PART IV

POLITICS AND JUSTICE IN ANCIENT ROME

I

THE TRIAL OF VERRES

In the early days of the year 70 B.C., a deputation from the cities of

Sicily arrived at Rome and sought an interview with a young Senator,

who was already famed for his eloquence, by name Marcus Tullius Cicero.

What could be the object of the Sicilians’ visit to Rome and to the

modest house of the young Senator, whose strict probity and modest

means made it impossible for him to receive his visitors in a sumptuous

palace? Justice was the object of their visit. For three years, from 75

to 73 B.C., Sicily had been governed by a young pro-prætor, a scion

of an illustrious house, who had powerful friends amongst the party in

power: Caius Cornelius Verres. Daring, imprudent, covetous, fond of art

and its products and of the pleasures of life, emboldened by a rapid

and fortunate career, the young pro-prætor had certainly much abused

his power in the provinces and had too readily turned to account the

corrupt notions of the times in the amassing of a huge fortune by all

the means, licit and illicit, which a pro-prætor could use and abuse,

though in doing so he had offended the interests and susceptibilities

of others, and had made a great number of enemies. That is the only

conclusion to be drawn from the fact that, after his departure, the

cities, accustomed though they were to insolent and overbearing

governors, decided in this instance to present an indictment and had

recourse to the young Senator who five years before had been quæstor in

Sicily, and who had left behind him in the island a great reputation

for culture, generosity and honesty. When he left the island, this

young Senator had himself said to the Sicilians in a speech delivered

at Lilybæum: “If at any time you have need of me, come and fetch me.”

The Sicilians had remembered this promise. The laws of ancient Rome

allowed any citizen to cite in the courts any other citizen whom he

suspected of having broken the laws. Would Cicero cite Verres in

Sicily’s behalf? The proposal of the Sicilian cities was a proof

of remarkable confidence, but it was at the same time a dangerous

honour. Verres was a rich man; he was powerful and had any number

of helpers and supporters among the party in power. Of even greater

assistance to Verres than the friendship of the influential was the

feeling of community of interest amongst the dominant faction. This

faction was the faction of Sulla, that is to say, the more conservative

portion of the nobility, which, after a terrible civil war waged

against the Democratic party, had succeeded in seizing the reins of

government of the Republic. It was a faction composed of widely

differing ingredients. It comprised not a few honourable and upright

men, who would naturally wish the provinces to be governed humanely

and uprightly. But great though the desire might be that the Empire

should be governed well, still greater was the desire to preserve,

together with the constitution imposed by Sulla on the Empire, the

power bequeathed by him. At this juncture, the opposite party had

been conquered but not destroyed, and its survivors were restlessly

alert for every opportunity of injuring the dominant faction with all

the arms provided by the constitution, amongst which one of the most

dangerous was precisely the initiation of scandalous charges against

prominent persons. Consequently, legal proceedings and scandals

intended to discredit the State had, since Sulla’s time, been looked

on with much disfavour by the dominant party, even honourable members

of which, faced with the choice between the harm which one of these

processes caused to the party and to the authority of the State and

the injury to justice resulting from the escape of a powerful culprit

unpunished, nearly always preferred the second.

In fact, for years past, the dominant party had strained every nerve to

prevent these processes, thus encouraging the less honourable governors

to abuse their authority. The result had been the rise in the public

conscience of a feeling of uneasiness, discontent, and irritation,

which the stories, often exaggerated, of the cruelty and violence of

the governors served only to accentuate. And by none at that moment

was this uneasiness more acutely felt than by Cicero. Cicero belonged

to a family of equestrian rank—middle-class we should call it—from

Arpino. He was a _homo novus_, a self-made man, to use a modern

expression, because he was the first of the family to become a member

of the Senate. He was not very rich and, though a man of intelligence

and vigour, he was somewhat lacking in courage. Consequently, he was

not the man to dare open defiance of the wrath, or a frontal attack

on the interests, of the dominant caste; rather were these violent

and terrible accusations so repugnant to his nature that he had never

brought himself hitherto to assume the rôle of prosecutor in any

action. He had always preferred the more humane part of defender.

He was, however, an honourable man, with small affection—like all

the equestrian order—for the faction and government formed by Sulla;

and he was fully conscious of the obligation imposed on him by the

promise which he had made so solemnly to the Sicilians. Besides, he

was young—only thirty-six years old—and was still a man of secondary

importance. A case of great public interest, which set all Italy

talking, and in which he was the popular protagonist, might be of great

service to his lofty and legitimate ambitions. In addition, things had

been moving fast recently, to the detriment of the party in power, who

were accused on all sides of outrage and corruption. The consuls for

that year were Pompey and Crassus, who, though members of the Sullan

party, had come forward as candidates with a Democratic programme,

promising no less than that they would restore to the tribunes of

the _plebs_ those powers of which Sulla had stripped them. There was

a feeling in the air which seemed to promise that just for once the

infamies of a governor might receive condign punishment from outraged

public opinion.

The young advocate realised that the decisive moment of his life

had come. He agreed to prosecute Verres. But what crime or crimes

should he lay to his charge? At this point emerges the first strange

feature in the history of this strange case. The budget of charges,

recriminations, and denunciations against Verres, which the Sicilians

lodged with Cicero, comprised enough and to spare of crimes of

every sort, some of which were actually of a capital nature. For

instance, Verres was accused of having ordered Roman citizens to

execution—which was a capital offence. But what did Cicero do? He

carefully singled out the least serious charge and persuaded the

Sicilians to lay an indictment _de pecuniis repetundis_—to demand, that

is to say, that Verres should be condemned to pay one hundred million

_prezzi_ (twenty-five million francs) as a penalty for having levied

unauthorised taxes. How are we to explain this forbearance? Cicero

in his speeches against Verres denounces him as a monster and a wild

beast. He launches the most terrible invectives against his villainies.

There is no need, however, to interpret too literally his glowing

periods. Not even Cicero could forget, while he was accusing Verres,

that he himself and the man he was accusing belonged to the same class,

and were members of the same aristocracy, which controlled the vast

Roman Empire. However keen might be the indignation aroused by the

misdeeds of Verres, not even the strictest section of the aristocracy

would have approved too relentless a line of attack, or one which

involved the accused in too serious danger. Personal hatred was a less

powerful factor than the sentiment of caste and the interest each man

felt in securing a mitigation of the severity of the laws in favour of

his fellows, in anticipation of a similar privilege for himself when

occasion might arise. Therefore Cicero acted wisely in his clients’

interests when he chose that charge which promised the least danger

to the defendant; for he knew that otherwise the latter would have an

easier task in escaping conviction.

The weakness of the attack, however, as always happens, emboldened the

accused. Verres did not hesitate one moment to make a political matter

of his case. He had recourse to all the most influential members of his

party. He begged Q. Hortensius, who was the greatest orator and the

cleverest advocate of the day, to defend him. In every possible way, he

tried to enlist in his support party interests and caste consciousness.

He represented the indictment as a machination of the Democratic

party, of the opposition, to bring obloquy on the party which had

been restored to power by Sulla. He, Verres, was the victim, in whose

person it was hoped to strike a blow at the whole of the Conservative

aristocracy, and at Sulla’s life work! This view of the matter was

at this juncture not unconvincing, so that Verres, when he began the

struggle, found himself supported by powerful friends.

His first move had for its object the elimination of Cicero as

prosecutor. The Roman law, though it allowed anyone to constitute

himself accuser of a citizen who had violated the laws, did not permit

an unlimited number of people to get up and accuse a single individual.

For, in that case, the law would have worked oppressively, cruelly, and

unconscionably. The accusation had to be lodged by a single person;

and if several persons asked to be allowed to accuse an individual, it

was the duty of the authority to choose one of them as the accuser.

Verres accordingly tried to find a rival for Cicero. A certain Quintus

Cecilius Negro, a Roman citizen, but of Sicilian origin and a Hebrew

by religion, who had been Verres’s quæstor in Sicily, appeared before

the Prætor, declaring that he wished to prosecute Verres, and demanding

the privilege over Cicero on the pretext that he had been insulted by

Verres in Sicily. As a matter of fact, there had been a violent quarrel

between them about a certain Agonis, a freedwoman of the temple of

Venus at Eryx, who practised the profession reserved in the ancient

world for the slaves of the temples of Venus.

So a preliminary trial was necessary to decide which should be the

accuser, Cecilius or Cicero, and this trial took place in the early

months of the year 70. Cicero made a powerful speech in which he

clearly insinuated that Cecilius was playing a part with the connivance

of Verres; that the former, if he were chosen to be the accuser,

would conduct the prosecution in the way best calculated to secure

Verres’s acquittal. He added in more precise terms that the case was

of the greatest political importance, inasmuch as it was bound to

prove definitely to the provinces whether there was or was not justice

to be had in Rome; whether the subjects of Rome might expect to find

their rights impartially defended in the courts of the Republic, or

whether—as the enemies of Rome and the adversaries of the dominant

party were repeating on all sides—the aristocracy were nothing but

a corrupt and rapacious association without bowels of mercy for the

victims whom they tortured.

Cicero was successful in this first skirmish. He obtained recognition

from the court as the prosecutor of Verres, and was granted one hundred

and ten days in which to proceed to Sicily to collect the proofs of his

accusation. He started at once.

At Rome, the struggle between the party with the purse and the

Democratic opposition, encouraged by the support of the two

all-powerful Consuls, waxed furious. Pompey and Crassus induced

the Senate to restore to the Tribunes their ancient powers. They

re-established the censorship and by the instrumentality of the two

newly elected Censors, they ejected from the Senate many of the more

contemptible of Sulla’s partisans. Marcus Aurelius Cotta proposed

a reform of the courts which would have removed the latter almost

entirely from the influence of the dominant party.

Naturally, these discussions, these laws, and these proposals served

only to increase the general excitement; and of this excitement Verres

took advantage to identify still further his own cause with that of the

party in power. He placed at the disposal of the party the wealth he

had well or badly earned in his province as well as his influence and

his personality. The party on their side chose as candidates for the

consulship Q. Hortensius, his defending counsel, and Quintus Metellus,

who was a great friend of Verres; for the prætorship, Marcus Metellus,

a brother of Quintus and no less than Quintus a friend of Verres. They

opposed with all their force the law proposed by Cotta, which would

have transformed the courts in a manner most unfavourable to Verres’s

interests. The Democratic party in their turn took the Sicilians’

cause under their protection, to the extent of choosing Cicero, their

illustrious advocate, as candidate for the ædileship.

Thus the elections of the year 70 promised to be bound up in the

trial of Verres. They seemed likely to be the means by which the two

parties would endeavour to influence public opinion in favour of the

prosecution or of the defence. Unfortunately, when Cicero, after an

absence of about two months returned to Rome from Sicily, with abundant

matter in the shape of documents and proofs, he found the situation

of the popular party, and consequently his action against Verres—for

its fate was bound up in that of the party—gravely compromised by a

rupture which had arisen between the two Consuls. There was no love

lost between Pompey and Crassus. Each was jealous of the other. In

putting themselves at the head of the Democratic party, they had been

guided by ambition and political calculations. But they were both too

rich, and had too many ties with, and friendships among, the dominant

party—from which both of them came—to be able to infuse much zeal and

sincerity into their services to the opposition. As a result, each had

ended by attacking the other; and these attacks, after some months of

activity, had paralysed the Democratic party, and restored boldness and

confidence to the Conservative party, which was now resolved to wreck

the law of judicial reform and to obtain Verres’s acquittal, the two

triumphs at which it aimed.

When Cicero returned, the elections were imminent, and because of their

imminence everyone was in a state of preoccupation and uncertainty.

It would not have been prudent for either party to incur the risk of

the trial before the elections. So the trial was postponed without

any difficulty or opposition. It was the month of June; and, in the

following July, the elections would, as usual, take place. Those

for the consulship and prætorship were a great triumph for Verres.

Quintus Hortensius and Quintus Metellus were elected Consuls; Marcus

Metellus was elected Prætor. Verres had conquered all along the line!

The evening of the day on which the Consuls were elected, Verres was

publicly congratulated on the result near the Arch of Fabius by several

members of the aristocracy; and one of them, Caius Curion, told him

in so many words that “the _comitia_ had acquitted him.” Cicero was

naturally much upset; but he did not lose heart. He discontinued for

some time working up his case, and devoted himself entirely to his

election to the ædileship. The Democratic party had realised that,

after their want of success in the elections to the consulship and the

prætorship, a further failure in the shape of Cicero’s non-election

would seriously compromise their chances in the prosecution of Verres.

In fact, Verres and his friends were working like demons against

Cicero, using against him all the resources of money, intrigue, and

calumny. Those were days of anxiety and turmoil for Cicero, the days of

the struggle, but, thanks to the energetic support on this occasion of

Pompey, Cicero was elected.

The elections over, attention was again directed to the trial, the

opening of which was fixed for the 5th of August; and the two parties

began to sharpen their weapons for the decisive and supreme issue.

There were two phases to a Roman trial; in the initial phase, the

prosecutor had the first word, opening his case, and the defendant

replied; the witnesses also were heard. Then followed a suspension of

the proceedings, after which the prosecutor once more spoke and the

defendant once more replied. Then the jury—for the Court was composed

of a jury drawn by lot from the body of Senators and presided over by

the Prætor—gave its verdict. Those in favour of acquittal wrote an A

(_absolvo_) on the waxed tablet, those in favour of conviction wrote

a C (_condemno_). Cicero’s intention was to abbreviate his opening

statement as much as possible; then to bring forward a large number of

witnesses whom he had brought from Sicily and collected in Rome, so

as to make a complete history of the whole of Verres’s political life

and administration. The charge against Verres was that he had extorted

forty million _sestertii_ from the provincials. But it would not

satisfy Cicero to prove only this point. He wanted to show that Verres

had been guilty of the countless rascalities which the popular voice

attributed to him, beginning from the time of his first occupation

of the office of quæstor; in short, to reconstruct with the help of

witnesses and documentary evidence the whole of his public and private

life. To strengthen the impression made by his case, he intended to

bring the witnesses forward in groups corresponding to the different

charges, and to introduce one group after the other, prefacing the

introduction of each group with a short explanatory speech, in such a

way as to focus the attention of the public each time on a definite

and precise episode in Verres’s career.

This method of procedure on the part of the prosecution may seem to us

barbarous and inhuman. We should think it atrocious if, even against

the greatest of scoundrels, the prosecution instituted an inquiry

into the whole of his life in order to punish him for, and to convict

him of, a single offence. Against such methods, we should not expect

anyone, however innocent, to be able to defend himself. And yet, so

greatly do feelings and ideas change in the world—Verres and most of

his friends had hopes of finding their best line of defence in this

relentless prosecution. An all-embracing accusation, such as Cicero

intended to make, might, it is true, annihilate a man; but it required

much time, days and days of discussion. Now, time was the ally on which

Verres and his friends counted most confidently. The trial began on

the 5th of August; the 16th to the 31st of August were the dates fixed

for the celebration of the games which Pompey had promised for years

past in memory of his victories over Sertorius. During this interval,

the trial would have to be suspended. Further suspensions would be

necessary from the 4th to the 19th of September, because of the Roman

games; from the 26th of October to the 4th of November because of the

games of Victory; from the 4th to the 17th of November because of the

_ludi plebei_. Thanks to this abundance of games, then, there was a

prospect, especially when Cicero’s wish to amplify the indictment was

taken into account, that the discussion would be unduly prolonged.

Other pretexts for postponement would surely not be wanting. In the

meantime public interest would flag; and, if one could look forward

to the new year, the presidency of the jury would pass to the new

Prætor, Marcus Metellus, who was an intimate friend of Verres. With his

connivance, it would be easy to find a way of bringing the prosecution

to an end with a convenient acquittal. In fact, Hortensius advised

Verres to let Cicero call as many witnesses as he wished, and to let

them talk freely, without contradicting them and without being drawn

into a discussion with them, but listening to them in austere and

contemptuous silence.

The doubtful and decisive point, then, of this great struggle was

this: whether greater success would attend Cicero in his efforts to

move the public with his tenacious and insistent accusations, or

Verres and his friends in their efforts to tire out that public with

their passive resistance. At last, on August 5th, the trial, the

preparations for which had occupied so many months, began. The public

expectations and curiosity were immense. The struggles and intrigues

of the parties had by now converted the trial into a political event.

The Democratic opposition wanted Verres to be convicted, so as to

inflict a humiliation on the dominant party and to be able to accuse

it of countenancing the pillage of the provinces. The Conservative

party wished for Verres’s acquittal so as to be able to assert that

these accusations of misgovernment, like so many others that had been

launched on previous occasions against other governors, were calumnies

concocted by the Democratic party, and noxious calumnies to boot,

inasmuch as they jeopardised the prestige of the Empire amongst its

subjects. Rome was, during these weeks, full of Italians from the

North and South, who had come for the elections, the games, and the

new census; hence the trial gained in general interest and importance.

During the days of waiting for the Pompeian games to begin, this great

trial, in which Hortensius and Cicero, the Conservative aristocracy and

the Popular party, were to be pitted against each other, promised to be

an interesting way of passing the time for all those strangers who had

nothing to do. In ancient Rome, as in all parts of the world nowadays,

trials were a gratuitous spectacle much to the taste of the public.

Thus, on that morning of the 5th of August, an immense crowd thronged

the Forum, round the benches on which the judges, the prosecution, the

defendant, and his supporters were to take their seats.

Verres showed a proud and resolute bearing, and appeared surrounded

by a crowd of influential friends. Cicero had the first word, and

made a short speech, in which he did not refer to any of the facts to

which his witnesses were expected to testify, saying that he would

let them speak for themselves. He preferred to deal generically with

the political and moral importance of the trial. He said that the

provinces, nay, the whole Empire was anxiously following the proceeding

which would tell whether there were judges and any hope of justice in

Rome. He concluded with a dexterous reference to the suspicions of

corruption which were flying about, and to the boasts that Verres was

supposed to have made of his ability, with the help of his money, to

flout with impunity every court of justice. It was for Hortensius to

reply to Cicero’s speech; but he complained that it had been so vague

and generic that it contained no single point which he could seize and

demolish.

Then began a long procession of witnesses, and a fierce and venomous

lot they were, with terrible tales for the ears of the judges and

the public! In order to secure Verres’s conviction and sentence to a

fine of one hundred million _sestertii_, under the _lex de pecuniis

repetundis_, Cicero produced witnesses who accused him of every sort

of crime; of having committed acts of sacrilege, of having gone shares

with the pirates whom he ought to have harried and destroyed, of

having been guilty of numberless acts of peculation and malversation,

and of having condemned Roman citizens to death! To prove these

charges, Cicero had unearthed hundreds of witnesses from every class

of society, of both sexes, and of all ages, who, carefully coached and

prepared beforehand, entered the witness-box to add their quota to the

fierce attacks on Verres. It is difficult to judge how much of these

impassioned and violent stories was true, and how much pure invention,

as we have no documentary evidence relating to this trial other than

the speeches for the prosecution. Besides, Verres, as we have said,

did not avail himself of the right of cross-examination which the law

allowed him. He allowed the avalanche of charges to slide unchecked

down the slope, and to hurl itself into the valley, hoping that it

would stop of its own accord. However, it is not improbable that the

evidence contained no small number of exaggerations. A Sicilian friend

of mine, an eminent politician and a man with a profound knowledge of

his native island, is constantly reminding me that, even at the present

day, the Sicilians throw so much passion into their political struggles

that great circumspection is required in sifting the accusations hurled

by one side against the other, when rivalry and party animosity come

into play. “Only imagine,” he says, “how it must have been in ancient

times.” Besides, everyone who reads Cicero’s speeches cannot help

feeling, from time to time, that the list of villainies he enumerates

is really too long even for the greatest villain that ever lived.

Although we to-day can pass a dispassionate judgment on the events of

twenty centuries ago, their contemporaries, embroiled in the turmoil

of unbridled passions, were not capable of so great detachment. At

this point, a phenomenon occurred which neither Cicero, Hortensius,

nor Verres had foreseen. Public opinion, which had been grumbling

for a long time at the excesses of the oligarchical government, and

which was ready to extend blind credence to such charges as the subtle

propaganda of the democratic opposition devised, gave birth to one of

those formidable and unexpected movements which no human force can

resist. Day by day, as the evidence of the witnesses spread from the

Forum through the city, was digested, embroidered, exaggerated from

mouth to mouth,—in those days, conversation performed the function of

newspapers, with the same defects, imprecision, and exaggeration, as

the latter,—an ungovernable wave of indignation against Verres swept

over Rome. No one set himself to sift the evidence dispassionately,

or by subtle analysis to separate the true from the legendary. The

weightier and the more terrible the charges against Verres, the more

readily they found credence. Each succeeding day saw an increase in the

public indignation and fury, as well as in the crowd that filled the

Forum. On the day on which a witness deposed that Verres had condemned

to death a Roman citizen who had in vain cried, “_Civis Romanus sum_,”

such a hubbub and commotion arose among the public that the Prætor

was obliged to close the sitting in hot haste, for fear of some great

calamity if the case proceeded. For five, six, seven, even for ten

days, Verres and his defenders faced the storm, hoping that the wind

would shift, that, after the first burst of passion was spent, public

opinion would veer round, regain self-control, and re-enter a state

of calm, conducive to reasoning and discussion. Each morning saw the

inexorable figure of Cicero at the head of a new handful of witnesses,

who came to re-kindle the public indignation by revelations of new

crimes and villainies, real or imaginary.

When, after fourteen days of discussion, the first phase of the case

came to an end and there was a suspension of proceedings pending the

second phase, Verres, his defenders, and his friends, were obliged to

hold a council of war. The situation was desperate. The hope of tiring

out public opinion with the length of the proceedings had proved a

vain illusion. There was no longer room for hope that the court might

acquit Verres. Even if every one of the judges had been convinced of

the entire and complete innocence of Verres, they would not have dared

to acquit him in face of the excited state of public opinion, for fear

of being suspected of corruption. Rome, Italy, the Empire, would have

declared with one voice that the judges had absolved Verres because

they had been bought with the gold which he had extorted in such

quantities from the Sicilians. The public clamoured for their victim.

Besides, even supposing that the judges had the inconceivable courage

to acquit Verres, his political career, after such a scandal, was at

an end. What use was it then to persist with the struggle, when the

battle was already irretrievably lost? It was best to give in. Verres

had better not show himself further at the trial, and had better go

into voluntary exile. In that case, he was sure to be fined much less

heavily, and to save his patrimony from the wreck of his political

fortunes.

Verres bowed his head to destiny, which had chosen him to be, in the

eyes of Italy and the Empire, the victim sacrificed to expiate the

misdeeds and the outrages committed by all the Roman governors since

the restoration of Sulla. When the trial began again, for the second

and decisive phase, he did not put in an appearance. He had already

gone into exile. Such was the delight of the judges that, by declaring

himself guilty, he had spared them the unpleasant and responsible task

of doing so themselves, that they inflicted upon him the lightest of

punishments. They condemned him to pay, not _one hundred_ millions,

as the Sicilians demanded, but only _three_ millions of _sestertii_.

A fine of three million _sestertii_ was the judicial imprimatur on a

trial, in the course of which a member of the Roman aristocracy had

been accused by a host of witnesses of the greatest atrocities and

outrages, some of which, if true, would have sufficed to bring him to

the scaffold.

When we read the violent speeches which Cicero wrote after the trial,

and which he would have pronounced, if it had continued into its second

phase, in order to sum up and point the moral of the terrible evidence

which had been given against Verres; when we compare these speeches

and the charges which they formulate, annotate, and tabulate with the

lenient and light penalty inflicted, we can, at first blush, only

feel surprise. The historian asks himself whether the whole of this

trial—which is certainly one of the most famous in the history of the

world—was not a sort of comedy played by actors of great skill for the

benefit of an ignorant and ingenuous public. Such a judgment would,

however, be too severe. Cicero was an honourable and upright man, and

defended the cause of his Sicilian clients with sincerity and loyalty.

No, this trial was not simply a judicial episode. It was a political

drama, and, like all political dramas, was overlaid with phenomena

which to a certain extent hide its real nature and essence from the

eyes of posterity as it hid these from those of its contemporaries. It

must not be forgotten that all the actors in this trial, the accused,

the prosecutor, the defending counsel, and the judges, belonged to

the same aristocracy. At a certain moment this aristocracy had found

itself compelled, by intestinal quarrels and by a complex political

situation, to sacrifice, in a trial at law, one of its members in order

to satisfy public opinion, Italy, and the Empire; in order to prove

that it was not true, as a whole party was busy whispering about Rome,

that the Roman governors, provided they belonged to the Conservative

aristocracy, were allowed to do what they liked in the provinces and

that their subjects were abandoned defenceless to their caprices and

their greed. But the particular member of the aristocracy whom it was

found necessary to sacrifice, whether he were or were not so great

a villain as his enemies asserted, had friends, protectors, and

supporters who exerted an influence sufficiently great amongst the

dominant party to admit of too ruthless an attack being made upon him.

Cicero himself who apparently attacks Verres with such fury, in reality

endeavours to do him as little harm as possible. At every stage of

his comments on the serious evidence of the witnesses, he says that,

if Verres is not convicted under the _lex de pecuniis repetundis_, he

will accuse him of a greater crime, as though to persuade him that

the prosecution has had the utmost possible regard for him. In short,

the trial and the condemnation of Verres were a twofold satisfaction

which the Roman aristocracy was forced to offer to the public opinion

of Italy and to the provinces; but, while offering it, she tried, in

every possible way, to temper the blow to the predestined victim. In

fact, Verres, though forced to renounce every political ambition, was

able to live the life of a _grand seigneur_ quietly in Italy. And that

is actually what he did, devoting himself especially to the collection

of those works of art for which he had such a passion. After the trial,

there is no mention of him in Roman history. He disappears; and, after

the year 70, his name does not reappear till more than twenty-seven

years later as one of the victims of the famous proscriptions

organised in 43 and 42 by Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavianus: the same

proscriptions in which Cicero, his accuser, perished. Inasmuch as

Verres had been for the elapsed twenty-seven years but an obscure

spectator of the political struggles of Rome, it is clear that he must

have been included in the lists of the proscribed because his riches

excited the cupidity of the Triumvirs.

The famous trial, while it cut short Verres’s political career, brought

Cicero’s to the heights of success. The trial of Verres made of Cicero,

who up to that time had been a promising young man, one of the foremost

political figures in Rome. The Conservative aristocracy recognised

in him an orator whose eloquence might be terrible. The Democratic

party was grateful to him for the humiliation which he had inflicted

on the dominant party. Italy and the provinces welcomed in him the

honourable Senator, the disinterested advocate, the intrepid defender

of down-trodden justice, the man who had publicly affirmed, at no small

risk to himself, that Rome owed it to her own honour to govern with

equity and uprightness the immense empire of which fortune had made her

mistress. Assuredly, Cicero deserved such admiration, even though his

attack on Verres had not been so bitter as the public supposed.

The trial of Verres is the first great page in Cicero’s history. Who

could, however, have prophesied to him, in 70, that history would write

the name of Verres beside his own yet once again, but on the last

page, that of a tragic and glorious death? How life teems with strange

coincidences! These two men who confronted each other in one of the

most famous legal duels in history, who separated with faces turned

towards such diverse destinies—the conqueror to find glory and power,

the conquered to find obscurity and seclusion—were fated to meet once

more in life, at the last hour, on the brink of the same abyss.

II

THE TRIAL OF CLODIUS

In December of the year 62 B.C., the festival of the _Bona Dea_ was

being celebrated as usual in Rome. This goddess was one of Rome’s

strangest deities. She represented fertility; and the object of the

December ceremonies was to move the goddess to grant that all the

fountains of fertility which nourish the life and prosperity of a

nation might flow copiously throughout the year. Women only were

admitted to the festivities, which were due to take place at night in

the house of the Consul or of the Prætor. The wife of the Prætor or of

the Consul presided; the lady members of the aristocracy took part;

but the master of the house, with all the male slaves, was required

to absent himself. It was popularly believed that the man who dared

to take part in the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_ would be immediately

struck blind.

In that particular year, the ceremonies took place in the house of

Julius Cæsar, who was Prætor at the time, under the presidency of his

wife, Pompeia, and his mother, Aurelia. Cæsar had left the house,

which had been decorated as the rites required. All the ladies of the

aristocracy had assembled there, and the mysterious ceremonies were

being carried on through the night, as usual, when in one of the rooms

a slave belonging to Cæsar’s mother encountered a musician who seemed

to have lost her way in the huge house, and not to know what she ought

to do or where to go. The slave asked the stranger whom or what she was

looking for. The musician did not answer. The slave, her suspicions

aroused by the other’s silence, persisted with her questions. The

musician was driven at last to say that she was looking for one of

Pompeia’s slaves, by name Abra. But Aurelia’s slave was horror-struck

when she heard the musician’s voice. It was the voice of a man! At

once, with loud screams, she gave the alarm. A man, a man disguised

as a woman, was present at the sacred rites of the _Bona Dea_! The

musician bolted. Cæsar’s mother, a dignified and energetic woman,

suspended the ceremonies, immediately ordered all the doors to be shut,

and, followed by all the matrons, searched the house thoroughly from

top to bottom. At last the musician was found hidden in Abra’s room;

and several of the ladies present believed they recognised in her a

young Roman patrician, famous in Rome for the blueness of his blood,

and for his extravagance: Publius Clodius. He was expelled from the

house, and the meeting broke up.

Next day, all Rome knew that Publius Clodius had dared to try to

profane the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_; and the news created an

immense sensation. Publius Clodius was the youthful descendant

of one of Rome’s most ancient, illustrious, and famous patrician

houses. His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and his

great-great-grandfather had all been Consuls. Thus he belonged to one

of those families which impersonated in the eyes of Italy the glory,

the power, and the virtue of Rome. That the youthful scion of one of

these venerated families should have dared to commit such a sacrilege

was a thing which would have made a painful impression in Rome at any

time. But the moment was a critical and uncertain one. The impression

made by the conspiracy of Catiline was still lively and fresh.

Everywhere, especially in the more respectable section of society,

a feeling of disgust mingled with fear prevailed. The public was in

favour of severe measures. All seriously minded people gave it as their

opinion that the prevailing licence of manners, and especially the

effrontery of the young men, must be curbed, if the Empire was not to

crumble into decay. If matters had come to such a pass that a Claudius,

a man whose name had for so many centuries spelt to the Romans all the

austere and traditional virtues of the Roman citizenship of old, dared

profane the most sacred rites of religion, what might not be feared at

the hands of a creedless, dissolute, corrupt youth, which was preparing

to invade, with the new generation, the official posts of the Republic?

Great, therefore, was the public indignation; and the strict party,

captained by Cato, a small party but active and powerful in the Senate,

perceived that now was the moment to make an example. That Clodius

had, up to that time, served the Conservative party, the aristocratic

community which Sulla had restored to power; that in the conspiracy of

Catiline he had zealously helped Cicero and defended the cause of the

order, counted for little, nay, rather was it all to the good. It was

necessary to show the people that the aristocracy could still, as in

the good old times, bring themselves to strike at their own members,

when they failed in their most sacred duties.

The tales which soon spread among the public as to the reasons for the

sacrilege only served to fan the flame of indignation. It was whispered

that Clodius was the paramour of Pompeia, Cæsar’s wife; and that he had

endeavoured, with the connivance of Abra, Pompeia’s slave, to gain an

entrance into the festivities, for the purpose of an assignation with

her! The sacrilege, therefore, was twofold. The rites of the _Bona Dea_

were intended to assure the prosperity of the people. It was infamous

that a young aristocrat should have dared to take advantage of them to

further an intrigue of gallantry. An example must be made; this was for

several days the general chorus throughout Rome. The most sacred things

of the Republic could not be left a prey to this corrupt and depraved

youth. The cynicism of a few dissolutes must not be allowed to expose

the Republic to the wrath of the gods!

An example must be made—certainly! But how? The law contained no

provision applying to such an act as Clodius had committed. Anyone

desirous of prosecuting him would not have known what law to invoke

in order to hale him before the judges. The case was unprecedented;

and it had never occurred to anyone to write it down a crime, with a

definite legal imprimatur attached. The ancient code was extremely

formal, especially in questions of rites and religion, and so Clodius’s

deed remained a wicked, impious, and shameful one, which was calculated

to cover him with infamy, but which could not be punished by the law.

Sensible, cautious, and prudent people, in the Senate, and out of it,

lost no time in convincing themselves on this point; while Clodius,

his friends, and his family, which was a most influential one, began

to intercede, to pray, and to intrigue. It was true that Clodius

had committed an act of unpardonable levity, which would ruin his

political career for all time. But it was an act for which there was no

punishment, save the reprobation of all good citizens.

So colourless a solution was, however, not at all to the taste of the

public, which was deeply moved by the sacrilege, and roused to fury

against these great families who abused their power in so scandalous a

way. The public demanded a severer punishment. The small Pietist party,

feeling itself backed by public opinion, brought the matter before the

Senate, by the mouth of an obscure Senator named Quintus Cornificius.

Cornificius proposed that the College of Pontiffs be consulted, and

their opinion asked as to the gravity and character of the crime

committed by Clodius. The proposal was an ingenious one. According to

ancient ideas, it was incumbent on the State itself to take precautions

that the gods should have no motive for losing their tempers with the

people and the city, and thereupon wreaking vengeance upon Rome. With

the public thrown into such a state of fear and commotion by Clodius’s

sacrilege, the Senate could not refuse to consult the Pontiffs, to

learn from them whether this act constituted an outrage against the

gods, and, if so, an outrage of what gravity. The College of Pontiffs

answered that the act was _nefas_—the technical expression which

indicated the gravest of delinquencies towards the divinity. Their

answer could not have been otherwise. Nevertheless, however _nefas_ the

act might be, there was no law which punished it.

So when the answer of the College of Pontiffs reached the Senators,

the latter found themselves confronted with the following situation.

A very grave and scandalous crime had been committed by one of the

best-known members of the aristocracy. This crime had stirred the

public indignation to its depths, and had been declared _nefas_ by the

College of Pontiffs. Yet there was no way of punishing it, because

the arsenal of the law did not provide the weapons necessary for its

punishment. The danger inherent in this state of affairs was obvious.

The public, infuriated and dismayed, would never believe that Clodius

could not be punished—because the laws had never even imagined that

such an abomination could ever be committed by a Roman. The public

would declare that Clodius had escaped his richly-deserved punishment

because he belonged to one of the most conspicuous and influential

families in Rome. The aristocracy was superior to the law; it could

even provoke with impunity the wrath of the gods against the city!

What was to be done? Public opinion, in its agitated state, kept

egging on the Senate; and the Pietist and ruthless party, profiting

by the popular agitation, attempted a daring move, proposing to the

Senate that it should invite the Consuls to make a special law, which

should have retrospective force, and should declare Clodius’s act on

a plane with the crime of incest,—make it equivalent, that is, to the

seduction of a vestal virgin, a crime which, according to ancient law,

was punishable with death, and which fell to be judged by the College

of Pontiffs. Nevertheless, no one, not even Cato, could delude himself

into thinking that the College of Pontiffs would condemn Clodius

to death. Consequently, the law proposed to constitute a special

tribunal,—which would not be that of the Pontiffs, nor the usual jury,

chosen by lot. The Prætor would himself constitute it, choosing it from

the panel of judges. It was hoped in this way to contrive a Court which

would condemn Clodius at least to exile.

It is not difficult to realise how daring and dangerous it was to

propose such a _privilegium_, as the Romans used to call exceptional

laws, in times of uproar like those, and in the midst of the fierce

discords which already for so many reasons were splitting up the

Roman aristocracy. But the indignation and commotion of the public,

superstitious and fearful as it was, were too lively. Cæsar himself

had felt the necessity of throwing a sop to the public by divorcing

Pompeia; and the Senate dared not reject the rash proposal, even though

many wise men, like Cicero, thought that it would be more prudent to

let Clodius fry in his own grease. The two Consuls were invited to

draft the law and to get it approved by the people.

From this moment, however, difficulties began; and, in a few weeks,

the prosecution of Clodius assumed a new aspect. It became a political

matter. That the act he had committed was an abominable one, no one in

Rome denied; but that in order to secure his punishment a law should

be passed which would not only be a special one, but—most important

point of all—would introduce the principle of the selection of judges

by the Prætor,—no, to this the Popular, Democratic party could not

consent. Always concerned not to leave in the hands of Sulla’s party,

which was still so powerful in the Senate and throughout the Republic,

too many weapons to employ against their enemies, the Popular party

had recently taken to demanding with the utmost emphasis the most

rigorous observance of legal forms, especially in proceedings in

the law-courts, which were such a convenient means, in the hands of

the preponderant party, of getting rid of the latter’s adversaries.

In fact, at that moment the Popular party had begun an agitation

against the illegalities committed in the course of the repression of

Catiline’s conspiracy. This law, therefore, sounded like a challenge.

As a matter of fact, of the two Consuls whose duty it was to bring

it forward, one, Marcus Pupius Piso, though he had not dared resist

the proposal openly in the Senate, was opposed to it; and, while he

made a show of obeying the orders of the Senate and actually did,

with his colleague, propose the law, he busied himself behind the

scenes to secure its rejection. The other Consul, Marcus Valerius

Messala, on the other hand, was an enthusiastic supporter of the law;

but it was whispered about that a tribune of the _plebs_, if the law

was brought forward, would veto it. Clodius and his relations worked

away vigorously. All the wise and prudent men, even Cicero, held

themselves in reserve, keeping an eye on the progress of events without

compromising themselves too far; so that Cicero, writing at the end of

January, 61, to Atticus, could give him to understand between the lines

that the law would never be passed, and that the whole business would

be brought to a stand-still by the fizzing away of the public anger.

For the rest, this was the secret wish of all level-headed citizens,

who, like Cicero, feared dreadful calamities, if the business were

allowed to assume more serious proportions.

But all the wiseacres reckoned without Cato and the Pietist party,

and without the obstinacy of Messala, who, irritated by the stolid

opposition of his colleague, countered it with a determined effort to

get the law passed. Between them all, they worked and spoke with such

effect that they succeeded in obtaining the support of Pompey, and

in bringing the law before the _comitia_ in the first fortnight of

February. Piso, however, was no less resolutely determined than Messala

that the law he had proposed should not be passed, and, as it was his

turn to preside over the meeting, he had recourse that day to every

sort of subtle device to prevent the law being passed. He even went so

far as to distribute to the voters only that tablet which they would

use in rejecting the law. When the heads of the Conservative party,

Cato, Hortensius, and Favonius, heard of this extraordinary intrigue,

they hurried to the _comitia_ and began to address the people. Cato

distinguished himself by a virulent attack on Piso. The speeches

were effectual in preventing the law from being put to the vote, and

therefore from being, as it assuredly would have been, rejected. They

could not, however, procure its approval, which, from Clodius’s point

of view, and for the moment at any rate, came to much the same thing.

Men’s passions began to get the better of them. The _amour propre_ of

the two small factions came more prominently into play the more the

case assumed a political aspect. Inasmuch as the opposition of one of

the two Consuls who had proposed the law was the greatest impediment

to the approval of the law, means must be found for getting rid of

Piso. The Pietists thought of exerting pressure upon him by means of

the Senate. They summoned a meeting of the Senate on urgent business,

and proposed a motion inviting the Consuls once more to join in

recommending the law to the popular vote; in other words, intimating to

Piso that he had better abandon his attitude of obstruction. A lively

discussion ensued. The friends of Clodius opposed the motion with

great energy; but it was carried by four hundred votes to fifteen. A

truly crushing majority! Clodius’s act was so offensive to the public

that few Senators dared openly to side with him, even though they were

conscious that the law which was meant to bring him to book was fraught

with danger.

Piso, however, did not allow this vote of the Senate to influence him.

The discontent of the Popular party was increasing, and the public

agitation, not in favour of Clodius, but against the law, was gathering

force, being focussed on that particular provision which undoubtedly

was the most dangerous, namely, the authority given to the Prætor to

choose the judges from the panel of jurors instead of entrusting the

choice to the fortune of the lot. The law, it is true, established this

procedure only for the purposes of the action against Clodius. But was

not the precedent a dangerous one? Would it not be possible, after this

first experiment, to try to apply the same method to other cases?

That would result in putting into the hands of the preponderant party

a formidable weapon for the destruction of its adversaries: the giving

to the Prætor in office the power to choose the judges who should be

summoned to decide the numberless cases by means of which that party

sought to deprive their rivals of their most influential leaders.

So the struggle waxed fiercer and fiercer. Piso would not give way,

and the Popular party supported him, never mentioning Clodius, but

asserting that the law was unjust, dangerous, and deadly—that the

death-blow would be given to the Republic on the day on which a

magistrate, elected by, and bound by ties to, one party, was invested

with the power to choose the judges for every law-suit. The Pietist

party, supported by the majority of the Senate, and by the Sullan

association, adopted the opposite tactics. It made light of the

provisions of the law and the dangers anticipated and denounced

by the Popular party. It protested that Clodius had committed a

horrible sacrilege, and could not be allowed to go unpunished without

compromising still further in the eyes of the disgusted and affrighted

masses the waning authority of the State. Intrigues and plots thickened

on this side and on that. Both sides endeavoured to influence public

opinion, but in this attempt the Popular party was the more successful.

For that party, by dint of dogged and dexterous efforts, and without

paying any regard to the votes of the Senate, which was almost

unanimously favourable to the opposite party, succeeded in persuading

the public that the law was immoderate, tyrannical, and dangerous,

especially in the matter of the powers entrusted to the Prætor.

The day arrived when the more enlightened men of the Conservative

party realised that the law, in the form in which it had been drafted,

would never be approved. Piso by himself, helped by the Popular party

and by the growing mistrust of public opinion, sufficed to checkmate

the majority of the Senate and the party in power. It was necessary,

therefore, to devise a compromise. And the man who devised it was

Hortensius, the great orator who ten years before had been Verres’s

defending counsel. He proposed that the two Consuls should abandon

their law; and that Fusius Calenus, who was tribune of the _plebs_,

should bring forward another, in which the first part of the preceding

law, that which made of Clodius’s act an incest, should be retained,

but the second part should be modified in such a way that the judges

summoned to administer it should not be the College of Pontiffs but

the ordinary jury, chosen in the ordinary way, that is to say, by lot,

and not, as the law of the two Consuls proposed, by the Prætors. By

this equable compromise Hortensius hoped to satisfy all parties—he

disarmed the opposition of the Popular party, which would not dare,

now that the law had been purged of the provision which aroused the

greatest mistrust in the public, to persist in its opposition, and to

risk appearing too openly to desire the protection of Clodius. He gave

a sop to public opinion, which was deeply stirred and offended by the

scandal. He gave satisfaction to the _amour propre_ of the Conservative

party, by presenting them with the head of Clodius. As a matter of

fact, he thought—and this was the argument he used to persuade the most

recalcitrant of the Pietist party—that it was not necessary to alter

the mode of choosing the judges. Clodius’s guilt was so evident that it

was quite impossible to imagine that a court of law, however corrupt,

could acquit him.

The first of Hortensius’s anticipations quickly came true. The

law, thus modified, passed without difficulty. At once, several

citizens hastened to indict Clodius of incest. Matters had not gone

far, however, before everyone perceived that Hortensius’s second

anticipation, that the conviction of Clodius was inevitable, would

not be realised so easily. Months had passed; the first impression of

horror made on the public had faded. The Conservative party—the same

that had made such efforts to save Verres—was too deeply committed to

obtaining the conviction of Clodius at whatever cost, for the Popular

party not to take Clodius under its protection, though it did so

covertly and without compromising itself too far. Crassus and Cæsar

in particular, without appearing on the scene, were disposed to do

whatever they could, to help Clodius, and to procure him, if it were

possible, an acquittal, an outcome which in no less a degree than the

conviction of Verres, would have been a rebuff for the party which

Sulla had installed in the government, and which, notwithstanding all

the reverses which it had undergone in recent years, was still so

powerful. Clodius on his side worked with the energy of despair to

escape conviction, which would have shattered his political career

irreparably and forever.

The trial took place at the beginning of May, in the midst of a

curiosity and excitement which may be easily imagined. The two parties

had by now decided to face each other once again, as in Verres’s time,

in the confined arena of a law-court. The judges were chosen by lot,

and the defendant especially availed himself of the right which the

law conceded to both sides, of challenging a certain number of them.

Nobody was surprised at this, as everyone knew that the struggle would

be a fierce one, or rather a hopeless one, for the accused. Indeed,

how could Clodius escape conviction, when his guilt was so manifest?

In declaring his act to be _incestum_, the law had already condemned

him in anticipation. When, however, the jury had been impannelled, and

the trial opened, an unexpected and dramatic incident occurred. Clodius

defended himself by saying that the matrons present at the feast in

honour of the _Bona Dea_ had been deceived. They had mistaken somebody

else for him. On that day he was actually not in Rome, but at Iteramna

(Terni)!

Just at first, this alibi made the public laugh. Nobody took it

seriously. It seemed to everyone that Clodius was joking and wished

to make fun of the Court, or that he was trying a desperate coup. But

here, too, they were wrong. Clodius intended that his point be taken

quite seriously, and had prepared his defence much more cleverly than

his adversaries, emboldened by the certainty of victory, supposed.

People were not slow to realise this, as the trial went on and on,

without producing that proof of Clodius’s guilt which everybody thought

so easy and certain, and without destroying his daring alibi. The

first step was to put Clodius’s slaves to the torture,—a step which

was allowed in a case in which “incest” was imputed. This procedure

was, however, barren of results. Clodius had sent the five slaves of

whose evidence he was particularly afraid, partly to his brother in

Greece, and partly to a distant property of his in the Alps. Then came

Cæsar, who had been cited as a witness, and by whose evidence also

the enemies of Clodius set great store. Had he not divorced his wife

immediately after the scandal? This divorce clearly indicated that

Cæsar considered his wife guilty; a state of mind which gave ground for

hope that he would revenge himself by charging Clodius. Cæsar, however,

had too great an interest in pleasing Crassus, whose desire to give the

Democratic party the satisfaction of procuring the acquittal of Clodius

was growing keener and keener. So Cæsar deposed under examination

that he knew nothing and could say nothing, as, in conformity with

religious precepts, he was out of the house that evening. Great was

the irritation and disappointment of the prosecutors, one of whom

thereupon, in order to put Cæsar in a difficulty, asked Cæsar for what

reason, if he knew nothing and could say nothing, he had divorced his

wife immediately after the scandal had broken out. Cæsar then, assuming

a solemn air, pronounced the famous phrase: “Because Cæsar’s wife must

be above suspicion,” a phrase which historians have proceeded to quote

as a proof of his precocious monarchical ambitions and of his masterful

temperament. On the contrary, the phrase was merely a _boutade_,

devised to elude an embarrassing question in a political trial, which

none of those who heard it took too seriously, and in saying which

Cæsar himself knew quite well that nobody would take him at his word.

In fact, the public smiled at the idea of the elegant and debt-laden

demagogue, who was known to all for his somewhat free opinions

and customs, having become all at once so jealous of the spotless

reputation of his house.

At any rate, as a loophole the answer was a clever one; and the

prosecutors could not press the question. So Julia, Cæsar’s sister, and

Aurelia, his mother, came forward. Both deposed that, on the night on

which the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_ were celebrated, a man had been

surprised in Cæsar’s house; but that they could not say with certainty

that the defendant was the man. We should be doing an injustice to the

memory of the two noble dames if we suspected that this evidence was

not candid, but prompted by concern for the political interests and

friendships of their brother and son. Is it not probable that, in the

confusion and disorder of the just-discovered scandal, neither may

have scrutinised the man in female disguise with so much attention and

particularity as to be able to recognise him subsequently in court,

where Clodius denied the identity with so much assurance? Therefore

this evidence also was in Clodius’s favour; for there was nobody who

could affirm positively that the man surprised in the middle of the

rites of the _Bona Dea_ was the accused.

Next came the evidence adduced by Clodius, to prove his alibi. It took

the form of a certain C. Causinius Schola, who deposed frankly and

resolutely that the gentlemen of the jury might take it from him that

at a certain hour on the day of the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, he had

conversed with Clodius at Iteramna, which was ninety thousand _passi_

distant from Rome. This evidence, after that of Cæsar, Julia, and

Aurelia, made the acquittal of Clodius inevitable. Certain proofs of

his guilt there were none. The improbable alibi, which at the beginning

nobody had taken seriously, threatened to triumph owing to the doubts

and scruples of a few witnesses, the adroit reticence of others, and

thanks to the subterranean workings of Clodius’s friends, backed by

Crassus’s gold.

Then came a second and even more unexpected surprise. At the very

moment when Clodius seemed to have emerged victorious, there appeared

to destroy his alibi.... Who? Cicero himself. Cited as witness,

Cicero deposed that on the day of the mysteries, three hours before

the hour at which Causinius declared that he had spoken to Clodius at

Terni, Clodius had come to call on him at his house in Rome! What had

happened? Cicero had up to that time adopted a distinctly reserved

attitude, making it clear that he, who since the suppression of

Catiline’s conspiracy had become one of the leading figures in the

State, had no wish to be mixed up in so trivial and stupid an affair.

For what reason did he thus hurl himself all at once, at the close

of the trial, into the thick of the fight, and opposing his evidence

to that of Causinius, seem to challenge the jury to choose between

his word—the word of a man of consular rank, the word of one of the

three or four most famous men in the Empire—and that of this obscure

and probably corrupt witness? Had he yielded to the pressure of the

Conservative party, which, realising that the prey was slipping from

their grasp, had wished to make a supreme attempt to destroy the alibi

which had been so adroitly prepared by Clodius? Had he, upright and

honourable man as he was, yielded to his disgust at seeing a comedy,

which had been staged with such ability, completely successful? Or

had he yielded to pressure and to considerations of the sort of which

Plutarch speaks? Plutarch says that Cicero’s wife, Terentia, was

jealous of Clodia, Clodius’s sister, whom she suspected of having cast

eyes upon Cicero; and had so much worried Cicero, by harping upon the

subject, and accusing him of sparing Clodius out of regard for the

sister, that Cicero, in order to convince her that her jealousy was

groundless, gave the evidence he did.

Which of these suppositions is the true one we do not know, and we

never shall know. What, however, is certain is that Cicero’s evidence

appeared at once to be the death-blow to Clodius. Clodius’s defenders

perceived this so clearly that they all rose in their seats, hurling

threats and insults at Cicero, hoping to intimidate him and to

obliterate the impression made by his evidence. Cicero retorted in

the same key. One section of the public, that favourable to Clodius,

supported the advocates. An uproar ensued. The judges rose from their

seats, and formed a circle round Cicero, as if to defend him. It seemed

for one moment that the partisans were coming to blows. In short, the

whole affair was a scandal, but one which made Clodius’s position even

more grave. Everyone realised that he considered himself lost. Was

it, in truth, possible that the jury should hesitate between Cicero’s

asseveration and that of Causinius? Clodius himself, as soon as the

uproar had quieted down, realised that he could not accuse Cicero, a

man of such authority, of lying. Indeed, he did not deny that the fact

was as stated; but he said that after having spoken with Cicero he had

immediately left Rome for Terni. To which it was easy to reply that in

three hours one cannot cover a distance of ninety thousand _passi_; and

this reply did not admit of answer, confutation, or sophistication.

The falseness of the alibi was the gravest of proofs against Clodius,

and that which was bound to compromise his cause most gravely in the

opinion of the public and of the judges.

On the evening of the day on which Cicero gave his evidence, there

was not a soul in Rome who did not think that the great orator had

dealt the youthful and turbulent patrician his _coup de grâce_.

But Cicero’s evidence, the tumult and threats which had succeeded,

the self-assurance of the Conservatives, who were now confident of

securing a conviction, only intensified the bitterness of public

feeling. Strange rumours and whispers began to circulate through

Rome, originating no one knew where. It was said that, on the day the

verdict was given, blood would flow amid scenes of terrible violence.

Some of the judges took fright and asked the Senate for the protection

of an armed bodyguard, which the Senate gave them. Round Cicero the

Conservative party organised a kind of permanent demonstration,

arranging that he should be accompanied everywhere by a number of

friends ready to defend him. The idea was to persuade the public in

every possible way that Clodius intended to sneak away, or even to use

violence, so sure was he of conviction, to shackle the free judgment

of the Court. That conviction was a certainty was the general opinion.

In the midst of these rumours, fears, and suspicions the case drew

rapidly to a close. In the crowded Forum, surrounded by the swords of

the bodyguard supplied by the Senate for the protection of the judges,

the Court finally pronounced its verdict—but how different it was from

that which was universally expected. By thirty-one votes to twenty-five

Clodius was acquitted!

The surprise, the scandal, the jubilation, the amusement, according

to each man’s disposition and party, were great in Rome when this

result was announced. In truth, whoever, after the lapse of so many

centuries, reads the history of the trial will find no difficulty in

believing Cicero when he accuses Crassus of having secured Clodius’s

acquittal by the exercise of pressure and corruption. In no other way

can be explained the fact that a Roman Court of law, forced to choose

between Cicero and Causinius, believed Causinius. Nevertheless, it is

certain that Clodius was much helped in this struggle by the political

mistakes of the Conservative party, by their blind relentlessness, and

by the obstinacy with which they had endeavoured for so long to bring

about, to the detriment of Clodius, a change in the method of choosing

the judges. At this epoch, justice in Rome was much too much exposed

to the influence of politics. If, however, the times were disturbed,

if the parties were divided by acute discord and men’s minds inflamed

by the memories of a terrible civil war, the sense of justice was,

nevertheless, not yet so much blunted by party passions as to allow

the dominant party to abuse their own power beyond a certain point.

Clodius might be a man little deserving of public interest; but there

were many persons in Rome to whom it was repugnant that, even for the

purpose of punishing a sacrilege, recourse should be had to means so

unusual, revolutionary, and extreme.

So the Popular party, with the support of the general sentiment of

legality, had succeeded in checkmating the Conservative party, the

Sullan association. The checkmate in itself was, however, not a

serious one, because the trial of Clodius had not been so important

and complex that his acquittal could seriously weaken the strength of

the Conservative party. The indirect consequences, on the other hand,

were most serious. The first was that Clodius went over body and soul

to the Popular party, and became the boldest and most violent of its

leaders. If the Conservative party had followed Cicero’s advice and

abandoned Clodius to the infamy which his act must have brought upon

him, there would have been an end of Clodius. The man who had profaned

the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_ would not have dared to show himself

any more in public. By persecuting him as it did, and by giving him the

chance of posing before the public as the victim of its persecutions,

this unpopular party saved his career, or at least helped to enable him

to continue to play a part in the political world of Rome, and a part

fraught with danger to the State. Clodius, realising that, after the

trial, he could no longer hope for anything from the Conservative party

in which he had grown up and in whose ranks he had fought, turned to

the Popular party; and, in order to make that party forget his origin,

his relations, and the _Bona Dea_ scandal, became the most violent and

turbulent of its chiefs. It is this trial which has made of Clodius the

famous demagogue of whom history tells, who in a few years contributed

so much, with his agitations, his laws, his violent acts, and his

enmities, to the destruction of the little order and concord that were

left in the Republic. The most violent of his enmities was that which

he entertained for Cicero. From this trial dates the deadly enmity

between the two, which was not the least of the causes of the great

disorder into which the Republic fell, which gave birth to the civil

war.

The trial of Clodius is, then, one of the events which paved the way

for the catastrophe of the Republic. What an object lesson it is for

political parties! In the excitement of the struggle, such parties reck

nothing, while they deal each other slashing blows, of the hatred and

rancour which they sow broadcast. But this hatred and rancour undermine

in men’s minds the sentiments of concord, loyalty, moderation,

tolerance, and equity, without which the social order cannot in the

long run subsist; it is one of the most potent causes of the great

catastrophes of history. A revolution is usually only the ultimate

effect of a long succession of violent acts, affronts, and injustices

which have exasperated the public mind, in which feelings of rancour

accumulate and ferment until one day they explode.

III

THE TRIAL OF PISO

Nearly a century had passed since the trial of Verres, and more

than eighty years since the trial of Clodius. The quarrels of the

Roman aristocracy, which had given birth to those two extraordinary

and sensational trials, had kindled the spark of two dreadful civil

wars, in the course of which the Empire had narrowly escaped complete

dissolution. Gradually, however, order had been re-established. From

the midst of the discords of the aristocracy, one family had emerged

and succeeded in acquiring preponderating influence: the family of

the Cæsars. First, Augustus for forty-two years, and, for the three

years succeeding his death, his stepson and adopted son Tiberius, had

governed the State as _principes_, or life-presidents, accumulating in

their own hands powers of the most diverse kinds—the supreme command

of the legions, the presidency of the Senate, the high-priesthood,

the surveillance of the most important provinces—and at the same

time making every effort to keep the ancient machinery of republican

government working with as little friction as possible under such

widely different conditions and in control of an empire of so much

vaster extent. No law had laid it down that this power should be

hereditary; but the force of circumstances—the exhaustion of the

ancient nobility, the weakness of the Senate, the dying out of all the

parties and all the powerful cabals which for centuries had bulked

so large in the Republic—made of this family, little by little, the

mistress of the Empire’s destinies.

If, however, the violent disputes of parties no longer raged in the

Senate; if blows were no longer exchanged in the Forum when the

election of the magistrates or the discussion of the laws was toward;

if the threat of civil war no longer hovered continually over the

heads of all, concord was not, for all that, re-established in the

ranks of the aristocracy which surrounded Cæsar’s family and which

ought to have helped that family to govern the immense Empire. Men’s

feelings were as much divided as ever, though for different motives.

Tiberius, the second _princeps_ in three years chosen by the Senate

as successor of Augustus, was hated by one section of the Roman

aristocracy, which judged him too old-fashioned—too closely bound to

the traditions of the old nobility and of his family, the Claudii; too

stern, hard, and rigid; too much out of sympathy with the new customs

and new refinements that were beginning to flow from Egypt into Italy;

too close-fisted and too keen a professor of a scrupulous and strict

financial policy; worst of all, too cautious in his foreign policy.

An old warrior, who had passed the best years of his life fighting on

the Rhine and the Danube against the barbarians, a consummate diplomat,

head and shoulders above all his contemporaries in matters of war and

diplomacy, Tiberius had convinced himself that Rome had not strength

enough to extend her empire beyond the Rhine and the Danube, and that,

therefore, she ought to rest content with the empire which she had

already won, which was, after all, vast enough for a tiny aristocracy

like that which was seated at Rome. The malcontents, however,—and

there were many of these, especially among the younger generation,—not

only did not recognise Tiberius’s wisdom, but imputed this sagacious

prudence of his to inexperience, to fear, or to envy of the young and

brilliant Germanicus.

The son of Drusus, the brother whom Tiberius had so much loved, the

adopted son of Tiberius, who had been enjoined by Augustus to adopt

him, intelligent, brilliant, generous, well-educated, handsome,

affable, inclined to be light-headed and casual like most youths who

are fortune’s favourites, Germanicus was the idol of all the enemies

of Tiberius. He was, and he was conscious of being, their idol, and,

without assuming too openly an attitude of opposition, he willingly

let himself be worshipped and extolled by the faction opposed to

his adoptive father, which faction was strong enough to exercise an

effective pressure on the Senate and throughout the State. In fact,

Germanicus, who after the death of Augustus had been sent by Tiberius

to take command of the legions of the Rhine, had dared to follow a

policy of his own, differing from that of Tiberius, on the Rhine,

crossing the great river on his own initiative, and making a long and

hazardous incursion into the territories abandoned by Rome after the

defeat of Varus.

This incursion—the first step taken by Rome to avenge Varus and his

legions, which had been betrayed and butchered in the great forest—had

evoked such enthusiasm in Rome and in Italy; Germanicus was so popular;

the expansionist party, always strong and now reinforced by all the

enemies of Tiberius, had made so much of the daring act of the young

general, that Tiberius had not dared to intervene, to repress, or to

moderate the dashing initiative of his young nephew and adopted son. So

he let Germanicus go on. On no account and at no cost would Tiberius,

however, again begin beyond the Rhine a dangerous and expensive

policy of provocation and expansion. Therefore, after having allowed

Germanicus to cover himself with glory through his expedition, to

collect and to bury in the great forests the bones of the butchered

legions, and to lay waste the territories of the tribes which had taken

part in the war against Rome, he called him back, in order to send

him—in the year 17 of the Christian era—to the East, complications

and difficulties having arisen in Cappadocia and Armenia. He was not

prepared to leave this ambitious, active, bold youth, the tool of his

own enemies, too long at grips with the warlike German tribes. He was

afraid that the all-powerful craving for glory might lead Germanicus

to provoke in the end some great and dangerous war. In Rome, the party

which favoured the reconquest of Germany was still powerful. Tiberius

did not want to reconquer that region. In the East, amongst unwarlike

nations, the danger was less urgent.

So Germanicus was sent to the East—but, by way of compensation for his

recall, he was given unusually large powers. When the time came to

approve the decree which conferred these powers upon him, the party

of his friends in the Senate proposed and carried a motion giving him

power overriding that of all the governors of the separate provinces

of the whole East; the result being that he was constituted a sort of

governor-general or even viceroy. Whether Tiberius was personally in

favour of this decree, which placed half the Empire in the absolute

power of a young man of little more than thirty years of age, or not,

we do not know. The probability is that he was not, and that on this

occasion also Tiberius was the victim of the intrigues and cabals

of the party which favoured his nephew and adopted son. It was very

difficult for him to oppose laws which heaped honours on the public

darling, Germanicus, because the public imputed his opposition to base

motives, such as jealousy, envy, or the fear of opposition. What is

certain, at any rate, is that, after this decree, Tiberius suddenly

changed the governor in Syria, the most important province in the

East, the choice of whose governors rested with him. He replaced the

mediocre person who then occupied the post by a first-rate man, Cneius

Piso, a descendant of one of the most noble Roman families, of a family

which had distinguished itself in the civil wars by its aversion to

the Cæsarian party; of a family, in short, which was aristocratic,

traditionalist, and conservative to the core. Cneius Piso himself was

a determined, conservative, and energetic man, a firm partisan of the

old policy with which Rome had kept in subjection and governed so many

nations for hundreds of years.

Tiberius’s idea is quite clear to anyone who examines it impartially.

He did not wish to leave the East at the mercy of Germanicus, who

was intelligent and good, but still young, inexperienced, and not

always deliberate, and who was easily influenced by light-headed,

irresponsible, and often vicious and corrupt flatterers. He wished to

place, at Germanicus’s elbow in the East, a serious, mature, energetic,

and cautious man; a man who could, so to speak, counterbalance him,

retrieve his more serious mistakes, keep an eye on everything he

did or said, and in every case warn him in time of the more grave

eventualities. Can we label such a device a crime? Or the sinister

expression of a morbid jealousy, as Tacitus would have us do? Was

it not rather the wise precaution of a cautious statesman, who

did not wish to rob an intelligent youth of the opportunities of

distinguishing himself and of becoming proficient in the government of

a world which would, perhaps, one day devolve upon him, though Tiberius

was at the same time anxious that the other’s inexperience should

not involve too much danger to the Empire and to himself? But the

wisest precautions are on occasions the seed of disasters of the first

magnitude.

And so they were in this case. In the year 18 A.D., Germanicus and

Piso started, one after the other, at a short interval of time, for

the East, but they lost no time in coming to loggerheads. The first

incident occurred at Athens, which first Germanicus, and then Piso,

made a stage in the journey. Germanicus, who was an ardent admirer of

Greek culture, had wished to do honour in every possible way to the

great city in which the fire of ancient culture had burned with the

most dazzling brightness. He had entered Athens almost like a private

person, with only one lictor in attendance; and had exchanged the most

flowery and amiable speeches with the magistrates of the city. This

attitude, however, had seemed too affable to a Roman of the old stamp,

like Piso, who considered that the representative of the power of Rome

ought never to repose too great authority and confidence in the subject

nations and cities, even if they called themselves Greece and Athens,

and could pride themselves on having listened to Socrates and on having

been the first to applaud the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides.

So Piso also stopped at Athens, but with the object of cancelling by

a brusque and harsh demeanour the impression which might have been

made by the imprudent affability of Germanicus. He, in his turn, made

a speech, full of stern reproof and almost veiled threats to the

Athenians, which seemed to everybody to be a disavowal of the speeches

of Germanicus; as if Piso intended to convey to the people of Athens

that Germanicus had spoken on his own account and not in the name of

the Roman government.

Germanicus was an impressionable young man, but really kind-hearted

and conciliatory. He did not take, in bad part, the kind of disavowal

which Piso had inflicted on him, all the more because he knew that

Piso was the mouthpiece of a perhaps harsh version of the admonitions

of Tiberius’s experienced wisdom. Round Germanicus, however, there

stood a large party of flatterers and intriguers who had fixed on

him as the future emperor—Tiberius was already an old man—; also,

Germanicus had to wife Agrippina, a virtuous and highly educated woman,

who loved and admired him intensely, but was at the same time very

ambitious, passionate, and uncritical, prone to mistake for just and

wise everything which appeased her ardent and not ungenerous passions.

Piso was accompanied to the East by his wife, Plancina, a great friend

of Livia, Tiberius’s mother, and a great enemy of Agrippina. The

interested flatteries of friends, the fiery temperament of Agrippina,

her blind love for her husband, and her hatred for Plancina, in a

short time transformed into a violent personal conflict what Tiberius

had intended to be a discreet collaboration between a man of ripe age

and experience, and a young man full of good intentions but at times

lacking in ballast.

For the rest, the matters which Germanicus and Piso had been sent

to the East to settle were complicated and difficult, and therefore

afforded countless opportunities and pretexts for quarrels. Rome found

herself involved in a grave difficulty in the East. Some years before,

the Parthians, left without a king, had sent to Italy for Vonones, a

son of their old King Phraates, who had been educated in Rome at the

house of Augustus. To have at the head of the Parthian Empire a king

who had been educated on the banks of the Tiber was a stroke of luck

for Rome. The Parthians, however, very soon discovered that Vonones had

become too much Latinised at Rome, and had forgotten too completely the

ideas and customs of his nation. Consequently, they had turned him out

and elected in his stead Artabanus. Vonones had fled to Armenia, and

had succeeded in getting elected King of the Armenians. But Artabanus,

not wishing his predecessor to become king of a vast empire marching

with his own, from which he might retrieve in due course the crown of

the Parthians, had succeeded also by means of various intrigues and

threats in getting Vonones expelled from Armenia.

The difficulty which Tiberius had charged Germanicus and Piso to

study and resolve on the spot was actually this: whether Rome should

or should not give ear to Vonones’s clamour and replace him on the

throne of Armenia. The difficulty was a serious one, as each of the

two opposing courses promised grave dangers. By replacing Vonones

on the throne of Armenia, Rome might implicate herself in serious

quarrels, and perhaps in a war, with the King of the Parthians, who

was opposed to Vonones’s restoration. By not replacing him, Rome

appeared to sacrifice to the hatred of the Parthian King this faithful

client of hers, whose only fault was that he had been educated in

Rome; to be inclined to recognise that a prince who had been too

thoroughly Romanised could not govern an Oriental state,—a confession

which certainly would not encourage the protected sovereigns of Asia,

great and small, to bring themselves too closely into touch with the

affairs, ideas, and customs of the protecting state. In point of

fact, Germanicus and Piso, who were already embittered against each

other by the incidents at Athens, came into open conflict on this

point. Germanicus and his supporters were in favour of sacrificing

Vonones to the resentment of the King of the Parthians and to the

national susceptibilities of the East; while Piso, more loyal to the

authoritative traditions of the old Roman policy, which were faithfully

reflected in his own more cautious judgment, decided to defend Vonones.

Rome must not abandon the cause of this her faithful servant in the

East!

Germanicus had, by virtue of a decree of the Senate, supreme powers

in the East; as a result his opinion carried the day, notwithstanding

all the efforts that Piso made to prevent his sacrificing Vonones,

whom Piso by way of compensation entertained, treated with honour,

and openly took under his protection. Towards the middle of the year

18, Germanicus crowned Zenon King of the Armenians in Artaxata, a son

of Polemon, King of Pontus. When, however, Germanicus asked Piso to

send into Armenia a section of the legions placed under his command,

to make an armed demonstration in favour of the new sovereign, Piso

refused. Theoretically and by virtue of the decrees of the Senate,

Germanicus had the right to give orders to Piso, and Piso ought to have

obeyed them. On the other hand, Piso represented Tiberius; and with

Germanicus, as with every other human authority, it was not enough to

possess the power, there was needed also the hardihood to use it. In

the face of Piso’s energy and the authority of Tiberius, who stood

behind Piso, Germanicus did not dare to insist.

It is easy, however, to picture the fury and rage of Germanicus’s

friends and flatterers, to whom this kind of surveillance to which

Germanicus was subjected became more intolerable, the more it limited

indirectly their own authority. In their fury, they determined to have

their revenge, and they were not long in finding an opportunity, though

it cost them dear. Artabanus, the King of the Parthians, encouraged by

the pliability of Germanicus, sent to ask him to forbid Vonones to

live in Syria, on the ground that, as that province bordered on his

Empire, Vonones could easily use it as a base from which to intrigue

against him. In view of the fact that Vonones was in Syria as the guest

of Piso, the Parthian King was asking Germanicus in so many words to

forbid Piso to protect him. The demand was, in truth, excessive and

somewhat humiliating for Rome; but Germanicus’s _entourage_ saw in

this demand a means of humiliating Piso, and worked and talked to such

effect that Germanicus conceded to it and shut Vonones up in a city

in Cilicia. A checkmate had been inflicted on Piso, but the price of

it was a humiliation for Rome. Piso and his party had good reason for

accusing Germanicus and his _entourage_ of compromising with singular

levity the prestige of Rome in the East.

At the end of the year 18, then, the conflict between Germanicus,

invested by a decree of the Senate with the general governorship of

the East and supported by a numerous party of Tiberius’s opponents,

and Piso, who, as charged by Tiberius with the governorship of Syria,

the most important province in the East, represented in the East the

will of the Emperor, had become so acute and violent as to upset in a

most dangerous manner the whole Eastern policy of Rome. The conflict

became still more grave in the following year. At the beginning of the

year 19, Germanicus, who was an enlightened young man, and therefore

desirous of travelling and seeing the famous spots, the monuments,

and the customs of various nations, made with Agrippina an extensive

trip through Egypt, impelled by curiosity to visit that ancient

and celebrated country, which even then exercised so mysterious a

fascination on the minds of the peoples of the West.

While he was on his way to see the Pyramids, however, was interrogating

the mysterious smile of the Sphinx, and was cleaving the sacred stream

of the Nile, Piso profited by his absence to avenge himself for the

checkmate which he had suffered the year before on Vonones’s account.

Either on his own initiative, or, it may be, because he had meanwhile

received instructions from Tiberius, Piso abolished or modified many

of the dispositions which Germanicus, by virtue of his extraordinary

powers, had made for Syria, the year before. Imagine the fury of

Germanicus, of Agrippina, and of his friends and flatterers, on his

return! Was this then all the deference Piso paid to the decrees of

the Senate and of the authority conferred by them on Germanicus? Did

Piso think himself lord of the East, because he was the friend and

representative of Tiberius? On Germanicus’s return there were some

violent altercations between him and Piso. This time, Germanicus,

impelled by passion, by the incitements of his flatterers, and also

by the fear of losing all authority in the eyes of the province if

he should yield once more, plucked up courage to resort to extreme

measures. In the exercise of his extraordinary powers, he ordered

Piso to give up the governorship of the province which Tiberius had

entrusted to him. This step, in view of the fact that Piso was the

representative of Tiberius, was a bold one, but it was quite a legal

one. In disobeying it, Piso was obliged to assume an attitude of open

defiance of the laws. Since Germanicus had dared to make use of this

power, and on this occasion showed that he meant business and was

determined to carry the matter through, it was Piso’s duty to give way

and obey, subject to the right of protest to Tiberius and of obtaining

from him just compensation for the affront he had received.

Piso resigned his office and left the province; and travelled at an

easy rate in short stages towards Italy. When he arrived at Seleucia,

he was overtaken by the news that Germanicus was seriously ill at

Antioch. He halted, waiting for new and more authentic news; which

arrived in a few days, and announced to him the young man’s death. What

was his illness? We do not know. Untimely deaths were frequent in the

family of Augustus. It seemed as if many of the younger members had

not the strength to stand the life of drudgery and fatigue to which he

compelled them, by way of preparation for the government of the Empire.

However that may be, Piso no sooner knew that Germanicus was dead than

he returned to Syria with the object of re-occupying the province. How

great, however, was his surprise to learn that it had been decided

amongst the friends of Germanicus, after the latter’s death, to entrust

the command of the legions and the government of the province to one

of themselves, Gnæus Senzius!

This nomination of Senzius was illegal—there can be no doubt about

that. With the death of Germanicus, the extraordinary power by which he

had momentarily removed Piso from the province, himself assuming its

government, came to an end; therefore the province and the command of

the armed forces re-devolved on Piso. The friends of Germanicus had no

right or power to nominate a substitute for him. But for what reason

had they arrived at so grave a decision? Germanicus was surrounded

in the East by many friends, many admirers, and many flatterers, who

had placed their hopes in him, as the future emperor. His death was,

therefore, a disaster for the ambitions and aspirations of many. On

the other hand, it had been sudden, unforeseen, and mysterious; a fact

which, in times when the causes and symptoms of illness were much less

easily recognised than they are at present, readily lent itself to

the engendering of suspicions, especially the suspicion of poisoning,

then so common and so easy. Before the corpse of Germanicus had been

burnt, Agrippina and all the _entourage_ of the dead man’s intimates

were persuaded, and were stating openly, that Germanicus had been

poisoned,—and poisoned by Piso in revenge. Hence arose the necessity of

their preventing Piso, even at the cost of a breach of the laws, from

re-occupying his province, in which they wished to be left supreme, so

as to be able to collect the proofs of the crime of which Germanicus

was the reported victim. For instance, they imprisoned an old woman

called Martina, who was said to be an intimate friend of Plancina, a

witch by profession. Her they accused of having supplied the poison,

and of having sent it to Rome.

When Piso first heard of the accusation, he did not take it very

seriously, and tried to force a re-entry into the province from which

his adversaries were illegally excluding him. Perhaps he hoped that

when he, the legitimate pro-consul, presented himself, the oppositions,

which the others pretended to be ready to make, would fade away. In

this he was disappointed. Gnæus Senzius resisted, a few insignificant

skirmishes took place, and a civil war on a small scale was about to

begin. The prospect, however, frightened both sides, and, not wishing

that so small a matter of principle should result in a real civil war,

both parties—Piso, Senzius, and the friends of Germanicus—agreed to go

in a body to Rome and to submit the question to the Emperor. And so

they did.

When, however, they arrived, they found Italy and Rome in an incredible

state of agitation. Germanicus was most popular, not only because he

was really attractive to a great many people, but because everybody in

his admiration and sympathy for him vented the discontent and repulsion

which the rough character and iron policy of Tiberius inspired in one.

The popular voice had gone so far as to say that Germanicus had made

up his mind to restore, when he became Emperor, the republic of ancient

times in every detail, and that Tiberius on this account suspected

and hated him! Not only, then, was his premature death bitterly

lamented by everybody; but the explanation which his friends gave of

it—that Germanicus had died of poison by the contrivance of Piso—was

immediately accepted as true, evident, and proved. Even at the present

day, the masses are easily convinced of tales of crimes and poisonings.

Imagine how it must have been in those days! And the desire for

vengeance followed hard on the general feeling of grief and horror. The

wish was expressed on all sides that Piso should be given an exemplary

punishment; it was impossible to allow so execrable a crime to go

unpunished. Would some noble friend of Germanicus, then, arise and

revenge his death? At the same time, other rumours, no less fantastic,

were being whispered from ear to ear. No; the trial would never take

place. Piso was secretly protected by Tiberius, and Plancina by Livia.

Nobody would dare attack them!

The arrival of Agrippina, who, at the end of 19 A.D., reached Brindisi

with Germanicus’s ashes; the transportation of the ashes to Rome in

the midst of the most moving demonstrations of grief on the part of

the Italian cities; the solemn celebration of the funeral rites in

Rome, made the situation still more serious. Public exasperation

increased, not only against Piso, but also against Tiberius. Tiberius

and Livia had not taken part in the funeral ceremonies for Germanicus

at Rome; the latter because she was too old and infirm, the former

because he had avoided recently as much as possible investing family

ceremonies with superfluous official importance. The public, however,

began to accuse these two of not being at all displeased at the death

of Germanicus. Of course, that young man had always given umbrage to

Tiberius. Had not the latter recalled him from Germany, so that he

should not cover himself with too much glory?

It was not long before even graver charges began to be whispered about.

Piso had arrived at Rome by way of the Tiber, disembarking near the

Tomb of the Cæsars, the resting-place of the ashes of his victim, and

with a large retinue of friends had made an ostentatious progress to

his house above the Forum, where he had given a great banquet. It was

clear, then, that he had no fears. He defied public opinion and the

Courts. And his attitude was justified, for he had acted on the orders

of Tiberius, and possessed a letter from him in which these orders were

given. That letter was his shield of defence against every danger!

In point of fact, public suspicion was by now being diverted from

Piso against a higher target. It was being directed straight against

Tiberius and Livia. And Agrippina, whom grief was robbing of the little

sense which nature had given her, added fuel to the enmities and

suspicions in the public and the Senate through her lamentations, her

recriminations, and her accusations, which were as vehement as they

were unfounded.

When at last, therefore, certain persons,—Fulcinius Trio, Vitellius,

and Veranius,—incited by public opinion, by the friends of Germanicus,

who cried for vengeance, and by Agrippina, who would hear of no

mercy, decided to accuse Piso and Plancina of poison, as well as Piso

and his son Marcius of having tried to stir up civil war, Tiberius

found himself in a most grave dilemma. It seems that trials such as

these, involving persons of the highest rank and acts of a political

character, could not be set in motion without the approval of the

Emperor, who had the additional privilege of deciding whether the case

should come before the ordinary tribunal,—the jury, as in trials of

Verres and Clodius,—or whether he ought to entrust it instead to the

Senate. Tiberius did not believe in the imputation of poison, which was

the only really grave charge brought against Piso,—the other charge,

that of civil war, being more in the nature of a second string. He did

not believe in the poison charge, just as no sensible and impartial man

believed in it, just as Tacitus, years later, did not believe in it,

even though, with his usual malice, he has done all he could to induce

posterity to accept it as true. Tiberius did not believe in it, for

not only was there no proof of the charge itself, but it was in itself

absurd. In fact, the accusers, when forced to explain when and in what

way Piso had poisoned Germanicus, had found themselves reduced to

asserting that, at a banquet to which Germanicus had invited Piso, and

at which Piso was seated at a considerable distance from Germanicus,

Piso, at a moment when Germanicus was looking in another direction, had

poured the poison into his wine, actually in the midst of his host’s

numerous servants and in the presence of the guests! This story may

be taken as a sample of the whole accusation. Tiberius then knew that

the charge was a romance, created and magnified by the political and

partisan enmities which amongst the Roman nobility were so violent,

by the credulity of the public, by the unreasoning hatred the people

felt towards himself and the supreme authority with which he had been

invested. He would, therefore, gladly have cut the trial short at the

very beginning.

Could he do so, however? This Emperor, whom so many inexperienced

historians have represented as a terrible despot, was in reality

possessed of much less power as head of the State than his present-day

detractors suppose. He was obliged to take into account public opinion,

however obtuse and mad it might be. He was vaguely suspected of having

prompted Piso to poison Germanicus, or at least of having willingly

shut his eyes to the crime. If he prevented the charge being brought,

would not this be the strongest confirmation of this mad calumny? Would

not the whole populace murmur in their anger that the unfortunate

Germanicus had been robbed, first of life, and then of vengeance,—and

by the man who was his adoptive father? This, in the eyes of the

ancients, constituted the gravest dereliction of family obligations.

The trial was a satisfaction which the public demanded; and the

Emperor—that pretended despot, lord of the whole State—had not power

enough to refuse it.

So Tiberius was forced to consent to the trial. Being, however, a

wise and level-headed man, he remitted it to the Senate, the one of

the two tribunals which might be expected with greater reason to be

enlightened and serene. The other—the _quæstio_, or, as we should say,

the jury—was too closely in contact with public opinion, and not likely

to be able to exercise calm judgment in a case in which public opinion

was so much excited and prejudiced against the principal defendant.

The Senate, on the contrary, was the gravest body in the Republic,

and might be expected to rise superior to popular passions in the

exercise of its judicial functions. Nevertheless, even in the Senate,

the friends of Germanicus and the enemies of Tiberius were to be found

in force. Not only this, but a fierce antipathy divided the ancient

from the new nobility. During the fifty years which followed the end

of the civil wars, many recently ennobled families had entered the

Senate. Amongst these, the families of ancient nobility, those whose

glory dated back to the grand era of the Republic, at this time formed

only a small yet haughty minority, which lived apart, despised the new

nobility, and kept aloof as far as possible. Now Piso belonged to one

of these ancient families, and to one of the most glorious of them.

The constitution of the Senate as the tribunal, meant, therefore,

entrusting the decision of the case to the new, upstart nobility, which

was full of blind rancour against the haughtiness of the old families.

In any case there was no other tribunal; and between the two evils,

Tiberius could only choose the lesser. However, he realised so clearly

the gravity of the dangers which surrounded the course of justice, in

the midst of so many frenzied passions, in this trial which had been

engineered by insensate hatreds and rancours, that when, as president

of the Senate, he had to open the sessions, he made a speech, the

gist of which Tacitus has preserved for us. Whoever reads it cannot

help recognising the spirit of profound wisdom and equity which

inspires it. Tiberius explained quite clearly to the Senate that

the charge of poisoning levelled against Piso, if true, would be an

extremely serious matter. He reminded them, however, that Piso was a

prominent man, who had rendered eminent services to the Republic and

belonged to one of the most ancient and noble families in Rome. They

must, therefore, bring the most serene impartiality to bear on their

judgment, forgetting who was the accused, if they found him guilty,

forgetting who was the victim, if they found him innocent. However

great his affection for Germanicus might be, nothing would induce him

to wish for the sacrifice on the latter’s tomb, of an innocent man, for

the satisfaction of the insensate mania for revenge which had taken

possession of the public.

The speech was a wise and humane one; but what could sober words, even

from an Emperor’s mouth, avail when passions are aroused? The Senate

allotted two days to the prosecution, three to the defence. There was

to be an interval of six days between the two sections of the trial.

For two whole days, the accusers talked, reconstructing, as Cicero had

done in Verres’s case, the whole history of Piso’s life. They went

so far as to accuse him of having misgoverned the previous provinces

he had had; they went minutely into the history of his government in

Syria, and repeated the fantastic story of the poisoning. Tacitus

himself recognised that the charges were very weak, especially the

accusation of poisoning, which was the only serious one. Accordingly,

the first impression made by the trial was very uncertain. The public

was prejudiced in favour of the prosecution; in the Senate there

was a strong party hostile to Piso. After all, however, the Senate

was a great political body, and many of its members could not but

recognise that the charges were slender ones. Everybody felt that the

issue depended on Tiberius, who could, according as he showed himself

favourable or the reverse, weigh down the scales on the side of

acquittal or of conviction. Everybody, therefore, looked towards him,

with hope or with anxiety. But Tiberius listened to the prosecution

without moving an eyelid, as impassive as a statue, without allowing

a glimpse into his secret thoughts on the subject. Could he act

otherwise? If he had shown himself favourable to Piso, he would have

been accused of shielding the murderers of Germanicus, through hatred

of his adopted son or even through actual complicity in the crime. He

could not and would not attach himself, however, to the mob which cried

for Piso’s head, innocent or guilty. He was too haughty and too serious

a man to descend to such baseness. Recognise that public opinion was

a force of which account must be taken,—this he was prepared to do;

pander to it like a slave, at the cost of honour and justice,—no.

Rarely had a Roman Emperor found himself placed, by the suspicions

of the public, by the mad passions of the people, by the perfidious

malevolence of the cabals and _coteries_, in a more difficult position.

The six days that elapsed between the prosecution and the defence must

have been thorny days for Tiberius. Inasmuch as a nod from him could

weigh down the scales, both parties tried to influence him. Piso and

his friends worked to induce him and Livia to make up their minds

to intervene openly in the Senate on behalf of outraged innocence.

The other side endeavoured to frighten him. They accused Tiberius

_sotto voce_ of having favoured Piso unjustly in his speech to the

Senate, in which he had already assumed the charge of poisoning to

be untrue. They circulated the story of the compromising letter in

Piso’s possession which the latter threatened to read in the Senate,

if Tiberius did not help him. Meanwhile Agrippina was filling Rome

with her lamentations and imprecations, and the public agitation was

increasing. Cries were heard on every side that Germanicus must be

avenged. Piso’s position was tragic. But Tiberius would not depart from

the line of conduct, that of impartiality, which he had marked out for

himself—hoping, perhaps, that the trial would furnish him sooner or

later with an opportunity of preserving justice without laying himself

open to suspicions of too debasing a nature. He allowed Livia, however,

to interest herself openly in behalf of Plancina against whom also

charges were levelled; and Livia’s intervention might be indirectly of

service to Piso, as it made it clear, to those who cared to see, that

Germanicus’s own grandmother did not believe in the charge of poisoning.

Piso was an energetic man. Confident in the justice of his case,

he reappeared in the Senate when, after the lapse of six days, the

sessions again began; and defended himself in a clever, energetic, and

resolute speech. He seems to have been especially happy in the way in

which he shattered the charge of poisoning. He demanded that his own

slaves, and those belonging to Germanicus who had been present at the

famous banquet at which it was suggested that he had put poison in

the dead man’s wine, should be put to the torture. The speech made a

lively impression, and would probably have saved Piso, had not serious

disorders broken out in Rome while he was speaking in the Senate. An

immense popular demonstration invaded the precincts of the Senate,

while he was speaking, howling for his execution, and crying that,

if the Senate acquitted him, they had serious thoughts of avenging

Germanicus by lynching the judges. A section burst into the Forum,

overturned the statues, and made as if to drag them away to the Gemoniæ

and to break them in pieces. It was found necessary to send Piso to his

house with an escort of soldiers, in order to save him from violence.

What was the origin of these demonstrations? Were they the natural

explosion of popular passion, fed by the ready credulity of the

masses? Were they stirred up by the enemies of Tiberius and Piso, to

impress the hesitating section of the Senate? We shall never know.

All that is certain is that, by the evening of the day on which these

demonstrations took place, nobody in Rome, least of all the accused,

was any longer under the delusion that Piso could be acquitted of the

charge, however absurd and unjust it might be. The Senate, weakened by

so many internal dissensions and by so many civil wars, was no longer a

strong enough assembly to dare resist this mad fury on the part of the

masses. By evening, Piso had lost all heart and had already made up his

mind to give up the struggle. But his sons gathered round him and put

into him fresh courage. Renewed efforts were made to induce Tiberius

to oppose his authority to the torrent of calumny and insensate hate.

Had Tiberius left room for one glimmer of light? or did Piso’s sons

and friends delude themselves and delude him? It is certain that next

day Piso again plucked up courage and returned to the Senate, where

he continued his defence, parrying and countering fresh attacks, with

his eyes ever fixed on Tiberius, the man who more than anyone else was

persuaded of his innocence, and from whom a word might be so useful to

him. Tiberius, however, did not dare pronounce that word. Surrounded as

he was by so many enemies and suspicions, not even he—the lord of the

world, as the historians call him—felt himself strong enough to engage

in open duel with the public opinion of Rome and the majority in the

Senate. So, when he perceived that Tiberius himself could not or would

not help him, Piso abandoned the struggle. Returning home that evening,

he anticipated his certain conviction by committing suicide during the

night.

The public had gained their victim, to comfort them in their grief for

the premature loss of Germanicus. The enemies of Piso were, however,

not content, and proposed that the name of Piso be erased from the

_fasti_, and that the half of his goods be confiscated; that his son

Marcus be imprisoned for ten years, only Plancina, out of regard

for Livia, being allowed to go unpunished. But Tiberius judged that

the blood of Piso was expiation enough for a crime which nobody had

committed; and, since the public had had their bloody satisfaction,

he intervened openly, and, by virtue of his authority, prevented the

erasure of Piso’s name from the _fasti_, as well as the confiscation of

his goods and the condemnation of his son.

The trial of Piso was one of the most savage of all the judicial

dramas in Roman history. The trial of Clodius had been a comedy, that

of Verres a tragi-comedy, that of Piso was pure tragedy and terrible

tragedy. For it was an episode in the gradual extermination of the old

and glorious Roman nobility, which was being brought about by the new

social forces which, during the years of peace, had grown up under the

shadow of the imperial authority. How sad a spectacle are these trials

which from time to time recur in history! The penal law ought to be

the sacred instrument of justice, which punishes the wrong-doers, and

defends and comforts the good citizens. The world is, however, full of

wicked passions; and wicked passions find fertile soil in political

parties, social classes, and public opinion—that vague power which

has come so much to the fore in the last hundred years. These evil

passions, from time to time, seize hold of the instruments of justice,

and convert them into instruments of torment and persecution for the

torture, the defamation, and the extermination of the innocent, for

whom there is no way of escape, no refuge, and no pity.

These trials prove one thing,—a truth which perhaps the modern world,

in which the power of public opinion has increased so much, ought

always to bear in mind. And that is, that the stronger public opinion

is in a state, the more necessary it is for that state to have an

unperturbed, independent, enlightened judicature, armed with a vigorous

and clear doctrine of justice, backed by a powerful government, which

can hold its own against the most violent gusts of public opinion, and

execute real justice in the teeth of the crooked malevolence of the

masses. Otherwise justice can only too easily degenerate into a kind of

tragic farce.