After the death of Sulla, the most distinguished man of the
aristocratic party was Pompey, who had been engaged in reducing Sicily
and Africa to allegiance after his chief had triumphed in Italy. Some
attempts were made to revive the Marian cause after the dictator’s
death, but by the exertions of Pompey and others they were suppressed,
and only in Spain had the Marian party still a stronghold. There the
brave Sertorius, at the head of the Marian refugees and the native
Spaniards, was fast establishing a power likely to rival that of
Italy. None of the Sullanian generals, not even Pompey, who went to
Spain in B. C. 76, could gain an advantage when opposed to his
splendid generalship; and had he not perished by treachery (B. C. 74),
Spain would have become an instrument in his hands for overturning all
that had been done by Sulla in Italy. Possibly even Spain might have
superseded her sister peninsula as the seat of Roman power. But after
the death of Sertorius, his army crumbled away; and, conquering his
successor Perpenna, Pompey found the pacification of Spain an easy
task. Returning to Italy in the height of the reputation which the
discharge of this office procured to him, he arrived (B. C. 71) in
time to have some share in another war of a frightful character which
had been desolating Italy in his absence. In the year B. C. 73,
seventy gladiators, headed by a Thracian named Spartacus, had broken
out of a school, or rather gladiator warehouse, at Capua, where they
were kept in training; and, speedily joined by all the slaves and
gladiators of the neighborhood, they had taken up their position on
Mount Vesuvius. Finding himself at the head of a large army, Spartacus
had given battle to several Roman generals, and defeated them; and the
conquering host which he commanded was on the point of crossing into
Sicily, after ravaging Italy, when it was attacked and cut to pieces
by the prætor Licinius Crassus (B. C. 71). Spartacus died fighting;
such of the gladiators and slaves as were taken prisoners were
crucified, or impaled alive; and the remnant which had escaped Crassus
were met and destroyed in the north of Italy by Pompey, as he was
returning from Spain. Pompey and Crassus were chosen consuls for the
year B. C. 70, the former being then in his thirty-sixth year.
Although both were disciples of Sulla, yet obeying the necessities of
the time, they repealed several of his enactments, and passed various
measures of liberal tendency.
Pompey was at this time the idol of Rome; and although after his
consulship he retired into private life, he was soon called upon to
exercise his abilities in a post of greater dignity and responsibility
than had ever been formally conferred on any Roman before him. The
Mediterranean was at that time infested with pirates, who had become
so numerous and so audacious during the recent convulsions, that the
coast of the Italian peninsula itself was not safe from their attacks,
and not a ship could sail from any port in the Roman dominions, even
in the service of government, without the risk of being captured. To
enable Pompey to free the Empire from this nuisance, he was invested
(B. C. 67) with supreme command for three years over the whole
Mediterranean and its coasts for 400 stadia inland, with power to
raise as many men and ships and as much money as he chose. Thus
virtually made master of the Roman world, Pompey exerted himself so
vigorously and judiciously, that within the short period of three
months he had cleared the sea of every pirate vessel. That his command
might not lie dormant for the remainder of the three years for which
he had been appointed, a tribune of the people proposed and carried a
law conferring on him the additional command of Pontus, Bithynia, and
Armenia, in order to secure his services in finishing a war which was
then going on with Mithridates. This was the third war with that
monarch; for there had been a second short war with him B. C. 83-81.
The present war had originated in some overtures made by Sertorius to
Mithridates in B. C. 74; but Sertorius having died in the same year,
Mithridates was left to maintain the war alone. The general sent to
oppose him was Lucullus, who carried on the war very successfully till
Pompey came to supersede him. For four years Pompey remained in Asia,
breaking the power of Mithridates, and negotiating with the monarchs
of Parthia, Armenia, etc. He traversed the greater part of Asia Minor,
establishing the Roman influence; dethroned the king of Syria, and
added it and Phœnicia to the number of the Roman provinces; entered
Palestine, where a civil war was then raging between the brothers
Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, declared in favor of the former, besieged
and took Jerusalem, and having imposed a tribute on the Jews,
commenced his march homewards. On his return through Asia Minor, he
found that Mithridates had in the meantime killed himself in despair;
and as there was no one to take up that monarch’s part, he was able to
parcel out Asia Minor as he chose――erecting some portions into
provinces, and giving others in charge to tributary princes. With the
glory of having thus subjugated and settled the East, the fortunate
Pompey prepared to return to Rome in the year B. C. 62.
Meanwhile Rome had been the scene of one of the most extraordinary
attempts at revolution recorded in history――the famous conspiracy of
Catiline. No passage in Roman history is involved in such obscurity as
this; for the accounts of the conspiracy left by Sallust and other
Latin authors are not nearly so satisfactory to the genuine student of
history, as they are pleasant to the mere reader for amusement. M.
Mérimée supposes that, several years after Sulla’s death, there arose
in Rome four distinct parties――the ‘oligarchical faction,’ consisting
of the small number of families, the chiefs of which directed the
senate, and in fact governed the republic; the ‘aristocratic faction,’
comprehending the mass of the senators, anxious to exercise the power
which they saw usurped by a small number of their colleagues; the
‘party of Marius,’ including all those whose families had been
persecuted by Sulla, and who now began to rally, and aspire to power;
and lastly, the ‘military factions,’ embracing a crowd of old officers
of Sulla, who, having squandered the fortunes they had gained under
him, and seeing themselves excluded from public affairs, were eager
for some convulsion which might improve their condition. At the head
of the first party was Pompey, now absent in Asia. In his absence, the
soul of the oligarchical party was the celebrated Marcus Tullius
Cicero――an advocate of extraordinary intellect, born B. C. 106, a few
months after Pompey, and who, entering public life early, had soon
established his reputation as the first orator in Rome. Of plebeian
birth, it might have been expected that he would attach himself to the
democratic side; but circumstances, and his natural disposition, which
was weak, and fond of the consideration of others, had won him over to
the side of the oligarchy, to whom his talents were invaluable. Having
passed through the quæstorship, and edileship, and prætorship, which
last he held B. C. 66, he now aspired to the highest dignity in the
state. Such was the leader of the oligarchical party. The leader of
the aristocratic party was Crassus, formerly the colleague of Pompey
in the consulship, and now his personal rival. Besides Crassus, the
senators had an active and most conscientious partisan in Marcus
Porcius Cato, who had been tribune of the people――a great-grandson of
Cato the Censor, and possessed of all his integrity. The leader of the
third or Marian party was a man six years younger than Pompey or
Cicero, and who, known during his youth for his accomplishments, his
love of pleasure, his firmness of purpose, and the boundless
generosity of his character, had just earned for himself the applauses
of all Rome by the lavish magnificence of his edileship (B. C. 65).
This was Caius Julius Cæsar, the greatest man that ever Rome produced.
He was the son of a man who had died suddenly, without having made any
figure in public life; his family was one of the noblest in Rome; and
his aunt had been the wife of Marius. Literature and pleasure had
occupied his youth, and only now was he beginning to take an active
part in public affairs, although with a force and earnestness which at
once marked him out as a man who was to lead. With chivalrous
recklessness of consequences, he had done justice to his uncle’s
memory at a time when it was hardly safe to mention the name of
Marius; and now the relics of the Marian party gathered round him with
hope, while the oligarchy and aristocracy, with the presentiment of
what he was to become, would fain have crushed him. Nine years older
than Cæsar, and three years older than Cicero or Pompey, was the
leader of the fourth or military faction――Lucius Sergius Catilina,
more commonly called Catiline, a man of illustrious birth, and who had
distinguished himself as one of the ablest and most ferocious officers
of Sulla. His reputation, owing partly to his haggard personal
appearance, and partly to vague rumors of horrible crimes which he had
committed, was one of the blackest; and as he walked along the streets
with gigantic body, but hurried and uncertain step, men pointed, and
said that that was Catiline. Yet he possessed extraordinary abilities,
and a peculiar power of fascinating those with whom he wished to
establish a friendly relation. He had already been prætor (B. C. 67),
and there was a large class, consisting principally of debauched young
patricians and ruined military men, who looked forward eagerly to his
election to the consulship.
Prevented, by a charge of extortion brought against him in his
capacity of prætor, from becoming a candidate for the consulship of
the year B. C. 65, Catiline came forward as candidate in the following
year. Cicero was his rival; and the senators mustered in sufficient
strength to return the orator. Enraged at his defeat, Catiline began
to plot a seditious movement with his patrician adherents, among whom
were Lentulus, Cethegus, Cæparius, etc. Rome, it was said, was to be
set on fire, and the consuls and many of the senators murdered.
Towards the end of the year (B. C. 64), these designs had become ripe,
and emissaries of Catiline were abroad throughout Italy. Meanwhile
Cicero had obtained private intelligence of the conspiracy, and on the
8th of November he addressed Catiline in such vehement terms in the
senate-house, that the conspirator fled into Etruria, from which he
continued to correspond with his accomplices in Rome. Having obtained
satisfactory proofs of the guilt of these accomplices, and having been
empowered by the senate to act as he chose for the good of state,
Cicero caused Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius, and Cæparius to be
apprehended; and these four, notwithstanding the motion of Cæsar for a
more moderate punishment, were put to death in prison; Cicero’s
activity had saved the Commonwealth. Catiline, however, who had raised
troops in Etruria, continued to menace the state till the beginning of
B. C. 62, when he and many of his patrician supporters died fighting
like lions against the troops sent to destroy them. Thus the insane
movement of the military faction was crushed: there remained, however,
much of the Catilinarian leaven diffused through Italy――men of broken
fortunes and profligate characters, to whom turmoil and riot afforded
the only chance of promotion.