the Eastern Alps
2. IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered
3. IV. V. And Reach the Danube
4. -Exterae nationes in arbitratu dicione potestate amicitiave
populi Romani- (lex repet. v. i), the official designation of the
non-Italian subjects and clients as contrasted with the Italian
"allies and kinsmen" (-socii nominisve Latini-).
5. III. XI. As to the Management of the Finances
6. III. XII. Mercantile Spirit
7. IV. III. Jury Courts, IV. III. Character of the Constitution
of Gaius Gracchus
8. This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed
property, is to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's
tenth, which it imposed on the domain-land. The former was let in
Sicily, and was fixed once for all; the latter--especially that of
the territory of Leontini--was let by the censors in Rome, and the
proportion of produce payable and other conditions were regulated
at their discretion (Cic. Verr. iii. 6, 13; v. 21, 53; de leg. agr.
i. 2, 4; ii. 18, 48). Comp, my Staatsrecht, iii. 730.
9. The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows. The Roman
government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of
the tax. Thus in Asia, for instance, according to the arrangement
of Sulla and Caesar the tenth sheaf was levied (Appian. B. C. v.
4); thus the Jews by Caesar's edict contributed every second year
a fourth of the seed (Joseph, iv. 10, 6; comp. ii. 5); thus in
Cilicia and Syria subsequently there was paid 5 per cent from
estate (Appian. Syr. 50), and in Africa also an apparently similar
tax was paid--in which case, we may add, the estate seems to have
been valued according to certain presumptive indications, e. g. the
size of the land occupied, the number of doorways, the number of
head of children and slaves (-exactio capitum atque ostiorum-,
Cicero, Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5, with reference to Cilicia; --phoros epi
tei gei kai tois somasin--, Appian. Pun. 135, with reference to
Africa). In accordance with this regulation the magistrates of
each community under the superintendence of the Roman governor
(Cic. ad Q. Fr. i. 1, 8; SC. de Asclep. 22, 23) settled who were
liable to the tax, and what was to be paid by each tributary (
-imperata- --epikephalia--, Cic. ad Att. v. 16); if any one did not
pay this in proper time, his tax-debt was sold just as in Rome, i.
e. it was handed over to a contractor with an adjudication to
collect it (-venditio tributorum-, Cic. Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5; --onas--
-omnium venditas-, Cic. ad Att. v. 16). The produce of these taxes
flowed into the coffers of the leading communities--the Jews, for
instance, had to send their corn to Sidon--and from these coffers
the fixed amount in money was then conveyed to Rome. These taxes
also were consequently raised indirectly, and the intermediate
agent either retained, according to circumstances, a part of the
produce of the taxes for himself, or advanced it from his own
substance; the distinction between this mode of raising and the
other by means of the -publicani- lay merely in the circumstance,
that in the former the public authorities of the contributors,
in the latter Roman private contractors, constituted the
intermediate agency.
10. IV. III. Jury Courts
11. III. VII. Administration of Spain
12. IV. X. Regulation of the Finances
13. For example, in Judaea the town of Joppa paid 26,075 -modii-
of corn, the other Jews the tenth sheaf, to the native princes; to
which fell to be added the temple-tribute and the Sidonian payment
destined for the Romans. In Sicily too, in addition to the Roman
tenth, a very considerable local taxation was raised from property.
14. IV. VI. The New Military Organization
15. IV. II. Vote by Ballot
16. III. VII. Liguria
17. IV. V. Province of Narbo
18. IV. V. In Illyria
19. IV. I. Province of Macedonia
20. III. XI. Italian Subjects, III. XII. Roman Wealth
21. IV. V. Taurisci
22. III. IV. Pressure of the War
23. IV. VII. Outbreak of the Mithradatic War
24. IV. IX. Preparations on Either Side
25. III. XII. The Management of Land and of Capital
26. IV. V. Conflicts with the Ligurians. With this may be connected
the remark of the Roman agriculturist, Saserna, who lived after Cato
and before Varro (ap. Colum. i. 1, 5), that the culture of the vine
and olive was constantly moving farther to the north.--The decree of
the senate as to the translation of the treatise of Mago (IV. II.
The Italian Farmers) belongs also to this class of measures.
27. IV. II. Slavery and Its Consequences
28. IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.
29. IV. I. Destruction of Carthage, IV. I. Destruction of Corinth
30. IV. V. The Advance of the Romans Checked by the Policy
of the Restoration
31. IV. IV. The Provinces
32. IV. VII. Economic Crisis
33. IV. VII. The Sulpician Laws
34. IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla
35. IV. IX. Government of Cinna
36. IV. VIII. Orders Issued from Ephesus for A General Massacre
37. IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.
38. IV. VI. Roman Intervention
39. III. XII. Roman Wealth
40. IV. V. Taurisci
41. III. VI. Pressure of the War
42. II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value
43. III. VI. Pressure of the War
44. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome
45. IV. X. Proscription-Lists
46. III. III. Autonomy, III. VII. the State of Culture in Spain,
III. XII. Coins and Moneys
47. III. XII. Coins and Moneys
48. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements
49. In the house, which Sulla inhabited when a young man, he paid
for the ground-floor a rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of
the upper story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, Sull. 1);
which, capitalized at two-thirds of the usual interest on capital,
yields nearly the above amount. This was a cheap dwelling. That a
rent of 6000 sesterces (60 pounds) in the capital is called a high
one in the case of the year 629 (Vell. ii. 10) must have been due
to special circumstances.
50. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome
51. IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus
52. "If we could, citizens"--he said in his speech--"we should
indeed all keep clear of this burden. But, as nature has so
arranged it that we cannot either live comfortably with wives
or live at all without them, it is proper to have regard rather
to the permanent weal than to our own brief comfort."
Chapter XII
1. IV. XI. Money-Dealing and Commerce
2. IV. X. The Roman Municipal System
3. IV. I. The Subjects
4. IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered
5. IV. I. The New Organization of Spain
6. IV. VII. Second Year of the War
7. The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome
before 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists
(--technitai--) and athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix.
22), and Greek flute-players, tragedians, and pugilists in 587
(Pol. xxx, 13).
8. III. XIII. Irreligious Spirit
9. A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis,
iii. 12, 13.
10. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the
Administration of the Provinces; IV. IX. Siege of Praeneste
11. In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines," he sarcastically set
forth how the primitive men had not been content with the God
who alone is recognized by thought, but had longed after
puppets and effigies.
12. III. XI. Interference of The Community in War and Administration
13. IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius
14. IV. X. Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges
15. IV. VI. The Equestrian Party
16. III. XIV. Cato's Encyclopedia
17. Cicero says that he treated his learned slave Dionysius more
respectfully than Scipio treated Panaetius, and in the same sense
it is said in Lucilius:--
-Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre Utilior mihi,
quam sapiens-.
18. IV. XII. Panaetius
Chapter XIII
1. Thus in the -Paulus-, an original piece, the following line
occurred, probably in the description of the pass of Pythium
(III. X. Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna):--
-Qua vix caprigeno generi gradilis gressio est-.
And in another piece the hearers are expected to understand the
following description--
-Quadrupes tardigrada agrestis humilis aspera, Capite brevi,
cervice anguina, aspectu truci, Eviscerata inanima cum
animali sono-.
To which they naturally reply--
-Ita saeptuosa dictione abs te datur, Quod conjectura sapiens aegre
contuit; Non intellegimus, nisi si aperte dixeris-.
Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to.
Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic
tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to
task by the Middle Comedy.
2. Perhaps the only exception is in the -Andria- (iv. 5) the
answer to the question how matters go:--
"-Sic Ut quimus," aiunt, "quando ut volumus non licet-"
in allusion to the line of Caecilius, which is, indeed, also
imitated from a Greek proverb:--
-Vivas ut possis, quando non quis ut velis-.
The comedy is the oldest of Terence's, and was exhibited by
the theatrical authorities on the recommendation of Caecilius.
The gentle expression of gratitude is characteristic.
3. A counterpart to the hind chased by dogs and with tears calling
on a young man for help, which Terence ridicules (Phorm. prol. 4),
may be recognized in the far from ingenious Plautine allegory of
the goat and the ape (Merc, ii. 1). Such excrescences are
ultimately traceable to the rhetoric of Euripides (e. g.
Eurip. Hec. 90).
4. Micio in the -Adelphi- (i. i) praises his good fortune in life,
more particularly because he has never had a wife, "which those
(the Greeks) reckon a piece of good fortune."
5. In the prologue of the -Heauton Timorumenos- he puts
the objection into the mouth of his censors:--
-Repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum Amicum ingenio
fretum, haud natura sua-.
And in the later prologue (594) to the -Adelphi- he says--
-Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles Eum adiutare,
adsidueque una scribere; Quod illi maledictum vehemens esse
existimant Eam laudem hic ducit maximam, quum illis placet Qui
vobis universis et populo placent; Quorum opera in bello, in otio,
in negotio, Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia-.
As early as the time of Cicero it was the general supposition that
Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus were here meant: the scenes were
designated which were alleged to proceed from them; stories were
told of the journeys of the poor poet with his genteel patrons to
their estates near Rome; and it was reckoned unpardonable that
they should have done nothing at all for the improvement of his
financial circumstances. But the power which creates legend is,
as is well known, nowhere more potent than in the history of
literature. It is clear, and even judicious Roman critics
acknowledged, that these lines could not possibly apply to Scipio
who was then twenty-five years of age, and to his friend Laelius
who was not much older. Others with at least more judgment thought
of the poets of quality Quintus Labeo (consul in 571) and Marcus
Popillius (consul in 581), and of the learned patron of art and
mathematician, Lucius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588); but this
too is evidently mere conjecture. That Terence was in close
relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however, be doubted: it
is a significant fact, that the first exhibition of the -Adelphi-
and the second of the -Hecyra- took place at the funeral games of
Lucius Paullus, which were provided by his sons Scipio and Fabius.
6. IV. XI. Token-Money
7. III. XIV. National Comedy
8. External circumstances also, it may be presumed, co-operated in
bringing about this change. After all the Italian communities had
obtained the Roman franchise in consequence of the Social war, it
was no longer allowable to transfer the scene of a comedy to any
such community, and the poet had either to keep to general ground
or to choose places that had fallen into ruin or were situated
abroad. Certainly this circumstance, which was taken into account
even in the production of the older comedies, exercised an
unfavourable effect on the national comedy.
9. I. XV. Masks
10. With these names there has been associated from ancient times
a series of errors. The utter mistake of Greek reporters, that
these farces were played at Rome in the Oscan language, is now with
justice universally rejected; but it is, on a closer consideration,
little short of impossible to bring these pieces, which are laid in
the midst of Latin town and country life, into relation with the
national Oscan character at all. The appellation of "Atellan play"
is to be explained in another way. The Latin farce with its fixed
characters and standing jests needed a permanent scenery: the fool-
world everywhere seeks for itself a local habitation. Of course
under the Roman stage-police none of the Roman communities, or of
the Latin communities allied with Rome, could be taken for this
purpose, although it was allowable to transfer the -togatae- to
these. But Atella, which, although destroyed de jure along with
Capua in 543 (III. VI. Capua Capitulates, III. VI. In Italy),
continued practically to subsist as a village inhabited by Roman
farmers, was adapted in every respect for the purpose. This conjecture
is changed into certainty by our observing that several of these farces
are laid in other communities within the domain of the Latin tongue,
which existed no longer at all, or no longer at any rate in the eye
of the law-such as the -Campani- of Pomponius and perhaps also his
-Adelphi- and his -Quinquatria- in Capua, and the -Milites Pometinenses-
of Novius in Suessa Pometia--while no existing community was subjected
to similar maltreatment. The real home of these pieces was
therefore Latium, their poetical stage was the Latinized Oscan
land; with the Oscan nation they have no connection. The statement
that a piece of Naevius (d. after 550) was for want of proper
actors performed by "Atellan players" and was therefore called
-personata- (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view:
the appellation "Atellan players" comes to stand here proleptically,
and we might even conjecture from this passage that they were
formerly termed "masked players" (-personati-).
An explanation quite similar may be given of the "lays of
Fescennium," which likewise belong to the burlesque poetry of
the Romans and were localized in the South Etruscan village of
Fescennium; it is not necessary on that account to class them
with Etruscan poetry any more than the Atellanae with Oscan.
That Fescennium was in historical times not a town but a village,
cannot certainly be directly proved, but is in the highest degree
probable from the way in which authors mention the place and from
the silence of inscriptions.
11. The close and original connection, which Livy in particular
represents as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the -satura-
with the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable. The
difference between the -histrio- and the Atellan player was
just about as great as is at present the difference between a
professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the
dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time had no masks, and the
Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there
subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced. The
drama arose out of the flute-piece, which at first without any
recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a
text (-satura-), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto
borrowed from the Greek stage, in which the old flute-lays occupied
nearly the place of the Greek chorus. This course of development
nowhere in its earlier stages comes into contact with the farce,
which was performed by amateurs.
12. In the time of the empire the Atellana was represented by
professional actors (Friedlander in Becker's Handbuch. vi. 549).
The time at which these began to engage in it is not reported, but
it can hardly have been other than the time at which the Atellan
was admitted among the regular stage-plays, i. e. the epoch before
Cicero (Cic. ad Fam. ix. 16). This view is not inconsistent with
the circumstance that still in Livy's time (vii. 2) the Atellan
players retained their honorary rights as contrasted with other
actors; for the statement that professional actors began to take
part in performing the Atellana for pay does not imply that
the Atellana was no longer performed, in the country towns
for instance, by unpaid amateurs, and the privilege therefore
still remained applicable,
13. It deserves attention that the Greek farce was not only
especially at home in Lower Italy, but that several of its
pieces (e. g. among those of Sopater, the "Lentile-Porridge,"
the "Wooers of Bacchis," the "Valet of Mystakos," the "Bookworms,"
the "Physiologist") strikingly remind us of the Atellanae.
This composition of farces must have reached down to the time
at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle
enclosed within the Latin-speaking Campania; for one of these
writers of farces, Blaesus of Capreae, bears even a Roman name
and wrote a farce "Saturnus."
14. According to Eusebius, Pomponius flourished about 664;
Velleius calls him a contemporary of Lucius Crassus (614-663) and
Marcus Antonius (611-667). The former statement is probably about
a generation too late; the reckoning by -victoriati- (p. 182) which
was discontinued about 650 still occurs in his -Pictores-, and
about the end of this period we already meet the mimes which
displaced the Atellanae from the stage.
15. It was probably merry enough in this form. In the
-Phoenissae- of Novius, for instance, there was the line:--
-Sume arma, iam te occidam clava scirpea-, Just as Menander's
--Pseudeirakleis-- makes his appearance.
16. Hitherto the person providing the play had been obliged to fit
up the stage and scenic apparatus out of the round sum assigned to
him or at his own expense, and probably much money would not often
be expended on these. But in 580 the censors made the erection of
the stage for the games of the praetors and aediles a matter of
special contract (Liv. xli. 27); the circumstance that the stage-
apparatus was now no longer erected merely for a single performance
must have led to a perceptible improvement of it.
17. The attention given to the acoustic arrangements of the Greeks
may be inferred from Vitruv. v. 5, 8. Ritschl (Parerg. i. 227, xx.)
has discussed the question of the seats; but it is probable
(according to Plautus, Capt. prol. 11) that those only who were
not -capite censi- had a claim to a seat. It is probable, moreover,
that the words of Horace that "captive Greece led captive her
conqueror" primarily refer to these epoch-making theatrical games
of Mummius (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21).
18. The scenery of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since
the birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin.
H. N. xxxv. 4, 23; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6). Hitherto the machinery for
thunder had consisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a
copper kettle; Pulcher first produced a better thunder by rolling
stones, which was thenceforth named "Claudian thunder" (Festus,
v. Claudiana, p. 57).
19. Among the few minor poems preserved from this epoch there
occurs the following epigram on this illustrious actor:--
-Constiteram, exorientem Auroram forte salutans, Cum subito a laeva
Roscius exoritur. Pace mihi liceat, coelestes, dicere vestra;
Mortalis visust pulchrior esse deo-.
The author of this epigram, Greek in its tone and inspired by Greek
enthusiasm for art, was no less a man than the conqueror of the
Cimbri, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in 652.
20. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric
21. -Quam lepide --legeis-- compostae ut tesserulae omnes Arte
pavimento atque emblemate vermiculato-.
22. The poet advises him--
-Quo facetior videare et scire plus quant ceteri---to say not
-pertaesum- but -pertisum-.
23. IV. III. Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus
24. The following longer fragment is a characteristic specimen of
the style and metrical treatment, the loose structure of which
cannot possibly be reproduced in German hexameters:--
-Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum
Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu' potesse;
Virtus est homini scire quo quaeque habeat res;
Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum,
Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum;
Virtus quaerendae finem rei scire modumque;
Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse;
Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori,
Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum,
Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum,
Hos magni facere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;
Commoda praeterea patriai prima putare,
Deinde parentum, tertia iam postremaque nostra-.
25. IV. XIII. Dramatic Arrangements, second note
26. III. X. Measures of Security in Greece
27. IV. I. Greece
28. Such scientific travels were, however, nothing uncommon among
the Greeks of this period. Thus in Plautus (Men. 248, comp. 235)
one who has navigated the whole Mediterranean asks--
-Quin nos hinc domum Redimus, nisi si historiam scripturi sumus-?
29. III. XIV. National Opposition
30. The only real exception, so far as we know, is the Greek
history of Gnaeus Aufidius, who flourished in Cicero's boyhood
(Tusc, v. 38, 112), that is, about 660. The Greek memoirs of
Publius Rutilius Rufus (consul in 649) are hardly to be regarded
as an exception, since their author wrote them in exile at Smyrna.
31. IV. XI. Hellenism and Its Results
32. IV. XII. Education
33. IV. XII. Latin Instruction
34. The assertion, for instance, that the quaestors were
nominated in the regal period by the burgesses, not by the king,
is as certainly erroneous as it bears on its face the impress of
a partisan character.
35. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric
36. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric
37. IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric
38. IV. X. Permanent and Special -Quaestiones-
39. Cato's book probably bore the title -De iuris disciplina-
(Gell. xiii. 20), that of Brutus the title -De iure civili- (Cic.
pro Cluent. 51, 141; De Orat. ii. 55, 223); that they were
essentially collections of opinions, is shown by Cicero (De Orat.
ii. 33, 142).
40. IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the
Administration of the Provinces, pp. 84, 205
41. IV. XII. Roman Stoa f.
42. IV. XI. Buildings
End of Book IV
* * * * *
THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK V
The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
Preparer's Notes
This work contains many literal citations of and references to words,
sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages, including
Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek. This English
language Gutenberg edition, constrained within the scope of 7-bit
ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:
1) Words and phrases regarded as "foreign imports", italicized
in the original text published in 1903; but which in the intervening
century have become "naturalized" into English; words such as "de jure",
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refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in the source
manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single preceding,
and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.
3) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents,
are rendered with a preceding and a following double-dash; thus, --xxxx--.
Note that in some cases the root word itself is a compound form such as
xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as --xxx-xxx--
4) Simple non-ideographic references to vocalic sounds, single letters,
or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic references
are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x, or -xxx.
5) The following refers particularly to the complex discussion
of alphabetic evolution in Ch. XIV: Measuring and Writing). Ideographic
references, meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather
than to its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a mental picture
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Followed by the form in lowercase. Such exotic parsing is necessary
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may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages,
or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different
times. Thus, -"id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to a Phoenician
construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually
stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to another one
of lowercase. Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates a symbol
that in graphic form most closely resembles an ASCII uppercase "E",
but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.
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found in the appended section of endnotes are to be taken as "proximate"
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of the closest indexing "handle", a subheading, which may or may not
echo congruent subject matter.
The reason for this is that in the translation from an original
paged manuscript to an unpaged "cyberscroll", page numbers are lost.
In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing "handles"
of sub-chapter scale. Unfortunately, in some stretches of text these
subheadings may be as sparse as merely one in three pages. Therefore,
it would seem to make best sense to save the reader time and temper
by adopting a shortest path method to indicate the desired reference.
7) The attentive reader will notice occasional typographic or syntactic
anomalies and errors. In almost all cases this conscious and due to
an editorial decision for the first Gutenberg edition to transmit
transparently all but the most egregious flaws found in the source text
Scribner edition of 1903. Furthermore, a number of sentences may be
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the most turgid specimens.
8) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.;
that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753 B. C.
To the end of each volume is appended a table of conversion between
the two systems.
CONTENTS
BOOK V: The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
CHAPTER
I. Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius
II. Rule of the Sullan Restoration
III. The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius
IV. Pompeius and the East
V. The Struggle of Parties during the Absence of Pompeius
VI. Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders
VII. The Subjugation of the West
VIII. The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar
IX. Death of Crassus--Rupture between the Joint Rulers
X. Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus
XI. The Old Republic and the New Monarchy
XII. Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art
BOOK FIFTH
The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
Wie er sich sieht so um und um,
Kehrt es ihm fast den Kopf herum,
Wie er wollt' Worte zu allem finden?
Wie er mocht' so viel Schwall verbinden?
Wie er mocht' immer muthig bleiben
So fort und weiter fort zu schreiben?
Goethe.
CHAPTER I
Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius
The Opposition
Jurists
Aristocrats Friendly to Reform
Democrats
When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had
restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but,
as it had been established by force, it still needed force
to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes.
It was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly
expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass
of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless
under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing
the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds
and with very different designs. There were the men of positive
law who neither mingled in nor understood politics, but who detested
the arbitrary procedure of Sulla in dealing with the lives
and property of the burgesses. Even during Sulla's lifetime,
when all other opposition was silent, the strict jurists resisted
the regent; the Cornelian laws, for example, which deprived various
Italian communities of the Roman franchise, were treated
in judicial decisions as null and void; and in like manner the courts
held that, where a burgess had been made a prisoner of war and sold
into slavery during the revolution, his franchise was not forfeited.
There was, further, the remnant of the old liberal minority
in the senate, which in former times had laboured to effect
a compromise with the reform party and the Italians, and was now
in a similar spirit inclined to modify the rigidly oligarchic
constitution of Sulla by concessions to the Populares.
There were, moreover, the Populares strictly so called,
the honestly credulous narrow-minded radicals, who staked property
and life for the current watchwords of the party-programme,
only to discover with painful surprise after the victory
that they had been fighting not for a reality, but for a phrase.
Their special aim was to re-establish the tribunician power, which Sulla
had not abolished but had divested of its most essential prerogatives,
and which exercised over the multitude a charm all the more mysterious,
because the institution had no obvious practical use and was
in fact an empty phantom--the mere name of tribune of the people,
more than a thousand years later, revolutionized Rome.
Transpadanes
Freedmen
Capitalists
Proletarians of the Capital
The Dispossessed
The Proscribed and Their Adherents
There were, above all, the numerous and important classes
whom the Sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whose political
or private interests it had directly injured. Among those
who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense
and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps,
which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in 665(1)
as merely an instalment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded
a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also
the freedmen, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially
dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could
not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their
earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position
stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious
silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment
and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital,
which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise
discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among
the burgess-bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations--whether
they like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed
by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter,
and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arretines
and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory,
but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them
by the Roman people; or, as was the case in Etruria especially,
were reduced to be beggars in their former abodes, or robbers
in the woods. Finally, the agitation extended to the whole family
connections and freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had lost
their lives in consequence of the restoration, or who were wandering
along the Mauretanian coasts, or sojourning at the court
and in the army of Mithradates, in all the misery of emigrant exile;
for, according to the strict family-associations that governed
the political feeling of this age, it was accounted a point of honour(2)
that those who were left behind should endeavour to procure for exiled
relatives the privilege of returning to their native land, and,
in the case of the dead, at least a removal of the stigma attaching
to their memory and to their children, and a restitution to the latter
of their paternal estate. More especially the immediate children
of the proscribed, whom the regent had reduced in point of law
to political Pariahs,(3) had thereby virtually received from the law
itself a summons to rise in rebellion against the existing
order of things.
Men of Ruined Fortunes
Men of Ambition
To all these sections of the opposition there was added the whole
body of men of ruined fortunes. All the rabble high and low,
whose means and substance had been spent in refined or in vulgar
debauchery; the aristocratic lords, who had no farther mark
of quality than their debts; the Sullan troopers whom the regent's
fiat could transform into landholders but not into husbandmen,
and who, after squandering the first inheritance of the proscribed,
were longing to succeed to a second--all these waited only
the unfolding of the banner which invited them to fight against
the existing order of things, whatever else might be inscribed on it.
From a like necessity all the aspiring men of talent, in search
of popularity, attached themselves to the opposition; not only
those to whom the strictly closed circle of the Optimates denied
admission or at least opportunities for rapid promotion,
and who therefore attempted to force their way into the phalanx
and to break through the laws of oligarchic exclusiveness and seniority
by means of popular favour, but also the more dangerous men,
whose ambition aimed at something higher than helping to determine
the destinies of the world within the sphere of collegiate intrigues.
On the advocates' platform in particular--the only field of legal
opposition left open by Sulla--even in the regent's lifetime
such aspirants waged lively war against the restoration with the weapons
of formal jurisprudence and combative oratory: for instance,
the adroit speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero (born 3rd January 648),
son of a landholder of Arpinum, speedily made himself a name
by the mingled caution and boldness of his opposition to the dictator.
Such efforts were not of much importance, if the opponent desired
nothing farther than by their means to procure for himself a curule
chair, and then to sit in it in contentment for the rest of his life.
No doubt, if this chair should not satisfy a popular man
and Gaius Gracchus should find a successor, a struggle for life
or death was inevitable; but for the present at least no name could
be mentioned, the bearer of which had proposed to himself
any such lofty aim.
Power of the Opposition
Such was the sort of opposition with which the oligarchic government
instituted by Sulla had to contend, when it had, earlier than
Sulla himself probably expected, been thrown by his death
on its own resources. The task was in itself far from easy, and it
was rendered more difficult by the other social and political evils
of this age--especially by the extraordinary double difficulty
of keeping the military chiefs in the provinces in subjection
to the supreme civil magistracy, and of dealing with the masses
of the Italian and extra-Italian populace accumulating in the capital,
and of the slaves living there to a great extent in de facto freedom,
without having troops at disposal. The senate was placed
as it were, in a fortress exposed and threatened on all sides,
and serious conflicts could not fail to ensue. But the means
of resistance organized by Sulla were considerable and lasting;
and although the majority of the nation was manifestly disinclined
to the government which Sulla had installed, and even animated
by hostile feelings towards it, that government might very well
maintain itself for a long time in its stronghold against
the distracted and confused mass of an opposition which was not agreed
either as to end or means, and, having no head, was broken up
into a hundred fragments. Only it was necessary that it should
be determined to maintain its position, and should bring
at least a spark of that energy, which had built the fortress,
to its defence; for in the case of a garrison which will not
defend itself, the greatest master of fortification constructs
his walls and moats in vain.
Want of Leaders
Coterie-Systems
The more everything ultimately depended on the personality
of the leading men on both sides, it was the more unfortunate
that both, strictly speaking, lacked leaders. The politics of
thisperiod were thoroughly under the sway of the coterie-system
in its worst form. This, indeed, was nothing new; close unions
of families and clubs were inseparable from an aristocratic
organizationof the state, and had for centuries prevailed in Rome.
But it was not till this epoch that they became all-powerful,
for it was only now (first in 690) that their influence was attested
rather than checked by legal measures of repression.
All persons of quality, those of popular leanings no less than
the oligarchy proper, met in Hetaeriae; the mass of the burgesses
likewise, so far as they took any regular part in political events
at all, formed according to their voting-districts close unions
with an almost military organization, which found their natural
captains and agents in the presidents of the districts, "tribe-
distributors" (-divisores tribuum-). With these political clubs
everything was bought and sold; the vote of the elector especially,
but also the votes of the senator and the judge, the fists too
which produced the street riot, and the ringleaders who directed
it--the associations of the upper and of the lower ranks
were distinguished merely in the matter of tariff. The Hetaeria
decided the elections, the Hetaeria decreed the impeachments,
the Hetaeria conducted the defence; it secured the distinguished
advocate, and in case of need it contracted for an acquittal
with one of the speculators who pursued on a great scale lucrative
dealings in judges' votes. The Hetaeria commanded by its compact bands
the streets of the capital, and with the capital but too often the state.
All these things were done in accordance with a certain rule,
and, so to speak, publicly; the system of Hetaeriae was better organized
and managed than any branch of state administration; although there was,
as is usual among civilized swindlers, a tacit understanding
that there should be no direct mention of the nefarious proceedings,
nobody made a secret of them, and advocates of repute were not ashamed
to give open and intelligible hints of their relation to the Hetaeriae
of their clients. If an individual was to be found here or there
who kept aloof from such doings and yet did not forgo public life,
he was assuredly, like Marcus Cato, a political Don Quixote.
Parties and party-strife were superseded by the clubs and their rivalry;
government was superseded by intrigue. A more than equivocal
character, Publius Cethegus, formerly one of the most zealous
Marians, afterwards as a deserter received into favour by Sulla,(4)
acted a most influential part in the political doings
of this period--unrivalled as a cunning tale-bearer and mediator
between the sections of the senate, and as having a statesman's
acquaintance with the secrets of all cabals: at times the appointment
to the most important posts of command was decided by a word
from his mistress Praecia. Such a plight was only possible
where none of the men taking part in politics rose above mediocrity:
any man of more than ordinary talent would have swept away
this system of factions like cobwebs; but there was in reality
the saddest lack of men of political or military capacity.
Phillipus
Metellus, Catulus, the Luculli
Of the older generation the civil wars had left not a single man
of repute except the old shrewd and eloquent Lucius Philippus (consul
in 663), who, formerly of popular leanings,(5) thereafter leader
of the capitalist party against the senate,(6) and closely associated
with the Marians,(7) and lastly passing over to the victorious
oligarchy in sufficient time to earn thanks and commendation,(8)
had managed to escape between the parties. Among the men
of the following generation the most notable chiefs of the pure
aristocracy were Quintus Metellus Pius (consul in 674), Sulla's
comrade in dangers and victories; Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul
in the year of Sulla's death, 676, the son of the victor of Vercellae;
and two younger officers, the brothers Lucius and Marcus Lucullus,
of whom the former had fought with distinction under Sulla
in Asia, the latter in Italy; not to mention Optimates like Quintus
Hortensius (640-704), who had importance only as a pleader,
or men like Decimus Junius Brutus (consul in 677), Mamercus
Aemilius Lepidus Livianus (consul in 677), and other such nullities,
whose best quality was a euphonious aristocratic name.
But even those four men rose little above the average calibre
of the Optimates of this age. Catulus was like his father a man of
refined culture and an honest aristocrat, but of moderate talents
and, in particular, no soldier. Metellus was not merely estimable
in his personal character, but an able and experienced officer;
and it was not so much on account of his close relations as a kinsman
and colleague with the regent as because of his recognized ability
that he was sent in 675, after resigning the consulship, to Spain,
where the Lusitanians and the Roman emigrants under Quintus
Sertorius were bestirring themselves afresh. The two Luculli
were also capable officers--particularly the elder, who combined
very respectable military talents with thorough literary culture
and leanings to authorship, and appeared honourable also as a man.
But, as statesmen, even these better aristocrats were not much less
remiss and shortsighted than the average senators of the time.
In presence of an outward foe the more eminent among them, doubtless,
proved themselves useful and brave; but no one of them evinced
the desire or the skill to solve the problems of politics proper,
and to guide the vessel of the state through the stormy sea of intrigues
and factions as a true pilot. Their political wisdom was limited
to a sincere belief in the oligarchy as the sole means of salvation,
and to a cordial hatred and courageous execration of demagogism
as well as of every individual authority which sought to emancipate
itself. Their petty ambition was contented with little.
The stories told of Metellus in Spain--that he not only allowed
himself to be delighted with the far from harmonious lyre
of the Spanish occasional poets, but even wherever he went had himself
received like a god with libations of wine and odours of incense,
and at table had his head crowned by descending Victories amidst
theatrical thunder with the golden laurel of the conqueror--
are no better attested than most historical anecdotes; but even
such gossip reflects the degenerate ambition of the generations
of Epigoni. Even the better men were content when they had gained
not power and influence, but the consulship and a triumph
and a place of honour in the senate; and at the very time
when with right ambition they would have just begun to be truly useful
to their country and their party, they retired from the political stage
to be lost in princely luxury. Men like Metellus and Lucius Lucullus
were, even as generals, not more attentive to the enlargement
of the Roman dominion by fresh conquests of kings and peoples than
to the enlargement of the endless game, poultry, and dessert lists
of Roman gastronomy by new delicacies from Africa and Asia Minor,
and they wasted the best part of their lives in more or less ingenious
idleness. The traditional aptitude and the individual self-denial,
on which all oligarchic government is based, were lost
in the decayed and artificially restored Roman aristocracy of this age;
in its judgment universally the spirit of clique was accounted
as patriotism, vanity as ambition, and narrow-mindedness as consistency.
Had the Sullan constitution passed into the guardianship of men
such as have sat in the Roman College of Cardinals or the Venetian
Council of Ten, we cannot tell whether the opposition would have been able
to shake it so soon; with such defenders every attack involved,
at all events, a serious peril.
Pompeius
Of the men, who were neither unconditional adherents nor open
opponents of the Sullan constitution, no one attracted more the eyes
of the multitude than the young Gnaeus Pompeius, who was at the time
of Sulla's death twenty-eight years of age (born 29th September 648).
The fact was a misfortune for the admired as well as
for the admirers; but it was natural. Sound in body and mind,
a capable athlete, who even when a superior officer vied with his
soldiers in leaping, running, and lifting, a vigorous and skilled
rider and fencer, a bold leader of volunteer bands, the youth had
become Imperator and triumphator at an age which excluded him
from every magistracy and from the senate, and had acquired
the first place next to Sulla in public opinion; nay, had obtained
from the indulgent regent himself--half in recognition, half in irony--
the surname of the Great. Unhappily, his mental endowments by no means
corresponded with these unprecedented successes. He was neither
a bad nor an incapable man, but a man thoroughly ordinary, created
by nature to be a good sergeant, called by circumstances to be
a general and a statesman. An intelligent, brave and experienced,
thoroughly excellent soldier, he was still, even in his military
capacity, without trace of any higher gifts. It was characteristic
of him as a general, as well as in other respects, to set to work
with a caution bordering on timidity, and, if possible, to give
the decisive blow only when he had established an immense superiority
over his opponent. His culture was the average culture of the time;
although entirely a soldier, he did not neglect, when he went
to Rhodes, dutifully to admire, and to make presents to,
the rhetoricians there. His integrity was that of a rich man
who manages with discretion his considerable property inherited
and acquired. He did not disdain to make money in the usual senatorial
way, but he was too cold and too rich to incur special risks,
or draw down on himself conspicuous disgrace, on that account.
The vice so much in vogue among his contemporaries, rather than
any virtue of his own, procured for him the reputation--comparatively,
no doubt, well warranted--of integrity and disinterestedness.
His "honest countenance" became almost proverbial, and even after
his death he was esteemed as a worthy and moral man; he was in fact
a good neighbour, who did not join in the revolting schemes
by which the grandees of that age extended the bounds of their domains
through forced sales or measures still worse at the expense
of their humbler neighbours, and in domestic life he displayed
attachment to his wife and children: it redounds moreover to his
credit that he was the first to depart from the barbarous custom
of putting to death the captive kings and generals of the enemy,
after they had been exhibited in triumph. But this did not prevent
him from separating from his beloved wife at the command of his lord
and master Sulla, because she belonged to an outlawed family,
nor from ordering with great composure that men who had stood
by him and helped him in times of difficulty should be executed
before his eyes at the nod of the same master:(9) he was not cruel,
thoughhe was reproached with being so, but--what perhaps was worse--
he was cold and, in good as in evil, unimpassioned. In the tumult
of battle he faced the enemy fearlessly; in civil life he was a shy
man, whose cheek flushed on the slightest occasion; he spoke
in public not without embarrassment, and generally was angular, stiff,
and awkward in intercourse. With all his haughty obstinacy he was--
as indeed persons ordinarily are, who make a display of their
independence--a pliant tool in the hands of men who knew how
to manage him, especially of his freedmen and clients, by whom he had
no fear of being controlled. For nothing was he less qualified
than for a statesman. Uncertain as to his aims, unskilful in the choice
of his means, alike in little and great matters shortsighted
and helpless, he was wont to conceal his irresolution and indecision
under a solemn silence, and, when he thought to play a subtle
game, simply to deceive himself with the belief that he was
deceiving others. By his military position and his territorial
connections he acquired almost without any action of his own
a considerable party personally devoted to him, with which
the greatest things might have been accomplished; but Pompeius
was in every respect incapable of leading and keeping together a party,
and, if it still kept together, it did so--in like manner without
his action--through the sheer force of circumstances. In this,
as in other things, he reminds us of Marius; but Marius, with his
nature of boorish roughness and sensuous passion, was still less
intolerable than this most tiresome and most starched of all
artificial great men. His political position was utterly perverse.
He was a Sullan officer and under obligation to stand up for
the restored constitution, and yet again in opposition to Sulla
personally as well as to the whole senatorial government. The gens
of the Pompeii, which had only been named for some sixty years
in the consular lists, had by no means acquired full standing
in the eyes of the aristocracy; even the father of this Pompeius
had occupied a very invidious equivocal position towards
the senate,(10) and he himself had once been in the ranks
of the Cinnans(11)--recollections which were suppressed perhaps,
but not forgotten. The prominent position which Pompeius
acquired for himself under Sulla set him at inward variance
with the aristocracy, quite as much as it brought him into outward
connection with it. Weak-headed as he was, Pompeius was seized
with giddiness on the height of glory which he had climbed
with such dangerous rapidity and ease. Just as if he would himself
ridicule his dry prosaic nature by the parallel with the most
poetical of all heroic figures, he began to compare himself
with Alexander the Great, and to account himself a man of unique
standing, whom it did not beseem to be merely one of the five
hundred senators of Rome. In reality, no one was more fitted
to take his place as a member of an aristocratic government than
Pompeius. His dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality,
his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want
of all initiative might have gained for him, had he been born
two hundred years earlier, an honourable place by the side
of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius: this mediocrity, so characteristic
of the genuine Optimate and the genuine Roman, contributed not a little
to the elective affinity which subsisted at all times between Pompeius
and the mass of the burgesses and the senate. Even in his own age
he would have had a clearly defined and respectable position
had he contented himself with being the general of the senate,
for which he was from the outset destined. With this he was
not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight of wishing
to be something else than he could be. He was constantly aspiring
to a special position in the state, and, when it offered itself,
he could not make up his mind to occupy it; he was deeply indignant
when persons and laws did not bend unconditionally before him,
and yet he everywhere bore himself with no mere affectation
of modesty as one of many peers, and trembled at the mere thought
of undertaking anything unconstitutional. Thus constantly
at fundamental variance with, and yet at the same time the obedient
servant of, the oligarchy, constantly tormented by an ambition
which was frightened at its own aims, his much-agitated life
passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction.
Crassus
Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among
the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy. He is a personage
highly characteristic of this epoch. Like Pompeius, whose senior
he was by a few years, he belonged to the circle of the high Roman
aristocracy, had obtained the usual education befitting his rank,
and had like Pompeius fought with distinction under Sulla
in the Italian war. Far inferior to many of his peers in mental gifts,
literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped them
by his boundless activity, and by the perseverance with which he strove
to possess everything and to become all-important. Above all,
he threw himself into speculation. Purchases of estates during
the revolution formed the foundation of his wealth; but he disdained
no branch of gain; he carried on the business of building
in the capital on a great scale and with prudence; he entered
into partnership with his freedmen in the most varied undertakings;
he acted as banker both in and out of Rome, in person or by his agents;
he advanced money to his colleagues in the senate, and undertook--
as it might happen--to execute works or to bribe the tribunals
on their account. He was far from nice in the matter
of making profit. On occasion of the Sullan proscriptions a forgery
in the lists had been proved against him, for which reason Sulla
made no more use of him thenceforward in the affairs of state:
he did not refuse to accept an inheritance, because the testamentary
document which contained his name was notoriously forged; he made
no objection, when his bailiffs by force or by fraud dislodged
the petty holders from lands which adjoined his own. He avoided open
collisions, however, with criminal justice, and lived himself
like a genuine moneyed man in homely and simple style. In this way
Crassus rose in the course of a few years from a man of ordinary
senatorial fortune to be the master of wealth which not long before
his death, after defraying enormous extraordinary expenses, still
amounted to 170,000,000 sesterces (1,700,000 pounds). He had
become the richest of Romans and thereby, at the same time, a great
political power. If, according to his expression, no one might
call himself rich who could not maintain an army from his revenues,
one who could do this was hardly any longer a mere citizen.
In reality the views of Crassus aimed at a higher object than
the possession of the best-filled money-chest in Rome. He grudged
no pains to extend his connections. He knew how to salute by name
every burgess of the capital. He refused to no suppliant
his assistance in court. Nature, indeed, had not done much
for him as an orator: his speaking was dry, his delivery monotonous,
he had difficulty of hearing; but his tenacity of purpose,
which no wearisomeness deterred and no enjoyment distracted, overcame
such obstacles. He never appeared unprepared, he never extemporized,
and so he became a pleader at all times in request and at all times
ready; to whom it was no derogation that a cause was rarely too bad
for him, and that he knew how to influence the judges not merely
by his oratory, but also by his connections and, on occasion,
by his gold. Half the senate was in debt to him; his habit of advancing
to "friends" money without interest revocable at pleasure rendered
a number of influential men dependent on him, and the more so that,
like a genuine man of business, he made no distinction among
the parties, maintained connections on all hands, and readily lent
to every one who was able to pay or otherwise useful. The most daring
party-leaders, who made their attacks recklessly in all directions,
were careful not to quarrel with Crassus; he was compared
to the bull of the herd, whom it was advisable for none to provoke.
That such a man, so disposed and so situated, could not strive
after humble aims is clear; and, in a very different way from Pompeius,
Crassus knew exactly like a banker the objects and the means
of political speculation. From the origin of Rome capital
was a political power there; the age was of such a sort, that everything
seemed accessible to gold as to iron. If in the time of revolution
a capitalist aristocracy might have thought of overthrowing
the oligarchy of the gentes, a man like Crassus might raise
his eyes higher than to the -fasces- and embroidered mantle
of the triumphators. For the moment he was a Sullan and adherent
of the senate; but he was too much of a financier to devote himself
to a definite political party, or to pursue aught else than his personal
advantage. Why should Crassus, the wealthiest and most intriguing
man in Rome, and no penurious miser but a speculator on the greatest
scale, not speculate also on the crown? Alone, perhaps,
he could not attain this object; but he had already carried out
various great transactions in partnership; it was not impossible
that for this also a suitable partner might present himself.
It is a trait characteristic of the time, that a mediocre orator
and officer, a politician who took his activity for energy
and his covetousness for ambition, one who at bottom had nothing
but a colossal fortune and the mercantile talent of forming
connections--that such a man, relying on the omnipotence of coteries
and intrigues, could deem himself on a level with the first generals
and statesmen of his day, and could contend with them
for the highest prize which allures political ambition.
Leaders of the Democrats
In the opposition proper, both among the liberal conservatives
and among the Populares, the storms of revolution had made fearful
havoc. Among the former, the only surviving man of note was Gaius
Cotta (630-c. 681), the friend and ally of Drusus, and as such
banished in 663,(12) and then by Sulla's victory brought back
to his native land;(13) he was a shrewd man and a capable advocate,
but not called, either by the weight of his party or by that of his
personal standing, to act more than a respectable secondary part.
In the democratic party, among the rising youth, Gaius Julius
Caesar, who was twenty-four years of age (born 12 July 652?(14)),
drew towards him the eyes of friend and foe. His relationship
with Marius and Cinna (his father's sister had been the wife of Marius,
he himself had married Cinna's daughter); the courageous refusal
of the youth who had scarce outgrown the age of boyhood to send
a divorce to his young wife Cornelia at the bidding of the dictator,
as Pompeius had in the like case done; his bold persistence
in the priesthood conferred upon him by Marius, but revoked by Sulla;
his wanderings during the proscription with which he was threatened,
and which was with difficulty averted by the intercession
of his relatives; his bravery in the conflicts before Mytilene
and in Cilicia, a bravery which no one had expected from the tenderly
reared and almost effeminately foppish boy; even the warnings
of Sulla regarding the "boy in the petticoat" in whom more than a Marius
lay concealed--all these were precisely so many recommendations
in the eyes of the democratic party. But Caesar could only be the object
of hopes for the future; and the men who from their age and their
public position would have been called now to seize the reins
of the party and the state, were all dead or in exile.
Lepidus
Thus the leadership of the democracy, in the absence of a man
with a true vocation for it, was to be had by any one who might please
to give himself forth as the champion of oppressed popular freedom;
and in this way it came to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a Sullan,
who from motives more than ambiguous deserted to the camp
of the democracy. Once a zealous Optimate, and a large purchaser
at the auctions of the proscribed estates, he had, as governor of Sicily,
so scandalously plundered the province that he was threatened
with impeachment, and, to evade it, threw himself into opposition.
It was a gain of doubtful value. No doubt the opposition
thus acquired a well-known name, a man of quality, a vehement orator
in the Forum; but Lepidus was an insignificant and indiscreet
personage, who did not deserve to stand at the head either
in council or in the field. Nevertheless the opposition welcomed him,
and the new leader of the democrats succeeded not only in deterring
his accusers from prosecuting the attack on him which they had
begun, but also in carrying his election to the consulship
for 676; in which, we may add, he was helped not only by the treasures
exacted in Sicily, but also by the foolish endeavour of Pompeius
to show Sulla and the pure Sullans on this occasion what he could do.
Now that the opposition had, on the death of Sulla, found a head
once more in Lepidus, and now that this their leader had become
the supreme magistrate of the state, the speedy outbreak of a new
revolution in the capital might with certainty be foreseen.
The Emigrants in Spain
Sertorius
But even before the democrats moved in the capital, the democratic
emigrants had again bestirred themselves in Spain. The soul
of this movement was Quintus Sertorius. This excellent man,
a native of Nursia in the Sabine land, was from the first
of a tender and even soft organization--as his almost enthusiastic love
for his mother, Raia, shows--and at the same time of the most chivalrous
bravery, as was proved by the honourable scars which he brought
home from the Cimbrian, Spanish, and Italian wars. Although wholly
untrained as an orator, he excited the admiration of learned
advocates by the natural flow and the striking self-possession
of his address. His remarkable military and statesmanly talent
had found opportunity of shining by contrast, more particularly
in the revolutionary war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly
mismanaged; he was confessedly the only democratic officer
who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the only democratic
statesman who opposed the insensate and furious doings of his party
with statesmanlike energy. His Spanish soldiers called him the new
Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost
an eye in war. He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician
by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, by his rare talent
of organizing war by means of war, by his adroitness in attracting
foreign nations to his interest and making them serviceable to his ends,
by his prudence in success and misfortune, by the quickness
of his ingenuity in turning to good account his victories
and averting the consequences of his defeats. It may be doubted
whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period, or of the present,
can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius.
After Sulla's generals had compelled him to quit Spain,(15)
he had led a restless life of adventure along the Spanish and African
coasts, sometimes in league, sometimes at war, with the Cilician
pirates who haunted these seas, and with the chieftains
of the roving tribes of Libya. The victorious Roman restoration had
pursued him even thither: when he was besieging Tingis (Tangiers),
a corps under Pacciaecus from Roman Africa had come to the help
of the prince of the town; but Pacciaecus was totally defeated,
and Tingis was taken by Sertorius. On the report of such achievements
by the Roman refugee spreading abroad, the Lusitanians, who,
notwithstanding their pretended submission to the Roman supremacy,
practically maintained their independence, and annually fought
with the governors of Further Spain, sent envoys to Sertorius
in Africa, to invite him to join them, and to commit to him
the command of their militia.
Renewed Outbreak of the Spanish Insurrection
Metellus Sent to Spain
Sertorius, who twenty years before had served under Titus Didius
in Spain and knew the resources of the land, resolved to comply
with the invitation, and, leaving behind a small detachment
on the Mauretanian coast, embarked for Spain (about 674).
The straits separating Spain and Africa were occupied by a Roman
squadron commanded by Cotta; to steal through it was impossible;
so Sertorius fought his way through and succeeded in reaching
the Lusitanians. There were not more than twenty Lusitanian
communities that placed themselves under his orders; and even
of "Romans" he mustered only 2600 men, a considerable part
of whom were deserters from the army of Pacciaecus or Africans
armed after the Roman style. Sertorius saw that everything depended on
his associating with the loose guerilla-bands a strong nucleus
of troops possessing Roman organization and discipline: for this end
he reinforced the band which he had brought with him by levying
4000 infantry and 700 cavalry, and with this one legion
and the swarms of Spanish volunteers advanced against the Romans.
The command in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius,
who through his absolute devotion to Sulla--well tried amidst
the proscriptions--had risen from a subaltern to be propraetor;
he was totally defeated on the Baetis; 2000 Romans covered the field
of battle. Messengers in all haste summoned the governor
of the adjoining province of the Ebro, Marcus Domitius Calvinus,
to check the farther advance of the Sertorians; and there soon appeared
(675) also the experienced general Quintus Metellus, sent by Sulla
to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain. But they did
not succeed in mastering the revolt. In the Ebro province
not only was the army of Calvinus destroyed and he himself slain
by the lieutenant of Sertorius, the quaestor Lucius Hirtuleius,
but Lucius Manlius, the governor of Transalpine Gaul, who had crossed
the Pyrenees with three legions to the help of his colleague,
was totally defeated by the same brave leader. With difficulty
Manlius escaped with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence
to his province, losing on the march his whole baggage through
a sudden attack of the Aquitanian tribes. In Further Spain Metellus
penetrated into the Lusitanian territory; but Sertorius succeeded
during the siege of Longobriga (not far from the mouth
of the Tagus) in alluring a division under Aquinus into an ambush,
and thereby compelling Metellus himself to raise the siege
and to evacuate the Lusitanian territory. Sertorius followed him,
defeated on the Anas (Guadiana) the corps of Thorius, and inflicted
vast damage by guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in-
chief himself. Metellus, a methodical and somewhat clumsy
tactician, was in despair as to this opponent, who obstinately
declined a decisive battle, but cut off his supplies
and communications and constantly hovered round him on all sides.
Organizations of Sertorius
These extraordinary successes obtained by Sertorius
in the two Spanish provinces were the more significant,
that they were not achieved merely by arms and were not of a mere
military nature. The emigrants as such were not formidable;
nor were isolated successes of the Lusitanians under this or that
foreign leader of much moment. But with the most decided political
and patriotic tact Sertorius acted, whenever he could do so,
not as condottiere of the Lusitanians in revolt against Rome,
but as Roman general and governor of Spain, in which capacity
he had in fact been sent thither by the former rulers.
He began(16) to form the heads of the emigration into a senate,
which was to increase to 300 members and to conduct affairs
and to nominate magistrates in Roman form. He regarded his army
as a Roman one, and filled the officers' posts, without exception,
with Romans. When facing the Spaniards, he was the governor,
who by virtue of his office levied troops and other support
from them; but he was a governor who, instead of exercising
the usual despotic sway, endeavoured to attach the provincials
to Rome and to himself personally. His chivalrous character
rendered it easy for him to enter into Spanish habits,
and excited in the Spanish nobility the most ardent enthusiasm
for the wonderful foreigner who had a spirit so kindred
with their own. According to the warlike custom of personal following
which subsisted in Spain as among the Celts and the Germans,
thousands of the noblest Spaniards swore to stand faithfully
by their Roman general unto death; and in them Sertorius found
more trustworthy comrades than in his countrymen and party-associates.
He did not disdain to turn to account the superstition of the ruder
Spanish tribes, and to have his plans of war brought to him as commands
of Diana by the white fawn of the goddess. Throughout he exercised
a just and gentle rule. His troops, at least so far as his eye
and his arm reached, had to maintain the strictest discipline.
Gentle as he generally was in punishing, he showed himself inexorable
when any outrage was perpetrated by his soldiers on friendly soil.
Nor was he inattentive to the permanent alleviation of the condition
of the provincials; he reduced the tribute, and directed the soldiers
to construct winter barracks for themselves, so that the oppressive
burden of quartering the troops was done away and thus a source
of unspeakable mischief and annoyance was stopped. For the children
of Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca (Huesca),
in which they received the higher instruction usual in Rome,
learning to speak Latin and Greek, and to wear the toga--a remarkable
measure, which was by no means designed merely to take from the allies
in as gentle a form as possible the hostages that in Spain
were inevitable, but was above all an emanation from, and an advance
onthe great project of Gaius Gracchus and the democratic
party for gradually Romanizing the provinces. It was the first
attempt to accomplish their Romanization not by extirpating
the old inhabitants and filling their places with Italian emigrants,
but by Romanizing the provincials themselves. The Optimates
in Rome sneered at the wretched emigrant, the runaway from the Italian
army, the last of the robber-band of Carbo; the sorry taunt
recoiled upon its authors. The masses that had been brought into
the field against Sertorius were reckoned, including the Spanish
general levy, at 120,000 infantry, 2000 archers and slingers,
and 6000 cavalry. Against this enormous superiority of force Sertorius
had not only held his ground in a series of successful conflicts
and victories, but had also reduced the greater part of Spain
under his power. In the Further province Metellus found himself
confined to the districts immediately occupied by his troops;
hereall the tribes, who could, had taken the side of Sertorius.
In the Hither province, after the victories of Hirtuleius,
there no longer existed a Roman army. Emissaries of Sertorius
roamed through the whole territory of Gaul; there, too,
the tribes began to stir, and bands gathering together began
to make the Alpine passes insecure. Lastly the sea too belonged
quite as much to the insurgents as to the legitimate government,
since the allies of the former--the pirates--were almost as powerful
in the Spanish waters as the Roman ships of war. At the promontory
of Diana (now Denia, between Valencia and Alicante) Sertorius established
for the corsairs a fixed station, where they partly lay in wait
for such Roman ships as were conveying supplies to the Roman
maritime towns and the army, partly carried away or delivered goods
for the insurgents, and partly formed their medium of intercourse
with Italy and Asia Minor. The constant readiness of these men moving
to and fro to carry everywhere sparks from the scene of conflagration
tended in a high degree to excite apprehension, especially at a time
when so much combustible matter was everywhere accumulated
in the Roman empire.
Death of Sulla and Its Consequences
Amidst this state of matters the sudden death of Sulla took place
(676). So long as the man lived, at whose voice a trained
and trustworthy army of veterans was ready any moment to rise,
the oligarchy might tolerate the almost (as it seemed)
definite abandonment of the Spanish provinces to the emigrants,
and the election of the leader of the opposition at home to be supreme
magistrate, at all events as transient misfortunes; and in their
shortsighted way, yet not wholly without reason, might cherish
confidence either that the opposition would not venture to proceed
to open conflict, or that, if it did venture, he who had twice
saved the oligarchy would set it up a third time. Now the state
of things was changed. The democratic Hotspurs in the capital,
long impatient of the endless delay and inflamed by the brilliant news
from Spain, urged that a blow should be struck; and Lepidus,
with whom the decision for the moment lay, entered into the proposal
with all the zeal of a renegade and with his own characteristic
frivolity. For a moment it seemed as if the torch which kindled
the funeral pile of the regent would also kindle civil war;
but the influence of Pompeius and the temper of the Sullan veterans
induced the opposition to let the obsequies of the regent
pass over in peace.
Insurrection of Lepidus
Yet all the more openly were arrangements thenceforth made
to introduce a fresh revolution. Daily the Forum resounded
with accusations against the "mock Romulus" and his executioners.
Even before the great potentate had closed his eyes, the overthrow
of the Sullan constitution, the re-establishment of the distributions
of grain, the reinstating of the tribunes of the people in their
former position, the recall of those who were banished contrary
to law, the restoration of the confiscated lands, were openly indicated
by Lepidus and his adherents as the objects at which they aimed.
Now communications were entered into with the proscribed;
Marcus Perpenna, governor of Sicily in the days of Cinna,(17)
arrived in the capital. The sons of those whom Sulla had declared
guilty of treason--on whom the laws of the restoration bore
with intolerable severity--and generally the more noted men of Marian
views were invited to give their accession. Not a few, such as
the young Lucius Cinna, joined the movement; others, however,
followed the example of Gaius Caesar, who had returned home from Asia
on receiving the accounts of the death of Sulla and of the plans
of Lepidus, but after becoming more accurately acquainted
with the character of the leader and of the movement prudently withdrew.
Carousing and recruiting went on in behalf of Lepidus
in the taverns and brothels of the capital. At length a conspiracy
against the new order of things was concocted among the Etruscan
malcontents.(18)
All this took place under the eyes of the government The consul
Catulus as well as the more judicious Optimates urged an immediate
decisive interference and suppression of the revolt in the bud;
the indolent majority, however, could not make up their minds to begin
the struggle, but tried to deceive themselves as long as possible
by a system of compromises and concessions. Lepidus also on his
part at first entered into it. The suggestion, which proposed
a restoration of the prerogatives taken away from the tribunes
of the people, he as well as his colleague Catulus repelled.
On the other hand, the Gracchan distribution of grain
was to a limited extent re-established. According to it not all
(as according to the Sempronian law) but only a definite number--
presumably 40,000--of the poorer burgesses appear to have received
the earlier largesses, as Gracchus had fixed them, of five -modii-
monthly at the price of 6 1/3 -asses- (3 pence)--a regulation
which occasioned to the treasury an annual net loss of at least
40,000 pounds.(19) The opposition, naturally as little satisfied
as it was decidedly emboldened by this partial concession, displayed
all the more rudeness and violence in the capital; and in Etruria,
the true centre of all insurrections of the Italian proletariate,
civil war already broke out, the dispossessed Faesulans resumed
possession of their lost estates by force of arms, and several
of the veterans settled there by Sulla perished in the tumult.
The senate on learning what had occurred resolved to send the two consuls
thither, in order to raise troops and suppress the insurrection.(20)
It was impossible to adopt a more irrational course. The senate,
in presence of the insurrection, evinced its pusillanimity
and its fears by the re-establishment of the corn-law; in order
to be relieved from a street-riot, it furnished the notorious
head of the insurrection with an army; and, when the two consuls
were bound by the most solemn oath which could be contrived not to turn
the arms entrusted to them against each other, it must have required
the superhuman obduracy of oligarchic consciences to think of erecting
such a bulwark against the impending insurrection. Of course Lepidus
armed in Etruria not for the senate, but for the insurrection--
sarcastically declaring that the oath which he had taken bound him
only for the current year. The senate put the oracular machinery
in motion to induce him to return, and committed to him the conduct
of the impending consular elections; but Lepidus evaded compliance,
and, while messengers passed to and fro and the official year drew
to an end amidst proposals of accommodation, his force swelled to an army.
When at length, in the beginning of the following year (677),
the definite order of the senate was issued to Lepidus to return
without delay, the proconsul haughtily refused obedience,
and demanded in his turn the renewal of the former tribunician power,
the reinstatement of those who had been forcibly ejected
from their civic rights and their property, and, besides this,
his own re-election as consul for the current year or, in other words,
the -tyrannis- in legal form.
Outbreak of the War
Lepidus Defeated
Death of Lepidus
Thus war was declared. The senatorial party could reckon, in addition to
the Sullan veterans whose civil existence was threatened by Lepidus,
upon the army assembled by the proconsul Catulus; and so, in compliance
with the urgent warnings of the more sagacious, particularly of Philippus,
Catulus was entrusted by the senate with the defence of the capital
and the repelling of the main force of the democratic party stationed
in Etruria. At the same time Gnaeus Pompeius was despatched with another
corps to wrest from his former protege the valley of the Po, which was held
by Lepidus' lieutenant, Marcus Brutus. While Pompeius speedily
accomplished his commission and shut up the enemy's general closely
in Mutina, Lepidus appeared before the capital in order to conquer
it for the revolution as Marius had formerly done by storm.
The right bank of the Tiber fell wholly into his power, and he was able
even to cross the river. The decisive battle was fought
on the Campus Martius, close under the walls of the city.
But Catulus conquered; and Lepidus was compelled to retreat to Etruria,
while another division, under his son Scipio, threw itself
into the fortress of Alba. Thereupon the rising was substantially
atan end. Mutina surrendered to Pompeius; and Brutus was,
notwithstanding the safe-conduct promised to him, subsequently
put to death by order of that general. Alba too was, after a long siege,
reduced by famine, and the leader there was likewise executed.
Lepidus, pressed on two sides by Catulus and Pompeius, fought another
engagement on the coast of Etruria in order merely to procure
the means of retreat, and then embarked at the port of Cosa for Sardinia
from which point he hoped to cut off the supplies of the capital,
and to obtain communication with the Spanish insurgents.
But the governor of the island opposed to him a vigorous resistance;
and he himself died, not long after his landing, of consumption (677),
whereupon the war in Sardinia came to an end. A part of his soldiers
dispersed; with the flower of the insurrectionary army
and with a well-filled chest the late praetor, Marcus Perpenna,
proceeded to Liguria, and thence to Spain to join the Sertorians.
Pompeius Extorts the Command in Spain
The oligarchy was thus victorious over Lepidus; but it found itself
compelled by the dangerous turn of the Sertorian war to concessions,
which violated the letter as well as the spirit of the Sullan
constitution. It was absolutely necessary to send a strong
army and an able general to Spain; and Pompeius indicated,
very plainly, that he desired, or rather demanded, this commission.
The pretension was bold. It was already bad enough that they
had allowed this secret opponent again to attain an extraordinary
command in the pressure of the Lepidian revolution; but it was far
more hazardous, in disregard of all the rules instituted by Sulla
for the magisterial hierarchy, to invest a man who had hitherto
filled no civil office with one of the most important ordinary
provincial governorships, under circumstances in which the observance
of the legal term of a year was not to be thought of.
The oligarchy had thus, even apart from the respect due to their
general Metellus, good reason to oppose with all earnestness
this new attempt of the ambitious youth to perpetuate his exceptional
position. But this was not easy. In the first place, they had
not a single man fitted for the difficult post of general in Spain.
Neither of the consuls of the year showed any desire to measure
himself against Sertorius; and what Lucius Philippus said in a full
meeting of the senate had to be admitted as too true--that, among
all the senators of note, not one was able and willing to command
in a serious war. Yet they might, perhaps, have got over this,
and after the manner of oligarchs, when they had no capable candidate,
have filled the place with some sort of makeshift, if Pompeius had
merely desired the command and had not demanded it at the head
of an army. He had already lent a deaf ear to the injunctions
of Catulus that he should dismiss the army; it was at least doubtful
whether those of the senate would find a better reception,
and the consequences of a breach no one could calculate--
the scale of aristocracy might very easily mount up, if the sword
of a well-known general were thrown into the opposite scale.
So the majority resolved on concession. Not from the people,
which constitutionally ought to have been consulted in a case
where a private man was to be invested with the supreme magisterial
power, but from the senate, Pompeius received proconsular authority
and the chief command in Hither Spain; and, forty days after he had
received it, crossed the Alps in the summer of 677.
Pompeius in Gaul
First of all the new general found employment in Gaul,
where no formal insurrection had broken out, but serious disturbances
of the peace had occurred at several places; in consequence
of which Pompeius deprived the cantons of the Volcae-Arecomici
and the Helvii of their independence, and placed them under Massilia.
He also laid out a new road over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre,(21)),
and so established a shorter communication between the valley
of the Po and Gaul. Amidst this work the best season of the year
passed away; it was not till late in autumn that Pompeius crossed
the Pyrenees.
Appearance of Pompeius in Spain
Sertorius had meanwhile not been idle. He had despatched
Hirtuleius into the Further province to keep Metellus in check,
and had himself endeavoured to follow up his complete victory
in the Hither province, and to prepare for the reception of Pompeius.
The isolated Celtiberian towns there, which still adhered to Rome,
were attacked and reduced one after another; at last, in the very
middle of winter, the strong Contrebia (south-east of Saragossa)
had fallen. In vain the hard-pressed towns had sent message
after message to Pompeius; he would not be induced by any entreaties
to depart from his wonted rut of slowly advancing. With the exception
of the maritime towns, which were defended by the Roman fleet,
and the districts of the Indigetes and Laletani in the north-east
corner of Spain, where Pompeius established himself after he had
at length crossed the Pyrenees, and made his raw troops bivouac
throughout the winter to inure them to hardships, the whole
of Hither Spain had at the end of 677 become by treaty or force
dependent on Sertorius, and the district on the upper and middle
Ebro thenceforth continued the main stay of his power. Even
the apprehension, which the fresh Roman force and the celebrated name
of the general excited in the army of the insurgents, had a salutary
effect on it. Marcus Perpenna, who hitherto as the equal
of Sertorius in rank had claimed an independent command over the force
which he had brought with him from Liguria, was, on the news
of the arrival of Pompeius in Spain, compelled by his soldiers
to place himself under the orders of his abler colleague.
For the campaign of 678 Sertorius again employed the corps
of Hirtuleius against Metellus, while Perpenna with a strong army
took up his position along the lower course of the Ebro to prevent
Pompeius from crossing the river, if he should march, as was
to be expected, in a southerly direction with the view of effecting
a junction with Metellus, and along the coast for the sake
of procuring supplies for his troops. The corps of Gaius Herennius
was destined to the immediate support of Perpenna; farther inland
on the upper Ebro, Sertorius in person prosecuted meanwhile
the subjugation of several districts friendly to Rome, and held himself
at the same time ready to hasten according to circumstances
to the aid of Perpenna or Hirtuleius. It was still his intention
to avoid any pitched battle, and to annoy the enemy by petty
conflicts and cutting off supplies.
Pompeius Defeated
Pompeius, however, forced the passage of the Ebro against Perpenna
and took up a position on the river Pallantias, near Saguntum,
whence, as we have already said, the Sertorians maintained their
communications with Italy and the east. It was time that Sertorius
should appear in person, and throw the superiority of his numbers
and of his genius into the scale against the greater excellence
of the soldiers of his opponent. For a considerable time the struggle
was concentrated around the town of Lauro (on the Xucar, south
of Valencia), which had declared for Pompeius and was on that account
besieged by Sertorius. Pompeius exerted himself to the utmost
to relieve it; but, after several of his divisions had already been
assailed separately and cut to pieces, the great warrior found
himself--just when he thought that he had surrounded the Sertorians,
and when he had already invited the besieged to be spectators
of the capture of the besieging army--all of a sudden completely
outmanoeuvred; and in order that he might not be himself
surrounded, he had to look on from his camp at the capture
and reduction to ashes of the allied town and at the carrying off
of its inhabitants to Lusitania--an event which induced a number
of towns that had been wavering in middle and eastern Spain
to adhere anew to Sertorius.
Victories of Metellus
Meanwhile Metellus fought with better fortune. In a sharp
engagement at Italica (not far from Seville), which Hirtuleius had
imprudently risked, and in which both generals fought hand to hand
and Hirtuleius was wounded, Metellus defeated him and compelled him
to evacuate the Roman territory proper, and to throw himself
into Lusitania. This victory permitted Metellus to unite with Pompeius.
The two generals took up their winter-quarters in 678-79
at the Pyrenees, and in the next campaign in 679 they resolved
to make a joint attack on the enemy in his position near Valentia.
But while Metellus was advancing, Pompeius offered battle beforehand
to the main army of the enemy, with a view to wipe out the stain
of Lauro and to gain the expected laurels, if possible, alone.
With joy Sertorius embraced the opportunity of fighting with Pompeius
before Metellus arrived.
Battle on the Sucro
The armies met on the river Sucro (Xucar): after a sharp conflict
Pompeius was beaten on the right wing, and was himself carried
from the field severely wounded. Afranius no doubt conquered
with the left and took the camp of the Sertorians, but during its pillage
he was suddenly assailed by Sertorius and compelled also to give way.
Had Sertorius been able to renew the battle on the following
day, the army of Pompeius would perhaps have been annihilated.
But meanwhile Metellus had come up, had overthrown the corps
of Perpenna ranged against him, and taken his camp: it was not
possible to resume the battle against the two armies united. The
successes of Metellus, the junction of the hostile forces, the
sudden stagnation after the victory, diffused terror among the
Sertorians; and, as not unfrequently happened with Spanish armies,
in consequence of this turn of things the greater portion
of the Sertorian soldiers dispersed. But the despondency passed away
as quickly as it had come; the white fawn, which represented
in the eyes of the multitude the military plans of the general,
was soon more popular than ever; in a short time Sertorius appeared
with a new army confronting the Romans in the level country
to the south of Saguntum (Murviedro), which firmly adhered to Rome,
while the Sertorian privateers impeded the Roman supplies by sea,
and scarcity was already making itself felt in the Roman camp.
Another battle took place in the plains of the river Turia
(Guadalaviar), and the struggle was long undecided. Pompeius
with the cavalry was defeated by Sertorius, and his brother-in-law
and quaestor, the brave Lucius Memmius, was slain; on the other hand
Metellus vanquished Perpenna, and victoriously repelled the attack
of the enemy's main army directed against him, receiving himself
a wound in the conflict. Once more the Sertorian army dispersed.
Valentia, which Gaius Herennius held for Sertorius, was taken
and razed to the ground. The Romans, probably for a moment,
cherished a hope that they were done with their tough antagonist.
The Sertorian army had disappeared; the Roman troops, penetrating
far into the interior, besieged the general himself in the fortress
Clunia on the upper Douro. But while they vainly invested
this rocky stronghold, the contingents of the insurgent communities
assembled elsewhere; Sertorius stole out of the fortress and even
before the expiry of the year stood once more as general
at the head of an army.
Again the Roman generals had to take up their winter quarters
with the cheerless prospect of an inevitable renewal of their Sisyphean
war-toils. It was not even possible to choose quarters in the region
of Valentia, so important on account of the communication with Italy
and the east, but fearfully devastated by friend and foe;
Pompeius led his troops first into the territory of the Vascones(22)
(Biscay) and then spent the winter in the territory of the Vaccaei
(about Valladolid), and Metellus even in Gaul.
Indefinite and Perilous Character of the Sertorian War
For five years the Sertorian war thus continued, and still
there seemed no prospect of its termination. The state suffered
from it beyond description. The flower of the Italian youth perished
amid the exhausting fatigues of these campaigns. The public treasury
was not only deprived of the Spanish revenues, but had annually
to send to Spain for the pay and maintenance of the Spanish armies
very considerable sums, which the government hardly knew how
to raise. Spain was devastated and impoverished, and the Roman
civilization, which unfolded so fair a promise there, received
a severe shock; as was naturally to be expected in the case
ofan insurrectionary war waged with so much bitterness,
and but too often occasioning the destruction of whole communities.
Even the towns which adhered to the dominant party in Rome had countless
hardships to endure; those situated on the coast had to be provided
with necessaries by the Roman fleet, and the situation of the faithful
communities in the interior was almost desperate. Gaul suffered
hardly less, partly from the requisitions for contingents
of infantry and cavalry, for grain and money, partly
from the oppressive burden of the winter-quarters, which rose
to an intolerable degree in consequence of the bad harvest of 680;
almost all the local treasuries were compelled to betake themselves
to the Roman bankers, and to burden themselves with a crushing load
of debt. Generals and soldiers carried on the war with reluctance.
The generals had encountered an opponent far superior in talent,
a tough and protracted resistance, a warfare of very serious perils
and of successes difficult to be attained and far from brilliant;
it was asserted that Pompeius was scheming to get himself recalled
from Spain and entrusted with a more desirable command somewhere
else. The soldiers, too, found little satisfaction in a campaign
in which not only was there nothing to be got save hard blows
and worthless booty, but their very pay was doled out to them
with extreme irregularity. Pompeius reported to the senate, at the end
of 679, that the pay was two years in arrear, and that the army
was threatening to break up. The Roman government might certainly
have obviated a considerable portion of these evils, if they could have
prevailed on themselves to carry on the Spanish war with less
remissness, to say nothing of better will. In the main, however,
it was neither their fault nor the fault of their generals
that a genius so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on
this petty warfare year after year, despite of all numerical
and military superiority, on ground so thoroughly favourable
to insurrectionary and piratical warfare. So little could its end
be foreseen, that the Sertorian insurrection seemed rather
as if it would become intermingled with other contemporary revolts
and thereby add to its dangerous character. Just at that time
the Romans were contending on every sea with piratical fleets,
in Italy with the revolted slaves, in Macedonia with the tribes
on the lower Danube; and in the east Mithradates, partly induced
by the successes of the Spanish insurrection, resolved once more
to try the fortune of arms. That Sertorius had formed connections
with the Italian and Macedonian enemies of Rome, cannot be distinctly
affirmed, although he certainly was in constant intercourse
with the Marians in Italy. With the pirates, on the other hand,
he had previously formed an avowed league, and with the Pontic king--
with whom he had long maintained relations through the medium
of the Roman emigrants staying at his court--he now concluded
a formal treaty of alliance, in which Sertorius ceded to the king
the client-states of Asia Minor, but not the Roman province of Asia,
and promised, moreover, to send him an officer qualified to lead
his troops, and a number of soldiers, while the king, in turn,
bound himself to transmit to Sertorius forty ships and 3000 talents
(720,000 pounds). The wise politicians in the capital were already
recalling the time when Italy found itself threatened by Philip
from the east and by Hannibal from the west; they conceived
that the new Hannibal, just like his predecessor, after having
by himself subdued Spain, could easily arrive with the forces
of Spain in Italy sooner than Pompeius, in order that,
like the Phoenician formerly, he might summon the Etruscans
and Samnites to arms against Rome.
Collapse of the Power of Sertorius
But this comparison was more ingenious than accurate. Sertorius
was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise
of Hannibal. He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes
were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people;
and even there he was more and more compelled to renounce
the offensive. His admirable skill as a leader could not change
the nature of his troops. The Spanish militia retained its character,
untrustworthy as the wave or the wind; now collected in masses
to the number of 150,000, now melting away again to a mere handful.
The Roman emigrants, likewise, continued insubordinate, arrogant,
and stubborn. Those kinds of armed force which require that a corps
should keep together for a considerable time, such as cavalry
especially, were of course very inadequately represented
in his army. The war gradually swept off his ablest officers
and the flower of his veterans; and even the most trustworthy
communities, weary of being harassed by the Romans and maltreated
by the Sertorian officers, began to show signs of impatience
and wavering allegiance. It is remarkable that Sertorius,
in this respect also like Hannibal, never deceived himself
as to the hopelessness of his position; he allowed no opportunity
for bringing about a compromise to pass, and would have been ready
at any moment to lay down his staff of command on the assurance
of being allowed to live peacefully in his native land.
But political orthodoxy knows nothing of compromise and conciliation.
Sertorius might not recede or step aside; he was compelled inevitably
to move on along the path which he had once entered, however narrow
and giddy it might become.
The representations which Pompeius addressed to Rome, and which
derived emphasis from the behaviour of Mithradates in the east,
were successful. He had the necessary supplies of money sent
to him by the senate and was reinforced by two fresh legions.
Thus the two generals went to work again in the spring of 680
and once more crossed the Ebro. Eastern Spain was wrested
from the Sertorians in consequence of the battles on the Xucar
and Guadalaviar; the struggle thenceforth became concentrated
on the upper and middle Ebro around the chief strongholds
of the Sertorians--Calagurris, Osca, Ilerda. As Metellus had done
best in the earlier campaigns, so too on this occasion he gained
the most important successes. His old opponent Hirtuleius, who again
confronted him, was completely defeated and fell himself along with
his brother--an irreparable loss for the Sertorians. Sertorius,
whom the unfortunate news reached just as he was on the point
of assailing the enemy opposed to him, cut down the messenger,
that the tidings might not discourage his troops; but the news
could not be long concealed. One town after another surrendered,
Metellus occupied the Celtiberian towns of Segobriga (between Toledo
and Cuenca) and Bilbilis (near Calatayud). Pompeius besieged
Pallantia (Palencia above Valladolid), but Sertorius relieved it,
and compelled Pompeius to fall back upon Metellus; in front
of Calagurris (Calahorra, on the upper Ebro), into which Sertorius
had thrown himself, they both suffered severe losses. Nevertheless,
when they went into winter-quarters--Pompeius to Gaul, Metellus
to his own province--they were able to look back on considerable
results; a great portion of the insurgents had submitted or had
been subdued by arms.
In a similar way the campaign of the following year (681) ran
its course; in this case it was especially Pompeius who slowly
but steadily restricted the field of the insurrection.
Internal Dissension among the Sertorians
The discomfiture sustained by the arms of the insurgents failed
not to react on the tone of feeling in their camp. The military
successes of Sertorius became like those of Hannibal, of necessity
less and less considerable; people began to call in question
his military talent: he was no longer, it was alleged,
what he had been; he spent the day in feasting or over his cups,
and squandered money as well as time. The number of the deserters,
and of communities falling away, increased. Soon projects formed
by the Roman emigrants against the life of the general were reported
to him; they sounded credible enough, especially as various officers
of the insurgent army, and Perpenna in particular, had submitted
with reluctance to the supremacy of Sertorius, and the Roman
governors had for long promised amnesty and a high reward to any
one who should kill him. Sertorius, on hearing such allegations,
withdrew the charge of guarding his person from the Roman soldiers
and entrusted it to select Spaniards. Against the suspected
themselves he proceeded with fearful but necessary severity,
and condemned various of the accused to death without resorting,
as in other cases, to the advice of his council; he was now
more dangerous--it was thereupon affirmed in the circles
of the malcontents--to his friends than to his foes.
Assassination of Sertorius
A second conspiracy was soon discovered, which had its seat
in his own staff; whoever was denounced had to take flight or die;
but all were not betrayed, and the remaining conspirators,
including especially Perpenna, found in the circumstances only
a new incentive to make haste. They were in the headquarters
at Osca. There, on the instigation of Perpenna, a brilliant victory
was reported to the general as having been achieved by his troops;
and at the festal banquet arranged by Perpenna to celebrate
this victory Sertorius accordingly appeared, attended, as was his wont,
by his Spanish retinue. Contrary to former custom in the Sertorian
headquarters, the feast soon became a revel; wild words passed
at table, and it seemed as if some of the guests sought opportunity
to begin an altercation. Sertorius threw himself back on his couch,
and seemed desirous not to hear the disturbance. Then a wine-cup
was dashed on the floor; Perpenna had given the concerted sign.
Marcus Antonius, Sertorius' neighbour at table, dealt the first
blow against him, and when Sertorius turned round and attempted
to rise, the assassin flung himself upon him and held him down
till the other guests at table, all of them implicated
in the conspiracy, threw themselves on the struggling pair,
and stabbed he defenceless general while his arms were pinioned (682).
With him died his faithful attendants. So ended one of the greatest
men, if not the very greatest man, that Rome had hitherto produced--
a man who under more fortunate circumstances would perhaps
have become the regenerator of his country--by the treason
of the wretched band of emigrants whom he was condemned to lead against
his native land. History loves not the Coriolani; nor has she made
any exception even in the case of this the most magnanimous,
most gifted, most deserving to be regretted of them all.
Perpenna Succeeds Sertorius
The murderers thought to succeed to the heritage of the murdered.
After the death of Sertorius, Perpenna, as the highest among
the Roman officers of the Spanish army, laid claim to the chief
command. The army submitted, but with mistrust and reluctance.
However men had murmured against Sertorius in his lifetime, death
reinstated the hero in his rights, and vehement was the indignation
of the soldiers when, on the publication of his testament, the name
of Perpenna was read forth among the heirs. A part of the soldiers,
especially the Lusitanians, dispersed; the remainder had a presentiment
that with the death of Sertorius their spirit and their
fortune had departed.
Pompeius Puts an End to the Insurrection