The able men of the democracy had fallen in the proscription.
Sertorius, the only eminent surviving soldier belonging to them, was
away, making himself independent in Spain. The rest were all killed.
But the Senate, too, had lost in Sylla the single statesman that they
possessed. They were a body of mediocrities, left with absolute power
in their hands, secure as they supposed from further interference, and
able to return to those pleasant occupations which for a time had been
so rudely interrupted. Sertorius was an awkward problem with which
Pompey might perhaps be entrusted to deal. No one knew as yet what
stuff might be in Pompey. He was for the present sunning himself in his
military splendors; too young to come forward as a politician, and
destitute, so far as appeared, of political ambition. If Pompey
promised to be docile, he might be turned to use at a proper time; but
the aristocracy had seen too much of successful military commanders,
and were in no hurry to give opportunities of distinction to a youth
who had so saucily defied them. Sertorius was far off, and could be
dealt with at leisure.
In his defence of Roscius, Cicero had given an admonition to the noble
lords that unless they mended their ways they could not look for any
long continuance.[1] They regarded Cicero perhaps, if they heard what
he said of them, as an inexperienced young man, who would understand
better by and by of what materials the world was made. There had been
excitement and anxiety enough. Conservatism was in power again. Fine
gentlemen could once more lounge in their clubs, amuse themselves with
their fish-ponds and horses and mistresses, devise new and ever new
means of getting money and spending it, and leave the Roman Empire for
the present to govern itself.
The leading public men belonging to the party in power had all served
in some capacity or other with Sylla or under him. Of those whose names
deserve particular mention there were at most five.
Licinius Lucullus had been a special favorite of Sylla. The Dictator
left him his executor, with the charge of his manuscripts. Lucullus was
a commoner, but of consular family, and a thorough-bred aristocrat. He
had endeared himself to Sylla by a languid talent which could rouse
itself when necessary into brilliant activity, by the easy culture of a
polished man of rank, and by a genius for luxury which his admirers
followed at a distance, imitating their master but hopeless of
overtaking him.
Caecilius Metellus, son of the Metellus whom Marius had superseded in
Africa, had been consul with Sylla in 80 B.C. He was now serving in
Spain against Sertorius, and was being gradually driven out of the
peninsula.
Lutatius Catulus was a proud but honest patrician, with the conceit of
his order, but without their vices. His father, who had been Marius's
colleague, and had been defeated by the Cimbri, had killed himself
during the Marian revolution. The son had escaped, and was one of the
consuls at the time of Sylla's death.
More noticeable than either of these was Marcus Crassus, a figure
singularly representative, of plebeian family, but a family long
adopted into the closest circle of the aristocracy, the leader and
impersonation of the great moneyed classes in Rome. Wealth had for
several generations been the characteristic of the Crassi. They had the
instinct and the temperament which in civilized ages take to
money-making as a natural occupation. In politics they aimed at being
on the successful side; but living as they did in an era of
revolutions, they were surprised occasionally in unpleasant situations.
Crassus the rich, father of Marcus, had committed himself against
Marius, and had been allowed the privilege of being his own
executioner. Marcus himself, who was a little older than Cicero, took
refuge in Sylla's camp. He made himself useful to the Dictator by his
genius for finance, and in return he was enabled to amass an enormous
fortune for himself out of the proscriptions. His eye for business
reached over the whole Roman Empire. He was banker, speculator,
contractor, merchant. He lent money to the spendthrift young lords, but
with sound securities and at usurious interest. He had an army of
slaves, but these slaves were not ignorant field-hands; they were
skilled workmen in all arts and trades, whose labors he turned to
profit in building streets and palaces. Thus all that he touched turned
to gold. He was the wealthiest single individual in the whole Empire,
the acknowledged head of the business world of Rome.
The last person who need be noted was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the
father of the future colleague of Augustus and Antony. Lepidus, too,
had been an officer of Sylla's. He had been rewarded for his services
by the government of Sicily, and when Sylla died was the second consul
with Catulus. It was said against him that, like so many other
governors, he had enriched himself by tyrannizing over his Sicilian
subjects. His extortions had been notorious; he was threatened with
prosecution as soon as his consulship should expire; and the adventure
to which he was about to commit himself was undertaken, so the
aristocrats afterward maintained, in despair of an acquittal. Lepidus's
side of the story was never told, but another side it certainly had.
Though one of Sylla's generals, he had married the daughter of the
tribune Saturninus. He had been elected consul by a very large majority
against the wishes of the Senate, and was suspected of holding popular
opinions. It may be that the prosecution was an after-thought of
revenge, and that Lepidus was to have been tried before a senatorial
jury already determined to find him guilty.
Among these men lay the fortunes of Rome when the departure of their
chief left the aristocrats masters of their own destiny.
During this time Caesar had been serving his apprenticeship as a
soldier. The motley forces which Mithridates had commanded had not all
submitted on the king's surrender to Sylla. Squadrons of pirates hung
yet about the smaller islands in the Aegean. Lesbos was occupied by
adventurers who were fighting for their own hand, and the praetor
Minucius Thermus had been sent to clear the seas and extirpate these
nests of brigands. To Thermus Caesar had attached himself. The praetor,
finding that his fleet was not strong enough for the work, found it
necessary to apply to Nicomedes, the allied sovereign of the adjoining
kingdom of Bithynia, to supply him with a few additional vessels; and
Caesar, soon after his arrival, was despatched on this commission to
the Bithynian court.
Long afterward, when Roman cultivated society had come to hate Caesar,
and any scandal was welcome to them which would make him odious, it was
reported that on this occasion he entered into certain relations with
Nicomedes of a kind indisputably common at the time in the highest
patrician circles. The value of such a charge in political controversy
was considerable, for whether true or false it was certain to be
believed; and similar accusations were flung indiscriminately, so
Cicero says, at the reputation of every eminent person whom it was
desirable to stain, if his personal appearance gave the story any air
of probability.[2]
The disposition to believe evil of men who have risen a few degrees
above their contemporaries is a feature of human nature as common as it
is base; and when to envy there are added fear and hatred, malicious
anecdotes spring like mushrooms in a forcing-pit. But gossip is not
evidence, nor does it become evidence because it is in Latin and has
been repeated through many generations. The strength of a chain is no
greater than the strength of its first link, and the adhesive character
of calumny proves only that the inclination of average men to believe
the worst of great men is the same in all ages. This particular
accusation against Caesar gains, perhaps, a certain credibility from
the admission that it was the only occasion on which anything of the
kind could be alleged against him. On the other hand, it was unheard of
for near a quarter of a century. It was produced in Rome in the midst
of a furious political contest. No witnesses were forthcoming; no one
who had been at Bithynia at the time; no one who ever pretended to have
original knowledge of the truth of the story. Caesar himself passed it
by with disdain, or alluded to it, if forced upon his notice, with
contemptuous disgust.
The Bithynian mission was otherwise successful. He brought the ships to
Thermus. He distinguished himself personally in the storming of
Mitylene, and won the oak-wreath, the Victoria Cross of the Roman army.
Still pursuing the same career, Caesar next accompanied Servilius
Isauricus in a campaign against the horde of pirates, afterwards so
famous, that was forming itself among the creeks and river-mouths of
Cilicia. The advantages which Servilius obtained over them were
considerable enough to deserve a triumph, but were barren of result.
The news that Sylla was dead reached the army while still in the field;
and the danger of appearing in Rome being over, Caesar at once left
Cilicia and went back to his family. Other causes are said to have
contributed to hasten his return. A plot had been formed, with the
consul Lepidus at its head, to undo Sylla's laws and restore the
constitution of the Gracchi. Caesar had been urged by letter to take
part in the movement, and he may have hurried home either to examine
the prospects of success or perhaps to prevent an attempt which, under
the circumstances, he might think criminal and useless. Lepidus was not
a wise man, though he may have been an honest one. The aristocracy had
not yet proved that they were incapable of reform. It might be that
they would digest their lesson after all, and that for a generation to
come no more revolutions would be necessary.
[Sidenote: B.C. 77. Caesar aet. 23.] Caesar at all events declined to
connect himself with this new adventure. He came to Rome, looked at
what was going on, and refused to have anything to do with it. The
experiment was tried without him. Young Cinna, his brother-in-law,
joined Lepidus. Together they raised a force in Etruria, and marched on
Rome. They made their way into the city, but were met in the Campus
Martius by Pompey and other consul, Catulus, at the head of some of
Sylla's old troops; and an abortive enterprise, which, if it had
succeeded, would probably have been mischievous, was ended almost as
soon as it began. The two leaders escaped. Cinna joined Sertorius in
Spain. Lepidus made his way to Sardinia, where in the next year he
died, leaving a son to play the game of democracy under more brilliant
auspices.
[Sidenote: Caesar aet. 24.] Caesar meanwhile felt his way, as Cicero
was doing in the law-courts, attacking the practical abuses which the
Roman administration was generating everywhere. Cornelius Dolabella had
been placed by Sylla in command of Macedonia. His father had been a
friend of Saturninus, and had fallen at his side. The son had gone over
to the aristocracy, and for this reason was perhaps an object of
aversion to the younger liberals. The Macedonians pursued him, when his
government had expired, with a list of grievances of the usual kind.
Young Caesar took up their cause, and prosecuted him. Dolabella was a
favorite of the Senate; he had been allowed a triumph for his services,
and the aristocracy adopted his cause as their own. The unpractised
orator was opposed at the trial by his kinsman Aurelius Cotta and the
most celebrated pleaders in Rome. To have crossed swords with such
opponents was a dangerous honor for him; success against them was not
to be expected, and Caesar was not yet master of his art. Dolabella was
acquitted. Party feeling had perhaps entered into the accusation.
Caesar found it prudent to retire again from the scene. There were but
two roads to eminence in Rome--oratory and service in the army. He had
no prospect of public employment from the present administration, and
the platform alone was open to him. Plain words with a plain meaning in
them no longer carried weight with a people who expected an orator to
delight as well as instruct them. The use of the tongue had become a
special branch of a statesman's education, and Caesar, feeling his
deficiency, used his leisure to put himself in training and to go to
school at Rhodes with the then celebrated Apollonius Molo. He had
recovered his property and his priesthood, and was evidently in no want
of money. He travelled with the retinue of a man of rank, and on his
way to Rhodes he fell in with an adventure which may be something more
than legend. When he was crossing the Aegean his vessel is said to have
been taken by pirates. They carried him to Pharmacusa,[3] an island off
the Carian coast, which was then in their possession, and there he was
detained for six weeks with three of his attendants, while the rest of
his servants were sent to the nearest Roman station to raise his
ransom. The pirates treated him with politeness. He joined in their
sports, played games with them, looked into their habits, and amused
himself with them as well as he could, frankly telling them at the same
time that they would all be hanged.
The ransom, a very large one, about £10,000, was brought and paid.
Caesar was set upon the mainland near Miletus, where, without a
moment's delay, he collected some armed vessels, returned to the
island, seized the whole crew while they were dividing their plunder,
and took them away to Pergamus, the seat of government in the Asiatic
province, where they were convicted and crucified. Clemency was not a
Roman characteristic. It was therefore noted with some surprise that
Caesar interceded to mitigate the severity of the punishment. The poor
wretches were strangled before they were stretched on their crosses,
and were spared the prolongation of their torture. The pirate business
being disposed of, he resumed his journey to Rhodes, and there he
continued for two years practising gesture and expression under the
tuition of the great master.
[Sidenote: B.C. 78-72] During this time the government of Rome was
making progress in again demonstrating its unfitness for the duties
which were laid upon it, and sowing the seeds which in a few years were
to ripen into a harvest so remarkable. Two alternatives only lay before
the Roman dominion--either disruption or the abolition of the
constitution. If the aristocracy could not govern, still less could the
mob govern. The Latin race was scattered over the basin of the
Mediterranean, no longer bound by any special ties to Rome or Italy,
each man of it individually vigorous and energetic, and bent before
all things on making his own fortune. If no tolerable administration
was provided from home, their obvious course could only be to identify
themselves with local interests and nationalities and make themselves
severally independent, as Sertorius was doing in Spain. Sertorius was
at last disposed of, but by methods promising ill for the future. He
beat Metellus till Metellus could do no more against him. The
all-victorious Pompey was sent at last to win victories and gain
nothing by them. Six campaigns led to no result and the difficulty was
only removed at last by treachery and assassination.
A more extraordinary and more disgraceful phenomenon was the growth of
piracy, with the skirts of which Caesar had come in contact at
Pharmacusa. The Romans had become masters of the world, only that the
sea from one end of their dominions to the other should be patrolled by
organized rovers. For many years, as Roman commerce extended, the
Mediterranean had become a profitable field of enterprise for those
gentry. From every country which they had overrun or occupied the
conquests of the Romans had let loose swarms of restless patriots who,
if they could not save the liberties of their own countries, could prey
upon the oppressor. Illyrians from the Adriatic, Greeks from the
islands and the Asiatic ports, Syrians, Egyptians, Africans, Spaniards,
Gauls, and disaffected Italians, trained many of them to the sea from
their childhood, took to the water in their light galleys with all the
world before them. Under most circumstances society is protected
against thieves by their inability to combine. But the pirates of the
Mediterranean had learnt from the Romans the advantage of union, and
had drifted into a vast confederation. Cilicia was their head-quarters.
Servilius had checked them for a time, but the Roman Senate was too
eager for a revenue, and the Roman governors and farmers of the taxes
were too bent upon filling their private purses, to allow fleets to be
maintained in the provincial harbors adequate to keep the peace. When
Servilius retired, the pirates reoccupied their old haunts. The
Cilician forests furnished them with ship timber. The mountain gorges
provided inaccessible storehouses for plunder. Crete was completely in
their hands also, and they had secret friends along the entire
Mediterranean shores. They grew at last into a thousand sail, divided
into squadrons under separate commanders. They were admirably armed.
They roved over the waters at their pleasure, attacking islands or
commercial ports, plundering temples and warehouses, arresting every
trading vessel they encountered, till at last no Roman could go abroad
on business save during the winter storms, when the sea was
comparatively clear. They flaunted their sails in front of Ostia
itself; they landed in their boats at the villas on the Italian coast,
carrying off lords and ladies, and holding them to ransom. They levied
black-mail at their pleasure. The wretched provincials had paid their
taxes to Rome in exchange for promised defence, and no defence was
provided.[4] The revenue which ought to have been spent on the
protection of the Empire a few patricians were dividing among
themselves. The pirates had even marts in different islands, where
their prisoners were sold to the slave-dealers; and for fifteen years
nothing was done or even attempted to put an end to so preposterous an
enormity. The ease with which these buccaneers of the old world were
eventually suppressed proved conclusively that they existed by
connivance. It was discovered at last that large sums had been sent
regularly from Crete to some of the most distinguished members of the
aristocracy. The Senate was again the same body which it was found by
Jugurtha, and the present generation were happier than their fathers in
that larger and richer fields were now open to their operation.
While the pirates were at work on the extremities, the senators in the
provinces were working systematically, squeezing the people as one
might squeeze a sponge of all the wealth that could be drained out of
them. After the failure of Lepidus the elections in Rome were wholely
in the Senate's hands. Such independence as had not been crushed was
corrupted. The aristocracy divided the consulships, praetorships, and
quaestorships among themselves, and after the year of office the
provincial prizes were then distributed. Of the nature of their
government a picture has been left by Cicero, himself one of the
senatorial party, and certainly not to be suspected of having
represented it as worse than it was in the famous prosecution of
Verres. There is nothing to show that Verres was worse than the rest of
his order. Piso, Gabinius, and many others equalled or perhaps excelled
him in villainy. But historical fate required a victim, and the
unfortunate wretch has been selected out of the crowd individually to
illustrate his class.
By family he was connected with Sylla. His father was noted as an
election manager at the Comitia. The son had been attached to Carbo
when the democrats were in power, but he had deserted them on Sylla's
return. He had made himself useful in the proscriptions, and had
scraped together a considerable fortune. He was employed afterward in
Greece and Asia, where he distinguished himself by fresh rapacity and
by the gross brutality with which he abused an innocent lady. With the
wealth which he had extorted or stolen he bought his way into the
praetorship, probably with his father's help; he then became a senator,
and was sent to govern Sicily--a place which had already suffered, so
the Senate said, from the malpractices of Lepidus, and needing,
therefore, to be generously dealt with.
Verres held his province for three years. He was supreme judge in all
civil and criminal cases. He negotiated with the parties to every suit
which was brought before him, and then sold his decisions. He
confiscated estates on fictitious accusations. The island was rich in
works of art. Verres had a taste for such things, and seized without
scruple the finest productions of Praxiteles or Zeuxis. If those who
were wronged dared to complain, they were sent to forced labor at the
quarries, or, as dead men tell no tales, were put out of the world. He
had an understanding with the pirates, which throws light upon the
secret of their impunity. A shipful of them were brought into Messina
as prisoners, and were sentenced to be executed. A handsome bribe was
paid to Verres, and a number of Sicilians whom he wished out of the way
were brought out, veiled and gagged that they might not be recognized,
and were hanged as the pirates' substitutes. By these methods Verres
was accused of having gathered out of Sicily three quarters of a
million of our money. Two thirds he calculated on having to spend in
corrupting the consuls and the court before which he might be
prosecuted. The rest he would be able to save, and with the help of it
to follow his career of greatness through the highest offices of state.
Thus he had gone on upon his way, secure, as he supposed, of impunity.
One of the consuls for the year and the consuls for the year which was
to come next were pledged to support him. The judges would be
exclusively senators, each of whom might require assistance in a
similar situation. The chance of justice on these occasions was so
desperate that the provincials preferred usually to bear their wrongs
in silence rather than expose themselves to expense and danger for
almost certain failure. But, as Cicero said, the whole world inside the
ocean was ringing with the infamy of the Roman senatorial tribunals.
Cicero, whose honest wish was to save the Senate from itself,
determined to make use of Verres's conduct to shame the courts into
honesty. Every difficulty was thrown in his way. He went in person to
Sicily to procure evidence. He was browbeaten and threatened with
violence. The witnesses were intimidated, and in some instances were
murdered. The technical ingenuities of Roman law were exhausted to
shield the culprit. The accident that the second consul had a
conscience alone enabled Cicero to force the criminal to the bar. But
the picture which Cicero drew and laid before the people, proved as it
was to every detail, and admitting of no answer save that other
governors had been equally iniquitous and had escaped unpunished,
created a storm which the Senate dared not encounter. Verres dropped
his defence and fled, and part of his spoils was recovered. There was
no shame in the aristocracy to prevent them from committing crimes:
there was enough to make them abandon a comrade who was so unfortunate
as to be detected and brought to justice.
This was the state of the Roman dominion under the constitution as
reformed by Sylla: the Spanish Peninsula recovered by murder to
temporary submission; the sea abandoned to buccaneers; decent
industrious people in the provinces given over to have their fortunes
stolen from them, their daughters dishonored, and themselves beaten or
killed if they complained, by a set of wolves calling themselves Roman
senators--and these scenes not localized to any one unhappy district,
but extending through the entire civilized part of mankind. There was
no hope for these unhappy people, for they were under the tyranny of a
dead hand. A bad king is like a bad season. The next may bring
improvement, or if his rule is wholly intolerable he can be deposed.
Under a bad constitution no such change is possible. It can be ended
only by a revolution. Republican Rome had become an Imperial State--she
had taken upon herself the guardianship of every country in the world
where the human race was industrious and prosperous, and she was
discharging her great trust by sacrificing them to the luxury and
ambition of a few hundred scandalous politicians.
[Sidenote: B.C. 74.] The nature of man is so constructed that a
constitution so administered must collapse. It generates faction
within, it invites enemies from without. While Sertorius was defying
the Senate in Spain and the pirates were buying its connivance in the
Mediterranean, Mithridates started into life again in Pontus. Sylla had
beaten him into submission; but Sylla was gone, and no one was left to
take Sylla's place. The watchful barbarian had his correspondents in
Rome, and knew everything that was passing there. He saw that he had
little to fear by trying the issue with the Romans once more. He made
himself master of Armenia. In the corsair fleet he had an ally ready
made. The Roman province in Asia Minor, driven to despair by the
villainy of its governors, was ripe for revolt. Mithridates rose, and
but for the young Caesar would a second time have driven the Romans out
of Asia. Caesar, in the midst of his rhetorical studies at Rhodes,
heard the mutterings of the coming storm. Deserting Apollonius's
lecture-room, he crossed over to the continent, raised a corps of
volunteers, and held Caria to its allegiance; but Mithridates possessed
himself easily of the interior kingdoms and of the whole valley of the
Euphrates to the Persian Gulf. The Black Sea was again covered with his
ships. He defeated Cotta in a naval battle, drove him through the
Bosphorus, and destroyed the Roman squadron. The Senate exerted itself
at last. Lucullus, Sylla's friend, the only moderately able man that
the aristocracy had among them, was sent to encounter him. Lucullus had
been trained in a good school, and the superiority of the drilled Roman
legions when tolerably led again easily asserted itself. Mithridates
was forced back into the Armenian hills. The Black Sea was swept clear,
and eight thousand of the buccaneers were killed at Sinope. Lucullus
pursued the retreating prince across the Euphrates, won victories, took
cities and pillaged them. He reached Lake Van, he marched round Mount
Ararat and advanced to Artaxata. But Asia was a scene of dangerous
temptation for a Roman commander. Cicero, though he did not name
Lucullus, was transparently alluding to him when he told the assembly
in the Forum that Rome had made herself abhorred throughout the world
by the violence and avarice of her generals. No temple had been so
sacred, no city so venerable, no houses so well protected, as to be
secure from their voracity. Occasions of war had been caught at with
rich communities where plunder was the only object. The proconsuls
could win battles, but they could not keep their hands from off the
treasures of their allies and subjects.[5]
Lucullus was splendid in his rapacity, and amidst his victories he had
amassed the largest fortune which had yet belonged to patrician or
commoner, except Crassus. Nothing came amiss to him. He had sold the
commissions in his army. He had taken money out of the treasury for the
expenses of the campaign. Part he had spent in bribing the
administration to prolong his command beyond the usual time; the rest
he had left in the city to accumulate for himself at interest.[6] He
lived on the plunder of friend and foe, and the defeat of Mithridates
was never more than a second object to him. The one steady purpose in
which he never varied was to pile up gold and jewels.
An army so organized and so employed soon loses efficiency and
coherence. The legions, perhaps considering that they were not allowed
a fair share of the spoil, mutinied. The disaffection was headed by
young Publius Clodius, whose sister Lucullus had married. The campaign
which had opened brilliantly ended ignominiously. The Romans had to
fall back behind Pontus, closely pursued by Mithridates. Lucullus stood
on the defensive till he was recalled, and he then returned to Rome to
lounge away the remainder of his days in voluptuous magnificence.
While Lucullus was making his fortune in the East, a spurt of
insurrectionary fire had broken out in Italy. The agrarian laws and
Sylla's proscriptions and confiscations had restored the numbers of the
small proprietors, but the statesmen who had been so eager for their
reinstatement were fighting against tendencies too strong for them.
Life on the farm, like life in the city, was growing yearly more
extravagant. [7] The small peasants fell into debt. Sylla's soldiers
were expensive, and became embarrassed. Thus the small properties
artificially re-established were falling rapidly again into the market.
The great landowners bought them up, and Italy was once more lapsing to
territorial magnates cultivating their estates by slaves.
Vast gangs of slave laborers were thus still dispersed over the
peninsula, while others in large numbers were purchased and trained for
the amusement of the metropolis. Society in Rome, enervated as it was
by vicious pleasures, craved continually for new excitements.
Sensuality is a near relation of cruelty; and the more savage the
entertainments, the more delightful they were to the curled and scented
patricians who had lost the taste for finer enjoyments. Combats of wild
beasts were at first sufficient for them, but to see men kill each
other gave a keener delight; and out of the thousands of youths who
were sent over annually by the provincial governors, or were purchased
from the pirates by the slave-dealers, the most promising were selected
for the arena. Each great noble had his training establishment of
gladiators, and was as vain of their prowess as of his race-horses. The
schools of Capua were the most celebrated; and nothing so recommended a
candidate for the consulship to the electors as the production of a few
pairs of Capuan swords-men in the circus.
[Sidenote: B.C. 72-70.] These young men had hitherto performed their
duties with more submissiveness than might have been expected, and had
slaughtered one another in the most approved methods. But the horse
knows by the hand on his rein whether he has a fool for his rider. The
gladiators in the schools and the slaves on the plantations could not
be kept wholly ignorant of the character of their rulers. They were
aware that the seas were held by their friends the pirates, and that
their masters were again being beaten out of Asia, from which many of
themselves had been carried off. They began to ask themselves why men
who could use their swords should be slaves when their comrades and
kindred were up and fighting for freedom. They found a leader in a
young Thracian robber chief, named Spartacus, who was destined for the
amphitheatre, and who preferred meeting his masters in the field to
killing his friends to make a Roman holiday. Spartacus, with two
hundred of his companions, burst out from the Capuan "stable," seized
their arms, and made their way into the crater of Vesuvius, which was
then, after the long sleep of the volcano, a dense jungle of wild
vines. The slaves from the adjoining plantations deserted and joined
them. The fire spread, Spartacus proclaimed universal emancipation, and
in a few weeks was at the head of an army with which he overran Italy
to the foot of the Alps, defeated consuls and praetors, captured the
eagles of the legions, wasted the farms of the noble lords, and for two
years held his ground against all that Rome could do.
Of all the illustrations of the Senate's incapacity, the slave
insurrection was perhaps the worst. It was put down at last after
desperate exertions by Crassus and Pompey. Spartacus was killed, and
six thousand of his followers were impaled at various points on the
sides of the high-roads, that the slaves might have before their eyes
examples of the effect of disobedience. The immediate peril was over;
but another symptom had appeared of the social disease which would soon
end in death unless some remedy could be found. The nation was still
strong. There was power and worth in the undegenerate Italian race,
which needed only to be organized and ruled. But what remedy was
possible? The practical choice of politicians lay between the Senate
and the democracy. Both were alike bloody and unscrupulous; and the
rule of the Senate meant corruption and imbecility, and the rule of the
democracy meant anarchy.
[1] "Unum hoc dico: nostri isti nobiles, nisi vigilantes et boni et fortes
et misericordes erunt, iis hominibus in quibus haec erunt, ornamenta
sua concedant necesse est."--_Pro Roscio Amerino_, sec. 48.
[2] "Sunt enim ista maledicta pervulgata in omnes, quorum in adolescentiâ
forma et species fuit liberalis."--_Oratio pro Marca Caelio_.
[3] Now Fermaco.
[4] "Videbat enim populum Romanum non locupletari quotannis pecuniâ
publicâ praeter paucos: neque eos quidquam aliud assequi classium
nomine, nisi ut, detrimentis accipiendis majore affici turpitudine
videremur."--Cicero, _Pro Lege Maniliâ_, 23.
[5] "Difficile est dictu, Quirites, quanto in odio simus apud exteras
nationes, propter eorum, quos ad eas per hos annos cum imperio
misimus, injurias ac libidines. Quod enim fanum putatis in illis
terris nostris magistratibus religiosum, quam civitatem sanctam, quam
domum satis clausam ac munitam fuisse? Urbes jam locupletes ac
copiosae requiruntur, quibus causa belli propter diripiendi
cupiditatem inferatur.... Quare etiamsi quem habetis, qui collatis
signis exercitus regios superare posse videatur, tamen, nisi erit
idem, qui se a pecuniis sociorum, qui ab eorum conjugibus ac liberis,
qui ab ornamentis fanorum atque oppidorum, qui ab auro gazâque regiâ
manus, oculos, animum cohibere possit, non erit idoneus, qui ad
bellum Asiaticum regiumque mittatur."--_Pro Lege Maniliâ_, 22,
23.
[6] "Quem possumus imperatorem aliquo in numero putare, cujus in exercitu
veneant centuriatus atque venierint? Quid hunc hominem magnum aut
amplum de republicâ cogitare, qui pecuniam ex aerario depromtam ad
bellum administrandum, aut propter cupiditatem provinciae
magistratibus diviserit aut propter avaritiam Romae in quaestu
reliquerit? Vestra admurmuratio facit, Quirites, ut agnoscere
videamini qui haec fecerint: ego autem neminem nomino."--_Pro Lege
Maniliâ_, 13.
[7] Varro mentions curious instances of the change in country manners. He
makes an old man say that when he was a boy, a farmer's wife used to
be content with a jaunt in a cart once or twice a year, the farmer not
taking out the covered wagon (the more luxurious vehicle) at all
unless he pleased. The farmer used to shave only once a week,
etc.--_M. Ter. Varronis Reliquiae_, ed. Alexander Riese, pp. 139,
140.