POMPEY
Sulla had hoped by his proscriptions to so completely crush the
popular party in Rome that the aristocratic party would be able to
enjoy a long period of undisputed authority and absolute power. Hardly
was Sulla buried, however, before the popular party began to show
signs of life and renewed resistance. The consuls at the time of
Sulla's death were Lepidus and Catulus, both of them elected on
account of their supposed absolute loyalty to the policies of Sulla
and their disregard of popular rights. The first named, however, soon
began to manifest symptoms of justice and humanity, and the Senate,
alarmed at these views and his increasing popularity, sought to remove
him from participation in Roman politics by sending him as proconsul
to govern the (then considered) remote province of Cisalpine Gaul.
This move only strengthened the position of Lepidus, however, by
providing him with an army. This army being augmented by recruits
consisting partly of enthusiastic adherents of the popular cause and
partly of desperate adventurers, Lepidus considered himself strong
enough to brave the chances of war, and began a march toward Rome. His
army, however, was intercepted by the senatorial army sent to meet
him, and Lepidus, completely defeated, fled to Sardinia, where he soon
died.
One of the leading lieutenants of Lepidus in this campaign was Brutus,
the father of the Brutus who was to be one of the assassins of Julius
Cæsar. The elder Brutus was taken prisoner at this time and put to
death.
In the meantime another rebellion broke out in Spain, where Sertorius
had assumed the government. Neither Metellus nor Pompey was able to
reduce him to submission, and the rebellion was put to an end only by
the murder of Sertorius in 72 B.C.
The epoch of civil wars had now fully begun for Rome, and the same
year which witnessed the murder of Sertorius saw also the breaking out
of the rebellion of the gladiators under Spartacus. This rebellion,
starting in the mere uprising of a handful of gladiators, reached very
large proportions and occasioned the greatest fear at Rome before it
was put down by Crassus in the south of Italy and Pompey in the north.
The credit for putting down this insurrection clearly belonged to
Crassus rather than to Pompey, whose share in the work had been merely
the destruction of a band of fugitives who had fled to the north of
Italy. Nevertheless, the Senate gave the highest honors to Pompey, who
was voted a triumph, while only an ovation was granted to Crassus.
Pompey and Crassus both sought election to the consulship, although
both were ineligible, since Crassus was still a prætor and under the
laws should have waited two years before being a candidate for consul,
and Pompey was only thirty-five years old and had not even been
quæstor. Each of the candidates, however, had an army under his
control at the very gates of Rome, and the two illegal elections were
secured from the people by fear. Pompey and Crassus, the two most
powerful men in Rome at this time, were thus consuls together in the
year 70 B.C.
Pompey, although he had been an ardent supporter of Sulla and a great
favorite of this leader, nevertheless, upon his election as consul,
began to depart from Sulla's policies. The proposals made by Pompey
were the removal of the restrictions placed upon the tribunes by Sulla
and a reform of the judicial system. The first proposal was consented
to by the Senate after some slight protest, but the second met with
bitter opposition. The complete control possessed by the Senate over
the law courts was of such great value to them that they were
determined to retain it, although the administration of the courts
while under their control had been one long-continued scandal. The
administration of justice under the knights, however, had been almost
as corrupt as that of the Senate, and to avoid giving the complete
control of the trials to either of these orders, the new law prepared
by Pompey and proposed by the prætor urbanus Aurelius Cotta provided
that one third of the jurymen should be furnished by the Senate, one
third by the knights, and one third by the tribunes of the treasury.
It was evident that the law was popular and would be adopted if it
came to a vote. To prevent this, the senatorial party again prepared
to engage in civil war. On this occasion, however, the resistance of
the Senate was broken by the result of the still famous Verres trial.
In connection with this trial it is necessary to go back and speak of
the work of another of the great men in the new generation of Roman
politicians. As early as the year 79 B.C. Cicero had won considerable
reputation by his defense of Sextius Roscius. From 77 B.C. down to the
period of which we are now writing Cicero had been actively engaged in
the work of an advocate at Rome, except during the single year 75
B.C., when he served as a quæstor in Sicily, and during this period
had risen in his profession until his reputation in the courts was
second only to that of the greatest lawyer of the age, Hortensius.
Cicero was now a candidate for ædile and tried to aid his candidacy by
some signal achievements. Just at this time a number of the Sicilians,
to whom Cicero had endeared himself by the honesty and ability with
which he had exercised his duty as quæstor in their island, besought
Cicero to undertake the prosecution of C. Cornelius Verres, who had
just returned from three years' service as prætor in Sicily, in which
province he had been guilty of the most extreme extortions,
dishonesty, and cruelty. The evidence Cicero was able to produce
against Verres, and the impassioned eloquence of the orations against
him which he prepared (for the evidence against Verres was so
unanswerable that his counsel, the great Hortensius, threw up the
case, and Verres fled into exile, thus depriving Cicero of an
opportunity of delivering all the carefully prepared speeches orally
in court) so demoralized the senatorial party that opposition to
Cotta's bill now ceased, and the law was passed without further
difficulty.
In the same year, 70 B.C., censors were again appointed, after the
office had been suspended for sixteen years, and the corruption of the
times, and particularly of the Senate, was shown by the fact that by
the action of the censors sixty-four members of the Senate were
degraded from their office.
The greatest military triumphs in the life of Pompey were in the years
following his consulship. In 67 B.C. he was sent to subdue the
Sicilian pirates, armed with more complete powers than had ever before
been voluntarily given by Roman citizens to any Roman general.
"The terms of the proposal are extraordinary, and require
close attention. First, a generalissimo was to be appointed
by the senate from the consulars, to hold supreme command
over the whole Mediterranean and over all the coast for
fifty miles inland, concurrently with the ordinary
governors, for three years. Second, he might select from the
men of senatorial rank twenty-five lieutenants with
prætorian powers, and two treasurers with questorian power.
Third, he might raise an army of 120,000 infantry and 7,000
cavalry, and a fleet of 500 ships, and for this purpose
might dispose absolutely of all the resources of the
provinces. Besides this, a large sum of money and a
considerable force of men and ships were at once handed over
to him.
"By the introduction of this law the government was
practically taken out of the hands of the senate; it was the
final collapse of the oligarchic rule. But it was more than
this--it was practically the institution of an unlimited
dictatorship.
"Like all extraordinary commands, this new office no doubt
required the confirmation of the people; but it was an
undoubted prerogative of the senate to define the sphere of
every command, and, in fact, to control and limit it in all
ways. The people had hitherto interfered only on the
proposition of the senate, or at any rate of a magistrate
himself qualified for the office of general. Even during the
Jugurthine War, when the command was transferred to Marius
by popular vote, it was only to Marius as consul for the
year. But now a private man was to be invested by the tribes
with extraordinary authority, and the sphere of his office
was defined by themselves. The new commander was empowered
to confer prætorian powers--that is, the highest military
and civil authority--upon adjutants chosen by himself,
though hitherto such authority could only be conferred with
the coöperation of the burgesses; while the office of
general, which was usually conferred for one year only, with
strict limitations as to forces and supplies, was now
committed almost without reserve to one man, who could draw
upon the whole resources of the state.
"Thus at one stroke the government was taken out of the
hands of the senate, and the fortunes of the empire
committed for the next three years to a dictator."
The passage of this measure was one of the greatest triumphs in the
life of Pompey. The success of Pompey against the pirates was complete
and immediate, and appeared in striking contrast with the ill-success
which had attended the Roman armies in Asia during the previous few
years.
In 66 B.C. Gaius Manilius, one of the tribunes, introduced a bill
recalling the Roman generals then conducting the war in Asia Minor and
transferring the control of the Roman armies in this section to
Pompey, giving also to Pompey the full power to make peace and
alliances. This proposed law brought about a most peculiar condition
of affairs in Roman politics. Few, if any, truly favored the
procedure, which was in direct violation of all the principles of the
Roman constitution--a greater violation even than the law which had
conferred upon Pompey his extraordinary powers as proconsul of the
seas. But while everybody feared the passage of this law, everybody,
with the exception of the extreme aristocratic party led by Catulus,
feared more to oppose it, and the law was passed with little
opposition.
From a military standpoint this grant of power to Pompey was justified
by the results. Inside of three years he succeeded in completely
overthrowing both Mithridates, the old king of Pontus, Rome's most
dreaded enemy, and Tigranes, the king of Armenia. These successes of
Pompey were followed by the conquest of the greater part of Syria.
From the conquests of Pompey in the East four new Roman provinces were
formed: (1) Pontus and Bithynia; (2) Cilicia, including Isauria and
Pamphylia; (3) Syria; (4) Crete.
The demoralizing effect of these laws conferring such powers upon
Pompey were soon to manifest themselves. Rome was rapidly becoming
accustomed to the disregard of the forms of government and of law, and
to the sight of vast and irresponsible powers being granted to a
single individual. These were the two things needed to prepare Rome to
quietly acquiesce in the abandonment of the republic and the creation
of a despotism. There is never a time in any country where too great a
responsibility or power can be given to a single individual without
the greatest danger to the future of the country. The right of the
people to rule is both meaningless and valueless if such right is
merely to consist in the right to delegate all the duties and powers
of government to the custody of a single individual. A government can
continue free only where the active control of public affairs is
widely distributed, and where the masses of the people are not afraid
to accept responsibility and do not attempt to throw the
responsibility for their safety and welfare upon the shoulders of a
single individual. Where a single individual becomes indispensable to
any free people it is a sign of the degeneracy of the people rather
than of the greatness of the man.