Chapter 41

ROME FROM THE DEATH OF SULLA TO THE GREAT CIVIL WARS OF CÆSAR AND POMPEY.—CICERO, POMPEY, AND CÆSAR.

On the death of Sulla, the Roman government was once more in the hands of the aristocracy, and for several years the consuls were elected from the great ruling families. But, in spite of all the conquests of Sulla and all his laws, the State was tumbling into anarchy, and was convulsed with fresh wars.

(M990) Sulla was alive when M. Lepidus came forward as the leader of the democratic party against C. Lutatius Catulus—a man without character or ability, who had deserted from the optimates to the popular party, to escape prosecution for the plunder of Sicily. The fortune he acquired in his government of that province enabled Lepidus to secure his election as consul, B.C. 78, and he even attempted to deprive Sulla of his funeral honors. A conspiracy was organized in Etruria, where the Sullan confiscation had been most severe. Lepidus came forward as an avenger of the old Romans whose fortunes had been ruined. The Senate, fearing convulsions, made Lepidus and Catulus, the consuls, swear not to take up arms against each other; but at the expiration of the consulship of Lepidus, went, as was usual, to the province assigned to him. This was Gaul, and here the war first broke out. An attempt on Rome was frustrated by Catulus, who defeated Lepidus, and the latter soon died in Sardinia, whither he had retired.

(M991) Sertorius was then in command of the army in Spain,—a man who had risen from an obscure position, but who possessed the hardy virtues of the old Sabine farmers. He served under Marius in Gaul, and was prætor when Sulla returned to Italy. When the cause of Marius was lost in Africa, he organized a resistance to Sulla in Spain. His army was re-enforced by Marian refugees, and he was aided by the Iberian tribes, among whom he was a favorite. For eight years this celebrated hero baffled the armies which Rome, under the lead of the aristocracy, sent against him, for he undertook to restore the cause of the democracy.

(M992) Against Sertorius was sent the man who, next to Cæsar, was destined to play the most important part in the history of those times—Cn. Pompeius, born the same year as Cicero, B.C. 106, who had enlisted in the cause of Sulla, and early distinguished himself against the generals of Marius. He gained great successes in Sicily and Africa, and was, on his return to Rome, saluted by the dictator Sulla himself with the name of _Magnus_, which title he ever afterward bore. He was then a simple equestrian, and had not risen to the rank of quæstor, or prætor, or consul. Yet he had, at the early age of twenty-four, without enjoying any curule office, the honor of a triumph, even against the opposition of Sulla.

(M993) Pompey was sent to Spain with the title of proconsul, and with an army of thirty thousand men. He crossed the Alps between the sources of the Rhone and Po, and advanced to the southern coast of Spain. Here he was met by Sertorius, and at first was worsted. I need not detail the varied events of this war in Spain. The Spaniards at length grew weary of a contest which was not to their benefit, but which was carried on in behalf of rival factions at the capital. Dissensions broke out among the officers of Sertorius, and he was killed at a banquet by Perpenna, his lieutenant. On the death of the only man capable of resisting the aristocracy of Rome, and whose virtues were worthy of the ancient heroes, the progress of Pompey was easy. Perpenna was taken prisoner and his army was dispersed, and Spain was reduced to obedience.

(M994) In the mean time, while Pompey was fighting Sertorius in Spain, a servile war broke out in Italy, produced in part by the immense demand of slaves for the gladiatorial shows. One of these slaves, Spartacus, once a Thracian captain of banditti, escaped with seventy comrades to the crater of Vesuvius, and organized an insurrection, and he was soon at the head of one hundred thousand of those wretched captives whose condition was unendurable. Italy was ravaged from the Alps to the Straits of Messina. No Roman general, then in Italy, was equal to the task of subduing them. But, in the second year of the war, Crassus, who was a great proprietor of slaves, and who had ably served under Sulla, undertook the task of subduing the insurrectionary slaves. With six legions he drove them to the extremity of the Bruttian peninsula, and shut them up in Rhegium by strong lines of circumvallation. Spartacus was killed, after having broken through the lines, and most of his followers were destroyed; but six thousand escaped into Cisalpine Gaul, as the northern part of Italy was then called, and met Pompey on his victorious return from Spain, by whom they were utterly annihilated. Pompey claimed the merit of ending the servile war, and sought the honor of the consulship, although ineligible. Crassus, also ineligible, also demanded the consulship, and both these lieutenants of Sulla obtained their ends. But both, in order to obtain the consulship, made great promises. Pompey, in particular, promised to restore the tribunitian power. Pompey now broke with the aristocracy, whose champion he had been, and even carried another law by which the judices were taken from the equites as well as the Senate. Thus was the constitution of Sulla subverted within ten years. In this movement Pompey was supported by Julius Cæsar, who was a young man of thirty years of age.

(M995) On the expiration of his consulship, Pompey remained inactive, refusing a province, until the troubles with the Mediterranean pirates again called him into active military service. These pirates swarmed on every coast, plundering cities, and cutting off communication between Rome and the provinces. They especially attacked the corn vessels, so that the price of provisions rose inordinately. The people, in distress, turned their eyes to Pompey; but he was not willing to accept any ordinary command, and through his intrigues, his tool, the tribune Gabinius, proposed that the people should elect a man for this service of consular rank, who should have absolute power for three years over the whole of the Mediterranean, and to a distance of fifty miles inward from the coast, and who should command a fleet of two hundred ships. He did not name Pompey, but everybody knew who was meant. The people, furious at the price of corn, and full of admiration for the victories of Pompey, were ready to appoint him; the Senate, alarmed and jealous, was equally determined to prevent his appointment. Tumults and riots were the consequence. Pompey affected to desire some other person for the command but himself; but the law passed, in spite of the opposition of the Senate, and Pompey was commissioned to prepare five hundred ships, enlist one hundred and twenty thousand sailors and soldiers, and also to take from the public treasury whatever sum he needed.

In the following spring his preparations were made, and in forty days he cleared the western half of the Mediterranean from the pirates, and drove them to the Cilician coast. Here he gained a great victory over their united fleets, and took twenty thousand prisoners, whom he settled at various points on the coasts, and returned home in forty-nine days after he had sailed from Brundusium. In less than three months he had ended the war.

(M996) This great success led to his command against Mithridates, who had again rallied his forces for one more decisive and desperate struggle with the Romans. Asia rallied against Europe, as Europe rallied against Asia in the crusades. Mithridates, after his defeat by Sulla, had retired to Armenia to the court of his son-in-law, Tigranes, whose power was greater than that of any other Oriental potentate. Tigranes was not at first inclined to break with Rome, but (B.C. 70) he consented to the war, which continued for seven years without decisive results. The Romans were commanded by Lucullus, the old lieutenant of Sulla, and although his labors were not appreciated at Rome, he broke really the power of Mithridates. But, through the intrigues of Pompey and his friends, he was recalled, and Pompey was commissioned, with the extraordinary power of unlimited control of the Eastern army and fleet, and the rights of proconsul over the whole of Asia. He already had the dominion of the Mediterranean. The Senate opposed this dangerous precedent, but it was carried by the people, who could not heap too many honors on their favorite. Cicero, then forty years of age, with Cæsar, supported the measure, which was opposed by Hortensius and Catulus.

(M997) Lucullus retired to his luxurious villa to squander the riches he had accumulated in Asia, and to study the academic philosophy, while Pompey pursued his conquests in the East over foes already broken and humiliated. He showed considerable ability, and drove Mithridates from post to post in the heart of his dominion. The Eastern monarch made overtures of peace, which were rejected. Nothing but unconditional surrender would be accepted. His army was finally cut to pieces, and the old man escaped only with a few horsemen. Rejected by Tigranes, he made his way to the Cimmerian Bosphorus, which was his last retreat. Pompey then turned his attention to Armenia, and Tigranes threw himself upon his mercy, at the cost of all his territories but Armenia Proper. Pompey then resumed the pursuit of Mithridates, fighting his way though the mountains of Iberia and Albania, but he did not pursue his foe over the Caucasus. Mithridates, secure in the Crimea, then planned a daring attempt on Rome herself, which was to march round the Euxine and up the Danube, collecting in his train the Sarmatians, Gætæ, and other barbarians, cross the Alps, and descend upon Italy. _His_ kingdom of Pontus was already lost, and had been made a Roman province. His followers, however, became disaffected, his son Pharnaces rebelled, and he had no other remedy than suicide to escape capture. He died B.C. 63, after a reign of fifty-three years, in the sixty-ninth year of his age—the greatest Eastern prince since Cyrus. Racine has painted him in one of his dramas as one of the most heroic men of the world. But it was his misfortune to contend with Rome in the plenitude of her power.

(M998) Pompey, before the death of Mithridates, went to Syria to regulate its affairs, it being ceded to Rome by Tigranes. After the defeat of Tigranes by Lucullus, that kingdom, however, had been recovered by Antiochus XIII., the last of the Seleucidæ, who held a doubtful sovereignty. He was, however, reduced by a legate of Pompey, and Syria became a Roman province. The next year, Pompey advanced south, and established the Roman supremacy in Phœnicia and Palestine, the latter country being the seat of civil war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. It was then that Jerusalem was taken by the Roman general, after a siege of three months, and the conqueror entered the most sacred precincts of the temple, to the horror of the priesthood. He established Hyrcanus as high priest, as has been already related, and then retired to Pontus, settled its affairs, and departed with his army for Italy, having won a succession of victories never equaled in the East, except by Alexander. And never did victories receive such great _éclat_, which, however, were easily won, as those of Alexander had been. No Asiatic foe was a match for either Greeks or Romans in the field. The real difficulties were in marches, in penetrating mountain passes, in crossing arid plains.

(M999) But before the conqueror of Asia received the reward of his great services to the State—the most splendid triumph which had as yet been seen on the Via Sacra—Rome was brought to the verge of ruin by the conspiracy of Catiline. The departure of Pompey to punish the pirates of the Mediterranean and conquer Mithridates, left the field clear to the two greatest men of their age, Cicero and Cæsar. It was while Cicero was consul that the conspiracy was detected.

(M1000) Marcus Tullius Cicero, the most accomplished man, on the whole, in Roman annals, and as immortal as Cæsar himself, was born B.C. 106, near Arpinum, of an equestrian, but not senatorial family. He received a good education, received the manly gown at sixteen, and entered the forum to hear the debates, but pursued his studies with great assiduity. He was intrusted by his wealthy father to the care of the augur, Q. Mucius Scævola, an old lawyer deeply read in the constitution of his country and the principles of jurisprudence. At eighteen he served his first and only campaign under the father of the great Pompey, in the social war. He was twenty-four before he made a figure in the eye of the public, keeping aloof from the fierce struggles of Marius and Sulla, identifying himself with neither party, and devoted only to the cultivation of his mind, studying philosophy and rhetoric as well as law, traveling over Sicily and Greece, and preparing himself for a forensic orator. At twenty-five he appeared in the forum as a public pleader, and boldly defended the oppressed and injured, and even braved the anger of Sulla, then all-powerful as dictator. At twenty-seven he again repaired to Athens for greater culture, and extensively traveled in Asia Minor, holding converse with the most eminent scholars and philosophers in the Grecian cities. At twenty-nine he returned to Rome, improved in health as well as in those arts which contributed to his unrivaled fame as an orator—a rival with Hortensius and Cotta, the leaders of the Roman bar. At thirty he was elected quæstor, not, as was usually the case, by family interest, but from his great reputation as a lawyer. The duties of his office called him to Sicily, under the prætor of Lilybæum, which he admirably discharged, showing not only executive ability, but rare virtue and impartiality. The vanity which dimmed the lustre of his glorious name, and which he never exorcised, received a severe wound on his return to Italy. He imagined he was the observed of all observers, but soon discovered that his gay and fashionable friends were ignorant, not only of what he had done in Sicily but of his administration at all.

(M1001) For the next four years he was absorbed in private studies, and in the courts of law, at the end of which he became ædile, the year that Verres was impeached for misgovernment in Sicily. This was the most celebrated State trial for impeachment on record, with the exception, perhaps, of that of Warren Hastings. But Cicero, who was the public accuser and prosecutor, was more fortunate than Burke. He collected such an overwhelming mass of evidence against this corrupt governor, that he went into exile without making a defense, although defended by Hortensius, consul elect. The speech which the orator _was to have_ made at the trial was subsequently published by Cicero, and is one of the most eloquent tirades against public corruption ever composed or uttered.

(M1002) Nothing of especial interest marked the career of this great man for three more years, until B.C. 67 he was elected first prætor, or supreme judge, an office for which he was supremely qualified. But it was not merely civic cases which he decided. He appeared as a political speaker, and delivered from the rostrum his celebrated speech on the Manilian laws, maintaining the cause of Pompey when he departed from the policy of the aristocracy. He had now gained by pure merit, in a corrupt age, without family influence, the highest offices of the State, even as Burke became the leader of the House of Commons without aristocratic connections, and now naturally aspired to the consulship,—the great prize which every ambitious man sought, but which, in the aristocratic age of Roman history, was rarely conferred except on members of the ruling houses, or very eminent success in war. By the friendship of Pompey, and also from the general admiration which his splendid talents and attainments commanded, this great prize was also secured. He had six illustrious competitors, among whom were Antonius and Catiline, who were assisted by Crassus and Cæsar. As consul, all the energies of his mind and character were absorbed in baffling the treason of this eminent patrician demagogue. L. Sergius Catiline was one of those wicked, unscrupulous, intriguing, popular, abandoned and intellectual scoundrels that a corrupt age and patrician misrule brought to the surface of society, aided by the degenerate nobles to whose class he belonged. In the bitterness of his political disappointments, headed off by Cicero at every turn, he meditated the complete overthrow of the Roman constitution, and his own elevation as chief of the State, and absolutely inaugurated rebellion. Cicero, who was in danger of assassination, boldly laid the conspiracy before the Senate, and secured the arrest of many of his chief confederates. Catiline fled and assembled his followers, which numbered twelve thousand desperate men, and fought with the courage of despair, but was defeated and slain.

Had it not been for the vigilance, energy, and patriotism of Cicero, it is possible this atrocious conspiracy would have succeeded. The state of society was completely demoralized; the disbanded soldiers of the Eastern wars had spent their money and wanted spoils; the Senate was timid and inefficient, and an unscrupulous and able leader, at the head of discontented factions, on the assassination of the consuls and the virtuous men who remained in power, might have bid defiance to any force which could then, in the absence of Pompey in the East, have been marshaled against him.

(M1003) But the State was saved, and saved by a patriotic statesman who had arisen by force of genius and character to the supreme power. The gratitude of the people was unbounded. Men of all ranks hailed him as the savior of his country; thanksgivings to the gods were voted in his name, and all Italy joined in enthusiastic praises.

(M1004) But he had now reached the culminating height of his political greatness, and his subsequent career was one of sorrow and disappointment. Intoxicated by his elevation,—for it was unprecedented at Rome, in his day, for a man to rise so high by mere force of eloquence and learning, without fortune, or family, or military exploits,—he became conceited and vain. In the civil troubles which succeeded the return of Pompey, he was banished from the country he had saved, and there is nothing more pitiful than his lamentations and miseries while in exile. His fall was natural. He had opposed the demoralising current which swept every thing before it. When his office of consul was ended, he was exposed to the hatred of the senators whom he had humiliated, of the equites whose unreasonable demands he had opposed, of the people whom he disdained to flatter, and of the triumvirs whose usurpation he detested. No one was powerful enough to screen him from these combined hostilities, except the very men who aimed at the subversion of Roman liberties, and who wished him out of the way; his friend Pompey showed a mean, pusillanimous, and calculating selfishness, and neither Crassus nor Cæsar liked him. But in his latter days, part of which were passed in exile, and all without political consideration, he found time to compose those eloquent treatises on almost every subject, for which his memory will be held in reverence. Unlike Bacon, he committed no crime against the laws; yet, like him, fell from his high estate in the convulsions of a revolutionary age, and as Bacon soothed his declining years with the charms of literature and philosophy, so did Cicero display in his writings the result of long years of study, and unfold for remotest generations the treasures of Greek and Roman wisdom, ornamented, too, by that exquisite style, which, of itself, would have given him immortality as one of the great artists of the world. He lived to see the utter wreck of Roman liberties, and was ultimately executed by order of Antonius, in revenge for those bitter philippics which the orator had launched against him before the descending sun of his political glory had finally disappeared in the gloom and darkness of revolutionary miseries.

(M1005) But we resume the thread of political history in those tangled times. Cicero was at the highest of his fame and power when Pompey returned from his Asiatic conquests, the great hero of his age, on whom all eyes were fixed, and to whom all bent the knee of homage and admiration. His triumph, at the age of forty-five, was the grandest ever seen. It lasted two days. Three hundred and twenty-four captive princes walked before his triumphal car, followed by spoils and emblems of a war which saw the reduction of one thousand fortresses. The enormous sum of twenty thousand talents was added to the public treasury.

(M1006) Pompey was, however, greater in war than in peace. Had he known how to make use of his prestige and his advantages, he might have henceforth reigned without a rival. He was not sufficiently noble and generous to live without making grave mistakes and alienating some of his greatest friends, nor was he sufficiently bad and unscrupulous to abuse his military supremacy. He pursued a middle course, envious of all talent, absorbed in his own greatness, vain, pompous, and vacillating. His quarrels with Crassus and Lucullus severed him from the aristocratic party, whose leader he properly was. His haughtiness and coldness alienated the affections of the people, through whom he could only advance to supreme dominion. He had neither the arts of a demagogue, nor the magnanimity of a conqueror.

(M1007) It was at this crisis that Cæsar returned from Spain as the conqueror of the Lusitanians. Caius Julius Cæsar belonged to the ancient patrician family of the Julii, and was born B.C. 100, and was six years younger than Pompey and Cicero. But he was closely connected with the popular party by the marriage of his aunt Julia with the great Marius, and his marriage with Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, one of the chief opponents of Sulla. He early served in the army of the East, but devoted his earliest years to the art of oratory. His affable manners and unbounded liberality made him popular with the people. He obtained the quæstorship at thirty-two, the year he lost his wife, and went as quæstor to Antistius Vetus, into the province of Further Spain. On his return, the following year, he married Pompeia, the granddaughter of Sulla, of the Cornelia gens, and formed a union with Pompey. By his family connections he obtained the curule ædileship at the age of thirty-five, and surpassed his predecessors in the extravagance of his shows and entertainments, the money for which he borrowed. At thirty-seven he was elected Pontifex Maximus, so great was his popularity, and the following year he obtained the prætorship, B.C. 62, and on the expiration of his office he obtained the province of Further Spain. His debts were so enormous that he applied for aid to Crassus, the richest man in Rome, and readily obtained the loan he sought. In Spain, with an army at his command, he gained brilliant victories over the Lusitanians, and returned to Rome enriched, and sought the consulship. To obtain this, he relinquished the customary triumph, and, with the aid of Pompey, secured his election, and entered into that close alliance with Pompey and Crassus which historians call the first triumvirate. It was merely a private agreement between the three most powerful men of Rome to support each other, and not a distinct magistracy.

(M1008) As consul, Cæsar threw his influence against the aristocracy, to whose ranks he belonged, both by birth and office, and caused an agrarian law to be passed, against the fiercest opposition of the Senate, by which the rich Campanian lands were divided for the benefit of the poorest citizens—a good measure, perhaps, but which brought him forward as the champion of the people. He next gained over the equites, by relieving them, by a law which he caused to be passed, of one-third of the sum they had agreed to pay for the farming of the taxes of Asia. He secured the favor of Pompey by causing all his acts in the East to be confirmed. At the expiration of his consulship he obtained the province of Gaul, as the fullest field for the development of his military talents, and the surest way to climb to subsequent greatness. At this period Cicero went into exile without waiting for his trial—that miserable period made memorable for aristocratic broils and intrigues, and when Clodius, a reckless young noble, entered into the house of the Pontifex Maximus, disguised as a woman, in pursuit of a vile intrigue with Cæsar’s wife.

(M1009) The succeeding nine years of Cæsar’s life were occupied by the subjugation of Gaul. In the first campaign he subdued the Helvetii, and conquered Ariovistus, a powerful German chieftain. In the second campaign he opposed a confederation of Belgic tribes—the most warlike of all the Gauls, who had collected a force of three hundred thousand men, and signally defeated them, for which victories the Senate decreed a public thanksgiving of fifteen days. That given in Pompey’s honor, after the Mithridatic war, had lasted but ten. At this time he made a renewed compact with Pompey and Crassus, by which Pompey was to have the two Spains for his province, Crassus that of Syria, and he himself should have a prolonged government in Gaul for five years more. The combined influence of these men was enough to secure the elections, and the year following Crassus and Pompey were made consuls. Cæsar had to resist powerful confederations of the Gauls, and in order to strike terror among them, in the fourth year of the war, invaded Britain. But I can not describe the various campaigns of Cæsar in Gaul and Britain without going into details hard to be understood—his brilliant victories over enemies of vastly greater numbers, his marchings and countermarchings, his difficulties and dangers, his inventive genius, his strategic talents, his boundless resources, his command over his soldiers and their idolatry, until, after nine years, Gaul was subdued and added to the Roman provinces. During his long absence from Rome his interests were guarded by the tribune Curio, and Marcus Antonius, the future triumvir. During this time Crassus had ingloriously conducted a distant war in Parthia, in quest of fame and riches, and was killed by an unknown hand after a disgraceful defeat. This avaricious patrician must not be confounded with the celebrated orator, of a preceding age, who was so celebrated for his elegance and luxury.

Affairs at Rome had also taken a turn which indicated a rupture with Cæsar and Pompey, now left, by the death of Crassus, at the head of the State. The brilliant victories of the former in Gaul were in everybody’s mouth, and the fame of the latter was being eclipsed. A serious rivalry between these great generals began to show itself. The disturbances which also broke out on the death of Clodius led to the appointment of Pompey as sole consul, and all his acts as consul tended to consolidate his power. His government in Spain was prolonged for five years more; he entered into closer connections with the aristocracy, and prepared for a rupture with his great rival, which had now become inevitable, as both grasped supreme power. That struggle is now to be presented in the following chapter.