(Stephan. Byzant., [Greek: Briges]), who are mentioned by Herodotus
(vii. 73). The Macedonian tradition was that they were the same as the
Phrygians; that so long as they lived in Europe with the Macedonians
they kept the name of Briges, and that when they passed over into Asia
they were called Phryges.
[567] Drumann (_Geschichte Roms_, i. 516, n. 84) assumes that it is P.
Volumnius Eutrapelus, a boon companion of Antonius. Several of Cicero's
letters to him are extant (_Ad Div._ vii. 32, 33).
[568] Plutarch has handled the character of Brutus with partiality. He
could not be ignorant of his love of money and of the oppressive manner
in which he treated his unlucky creditors. Drumann (_Junii_, p. 20, &c.)
has collected the evidence on this point. Though Brutus was an austere
man and affected philosophy, his character is not free from the
imputation of ingratitude to Cæsar, love of power, and avarice. He seems
to have been one of those who deceive themselves into a belief of their
own virtues, because they are free from other people's vices. The
promise of plunder to his soldiers is not excusable because Antonius and
Cæsar did worse than he intended to do. Plutarch here alludes to many of
the Italians being driven out of their lands, which were given to the
soldiers who had fought on the side of Cæsar and Antonius at Philippi.
The misery that was occasioned by this measure was one of the chief
evils of the Civil Wars. The slaughter in war chiefly affected the
soldiers themselves, and if both armies had been destroyed, the people
would only have been the better for it. The misery that arose from the
ejection of the hard-working husbandmen reached to their wives and
children. But a country which had a large army on foot which is no
longer wanted, must either pay them out of taxes and plunder, or have a
revolution. Necessity was the excuse for Cæsar and Antonius, and the
same necessity would have been the excuse of Brutus, if he had been
victorious. Defeat saved him from this necessity.
[569] The ships which were bringing aid to Cæsar from Brundusium under
the command of Domitius Calvinus. They were met and defeated by L.
Statius Marcus.
[570] Nothing seems to be known about him. Of course he is not the
Volumnius mentioned in c. 45.
[571] See the Life of Cato the Younger, c. 73.
[572] See the Life of Antonius, c. 70.
[573] The verse is from the Medea of Euripides (v. 332), in which Medea
Is cursing her faithless husband Jason. The educated Romans were
familiar with the Greek dramatists, whom they often quoted. (Compare the
Life of Pompeius, c. 78.) Appian says that Brutus intended to apply this
line to Antonius (_Civil Wars_, iv. 130).
The other verse, which Volumnius forgot, was remembered by somebody
else, if it be the verse of which Florus (iv. 7) has recorded the
substance, "that virtue is not a reality, but a name." Dion Cassius
(xlvii. 49, and the note of Reimarus) also has recorded two Greek verses
which Brutus is said to have uttered; but he does not mention the verse
which Plutarch cites. The substance of the two verses cited by Dion is
this:
"Poor virtue, empty name, whom I have serv'd
As a true mistress; thou art fortune's slave."
Volumnius might not choose to remember these verses, as Drumann
suggests, in order to save the credit of his friend.
[574] See c. 11, and the Life of the younger Cato, c. 65, 73.
[575] Brutus was forty-three years of age when he died. Velleius (ii.
72) says that he was in his thirty-seventh year, which is a mistake.
The character of Brutus requires a special notice. It is easy enough to
write a character of a man, but not easy to write a true one. Michelet
(_Histoire de la Revolution Française_, ii. 545), speaking of the chief
actors of the revolution in 1789. '90, '91, says: "We have rarely given
a judgment entire, indistinct, no _portrait_ properly speaking; all,
almost all, are unjust; resulting from a mean which is taken between
this and that moment in a person's life, between the good and the bad,
neutralising the one by the other, and making both false. We have judged
the acts, as they present themselves, day by day, hour by hour. We have
given a date to our judgments; and this has allowed us often to praise
men, whom at a later time we shall have to blame. Criticism, forgetful
and harsh, too often condemns beginnings which are laudable, having in
view the end which it knows, of which it has a view beforehand. But we
do not choose to know this end; whatever this man may do to-morrow, we
note for his advantage the good which he does to-day: the end will come
soon enough." This is the true method of writing history; this is the
true method of judging men. Unfortunately we cannot trace the career of
many individuals with that particularity of date and circumstance which
would enable us to do justice. Plutarch does not draw characters in the
mass in the modern way: he gives us both the good and the bad, in
detail: but with little regard sometimes to time and circumstance. He
has treated Brutus with partiality: he finds only one act in his life to
condemn (chap. 46). The great condemnation of Brutus is, that acting in
the name of virtue, he did not know what it was; that fighting for his
country, he was fighting for a party; his Roman republic was a republic
of aristocrats; his people was a fraction of the Roman citizens; he
conceived no scheme for regenerating a whole nation: he engaged in a
death struggle in which we can feel no sympathy. His name is an idle
abused theme for rhetoric; and his portrait must be drawn, ill or well,
that the world may be disabused.
Drumann (_Geschichte Roms_, Junii, p. 34) has carefully collected the
acts of Brutus; and he has judged him severely, and, I think, truly.
Brutus had moderate abilities, with great industry and much learning: he
had no merit as a general, but he had the courage of a soldier, he had
the reputation of virtue, and he was free from many of the vices of his
contemporaries; he was sober and temperate. Of enlarged political views
he had none; there is not a sign of his being superior in this respect
to the mass of his contemporaries. When the Civil War broke out, he
joined Pompeius, though Pompeius had murdered his father. If he gave up
his private enmity, as Plutarch says, for what he believed to be the
better cause, the sacrifice was honourable: if there were other motives,
and I believe there were, his choice of his party does him no credit.
His conspiracy against Cæsar can only be justified by those, if there
are such, who think that a usurper ought to be got rid of in any way.
But if a man is to be murdered, one does not expect those to take a part
in the act who, after being enemies have received favours from him, and
professed to be friends. The murderers should at least be a man's
declared enemies who have just wrongs to avenge. Though Brutus was
dissatisfied with things under Cæsar, he was not the first mover in the
conspiracy. He was worked upon by others, who knew that his character
and personal relation to Cæsar would in a measure sanctify the deed; and
by their persuasion, not his own resolve, he became an assassin in the
name of freedom, which meant the triumph of his party, and in the name
of virtue, which meant nothing.
The act was bad in Brutus as an act of treachery; and it was bad as an
act of policy. It failed in its object--the success of a party, because
the death of Cæsar was not enough; other victims were necessary, and
Brutus would not have them. He put himself at the head of a plot, in
which there was no plan: he dreamed of success and forgot the means. He
mistook the circumstances of the times and the character of the men. His
conduct after the murder was feeble and uncertain; and it was also as
illegal as the usurpation of Cæsar. "He left Rome as prætor without the
permission of the Senate; he took possession of a province which, even
according to Cicero's testimony, had been assigned to another; he
arbitrarily passed beyond the boundaries of his province, and set his
effigy on the coins." (Drumann.) He attacked the Bessi in order to give
his soldiers booty, and he plundered Asia to get money for the conflict
against Cæsar and Antonius, for the mastery of Rome and Italy. The means
that he had at his disposal show that he robbed without measure and
without mercy; and never was greater tyranny exercised over helpless
people in the name of liberty than the wretched inhabitants of Asia
experienced from Brutus the "Liberator" and Cassius "the last of the
Romans." But all these great resources were thrown away in an
ill-conceived and worse executed campaign.
Temperance, industry, and unwillingness to shed blood are noble
qualities in a citizen and a soldier; and Brutus possessed them. But
great wealth gotten by ill means is an eternal reproach; and the trade
of money-lending, carried on in the names of others, with unrelenting
greediness, is both avarice and hypocrisy. Cicero, the friend of Brutus,
is the witness for his wealth, and for his unworthy means to increase
it.
Reflecting men in all ages have a philosophy. With the educated Greeks
and Romans, philosophy was religion. The vulgar belief, under whatever
name it may be, is never the belief of those who have leisure for
reflection. The vulgar rich and vulgar poor are immersed in sense: the
man of reflection strives to emerge from it. To him the things which are
seen are only the shadows of the unseen; forms without substance, but
the evidence of the substantial: "for the invisible things of God from
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made" (Epistle to the Romans, i. 20). Brutus was from
his youth up a student of philosophy and well versed in the systems of
the Greeks. Untiring industry and a strong memory had stored his mind
with the thoughts of others, but he had not capacity enough to draw
profit from his intellectual as he did from his golden treasures. His
mind was a barren field on which no culture could raise an abundant
crop. His wisdom was the thoughts of others, and he had ever ready in
his mouth something that others had said. But to utter other men's
wisdom is not enough: a man must make it his own by the labour of
independent thought. Philosophy and superstition were blended in his
mind, and they formed a chaos in his bewildered brain, as they always
will do; and the product is Gorgons and Hydras and Chimeras dire. In the
still of night phantoms floated before his wasted strength and wakeful
eyes; perhaps the vision of him, the generous and the brave, who had
saved the life of an enemy in battle, and fell by his hand in the midst
of peace. Conscience was his tormentor, for truth was stronger than the
illusions of self-imputed virtue. Though Brutus had condemned Cato's
death, he died by his own hand, not with the stubborn resolve of Cato,
who would not yield to a usurper, but merely to escape from his enemies.
A Roman might be pardoned for not choosing to become the prisoner of a
Roman, but his grave should have been the battlefield, and the
instrument should have been the hands of those who were fighting against
the cause which he proclaimed to be righteous and just. Cato's son
bettered his father's example: he died on the plain of Philippi by the
sword of the enemy. Brutus died without belief in the existence of that
virtue which he had affected to follow: the triumph of a wrongful cause,
as he conceived it, was a proof that virtue was an empty name. He forgot
the transitory nature of all individual existences, and thought that
justice perished with him. But a true philosopher does not make himself
a central point, nor his own misfortunes a final catastrophe. He looks
both backwards and forwards, to the past and the future, and views
himself as a small link in the great chain of events which holds all
things together. Brutus died in despair, with the courage, but not with
the faith, of a martyr.
When men talk of tyranny and rise against it, the name of Brutus is
invoked; a mere name and nothing else. What single act is there in the
man's life which promised the regeneration of his country and the
freedom of mankind? Like other Romans, he only thought of maintaining
the supremacy of Rome; his ideas were no larger than theirs; he had no
sympathy for those whom Rome governed and oppressed. For his country, he
had nothing to propose; its worn-out political constitution he would
maintain, not amend; indeed, amendment was impossible. Probably he
dreaded anarchy and the dissolution of social order, for that would have
released his creditors and confiscated his valuable estates. But Cæsar's
usurpation was not an anarchy: it was a monarchy, a sole rule; and
Brutus, who was ambitious, could not endure that. It may be said that if
the political views of Brutus were narrow, he was only like most of his
countrymen. But why then is he exalted, and why is his name invoked?
What single title had he to distinction except what Cæsar gave him? A
man of unknown family, the son of a woman whom Cæsar had debauched,
pardoned after fighting against his mother's lover, raised by him to the
prætorship, and honoured with Cæsar's friendship--he has owed his
distinction to nothing else than murdering the man whose genius he could
not appreciate, but whose favours he had enjoyed.
His spurious philosophy has helped to save him from the detestation
which is his due; but the false garb should be stripped off. A stoic, an
ascetic, and nothing more, is a mere negation. The active virtues of
Brutus are not recorded. If he sometimes did an act of public justice
(c. 35), it was not more than many other Romans have done. To reduce
this philosopher to his true level, we ask, what did he say or do that
showed a sympathy with all mankind? Where is the evidence that he had
the feeling of justice which alone can regenerate a nation? But it may
be said, why seek in a Roman of his age what we cannot expect to find?
Why then elevate him above the rest of his age and consecrate his name?
Why make a hero of him who murdered his benefactor, and then ran away
from the city which he was to save--from we know not what? And why make a
virtuous man of him who was only austere, and who did not believe in the
virtues that he professed? As to statesmanship, nobody has claimed that
for him yet.
"The deputy of Arras, poor, and despised even by his own party, won the
confidence of the people by their belief in his probity: and he deserved
it. Fanatical and narrow-minded, he was still a man of principles.
Untiring industry, unshaken faith, and poverty, the guarantee of his
probity, raised him slowly to distinction, and enabled him to destroy
all who stood between him and the realisation of an unbending theory.
Though he had sacrificed the lives of others, he scorned to save his own
by doing what would have contradicted his principles: he respected the
form of legality, when its substance no longer existed, and refused to
sanction force when it would have been used for his own protection"
(Lamartine, _Histoire des Girondins_, liv. 61, ix.). A great and
memorable example of crime, of fanaticism, and of virtue; of a career
commenced in the cause of justice, in truth, faith and sincerity; of a
man who did believe in virtue, and yet spoiled the cause in which he
embarked, and left behind him a name for universal execration.
Treachery at home, enmity abroad, and misconduct in its own leaders,
made the French Revolution result in anarchy, and then in a tyranny. The
Civil Wars of Rome resulted in a monarchy, and there was nothing else in
which they could end. The Roman monarchy or the Empire was a natural
birth. The French Empire was an abortion. The Roman Empire was the
proper growth of the ages that had preceded it: they could produce
nothing better. In a few years after the battle of Philippi, Cæsar
Octavianus got rid of his partner Antonius; and under the administration
of Augustus the world enjoyed comparative peace, and the Roman Empire
was established and consolidated. The genius of Augustus, often ill
appreciated, is demonstrated by the results of his policy. He restored
order to a distracted state and transmitted his power to his successors.
The huge fabric of Roman greatness resting on its ancient foundations,
only crumbled beneath the assaults that time and new circumstances make
against all political institutions.
[576] Velleius (ii. 71, quoted by Kaltwasser) states that some of the
partisans of Brutus and Cassius wished Messala to put himself at the
head of their party, but he declined to try the fortune of another
contest.
[577] Compare the Life of Antonius, c. 22. Appian (_Civil Wars_, iv.
135) makes the same statement as Plutarch about the body of Brutus. It
is not inconsistent with this that his head was cut off in order to be
sent to Rome and thrown at the feet of Cæsar's statue, as Suetonius says
(Sueton. _August._ 13). Dion Cassius adds (xlvii. 49) that in the
passage from Dyrrachium a storm came on and the head was thrown into the
sea.
[578] Nikolaus of Damascus, a Peripatetic philosopher, and a friend of
Augustus, wrote a universal history in Greek, in one hundred and
forty-four books, of which a few fragments remain. There is also a
fragment of his Life of Augustus. The best edition is that of J.C.
Orelli, Leipzig, 1804, 8vo.; to which a supplement was published in
1811.
[579] The work of Valerius Maximus is dedicated to the Emperor Tiberius.
The death of Porcia is mentioned in lib. iv. c. 6, 5. Appian (_Civil
Wars_, iv. 136) and Dion Cassius (xlvii. 49) give the same account of
Porcia's death.
[580] Plutarch here evidently doubts the genuineness of the letter
attributed to Brutus. The life of Brutus offered good materials for the
falsifiers of history, who worked with them after rhetorical fashion.
There are a few letters in the collection of Cicero which are genuine,
but the single book of letters to Brutus (M. Tullii Ciceronis
Epistolorum ad Brutum Liber Singularis) is condemned as a forgery by the
best critics. It contains letters of Cicero to Brutus, and of Brutus to
Cicero; and a letter of Brutus to Atticus. Genuine letters of Brutus,
written day by day, like those of Cicero, would have formed the best
materials from which we might judge him.
[581] A despatch rolled in a peculiar manner. See vol. ii. Life of
Lysander, ch. 19.
[582] The battle of Kunaxa was fought on the 7th of September 401 B.C.
[583] The title of a great Persian officer of State.
[584] Egypt revolted from Persia B.C. 358. See vol. iii. Life of
Agesilaus, ad. fin.
[585] A people of Media on the Caspian Sea.
[586] See Grote on Epameinondas. "The muscularity, purchased by
excessive nutriment, of the Boeotian pugilist." (_Hist. of Greece_, part
ii. ch. lxxvii.)
[587] See vol. iii. Life of Agesilaus, c. 13, note.
[588] Ptolemy, King of Egypt.
[589] The reading Adria is obviously wrong. Droysen suggests Andros; but
Thirlwall much more reasonably conjectures that the word should be
Hydrea, observing that the geographical position of Andros does not suit
the account given in the text. Clough prefers to read Andros, saying
that "Aratus would hardly be thought to have gone from Hydrea to Euboea,
which is near enough to Andros to make the supposition in this case not
unnatural." But I think that this argument makes just the other way, for
the object of Aratus's slaves was to tell the Macedonian officer that
their master was gone to a place so far away that it would be useless to
attempt to follow him.
[590] The word which I have here translated "portraits" generally means
statues, but not necessarily. Probably most of the despots were
commemorated by statues.
[591] Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander, I suppose is meant.
[592] This Alexander was the son of Kraterus, and grandson of Alexander
the Great's general of that name.
[593] A common precaution against surprise. See above, ch. viii.
[594] This was Demetrius II., the son of Antigonus Gonatas, who
succeeded his father on the throne of Macedonia, B.C. 239.
[595] Apparently the great seal of the league is meant, which we must
suppose was entrusted to the general for the time being.
[596] I., ii. 607.
[597] Philip's object in this expedition was to make himself master of
Apollonia and Oricum.
[598] "He was forced to burn his ships and retreat overland, leaving his
baggage, ammunition, and a great part of the arms of his troops in the
enemy's hands." (_Thirlwall's History_, ch. lxiv).
[599] See Merivale's 'History of the Romans under the Empire,' ch. liii.
vol. vi. page 142, note.
[600] Quintus Catulus Capitolinus.
[601] Nero set a price upon the head of Vindex, whose designs were
speedily revealed to him, and though the forces of the Gaulish province
were disposed to follow their chief, the more powerful legions of Lower
Germany, under Virginius Rufus, were in full march against them. The
armies met at Vesontio, and there Virginius and Vindex at a private
interview agreed to conspire together, but their troops could come to no
such understanding; the Virginians attacked the soldiers of Vindex, and
almost cut them to pieces. Vindex thereupon, with the haste and levity
of his race, threw himself upon his sword, and the rebellion seemed for
a moment to be crushed. Merivale's 'History of the Romans under the
Empire,' vol. vi. ch. lv.
[602] Nero died on the 9th of June, A.D. 68.
[603] The gold ring was presented by the Roman emperors in much the same
way as the insignia of an order of chivalry is given by modern
sovereigns. Under the republic it had been the distinguishing mark of
the equestrian order, and its possession still continued to raise its
recipients to the rank of 'eques,' cf. Plin. H.N. 33, 2, and Paulus i.
5, de jure anul.
[604] Clough well remarks that here we may observe the beginning of a
state-post, which still exists on the continent of Europe, by which all
government couriers, &c., were forwarded free of expense. The modern
terms of "diplomacy," "diplomatist," &c., is derived from the
"_diplomata_," or folded and sealed dispatches carried by such persons.
[605] Narbonne.
[606] Tacitus sums up the characters of these two men after his manner.
"Titus Vinius and Cornelius Laco, the one the worst, the other the
laziest of men, &c." Tac. Hist. i. 6.
[607] No doubt Galba's personal appearance offered a striking contrast
to that of "the implacable, beautiful tyrant" Nero. See infra, ch. 15,
and Tac. Hist. i. 7
[608] 'Tanquam innocentes,' Tac. Hist. i. 6.
[609] More properly "rowers," men employed to row in ships of war, who
regarded it as promotion to become legionary soldiers.
[610] Vinius had engaged to marry the daughter of Tigellinus, who was a
widow with a large dower.
[611] 'Hordeonius Flaccus,' Tac. Hist. i. 12, 53, etc.
[612] Tigellinus, we have learned from the last chapter but one, was
living at Rome. Moreover he was never in command of any legions; and
evidently some legions in the provinces are meant. Clough conjectures
that we should read Vitellius instead of Tigellinus; and this I think
very reasonable.
[613] This seems to be a mistake, as Asiaticus was a freedman of
Vitellius. See Tac. (_Hist._ ii. 57)
[614] Of sesterces.
[615] A.D. 69.
[616] The First Legion, in Lower Germany.
[617] At Cologne.
[618] Tac. (_Hist._ i. 62).
[619] Suetonius (_Otho_, 4) calls him Seleukus.
[620] So I have ventured to translate "speculator." The speculatores
under the empire were employed as special adjutants, messengers, and
bodyguards of a general.
[621] Counting inclusively in the Roman fashion.
[622] The Miliarium Aureum, or Golden Milestone. London Stone was
established by the Romans in Britain for the same purpose.
[623] This habit of the ancient Romans, of being carried about Rome in
litters, survives to the present day in the Pope's "sedia gestatoria."
[624] We learn from Tacitus that this man was the standard-bearer
(vexillarius) of a cohort which still accompanied Galba. Tac. (_Hist._
i. 41).
[625] Galba before leaving the palace had put on a light, quilted tunic.
Suet. (_Galba_, ch. 19).
[626] She was obliged to pay for it. Tac. (_Hist._ i. 47).
[627] Patrobius was a freedman of Nero who had been punished by Galba.
The words "and Vitellius" are probably corrupt.