows with the country tribes. In the midst of the

tumult, Saturninus, followed by a troop of desperadoes, made himself

master of the Capitol, and fortified himself in it. Charged, in his

quality of consul, with the repression of sedition, Marius first

favoured it by an intentional inaction; then, seeing all good citizens

run to arms, and the factious without support, even deserted by the

urban plebeians, he placed himself at the head of some troops, and

occupied the avenues to the Capitol. From the first moment of the

attack, the rebels threw down their arms and demanded quarter. Marius

left them to be massacred by the people, as though he had wished that

the secret of the sedition might die with them.

The question of Italian emancipation was not foreign to the revolt of

Saturninus. It is certain that the claims of the Italiotes, rejected

after the death of C. Gracchus, and then adjourned at the approach of

the Cimbri, who threatened all the peninsula with one common

catastrophe, were renewed with more earnestness than ever after the

defeat of the barbarians. The earnestness of the allies to come to the

succour of Italy, the courage which they had shown in the battle-fields

of Aquæ Sextiæ and Vercellæ, gave them new claims to become Romans. Yet,

if some prudent politicians believed that the time was arrived for

yielding to the wishes of the Italiotes, a numerous and powerful party

revolted at the idea of such a concession. The more the privileges of

the citizens became extended, the more the Roman pride resisted the

thought of having sharers in them. M. Livius Drusus (663), tribune of

the people, son of the Drusus already mentioned, having under his

command in Rome an immense body of clients, the acknowledged patron of

all the Italiote cities, dared to attempt this salutary reform, and had

nearly carried it by force of party. He was not ignorant that there was

already in existence a formidable confederacy of the peoples of the

south and east of Italy, and that more than once their chiefs had

meditated a general insurrection. Drusus, trusting in their projects,

had had the art to restrain them and to obtain from them the promise of

a blind obedience. The success of the tribune seemed certain. The people

were gained over by distributions of wheat and concessions of lands; the

Senate, intimidated, appeared to have become powerless, when, a few days

before the vote of the tribes, Drusus was assassinated. All Italy

accused the senators of this crime, and war became inevitable.

The obstinate refusal of the Romans to share with the Italiotes all

their political rights, had been long a cause of political agitation.

More than two hundred years before, the war of the Latins and the revolt

of the inhabitants of Campania, after the battle of Cannæ, had no other

motives. About the same time (536), Spurius Carvilius proposed to admit

into the Senate two senators taken from each people in Latium. “The

assembly,” says Livy,[691] “burst into a murmur of indignation, and

Manlius, raising his voice over the others, declared that there existed

still a descendant of that consul who once, in the Capitol, threatened

to kill with his own hand the first Latin he should see in the curia;” a

striking proof of this secular resistance of the Roman aristocracy to

everything which might threaten its supremacy. But, after this epoch,

the ideas of equality had assumed a power which it was impossible to

mistake.

[Sidenote: Wars of the Allies (663).]

VI. This civil war, which was called the _War of Allies_,[692] showed

once more the impotence of material force against the legitimate

aspirations of peoples, and it covered the country with blood and ruins.

Three hundred thousand citizens, the choice of the nation, perished on

the field of battle.[693] Rome had the superiority, it is true, and yet

it was the cause of the vanquished which triumphed, since, after the

war, the only object of which was the assertion of the rights of

citizenship, these rights were granted to most of the peoples of Italy.

Sylla subsequently restricted them, and we may be convinced, by

examining the different censuses, that the entire emancipation was only

accomplished under Cæsar.[694]

The revolt burst out fortuitously before the day fixed. It was provoked

by the violence of a Roman magistrate, who was massacred by the

inhabitants of Asculum; but all was ready for an insurrection, which

was not long before it became general. The allies had a secret

government, chiefs appointed, and an army organised. At the head of the

peoples confederated against Rome were distinguished the Marsi and the

Samnites; the first excited rather by a feeling of national pride than

by the memory of injuries to be revenged; the second, on the contrary,

by the hatred which they had vowed against the Romans during long

struggles for their independence--struggles renewed on the invasion of

Hannibal. Both shared the honour of the supreme command. It appears,

moreover, that the system of government adopted by the confederation was

a copy of the Roman institutions. To substitute Italy for Rome, and to

replace the denomination of a single town by that of a great people, was

the avowed aim of the new league. A Senate was named, or rather a Diet,

in which each city had its representatives; they elected two consuls, Q.

Pompædius Silo, a Marsian, and C. Papius Mutilus, a Samnite. For their

capital, they chose Corfinium, the name of which was changed to that of

_Italia_, or _Vitelia_, which, in the Oscan language, spoken by a part

of the peoples of Southern Italy, had the same signification.[695]

The allies were wanting neither in skilful generals nor in brave and

experienced soldiers; in the two camps, the same arms, the same

discipline. The war, commenced at the end of the year 663, was pursued

on both sides with the utmost animosity. It extended through Central

Italy, from the north to the south, from Firmum (_Fermo_) to Grumentum,

in Lucania, and from east to west from Cannæ to the Liris. The battles

were sanguinary, and often indecisive, and, on both sides, the losses

were so considerable, that it soon became necessary to enrol the

freedmen, and even the slaves.

The allies obtained at first brilliant successes. Marius had the glory

of arresting their progress, although he had only troops demoralised by

reverses. Fortune, this time again, served Sylla better; conqueror

wherever he appeared, he sullied his exploits by horrible cruelties to

the Samnites, whom he seemed to have undertaken to destroy rather than

to subdue. The Senate displayed more humanity, or more policy, in

granting spontaneously the right of Roman city to all the allies who

remained faithful to the Republic, and in promising it to all those who

should lay down their arms. It treated in the same manner the Cisalpine

Gauls; as to their neighbours on the left bank of the Po, it conferred

upon them the right of Latium. This wise measure divided the

confederates;[696] the greater part submitted. The Samnites, almost

alone, continued to fight in their mountains with the fury of despair.

The emancipation of Italy was accompanied, nevertheless, with a

restrictive measure which was designed to preserve to the Romans the

preponderance in the comitia. To the thirty-five old tribes, eight new

ones were added, in which all the Italiotes were inscribed; and, as the

votes were reckoned by tribes, and not by head, it is evident that the

influence of the new citizens must have been nearly null.[697]

Etruria had taken no part in the Social War. The nobility was devoted to

Rome, and the people lived in a condition approximating to bondage. The

law Julia, which gave to the Italiotes the right of Roman city, and

which took its name from its author, the consul L. Julius Cæsar,

produced among the Etruscans a complete revolution. It was welcomed with

enthusiasm.

While Italy was in flames, Mithridates VI., king of Pontus, determined

to take advantage of the weakness of the Republic to aggrandise himself.

In 664, he invaded Bithynia and Cappadocia, and expelled the kings,

allies of Rome. At the same time he entered into communication with the

Samnites, to whom he promised subsidies and soldiers. Such was the

hatred then inspired by the Romans in foreign countries, that an order

of Mithridates was sufficient to raise the province of Asia, where, in

one day, eighty thousand Romans were massacred.[698] At this time the

Social War was already approaching its end. With the exception of

Samnium, all Italy was subdued, and the Senate could turn its attention

to the distant provinces.

[Sidenote: Sylla (666).]

VII. Sylla, appointed consul in recompense for his services, was charged

with the task of chastising Mithridates. While he was preparing for this

mission, the tribune of the people, P. Sulpicius, had formed a powerful

party. A remarkable man, though without scruples, he had the qualities

and the defects of most of those who played a part in these epochs of

dissension.[699] Escorted by six hundred Roman knights, whom he called

the Anti-Senate,[700] he sold publicly the right of citizen to freedmen

and foreigners, and received the price on tables raised in the middle of

the public place.[701] He caused a plebiscitum to be passed to put an

end to the subterfuge of the law Julia, which, by an illusory

re-partition, cheated the Italiotes of the very rights which it seemed

to accord to them; and instead of maintaining them in the eight new

tribes, he caused them to be inscribed in the thirty-five old ones. The

measure was not adopted without warm discussions; but Sulpicius was

supported by all the new citizens, together with the democratic faction

and Marius. A riot carried the vote and Sylla, threatened with death,

was obliged to take refuge in the house of Marius, and hastily quit

Rome. Master of the town, Sulpicius showed the influences he obeyed, by

causing to be given to the aged Marius the province of Asia, and the

command of the expedition against Mithridates. But Sylla had his army in

Campania, and was determined to support his own claims. While the

faction of Marius, in the town, indulged in acts of violence against the

contrary faction, the soldiers of Sylla were irritated at seeing the

legions of his rival likely to snatch from them the rich booty which

Asia promised; and they swore to avenge their chief. Sylla placed

himself at their head, and marched from Nola upon Rome, with his

colleague, Pompeius Rufus, who had just joined him. The greater part of

the superior officers dared not follow him, so great was still the

prestige of the eternal city.[702] In vain deputations are addressed to

him; he marches onwards, and penetrates into the streets of Rome.

Assailed by the inhabitants, and attacked by Marius and Sulpicius, he

triumphs only by dint of boldness and energy. It was the first time that

a general, entering Rome as a conqueror, had seized the power by force

of arms.

Sylla restored order, prevented pillage, convoked the assembly of the

people, justified his conduct, and, wishing to secure for his party the

preponderance in the public deliberations, he recalled to force the old

custom of requiring the previous assent of the Senate before the

presentation of a law. The comitia by centuries were substituted for

the comitia by tribes, to which was left only the election of the

inferior magistrates.[703] Sylla caused Sulpicius to be put to death,

and abrogated his decrees; and he set a price on the head of Marius,

forgetting that he had himself, a short time before, found a refuge in

the house of his rival. He proscribed the chiefs of the democratic

faction, but most of them had fled before he entered Rome. Marius and

his son had reached Africa through a thousand dangers. This revolution

appears not to have been sanguinary, and, with the exception of

Sulpicius, the historians of the time mention no considerable person as

having been put to death. The terror inspired at first by Sylla lasted

no long time. Reprobation of his acts was shown both in the Senate and

among the people, who seized every opportunity to mark their discontent.

Sylla was to resume the command of the army of Asia, and that of the

army of Italy had fallen to Pompeius. The massacre of this latter by his

own soldiers made the future dictator feel how insecure was his power;

he sought to put a stop to the opposition to which he was exposed by

accepting as a candidate at the consular comitia L. Cornelius Cinna, a

known partisan of Marius, taking care, however, to exact from him a

solemn oath of fidelity. But Cinna, once elected, held none of his

engagements, and the other consul, Cn. Octavius, had neither the

authority nor the energy necessary to balance the influence of his

colleague.

Sylla, after presiding at the consular comitia, went in all haste to

Capua to take the command of his troops, whom he led into Greece against

the lieutenants of Mithridates. Cinna determined to execute the law of

Sulpicius, which assimilated the new citizens to the old ones;[704] he

demanded at the same time the return of the exiles, and made an appeal

to the slaves. Immediately the Senate, and even the tribunes of the

people, pronounced against him. He was declared deposed from the

consulate. “A merited disgrace,” says Paterculus, “but a dangerous

precedent.”[705] Driven from Rome, he hurried to Nola to demand an

asylum of the Samnites, who were still in arms. Thence he went to sound

the temper of the Roman army employed to observe Samnium, and, once

assured of the dispositions of the soldiers in his favour, he penetrated

into their camp, demanding protection against his enemies. His speeches

and promises seduced the legions: they chose Cinna for their chief by

acclamation, and followed him without hesitating. Meanwhile two

lieutenants of Marius, Q. Sertorius and Cn. Papirius Carbo, both exiled

by Sylla, proceeded to levy troops in the north of Italy; and the aged

Marius landed in Etruria, where his presence was immediately followed by

an insurrection. The Etruscan peasants accused the Senate as the cause

of all their sufferings; and the enemy of the nobles and the rich

appeared to them as an avenger sent by the gods. In ranging themselves

under his banner, they believed that they were on the way with him to

the pillage of the eternal city.

War was on the point of re-commencing, and this time Romans and

Italiotes marched united against Rome. From the north, Marius,

Sertorius, and Carbo were advancing with considerable forces. Cinna,

master of Campania, was penetrating into Latium, while a Samnite army

invaded it on the other side. To these five armies the Senate could

oppose but one; that of Cn. Pompeius Strabo, an able general, but an

intriguing politician, who hoped to raise himself under favour of the

disorder. Quitting his cantonments in Apulia, he had arrived, by forced

marches, under the walls of Rome, seeking either to sell his services to

the Senate or to effect a conciliation with Marius. He soon saw that the

insurgents were strong enough to do without him. His soldiers, raised in

the Picenum and in the country of the Marsi, refused to fight for the

Senate against their old confederates, and would have abandoned their

general but for the courage and presence of mind of his son, a youth of

twenty years of age, the same who subsequently was the great Pompey. One

day the legionaries, snatching their ensigns, threatened to desert in

mass: young Pompey laid himself across the gateway of the camp, and

challenged them to pass over his body.[706] Death delivered Pompeius

Strabo from the shame of being present at an inevitable catastrophe.

According to some authors, he sank under the attacks of an epidemic

disease; according to others, he was struck by lightning in the very

midst of his camp. Deprived of its chief, his army passed over to the

enemy; the Senate was without defenders, and the populace rose against

it: Rome opened her gates to Cinna and Marius.

The conquerors were without pity in putting to death, often with

refinements in cruelty unknown to the Romans, the partisans of the

aristocratic faction who had fallen into their hands. During several

days, the slaves, whom Cinna had restored to liberty, gave themselves up

to every excess. Sertorius, the only one of the chiefs of the democratic

party who had some feelings of justice, made an example of these

wretches, and massacred nearly four thousand of them.[707]

Marius and Cinna had proclaimed, as they advanced upon Rome in arms,

that their aim was to assure to the Italiotes the entire enjoyment of

the rights of Roman city; they declared themselves both consuls for the

year 668. Their power was too considerable to be contested, for the new

citizens furnished them with a contingent of thirty legions, or about

150,000 men.[708] Marius died suddenly thirteen days after entering upon

office, and the democratic party lost in him the only man who still

preserved his prestige. A fact which arose out of his funeral, paints

the manners of the epoch, and the character of the revolution which had

just been effected. An extraordinary sacrifice was wanted for his tomb:

the pontiff Q. Mucius Scævola, one of the most respectable old men of

the nobility, was chosen as the victim. Conducted in pomp before the

funeral pile of the conqueror of the Cimbri, he was struck by the

sacrificer, who, with an inexperienced hand, plunged the knife into his

throat without killing him. Restored to life, Scævola was cited in

judgment, by a tribune of the people, for not having received the blow

_fairly_.[709]

While Rome and all Italy were plunged in this fearful anarchy, Sylla

drove out of Greece the generals of Mithridates VI., and gained two

great battles at Chæronea (668) and Orchomenus (669). He was still in

Bœotia, when Valerius Flaccus, sent by Cinna to replace him, landed

in Greece, penetrated into Thessaly, and thence passed into Asia. Sylla

followed him thither immediately, in haste to conclude with the King of

Pontus an arrangement which would enable him to lead his army back into

Italy. Circumstances were favourable. Mithridates had need to repair his

losses, and he found himself in presence of a new enemy, the lieutenant

of Valerius Flaccus, the fierce Flavius Fimbria, who, having by the

murder of his general become head of the army of Asia, had seized upon

Pergamus. Mithridates subscribed to the conditions imposed by Sylla; he

restored all the provinces of which he had taken possession, and gave

plate and money. Sylla then advanced into Lydia against Fimbria; but the

latter, at the approach of the victor of Chæronea, could not restrain

his soldiers. His whole army disbanded and passed over to Sylla.

Threatened by his rival, the murderer of Flaccus was driven to slay

himself. Nothing now stood in the way of Sylla’s projects on Italy, and

he prepared to make his enemies at Rome pay dearly for their temporary

triumph. At the moment of setting sail, he wrote to the Senate to

announce the conclusion of the war in Asia, and his own speedy return.

Three years, he said, had been sufficient to enable him to re-unite with

the Roman empire Greece, Macedonia, Ionia, and Asia, and to shut up

Mithridates within the limits of his old possessions; he was the first

Roman who received an embassy from the King of the Parthians.[710] He

complained of the violence exercised against his friends and his wife,

who had fled with a crowd of fugitives to seek an asylum in his

camp.[711] He added, without vain threats, his intention to restore

order by force of arms; but he promised not to repeal the great measure

of the emancipation of Italy, and ended by declaring that the good

citizens, new as well as old, had nothing to fear from him.

This letter, which the Senate ventured to receive, redoubled the fury of

the men who had succeeded Marius. Blood flowed again. Cinna, who caused

himself to be re-elected consul for the fourth time, and Cn. Papirius

Carbo, his colleague, collecting in haste numerous troops, but ill

disciplined, prepared to do their best to make head against the storm

which was approaching. Persuaded that Sylla would proceed along the

Adriatic to invade Italy from the north, Cinna had collected at Ancona a

considerable army, with the design of surprising him in the midst of his

march, and attacking him either in Epirus or Illyria. But his soldiers,

Italiotes in great part, encouraged by the promises of Sylla, and,

moreover, full of contempt for their own general, said openly that they

would not pass the sea. Cinna attempted to make an example of some of

the mutineers. A revolt broke out, and he was massacred. To avoid a

similar lot, Carbo, who came to take the command, hastened to promise

the rebels that they should not quit Italy.

Sylla landed at Brundusium, in 671, at the head of an army of forty

thousand men, composed of five legions, six thousand cavalry, and

contingents from Peloponnesus and Macedonia. The fleet numbered sixteen

hundred vessels.[712] He followed the Appian Way, and reached Campania

after a single battle, fought not far from Canusium.[713] He brought the

gold of Mithridates and the plunder of the temples of Greece, means of

seduction still more dangerous than his ability on the field of battle.

Hardly arrived in Italy, he rallied round him the proscripts and all

those who detested the inapt and cruel government of the successors of

Marius. The remains of the great families decimated by them repaired to

his camp as to a safe place of refuge. M. Licinius Crassus became one of

his ablest lieutenants, and it was then that Cn. Pompeius, the son of

Strabo, a general at twenty-three years of age, raised an army in the

Picenum, beat three bodies of the enemies, and came to offer to Sylla

his sword, already redoubtable.

It was the beginning of the year 672 when Sylla entered Latium; he

completely defeated, near Signia, the legions of the younger Marius,

whose name had raised him to the consulship. This battle rendered Sylla

master of Rome; but to the north, in Cisalpine Gaul and Etruria, Carbo,

in spite of frequent defeats, disputed the ground with obstinacy against

Pompey and Sylla’s other lieutenants. In the south, the Samnites had

raised all their forces, and were preparing to succour Præneste,

besieged by Sylla in person, and defended by young Marius. Pontius

Telesinus, the general of the Samnites, finding it out of his power to

raise the siege, conceived then the audacious and almost desperate idea

of carrying his whole army to Rome, taking it by surprise, and sacking

it. “Let us burn the wolves’ den,”[714] he said to his soldiers: “so

long as it exists, there will be no liberty in Italy.”

By a rapid night-march, Telesinus deceived the vigilance of his

adversary; but, exhausted with fatigue, on arriving at the foot of the

ramparts of Rome, the Samnites were unable to give the assault, and

Sylla had time to arrive with the choicest of his legions.

A sanguinary battle took place at the very gates of the town, on the day

of the calends of November, 672, and it continued far into the night.

The left wing of the Romans was beaten and took to flight, in spite of

the efforts of Sylla to rally it; Telesinus perished in the fight, and

Crassus, who commanded the right wing, gained a complete victory. At

daylight, the Samnites who had escaped the slaughter laid down their

arms and demanded quarter.[715]

More than a year still passed away before the complete pacification of

Italy, and it was only obtained by employing the most violent and

sanguinary measures. Sylla made this terrible declaration, that he would

not pardon one of his enemies. At Præneste, all the senators who were

the partisans of Marius had their throats cut, and the inhabitants were

put to the sword. Those of Norba, surprised through treason, rather than

surrender, buried themselves under the ruins of their city.

Sylla had scrupled at nothing in his way to power; the corruption of the

armies,[716] the pillage of towns, the massacre of the inhabitants, and

the extermination of his enemies; nor did he show any more scruples in

maintaining himself in it. He inaugurated his return to the Senate by

the slaughter, near the Temple of Bellona, of three thousand Samnites

who had surrendered prisoners.[717] A considerable number of the

inhabitants of Italy were deprived of the right of city which had been

granted them after the war of the allies;[718] he invented a new

punishment, that of proscription,[719] and, in Rome alone, he banished

four thousand seven hundred citizens, among whom were ninety senators,

fifteen consulars, and two thousand seven hundred knights.[720] His fury

fell heaviest upon the Samnites, whose spirit of independence he feared,

and he almost entirely annihilated that nation.[721] Although his

triumph had been a reaction against the popular party, he treated as

prisoners of war the children of the noblest and most respectable

families, and, by a monstrous innovation, even the women suffered the

same lot.[722] Lists of proscription, placarded on the Forum with the

names of the intended victims, threw terror into families; to laugh or

cry on looking at these was a crime.[723] M. Pletorius was slaughtered

for having fainted at the sight of the punishment inflicted on the

prætor, M. Marius;[724] to denounce the hiding-place of the proscripts,

or put them to death, formed a title to recompenses paid from the public

treasury, amounting in some cases to twelve thousand drachmas (about

11,640 francs [£460]) a head;[725] to assist them, to have had friendly

or any other relations with the enemies of Sylla, was enough to subject

the offender to capital punishment. From one end of Italy to the other,

all those who had served under the orders of Marius, Carbo, or Norbanus,

were massacred or banished, and their goods sold by auction. They were

to be struck even in their posterity: the children and grandchildren of

the proscripts were deprived of the right of inheritance and of being

candidates for public offices.[726] All these acts of pitiless vengeance

had been authorised by a law called _Valeria_, promulgated in 672, and

which, in appointing Sylla dictator, conferred upon him unlimited

powers. Yet, though Sylla kept the supreme power, he permitted the

election of the consuls every year, an example which was subsequently

followed by the emperors.

Calm re-established in Rome, a new constitution was promulgated, which

restored the aristocracy to its ascendency. The dictator fell into the

delusion of believing that a system founded by violence, upon selfish

interests, could survive him. It is easier to change laws than to arrest

the course of ideas.

The legislation of the Gracchi was abolished. The senators, by the law

_judiciaria_, acquired again the exclusive privilege of the judicatory

functions. The colony of Capua, a popular creation, was destroyed and

restored to the domain. Sylla assumed to himself one of the first

privileges of the censorship, which he had suppressed--the nomination

of the members of the Senate. He introduced into that assembly,

decimated during the civil wars, three hundred knights. By the law on

the priesthood, he removed from the votes of the people and restored to

the college the choice of the pontiffs and of the sovereign pontiff. He

limited the power of the tribunes, leaving them only the right of

protection (_auxilium_),[727] and forbidding their access to the

superior magistracies.[728] He flattered himself that he had thus

removed the ambitious from a career henceforward profitless.

He admitted into Rome ten thousand new citizens (called

_Cornelians_),[729] taken from among the slaves whose masters had been

proscribed. Similar enfranchisements took place in the rest of Italy. He

had almost exterminated two nations, the Etruscans and the Samnites; he

re-peopled their deserted countries by distributing the estates of his

adversaries among a considerable number of his soldiers, whom some

authors raise to the prodigious number of forty-seven legions,[730] and

created for his veterans twenty-three military colonies on the territory

taken from the rebel towns.[731]

All these arbitrary measures were dictated by the spirit of reaction;

but those which follow were inspired by the desire to re-establish order

and the hierarchy.

The rules formerly adopted for the succession of the magistracies were

restored.[732] No person could offer himself for the consulship without

having previously held the office of prætor; or for the prætorship

before he had held that of questor. Thirty years were fixed as the age

necessary for the questorship, forty for the prætorship, and forty-three

for the consulship. The law required an interval of two years between

the exercise of two different magistracies, and often between the same

magistracy, a rule so severely maintained, that, for having braved it in

merely soliciting for the consulship,[733] Lucretius Ofella, one of

Sylla’s most devoted partisans, was put to death. The dictator withdrew

from the freedmen the right of voting, from the knights the places of

honour in the spectacles; he put a stop to the adjudications entrusted

to the farmers-general and the distributions of wheat, and suppressed

the corporations, which threatened a real danger to public tranquillity.

Lastly, to put limits to extravagance, the sumptuary laws were

promulgated.[734]

By the law _de provinciis ordinandis_, he sought to regulate the

provinces and ameliorate their administration. The two consuls and the

eight prætors were retained at Rome during their year of office by the

administration of civil affairs. They took afterwards, in quality of

proconsuls or proprætors, the command of one of the ten provinces, which

they exercised during a year; after which a new curiate law became

necessary to renew the _imperium_; they preserved it until their return

to Rome. Thirty days were allowed to them for quitting the province

after the arrival of their successors.[735] The number of prætors,

questors, pontiffs, and augurs was augmented.[736] Every year twenty

questors were to be named, which would ensure the recruitment of the

Senate, since this office gave entrance to it. Sylla multiplied the

commissions of justice. He took measures for putting a stop to the

murders which desolated Italy (_lex de sicariis_), and to protect the

citizens against outrages (_lex de injuriis_). The _lex magistratis_

completed, so to say, the preceding.[737] In the number of _crimes of

high treason_, punished capitally, are the excesses of magistrates

charged with the administration of the provinces; quitting their

government without leave of the Senate; conducting an army beyond the

limits of his province; undertaking a war unauthorised; treating with

foreign chiefs: such were the principal acts denounced as crimes against

the Republic. There was not one of them of which Sylla himself had not

been guilty.

Sylla abdicated in 675, the only extraordinary act which remained for

him to accomplish. He who had carried mourning into so many families

returned into his own house alone, through a respectful and submissive

crowd. Such was the ascendency of his old power, supported, moreover,

by the ten thousand Cornelians present in Rome and devoted to his

person,[738] that, though he had resumed his position of simple citizen,

he was still allowed to act as absolute master, and even on the eve of

his death, which occurred in 676, he made himself the executioner of

pitiless justice, in daring to cause to be slaughtered before his eyes

the prætor Granius, guilty of exaction.[739]

Unexampled magnificence was displayed at his funeral; his body was

carried to the Campus Martius, where previously none but the kings had

been inhumed.[740] He left Italy tamed, but not subdued; the great

nobles in power, but without moral authority; his partisans enriched,

but trembling for their riches; the numerous victims of tyranny held

down, but growling under the oppression; lastly, Rome taught that

henceforth she is without protection against the boldness of any

fortunate soldier.[741]

[Sidenote: Effects of Sylla’s Dictatorship.]

VII. The history of the last fifty years, and especially the

dictatorship of Sylla, show beyond doubt that Italy demanded a master.

Everywhere institutions gave way before the power of an individual,

sustained not only by his own partisans, but also by the irresolute

multitude, which, fatigued by the action and reaction of so many

opposite parties, aspired to order and repose. If the conduct of Sylla

had been moderated, what is called the Empire would probably have

commenced with him; but his power was so cruel and so partial, that

after his death, the abuses of liberty were forgotten in the memory of

abuses of tyranny. The more the democratic spirit had expanded, the more

the ancient institutions lost their prestige. In fact, as democracy,

trusting and passionate, believes always that its interests are better

represented by an individual than by a political body, it was

incessantly disposed to deliver its future to the man who raised himself

above others by his own merit. The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla, had in

turn disposed at will of the destinies of the Republic, and trampled

under foot with impunity ancient institutions and ancient customs; but

their reign was ephemeral,[742] for they only represented factions.

Instead of embracing collectively the hopes and interests of all the

peninsula of Italy, they favoured exclusively particular classes of

society. Some sought before all to secure the prosperity of the

proletaries of Rome, or the emancipation of the Italiotes, or the

preponderance of the knights; others, the privileges of the aristocracy.

They failed.

To establish a durable order of things there wanted a man who, raising

himself above vulgar passions, should unite in himself the essential

qualities and just ideas of each of his predecessors, avoiding their

faults as well as their errors. To the greatness of soul and love of the

people of certain tribunes, it was needful to join the military genius

of great generals and the strong sentiments of the Dictator in favour of

order and the hierarchy.

The man capable of so lofty a mission already existed; but perhaps, in

spite of his name, he might have still remained long unknown, if the

penetrating eye of Sylla had not discovered him in the midst of the

crowd, and, by persecution, pointed him out to public attention. That

man was Cæsar.

BOOK II.

HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.

CHAPTER I.

(654-684.)

[Sidenote: First Years of Cæsar.]

I. About the time when Marius, by his victories over the Cimbri and

Teutones, saved Italy from a formidable invasion, was born at Rome the

man who would one day, by again subduing the Gauls and Germans, retard

for several centuries the irruption of the barbarians, give the

knowledge of their rights to oppressed peoples, assure continuance to

Roman civilisation, and bequeath his name to the future chiefs of

nations, as a consecrated emblem of power.

Caius Julius Cæsar was born at Rome on the 4th of the ides of Quintilis

(July 12), 654,[743] and the month Quintilis, called _Julius_ [July] in

honour of him, has borne for 1,900 years the name of the great man. He

was the son of C. Julius Cæsar,[744] prætor, who died suddenly at Pisa

about 670,[745] and of Aurelia, descended from an illustrious plebeian

family.

By ancestry and alliances, Cæsar inherited that double prestige which is

derived from ancient origin and recent renown.

On one side, he claimed to be descended from Anchises and Venus;[746] on

the other, he was the nephew of the famous Marius who had married his

aunt Julia. When the widow of this great captain died in 686, Cæsar

pronounced her funeral oration, and thus traced out his own

genealogy:--“My aunt Julia, on the maternal side, is of the issue of

kings; on the paternal side, she descends from the immortal gods: for

her mother was a Marcia,[747] and the family Marcius Rex are the

descendants of Ancus Marcius. The Julia family, to which I belong,

descends from Venus herself. Thus our house unites to the sacred

character of kings, who are the most powerful among men, the venerated

holiness of the gods, who hold kings themselves under their

subjection.”[748]

This proud glorification of his race attests the value which was set at

Rome upon antiquity of origin; but Cæsar, sprung from that aristocracy

which had produced so many illustrious men, and impatient to follow in

their footsteps, showed, from early youth, that nobility obliges,

instead of imitating those whose conduct would make one believe that

nobility dispenses.

Aurelia, a woman of lofty character and severe morals,[749] helped above

all in the development of his great abilities, by a wise and enlightened

education, and prepared him to make himself worthy of the part which

destiny had reserved for him.[750] This first education, given by a

tender and virtuous mother, has ever as much influence over our future

as the most precious natural qualities. Cæsar reaped the fruits of it.

He also received lessons from M. Antonius Gnipho, the Gaul, a

philosopher and master of eloquence, of a rare mind, of vast learning,

and well versed in Greek and Latin letters, which he had cultivated at

Alexandria.[751]

Greece was always the country of the arts and sciences, and the language

of Demosthenes was familiar to every lettered Roman.[752] Thus Greek and

Latin might be called the two languages of Italy, as they were, at a

later period, by the Emperor Claudius.[753] Cæsar spoke both with the

same facility; and, when falling beneath the dagger of Brutus, he

pronounced in Greek the last words that issued from his lips.[754]

Though eager for pleasure, he neglected nothing, says Suetonius, by

which to acquire those talents which lead to the highest honours. Now,

according to Roman habits, the first offices were attainable only by the

union of the most diverse merits. The patrician youth, still worthy of

their ancestors, were not idle: they sought religious appointments, to

give them power over consciences; administrative employments, to

influence material interests; discussions and public discourses, to

captivate minds by their eloquence; finally, military labours, to strike

imaginations by the brilliancy of their glory. Emulous of distinction in

all, Cæsar did not confine himself to the study of letters; he early

composed works, among which are cited “The Praises of Hercules,” a

tragedy of “Œdipus,” “A Collection of Choice Phrases,”[755] a book on

“Divination.”[756] It seems that these works were written in a style so

pure and correct, that they gained for him the reputation of an eminent

writer, _gravis auctor linguæ Latinæ_.[757] He was less happy in the art

of poetry, if we may believe Tacitus.[758] However, there remain to us

some verses addressed to the memory of Terence, which are not wanting in

elegance.[759]

Education, then, had made Cæsar a distinguished man before he was a

great man. He united to goodness of heart a high intelligence, to an

invincible courage,[760] an enthralling eloquence,[761] a wonderful

memory,[762] an unbounded generosity; finally, he possessed one very

rare quality--calmness under anger.[763] “His affability,” says

Plutarch, “his politeness, his gracious address--qualities which he had

to a degree beyond his age--gained him the affection of the

people.”[764]

Two anecdotes of later date must come in here. Plutarch relates that

Cæsar, during his campaigns, one day, surprised by a violent storm, took

shelter in a hut where was only one room, too small to contain many

people. He hastened to offer it to Oppius, one of his officers, who was

sick; and himself passed the night in the open air, saying to those who

accompanied him, “We must leave to the great the places of honour, but

yield to the sick those that are necessary to them.” Another time,

Valerius Leo, with whom he was dining at Milan, having set before him an

ill-seasoned dish, the companions of Cæsar remonstrated, but he

reproached them sharply for their want of consideration for his host,

saying “that they were free not to eat of a dish they did not like, but

that to complain of it aloud was a want of good breeding.”[765]

These facts, of small importance in themselves, yet testify to Cæsar’s

goodness of heart, and to the delicacy of the well-bred man who is

always observant of propriety.

To his natural qualities, developed by a brilliant education, were added

physical advantages. His tall stature, his rounded and well-proportioned

limbs, stamped his person with a grace that distinguished him from all

others.[766] He had black eyes, a piercing look, a pale complexion, a

straight and high nose. His mouth, small and regular, but with rather

thick lips, gave a kindly expression to the lower part of his face,

whilst his breadth of brow betokened the development of the intellectual

faculties. His face was full, at least, in his youth; for in his busts,

doubtless made towards the end of his life, his features are thinner,

and bear traces of fatigue.[767] He had a sonorous and penetrating

voice, a noble gesture, and an air of dignity reigned over all his

person.[768] His constitution, at first delicate, became robust by a

frugal regimen and the habit of exposing himself to the inclemency of

the weather.[769] Accustomed from his youth to all bodily exercises, he

was a bold horseman,[770] and bore privations and fatigues without

difficulty.[771] Habitually temperate, his health was impaired neither

by excess of labour nor by excess of pleasure. However, on two

occasions--the first at Corduba, the second at Thapsus--he was seized

with nervous attacks, wrongly mistaken for epilepsy.[772]

He paid special attention to his person, carefully shaved or plucked out

his beard, and artistically brought his hair forward to the front of his

head, which, in more advanced age, served to conceal his bald forehead.

He was reproached with the affectation of scratching his head with one

finger only, so that he should not disarrange his hair.[773] His

toilette was refined; his toga was generally ornamented with a

laticlavia, fringed down to the hands, and fastened by a girdle

carelessly tied about his loins; a costume which distinguished the

elegant and effeminate youths of the period. But Sylla was not deceived

by these appearances of frivolity, and repeated that they must take care

of this young man with the loose girdle.[774] He had a taste for

pictures, statues, and jewels; and, in memory of his origin, always

wore on his finger a ring, on which was engraved the figure of an armed

Venus.[775]

In fine, we discover in Cæsar, both physically and morally, two natures

rarely united in the same person. He joined an aristocratic delicacy of

body to the muscular constitution of the warrior; the love of luxury and

the arts to a passion for military life, in all its simplicity and

rudeness: in a word, he allied the elegance of manner which seduces with

the energy of character which commands.

[Sidenote: Cæsar persecuted by Sylla (672).]

II. Such was Cæsar at the age of eighteen, when Sylla seized the

dictatorship.[776] Already he attracted all eyes at Rome by his name,

his intellect, his affable manners, which pleased men, and, perhaps,

women still more.

The influence of his uncle Marius caused him to be nominated priest of

Jupiter (_flamen dialis_) at the age of fourteen.[777] At sixteen,

betrothed, doubtless against his will, to Cossutia, the daughter of a

rich knight, he broke his engagement,[778] after the death of his

father, to draw still closer his alliance with the popular party by

marrying, a year after, in 671, Cornelia, daughter of L. Cornelius

Cinna, the ancient colleague of Marius, and the representative of his

cause. From this marriage was born, the following year, Julia, who

became, in after time, the wife of Pompey.[779]

Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s

thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more

closely with those who were opposed to him. He wished to force him to

divorce Cornelia, but he found him inflexible. When every one yielded to

his will; when, by his orders, Piso separated from Annia, the widow of

Cinna,[780] and Pompey ignominiously dismissed his wife, the daughter of

Antistius, who died for his cause,[781] to marry Emilia, the

daughter-in-law of the dictator, Cæsar maintained his independence at

the price of his personal safety.

Become suspected, he was deprived of his priesthood,[782] and of his

wife’s dowry, and declared incapable of inheriting from his family.

Obliged to conceal himself in the outskirts of Rome to escape

persecution, he changed his place of retreat every night, though ill

with fever; but, arrested by a band of assassins in the pay of Sylla,

he gained the chief, Cornelius Phagita, by giving him two talents (about

12,000 francs),[783] and his life was preserved. Let us note here that,

arrived at sovereign power, Cæsar met this same Phagita, and treated him

with indulgence, without reminding him of the past.[784] Meanwhile, he

still wandered about in the Sabine country. His courage, his constancy,

his illustrious birth, his former quality of flamen, excited general

interest. Soon important personages, such as Aurelius Cotta, his

mother’s brother, and Mamercus Lepidus, a connection of his family,

interceded in his favour.[785] The vestals also, whose sole intervention

put an end to all violence, did not spare their prayers.[786] Vanquished

by so many solicitations, Sylla yielded at last, exclaiming, “Well! be

it so, you will it; but know that he, whose pardon you demand, will one

day ruin the party of the great for which we have fought together, for,

trust me, there are several Mariuses in this young man.”[787]

Sylla had judged truly: many Mariuses, in effect, had met together in

Cæsar: Marius, the great captain, but with a larger military genius;

Marius, the enemy of the oligarchy, but without hatred and without

cruelty; Marius, in a word, no longer the man of a faction, but the man

of his age.

[Sidenote: Cæsar in Asia (673, 674).]

III. Cæsar could not remain a cold spectator of the sanguinary reign of

Sylla, and left for Asia, where he received the hospitality of

Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. A short time afterwards he took part in the

hostilities which continued against Mithridates. The young men of good

family who wished to serve their military apprenticeship followed a

general to the army. Admitted to his intimacy under the name of

_contubernales_, they were attached to his person. It was in this

capacity that Cæsar accompanied the prætor M. Minucius Thermus,[788] who

sent him to Nicomedes to claim his co-operation in the siege of

Mitylene, occupied by the troops of Mithridates. Cæsar succeeded in his

mission, and on his return aided in the capture of the city. Having

saved the life of a Roman soldier, he received from Thermus a civic

crown.[789]

Shortly afterwards he returned to Bithynia, to defend the cause of one

of his clients. His frequent presence at the court of Nicomedes served

as the pretext for an accusation of shameful condescension. But Cæsar’s

relations with the Bithynians may be explained quite naturally by his

feelings of gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them; it

was the reason which made him always defend their interests, and at a

later period become their patron, as may be gathered from the fragment

of a speech preserved by Aulus Gellius.[790] The motives of his conduct

were, nevertheless, so misconstrued, that insulting allusions are to be

found in certain debates of the Senate, and even in the songs of the

soldiers who followed his triumphal car.[791] But these sarcasms, which

told rather of hatred than of truth, as Cicero himself says, _magis odio

firmata quam præsidio_,[792] were only set afloat by his adversaries

very much later, that is to say, at one of those moments of excitement

when political parties shrink from no calumny[793] to mutually decry

each other. Notwithstanding the relaxation of morals, nothing could have

ruined the reputation of Cæsar more than this accusation, for such a

crime was not only abhorred in the army,[794] but, committed with a

foreigner, would have been the most degrading disregard of Roman

dignity. Wherefore Cæsar, whose love for women ought to have shielded

him from such a suspicion, repelled it with just indignation.[795]

After having made his first campaign at the siege of Mitylene, Cæsar

served in the fleet of the proconsul P. Servilius (676), commissioned to

make war on the Cilician pirates, who subsequently received the surname

of _Isauricus_, because he had taken Isaura, their chief place of

refuge,[796] and conquered part of Cilicia. However, he remained but a

short time with Servilius, for, having been informed of the death of

Sylla, he returned to Rome.[797]

[Sidenote: Cæsar on his return to Rome (676).]

IV. The Republic, divided into two parties, was on the eve of falling

into civil war through the diversity of opinion between the two consuls,

Lepidus and Catulus. They were ready to come to blows. The former,

elevated to the consulship by the influence of Pompey, against the

advice of Sylla, fomented an insurrection. “He lighted up,” says Florus,

“the fire of civil war at the very funeral pyre of the dictator.”[798]

He wished to abrogate the Cornelian laws, restore to the tribunes their

power, to the proscribed their rights, to the allies their lands.[799]

These designs against the system established by the dictator agreed with

Cæsar’s ideas, and endeavours were made, by seductive offers, to draw

him into the intrigues which were then going on; but he kept aloof.[800]

The Senate succeeded in making the consuls swear that they would be

reconciled, and thought to ensure peace by giving each a military

command. Catulus received the government of Italy, and Lepidus that of

Cisalpine Gaul. The latter, before going to his province, visited

Etruria, where the partisans of Marius flocked to him. The Senate,

informed of these doings, recalled him to Rome, towards the end of the

year, to hold the comitia.[801] Lepidus, leaving Brutus the prætor

encamped near Mutina (_Modena_), marched back to Rome at the head of his

army. Beaten by Catulus and Pompey at the bridge of Milvius, he withdrew

to the coast of Etruria, and, after a new defeat, fled to Sardinia,

where he ended his career miserably.[802] Perpenna, his lieutenant,

went, with the wreck of his army, to rejoin Sertorius in Spain.

Cæsar acted wisely in keeping out of these movements, for not only did

the character of Lepidus inspire him with no confidence,[803] but he

must have thought that the dictatorship of Sylla was too recent, that it

had inspired too many fears, and created too many new interests, to

admit of the reaction, still incomplete in men’s minds, succeeding by

arms. For the present, they must limit themselves to acting on public

opinion, by branding with words the instruments of the past tyranny.

The most general way of entering on a political career was by

instituting a prosecution against some high personage.[804] Its success

mattered little; the real point was to be brought prominently forward by

some remarkable speech, and offer a proof of patriotism.

Cornelius Dolabella, one of the friends of Sylla, who had had the

honours of the consulate and triumph, and who, two years before, was

governor of Macedonia, was now accused by Cæsar of excesses committed in

his government (677). He was acquitted by the tribunal composed of the

creatures of the dictator.[805] Public opinion did not praise Cæsar the

less for having dared to attack a man who was supported and defended by

orators such as Hortensius and L. Aurelius Cotta. Besides, he displayed

so much eloquence, that this first speech gave him at once a veritable

celebrity.[806] Encouraged by this success, Cæsar cited C. Antonius

Hybrida before the prætor M. Lucullus for having, at the head of a body

of cavalry, pillaged certain parts of Greece when Sylla was returning

from Asia.[807] The accused was also acquitted, but the popularity of

the accuser still increased. He also spoke, probably, in other causes

now unknown. Tacitus speaks of a speech of Cæsar’s in favour of a

certain Decius the Samnite,[808] without doubt the same mentioned by

Cicero, who, flying from the proscription of Sylla, was kindly received

by Aulus Cluentius.[809] Thus Cæsar boldly offered himself as the

defender of the oppressed Greeks or Samnites, who had suffered so much

from the regime preceding. He gained especially the good-will of the

former, whose opinions, highly influential at Rome, helped to make

reputations.

These attacks were certainly a means of attracting public attention, but

they also showed the courage of the man, since the partisans of Sylla

were still all in power.

[Sidenote: Cæsar goes to Rhodes (678-680).]

V. Notwithstanding his celebrity as an orator, Cæsar resolved to keep

out of the troubles which agitated Italy, and doubtless felt his

presence in Rome useless to his cause and irksome to himself. It is

often advantageous to political men to disappear for a time from the

scene; they thus avoid compromising themselves in daily struggles

without aim, and their reputation, instead of losing, increases by

absence. During the winter of 678 Cæsar again quitted Italy, for the

purpose of going to Rhodes to complete his studies. This island, then

the centre of intellectual lights, the dwelling-place of the most

celebrated philosophers, was the school of all the well-born youth.

Cicero himself had gone there for lessons some years before.

In his passage, Cæsar was taken by pirates near Pharmacusa, a small

island in the archipelago of the Sporades, at the mouth of the Gulf of

Jassius.[810] Notwithstanding the campaign of P. Servilius Isauricus,

these pirates still infested the sea with numerous fleets. They demanded

twenty talents (£2,329) for his ransom. He offered fifty (£11,640),

which must naturally have given them a high notion of their prisoner,

and insured him better treatment. He sent trusty agents, and among

others Epicrates, one of his Milesian slaves, to raise this sum in the

neighbouring towns.[811] Though the allied provinces and towns were in

this case obliged to furnish the ransom, it was none the less curious,

as a proof of their wealth, to see a young man of twenty-four, arrested

in a little island of Asia Minor, instantly able to borrow so large a

sum.

Left alone with a physician and two slaves[812] in the midst of these

ferocious brigands, he held them in awe by his force of character, and

passed nearly forty days on board without ever loosing either his

sandals or his girdle, to avoid all suspicion of wishing to escape by

swimming.[813] He seemed less a captive, says Plutarch, than a prince

surrounded by his guards; now playing with them, now reciting poems to

them, he made himself loved and feared, and laughingly told them that,

once free, he would have them crucified.[814] Yet the remembrance of

Rome recurred to his mind, and recalled the strifes and enmities he had

left there. He was often heard to say, “What pleasure Crassus will have

at knowing me in these straits!”[815]

As soon as he received his ransom from Miletus and the other towns, he

paid it. Landed on the coast, he hastened to equip ships, impatient to

revenge himself. The pirates, surprised at anchor in the harbour of the

island, were almost all made prisoners, and their booty fell into his

hands. He secured them in the prison at Pergamus, to deliver them up to

Junius Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, whose duty it was to punish them.

But, wishing to sell them and make a profit, Junius replied in an

evasive manner. Cæsar returned to Pergamus, and had them crucified.[816]

He went afterwards to Rhodes, to attend the lessons of Apollonius Molo,

the most illustrious of the masters of eloquence of that time, who had

formerly been to Rome, in 672, as the Rhodian ambassador. About the same

time one of his uncles, the proconsul M. Aurelius Cotta, was appointed

governor of Bithynia, bequeathed by Nicomedes to the Roman people, and

charged, with Lucullus, to oppose the new invasions of Mithridates.

Cotta, beaten by land and sea near Chalcedon, was reduced to great

straits, and Mithridates was advancing against Cyzicus, an allied town,

which Lucullus afterwards relieved. On another side, Eumachius, a

lieutenant of the King of Pontus, ravaged Phrygia, where he massacred

all the Romans, and seized several of the southern provinces of Asia

Minor. The rumours of war, the perils into which the allies were

falling, took Cæsar from his studies. He went over into Asia, levied

troops on his own authority, drove out from the province the king’s

governor, and kept in allegiance towns whose faith was doubtful or

shaken.[817]

[Sidenote: Cæsar Pontiff and Military Tribune (680-684).]

VI. Whilst he was making war on the coasts of Asia, his friends at Rome

did not forget him; and, seeing clearly the importance of Cæsar’s being

clothed with a sacred character, they nominated him pontiff, in the

place of his uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 680, who had died

suddenly in Gaul the following year.[818]

This circumstance obliged him to return to Rome. The sea continued to

swarm with pirates, who must necessarily owe him a grudge for the death

of their comrades. The better to escape them, he crossed the Adriatic in

a boat of four oars, accompanied only by two friends and ten

slaves.[819] In the passage, thinking that he saw sails in the horizon,

he seized his sword, resolved to sell his life dearly; but his fears

were not justified, and he landed safe and sound in Italy.

Immediately on his return to Rome, he was elected military tribune, and

succeeded by a large majority over his rival, C. Popilius.[820] This

already elevated rank, since it gave him the command of about a thousand

men, was the first step which the young nobility easily attained, either

by election or by the choice of the generals.[821] Cæsar does not seem

to have profited by his new position to take part in the important wars

in which the Republic was then engaged. And yet the clang of arms echoed

from all quarters.

In Spain Sertorius successfully continued the war begun in 674 against

the lieutenants of Sylla, joined in 677 by Perpenna, at the head of

thirty cohorts,[822] he had got together a formidable army, bravely

maintained the standard of Marius, and given the name of _Senate_ to an

assemblage of 300 Romans. Vanquisher of Metellus for several years,

Sertorius, gifted with a vast military genius, exercising great

influence over the Celtiberians and Lusitanians, and master of the

passes,[823] was dreaming of crossing the Alps. The Spaniards had

already given him the name of a _second Hannibal_. But Pompey, sent in

all haste to Spain, reinforced the army of Metellus, deprived Sertorius

of all hope of penetrating into Italy, and even drove him far back from

the Pyrenees. The united efforts of the two generals, however, did not

effect the subjugation of Spain, which, since 680, had been entirely

re-conquered by Sertorius. But soon after this, his lieutenants

experiencing reverses, desertion began among his soldiers, and he

himself lost his confidence. Yet he would have resisted for a long time

still, had not Perpenna caused him to be assassinated by an infamous act

of treachery. This murder did not profit its author. Though Perpenna

succeeded Sertorius in the command of the troops, he found himself an

object of their hatred and contempt. Soon defeated and taken prisoner by

Pompey, he was put to death. Thus ended the war in Spain in 682.

In Asia, Lucullus successfully pursued the campaign against

Mithridates, who courageously maintained the struggle, and had even been

able to come to an understanding with Sertorius. Lucullus beat him in

Cappadocia (683), and forced him to take refuge with Tigranes, his

son-in-law, King of Armenia, who soon experienced a sanguinary defeat,

and lost his capital, Tigranocerta.

In the East, the barbarians infested the frontiers of Macedonia, the

pirates of Cilicia sailed from end to end of all the seas with impunity,

and the Cretans flew to arms to defend their independence.

Italy was torn by the Servile War. This disinherited class had risen up

anew, despite the bloody repression of the Sicilian insurrection from

620 to 623. It had acquired the knowledge of its strength chiefly from

the circumstance that each party in the civil troubles had by turns

granted its liberty to increase the number of its respective adherents.

In 681, seventy gladiators, kept at Capua, revolted; their chief was

Spartacus, formerly a soldier, made prisoner, then sold as a slave. In

less than a year his band had so much increased that consular armies

were needed to combat him, and, having gained a victory in Picenum, for

a moment he had entertained the thought of marching upon Rome at the

head of 40,000 men.[824] Nevertheless, forced to withdraw to the south

of Italy, he contended against the Roman forces successfully for two

years, when at last, in 683, Licinius Crassus, at the head of eight

legions, conquered him in Apulia. Spartacus perished in the fight; the

remainder of the army of slaves separated into four bodies, one of

which, retiring towards Gaul, was easily dispersed by Pompey, who was

returning from Spain. The 6,000 prisoners taken in the battle fought in

Apulia were hanged all along the road from Capua to Rome.

Occasions for making himself perfect in the art of war were not wanting

to Cæsar; but we can understand his inaction, for Sylla’s partisans

alone were at the heads of the armies; in Spain, Metellus and

Pompey--the first the brother-in-law of the Dictator, the second

formerly his best lieutenant; in Italy, Crassus, the enemy of Cæsar,

equally devoted to the party of Sylla; in Asia, Lucullus, an old friend

of the Dictator, who had dedicated his “_Memoirs_”[825] to him. Cæsar,

then, found everywhere either a cause he would not defend, or a general

under whom he would not serve. In Spain, however, Sertorius represented

the party he would most willingly have embraced; but Cæsar had a horror

of civil wars. Whilst faithful to his convictions, he seems, in the

first years of his career, to have carefully avoided placing between him

and his adversaries that eternal barrier which for ever separates the

children of the same country, after blood has once been shed. He had it

at heart to be able, in his exalted future, to appeal to a past pure

from all violence, so that, instead of being the man of a party, he

might rally round him all good citizens.

The Republic had triumphed everywhere, but she had yet to reckon with

her conquering generals: she found herself in the presence of Crassus

and Pompey, who, proud of their successes, advanced upon Rome at the

head of their armies, to demand or seize the chief power. The Senate

could be but little at ease as to the intentions of the latter, who, not

long before, had sent an insolent letter from Spain, in which he menaced

his country with the sword unless they sent him the supplies necessary

to carry on the war against Sertorius.[826] The same ambition animated

Pompey and Crassus: neither of the two would be the first to disband his

army; each, indeed, brought his own to the gates of the city. Both were

elected consuls, allowed a triumph, and forced by the augurs and public

opinion to be reconciled together; and they held out their hands to each

other, disbanded their troops, and for some time the Republic recovered

an unexpected calm.[827]

CHAPTER II.

(684-691.)

[Sidenote: State of the Republic (684).]

I. When Pompey and Crassus came to the consulship, Italy had been a prey

to intestine convulsions for sixty-three years. But, notwithstanding the

repose which society demanded, and which the reconciliation of the two

rivals seemed to promise, many opposing passions and interests still

seethed in her bosom.[828]

Sylla believed he had re-established the Republic on its ancient basis,

but, instead, he had thrown everything into disorder. The property, the

life even of each citizen, was at the mercy of the stronger; the people

had lost the right of appeal, and their legitimate share in the

elections; the poor, the distribution of wheat; the tribuneship, its

secular privileges; and the influential order of the knights, their

political and financial importance.

At Rome, no more guarantee for justice; in Italy, no more security for

the rights of citizenship, so dearly acquired; in the provinces, no more

consideration for subjects and allies. Sylla had restored their

prerogatives to the upper class without being able to restore their

former prestige; having made use of only corrupt elements, and appealed

to only sordid passions, he left behind him a powerless oligarchy, and

a thoroughly distracted people. The country was divided between those

whom his tyranny had enriched and those whom it had despoiled; the one

fearing to lose what they had just acquired, the other hoping to regain

what they had lost.

The aristocracy, proud of their wealth and ancestry, absorbed in all the

pleasures of luxury, kept the _new men_[829] out of the highest offices,

and, by a long continuance of power, had come to look on the chief

magistracies as their property. Cato, in a discourse to the Senate,

exclaimed:--“Instead of the virtues of our ancestors we have luxury and

avarice; the poverty of the State, and the opulence of individuals; we

boast of our riches, we cherish idleness; no distinction is made between

the good and the wicked; all rewards due to merit are the price of

intrigue. Why then are we astonished at this, since each man, isolating

himself from the rest, consults only his own interest? At home, the

slaves of pleasure; here, of wealth or of favour.”[830]

The elections had for a long time been the result of a shameless

traffic, where every mean of success was allowable. Lucullus himself, to

obtain the government of Asia, did not blush to have recourse to the

good offices of a courtesan, the mistress of Cethegus.[831] The sale of

consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that the several

instruments of electoral corruption had functions and titles almost

recognised. Those who bought votes were called _divisores_; the

go-betweens were _interpretes_; and those with whom was deposited the

purchase money[832] were _sequestres_. Numerous secret societies were

formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage; they were divided

into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a supreme head, who

treated with the candidates and sold the votes of the associates, either

for money, or on the stipulation of certain advantages for himself or

his friends. These societies carried most of the elections, and Cicero

himself, who so often boasted of the unanimity with which he had been

chosen consul, owed to them a great part of the suffrages he

obtained.[833]

All the sentences of the tribunals composed of senators were dictated by

a venality so flagrant, that Cicero brands it in these terms:--“I will

demonstrate by positive proofs the guilty intrigues, the infamies which

have sullied the judicial powers for the ten years that they have been

entrusted to the Senate. The Roman people shall learn from me how the

knightly order has administered justice for nearly fifty consecutive

years, without the faintest suspicion resting on any of its members of

having received money for a judgment delivered; how, since senators

alone have composed our tribunals, since the people have been despoiled

of the right which they had over each of us, Q. Calidius has been able

to say, after his condemnation, that they could not honestly require

less than 300,000 sestertii to condemn a prætor; how, when the senator

P. Septimius was found guilty of embezzlement before the prætor

Hortensius, the money he had received in his quality of judge was

included in his fine; how C. Herennius and C. Popilius, both senators,

having been convicted of the crime of peculation, and M. Atilius of the

crime of high treason, it was proved that they had received money as the

price of one of their sentences; how it was found that certain senators,

when their names were taken from the urn held by C. Verres, then prætor

urbanus, instantly went to vote against the accused, without having

heard the suit; how, finally, we have seen a senator, judge in this same

suit, receive money from the accused to distribute to the other judges,

and money from the accuser to condemn the accused. Can I, then,

sufficiently deplore this blot, this shame, this calamity which weighs

on the whole order?”[834]

Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against the avidity of the

generals and farmers of the revenues, notwithstanding the patronage of

the great at Rome, the conquered peoples[835] were always a prey to the

exactions of the magistrates, and Verres was a type of the most

shameless immorality, which drew this exclamation from Cicero: “All the

provinces groan; all free peoples lament; all the kingdoms cry out

against our cupidity and our violence. There is not between the Ocean

and ourselves a spot so remote or so little known that the injustice and

tyranny of our fellow-citizens of these days have not penetrated to

it.”[836] The inhabitants of foreign countries were obliged to borrow,

either to satisfy the immoderate demands of their governors and their

retinue, or to pay the farmers of the public revenues. Now, capital

being nowhere but at Rome, they could only procure it at an excessive

rate of interest; and the nobles, giving themselves up to usury, held

the provinces in their power.

The army itself had been demoralised by civil wars, and the chiefs no

longer maintained discipline. “Flamininus, Aquilius, Paulus Æmilius,”

says Dio Cassius, “commanded men well disciplined, who had learnt to

execute the orders of their generals in silence. The law was their rule;

with a royal soul, simple in life, bounding their expenses within

reasonable limits, they held it more shameful to flatter the soldiery

than to fear the enemy. From the time of Sylla, on the contrary, the

generals, raised to the first rank by violence and not by merit, forced

to turn their arms against each other rather than against the enemy,

were reduced to court popularity. Charged with the command, they

squandered gold to procure enjoyments for an army, the fatigues of which

they paid dearly; they rendered their country venal, without caring for

it; and made themselves the slaves of the most depraved men, to bring

under their authority those who were worth more than themselves. This is

what drove Marius out of Rome, and led him back against Sylla; this is

what made Cinna the murderer of Octavius, and Fimbria the murderer of

Flaccus. Sylla was the principal cause of these evils, he who, to seduce

the soldiers enrolled under other chiefs, and bring them under his own

flag, scattered gold in handfuls among his army.”[837]

Far were they from the times when the soldier, after a short campaign,

laid down his arms to take up the plough again; since then, retained

under his standards for long years, and returning in the train of a

victorious general to vote in the Campus Martius, the citizen had

disappeared; there remained the warrior, with the sole inspiration of

the camp. At the end of the expeditions, the army was disbanded, and

Italy thus found itself overrun with an immense number of veterans,

united in colonies or dispersed over the territory, more inclined to

follow a leader than to obey the law. The veterans of the ancient

legions of Marius and Sylla were to be counted by hundreds of thousands.

A State, moreover, is often weakened by an exaggeration of the principle

on which it rests; and as war was the chief occupation at Rome, all the

institutions had originally a military character. The consuls, the first

magistrates of the Republic, elected by centuries--that is to say, by

the people voting under arms--commanded the troops. The army, composed

of all there was most honourable in the nation, did not take an oath to

the Republic, but to the chief who recruited it and led it against the

enemy; this oath, religiously kept, rendered the generals the absolute

masters of their soldiers, who, in their turn, decreed to them the title

of _Imperator_ after a victory: what more natural, then, even after the

transformation of society, than that these soldiers should believe

themselves the real people, and the generals elected by them the

legitimate chiefs of the Republic? Every abuse has deep roots in the

past, and we may find the original cause of the power of the prætorians

under the emperors in the primitive organisation and functions of the

centuries established by Servius Tullius.

Although the army had not as yet acquired this preponderance, it

nevertheless weighed heavily on the decisions of the Forum. By the side

of men habituated to the noble chances of the fight existed a true army

of turbulence, kept at the expense of the State or of private persons,

in the principal towns of Italy--above all, at Capua: these were the

gladiators, ever ready to undertake anything for those who paid them,

either in the electoral contests[838] or as soldiers in the times of

civil war.[839]

Thus all was struck with decadence. Brute force bestowed power, and

corruption the magistracies. The empire no longer belonged to the

Senate, but to the commanders of the armies; the armies no longer

belonged to the Republic, but to the chiefs who led them to victory.

Numerous elements of dissolution afflicted society: the venality of the

judges, the traffic in elections, the absolutism of the Senate, the

tyranny of wealth, which oppressed the poor by usury, and braved the law

with impunity.

Rome found herself divided into two thoroughly distinct parties; the

one, seeing salvation only in the past, attached itself to abuses, in

the fear that to displace one stone would be to shatter the whole

edifice; the other wished to consolidate it by rendering the base larger

and the summit less unsteady. The first party supported itself on the

institutions of Sylla; the second had taken the name of Marius as the

symbol of its hopes.

Great causes need an historical figure to personify their interests and

tendencies. The man once adopted, his faults, his very crimes are

forgotten, and his great deeds alone remembered. Thus, the vengeance

and massacres of Marius had faded away from memory at Rome. Only his

victories, which had preserved Italy from the invasions of the Cimbri

and the Teutones, were recalled; his misfortunes were pitied, his hatred

to the aristocracy vaunted. The preferences of public opinion were

clearly manifested by the language of the orators, even those most

favourable to the Senate. Thus Catulus and Cicero, speaking of Sylla or

of Marius, the tyranny of both of whom had been substantially almost

equally cruel, thought themselves obliged to glorify the one and to

brand the other;[840] yet the legislation of Sylla was still in full

vigour, his party omnipotent--that of Marius dispersed and

powerless.[841]

The struggle, which was perseveringly continued for sixty-three years

against the Senate, had never succeeded, because the defence of the

people had never been placed in hands either sufficiently strong or

sufficiently pure. To the Gracchi had been wanting an army; to Marius a

power less disgraced by excesses; to the war of the allies a character

less hostile to the national unity of which Rome was the representative.

As to Spartacus, by rousing the slaves he went beyond his aim, and his

success threatened the whole of society; he was annihilated. To triumph

over a long accumulation of prejudices, the popular cause needed a chief

of transcendent merit, and a concurrence of circumstances difficult to

foresee. But then the genius of Cæsar was not yet revealed, and the

vanquisher of Sertorius was the only one who dominated the situation by

his antecedents and high achievements.

[Sidenote: Consulship of Pompey and Crassus.]

II. By a line of conduct quite opposite to that of Cæsar, Pompey had

greatly risen during the civil wars. From the age of twenty-three he had

received from Sylla the title _Imperator_, and the name of “Great;”[842]

he passed for the first warrior of his time, and had distinguished

himself in Italy, Sicily, and Africa against the partisans of Marius,

whom he caused to be pitilessly massacred.[843] Fate had ever favoured

him. In Spain, the death of Sertorius had made victory easy to him; on

his return, the fortuitous defeat of the fugitive remains of the army of

Spartacus allowed him to assume the honour of having put an end to that

formidable insurrection; soon he will profit by the success already

obtained by Lucullus against Mithridates. Thus a distinguished writer

has justly said that Pompey always came in time to terminate, to his own

glory, the wars which were just going to end to the glory of

another.[844]

The vulgar, who hail good fortune as the equal of genius, surrounded

then the conqueror of Spain with their homage, and he himself, of a poor

and vain spirit, referred the favours of fortune to his own sole merit.

Seeking power for ornament rather than service, he courted it not in the

hope of making a cause or a principle triumphant, but to enjoy it

peaceably by trimming between different parties. Thus, whilst to Cæsar

power was a means, to him it was only the end. Honest, but vacillating,

he was unconsciously the instrument of those who flattered him. His

courteous manners, and the show of disinterestedness which disguised his

ambition, removed all suspicions of his aspiring to the supreme

power.[845] An able general in ordinary times, he was great only while

events were not greater than he. Nevertheless, he then enjoyed the

highest reputation at Rome. By his antecedents he was rather the

representative of the party of the aristocracy; but the desire of

conciliating public favour, and his own intelligence, made him

comprehend the necessity of certain modifications in the laws: thus,

before entering Rome to celebrate his triumph over the Celtiberians, he

manifested the intention of re-establishing the prerogative of the

tribunes, of putting an end to the devastation and oppression of the

provinces, of restoring impartiality to justice, and respect to the

judges.[846] He was then consul-elect; his promises excited the most

lively enthusiasm; for it was the evil administration of the provinces,

and the venality of the senators in their judicial functions, which more

than all else made the people demand so ardently the re-establishment of

the privileges of the tribuneship, notwithstanding the abuses which they

had engendered.[847] Excesses in power always give birth to an

immoderate desire for liberty.

In publishing the programme of his conduct, of his own free will, before

entering Rome, Pompey did not yield to a fascination cleverly exerted

over him by Cæsar, as several historians pretend; he obeyed a stronger

impulse, that of public opinion. The nobles reproached him with having

abandoned their cause,[848] but the popular party was satisfied, and

Cæsar, seeing the new consul take his ideas and sentiments to heart,

resolved to support him energetically.[849] Doubtless, he thought that

with so many elements of corruption, so much contempt of the laws, so

many jealous rivalries, and so much boundless ambition, the ascendency

of him whom fortune had raised so high could alone, for the time, assist

the destinies of the Republic. Was this a loyal co-operation? We believe

so, but it did not exclude a noble rivalry, and Cæsar could not be

afraid of smoothing for Pompey the platform on which they must one day

meet. The man who understands his own worth has no perfidious jealousy

against those who have preceded him in his career; rather, he goes to

their aid, for then he has more glory in rejoining them. Where would be

the emulation of the contest if one was alone in the power of attaining

the end?

Pompey’s colleague was M. Licinius Crassus. This remarkable man, as we

have seen, had distinguished himself as a general, but his influence was

owing rather to his wealth and his amiable and courteous disposition.

Enriched under Sylla by purchasing the property of the proscribed, he

possessed whole quarters of the city of Rome, rebuilt after several

fires; his fortune was more than forty millions of francs [a million and

a half sterling],[850] and he pretended that to be rich, one must be

able to maintain an army at his own expense.[851] Though his chief

passion was the love of gold, avarice did not with him exclude

liberality. He lent to all his friends without interest, and sometimes

scattered his largesses with profusion. Versed in letters, gifted with a

rare eloquence, he accepted eagerly all the causes which Pompey, Cæsar,

and Cicero disdained to defend; by his eagerness to oblige all those who

claimed his services, either to borrow, or to obtain some situation, he

acquired a power which balanced that of Pompey. This last had

accomplished greater deeds, but his airs of grandeur and dignity, his

habit of avoiding crowds and sights, alienated the multitude from him;

while Crassus, of easy access, always in the midst of the public and of

business, had the advantage over him by his affable manners.[852] We do

not find very defined principles in him, either in political or private

life; he was _neither a constant friend nor an irreconcilable

enemy_.[853] Fitter to serve as an instrument for the elevation of

another, than to elevate himself to the front rank, he was very useful

to Cæsar, who did his best to gain his confidence. “There existed then

at Rome,” says Plutarch, “three factions, the chiefs of which were

Pompey, Cæsar, and Crassus; Cato, whose power did not equal his glory,

was more admired than followed. The wise and moderate part of the

citizens were for Pompey; energetic, speculative, and bold men attached

themselves to the hopes of Cæsar; Crassus, who held the mean between

these two factions, used both.”[854]

During his first consulship, Crassus seems to have been only occupied

with extravagant expenditure, and to have preserved a prudent

neutrality. He made a grand sacrifice to Hercules, and consecrated to

him the tenth part of his revenues; he gave the people an enormous

feast, spread out on ten thousand tables, and bestowed corn for three

months to every citizen.[855]

Pompey occupied himself in more serious matters, and, supported by

Cæsar, favoured the adoption of several laws, all of which announced a

reaction against the system of Sylla.

The effect of the first was to give the tribunes the right anew of

presenting laws and appealing to the people; already, in 679, the power

of obtaining other magistracies had been restored to them.

The second was connected with justice. Instead of leaving to the Senate

alone the whole judicial power, the prætor Aurelius Cotta, Cæsar’s

uncle, proposed a law which would conciliate all interests, by making it

legal to take the judges by thirds from the three classes: that is to

say, from the Senate, the equestrian order, and the tribunes of the

treasury, who were for the most part plebeians.[856]

But the measure which most helped to heal the wounds of the Republic was

the amnesty proposed by the tribune Plotius in favour of all those who

had taken part in the civil war. In this number was comprised the wreck

of the army of Lepidus, which had remained in Spain after the defeat of

Sertorius, and amongst which was to be found C. Cornelius Cinna,

brother-in-law of Cæsar. This last, in speeches which have not come down

to us, but which are quoted by different authors, spared nothing to

assure among the people the success of the proposition.[857] “He

insisted on the _propriety of deciding promptly on this measure of

reconciliation, and observed that there could not be a more opportune

moment for its adoption_.”[858] It was adopted without difficulty. All

seemed to favour a return to the old institutions. The censorship,

interrupted for seventeen years, was re-established, and L. Gellius and

C. Lentulus, the censors chosen, exercised their office with so much

severity, that they expelled from the Senate sixty-four of its members,

probably creatures of Sylla. In the number of those expelled figured

Caius Antonius, previously accused by Cæsar, and Publius Lentulus Sura,

consul in the year 683.