The Struggle of Parties During the Absence of Pompeius.
The Defeated Aristocracy
With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the capital
changed positions. From the time that the elected general
of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his party,
or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance in the capital.
The nobility doubtless still stood in compact array, and still
as before there issued from the comitial machinery none but consuls,
who according to the expression of the democrats were already
designated to the consulate in their cradles; to command the elections
andbreak down the influence of the old families over them was beyond
the power even of the holders of power. But unfortunately the consulate,
at the very moment when they had got the length of virtually excluding
the "new men" from it, began itself to grow pale before the newly-
risen star of the exceptional military power. The aristocracy felt
this, though they did not exactly confess it; they gave themselves
up as lost. Except Quintus Catulus, who with honourable firmness
persevered at his far from pleasant post as champion of a vanquished
party down to his death (694), no Optimate could be named
from the highest ranks of the nobility, who would have sustained
the interests of the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness.
Their very men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus
Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired,
so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas,
in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the senate-house
amidst their gardens and libraries, their aviaries and fish-ponds.
Still more, of course, was this the case with the younger generation
of the aristocracy, which was either wholly absorbed in luxury
and literature or turning towards the rising sun.
Cato
There was among the younger men a single exception; it was
Marcus Porcius Cato (born in 659), a man of the best intentions
and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most Quixotic
and one of the most cheerless phenomena in this age so abounding
in political caricatures. Honourable and steadfast, earnest in purpose
and in action, full of attachment to his country and to its hereditary
constitution, but dull in intellect and sensuously as well as
morally destitute of passion, he might certainly have made
a tolerable state-accountant. But unfortunately he fell early
under the power of formalism, and swayed partly by the phrases
of the Stoa, which in their abstract baldness and spiritless
isolation were current among the genteel world of that day, partly
by the example of his great-grandfather whom he deemed it his especial
task to reproduce, he began to walk about in the sinful capital
as a model burgess and mirror of virtue, to scold at the times
like the old Cato, to travel on foot instead of riding, to take
no interest, to decline badges of distinction as a soldier,
and to introduce the restoration of the good old days by going after
the precedent of king Romulus without a shirt. A strange caricature
of his ancestor--the gray-haired farmer whom hatred and anger made
an orator, who wielded in masterly style the plough as well as
the sword, who with his narrow, but original and sound common sense
ordinarily hit the nail on the head--was this young unimpassioned
pedant from whose lips dropped scholastic wisdom and who was
everywhere seen sitting book in hand, this philosopher
who understood neither the art of war nor any other art whatever,
this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals. Yet he attained
to moral and thereby even to political importance. In an utterly
wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told
powerfully on the multitude; he even formed a school, and there were
individuals--it is true they were but few--who in their turn
copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher.
On the same cause depended also his political influence.
As he was the only conservative of note who possessed if not talent
and insight, at any rate integrity and courage, and was always ready
to throw himself into the breach whether it was necessary to do so
or not, he soon became the recognized champion of the Optimate party,
although neither his age nor his rank nor his intellect entitled
him to be so. Where the perseverance of a single resolute man
could decide, he no doubt sometimes achieved a success,
and in questions of detail, more particularly of a financial character,
he often judiciously interfered, as indeed he was absent
from no meeting of the senate; his quaestorship in fact formed
an epoch, and as long as he lived he checked the details of the public
budget, regarding which he maintained of course a constant warfare
with the farmers of the taxes. For the rest, he lacked simply
every ingredient of a statesman. He was incapable of even
comprehending a political aim and of surveying political relations;
his whole tactics consisted in setting his face against every one
who deviated or seemed to him to deviate from the traditionary
moral and political catechism of the aristocracy, and thus
of course he worked as often into the hands of his opponents
as into those of his own party. The Don Quixote of the aristocracy,
he proved by his character and his actions that at this time,
while there was certainly still an aristocracy in existence,
the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.
Democratic Attacks
To continue the conflict with this aristocracy brought little
honour. Of course the attacks of the democracy on the vanquished
foe did not on that account cease. The pack of the Populares threw
themselves on the broken ranks of the nobility like the sutlers
on a conquered camp, and the surface at least of politics
was by this agitation ruffled into high waves of foam. The multitude
entered into the matter the more readily, as Gaius Caesar especially
kept them in good humour by the extravagant magnificence of his games
(689)--in which all the equipments, even the cages of the wild
beasts, appeared of massive silver--and generally by a liberality
which was all the more princely that it was based solely
on the contraction of debt. The attacks on the nobility
were of the most varied kind. The abuses of aristocratic rule afforded
copious materials; magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed
a liberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, Marcus Cicero,
continued systematically to unveil the most offensive and scandalous
aspects of the Optimate doings and to propose laws against them.
The senate was directed to give access to foreign envoys on set days,
with the view of preventing the usual postponement of audiences.
Loans raised by foreign ambassadors in Rome were declared non-actionable,
as this was the only means of seriously checking the corruptions
which formed the order of the day in the senate (687). The right
of the senate to give dispensation in particular cases from the laws
was restricted (687); as was also the abuse whereby every Roman of rank,
who had private business to attend to in the provinces, got himself
invested by the senate with the character of a Roman envoy thither
(691). They heightened the penalties against the purchase
of votes and electioneering intrigues (687, 691); which latter
were especially increased in a scandalous fashion by the attempts
of the individuals ejected from the senate(1) to get back
to it through re-election.
What had hitherto been simply understood as matter of course
was now expressly laid down as a law, that the praetors were bound
to administer justice in conformity with the rules set forth by them,
after the Roman fashion, at their entering on office (687).
Transpadanes
Freedmen
But, above all, efforts were made to complete the democratic
restoration and to realize the leading ideas of the Gracchan period
in a form suitable to the times. The election of the priests
by the comitia, which Gnaeus Domitius had introduced(2) and Sulla
had again done away,(3) was established by a law of the tribune
of the people Titus Labienus in 691. The democrats were fond
of pointing out how much was still wanting towards the restoration
of the Sempronian corn-laws in their full extent, and at the same
time passed over in silence the fact that under the altered
circumstances--with the straitened condition of the public finances
and the great increase in the number of fully-privileged Roman
citizens--that restoration was absolutely impracticable.
In the country between the Po and the Alps they zealously fostered
the agitation for political equality with the Italians.
As early as 686 Gaius Caesar travelled from place to place there
for this purpose; in 689 Marcus Crassus as censor made arrangements
to enrol the inhabitants directly in the burgess-roll--which was only
frustrated by the resistance of his colleague; in the following
censorships this attempt seems regularly to have been repeated.
As formerly Gracchus and Flaccus had been the patrons of the Latins,
so the present leaders of the democracy gave themselves forth
as protectors of the Transpadanes, and Gaius Piso (consul in 687)
had bitterly to regret that he had ventured to outrage
one of these clients of Caesar and Crassus. On the other hand
the same leaders appeared by no means disposed to advocate
the political equalization of the freedmen; the tribune of the people
Gaius Manilius, who in a thinly attended assembly had procured
the renewal (31 Dec. 687) of the Sulpician law as to the suffrage
of freedmen,(4) was immediately disavowed by the leading men
of the democracy, and with their consent the law was cancelled
by the senate on the very day after its passing. In the same spirit
all the strangers, who possessed neither Roman nor Latin burgess-
rights, were ejected from the capital by decree of the people
in 689. It is obvious that the intrinsic inconsistency
of the Gracchan policy--in abetting at once the effort of the excluded
to obtain admission into the circle of the privileged, and the effort
of the privileged to maintain their distinctive rights--had passed
over to their successors; while Caesar and his friends on the one hand
held forth to the Transpadanes the prospect of the franchise,
they on the other hand gave their assent to the continuance
of the disabilities of the freedmen, and to the barbarous setting aside
of the rivalry which the industry and trading skill of the Hellenes
and Orientals maintained with the Italians in Italy itself.
Process against Rabirius
The mode in which the democracy dealt with the ancient criminal
jurisdiction of the comitia was characteristic. It had not been
properly abolished by Sulla, but practically the jury-commissions
on high treason and murder had superseded it,(5) and no rational
man could think of seriously re-establishing the old procedure
which long before Sulla had been thoroughly unpractical.
But as the idea of the sovereignty of the people appeared to require
a recognition at least in principle of the penal jurisdiction
of the burgesses, the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 691
brought the old man, who thirty-eight years before had slain or was
alleged to have slain the tribune of the people Lucius Saturninus,(6)
before the same high court of criminal jurisdiction, by virtue of which,
if the annals reported truly, king Tullus had procured the acquittal
of the Horatius who had killed his sister. The accused was one
Gaius Rabirius, who, if he had not killed Saturninus,
had at least paraded with his cut-off head at the tables
of men of rank, and who moreover was notorious among the Apulian
landholders for his kidnapping and his bloody deeds. The object,
if not of the accuser himself, at any rate of the more sagacious men
who backed him, was not at all to make this pitiful wretch
die the death of the cross; they were not unwilling to acquiesce,
when first the form of the impeachment was materially modified
by the senate, and then the assembly of the people called to pronounce
sentence on the guilty was dissolved under some sort of pretext
by the opposite party--so that the whole procedure was set aside.
At all events by this process the two palladia of Roman freedom,
the right of the citizens to appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes
of the people, were once more established as practical rights,
and the legal basis on which the democracy rested was adjusted afresh.
Personal Attacks
The democratic reaction manifested still greater vehemence
in all personal questions, wherever it could and dared.
Prudence indeed enjoined it not to urge the restoration of the estates
confiscated by Sulla to their former owners, that it might not quarrel
with its own allies and at the same time fall into a conflict
with material interests, for which a policy with a set purpose
is rarelya match; the recall of the emigrants was too closely connected
with this question of property not to appear quite as unadvisable.
On the other hand great exertions were made to restore to the children
of the proscribed the political rights withdrawn from them (691),
and the heads of the senatorial party were incessantly subjected
to personal attacks. Thus Gaius Memmius set on foot a process aimed
at Marcus Lucullus in 688. Thus they allowed his more famous
brother to wait for three years before the gates of the capital
for his well-deserved triumph (688-691). Quintus Rex and the conqueror
of Crete Quintus Metellus were similarly insulted.
It produced a still greater sensation, when the young leader
of the democracy Gaius Caesar in 691 not merely presumed to compete
with the two most distinguished men of the nobility, Quintus Catulus
and Publius Servilius the victor of Isaura, in the candidature
for the supreme pontificate, but even carried the day
among the burgesses. The heirs of Sulla, especially his son Faustus,
found themselves constantly threatened with an action for the refunding
of the public moneys which, it was alleged, had been embezzled
by the regent. They talked even of resuming the democratic
impeachments suspended in 664 on the basis of the Varian law.(7)
The individuals who had taken part in the Sullan executions were,
as may readily be conceived, judicially prosecuted with the utmost
zeal. When the quaestor Marcus Cato, in his pedantic integrity,
himself made a beginning by demanding back from them the rewards
which they had received for murder as property illegally alienated
from the state (689), it can excite no surprise that in the following
year (690) Gaius Caesar, as president of the commission
regarding murder, summarily treated the clause in the Sullan
ordinance, which declared that a proscribed person might be
killed with impunity, as null and void, and caused the most
noted of Sulla's executioners, Lucius Catilina, Lucius Bellienus,
Lucius Luscius to be brought before his jurymen and, partially,
to be condemned.
Rehabilitation of Saturninus and Marius
Lastly, they did not hesitate now to name once more in public
the long-proscribed names of the heroes and martyrs of the democracy,
and to celebrate their memory. We have already mentioned how
Saturninus was rehabilitated by the process directed against
his murderer. But a different sound withal had the name of Gaius
Marius, at the mention of which all hearts once had throbbed;
and it happened that the man, to whom Italy owed her deliverance
from the northern barbarians, was at the same time the uncle
of the present leader of the democracy. Loudly had the multitude
rejoiced, when in 686 Gaius Caesar ventured in spite of
the prohibitions publicly to show the honoured features of the hero
in the Forum at the interment of the widow of Marius. But when,
three years afterwards (689), the emblems of victory, which Marius
had caused to be erected in the Capitol and Sulla had ordered to be
thrown down, one morning unexpectedly glittered afresh in gold
and marble at the old spot, the veterans from the African and Cimbrian
wars crowded, with tears in their eyes, around the statue of their
beloved general; and in presence of the rejoicing masses the senate
did not venture to seize the trophies which the same bold hand had
renewed in defiance of the laws.
Worthlessness of the Democratic Successes
But all these doings and disputes, however much noise they made,
were, politically considered, of but very subordinate importance.
The oligarchy was vanquished; the democracy had attained the helm.
That underlings of various grades should hasten to inflict
an additional kick on the prostrate foe; that the democrats also
should have their basis in law and their worship of principles;
that their doctrinaires should not rest till the whole privileges
of the community were in all particulars restored, and should
in that respect occasionally make themselves ridiculous,
as legitimists are wont to do--all this was just as much
to be expected as it was matter of indifference. Taken as a whole,
the agitation was aimless; and we discern in it the perplexity
of its authors to find an object for their activity, for it
turned almost wholly on things already essentially settled
or on subordinate matters.
Impending Collision between the Democrats and Pompeius
It could not be otherwise. In the struggle with the aristocracy
the democrats had remained victors; but they had not conquered
alone, and the fiery trial still awaited them--the reckoning
not with their former foe, but with their too powerful ally,
to whom in the struggle with the aristocracy they were substantially
indebted for victory, and to whose hands they had now entrusted
an unexampled military and political power, because they dared
not refuse it to him. The general of the east and of the seas
was still employed in appointing and deposing kings. How long time
he would take for that work, or when he would declare the business
of the war to be ended, no one could tell but himself;
since like everything else the time of his return to Italy,
or in other words the day of decision, was left in his own hands.
The parties in Rome meanwhile sat and waited. The Optimates indeed
looked forward to the arrival of the dreaded general with comparative
calmness; by the rupture between Pompeius and the democracy, which they
saw to be approaching, they could not lose, but could only gain.
The democrats on the contrary waited with painful anxiety,
and sought, during the interval still allowed to them
by the absence of Pompeius, to lay a countermine against
the impending explosion.
Schemes for Appointing a Democratic Military Dictatorship
In this policy they again coincided with Crassus,
to whom no course was left for encountering his envied and hated rival
but that of allying himself afresh, and more closely than before,
with the democracy. Already in the first coalition a special
approximation had taken place between Caesar and Crassus
as the two weaker parties; a common interest and a common danger
tightened yet more the bond which joined the richest
and the most insolvent of Romans in closest alliance.
While in public the democrats described the absent general
as the head and pride of their party and seemed to direct
all their arrows against the aristocracy, preparations
were secretly made against Pompeius; and these attempts
of the democracy to escape from the impending military dictatorship
have historically a far higher significance than the noisy agitation,
for the most part employed only as a mask, against the nobility.
It is true that they were carried on amidst a darkness, upon which
our tradition allows only some stray gleams of light to fall;
for not the present alone, but the succeeding age also
had its reasons for throwing a veil over the matter. But in general
both the course and the object of these efforts are completely clear.
The military power could only be effectually checkmated by another
military power. The design of the democrats was to possess
themselves of the reins of government after the example of Marius
and Cinna, then to entrust one of their leaders either with the conquest
of Egypt or with the governorship of Spain or some similar
ordinary or extraordinary office, and thus to find in him
and his military force a counterpoise to Pompeius and his army.
For this they required a revolution, which was directed immediately
against the nominal government, but in reality against Pompeius
as the designated monarch;(8) and, to effect this revolution,
there was from the passing of the Gabinio-Manilian laws down to
the return of Pompeius (688-692) perpetual conspiracy in Rome.
The capital was in anxious suspense; the depressed temper
of the capitalists, the suspensions of payment, the frequent bankruptcies
were heralds of the fermenting revolution, which seemed as though it must
at the same time produce a totally new position of parties.
The project of the democracy, which pointed beyond the senate
at Pompeius, suggested an approximation between that general
and the senate. But the democracy in attempting to oppose
to the dictatorship of Pompeius that of a man more agreeable to it,
recognized, strictly speaking, on its part also the military government,
and in reality drove out Satan by Beelzebub; the question of principles
became in its hands a question of persons.
League of the Democrats and the Anarchists
The first step towards the revolution projected by the leaders
of the democracy was thus to be the overthrow of the existing
government by means of an insurrection primarily instigated
in Rome by democratic conspirators. The moral condition of the lowest
as of the highest ranks of society in the capital presented
the materials for this purpose in lamentable abundance. We need not
here repeat what was the character of the free and the servile
proletariate of the capital. The significant saying was already
heard, that only the poor man was qualified to represent the poor;
the idea was thus suggested, that the mass of the poor might
constitute itself an independent power as well as the oligarchy
of the rich, and instead of allowing itself to be tyrannized over,
might perhaps in its own turn play the tyrant. But even in the circles
of the young men of rank similar ideas found an echo.
The fashionable life of the capital shattered not merely the fortunes
of men, but also their vigour of body and mind. That elegant world
of fragrant ringlets, of fashionable mustachios and ruffles--merry
as were its doings in the dance and with the harp, and early
and late at the wine-cup--yet concealed in its bosom an alarming abyss
of moral and economic ruin, of well or ill concealed despair,
and frantic or knavish resolves. These circles sighed without
disguise for a return of the time of Cinna with its proscriptions
and confiscations and its annihilation of account-books for debt;
there were people enough, including not a few of no mean descent
and unusual abilities, who only waited the signal to fall
like a gang of robbers on civil society and to recruit by pillage
the fortune which they had squandered. Where a band gathers,
leaders are not wanting; and in this case the men were soon found
who were fitted to be captains of banditti.
Catalina
The late praetor Lucius Catilina, and the quaestor Gnaeus Piso,
were distinguished among their fellows not merely by their genteel
birth and their superior rank. They had broken down the bridge
completely behind them, and impressed their accomplices by their
dissoluteness quite as much as by their talents. Catilina especially
was one of the most wicked men in that wicked age. His villanies
belong to the records of crime, not to history; but his very outward
appearance--the pale countenance, the wild glance, the gait by turns
sluggish and hurried--betrayed his dismal past. He possessed in a high
degree the qualities which are required in the leader of such a band--
the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of bearing all privations,
courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the energy of a felon,
and that horrible mastery of vice, which knows how to bring the weak
to fall and how to train the fallen to crime.
To form out of such elements a conspiracy for the overthrow
of the existing order of things could not be difficult to men
who possessed money and political influence. Catilina, Piso,
and their fellows entered readily into any plan which gave the prospect
of proscriptions and cancelling of debtor-books; the former had
moreover special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed
the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for the consulship.
As he had formerly in the character of an executioner
of Sulla hunted the proscribed at the head of a band of Celts
and had killed among others his own aged father-in-law
with his own hand, he now readily consented to promise similar services
to the opposite party. A secret league was formed. The number
of individuals received into it is said to have exceeded 400; it
included associates in all the districts and urban communities
of Italy; besides which, as a matter of course, numerous recruits
would flock unbidden from the ranks of the dissolute youth
to an insurrection, which inscribed on its banner the seasonable
programme of wiping out debts.
Failure of the First Plans of Conspiracy
In December 688--so we are told--the leaders of the league thought
that they had found the fitting occasion for striking a blow.
The two consuls chosen for 689, Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius
Autronius Paetus, had recently been judicially convicted
of electoral bribery, and therefore had according to legal rule
forfeited their expectancy of the highest office. Both thereupon
joined the league. The conspirators resolved to procure
the consulship for them by force, and thereby to put themselves
in possession of the supreme power in the state. On the day
when the new consuls should enter on their office--the 1st Jan. 689--
the senate-house was to be assailed by armed men, the new consuls
and the victims otherwise designated were to be put to death, and Sulla
and Paetus were to be proclaimed as consuls after the cancelling
of the judicial sentence which excluded them. Crassus was then
to be invested with the dictatorship and Caesar with the mastership
of the horse, doubtless with a view to raise an imposing military
force, while Pompeius was employed afar off at the Caucasus.
Captains and common soldiers were hired and instructed; Catilina
waited on the appointed day in the neighbourhood of the senate-
house for the concerted signal, which was to be given him by Caesar
on a hint from Crassus. But he waited in vain; Crassus was absent
from the decisive sitting of the senate, and for this time
the projected insurrection failed. A similar still more comprehensive
plan of murder was then concerted for the 5th Feb.; but this too
was frustrated, because Catilina gave the signal too early,
before the bandits who were bespoken had all arrived. Thereupon
the secret was divulged. The government did not venture openly
to proceed against the conspiracy, but it assigned a guard
to the consuls who were primarily threatened, and it opposed to the band
of the conspirators a band paid by the government. To remove Piso,
the proposal was made that he should be sent as quaestor
with praetorian powers to Hither Spain; to which Crassus consented,
in the hope of securing through him the resources of that important
province for the insurrection. Proposals going farther
were prevented by the tribunes.
So runs the account that has come down to us, which evidently gives
the version current in the government circles, and the credibility
of which in detail must, in the absence of any means of checking
it, be left an open question. As to the main matter--the participation
of Caesar and Crassus--the testimony of their political opponents
certainly cannot be regarded as sufficient evidence of it. But their
notorious action at this epoch corresponds with striking exactness
to the secret action which this report ascribes to them. The attempt
of Crassus, who in this year was censor, officially to enrol
the Transpadanes in the burgess-list(9) was of itself directly
a revolutionary enterprise. It is still more remarkable,
that Crassus on the same occasion made preparations to enrol
Egypt and Cyprus in the list of Roman domains,(10) and that Caesar
about the same time (689 or 690) got a proposal submitted
by some tribunes to the burgesses to send him to Egypt,
in order to reinstate king Ptolemaeus whom the Alexandrians
had expelled. These machinations suspiciously coincide
with the charges raised by their antagonists. Certainty cannot be
attained on the point; but there is a great probability that Crassus
and Caesar had projected a plan to possess themselves of the military
dictatorship during the absence of Pompeius; that Egypt was selected
as the basis of this democratic military power; and that, in fine,
the insurrectionary attempt of 689 had been contrived to realize
these projects, and Catilina and Piso had thus been tools in the hands
of Crassus and Caesar.
Resumption of the Conspiracy
For a moment the conspiracy came to a standstill. The elections
for 690 took place without Crassus and Caesar renewing their
attempt to get possession of the consulate; which may have been
partly owing to the fact that a relative of the leader
of the democracy, Lucius Caesar, a weak man who was not unfrequently
employed by his kinsman as a tool, was on this occasion a candidate
for the consulship. But the reports from Asia urged them to make
haste. The affairs of Asia Minor and Armenia were already
completely arranged. However clearly democratic strategists showed
that the Mithradatic war could only be regarded as terminated
by the capture of the king, and that it was therefore necessary
to undertake the pursuit round the Black Sea, and above all things
to keep aloof from Syria(11)--Pompeius, not concerning himself
about such talk, had set out in the spring of 690 from Armenia
and marched towards Syria. If Egypt was really selected
as the headquarters of the democracy, there was no time to be lost;
otherwise Pompeius might easily arrive in Egypt sooner than Caesar.
The conspiracy of 688, far from being broken up by the lax
and timid measures of repression, was again astir when the consular
elections for 691 approached. The persons were, it may be
presumed, substantially the same, and the plan was but little
altered. The leaders of the movement again kept in the background.
On this occasion they had set up as candidates for the consulship
Catilina himself and Gaius Antonius, the younger son of the orator
and a brother of the general who had an ill repute from Crete.
They were sure of Catilina; Antonius, originally a Sullan
like Catilina and like the latter brought to trial on that account
some years before by the democratic party and ejected
from the senate(12)--otherwise an indolent, insignificant man,
in no respect called to be a leader, and utterly bankrupt--
willingly lent himself as a tool to the democrats for the prize
of the consulship and the advantages attached to it. Through these
consuls the heads of the conspiracy intended to seize the government,
to arrest the children of Pompeius, who remained behind in the capital,
as hostages, and to take up arms in Italy and the provinces
against Pompeius. On the first news of the blow struck in the capital,
the governor Gnaeus Piso was to raise the banner of insurrection
in Hither Spain. Communication could not be held with him by way
of the sea, since Pompeius commanded the seas. For this purpose
they reckoned on the Transpadanes the old clients of the democracy--
among whom there was great agitation, and who would of course have
at once received the franchise--and, further, on different Celtic
tribes.(13) The threads of this combination reached as far as
Mauretania. One of the conspirators, the Roman speculator Publius
Sittius from Nuceria, compelled by financial embarrassments
to keep aloof from Italy, had armed a troop of desperadoes there
and in Spain, and with these wandered about as a leader of free-lances
in western Africa, where he had old commercial connections.
Consular Elections
Cicero Elected instead of Catalina
The party put forth all its energies for the struggle
of the election. Crassus and Caesar staked their money--whether their
own or borrowed--and their connections to procure the consulship
for Catilina and Antonius; the comrades of Catilina strained every
nerve to bring to the helm the man who promised them the magistracies
and priesthoods, the palaces and country-estates of their opponents,
and above all deliverance from their debts, and who, they knew,
would keep his word. The aristocracy was in great perplexity,
chiefly because it was not able even to start counter-candidates.
That such a candidate risked his head, was obvious; and the times
were past when the post of danger allured the burgess--now even
ambition was hushed in presence of fear. Accordingly the nobility
contented themselves with making a feeble attempt to check
electioneering intrigues by issuing a new law respecting
the purchase of votes--which, however, was thwarted by the veto
of a tribune of the people--and with turning over their votes
to a candidate who, although not acceptable to them, was at least
inoffensive. This was Marcus Cicero, notoriously a political
trimmer,(14) accustomed to flirt at times with the democrats,
at times with Pompeius, at times from a somewhat greater distance
with the aristocracy, and to lend his services as an advocate to every
influential man under impeachment without distinction of person
or party (he numbered even Catilina among his clients); belonging
properly to no party or--which was much the same--to the party
of material interests, which was dominant in the courts
and was pleased with the eloquent pleader and the courtly and witty
companion. He had connections enough in the capital and the country
towns to have a chance alongside of the candidates proposed
by the democracy; and as the nobility, although with reluctance,
and the Pompeians voted for him, he was elected by a great
majority. The two candidates of the democracy obtained almost
the same number of votes; but a few more fell to Antonius, whose family
was of more consideration than that of his fellow-candidate.
This accident frustrated the election of Catilina and saved Rome
from a second Cinna. A little before this Piso had--it was said
at the instigation of his political and personal enemy Pompeius--
been put to death in Spain by his native escort.(15) With the consul
Antonius alone nothing could be done; Cicero broke the loose bond
which attached him to the conspiracy, even before they entered
on their offices, inasmuch as he renounced his legal privilege
of having the consular provinces determined by lot, and handed over
to his deeply-embarrassed colleague the lucrative governorship
of Macedonia. The essential preliminary conditions of this project
also had therefore miscarried.
New Projects of the Conspirators
Meanwhile the development of Oriental affairs grew daily
more perilous for the democracy. The settlement of Syria rapidly
advanced; already invitations had been addressed to Pompeius
from Egypt to march thither and occupy the country for Rome;
they could not but be afraid that they would next hear of Pompeius
in person having taken possession of the valley of the Nile.
It was by this very apprehension probably that the attempt of Caesar
to get himself sent by the people to Egypt for the purpose of aiding
the king against his rebellious subjects(16) was called forth;
it failed, apparently, through the disinclination of great and small
to undertake anything whatever against the interest of Pompeius.
His return home, and the probable catastrophe which it involved,
were always drawing the nearer; often as the string of the bow
had been broken, it was necessary that there should be a fresh
attempt to bend it. The city was in sullen ferment; frequent
conferences of the heads of the movement indicated that some
step was again contemplated.
The Servilian Agrarian Law
What they wished became manifest when the new tribunes
of the people entered on their office (10 Dec. 690), and one of them,
Publius Servilius Rullus, immediately proposed an agrarian law,
which was designed to procure for the leaders of the democrats
a position similar to that which Pompeius occupied in consequence
of 2the Gabinio-Manilian proposals. The nominal object
was the founding of colonies in Italy. The ground for these, however,
was not to be gained by dispossession; on the contrary all existing
private rights were guaranteed, and even the illegal occupations
of the most recent times(17) were converted into full property.
The leased Campanian domain alone was to be parcelled out
and colonized; in other cases the government was to acquire
the land destined for assignation by ordinary purchase. To procure
the sums necessary for this purpose, the remaining Italian,
and more especially all the extra-Italian, domain-land was successively
to be brought to sale; which was understood to include the former
royal hunting domains in Macedonia, the Thracian Chersonese,
Bithynia, Pontus, Cyrene, and also the territories of the cities
acquired in full property by right of war in Spain, Africa, Sicily,
Hellas, and Cilicia. Everything was likewise to be sold
which the state had acquired in moveable and immoveable property
since the year 666, and of which it had not previously disposed;
this was aimed chiefly at Egypt and Cyprus. For the same purpose
all subject communities, with the exception of the towns with Latin
rights and the other free cities, were burdened with very high
rates of taxes and tithes. Lastly there was likewise destined
for those purchases the produce of the new provincial revenues,
to be reckoned from 692, and the proceeds of the whole booty
not yet legally applied; which regulations had reference
to the new sources of taxation opened up by Pompeius in the east
and to the public moneys that might be found in the hands of Pompeius
and the heirs of Sulla. For the execution of this measure decemvirs
with a special jurisdiction and special -imperium- were to be nominated,
who were to remain five years in office and to surround themselves
with 200 subalterns from the equestrian order; but in the election
of the decemvirs only those candidates who should personally
announce themselves were to be taken into account, and,
as in the elections of priests,(18) only seventeen tribes to be fixed
by lot out of the thirty-five were to make the election. It needed
no great acuteness to discern that in this decemviral college it
was intended to create a power after the model of that of Pompeius,
only with somewhat less of a military and more of a democratic hue.
The jurisdiction was especially needed for the sake of deciding
the Egyptian question, the military power for the sake of arming
against Pompeius; the clause, which forbade the choice of an absent
person, excluded Pompeius; and the diminution of the tribes entitled
to vote as well as the manipulation of the balloting were designed
to facilitate the management of the election in accordance
with the views of the democracy.
But this attempt totally missed its aim. The multitude, finding
it more agreeable to have their corn measured out to them
under the shade of Roman porticoes from the public magazines
than to cultivate it for themselves in the sweat of their brow,
received even the proposal in itself with complete indifference.
They soon came also to feel that Pompeius would never acquiesce
in such a resolution offensive to him in every respect, and that matters
could not stand well with a party which in its painful alarm
condescended to offers so extravagant. Under such circumstances
it was not difficult for the government to frustrate the proposal;
the new consul Cicero perceived the opportunity of exhibiting
here too his talent for giving a finishing stroke to the beaten party;
even before the tribunes who stood ready exercised their veto,
the author himself withdrew his proposal (1 Jan. 691).
The democracy had gained nothing but the unpleasant lesson,
that the great multitude out of love or fear still continued
to adhere to Pompeius, and that every proposal was certain
to fail which the public perceived to be directed against him.
Preparations of the Anarchists in Etruria
Wearied by all this vain agitation and scheming without result,
Catilina determined to push the matter to a decision and make
an end of it once for all. He took his measures in the course
of the summer to open the civil war. Faesulae (Fiesole),
a very strong town situated in Etruria--which swarmed with
the impoverished and conspirators--and fifteen years before the centre
of the rising of Lepidus, was again selected as the headquarters
of the insurrection. Thither were despatched the consignments
of money, for which especially the ladies of quality in the capital
implicated in the conspiracy furnished the means; there arms
and soldiers were collected; and there an old Sullan captain, Gaius
Manlius, as brave and as free from scruples of conscience
as was ever any soldier of fortune, took temporarily the chief command.
Similar though less extensive warlike preparations were made
at other points of Italy. The Transpadanes were so excited
that they seemed only waiting for the signal to strike. In the Bruttian
country, on the east coast of Italy, in Capua--wherever great
bodies of slaves were accumulated--a second slave insurrection
like that of Spartacus seemed on the eve of arising. Even in the capital
there was something brewing; those who saw the haughty bearing
with which the summoned debtors appeared before the urban praetor,
could not but remember the scenes which had preceded the murder
of Asellio.(19) The capitalists were in unutterable anxiety;
it seemed needful to enforce the prohibition of the export
of gold and silver, and to set a watch over the principal ports.
The plan of the conspirators was--on occasion of the consular
election for 692, for which Catilina had again announced himself--
summarily to put to death the consul conducting the election
as well as the inconvenient rival candidates, and to carry
the election of Catilina at any price; in case of necessity, even
to bring armed bands from Faesulae and the other rallying points
against the capital, and with their help to crush resistance.
Election of Catalina as Consul again Frustrated
Cicero, who was always quickly and completely informed by his
agents male and female of the transactions of the conspirators,
on the day fixed for the election (20 Oct.) denounced the conspiracy
in the full senate and in presence of its principal leaders.
Catilina did not condescend to deny it; he answered haughtily that,
if the election for consul should fall on him, the great headless
party would certainly no longer want a leader against the small
party led by wretched heads. But as palpable evidences of the plot
were not before them, nothing farther was to be got from the timid
senate, except that it gave its previous sanction in the usual way
to the exceptional measures which the magistrates might deem
suitable (21 Oct.). Thus the election battle approached--
on this occasion more a battle than an election; for Cicero too
had formed for himself an armed bodyguard out of the younger men,
more especially of the mercantile order; and it was his armed force
that covered and dominated the Campus Martius on the 28th October,
the day to which the election had been postponed by the senate.
The conspirators were not successful either in killing the consul
conducting the election, or in deciding the elections according
to their mind.
Outbreak of the Insurrection in Etruria
Repressive Measures of the Government
But meanwhile the civil war had begun. On the 27th Oct. Gaius
Manlius had planted at Faesulae the eagle round which the army
of the insurrection was to flock--it was one of the Marian eagles
from the Cimbrian war--and he had summoned the robbers
from the mountains as well as the country people to join him.
His proclamations, following the old traditions of the popular
party, demanded liberation from the oppressive load of debt
and a modification of the procedure in insolvency, which, if the amount
of the debt actually exceeded the estate, certainly still involved
in law the forfeiture of the debtor's freedom. It seemed as though
the rabble of the capital, in coming forward as if it were
the legitimate successor of the old plebeian farmers and fighting
its battles under the glorious eagles of the Cimbrian war, wished
to cast a stain not only on the present but on the past of Rome.
This rising, however, remained isolated; at the other places
of rendezvous the conspiracy did not go beyond the collection of arms
and the institution of secret conferences, as resolute leaders
were everywhere wanting. This was fortunate for the government;
for, although the impending civil war had been for a considerable time
openly announced, its own irresolution and the clumsiness
of the rusty machinery of administration had not allowed it to make
any military preparations whatever. It was only now that the general
levy was called out, and superior officers were ordered to the several
regions of Italy that each might suppress the insurrection
in his own district; while at the same time the gladiatorial slaves
were ejected from the capital, and patrols were ordered on account
of the apprehension of incendiarism.
The Conspirators in Rome
Catilina was in a painful position. According to his design
there should have been a simultaneous rising in the capital
and in Etruria on occasion of the consular elections; the failure
of the former and the outbreak of the latter movement endangered
his person as well as the whole success of his undertaking.
Now that his partisans at Faesulae had once risen in arms against
the government, he could no longer remain in the capital; and yet
not only did everything depend on his inducing the conspirators
of the capital now at least to strike quickly, but this had to be
done even before he left Rome--for he knew his helpmates too well
to rely on them for that matter. The more considerable
of the conspirators--Publius Lentulus Sura consul in 683, afterwards
expelled from the senate and now, in order to get back into
the senate, praetor for the second time, and the two former praetors
Publius Autronius and Lucius Cassius--were incapable men; Lentulus
an ordinary aristocrat of big words and great pretensions, but slow
in conception and irresolute in action; Autronius distinguished
for nothing but his powerful screaming voice; while as to Lucius
Cassius no one comprehended how a man so corpulent and so simple
had fallen among the conspirators. But Catilina could not venture
to place his abler partisans, such as the young senator Gaius
Cethegus and the equites Lucius Statilius and Publius Gabinius
Capito, at the head of the movement; for even among the conspirators
the traditional hierarchy of rank held its ground, and the very
anarchists thought that they should be unable to carry the day
unless a consular or at least a praetorian were at their head.
Therefore, however urgently the army of the insurrection might
long for its general, and however perilous it was for the latter
to remain longer at the seat of government after the outbreak
of the revolt, Catilina nevertheless resolved still to remain
for a time in Rome. Accustomed to impose on his cowardly opponents
by his audacious insolence, he showed himself publicly in the Forum
and in the senate-house and replied to the threats which were
there addressed to him, that they should beware of pushing him
to extremities; that, if they should set the house on fire, he would
be compelled to extinguish the conflagration in ruins. In reality
neither private persons nor officials ventured to lay hands
on the dangerous man; it was almost a matter of indifference
when a young nobleman brought him to trial on account of violence,
for long before the process could come to an end, the question could not
but be decided elsewhere. But the projects of Catilina failed;
chiefly because the agents of the government had made their way
into the circle of the conspirators and kept it accurately informed
of every detail of the plot. When, for instance, the conspirators
appeared before the strong Praeneste (1 Nov.), which they had hoped
to surprise by a -coup de main-, they found the inhabitants warned
and armed; and in a similar way everything miscarried. Catilina
with all his temerity now found it advisable to fix his departure
for one of the ensuing days; but previously on his urgent exhortation,
at a last conference of the conspirators in the night between
the 6th and 7th Nov. it was resolved to assassinate the consul Cicero,
who was the principal director of the countermine, before the departure
of their leader, and, in order to obviate any treachery,
to carry the resolve at once into execution. Early on the morning
of the 7th Nov., accordingly, the selected murderers knocked
at the house of the consul; but they found the guard reinforced
and themselves repulsed--on this occasion too the spies
of the government had outdone the conspirators.
Catalina Proceed to Etruria
On the following day (8 Nov.) Cicero convoked the senate.
Even now Catilina ventured to appear and to attempt a defence against
the indignant attacks of the consul, who unveiled before his face
the events of the last few days; but men no longer listened to him,
and in the neighbourhood of the place where he sat the benches became
empty. He left the sitting, and proceeded, as he would doubtless
have done even apart from this incident, in accordance
with the agreement, to Etruria. Here he proclaimed himself consul,
and assumed an attitude of waiting, in order to put his troops
in motion against the capital on the first announcement
of the outbreak of the insurrection there. The government declared
the two leaders Catilina and Manlius, as well as those of their
comrades who should not have laid down their arms by a certain day,
to be outlaws, and called out new levies; but at the head
of the army destined against Catilina was placed the consul Gaius
Antonius, who was notoriously implicated in the conspiracy,
and with whose character it was wholly a matter of accident whether
he would lead his troops against Catilina or over to his side.
They seemed to have directly laid their plans towards converting
this Antonius into a second Lepidus. As little were steps taken
against the leaders of the conspiracy who had remained behind
in the capital, although every one pointed the finger at them
and the insurrection in the capital was far from being abandoned
by the conspirators--on the contrary the plan of it had been settled
by Catilina himself before his departure from Rome. A tribune
was to give the signal by calling an assembly of the people;
in the following night Cethegus was to despatch the consul Cicero;
Gabinius and Statilius were to set the city simultaneously
on fire at twelve places; and a communication was to be established
as speedily as possible with the army of Catilina, which should
have meanwhile advanced. Had the urgent representations of Cethegus
borne fruit and had Lentulus, who after Catilina's departure
was placed at the head of the conspirators, resolved on rapidly
striking a blow, the conspiracy might even now have been successful.
But the conspirators were just as incapable and as cowardly as their
opponents; weeks elapsed and the matter came to no decisive issue.
Conviction and Arrest of the Conspirators in the Capital
At length the countermine brought about a decision. Lentulus
in his tedious fashion, which sought to cover negligence in regard
to what was immediate and necessary by the projection of large
and distant plans, had entered into relations with the deputies
of a Celtic canton, the Allobroges, now present in Rome; had attempted
to implicate these--the representatives of a thoroughly disorganized
commonwealth and themselves deeply involved in debt--in the conspiracy;
and had given them on their departure messages and letters to his
confidants. The Allobroges left Rome, but were arrested in the night
between 2nd and 3rd Dec. close to the gates by the Roman authorities,
and their papers were taken from them. It was obvious
that the Allobrogian deputies had lent themselves as spies
to the Roman government, and had carried on the negotiations only
with a view to convey into the hands of the latter the desired proofs
implicating the ringleaders of the conspiracy. On the following
morning orders were issued with the utmost secrecy by Cicero
for the arrest of the most dangerous leaders of the plot,
and executed in regard to Lentulus, Cethegus, Gabinius,
and Statilius, while some others escaped from seizure by flight.
The guilt of those arrested as well as of the fugitives
was completely evident. Immediately after the arrest the letters seized,
the seals and handwriting of which the prisoners could not avoid
acknowledging, were laid before the senate, and the captives
and witnesses were heard; further confirmatory facts, deposits of arms
in the houses of the conspirators, threatening expressions
which they had employed, were presently forthcoming; the actual
subsistence of the conspiracy was fully and validly established,
and the most important documents were immediately on the suggestion
of Cicero published as news-sheets.
The indignation against the anarchist conspiracy was general.
Gladly would the oligarchic party have made use of the revelations
to settle accounts with the democracy generally and Caesar
in particular, but it was far too thoroughly broken to be able
to accomplish this, and to prepare for him the fate which it had
formerly prepared for the two Gracchi and Saturninus;
in this respect the matter went no farther than good will.
The multitude of the capital was especially shocked by the incendiary
schemes of the conspirators. The merchants and the whole party
of material interests naturally perceived in this war of the debtors
against the creditors a struggle for their very existence; in tumultuous
excitement their youth crowded, with swords in their hands, round
the senate-house and brandished them against the open and secret
partisans of Catilina. In fact, the conspiracy was for the moment
paralyzed; though its ultimate authors perhaps were still at liberty,
the whole staff entrusted with its execution were either captured
or had fled; the band assembled at Faesulae could not possibly
accomplish much, unless supported by an insurrection in the capital.
Discussions in the Senate as to the Execution of Those Arrested
In a tolerably well-ordered commonwealth the matter would now
have been politically at an end, and the military and the tribunals
would have undertaken the rest. But in Rome matters had come
to such a pitch, that the government was not even in a position
to keep a couple of noblemen of note in safe custody. The slaves
and freedmen of Lentulus and of the others arrested were stirring;
plans, it was alleged, were contrived to liberate them by force
from the private houses in which they were detained; there was no lack--
thanks to the anarchist doings of recent years--of ringleaders
in Rome who contracted at a certain rate for riots and deeds
of violence; Catilina, in fine, was informed of what had occurred,
and was near enough to attempt a coup de main with his bands.
How much of these rumours was true, we cannot tell; but there was ground
for apprehension, because, agreeably to the constitution, neither troops
nor even a respectable police force were at the command of the government
in the capital, and it was in reality left at the mercy of every gang
of banditti. The idea was suggested of precluding all possible
attempts at liberation by the immediate execution of the prisoners.
Constitutionally, this was not possible. According to the ancient
and sacred right of appeal, a sentence of death could only be
pronounced against the Roman burgess by the whole body of burgesses,
and not by any other authority; and, as the courts formed by the body
of burgesses had themselves become antiquated, a capital sentence
was no longer pronounced at all. Cicero would gladly have rejected
the hazardous suggestion; indifferent as in itself the legal
question might be to the advocate, he knew well how very useful
it is to an advocate to be called liberal, and he showed
little desire to separate himself for ever from the democratic party
by shedding this blood. But those around him, and particularly
his genteel wife, urged him to crown his services to his country
by this bold step; the consul like all cowards anxiously endeavouring
to avoid the appearance of cowardice, and yet trembling
before the formidable responsibility, in his distress
convoked the senate, and left it to that body to decide
as to the life or death of the four prisoners. This indeed
had no meaning; for as the senate was constitutionally even less
entitled to act than the consul, all the responsibility still
devolved rightfully on the latter: but when was cowardice ever
consistent? Caesar made every exertion to save the prisoners,
and his speech, full of covert threats as to the future inevitable
vengeance of the democracy, made the deepest impression. Although
all the consulars and the great majority of the senate had already
declared for the execution, most of them, with Cicero at their
head, seemed now once more inclined to keep within the limits
of the law. But when Cato in pettifogging fashion brought
the champions of the milder view into suspicion of being accomplices
of the plot, and pointed to the preparations for liberating
the prisoners by a street-riot, he succeeded in throwing the waverers
into a fresh alarm, and in securing a majority for the immediate
execution of the transgressors.
Execution of the Catalinarians
The execution of the decree naturally devolved on the consul,
who had called it forth. Late on the evening of the 5th of December
the prisoners were brought from their previous quarters, and conducted
across the market-place still densely crowded by men to the prison
in which criminals condemned to death were wont to be kept.
It was a subterranean vault, twelve feet deep, at the foot
of the Capitol, which formerly had served as a well-house.
The consul himself conducted Lentulus, and praetors the others,
all attended by strong guards; but the attempt at rescue,
which had been expected, did not take place. No one knew whether
the prisoners were being conveyed to a secure place of custody
or to the scene of execution. At the door of the prison they
were handed over to the -tresviri- who conducted the executions,
and were strangled in the subterranean vault by torchlight. The consul
had waited before the door till the executions were accomplished,
and then with his loud well-known voice proclaimed over the Forum
to the multitude waiting in silence, "They are dead." Till far
on in the night the crowds moved through the streets and exultingly
saluted the consul, to whom they believed that they owed
the security of their houses and their property. The senate ordered
public festivals of gratitude, and the first men of the nobility,
Marcus Cato and Quintus Catulus, saluted the author of the sentence
of death with the name--now heard for the first time--of a "father
of his fatherland."
But it was a dreadful deed, and all the more dreadful that it
appeared to a whole people great and praiseworthy. Never perhaps
has a commonwealth more lamentably declared itself bankrupt,
than did Rome through this resolution--adopted in cold blood
by the majority of the government and approved by public opinion--
to put to death in all haste a few political prisoners, who were
no doubt culpable according to the laws, but had not forfeited life;
because, forsooth, the security of the prisons was not to be
trusted, and there was no sufficient police. It was the humorous
trait seldom wanting to a historical tragedy, that this act
of the most brutal tyranny had to be carried out by the most unstable
and timid of all Roman statesmen, and that the "first democratic
consul" was selected to destroy the palladium of the ancient
freedom of the Roman commonwealth, the right of -provocatio-.
Suppression of the Etruscan Insurrection
After the conspiracy had been thus stifled in the capital
even before it came to an outbreak, there remained the task of putting
an end to the insurrection in Etruria. The army amounting to about
2000 men, which Catilina found on his arrival, had increased nearly
fivefold by the numerous recruits who flocked in, and already
formed two tolerably full legions, in which however only about
a fourth part of the men were sufficiently armed. Catilina had
thrown himself with his force into the mountains and avoided
a battle with the troops of Antonius, with the view of completing
the organization of his bands and awaiting the outbreak
of the insurrection in Rome. But the news of its failure broke up
the army of the insurgents; the mass of the less compromised thereupon
returned home. The remnant of resolute, or rather desperate,
men that were left made an attempt to cut their way through
the Apennine passes into Gaul; but when the little band arrived
at the foot of the mountains near Pistoria (Pistoja), it found itself
here caught between two armies. In front of it was the corps
of Quintus Metellus, which had come up from Ravenna and Ariminum
to occupy the northern slope of the Apennines; behind it was the army
of Antonius, who had at length yielded to the urgency of his officers
and agreed to a winter campaign. Catilina was wedged in
on both sides, and his supplies came to an end; nothing was left
but to throw himself on the nearest foe, which was Antonius.
In a narrow valley enclosed by rocky mountains the conflict took place
between the insurgents and the troops of Antonius, which the latter,
in order not to be under the necessity of at least personally
performing execution on his former allies, had under a pretext
entrusted for this day to a brave officer who had grown gray
under arms, Marcus Petreius. The superior strength of the government
army was of little account, owing to the nature of the field
of battle. Both Catilina and Petreius placed their most trusty men
in the foremost ranks; quarter was neither given nor received.
The conflict lasted long, and many brave men fell on both sides;
Catilina, who before the beginning of the battle had sent back
his horse and those of all his officers, showed on this day
that nature had destined him for no ordinary things, and that he knew
at once how to command as a general and how to fight as a soldier.
At length Petreius with his guard broke the centre of the enemy,
and, after having overthrown this, attacked the two wings from within.
This decided the victory. The corpses of the Catilinarians--there
were counted 3000 of them--covered, as it were in rank and file,
the ground where they had fought; the officers and the general
himself had, when all was lost, thrown themselves headlong
on the enemy and thus sought and found death (beginning of 692).
Antonius was on account of this victory stamped by the senate
with the title of Imperator, and new thanksgiving-festivals showed
that the government and the governed were beginning to become
accustomed to civil war.
Attitude of Crassus and Caesar toward the Anarchists
The anarchist plot had thus been suppressed in the capital as in Italy
with bloody violence; people were still reminded of it merely
by the criminal processes which in the Etruscan country towns
and in the capital thinned the ranks of those affiliated to the beaten
party, and by the large accessions to the robber-bands of Italy--
one of which, for instance, formed out of the remains of the armies
of Spartacus and Catilina, was destroyed by a military force in 694
in the territory of Thurii. But it is important to keep in view
that the blow fell by no means merely on the anarchists proper,
who had conspired to set the capital on fire and had fought
at Pistoria, but on the whole democratic party. That this party,
and in particular Crassus and Caesar, had a hand in the game
on the present occasion as well as in the plot of 688,
may be regarded--not in a juristic, but in a historical, point of view--
as an ascertained fact. The circumstance, indeed, that Catulus
and the other heads of the senatorial party accused the leader
of the democrats of complicity in the anarchist plot,
and that the latter as senator spoke and voted against the brutal
judicial murder contemplated by the oligarchy, could only be urged
by partisan sophistry as any valid proof of his participation
in the plans of Catilina. But a series of other facts is of more weight.
According to express and irrefragable testimonies it was especially
Crassus and Caesar that supported the candidature of Catilina
for the consulship. When Caesar in 690 brought the executioners
of Sulla before the commission for murder(20) he allowed the rest
to be condemned, but the most guilty and infamous of all, Catilina,
to be acquitted. In the revelations of the 3rd of December,
it is true, Cicero did not include among the names of the conspirators
of whom he had information those of the two influential men;
but it is notorious that the informers denounced not merely those
against whom subsequently investigation was directed, but "many innocent"
persons besides, whom the consul Cicero thought proper to erase
from the list; and in later years, when he had no reason to disguise
the truth, he expressly named Caesar among the accomplices. An indirect
but very intelligible inculpation is implied also in the circumstance,
that of the four persons arrested on the 3rd of December the two least
dangerous, Statilius and Gabinius, were handed over to be guarded
by the senators Caesar and Crassus; it was manifestly intended that these
should either, if they allowed them to escape, be compromised in the view
of public opinion as accessories, or, if they really detained them,
be compromised in the view of their fellow-conspirators as renegades.
The following scene which occurred in the senate shows
significantlyhow matters stood. Immediately after the arrest
of Lentulus and his comrades, a messenger despatched by the conspirators
in the capital to Catilina was seized by the agents of the government,
and, after having been assured of impunity, was induced
to make a comprehensive confession in a full meeting of the senate.
But when he came to the critical portions of his confession
and in particular named Crassus as having commissioned him,
he was interrupted by the senators, and on the suggestion
of Cicero it was resolved to cancel the whole statement without
farther inquiry, but to imprison its author notwithstanding
the amnesty assured to him, until such time as he should have
not merely retracted the statement, but should have also confessed
who had instigated him to give such false testimony! Here it is
abundantly clear, not merely that that man had a very accurate
knowledge of the state of matters who, when summoned to make
an attack upon Crassus, replied that he had no desire to provoke
the bull of the herd, but also that the majority of the senate
with Cicero at their head were agreed in not permitting the revelations
to go beyond a certain limit. The public was not so nice; the young men,
who had taken up arms to ward off the incendiaries, were exasperated
against no one so much as against Caesar, on the 5th of December,
when he left the senate, they pointed their swords at his breast
and even now he narrowly escaped with his life on the same spot
where the fatal blow fell on him seventeen years afterwards;
he did not again for a considerable time enter the senate-house.
Any one who impartially considers the course of the conspiracy
will not be able to resist the suspicion that during all this time
Catilina was backed by more powerful men, who--relying on the want
of a legally complete chain of evidence and on the lukewarmness
and cowardice of the majority of the senate, which was but half-
initiated and greedily caught at any pretext for inaction--knew how
to hinder any serious interference with the conspiracy on the part
of the authorities, to procure free departure for the chief
of the insurgents, and even so to manage the declaration of war
and the sending of troops against the insurrection that it was almost
equivalent to the sending of an auxiliary army. While the course
of the events themselves thus testifies that the threads
of the Catilinarian plot reached far higher than Lentulus and Catilina,
it deserves also to be noticed, that at a much later period,
when Caesar had got to the head of the state, he was in the closest
alliance with the only Catilinarian still surviving, Publius Sittius
the leader of the Mauretanian free bands, and that he modified
the law of debt quite in the sense that the proclamations
of Manlius demanded.
All these pieces of evidence speak clearly enough; but, even were
it not so, the desperate position of the democracy in presence
of the military power--which since the Gabinio-Manilian laws assumed
by its side an attitude more threatening than ever--renders it
almost a certainty that, as usually happens in such cases,
it sought a last resource in secret plots and in alliance
with anarchy. The circumstances were very similar to those
of the Cinnan times. While in the east Pompeius occupied a position
nearly such as Sulla then did, Crassus and Caesar sought to raise
over against him a power in Italy like that which Marius and Cinna
had possessed, with the view of employing it if possible better
than they had done. The way to this result lay once more through
terrorism and anarchy, and to pave that way Catilina was certainly
the fitting man. Naturally the more reputable leaders
of the democracy kept themselves as far as possible in the background,
and left to their unclean associates the execution of the unclean
work, the political results of which they hoped afterwards
to appropriate. Still more naturally, when the enterprise had failed,
the partners of higher position applied every effort to conceal
their participation in it. And at a later period, when the former
conspirator had himself become the target of political plots,
the veil was for that very reason drawn only the more closely
over those darker years in the life of the great man, and even
special apologies for him were written with that very object.(21)
Total Destruction of the Democratic Party
For five years Pompeius stood at the head of his armies and fleets
in the east; for five years the democracy at home conspired
to overthrow him. The result was discouraging. With unspeakable
exertions they had not merely attained nothing, but had suffered
morally as well as materially enormous loss. Even the coalition
of 683 could not but be for democrats of pure water a scandal,
although the democracy at that time only coalesced with two
distinguished men of the opposite party and bound these
to its programme.
But now the democratic party had made common cause with a band
of murderers and bankrupts, who were almost all likewise deserters
from the camp of the aristocracy; and had at least for the time
being accepted their programme, that is to say, the terrorism
of Cinna. The party of material interests, one of the chief elements
of the coalition of 683, was thereby estranged from the democracy,
and driven into the arms of the Optimates in the first instance,
or of any power at all which would and could give protection against
anarchy. Even the multitude of the capital, who, although having
no objection to a street-riot, found it inconvenient to have
their houses set on fire over their heads, became in some measure
alarmed. It is remarkable that in this very year (691) the full
re-establishment of the Sempronian corn-largesses took place,
and was effected by the senate on the proposal of Cato. The league
of the democratic leaders with anarchy had obviously created a breach
between the former and the burgesses of the city; and the oligarchy
sought, not without at least momentary success, to enlarge
this chasm and to draw over the masses to their side. Lastly,
Gnaeus Pompeius had been partly warned, partly exasperated,
by all these cabals; after all that had occurred, and after the democracy
had itself virtually torn asunder the ties which connected it
with Pompeius, it could no longer with propriety make the request--
which in 684 had had a certain amount of reason on its side--
that he should not himself destroy with the sword the democratic power
which he had raised, and which had raised him.
Thus the democracy was disgraced and weakened; but above all it had
become ridiculous through the merciless exposure of its perplexity
and weakness. Where the humiliation of the overthrown government
and similar matters of little moment were concerned, it was great
and potent; but every one of its attempts to attain a real
political success had proved a downright failure. Its relation
to Pompeius was as false as pitiful. While it was loading him
with panegyrics and demonstrations of homage, it was concocting
against him one intrigue after another; and one after another,
like soap-bubbles, they burst of themselves. The general of the east
and of the seas, far from standing on his defence against them,
appeared not even to observe all the busy agitation, and to obtain
his victories over the democracy as Herakles gained his over
the Pygmies, without being himself aware of it. The attempt to kindle
civil war had miserably failed; if the anarchist section
had at least displayed some energy, the pure democracy, while knowing
doubtless how to hire conspirators, had not known how to lead
them or to save them or to die with them. Even the old languid
oligarchy, strengthened by the masses passing over to it
from the ranks of the democracy and above all by the--in this affair
unmistakeable--identity of its interests and those of Pompeius,
had been enabled to suppress this attempt at revolution and thereby
to achieve yet a last victory over the democracy. Meanwhile king
Mithradates was dead, Asia Minor and Syria were regulated,
and the return of Pompeius to Italy might be every moment expected.
The decision was not far off; but was there in fact still room
to speak of a decision between the general who returned more famous
and mightier than ever, and the democracy humbled beyond parallel
and utterly powerless? Crassus prepared to embark his family
and his gold and to seek an asylum somewhere in the east;
and even so elastic and so energetic a nature as that of Caesar seemed
on the point of giving up the game as lost. In this year (691)
occurred his candidature for the place of -pontifex maximus-;(22)
when he left his dwelling on the morning of the election,
he declared that, if he should fail in this also, he would
never again cross the threshold of his house.