people; accordingly he did not venture to take them till late, after
Munda and Thapsus, when his authority was no longer disputed and he felt
himself strong enough to resist the democracy, his ancient ally. When he
set out for Pharsalia he had still to observe much caution; prudence
commanded him not to displease his friends, while so many enemies
remained. Moreover, there were certain questions which could not be
deferred, so important were they in the eyes of the democracy which
demanded their immediate settlement. One of the chief of these was the
abolition of debts. Caesar turned his attention to it immediately on his
return from Spain; but here again, notwithstanding the difficulties of
his position, he was not so radical as he was expected to be. Placed
between his conservative instincts and the demands of his friends, he
adopted a middle course: instead of abolishing the debts completely, he
contented himself with reducing them. Firstly, he ordered that all sums
paid up to that time as interest should be deducted from the capital
sums; then, to make payment of the amount thus reduced easier, he ruled
that the property of the debtors should be valued by arbitrators; that
they should assess it, not at its present value, but at that which it
had before the civil war, and that the creditors should be obliged to
take it at that rate. Suetonius says that, in this manner, debts were
reduced by more than one-fourth. These measures certainly still appear
to us sufficiently revolutionary. We cannot approve this intervention of
authority, to despoil without reason private persons of a part of their
wealth, and nothing can seem to us more unjust than that the law itself
should annul contracts which have been placed under its protection; but
at that time the effect produced on men’s minds was very different. The
creditors, who had feared that nothing would be left them, thought
themselves very fortunate not to lose all, and the debtors, who had
reckoned upon being altogether freed, bitterly complained because they
were still required to pay part. Hence disappointment and murmuring. “At
this moment,” wrote Caelius, “with the exception of a few usurers,
everybody herd is Pompeian.”[232]
This was a good opportunity for a secret enemy like Caelius. He hastened
to seize it, and to take advantage of the disaffection which he clearly
perceived. His tactics were bold. The plan which he devised was to take
upon himself this character of advanced democrat, or, as we should say
now, of socialist, which Caesar rejected, to form a more radical party
of all these malcontents, and to declare himself their head. While the
arbitrators appointed to value the property of the debtors performed
their delicate functions to the best of their ability, and the praetor
of the city, Trebonius, settled the disputes which arose upon their
decisions, Caelius had his curule chair placed beside the tribunal of
Trebonius, and setting himself up, by his own authority, as judge of the
sentences of his colleague, he declared that he would support the
demands of those who had any complaints; but whether it was that
Trebonius satisfied everybody, or rather, that they were afraid of
Caesar, no one dared to come forward. This first check did not
discourage Caelius: he thought, on the contrary, that the more difficult
his position became, the more necessary it was to put a bold face on the
matter, and therefore, notwithstanding the opposition of the consul
Servilius, and of all the other magistrates, he published two very
daring laws, one remitting a year’s rent to all tenants, the other
abolishing entirely all debts. This time the people seemed disposed to
come to the aid of him who took their part so resolutely; disturbances
took place; blood was shed as in former times in the Forum; Trebonius,
attacked by a furious multitude, was thrown down from his tribunal and
only escaped by a miracle. Caelius triumphed, and no doubt thought that
a new revolution was about to commence; but, by a singular coincidence,
he soon found himself the victim of the same error that later ruined
Brutus. In causes quite opposed, these two men so unlike each other
deceived themselves in the same manner: both had reckoned too much on
the people of Rome. One restored them liberty, and thought them capable
of desiring and defending it, the other called them to arms, promising
to share among them the wealth of the rich; but the people listened
neither to the one nor the other, for they were no more powerfully
stirred by evil passions than by noble sentiments; they had played their
part and they were aware of it. On the day that they had surrendered
themselves to absolute power they seem to have lost entirely all memory
of the past. From that time we see that they have renounced all
political activity, and nothing can rouse them from their apathy. Those
rights, which they had desired with such ardour, and gained with so much
trouble, that greed so carefully encouraged by the popular leaders, even
the tribunate and the agrarian laws, all become indifferent to them.
They are already that populace of the empire which is so admirably
painted by Tacitus, the most worthless of all peoples, cringing to the
successful, cruel to the defeated, welcoming all who triumph with the
same applause, whose sole part in all revolutions consists in joining
the train of the conqueror, when the struggle is over.
Such a people could not be a real support to anybody, and Caelius was
wrong to reckon upon them. If, by force of habit, they appeared one day
to be moved by those great promises which had stirred them so often,
when they were free, the feeling was but a passing one, and a small body
of cavalry which chanced to be marching through Rome was sufficient to
reduce them to order. The consul Servilius was armed by the senate with
the famous formula which suspended all legal powers, and concentrated
authority in a single hand. Aided by these passing troops, he forbade
Caelius to exercise the functions of his office, and when Caelius
resisted, he had his curule chair broken,[233] and dragged him from the
tribune from which he would not descend. This time the people remained
quiet, not a voice answered when he tried to awaken the old passions in
these dead souls. Caelius went home with rage in his heart. After such a
public disgrace it was not possible to remain longer in Rome.
Accordingly he hastened to quit it, telling everybody that he was going
to have an explanation with Caesar; but he had quite other projects.
Since Rome abandoned him, Caelius was going to attempt to rouse Italy
and recommence the social war. It was a bold enterprise, and yet with
the help of an intrepid man whose support he had procured he did not
despair of success. There was at that time in Italy an old conspirator,
Milo, who had made himself dreaded by his violence during the anarchy
which followed Cicero’s consulship, and when condemned later for
assassination, he had taken refuge at Marseilles. Caesar, in recalling
all the exiles, had excepted this man whose incorrigible audacity he
feared; but, on the invitation of Caelius, he had secretly returned and
awaited the turn of events. Caelius went to see him, and both wrote
pressing letters to the free towns of Italy, making them great promises,
and exciting them to take up arms. The free towns remained quiet.
Caelius and Milo were forced to make use of the last resource that
remained to them. Abandoned by the free citizens of Rome, and of Italy,
they appealed to the servile population, opening the prisons of the
slaves, and calling upon the shepherds of Apulia and the gladiators of
the public games. When they had by these means got together some
partisans, they parted to tempt fortune separately, but neither
succeeded. Milo, who had dared to attack an important town defended by a
praetor with a legion, was killed by a stone. Caelius, after having
vainly essayed to induce Naples and Campania to declare in his favour,
was obliged to retreat to Thurium. There he met some Spanish and Gallic
cavalry who had been sent from Rome, and as he advanced to speak with
them and promised them money if they would follow him, they killed him.
Thus perished at the age of thirty-four years this intrepid young man
who had hoped to equal the fortunes of Caesar. Never had such vast
designs so miserable an end. After having shown an incredible audacity,
and formed projects which grew more and more bold as the first attempts
failed; after having in a few months successively tried to raise the
people of Rome, Italy, and the slaves, he died obscurely by the hand of
some barbarians whom he wished to induce to betray their duty; and his
death, happening at the moment when all eyes were fixed on Pharsalia,
passed almost unobserved. Who would dare to say, however, that this end,
sad as it may be, was not deserved? Was it not just, after all, that a
man who had lived by adventures should perish as an adventurer? He was
not a consummate politician, whatever Cicero may assert; he failed to be
that, because he lacked conviction and a genuine devotion. The
instability of his feelings, the inconsistency of his conduct, that sort
of scepticism that he affected for all convictions were not less hurtful
to his talents than to his character. If he had known how to put greater
unity into his life, if he had early attached himself to some honourable
party, his capacities, finding employment worthy of them, would have
attained their perfection. He might have no doubt failed, but to die at
Pharsalia or Philippi is still considered an honour by posterity. On the
contrary, as he changed his opinions as often as his interests or
caprices, as he served by turns the most opposite parties without belief
in the justice of any, he was never anything but an immature orator and
a hap-hazard politician, and he died on the high-road like a common
malefactor. However, notwithstanding his faults, history has some
difficulty in judging him harshly. The ancient writers never speak of
him without a secret liking. The brilliancy that surrounded his youth,
the charms of his mind, the elegance which he knew how to preserve in
his worst disorders, a sort of daring frankness which prevented him
seeking honourable pretexts for dishonourable actions, his clear
judgment of political situations, his knowledge of men, his fertility of
resource, his strength of resolution, his boldness in daring all and in
constantly risking his life; these many brilliant qualities though
mingled with so many great defects have disarmed the most severe judges.
The sage Quintilian himself, little fitted as he was to understand that
passionate nature, dared not be severe upon him. After having praised
the graces of his mind and his incisive eloquence, he contented himself
with saying, by way of moral: “He was a man who deserved to have had a
juster sense of conduct and a longer life, _dignus vir cui mens melior
et vita longior contigisset!_”[234]
At the time that Caelius died, that elegant youth of which he was the
model, and which the verses of Catullus and the letters of Cicero have
helped us to know, had already partly disappeared. There remained
scarcely any of those young men who had shone in the _fêtes_ of Baiae
and who had been applauded in the Forum. Catullus died first, at the
very moment when his talents were being ripened by age, and were
becoming more serious and more elevated. His friend Calvus was soon to
follow him, carried off at thirty-five, no doubt by the fatigues of
public life. Curio had been killed by Pompey’s soldiers, as Caelius was
by Caesar’s. Dolabella survived, but only for a short time, and he also
was to perish in a tragic manner. It was a revolutionary generation
which the revolution mowed down, for it is true, according to the
celebrated saying, that in all times as in all countries revolution
devours her own children.
CAESAR AND CICERO
I
CICERO AND THE CAMP OF CAESAR IN GAUL
Cicero was not wrong when he said one day to Caesar: “After our time,
there will be great debates about you, as there have been among
ourselves.”[235] It is certain that he is that historical personage whom
men still discuss with most heat. None has excited more sympathy or
roused more animosity, and it must be admitted that there seems to be
something in him to justify both the one and the other. He cannot be
admired or blamed without some reservations, and he always attracts on
some side those whom he repels on another. The very people who hate him
the most, and who cannot pardon him the political revolution that he
accomplished, are forced into a secret admiration for him when they
think of his victories, or read his writings.
The more complex and disputable his character, the more necessary it is,
in order to form a just idea of him, to interrogate those who were in a
position to know him. Although Cicero was almost all his life separated
from Caesar by grave disagreements, twice he had occasion to maintain a
close intercourse with him: during the Gallic war he was his political
ally and his assiduous correspondent; after Pharsalia he became his
friend again, and acted as intermediary between the conqueror and those
he had condemned to exile. Let us inquire what he says of him at these
two periods of his life when he saw him most closely, and let us collect
from his correspondence, through which we become so well acquainted with
the eminent men of that time, the information it contains about him who
was the greatest of all.
I.
I must first recall the events which led Cicero to desert the
aristocratic party to which he had been attached since his consulship,
in order to serve the triumvirs, and how the courageous friend of
Hortensius and of Cato became so subservient to Pompey and Caesar. It is
not an honourable period in his life, and his most convinced admirers
say as little about it as possible. However, there is some interest,
perhaps even some profit, in pausing upon it for a moment.
Cicero’s return from the exile to which he had been condemned after his
consulship by the efforts of Clodius, was a veritable triumph.
Brundusium, where he disembarked, celebrated his arrival by public
rejoicings. All the citizens of the free towns that bordered the Appian
Way, waited for him on the road, and the heads of families with their
wives and children came from all the neighbouring farms to see him pass.
At Rome, he was received by an immense multitude crowded on the public
squares, or ranged on the steps of the temples. “It seemed,” said he,
“that all the city was drawn from its foundations to come and salute its
liberator.”[236] At his brother’s house, where he was going to live, he
found the most eminent members of the senate awaiting him, and at the
same time congratulatory addresses from all the popular societies of the
city. It is probable that some who had signed these, had voted with the
same eagerness the preceding year for the law that exiled him, and that
many clapped their hands on his return who had applauded his departure;
but the people have occasionally these strange and generous impulses. It
sometimes happens that they break away by a sudden bound from the
malice, distrust, and narrowness of party spirit, and, at the very
moment when passions seem most inflamed and divisions most clearly
marked, they unite all at once to render homage to some great genius or
to some great character, which, we know not how, has compelled their
recognition. Usually, this gratitude and admiration last but a short
time; but, should they endure only a day, they do eternal honour to him
who has been their object, and the glory they leave behind is sufficient
to illumine a whole life. Therefore we must pardon Cicero for having
spoken so often and with so much effusiveness of this glorious day. A
little pride was here both legitimate and natural. How could a soul so
sensitive to popular applause have resisted the intoxication of a
triumphal return? “I do not feel as though I were simply returning from
exile,” said he, “I appear to myself to be mounting to heaven.”[237]
But he was not long in descending again to earth. Whatever he may have
thought at first, he soon recognized that this city which welcomed him
with so much rejoicing was not changed, and that he found it much the
same as when he left it. Anarchy had reigned there for three years, an
anarchy such as we have difficulty in imagining, notwithstanding all the
examples that our own revolutions have given us. Since the triumvirs had
let loose the rabble in order to seize upon the government of the
republic, it had become entirely master. A daring tribune, a deserter
from the aristocracy, and one who bore the most illustrious name in
Rome, Clodius, had taken upon himself to lead it, and as far as
possible, to discipline it. He had displayed in this difficult work many
talents and much audacity, and had succeeded well enough to deserve to
become the terror of honest people. When we speak of the Roman mob, we
must not forget that it was much more frightful than our own, and was
recruited from more formidable elements. Whatever just dismay the
populace that emerges all at once from the lowest quarters of our
manufacturing cities, on a day of riot, may cause us, let us remember
that at Rome, this inferior social stratum descended still lower. Below
the vagabond strangers and the starving workmen, the ordinary tools of
revolutions, there was all that crowd of freedmen demoralized by
slavery, to whom liberty had given but one more means for evil-doing;
there were those gladiators, trained to fight beast or man, who made
light of the death of others or themselves; there were, still lower,
those fugitive slaves, who were indeed the worst of all classes, who,
after having robbed or murdered at home, and lived by pillage on the
road, came from all Italy to take refuge and disappear in the obscurity
of the slums of Rome, an unclean and terrible multitude of men without
family, without country, who, outlawed by the general sentiment of
society, had nothing to respect as they had nothing to lose. It was
among these that Clodius recruited his bands. Enlistments were made in
open day, in one of the most frequented spots in Rome, near the Aurelian
steps. The new soldiers were then organized in decuries and centuries,
under energetic leaders. They assembled by districts in secret
societies, where they went to receive the password, and had their centre
and arsenal at the temple of Castor. When the day arrived, and a popular
manifestation was wanted, the tribunes ordered the shops to be closed;
then, the artisans were thrown on the public streets, and all the army
of the secret societies marched together towards the Forum. There they
met, not the honest folks, who, feeling themselves the weaker party,
stayed at home, but the gladiators and herdsmen whom the senate had
fetched to defend them from the wilds of Picenum or Gaul, and then the
battle commenced. “Imagine London,” says M. Mommsen, “with the slave
population of New Orleans, the police of Constantinople, and the
industrial condition of modern Rome, and think of the political state of
Paris in 1848: you will have some idea of republican Rome in its last
days.”
No law was any longer respected, no citizen, no magistrate was secure
from violence. One day the fasces of a consul were broken, the next a
tribune was left for dead. The senate itself, led away by these
examples, had at last lost that quality which Romans lost the last, its
dignity. In that assembly of kings, as a Greek had called it, they
debated with revolting coarseness. Cicero surprised no one when he gave
his adversaries the names of swine, filth, rotten flesh. Sometimes the
discussions became so heated that the noise reached that excited crowd
that filled the porticoes near the curia, which then took part in them,
with so much violence that the terrified senators hastened to fly.[238]
We can easily understand that it was much worse in the Forum. Cicero
relates that, when they were tired of insulting, they spat in each
other’s faces.[239] When a man wished to address the people, he had to
take the rostrum by storm, and he risked his life in trying to keep his
place there. The tribunes had found a new way of obtaining unanimity of
votes for the laws that they proposed: namely, to beat and drive away
all who took it into their heads not to agree with them. But contests
were nowhere more violent than on the Campus Martius on election days.
Men were driven to regret the time when they trafficked publicly in the
votes of the electors. Now, they did not even take the trouble to buy
public offices; they found it more convenient to seize them by force.
Each party went before daylight to the Campus Martius. Collisions took
place on the roads leading to it. Each party hastened to arrive before
its adversaries, or, if these were already established there, attacked
them in order to dislodge them: naturally the appointments belonged to
those who remained masters of the place. In the midst of all these armed
bands there was no security for any one. Men were obliged to fortify
themselves in their houses for fear of being surprised. They could only
go out with a train of gladiators and slaves. To go from one quarter of
the city to another, they took as many precautions as if they had to
traverse a desert country, and they met at the turning of a street with
the same fear they would have had at the corner of a wood. In the midst
of Rome there were real battles and regular sieges. It was an ordinary
manœuvre to set fire to the houses of their enemies at the risk of
burning down a whole quarter, and, towards the end, no election or
popular assembly took place without bloodshed. “The Tiber,” says Cicero,
speaking of one of these combats, “was full of the corpses of the
citizens, the public sewers were choked with them, and they were obliged
to mop up with sponges the blood that streamed from the Forum.”[240]
Such were the obscure convulsions in which the Roman republic perished,
and the shameful disorders that sapped its remaining strength. Cicero
well knew that bloody anarchy and the dangers he was about to run, and
had therefore resolved, before re-entering Rome, to be prudent, so as
not to run the risk of having to leave it again. His was not one of
those minds that misfortune strengthens, and that feel a kind of
pleasure in struggling against ill-fortune. Exile had discouraged him.
During the long weariness of his sojourn in Thessaly, he had made a sad
review of the past. He had reproached himself for his occasional courage
and independence, for his boldness in combating the powerful, and for
the mistake he had made in joining himself too closely to the party
which he had judged the best, but which was evidently the weakest, as
though to act thus had been a crime. He came back thoroughly resolved to
entangle himself as little as possible with any one, to disarm his
enemies by concession, and to keep on good terms with everybody. This
was the course he followed on his arrival, and his first speeches are
masterpieces of policy. It is plain that he still leans towards the
aristocracy which had taken an active part in his restoration, and to
praise it he has noble expressions of patriotism and gratitude; but
already he commences to flatter Caesar, and he calls Pompey “the most
virtuous, the wisest, the greatest of the men of his age or of any
age.”[241] At the same time, he tells us himself, he took good heed not
to appear in the senate when irritating questions were to be discussed,
and was very careful to escape from the Forum as soon as the debate
became too heated. “No more violent remedies,” he replied to those who
tried to urge him to some brilliant action; “I must put myself on
diet.”[242]