of the Sullan restoration. No one of the movements, external
or internal, which occurred during this period--neither the insurrection
of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars
in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings
of the pirates and the slaves--constituted of itself a mighty danger
necessarily affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet
the state had in all these struggles well-nigh fought for its
very existence. The reason was that the tasks were everywhere
left unperformed, so long as they might still have been performed
with ease; the neglect of the simplest precautionary measures produced
the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed
dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing
of equality. The democracy and the servile insurrection
were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor
was neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them.
It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals
of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked
by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief
Sertorius and his Spanish guerillas, and that it was only
the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian war in favour
of the legitimate government. As to the slaves, it was far less
an honour to have conquered them than a disgrace to have confronted
them in equal strife for years. Little more than a century had
elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush
to the cheek of the honourable Roman, when he reflected
on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age.
Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans
of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before
the bludgeons of their runaway serfs. Then every plain captain
acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success,
but always with honour; now it was difficult to find among
all the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency.
Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough
rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were
on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired,
merely that they might be able to defend themselves against
the insurgent slaves at home. Spartacus too as well as Hannibal
had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian straits,
beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with blockade;
the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity
to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken
against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti.
Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories
over insurgents and robber-chiefs?
The external wars, however, had produced a result still less
gratifying. It is true that the Thraco-Macedonian war had yielded
a result not directly unfavourable, although far from corresponding
to the considerable expenditure of men and money. In the wars
in Asia Minor and with the pirates on the other hand, the government
had exhibited utter failure. The former ended with the loss
of the whole conquests made in eight bloody campaigns, the latter
with the total driving of the Romans from "their own sea." Once Rome,
fully conscious of the irresistibleness of her power by land,
had transferred her superiority also to the other element;
now the mighty state was powerless at sea and, as it seemed,
on the point of also losing its dominion at least over the Asiatic
continent. The material benefits which a state exists to confer--
security of frontier, undisturbed peaceful intercourse, legal protection,
and regulated administration--began all of them to vanish for the whole
of the nations united in the Roman state; the gods of blessing
seemed all to have mounted up to Olympus and to have left
the miserable earth at the mercy of the officially called or volunteer
plunderers and tormentors. Nor was this decay of the state felt
as a public misfortune merely perhaps by such as had political rights
and public spirit; the insurrection of the proletariate,
and the brigandage and piracy which remind us of the times
of the Neapolitan Ferdinands, carried the sense of this decay
into the remotest valley and the humblest hut of Italy, and made
every one who pursued trade and commerce, or who bought
even a bushel of wheat, feel it as a personal calamity.
If inquiry was made as to the authors of this dreadful and unexampled
misery, it was not difficult to lay the blame of it with good
reason on many. The slaveholders whose heart was in their
money-bags, the insubordinate soldiers, the generals cowardly,
incapable, or foolhardy, the demagogues of the market-place mostly
pursuing a mistaken aim, bore their share of the blame; or,
to speak more truly, who was there that did not share in it?
It was instinctively felt that this misery, this disgrace, this disorder
were too colossal to be the work of any one man. As the greatness
of the Roman commonwealth was the work not of prominent individuals,
but rather of a soundly-organized burgess-body, so the decay
of this mighty structure was the result not of the destructive genius
of individuals, but of a general disorganization. The great majority
of the burgesses were good for nothing, and every rotten stone
in the building helped to bring about the ruin of the whole; the whole
nation suffered for what was the whole nation's fault. It was unjust
to hold the government, as the ultimate tangible organ of the state,
responsible for all its curable and incurable diseases; but it certainly
was true that the government contributed after a very grave fashion
to the general culpability. In the Asiatic war, for example,
where no individual of the ruling lords conspicuously failed,
and Lucullus, in a military point of view at least, behaved with ability
and even glory, it was all the more clear that the blame of failure lay
in the system and in the government as such--primarily, so far
as that war was concerned, in the remissness with which Cappadocia
and Syria were at first abandoned, and in the awkward position
of the able general with reference to a governing college incapable
of any energetic resolution. In maritime police likewise
the true idea which the senate had taken up as to a general hunting
out of the pirates was first spoilt by it in the execution
and then totally dropped, in order to revert to the old foolish system
of sending legions against the coursers of the sea. The expeditions
of Servilius and Marcius to Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete,
were undertaken on this system; and in accordance with it Triarius
had the island of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against
the pirates. Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas remind
us of that Persian great-king, who ordered the sea to be scourged
with rods to make it subject to him. Doubtless therefore
the nation had good reason for laying the blame of its failure
primarily on the government of the restoration. A similar misrule
had indeed always come along with the re-establishment
of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that
of Marius and Saturninus; yet never before had it shown such violence
and at the same time such laxity, never had it previously emerged
so corrupt and pernicious. But, when a government cannot govern,
it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also
the right to overthrow it. It is, no doubt, unhappily true
that an incapable and flagitious government may for a long period trample
under foot the welfare and honour of the land, before the men are
found who are able and willing to wield against that government
the formidable weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of
the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolution
which is in such a case legitimate. But if the game attempted
with the fortunes of nations may be a merry one and may be played
perhaps for a long time without molestation, it is a treacherous
game, which in its own time entraps the players; and no one then
blames the axe, if it is laid to the root of the tree that bears
such fruits. For the Roman oligarchy this time had now come.
The Pontic-Armenian war and the affair of the pirates became
the proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan constitution
and of the establishment of a revolutionary military dictatorship.
CHAPTER III
The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius
Continued Subsistence of the Sullan Constitution
The Sullan constitution still stood unshaken. The assault,
which Lepidus and Sertorius had ventured to make on it,
had been repulsed with little loss. The government had neglected,
it is true, to finish the half-completed building in the energetic
spirit of its author. It is characteristic of the government,
that it neither distributed the lands which Sulla had destined
for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned
the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional
possession without regulating their title, and indeed even allowed
various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be
arbitrarily taken possession of by individuals according
to the old system of occupation, which was de jure and de facto
set aside by the Gracchan reforms.(1) Whatever in the Sullan enactments
was indifferent or inconvenient for the Optimates, was without scruple
ignored or cancelled; for instance, the sentences under which whole
communities were deprived of the right of citizenship, the prohibition
against conjoining the new farms, and several of the privileges
conferred by Sulla on particular communities--of course, without
giving back to the communities the sums paid for these exemptions.
But though these violations of the ordinances of Sulla by the government
itself contributed to shake the foundations of his structure,
the Sempronian laws were substantially abolished and remained so.
Attacks of the Democracy
Corn-Laws
Attempts to Restore the Tribunician Power
There was no lack, indeed, of men who had in view the re-establishment
of the Gracchan constitution, or of projects to attain piecemeal
in the way of constitutional reform what Lepidus and Sertorius
had attempted by the path of revolution. The government
had already under the pressure of the agitation of Lepidus
immediately after the death of Sulla consented to a limited revival
of the largesses of grain (676); and it did, moreover,
what it could to satisfy the proletariate of the capital in regard
to this vital question. When, notwithstanding those distributions,
the high price of grain occasioned chiefly by piracy produced
so oppressive a dearth in Rome as to lead to a violent tumult
in the streets in 679, extraordinary purchases of Sicilian grain
on account of the government relieved for the time the most severe
distress; and a corn-law brought in by the consuls of 681 regulated
for the future the purchases of Sicilian grain and furnished
the government, although at the expense of the provincials,
with better means of obviating similar evils. But the less material
points of difference also--the restoration of the tribunician power
in its old compass, and the setting aside of the senatorial tribunals--
ceased not to form subjects of popular agitation; and in their
case the government offered more decided resistance. The dispute
regarding the tribunician magistracy was opened as early as 678,
immediately after the defeat of Lepidus, by the tribune of the people
Lucius Sicinius, perhaps a descendant of the man of the same
name who had first filled this office more than four hundred years
before; but it failed before the resistance offered to it
by the active consul Gaius Curio. In 680 Lucius Quinctius resumed
the agitation, but was induced by the authority of the consul Lucius
Lucullus to desist from his purpose. The matter was taken up
in the following year with greater zeal by Gaius Licinius Macer, who--
in a way characteristic of the period--carried his literary studies
into public life, and, just as he had read in the Annals,
counselled the burgesses to refuse the conscription.
Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals
Complaints also, only too well founded, prevailed respecting
the bad administration of justice by the senatorial jurymen.
The condemnation of a man of any influence could hardly be obtained.
Not only did colleague feel reasonable compassion for colleague,
those who had been or were likely to be accused for the poor sinner
under accusation at the moment; the sale also of the votes
of jurymen was hardly any longer exceptional. Several senators
had been judicially convicted of this crime: men pointed
with the finger at others equally guilty; the most respected Optimates,
such as Quintus Catulus, granted in an open sitting of the senate
that the complaints were quite well founded; individual specially
striking cases compelled the senate on several occasions, e. g. in 680,
to deliberate on measures to check the venality of juries,
but only of course till the first outcry had subsided and the matter
could be allowed to slip out of sight. The consequences
of this wretched administration of justice appeared especially
in a system of plundering and torturing the provincials, compared
with which even previous outrages seemed tolerable and moderate.
Stealing and robbing had been in some measure legitimized by custom;
the commission on extortions might be regarded as an institution
for taxing the senators returning from the provinces for the benefit
of their colleagues that remained at home. But when an esteemed
Siceliot, because he had not been ready to help the governor
in a crime, was by the latter condemned to death in his absence
and unheard; when even Roman burgesses, if they were not equites
or senators, were in the provinces no longer safe from the rods
and axes of the Roman magistrate, and the oldest acquisition
of the Roman democracy--security of life and person--began to be
trodden under foot by the ruling oligarchy; then even the public
in the Forum at Rome had an ear for the complaints regarding
its magistrates in the provinces, and regarding the unjust judges
who morally shared the responsibility of such misdeeds. The opposition
of course did not omit to assail its opponents in--what was almost
the only ground left to it--the tribunals. The young Gaius Caesar,
who also, so far as his age allowed, took zealous part
in the agitation for the re-establishment of the tribunician power,
brought to trial in 677 one of the most respected partisans
of Sulla the consular Gnaeus Dolabella, and in the following year
another Sullan officer Gaius Antonius; and Marcus Cicero in 684
called to account Gaius Verres, one of the most wretched
of the creatures of Sulla, and one of the worst scourges
of the provincials. Again and again were the pictures
of that dark period of the proscriptions, the fearful sufferings
of the provincials, the disgraceful state of Roman criminal justice,
unfolded before the assembled multitude with all the pomp
of Italian rhetoric, and with all the bitterness of Italian sarcasm,
and the mighty dead as well as his living instruments were unrelentingly
exposed to their wrath and scorn. The re-establishment of the full
tribunician power, with the continuance of which the freedom,
might, and prosperity of the republic seemed bound up as by a charm
of primeval sacredness, the reintroduction of the "stern" equestrian
tribunals, the renewal of the censorship, which Sulla had set
aside, for the purifying of the supreme governing board
from its corrupt and pernicious elements, were daily demanded
with a loud voice by the orators of the popular party.
Want of Results from the Democratic Agitation
But with all this no progress was made. There was scandal
and outcry enough, but no real result was attained by this exposure
of the government according to and beyond its deserts. The material
power still lay, so long as there was no military interference,
in the hands of the burgesses of the capital; and the "people"
that thronged the streets of Rome and made magistrates and laws
in the Forum, was in fact nowise better than the governing senate.
The government no doubt had to come to terms with the multitude,
where its own immediate interest was at stake; this was the reason
for the renewal of the Sempronian corn-law. But it was not
to be imagined that this populace would have displayed earnestness
on behalf of an idea or even of a judicious reform. What Demosthenes
said of his Athenians was justly applied to the Romans
of this period--the people were very zealous for action, so long
as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms;
but when they went home, no one thought further of what he had
heard in the market-place. However those democratic agitators might
stir the fire, it was to no purpose, for the inflammable material
was wanting. The government knew this, and allowed no sort
of concession to be wrung from it on important questions
of principle; at the utmost it consented (about 682) to grant
amnesty to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus.
Any concessions that did take place, came not so much from the pressure
of the democracy as from the attempts at mediation of the moderate
aristocracy. But of the two laws which the single still surviving
leader of this section Gaius Cotta carried in his consulate of 679,
that which concerned the tribunals was again set aside
in the very next year; and the second, which abolished the Sullan
enactment that those who had held the tribunate should be disqualified
for undertaking other magistracies, but allowed the other limitations
to continue, merely--like every half-measure--excited the displeasure
of both parties.
The party of conservatives friendly to reform which lost
its most notable head by the early death of Cotta occurring soon
after (about 681) dwindled away more and more--crushed between
the extremes, which were becoming daily more marked. But of these
the party of the government, wretched and remiss as it was,
necessarily retained the advantage in presence of the equally
wretched and equally remiss opposition.
Quarrel between the Government and Their General Pompeius
But this state of matters so favourable to the government
was altered, when the differences became more distinctly developed
which subsisted between it and those of its partisans, whose hopes
aspired to higher objects than the seat of honour in the senate
and the aristocratic villa. In the first rank of these stood Gnaeus
Pompeius. He was doubtless a Sullan; but we have already shown(2)
how little he was at home among his own party, how his lineage,
his past history, his hopes separated him withal from the nobility
as whose protector and champion he was officially regarded.
The breach already apparent had been widened irreparably during
the Spanish campaigns of the general (677-683). With reluctance
and semi-compulsion the government had associated him as colleague
with their true representative Quintus Metellus; and in turn he accused
the senate, probably not without ground, of having by its careless
or malicious neglect of the Spanish armies brought about their
defeats and placed the fortunes of the expedition in jeopardy.
Now he returned as victor over his open and his secret foes,
at the head of an army inured to war and wholly devoted to him,
desiring assignments of land for his soldiers, a triumph
and the consulship for himself. The latter demands came into
collision with the law. Pompeius, although several times invested
in an extraordinary way with supreme official authority, had not yet
administered any ordinary magistracy, not even the quaestorship,
and was still not a member of the senate; and none but one
who had passed through the round of lesser ordinary magistracies
could become consul, none but one who had been invested
with the ordinary supreme power could triumph. The senate
was legally entitled, if he became a candidate for the consulship,
to bid him begin with the quaestorship; if he requested a triumph,
to remind him of the great Scipio, who under like circumstances
had renounced his triumph over conquered Spain. Nor was Pompeius
less dependent constitutionally on the good will of the senate
as respected the lands promised to his soldiers. But, although
the senate--as with its feebleness even in animosity
was very conceivable--should yield those points and concede
to the victorious general, in return for his executioner's service
against the democratic chiefs, the triumph, the consulate,
and the assignations of land, an honourable annihilation
in senatorial indolence among the long series of peaceful
senatorial Imperators was the most favourable lot which the oligarchy
was able to hold in readiness for the general of thirty-six.
That which his heart really longed for--the command
in the Mithradatic war--he could never expect to obtain
from the voluntary bestowal of the senate: in their own well-understood
interest the oligarchy could not permit him to add to his Africa
and European trophies those of a third continent; the laurels
which were to be plucked copiously and easily in the east were reserved
at all events for the pure aristocracy. But if the celebrated general
did not find his account in the ruling oligarchy, there remained--
for neither was the time ripe, nor was the temperament of Pompeius
at all fitted, for a purely personal outspoken dynastic policy--
no alternative save to make common cause with the democratic party.
No interest of his own bound him to the Sullan constitution;
he could pursue his personal objects quite as well, if not better,
with one more democratic. On the other hand he found all that he needed
in the democratic party. Its active and adroit leaders were ready
and able to relieve the resourceless and somewhat wooden hero
of the trouble of political leadership, and yet much too insignificant
to be able or even wishful to dispute with the celebrated general
the first place and especially the supreme military control. Even
Gaius Caesar, by far the most important of them, was simply a young
man whose daring exploits and fashionable debts far more than his
fiery democratic eloquence had gained him a name, and who could not
but feel himself greatly honoured when the world-renowned Imperator
allowed him to be his political adjutant. That popularity,
to which men like Pompeius, with pretensions greater than their
abilities, usually attach more value than they are willing
to confess to themselves, could not but fall in the highest measure
to the lot of the young general whose accession gave victory
to the almost forlorn cause of the democracy. The reward of victory
claimed by him for himself and his soldiers would then follow
of itself. In general it seemed, if the oligarchy were overthrown,
that amidst the total want of other considerable chiefs
of the opposition it would depend solely on Pompeius himself
to determine his future position. And of this much there could
hardly be a doubt, that the accession of the general of the army,
which had just returned victorious from Spain and still stood compact
and unbroken in Italy, to the party of opposition must have
as its consequence the fall of the existing order of things.
Government and opposition were equally powerless; so soon as
the latter no longer fought merely with the weapons of declamation,
but had the sword of a victorious general ready to back its demands,
the government would be in any case overcome, perhaps even
without a struggle.
Coalition of the Military Chiefs and the Democracy
Pompeius and the democrats thus found themselves urged
into coalition. Personal dislikings were probably not wanting
on either side: it was not possible that the victorious general
could love the street orators, nor could these hail with pleasure
as their chief the executioner of Carbo and Brutus; but political
necessity outweighed at least for the moment all moral scruples.
The democrats and Pompeius, however, were not the sole parties
to the league. Marcus Crassus was in a similar situation
with Pompeius. Although a Sullan like the latter, his politics
were quite as in the case of Pompeius preeminently of a personal kind,
and by no means those of the ruling oligarchy; and he too was now
in Italy at the head of a large and victorious army, with which
he had just suppressed the rising of the slaves. He had to choose
whether he would ally himself with the oligarchy against the coalition,
or enter that coalition: he chose the latter, which was doubtless
the safer course. With his colossal wealth and his influence
on the clubs of the capital he was in any case a valuable
ally; but under the prevailing circumstances it was an incalculable
gain, when the only army, with which the senate could have met
the troops of Pompeius, joined the attacking force. The democrats
moreover, who were probably somewhat uneasy at their alliance
with that too powerful general, were not displeased to see
a counterpoise and perhaps a future rival associated with him
in the person of Marcus Crassus.
Thus in the summer of 683 the first coalition took place between
the democracy on the one hand, and the two Sullan generals Gnaeus
Pompeius and Marcus Crassus on the other. The generals adopted
the party-programme of the democracy; and they were promised
immediately in return the consulship for the coming year, while
Pompeius was to have also a triumph and the desired allotments
of land for his soldiers, and Crassus as the conqueror of Spartacus
at least the honour of a solemn entrance into the capital.
To the two Italian armies, the great capitalists,
and the democracy, which thus came forward in league for the overthrow
of the Sullan constitution, the senate had nothing to oppose save
perhaps the second Spanish army under Quintus Metellus Pius.
But Sulla had truly predicted that what he did would not be done
a second time; Metellus, by no means inclined to involve himself
in a civil war, had discharged his soldiers immediately after crossing
the Alps. So nothing was left for the oligarchy but to submit
to what was inevitable. The senate granted the dispensations
requisite for the consulship and triumph; Pompeius and Crassus
were, without opposition, elected consuls for 684, while their
armies, on pretext of awaiting their triumph, encamped before
the city. Pompeius thereupon, even before entering on office,
gave his public and formal adherence to the democratic programme
in an assembly of the people held by the tribune Marcus Lollius
Palicanus. The change of the constitution was thus
in principle decided.
Re-establishing of the Tribunician Power
They now went to work in all earnest to set aside the Sullan
institutions. First of all the tribunician magistracy regained
its earlier authority. Pompeius himself as consul introduced the law
which gave back to the tribunes of the people their time-honoured
prerogatives, and in particular the initiative of legislation--
a singular gift indeed from the hand of a man who had done more than
any one living to wrest from the community its ancient privileges.
New Arrangement as to Jurymen
With respect to the position of jurymen, the regulation of Sulla,
that the roll of the senators was to serve as the list of jurymen,
was no doubt abolished; but this by no means led to a simple
restoration of the Gracchan equestrian courts. In future--so it
was enacted by the new Aurelian law--the colleges of jurymen
were to consist one-third of senators and two-thirds of men
of equestrian census, and of the latter the half must have rilled
the office of district-presidents, or so-called -tribuni aerarii-.
This last innovation was a farther concession made to the democrats,
inasmuch as according to it at least a third part of the criminal
jurymen were indirectly derived from the elections of the tribes.
The reason, again, why the senate was not totally excluded
from the courts is probably to be sought partly in the relations
of Crassus to the senate, partly in the accession of the senatorial
middle party to the coalition; with which is doubtless connected
the circumstance that this law was brought in by the praetor Lucius
Cotta, the brother of their lately deceased leader.
Renewal of the Asiatic Revenue-Farming
Not less important was the abolition of the arrangements
as to taxation established for Asia by Sulla,(3) which presumably
likewise fell to this year. The governor of Asia at that time,
Lucius Lucullus, was directed to reestablish the system of farming
the revenue introduced by Gaius Gracchus; and thus this important
source of money and power was restored to the great capitalists.
Renewal of the Censorship
Lastly, the censorship was revived. The elections for it,
which the new consuls fixed shortly after entering on their office,
fell, in evident mockery of the senate, on the two consuls of 682,
Gnaeus Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius, who had been removed
by the senate from their commands on account of their wretched
management of the war against Spartacus.(4) It may readily be conceived
that these men put in motion all the means which their important
and grave office placed at their command, for the purpose of doing
homage to the new-holders of power and of annoying the senate.
At least an eighth part of the senate, sixty-four senators, a number
hitherto unparalleled, were deleted from the roll, including Gaius
Antonius, formerly impeached without success by Gaius Caesar,(5)
and Publius Lentulus Sura, the consul of 683, and presumably also
not a few of the most obnoxious creatures of Sulla.
The New Constitution
Thus in 684 they had reverted in the main to the arrangements
that subsisted before the Sullan restoration.
Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state-chest,
in other words by the provinces;(6) again the tribunician authority
gave to every demagogue a legal license to overturn the arrangements
of the state; again the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue
and possessed of the judicial control over the governors, raised their
heads alongside of the government as powerfully as ever; again the senate
trembled before the verdict of jurymen of the equestrian order and before
the censorial censure. The system of Sulla, which had based the monopoly
of power by the nobility on the political annihilation of the mercantile
aristocracy and of demagogism, was thus completely overthrown.
Leaving out of view some subordinate enactments, the abolition
of which was not overtaken till afterwards, such as the restoration
of the right of self-completion to the priestly colleges,(7) nothing
of the general ordinances of Sulla survived except, on the one hand,
the concessions which he himself found it necessary to make
to the opposition, such as the recognition of the Roman franchise
of all the Italians, and, on the other hand, enactments without
any marked partisan tendency, and with which therefore even judicious
democrats found no fault--such as, among others, the restriction
of the freedmen, the regulation of the functional spheres
of the magistrates, and the material alterations in criminal law.
The coalition was more agreed regarding these questions
of principle than with respect to the personal questions which such
a political revolution raised. As might be expected, the democrats
were not content with the general recognition of their programme;
but they too now demanded a restoration in their sense--revival
of the commemoration of their dead, punishment of the murderers,
recall of the proscribed from exile, removal of the political
disqualification that lay on their children, restoration
of the estates confiscated by Sulla, indemnification at the expense
of the heirs and assistants of the dictator. These were certainly
the logical consequences which ensued from a pure victory
of the democracy; but the victory of the coalition of 683 was very far
from being such. The democracy gave to it their name and their
programme, but it was the officers who had joined the movement,
and above all Pompeius, that gave to it power and completion; and these
could never yield their consent to a reaction which would not only
have shaken the existing state of things to its foundations,
but would have ultimately turned against themselves--men still had
a lively recollection who the men were whose blood Pompeius had shed,
and how Crassus had laid the foundation of his enormous fortune.
It was natural therefore, but at the same time significant
of the weakness of the democracy, that the coalition of 683 took
not the slightest step towards procuring for the democrats revenge
or even rehabilitation. The supplementary collection of all
the purchase money still outstanding for confiscated estates
bought by auction, or even remitted to the purchasers by Sulla--
for which the censor Lentulus provided in a special law--
can hardly be regarded as an exception; for though not a few Sullans
were thereby severely affected in their personal interests,
yet the measure itself was essentially a confirmation
of the confiscations undertaken by Sulla.
Impending Miliatry Dictatorship of Pompeius
The work of Sulla was thus destroyed; but what the future order
of things was to be, was a question raised rather than decided by
that destruction. The coalition, kept together solely by the common
object of setting aside the work of restoration, dissolved
of itself, if not formally, at any rate in reality, when that object
was attained; while the question, to what quarter the preponderance
of power was in the first instance to fall, seemed approaching
an equally speedy and violent solution. The armies of Pompeius
and Crassus still lay before the gates of the city. The former had
indeed promised to disband his soldiers after his triumph (last day
of Dec. 683); but he had at first omitted to do so, in order to let
the revolution in the state be completed without hindrance
under the pressure which the Spanish army in front of the capital
exercised over the city and the senate--a course, which in like manner
applied to the army of Crassus. This reason now existed
no longer; but still the dissolution of the armies was postponed.
In the turn taken by matters it looked as if one of the two generals
allied with the democracy would seize the military dictatorship
and place oligarchs and democrats in the same chains. And this one
could only be Pompeius. From the first Crassus had played
a subordinate part in the coalition; he had been obliged to propose
himself, and owed even his election to the consulship mainly
to the proud intercession of Pompeius. Far the stronger, Pompeius
was evidently master of the situation; if he availed himself of it,
it seemed as if he could not but become what the instinct
of the multitude even now designated him--the absolute ruler
of the mightiest state in the civilized world. Already the whole mass
of the servile crowded around the future monarch. Already his weaker
opponents were seeking their last resource in a new coalition;
Crassus, full of old and recent jealousy towards the younger rival
who so thoroughly outstripped him, made approaches to the senate
and attempted by unprecedented largesses to attach to himself
the multitude of the capital--as if the oligarchy which Crassus himself
had helped to break down, and the ever ungrateful multitude,
would have been able to afford any protection whatever against
the veterans of the Spanish army. For a moment it seemed as if
the armies of Pompeius and Crassus would come to blows before
the gates of the capital.
Retirement of Pompeius
But the democrats averted this catastrophe by their sagacity
and their pliancy. For their party too, as well as for the senate
and Crassus, it was all-important that Pompeius should not seize
the dictatorship; but with a truer discernment of their own weakness
and of the character of their powerful opponent their leaders tried
the method of conciliation. Pompeius lacked no condition
for grasping at the crown except the first of all--proper kingly
courage. We have already described the man--with his effort to be
at once loyal republican and master of Rome, with his vacillation
and indecision, with his pliancy that concealed itself
under the boasting of independent resolution. This was the first
great trial to which destiny subjected him; and he failed to stand it.
The pretext under which Pompeius refused to dismiss the army was,
that he distrusted Crassus and therefore could not take the initiative
in disbanding the soldiers. The democrats induced Crassus to make
gracious advances in the matter, and to offer the hand of peace
to his colleague before the eyes of all; in public and in private they
besought the latter that to the double merit of having vanquished
the enemy and reconciled the parties he would add the third and yet
greater service of preserving internal peace to his country,
and banishing the fearful spectre of civil war with which
they were threatened. Whatever could tell on a vain, unskilful,
vacillating man--all the flattering arts of diplomacy, all the theatrical
apparatus of patriotic enthusiasm--was put in motion to obtain
the desired result; and--which was the main point--things had
by the well-timed compliance of Crassus assumed such a shape,
that Pompeius had no alternative but either to come forward openly
as tyrant of Rome or to retire. So he at length yielded and consented
to disband the troops. The command in the Mithradatic war,
which he doubtless hoped to obtain when he had allowed himself to be
chosen consul for 684, he could not now desire, since Lucullus
seemed to have practically ended that war with the campaign of 683.
He deemed it beneath his dignity to accept the consular province
assigned to him by the senate in accordance with the Sempronian
law, and Crassus in this followed his example. Accordingly
when Pompeius after discharging his soldiers resigned his consulship
on the last day of 684, he retired for the time wholly from public
affairs, and declared that he wished thenceforth to live a life
of quiet leisure as a simple citizen. He had taken up such a position
that he was obliged to grasp at the crown; and, seeing that he was
not willing to do so, no part was left to him but the empty one
of a candidate for a throne resigning his pretensions to it.
Senate, Equites, and Populares
The retirement of the man, to whom as things stood the first place
belonged, from the political stage reproduced in the first instance
nearly the same position of parties, which we found in the Gracchan
and Marian epochs. Sulla had merely strengthened the senatorial
government, not created it; so, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla
had fallen, the government nevertheless remained primarily
with the senate, although, no doubt, the constitution with which
it governed--in the main the restored Gracchan constitution--
was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the oligarchy. The democracy
had effected the re-establishment of the Gracchan constitution;
but without a new Gracchus it was a body without a head,
and that neither Pompeius nor Crassus could be permanently such a head,
was in itself clear and had been made still clearer by the recent
events. So the democratic opposition, for want of a leader
who could have directly taken the helm, had to content itself
for the time being with hampering and annoying the government
at every step. Between the oligarchy, however, and the democracy
there rose into new consideration the capitalist party,
which in the recent crisis had made common cause with the latter,
but which the oligarchs now zealously endeavoured to draw over
to their side, so as to acquire in it a counterpoise to the democracy.
Thus courted on both sides the moneyed lords did not neglect to turn
their advantageous position to profit, and to have the only one
of their former privileges which they had not yet regained--the fourteen
benches reserved for the equestrian order in the theatre--now (687)
restored to them by decree of the people. On the whole, without
abruptly breaking with the democracy, they again drew closer
to the government. The very relations of the senate to Crassus
and his clients point in this direction; but a better understanding
between the senate and the moneyed aristocracy seems to have been
chiefly brought about by the fact, that in 686 the senate withdrew
from Lucius Lucullus the ablest of the senatorial officers,
at the instance of the capitalists whom he had sorely annoyed,
the dministration of the province of Asia so important
for their purposes.(8)
The Events in the East, and Their Reaction on Rome
But while the factions of the capital were indulging in their
wonted mutual quarrels, which they were never able to bring
to any proper decision, events in the east followed their fatal course,
as we have already described; and it was these events that brought
the dilatory course of the politics of the capital to a crisis.
The war both by land and by sea had there taken a most unfavourable
turn. In the beginning of 687 the Pontic army of the Romans
was destroyed, and their Armenian army was utterly breaking up
on its retreat; all their conquests were lost, the sea was exclusively
in the power of the pirates, and the price of grain in Italy
was thereby so raised that they were afraid of an actual famine.
No doubt, as we saw, the faults of the generals, especially
the utter incapacity of the admiral Marcus Antonius and the temerity
of the otherwise able Lucius Lucullus, were in part the occasion
of these calamities; no doubt also the democracy had by its
revolutionary agitations materially contributed to the breaking up
of the Armenian army. But of course the government was now held
cumulatively responsible for all the mischief which itself
and others had occasioned, and the indignant hungry multitude
desired only an opportunity to settle accounts with the senate.
Reappearance of Pompeius
It was a decisive crisis. The oligarchy, though degraded
and disarmed, was not yet overthrown, for the management of public
affairs was still in the hands of the senate; but it would fall,
if its opponents should appropriate to themselves that management,
and more especially the superintendence of military affairs;
and now this was possible. If proposals for another and better
management of the war by land and sea were now submitted to the comitia,
the senate was obviously--looking to the temper of the burgesses--
not in a position to prevent their passing; and an interference
of the burgesses in these supreme questions of administration
was practically the deposition of the senate and the transference
of the conduct of the state to the leaders of opposition. Once more
the concatenation of events brought the decision into the hands
of Pompeius. For more than two years the famous general had lived
as a private citizen in the capital. His voice was seldom heard
in the senate-house or in the Forum; in the former he was unwelcome
and without decisive influence, in the latter he was afraid
of the stormy proceedings of the parties. But when he did show himself,
it was with the full retinue of his clients high and low,
and the very solemnity of his reserve imposed on the multitude.
If he, who was still surrounded with the full lustre of his extraordinary
successes, should now offer to go to the east, he would beyond
doubt be readily invested by the burgesses with all the plenitude
of military and political power which he might himself ask.
For the oligarchy, which saw in the political-military dictatorship
their certain ruin, and in Pompeius himself since the coalition
of 683 their most hated foe, this was an overwhelming blow;
but the democratic party also could have little comfort in the prospect.
However desirable the putting an end to the government of the senate
could not but be in itself, it was, if it took place in this way,
far less a victory for their party than a personal victory
for their over-powerful ally. In the latter there might easily arise
a far more dangerous opponent to the democratic party than the senate
had been. The danger fortunately avoided a few years before
by the disbanding of the Spanish army and the retirement of Pompeius
would recur in increased measure, if Pompeius should now be placed
at the head of the armies of the east.
Overthrow of the Senatorial Rule, and New Power of Pompeius
On this occasion, however, Pompeius acted or at least allowed
others to act in his behalf. In 687 two projects of law
were introduced, one of which, besides decreeing the discharge--
long since demanded by the democracy--of the soldiers of the Asiatic
army who had served their term, decreed the recall of its
commander-in-chief Lucius Lucullus and the supplying of his place
by one of the consuls of the current year, Gaius Piso or Manius
Glabrio; while the second revived and extended the plan proposed
seven years before by the senate itself for clearing the seas
from the pirates. A single general to be named by the senate
from the consulars was to be appointed, to hold by sea exclusive command
over the whole Mediterranean from the Pillars of Hercules to the coasts
of Pontus and Syria, and to exercise by land, concurrently
with the respective Roman governors, supreme command over the whole
coasts for fifty miles inland. The office was secured to him
for three years. He was surrounded by a staff, such as Rome
had never seen, of five-and-twenty lieutenants of senatorial rank,
all invested with praetorian insignia and praetorian powers,
and of two under-treasurers with quaestorian prerogatives, all of them
selected by the exclusive will of the general commanding-in-chief.
He was allowed to raise as many as 120,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry,
500 ships of war, and for this purpose to dispose absolutely
of the means of the provinces and client-states; moreover, the existing
vessels of war and a considerable number of troops were at once
handed over to him. The treasures of the state in the capital
and in the provinces as well as those of the dependent communities
were to be placed absolutely at his command, and in spite of the severe
financial distress a sum of; 1,400,000 pounds (144,000,000 sesterces)
was at once to be paid to him from the state-chest.
Effect of the Projects of Law
It is clear that by these projects of law, especially
by that which related to the expedition against the pirates,
the government of the senate was set aside. Doubtless the ordinary
supreme magistrates nominated by the burgesses were of themselves
the proper generals of the commonwealth, and the extraordinary
magistrates needed, at least according to strict law, confirmation
by the burgesses in order to act as generals; but in the appointment
to particular commands no influence constitutionally belonged
to the community, and it was only on the proposition of the senate,
or at any rate on that of a magistrate entitled in himself
to hold the office of general, that the comitia had hitherto
now and again interfered in this matter and conferred
such special functions. In this field, ever since there had existed
a Roman free state, the practically decisive voice pertained
to the senate, and this its prerogative had in the course of time
obtained full recognition. No doubt the democracy had already
assailed it; but even in the most doubtful of the cases which had
hitherto occurred--the transference of the African command
to Gaius Marius in 647(9)--it was only a magistrate constitutionally
entitled to hold the office of general that was entrusted
by the resolution of the burgesses with a definite expedition.
But now the burgesses were to invest any private man at their
pleasure not merely with the extraordinary authority of the supreme
magistracy, but also with a sphere of office definitely settled
by them. That the senate had to choose this man from the ranks
of the consulars, was a mitigation only in form; for the selection
was left to it simply because there was really no choice,
and in presence of the vehemently excited multitude the senate
could entrust the chief command of the seas and coasts to no other
save Pompeius alone. But more dangerous still than this negation
in principle of the senatorial control was its practical abolition
by the institution of an office of almost unlimited military
and financial powers. While the office of general was formerly
restricted to a term of one year, to a definite province,
and to military and financial resources strictly measured out,
the new extraordinary office had from the outset a duration
of three years secured to it--which of course did not exclude
a farther prolongation; had the greater portion of all the provinces,
and even Italy itself which was formerly free from military
jurisdiction, subordinated to it; had the soldiers, ships,
treasures of the state placed almost without restriction
at its disposal. Even the primitive fundamental principle
in the state-law of the Roman republic, which we have just mentioned--
that the highest military and civil authority could not be conferred
without the co-operation of the burgesses--was infringed in favour
of the new commander-in-chief. Inasmuch as the law conferred beforehand
on the twenty-five adjutants whom he was to nominate praetorian
rank and praetorian prerogatives,(10) the highest office
of republican Rome became subordinate to a newly created office,
for which it was left to the future to find the fitting name,
but which in reality even now involved in it the monarchy.
It was a total revolution in the existing order of things,
for which the foundation was laid in this project of law.
Pompeius and the Gabinian Laws
These measures of a man who had just given so striking proofs
of his vacillation and weakness surprise us by their decisive energy.
Nevertheless the fact that Pompeius acted on this occasion
more resolutely than during his consulate is very capable of explanation.
The point at issue was not that he should come forward at once
as monarch, but only that he should prepare the way for the monarchy
by a military exceptional measure, which, revolutionary
as it was in its nature, could still be accomplished under the forms
of the existing constitution, and which in the first instance
carried Pompeius so far on the way towards the old object
of his wishes, the command against Mithradates and Tigranes.
Important reasons of expediency also might be urged for the emancipation
of the military power from the senate. Pompeius could not
have forgotten that a plan designed on exactly similar
principles for the suppression of piracy had a few years before
failed through the mismanagement of the senate, and that the issue
of the Spanish war had been placed in extreme jeopardy by the neglect
of the armies on the part of the senate and its injudicious conduct
of the finances; he could not fail to see what were the feelings
with which the great majority of the aristocracy regarded
him as a renegade Sullan, and what fate was in store for him,
if he allowed himself to be sent as general of the government
with the usual powers to the east. It was natural therefore
that he should indicate a position independent of the senate
as the first condition of his undertaking the command,
and that the burgesses should readily agree to it. It is moreover
in a high degree probable that Pompeius was on this occasion urged
to more rapid action by those around him, who were, it may be presumed,
not a little indignant at his retirement two years before. The projects
of law regarding the recall of Lucullus and the expedition against
the pirates were introduced by the tribune of the people Aulus
Gabinius, a man ruined in finances and morals, but a dexterous
negotiator, a bold orator, and a brave soldier. Little as the assurance
of Pompeius, that he had no wish at all for the chief command
in the war with the pirates and only longed for domestic
repose, were meant in earnest, there was probably this much
of truth in them, that the bold and active client, who was
in confidential intercourse with Pompeius and his more immediate
circle and who completely saw through the situation and the men,
took the decision to a considerable extent out of the hands
of his shortsighted and resourceless patron.
The Parties in Relation to the Gabinian Laws
The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in secret,
could not well come publicly forward against the project of law.
It would, to all appearance, have been in no case able to hinder
the carrying of the law; but it would by opposition have openly
broken with Pompeius and thereby compelled him either to make
approaches to the oligarchy or regardlessly to pursue his personal
policy in the face of both parties. No course was left
to the democrats but still even now to adhere to their alliance
with Pompeius, hollow as it was, and to embrace the present opportunity
of at least definitely overthrowing the senate and passing over
from opposition into government, leaving the ulterior issue
to the future and to the well-known weakness of Pompeius' character.
Accordingly their leaders--the praetor Lucius Quinctius, the same
who seven years before had exerted himself for the restoration
of the tribunician power,(11) and the former quaestor Gaius Caesar--
supported the Gabinian proposals.
The privileged classes were furious--not merely the nobility,
but also the mercantile aristocracy, which felt its exclusive
rights endangered by so thorough a state-revolution and once
more recognized its true patron in the senate. When the tribune
Gabinius after the introduction of his proposals appeared
in the senate-house, the fathers of the city were almost on the point
of strangling him with their own hands, without considering in their
zeal how extremely disadvantageous for them this method of arguing
must have ultimately proved. The tribune escaped to the Forum
and summoned the multitude to storm the senate-house, when just
at the right time the sitting terminated. The consul Piso,
the champion of the oligarchy, who accidentally fell into the hands
of the multitude, would have certainly become a victim to popular fury,
had not Gabinius come up and, in order that his certain success
might not be endangered by unseasonable acts of violence, liberated
the consul. Meanwhile the exasperation of the multitude remained
undiminished and constantly found fresh nourishment in the high
prices of grain and the numerous rumours more or less absurd
which were in circulation--such as that Lucius Lucullus had invested
the money entrusted to him for carrying on the war at interest in Rome,
or had attempted with its aid to make the praetor Quinctius withdraw
from the cause of the people; that the senate intended to prepare
for the "second Romulus," as they called Pompeius, the fate
of the first,(12) and other reports of a like character.
The Vote
Thereupon the day of voting arrived. The multitude stood densely
packed in the Forum; all the buildings, whence the rostra could
be seen, were covered up to the roofs with men. All the colleagues
of Gabinius had promised their veto to the senate; but in presence
of the surging masses all were silent except the single Lucius
Trebellius, who had sworn to himself and the senate rather
to die than yield. When the latter exercised his veto,
Gabinius immediately interrupted the voting on his projects of law
and proposed to the assembled people to deal with his
refractory colleague, as Octavius had formerly been dealt with
on the proposition of Tiberius Gracchus,(13) namely, to depose him
immediately from office. The vote was taken and the reading
out of the voting tablets began; when the first seventeen tribes,
which came to be read out, had declared for the proposal
and the next affirmative vote would give to it the majority,
Trebellius, forgetting his oath, pusillanimously withdrew his veto.
In vain the tribune Otho then endeavoured to procure that at least
the collegiate principle might be preserved, and two generals
elected instead of one; in vain the aged Quintus Catulus,
the most respected man in the senate, exerted his last energies
to secure that the lieutenant-generals should not be nominated
by the commander-in-chief, but chosen by the people. Otho could
not even procure a hearing amidst the noise of the multitude;
the well-calculated complaisance of Gabinius procured a hearing
for Catulus, and in respectful silence the multitude listened
to the old man's words; but they were none the less thrown away.
The proposals were not merely converted into law with all the clauses
unaltered, but the supplementary requests in detail made by Pompeius
were instantaneously and completely agreed to.
Successes of Pompeius in the East
With high-strung hopes men saw the two generals Pompeius and Glabrio
depart for their places of destination. The price of grain
had fallen immediately after the passing of the Gabinian laws
to the ordinary rates--an evidence of the hopes attached to the grand
expedition and its glorious leader. These hopes were, as we shall
have afterwards to relate, not merely fulfilled, but surpassed:
in three months the clearing of the seas was completed.
Since the Hannibalic war the Roman government had displayed
no such energy in external action; as compared with the lax
and incapable administration of the oligarchy, the democratic--
military opposition had most brilliantly made good its title
to grasp and wield the reins of the state. The equally unpatriotic
and unskilful attempts of the consul Piso to put paltry obstacles
in the way of the arrangements of Pompeius for the suppression of piracy
in Narbonese Gaul only increased the exasperation of the burgesses
against the oligarchy and their enthusiasm for Pompeius; it was nothing
but the personal intervention of the latter, that prevented the assembly
of the people from summarily removing the consul from his office.
Meanwhile the confusion on the Asiatic continent had become still
worse. Glabrio, who was to take up in the stead of Lucullus
the chief command against Mithradates and Tigranes, had remained
stationary in the west of Asia Minor and, while instigating
the soldiers by various proclamations against Lucullus, had not entered
on the supreme command, so that Lucullus was forced to retain it.
Against Mithradates, of course, nothing was done; the Pontic
cavalry plundered fearlessly and with impunity in Bithynia
and Cappadocia. Pompeius had been led by the piratical war to proceed
with his army to Asia Minor; nothing seemed more natural than
to invest him with the supreme command in the Pontic-Armenian war,
to which he himself had long aspired. But the democratic party did
not, as may be readily conceived, share the wishes of its general,
and carefully avoided taking the initiative in the matter.
It is very probable that it had induced Gabinius not to entrust
both the war with Mithradates and that with the pirates from the outset
to Pompeius, but to entrust the former to Glabrio; upon no account
could it now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional
position of the already too-powerful general. Pompeius himself
retained according to his custom a passive attitude; and perhaps
he would in reality have returned home after fulfilling the commission
which he had received, but for the occurrence of an incident
unexpected by all parties.
The Manillian Law
One Gaius Manilius, an utterly worthless and insignificant man
had when tribune of the people by his unskilful projects of legislation
lost favour both with the aristocracy and with the democracy.
In the hope of sheltering himself under the wing of the powerful
general, if he should procure for the latter what every one knew
that he eagerly desired but had not the boldness to ask, Manilius
proposed to the burgesses to recall the governors Glabrio
from Bithynia and Pontus and Marcius Rex from Cilicia, and to entrust
their offices as well as the conduct of the war in the east,
apparently without any fixed limit as to time and at any rate
with the freest authority to conclude peace and alliance,
to the proconsul of the seas and coasts in addition to his previous
office (beg. of 688). This occurrence very clearly showed how
disorganized was the machinery of the Roman constitution,
whenthe power of legislation was placed as respected the initiative
inthe hands of any demagogue however insignificant, and as respected
the final determination in the hands of the incapable multitude,
while it at the same time was extended to the most important questions
of administration. The Manilian proposal was acceptable to none of
the political parties; yet it scarcely anywhere encountered serious
resistance. The democratic leaders, for the same reasons which had
forced them to acquiesce in the Gabinian law, could not venture
earnestly to oppose the Manilian; they kept their displeasure
and their fears to themselves and spoke in public for the general
of the democracy. The moderate Optimates declared themselves
for the Manilian proposal, because after the Gabinian law resistance
in any case was vain, and far-seeing men already perceived
that the true policy for the senate was to make approaches
as far as possible to Pompeius and to draw him over to their side
on occasion of the breach which might be foreseen between him
and the democrats. Lastly the trimmers blessed the day
when they too seemed to have an opinion and could come forward
decidedly without losing favour with either of the parties--
it is significant that Marcus Cicero first appeared as an orator
on the political platform in defence of the Manilian proposal.
The strict Optimates alone, with Quintus Catulus at their head,
showed at least their colours and spoke against the proposition.
Of course it was converted into law by a majority bordering on unanimity.
Pompeius thus obtained, in addition to his earlier extensive powers,
the administration of the most important provinces of Asia Minor--
so that there scarcely remained a spot of land within the wide Roman
bounds that had not to obey him--and the conduct of a war as to which,
like the expedition of Alexander, men could tell where and when
it began, but not where and when it might end. Never since Rome
stood had such power been united in the hands of a single man.
The Democratic-Military Revolution
The Gabinio-Manilian proposals terminated the struggle between
the senate and the popular party, which the Sempronian laws had begun
sixty-seven years before. As the Sempronian laws first constituted
the revolutionary party into a political opposition, the Gabinio-
Manilian first converted it from an opposition into the government;
and as it had been a great moment when the first breach
in the existing constitution was made by disregarding the veto
of Octavius, it was a moment no less full of significance
when the last bulwark of the senatorial rule fell with the withdrawal
of Trebellius. This was felt on both sides and even the indolent
souls of the senators were convulsively roused by this death-
struggle; but yet the war as to the constitution terminated
in a very different and far more pitiful fashion than it had begun.
A youth in every sense noble had commenced the revolution;
it was concluded by pert intriguers and demagogues of the lowest type.
On the other hand, while the Optimates had begun the struggle
with a measured resistance and with a defence which earnestly held out
even at the forlorn posts, they ended with taking the initiative
in club-law, with grandiloquent weakness, and with pitiful perjury.
What had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained; the senate
had ceased to govern. But when the few old men who had seen
the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi,
compared that time with the present they found that everything
had in the interval changed--countrymen and citizens, state-law
and military discipline, life and manners; and well might those
painfully smile, who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period
with their realization. Such reflections however belonged
to the past. For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall
of the aristocracy was an accomplished fact. The oligarchs resembled
an army utterly broken up, whose scattered bands might serve
to reinforce another body of troops, but could no longer themselves
keep the field or risk a combat on their own account. But as
the old struggle came to an end, a new one was simultaneously
beginning--the struggle between the two powers hitherto leagued
for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution, the civil-
democratic opposition and the military power daily aspiring
to greater ascendency. The exceptional position of Pompeius
even under the Gabinian, and much more under the Manilian,
law was incompatible with a republican organization. He had been
as even then his opponents urged with good reason, appointed
by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but as regent of the empire;
not unjustly was he designated by a Greek familiar with eastern
affairs "king of kings." If he should hereafter, on returning
from the east once more victorious and with increased glory,
with well-filled chests, and with troops ready for battle and devoted
to his cause, stretch forth his hand to seize the crown--who would
then arrest his arm? Was the consular Quintus Catulus, forsooth,
to summon forth the senators against the first general of his time
and his experienced legions? or was the designated aedile Gaius Caesar
to call forth the civic multitude, whose eyes he had just feasted
on his three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators with their silver
equipments? Soon, exclaimed Catulus, it would be necessary once
more to flee to the rocks of the Capitol, in order to save liberty.
It was not the fault of the prophet, that the storm came not,
as he expected, from the east, but that on the contrary fate,
fulfilling his words more literally than he himself anticipated,
brought on the destroying tempest a few years later from Gaul.
CHAPTER IV
Pompeius and the East
Pompeius Suppresses Piracy
We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs
of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687
Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude of power, undertook
the conduct of the war against the pirates. He began by dividing
the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts
and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants,
for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching
the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them
into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the best part
of the ships of war that were available--among which on this occasion
also those of Rhodes were distinguished--early in the year to sea,
and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian
waters, with a view especially to re-establish the supply of grain
from these provinces to Italy. His lieutenants meanwhile addressed
themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts.
It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted
from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate
of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province
of Narbo--an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same
time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against
the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared
in Rome.(1) When at the end of forty days the navigation had been
everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean,
Pompeius proceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern
seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy,
the Lycian and Cilician waters. On the news of the approach
of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere disappeared
from the open sea; and not only so, but even the strong Lycian fortresses
of Anticragus and Cragus surrendered without offering serious
resistance. The well-calculated moderation of Pompeius helped
even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible
marine strongholds. His predecessors had ordered every captured
freebooter to be nailed to the cross; without hesitation he gave
quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found
in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence.
The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain
at least their own waters by arms against the Romans; after having
placed their children and wives and their rich treasures for
security in the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited
the Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the offing
of Coracesium. But here the ships of Pompeius, well manned and well
provided with all implements of war, achieved a complete victory.
Without farther hindrance he landed and began to storm and break up
the mountain-castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer
to themselves freedom and life as the price of submission. Soon
the great multitude desisted from the continuance of a hopeless war
in their strongholds and mountains, and consented to surrender.
Forty-nine days after Pompeius had appeared in the eastern seas,
Cilicia was subdued and the war at an end.
The rapid suppression of piracy was a great relief, but not a grand
achievement; with the resources of the Roman state, which had been
called forth in lavish measure, the corsairs could as little cope
as the combined gangs of thieves in a great city can cope
with a well-organized police. It was a naive proceeding to celebrate
such a razzia as a victory. But when compared with the prolonged
continuance and the vast and daily increasing extent of the evil,
it was natural that the surprisingly rapid subjugation
of the dreaded pirates should make a most powerful impression
on the public; and the more so, that this was the first trial of rule
centralized in a single hand, and the parties were eagerly waiting
to see whether that hand would understand the art of ruling better
than the collegiate body had done. Nearly 400 ships and boats,
including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either taken
by Pompeius or surrendered to him; in all about 1300 piratical vessels
are said to have been destroyed; besides which the richly-filled
arsenals and magazines of the buccaneers were burnt.
Of the pirates about 10,000 perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive
into the hands of the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral
of the Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other
individuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long believed
at home to be dead, obtained once more their freedom through
Pompeius. In the summer of 687, three months after the beginning
of the campaign, commerce resumed its wonted course and instead
of the former famine abundance prevailed in Italy.
Dissensions between Pompeius and Metellus as to Crete
A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however,
disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the Roman arms.
There Quintus Metellus was stationed in the second year of his command,
and was employed in finishing the subjugation-already substantially
effected--of the island,(2) when Pompeius appeared in the eastern
waters. A collision was natural, for according to the Gabinian law
the command of Pompeius extended concurrently with that of Metellus
over the whole island, which stretched to a great length but was
nowhere more than ninety miles broad;(3) but Pompeius was considerate
enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants. The still resisting
Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen
taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned
on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit
of imposing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south
of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius.
He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment,
from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius
to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions
and to take over the towns. This proceeding was, no doubt,
not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side
of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when,
utterly ignoring the convention of the cities with Pompeius,
he continued to treat them as hostile. In vain Octavius protested;
in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned
from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there;
Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna,
besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person
was taken prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans
who were taken with him were consigned to the executioner.
Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna,
at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader's
death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been
commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war
in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna,
where both made a stand, was only subdued by Metellus
after the most obstinate resistance.
In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal
civil war at his own hand against the generalissimo of the democracy.
It shows the indescribable disorganization in the Roman state,
that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter
correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years
afterwards were sitting once more peacefully and even "amicably"
side by side in the senate.
Pompeius Takes the Supreme Command against Mithradates
Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing
for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans
or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal
which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs
of the mainland of Asia Minor. The portion of the Lucullan army
that was still left after the losses which it had suffered
and the departure of the Fimbrian legions remained inactive
on the upper Halys in the country of the Trocmi bordering
on the Pontic territory. Lucullus still held provisionally
the chief command, as his nominated successor Glabrio continued
to linger in the west of Asia Minor. The three legions
commanded by Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive
in Cilicia. The Pontic territory was again wholly in the power
of king Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities
that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria,
pay for their revolt with cruel severity. The kings of the east
did not proceed to any serious offensive movement against the Romans,
either because it formed no part of their plan, or--as was asserted--
because the landing of Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates
and Tigranes to desist from advancing farther. The Manilian law
realized the secretly-cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly
than he probably himself anticipated; Glabrio and Rex
were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia and Cilicia
with the troops stationed there, as well as the management
of the Pontic-Armenian war along with authority to make war, peace,
and alliance with the dynasts of the east at his own discretion,
were transferred to Pompeius. Amidst the prospect of honours
and spoils so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising
of an ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty laurels;
he abandoned the expedition against Crete and the farther pursuit
of the corsairs, and destined his fleet also to support the attack
which he projected on the kings of Pontus and Armenia. Yet amidst
this land-war he by no means wholly lost sight of piracy,
which was perpetually raising its head afresh. Before he left Asia
(691) he caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against
the corsairs; on his proposal in the following year a similar measure
was resolved on for Italy, and the sum needed for the purpose
was granted by the senate. They continued to protect the coasts
with guards of cavalry and small squadrons, and though
as the expeditions to be mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696
and Egypt in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet
after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes
and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its head
and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as it had done
under the government of the mouldering oligarchy.
War Preparations of Pompeius
Alliance with the Parthians
Variance between Mithradates and Tigranes
The few months which still remained before the commencement
of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed by the new commander-
in-chief with strenuous activity in diplomatic and military
preparations. Envoys were sent to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre
than to attempt a serious mediation. There was a hope at the Pontic
court that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by the recent
considerable successes which the allies had achieved over Rome
to enter into the Pontic-Armenian alliance. To counteract this, Roman
envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles,
which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid.
A son of the great-king Tigranes, bearing the same name
had rebelled against his father, either because he was unwilling
to wait for the death of the old man, or because his father's
suspicion, which had already cost several of his brothers their
lives, led him to discern his only chance of safety in open
insurrection. Vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge
with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid,
and intrigued against his father there. It was partly due
to his exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward
which was offered to him by both sides for his accession--the secured
possession of Mesopotamia--from the hand of the Romans, renewed
with Pompeius the agreement concluded with Lucullus respecting
the boundary of the Euphrates,(4) and even consented to operate
in concert with the Romans against Armenia. But the younger Tigranes
occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out of his
promoting the alliance between the Romans and the Parthians,
for his insurrection produced a variance between the kings
Tigranes and Mithradates themselves. The great-king cherished
in secret the suspicion that Mithradates might have had a hand
in the insurrection of his grandson--Cleopatra the mother
of the younger Tigranes was the daughter of Mithradates--
and, though no open rupture took place, the good understanding
between the two monarchs was disturbed at the very moment
when it was most urgently needed.
At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike preparations
with energy. The Asiatic allied and client communities were warned
to furnish the stipulated contingents. Public notices summoned
the discharged veterans of the legions of Fimbria to return
to the standards as volunteers, and by great promises and the name
of Pompeius a considerable portion of them were induced in reality
to obey the call. The whole force united under the orders
of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries,
to between 40,000 and 50,000 men.(5)
Pompeius and Lucullus
In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, to take
the chief command of the troops of Lucullus and to advance
with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Cilician legions
were directed to follow. At Danala, a place belonging to the Trocmi,
the two generals met; but the reconciliation, which mutual friends
had hoped to effect, was not accomplished. The preliminary
courtesies soon passed into bitter discussions, and these
into violent altercation: they parted in worse mood than they had met.
As Lucullus continued to make honorary gifts and to distribute
lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared
all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to
his own arrival null and void. Formally he was in the right;
customary tactin the treatment of a meritorious and more than
sufficientlymortified opponent was not to be looked for from him.
Invasion of Pontus
Retreat of Mithradates
So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops crossed
the frontier of Pontus. There they were opposed by king Mithradates
with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry. Left in the lurch by his
allies and attacked by Rome with reinforced power and energy,
he made an attempt to procure peace; but he would hear nothing
of the unconditional submission which Pompeius demanded--what worse
could the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him? That he might
not expose his army, mostly archers and horsemen, to the formidable
shock of the Roman infantry of the line, he slowly retired before
the enemy, and compelled the Romans to follow him in his various
cross-marches; making a stand at the same time, wherever there was
opportunity, with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy,
and occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding
their supplies. At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted
from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone,
proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates,
crossed it, and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire.
But Mithradates followed along the left bank of the Euphrates,
and when he had arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province,
he intercepted the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira,
which was strong and well provided with water, and from which
with his light troops he commanded the plain. Pompeius,
still wanting the Cilician legions and not strong enough to maintain
himself in this position without them, had to retire over the Euphrates
and to seek protection from the cavalry and archers of the king
in the wooded ground of Pontic Armenia extensively intersected
by rocky ravines and deep valleys. It was not till the troops
from Cilicia arrived and rendered it possible to resume the offensive
with a superiority of force, that Pompeius again advanced, invested
the camp of the king with a chain of posts of almost eighteen miles
in length, and kept him formally blockaded there, while the Roman
detachments scoured the country far and wide. The distress in the Pontic
camp was great; the draught animals even had to be killed; at length
after remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick
and wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to leave
in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death by his own troops,
and departed during the night with the utmost secrecy towards
the east. Cautiously Pompeius followed through the unknown land:
the march was now approaching the boundary which separated
the dominions of Mithradates and Tigranes. When the Roman general
perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest
to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the enemy away
after him into the far distant regions of the east, he determined
not to permit this.
Battle at Nicopolis
The two armies lay close to each other. During the rest at noon
the Roman army set out without the enemy observing the movement,
made a circuit, and occupied the heights, which lay in front
and commanded a defile to be passed by the enemy, on the southern bank
of the river Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Enderes,
at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built. The following
morning the Pontic troops broke up in their usual manner,
and, supposing that the enemy was as hitherto behind them, after,
accomplishing the day's march they pitched their camp
in the very valley whose encircling heights the Romans had occupied.
Suddenly in the silence of the night there sounded all around them
the dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides
poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp-followers,
chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other; and amidst
the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness, not a missile
failed to take effect. When the Romans had expended their darts,
they charged down from the heights on the masses which had now become
visible by the light of the newly-risen moon, and which were
abandoned to them almost defenceless; those that did not fall
by the steel of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful pressure
under the hoofs and wheels. It was the last battle-field
on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans. With three
attendants--two of his horsemen, and a concubine who was accustomed
to follow him in male attire and to fight bravely by his side--
he made his escape thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither
a portion of his trusty followers found their way to him. He divided
among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents of gold
(1,400,000 pounds); furnished them and himself with poison;
and hastened with the band that was left to him up the Euphrates
to unite with his ally, the great-king of Armenia.
Tigranes Breaks with Mithradates
Mithradates Crosses the Phasis
This hope likewise was vain; the alliance, on the faith of which
Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already by that time
existed no longer. During the conflicts between Mithradates
and Pompeius just narrated, the king of the Parthians, yielding
to the urgency of the Romans and above all of the exiled Armenian prince,
had invaded the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had
compelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains.
The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata;
but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure
with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered
the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led
by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom
Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little
inclined to fight with the freshly-victorious Romans, and least
of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates; whom he trusted less
than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son
intended to betake himself to his grandfather. So he entered into
negotiations with the Romans for a separate peace; but he did not wait
for the conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance
which linked him to Mithradates. The latter, when he had arrived
at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn that the great-king
Tigranes had set a price of 100 talents (24,000 pounds)
on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had delivered them
to the Romans. King Mithradates saw his kingdom in the hands
of the enemy, and his allies on the point of coming to an agreement
with them; it was not possible to continue the war; he might deem
himself fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along
the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in perhaps
dislodging his son Machares--who had revolted and entered into
connection with the Romans(6)--once more from the Bosporan kingdom,
and in finding on the Maeotis a fresh soil for fresh projects.
So he turned northward. When the king in his flight had crossed
the Phasis, the ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time
discontinued his pursuit; but instead of returning to the region
of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into the region
of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.
Pompeius at Artaxata
Peace with Tigranes
Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the region
of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his camp thirteen miles
from the city. There he was met by the son of the great-king,
who hoped after the fall of his father to receive the Armenian diadem
from the hand of the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every
way to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father
and the Romans. The great-king was only the more resolved to purchase
peace at any price. On horseback and without his purple robe,
but adorned with the royal diadem and the royal turban, he appeared
at the gate of the Roman camp and desired to be conducted
to the presence of the Roman general. After having given up
at the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman camp
required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself in barbarian
fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in token of unconditional
surrender placed the diadem and tiara in his hands. Pompeius,
highly delighted at a victory which cost nothing, raised up
the humbled king of kings, invested him again with the insignia
of his dignity, and dictated the peace. Besides a payment of;
1,400,000 pounds (6000 talents) to the war-chest and a present
to the soldiers, out of which each of them received 50 -denarii-
(2 pounds 2 shillings), the king ceded all the conquests which
he had made, not merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian
possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right bank
of the Euphrates; he was again restricted to Armenia proper,
and his position of great-king was, of course, at an end.
In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued the two mighty kings
of Pontus and Armenia. At the beginning of 688 there was not a Roman
soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its
close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without
an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat
on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal
of Rome. The whole domain of Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates
unconditionally obeyed the Romans; the victorious army took up
its winter-quarters to the east of that stream on Armenian soil,
in the country from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur,
from which the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.
The Tribes of the Caucasus
Iberians
Albanians
But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot, raised up
for them new conflicts. The brave peoples of the middle and eastern
Caucasus saw with indignation the remote Occidentals encamping
on their territory. There--in the fertile and well-watered tableland
of the modern Georgia--dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well-organized,
agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs
cultivated the soil according to the system of common possession,
without any separate ownership of the individual cultivators. Army
and people were one; the people were headed partly by the ruler-
clans--out of which the eldest always presided over the whole
Iberian nation as king, and the next eldest as judge and leader
of the army--partly by special families of priests, on whom chiefly
devolved the duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties
concluded with other peoples and of watching over their observance.
The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the king.
Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans, who were settled
on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, were in a far lower
stage of culture. Chiefly a pastoral people they tended, on foot
or on horseback, their numerous herds in the luxuriant meadows
of the modern Shirvan; their few tilled fields were still cultivated
with the old wooden plough without iron share. Coined money
was unknown, and they did not count beyond a hundred. Each of their
tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief and spoke its distinct
dialect. Far superior in number to the Iberians, the Albanians
could not at all cope with them in bravery. The mode of fighting
was on the whole the same with both nations; they fought chiefly
with arrows and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian
fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods
behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops of trees
on the foe; the Albanians had also numerous horsemen partly mailed
after the Medo-Armenian manner with heavy cuirasses and greaves.
Both nations lived on their lands and pastures in a complete
independence preserved from time immemorial. Nature itself
as it were, seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and Asia
as a rampart against the tide of national movements; there the arms
of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly found their limit;
now the brave garrison of this partition-wall set themselves
to defend it also against the Romans.
Albanians Conquered by Pompeius
Iberians Conquered
Alarmed by the information that the Roman commander-in-chief
intended next spring to cross the mountains and to pursue
the Pontic king beyond the Caucasus--for Mithradates, they heard,
was passing the winter in Dioscurias (Iskuria between Suchum Kale
and Anaklia) on the Black Sea--the Albanians under their prince
Oroizes first crossed the Kur in the middle of the winter of 688-689
and threw themselves on the army, which was divided for the sake
of its supplies into three larger corps under Quintus Metellus Celer,
Lucius Flaccus, and Pompeius in person. But Celer, on whom
the chief attack fell, made a brave stand, and Pompeius, after having
delivered himself from the division sent to attack him, pursued
the barbarians beaten at all points as far as the Kur. Artoces
the king of the Iberians kept quiet and promised peace and friendship;
but Pompeius, informed that he was secretly arming so as to fall
upon the Romans on their march in the passes of the Caucasus,
advanced in the spring of 689, before resuming the pursuit
of Mithradates, to the two fortresses just two miles distant
from each other, Harmozica (Horum Ziche or Armazi) and Seusamora
(Tsumar) which a little above the modern Tiflis command the two valleys
of the river Kur and its tributary the Aragua, and with these
the only passes leading from Armenia to Iberia. Artoces, surprised
by the enemy before he was aware of it, hastily burnt the bridge over
the Kur and retreated negotiating into the interior. Pompeius occupied
the fortresses and followed the Iberians to the other bank
of the Kur; by which he hoped to induce them to immediate submission.
But Artoces retired farther and farther into the interior,
and, when at length he halted on the river Pelorus, he did so
not to surrender but to fight. The Iberian archers however withstood
not for a moment the onset of the Roman legions, and, when Artoces
saw the Pelorus also crossed by the Romans, he submitted
at length to the conditions which the victor proposed, and sent
his children as hostages.
Pompeius Proceeds to Colchis
Pompeius now, agreeably to the plan which he had formerly projected,
marched through the Sarapana pass from the region of the Kur
to that of the Phasis and thence down that river to the Black Sea,
where on the Colchian coast the fleet under Servilius already
awaited him. But it was for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost
unsubstantial, that the army and fleet were thus brought
to the richly fabled shores of Colchis. The laborious march just
completed through unknown and mostly hostile nations was nothing
when compared with what still awaited them, and if they should
really succeed in conducting the force from the mouth of the Phasis
to the Crimea, through warlike and poor barbarian tribes,
on inhospitable and unknown waters, along a coast where
at certain places the mountains sink perpendicularly into the sea
and it would have been absolutely necessary to embark in the ships--
if such a march should be successfully accomplished, which was perhaps
more difficult than the campaigns of Alexander and Hannibal--
what was gained by it even at the best, corresponding at all to its toils
and dangers? The war doubtless was not ended, so long as the old
king was still among the living; but who could guarantee that they
would really succeed in catching the royal game for the sake of which
this unparalleled chase was to be instituted? Was it not better
even at the risk of Mithradates once more throwing the torch
of war into Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised
so little gain and so many dangers? Doubtless numerous voices
in the army, and still more numerous voices in the capital,
urged the general to continue the pursuit incessantly and at any price;
but they were the voices partly of foolhardy Hotspurs,
partly of those perfidious friends, who would gladly at any price
have kept the too-powerful Imperator aloof from the capital
and entangled him amidst interminable undertakings in the east.
Pompeius was too experienced and too discreet an officer to stake
his fame and his army in obstinate adherence to so injudicious
an expedition; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the army
furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit
of the king and arranging its return. The fleet received instructions
to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the northern coast of Asia
Minor against any hostile invasion, and strictly to blockade
the Cimmerian Bosporus under the threat of death to any trader
who should break the blockade. Pompeius conducted the land troops
not without great hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory
to the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the stream,
into the Albanian plain.
Fresh Conflicts with the Albanians
For several days the Roman army had to march in the glowing heat
through this almost waterless flat country, without encountering
the enemy; it was only on the left bank of the Abas (probably
the river elsewhere named Alazonius, now Alasan) that the force
of the Albanians under the leadership of Coses, brother of the king
Oroizes, was drawn up against the Romans; they are said to have
amounted, including the contingent which had arrived
from the inhabitants of the Transcaucasian steppes, to 60,000 infantry
and 12,000 cavalry. Yet they would hardly have risked the battle,
unless they had supposed that they had merely to fight with
the Roman cavalry; but the cavalry had only been placed in front,
and, on its retiring, the masses of Roman infantry showed themselves
from their concealment behind. After a short conflict the army
of the barbarians was driven into the woods, which Pompeius
gave orders to invest and set on fire. The Albanians thereupon
consented to make peace; and, following the example of the more
powerful peoples, all the tribes settled between the Kur and the Caspian
concluded a treaty with the Roman general. The Albanians,
Iberians, and generally the peoples settled to the south along,
and at the foot of, the Caucasus, thus entered at least for the moment
into a relation of dependence on Rome. When, on the other hand,
the peoples between the Phasis and the Maeotis--Colchians, Soani,
Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae--were inscribed
in the long list of the nations subdued by Pompeius, the notion
of subjugation was evidently employed in a manner very far from exact.
The Caucasus once more verified its significance in the history
of the world; the Roman conquest, like the Persian and the Hellenic,
found its limit there.
Mithradates Goes to Panticapaeum
Accordingly king Mithradates was left to himself and to destiny.
As formerly his ancestor, the founder of the Pontic state
had first entered his future kingdom as a fugitive from the executioners
of Antigonus and attended only by six horsemen, so had the grandson
now been compelled once more to cross the bounds of his kingdom
and to turn his back on his own and his fathers' conquests.
But for no one had the dice of fate turned up the highest gains
and the greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously
than for the old sultan of Sinope; and the fortunes of men
change rapidly and incalculably in the east. Well might
Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new
vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn
paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only thing
constant was the perpetual change of fortune. Inasmuch as
the Roman rule was intolerable for the Orientals at the very core
of their nature, and Mithradates himself was in good and in evil
a true prince of the east, amidst the laxity of the rule exercised
by the Roman senate over the provinces, and amidst the dissensions
of the political parties in Rome fermenting and ripening into civil
war, Mithradates might, if he was fortunate enough to bide
his time, doubtless re-establish his dominion yet a third time.
For this very reason--because he hoped and planned while still
there was life in him--he remained dangerous to the Romans so long as
he lived, as an aged refugee no less than when he had marched forth
with his hundred thousands to wrest Hellas and Macedonia
from the Romans. The restless old man made his way in the year 689
from Dioscurias amidst unspeakable hardships partly by land partly
by sea to the kingdom of Panticapaeum, where by his reputation
and his numerous retainers he drove his renegade son Machares
from the throne and compelled him to put himself to death.
From this point he attempted once more to negotiate with the Romans;
he besought that his paternal kingdom might be restored to him,
and declared himself ready to recognize the supremacy of Rome
and to pay tribute as a vassal. But Pompeius refused to grant
the king a position in which he would have begun the old game afresh,
and insisted on his personal submission.
His Last Preparations against Rome
Mithradates, however, had no thought of delivering himself into the hands
of the enemy, but was projecting new and still more extravagant plans.
Straining all the resources with which the treasures that he had saved
and the remnant of his states supplied him, he equipped a new army
of 36,000 men consisting partly of slaves which he armed and exercised
after the Roman fashion, and a war-fleet; according to rumour he designed
to march westward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Pannonia, to carry along
with him the Scythians in the Sarmatian steppes and the Celts on the Danube
as allies, and with this avalanche of peoples to throw himself
on Italy. This has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war
of the Pontic king has been compared with the military march
of Hannibal; but the same project, which in a gifted man is a stroke
of genius, becomes folly in one who is wrong-headed. This intended
invasion of Italy by the Orientals was simply ridiculous,
and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair.
Through the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans
were prevented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist
and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it
were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been
soon enough met at the foot of the Alps.
Revolt against Mithradates
In fact, while Pompeius, without troubling himself further
as to the threats of the impotent giant, was employed in organizing
the territory which he had gained, the destinies of the aged king
drew on to their fulfilment without Roman aid in the remote north.
His extravagant preparations had produced the most violent excitement
among the Bosporans, whose houses were torn down, and whose oxen
were taken from the plough and put to death, in order to procure
beams and sinews for constructing engines of war. The soldiers
too were disinclined to enter on the hopeless Italian expedition.
Mithradates had constantly been surrounded by suspicion
and treason; he had not the gift of calling forth affection
and fidelity among those around him. As in earlier years he had
compelled his distinguished general Archelaus to seek protection
in the Roman camp; as during the campaigns of Lucullus his most
trusted officers Diodes, Phoenix, and even the most notable of the Roman
emigrants had passed over to the enemy; so now, when his star
grew pale and the old, infirm, embittered sultan was accessible
to no one else save his eunuchs, desertion followed still more rapidly
on desertion. Castor, the commandant of the fortress Phanagoria
(on the Asiatic coast opposite Kertch), first raised the standard
of revolt; he proclaimed the freedom of the town and delivered
the sons of Mithradates that were in the fortress into the hands
of the Romans. While the insurrection spread among the Bosporan towns,
and Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), Theudosia (Kaffa),
and others joined the Phanagorites, the king allowed his suspicion
and his cruelty to have free course. On the information of despicable
eunuchs his most confidential adherents were nailed to the cross;
the king's own sons were the least sure of their lives. The son
who was his father's favourite and was probably destined by him
as his successor, Pharnaces, took his resolution and headed
the insurgents. The servants whom Mithradates sent to arrest him,
and the troops despatched against him, passed over to his side;
the corps of Italian deserters, perhaps the most efficient among
the divisions of Mithradates' army, and for that very reason the least
inclined to share in the romantic--and for the deserters peculiarly
hazardous--expedition against Italy, declared itself en masse
for the prince; the other divisions of the army and the fleet followed
the example thus set.
Death of Mithadates
After the country and the army had abandoned the king, the capital
Panticapaeum at length opened its gates to the insurgents
and delivered over to them the old king enclosed in his palace.
From the high wall of his castle the latter besought his son at least
to grant him life and not imbrue his hands in his father's blood;
but the request came ill from the lips of a man whose own hands
were stained with the blood of his mother and with the recently-shed
blood of his innocent son Xiphares; and in heartless severity
and inhumanity Pharnaces even outstripped his father. Seeing therefore
he had now to die, the sultan resolved at least to die as he had
lived; his wives, his concubines and his daughters, including
the youthful brides of the kings of Egypt and Cyprus, had all to suffer
the bitterness of death and drain the poisoned cup, before he too
took it, and then, when the draught did not take effect quickly
enough, presented his neck for the fatal stroke to a Celtic
mercenary Betuitus. So died in 691 Mithradates Eupator,
in the sixty-eighth year of his life and the fifty-seventh of his reign,
twenty-six years after he had for the first time taken the field
against the Romans. The dead body, which king Pharnaces sent
as a voucher of his merits and of his loyalty to Pompeius, was by order
of the latter laid in the royal sepulchre of Sinope.
The death of Mithradates was looked on by the Romans as equivalent
to a victory: the messengers who reported to the general
the catastrophe appeared crowned with laurel, as if they had a victory
to announce, in the Roman camp before Jericho. In him a great
enemy was borne to the tomb, a greater than had ever yet withstood
the Romans in the indolent east. Instinctively the multitude felt
this: as formerly Scipio had triumphed even more over Hannibal than
over Carthage, so the conquest of the numerous tribes of the east
and of the great-king himself was almost forgotten in the death
of Mithradates; and at the solemn entry of Pompeius nothing attracted
more the eyes of the multitude than the pictures, in which they saw
king Mithradates as a fugitive leading his horse by the rein
and thereafter sinking down in death between the dead bodies of his
daughters. Whatever judgment may be formed as to the idiosyncrasy
of the king, he is a figure of great significance--in the full
sense of the expression--for the history of the world. He was not
a personage of genius, probably not even of rich endowments;
but he possessed the very respectable gift of hating,
and out of this hatred he sustained an unequal conflict
against superior foes throughout half a century, without success
doubtless, but with honour. He became still more significant
through the position in which history had placed him
thanthrough his individual character. As the forerunner
of the national reaction of the Orientals against the Occidentals,
he opened the new conflict of the east against the west;
and the feeling remained with the vanquished as with the victors,
that his death was not so much the end as the beginning.
Pompeius Proceeds to Syria
Meanwhile Pompeius, after his warfare in 689 with the peoples
of the Caucasus, had returned to the kingdom of Pontus,
and there reduced the last castles still offering resistance;
these were razed in order to check the evils of brigandage,
and the castle wells were rendered unserviceable by rolling blocks
of rock into them. Thence he set out in the summer of 690 for Syria,
to regulate its affairs.
State of Syria
It is difficult to present a clear view of the state of disorganization
which then prevailed in the Syrian provinces. It is true
that in consequence of the attacks of Lucullus the Armenian governor
Magadates had evacuated these provinces in 685,(7) and that the Ptolemies,
gladly as they would have renewed the attempts of their predecessors
to attach the Syrian coast to their kingdom, were yet afraid to provoke
the Roman government by the occupation of Syria; the more so,
as that government had not yet regulated their more than doubtful
legal title even in the case of Egypt, and had been several times
solicited by the Syrian princes to recognize them as the legitimate heirs
of the extinct house of the Lagids. But, though the greater powers
all at the moment refrained from interference in the affairs
of Syria, the land suffered far more than it would have suffered amidst
a great war, through the endless and aimless feuds of the princes,
knights, and cities.
Arabian Princes
The actual masters in the Seleucid kingdom were at this time
the Bedouins, the Jews, and the Nabataeans. The inhospitable
sandy steppe destitute of springs and trees, which, stretching
from the Arabianpeninsula up to and beyond the Euphrates, reaches
towards the west as far as the Syrian mountain-chain and its narrow belt
of coast, toward the east as far as the rich lowlands of the Tigris
and lower Euphrates--this Asiatic Sahara--was the primitive home
of the sons of Ishmael; from the commencement of tradition we find
the "Bedawi," the "son of the desert," pitching his tents there
and pasturing his camels, or mounting his swift horse in pursuit
now of the foe of his tribe, now of the travelling merchant. Favoured
formerly by king Tigranes, who made use of them for his plans half
commercial half political,(8) and subsequently by the total absence
of any master in the Syrian land, these children of the desert
spread themselves over northern Syria. Wellnigh the leading part
in a political point of view was enacted by those tribes,
which had appropriated the first rudiments of a settled existence
from the vicinity of the civilized Syrians. The most noted
of these emirs were Abgarus, chief of the Arab tribe of the Mardani,
whom Tigranes had settled about Edessa and Carrhae in upper Mesopotamia;(9)
then to the west of the Euphrates Sampsiceramus, emir of the Arabs
of Hemesa (Homs) between Damascus and Antioch, and master
of the strong fortress Arethusa; Azizus the head of another horde
roaming in the same region; Alchaudonius, the prince of the Rhambaeans,
who had already put himself into communication with Lucullus;
and several others.
Robber-Chiefs
Alongside of these Bedouin princes there had everywhere appeared
bold cavaliers, who equalled or excelled the children of the desert
in the noble trade of waylaying. Such was Ptolemaeus son
of Mennaeus, perhaps the most powerful among these Syrian robber-
chiefs and one of the richest men of this period, who ruled over
the territory of the Ityraeans--the modern Druses--in the valleys
of the Libanus as well as on the coast and over the plain
of Massyas to the northward with the cities of Heliopolis (Baalbec)
and Chalcis, and maintained 8000 horsemen at his own expense;
such were Dionysius and Cinyras, the masters of the maritime cities
Tripolis (Tarablus) and Byblus (between Tarablus and Beyrout);
such was the Jew Silas in Lysias, a fortress not far from Apamea
on the Orontes.
Jews
In the south of Syria, on the other hand, the race of the Jews
seemed as though it would about this time consolidate itself
into a political power. Through the devout and bold defence
of the primitive Jewish national worship, which was imperilled
by the levelling Hellenism of the Syrian kings, the family
of the Hasmonaeans or the Makkabi had not only attained to their
hereditary principality and gradually to kingly honours;(10)
but these princely high-priests had also spread their conquests
to the north, east, and south. When the brave Jannaeus Alexander
died (675), the Jewish kingdom stretched towards the south over
the whole Philistian territory as far as the frontier of Egypt, towards
the south-east as far as that of the Nabataean kingdom of Petra,
from which Jannaeus had wrested considerable tracts on the right
bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, towards the north over Samaria
and Decapolis up to the lake of Gennesareth; here he was already
making arrangements to occupy Ptolemais (Acco) and victoriously
to repel the aggressions of the Ityraeans. The coast obeyed the Jews
from Mount Carmel as far as Rhinocorura, including the important
Gaza--Ascalon alone was still free; so that the territory
of the Jews, once almost cut off from the sea, could now be enumerated
among the asylums of piracy. Now that the Armenian invasion, just
as it approached the borders of Judaea, was averted from that land
by the intervention of Lucullus,(11) the gifted rulers
of the Hasmonaean house would probably have carried their arms still
farther, had not the development of the power of that remarkable
conquering priestly state been nipped in the bud by internal divisions.
Pharisees
Sadducees
The spirit of religious independence, and the spirit of national
independence--the energetic union of which had called the Maccabee
state into life--speedily became once more dissociated and even
antagonistic. The Jewish orthodoxy or Pharisaism, as it was called,
was content with the free exercise of religion, as it had
been asserted in defiance of the Syrian rulers; its practical aim
was a community of Jews, composed of the orthodox in the lands
of all rulers, essentially irrespective of the secular government--
a community which found its visible points of union in the tribute
for the temple at Jerusalem, which was obligatory on every
conscientious Jew, and in the schools of religion and spiritual
courts. Overagainst this orthodoxy, which turned away
from political life and became more and more stiffened into theological
formalism and painful ceremonial service, were arrayed
the defenders of the national independence, invigorated amidst
successful struggles against foreign rule, and advancing towards
the ideal of a restoration of the Jewish state, the representatives
of the old great families--the so-called Sadducees--partly
on dogmatic grounds, in so far as they acknowledged only the sacred
books themselves and conceded authority merely, not canonicity,
to the "bequests of the scribes," that is, to canonical tradition;(12)
partly and especially on political grounds, in so far as, instead
of a fatalistic waiting for the strong arm of the Lord of Zebaoth,
they taught that the salvation of the nation was to be expected
from the weapons of this world, and from the inward and outward
strengthening of the kingdom of David as re-established
in the glorious times of the Maccabees. Those partisans of orthodoxy
found their support in the priesthood and the multitude; they
contested with the Hasmonaeans the legitimacy of their high-
priesthood, and fought against the noxious heretics with all
the reckless implacability, with which the pious are often found
to contend for the possession of earthly goods. The state-party
on the other hand relied for support on intelligence brought into
contact with the influences of Hellenism, on the army, in which
numerous Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries served, and on the abler
kings, who here strove with the ecclesiastical power much as
a thousand years later the Hohenstaufen strove with the Papacy.
Jannaeus had kept down the priesthood with a strong hand;
under his two sons there arose (685 et seq.) a civil and fraternal war,
since the Pharisees opposed the vigorous Aristobulus and attempted
to obtain their objects under the nominal rule of his brother,
the good-natured and indolent Hyrcanus. This dissension not merely
put a stop to the Jewish conquests, but gave also foreign nations
opportunity to interfere and thereby obtain a commanding position
in southern Syria.
Nabataeans