Part 5

His conquest of the pirates was effected with wonderful rapidity, and cemented by a merciful policy, which, instead of taking vengeance for the past, accomplished the prevention of evil for the future. His presence in Asia, when he conducted the war with Mithridates, was no less a relief to the provinces from the tyranny of their governors, than it was their protection against the arms of the enemy. It is true that wounded vanity led him, after his return from Asia, to unite himself for a time with some unworthy associates; and this connection, as it ultimately led to all his misfortunes, so did it immediately tempt him to the worst faults of his political life, and involved him in a career of difficulty, mortification, and shame.

But after this disgraceful fall, he again returned to his natural station, and was universally regarded as the fit protector of the laws and liberties of his country when they were threatened by Cæsar’s rebellion. In the conduct of the civil war he showed something of weakness and vacillation; but his abilities, though considerable, were far from being equal to those of his adversary. His inferiority was most seen in that want of steadiness in the pursuit of his own plans which caused him to abandon a system already sanctioned by success, and to persuade himself that he might yield with propriety to the ill-judged impatience of his followers for battle.

His death is one of the few tragical events of those times which may be regarded with unmixed compassion. It was not accompanied, like that of Cato and Brutus, with the rashness and despair of suicide; nor can it be regarded like that of Cæsar, as the punishment of crimes, unlawfully inflicted, indeed, yet suffered deservedly. With a character of rare purity and tenderness in his domestic relations, he was slaughtered before the eyes of his wife and son; while flying from the ruin of a most just cause he was murdered by those whose kindness he was entitled to claim.

His virtues have not been transmitted to posterity with their deserved fame; and while the violent republican writers have exalted the memory of Cato and Brutus; while the lovers of literature have extolled Cicero; and the admirers of successful ability have lavished their praises on Cæsar; Pompey’s many and rare merits have been forgotten in the faults of his triumvirate, and in the weakness of temper which he displayed in conduct of the last campaign.

But he must have been in no ordinary degree good and amiable for whom his countrymen professed their enthusiastic love, unrestrained by servility and unimpelled by faction; and though the events of his life must now be gathered for the most part from unfriendly sources, yet we think that they who read them impartially will continually cherish his memory with a warmer regard.

SERTORIUS.

BY PLUTARCH.

[Quintus Sertorius, a Roman general of Sabine extraction, born about 121 B.C., assassinated in Spain in 72. A prominent chief of the Marian party, he fled to Spain and held possession of the province against the dominant party at Rome for more than ten years. He was the one leader among the adherents of Marius, as Pompey was the one general among the followers of Sylla, who showed moderation and the spirit of clemency. His greatness was chiefly shown in his career in Spain. He displayed consummate generalship and skill in holding all the armies of Rome at bay till he was assassinated by one of his own officers.]

Sertorius at last utterly despaired of Rome, and hastened into Spain, that by taking possession there beforehand he might secure a refuge to his friends from their misfortunes at home. He armed all the Romans who lived in those countries that were of military age, and undertook the building of ships and the making of all sorts of warlike engines, by which means he kept the cities in due obedience, showing himself gentle in all peaceful business, and at the same time formidable to his enemies by his great preparations for war.

When Sertorius was called to Mauritania to assist the enemies of Prince Ascalis, and had made himself absolute master of the whole country, he acted with great fairness to those who had confided in him, and who yielded to his mercy. He restored to them their property, cities, and government, accepting only of such acknowledgments as they themselves freely offered. While he considered which way next to turn his arms, the Lusitanians sent ambassadors to desire him to be their general. For being terrified with the Roman power, and finding the necessity of having a commander of great authority and experience in war; being also sufficiently assured of his worth and valor by those who formerly had known him, they were desirous to commit themselves specially to his care.

In fact, Sertorius is said to have been of a temper unassailable either by fear or pleasure, in adversity and dangers undaunted, and no ways puffed up with prosperity. In straightforward fighting no commander of his time was more bold and daring; and in whatever was to be performed in war by stratagem, secrecy, or surprise, if any strong place was to be secured, any pass to be gained speedily, for deceiving and overreaching an enemy, there was no man equal to him in subtlety and skill.

In bestowing rewards and conferring honors upon those who had performed good service in the wars he was bountiful and magnificent, and was no less sparing and moderate in inflicting punishment. The Lusitanians having sent for Sertorius, he left Africa, and being made general, with absolute authority, he put all in order among them, and brought the neighboring parts of Spain into subjection. Most of the tribes voluntarily submitted themselves, won by the fame of his clemency and of his courage; and to some extent also, he availed himself of cunning artifices of his own devising to impose on them, and gain influence over them.

Among which certainly that of the hind was not the least. Spanus, a countryman who lived in those parts, meeting by chance a hind that had recently calved flying from the hunters, let the dam go, and pursuing the fawn took it, being wonderfully pleased with the rarity of the color, which was all milk white. At that time Sertorius was living in the neighborhood, and accepted gladly any presents of fruits, fowl, or venison that the country afforded, and rewarded liberally those who presented them.

The countryman brought him his young hind, which he took and was well pleased with at first sight; but when in time he made it so tame and gentle that it would come when he called, and follow him wherever he went, and could endure the noise and tumult of the camp, knowing well that uncivilized people are naturally prone to superstition, by little and little he raised it to something supernatural, saying it was given him by the goddess Diana, and that it revealed to him many secrets.

If he had received private intelligence that the enemies had made an incursion into any part of the district under his command, or had solicited any city to revolt, he pretended that the hind had informed him of it in his sleep, and charged him to keep his forces in readiness. Or, again, if he had notice that any of the commanders under him had got a victory, he would hide the messengers and bring forth the hind crowned with flowers, for joy of the good news that was to come, and would encourage them to rejoice and sacrifice to the gods for the good account they should soon receive of their prosperous success.

He was also highly honored for his introducing discipline and good order among them, for he altered their furious mode of fighting, and brought them to make use of Roman armor, taught them to keep their ranks, and observe signals and watch-words; and out of a confused number of thieves and robbers he constituted a well-disciplined army. That which delighted them most, however, was the care he took of their children. He sent for all the boys of noblest parentage out of all their tribes, and placed them in the great city of Osca, where he appointed masters to instruct them in the Latin and Greek learning.

His method of conducting the war against the Romans showed his military skill and foresight. By rapidly assaulting them, by alarming them on all sides, by ensnaring, circumventing, and laying ambushes for them, he cut off all provisions by land, while with his piratical vessels he kept all the coast in awe and hindered their supplies by sea. He thus forced the Roman generals to dislodge and to separate from one another at the last; Metellus departed into Gaul and Pompey wintered among the Vaccæans in a wretched condition, where, being in extreme want of money, he wrote a letter to the senate, to let them know that if they did not speedily supply him he must draw off his army. To these extremities the chiefest and most powerful commanders of the age were brought by the skill of Sertorius; and it was the common opinion in Rome that he would be in Italy before Pompey.

Sertorius showed the loftiness of his temper in calling together all the Roman senators who had fled from Rome and had come and resided with him, giving them the name of a senate. Out of these he chose prætors and quæstors, and adorned his government with all the Roman laws and institutions, and though he made use of the arms, riches, and cities of the Spaniards, yet he never would even in word remit to them the imperial authority, but set Roman officers and commanders over them, intimating his purpose to restore liberty to the Romans, not to raise up the Spaniards’ power against them.

He was a sincere lover of his country and had a great desire to return home; but in his adverse fortune he showed undaunted courage, and behaved himself toward his enemies in a manner free from all dejection and mean spiritedness. In his prosperity and the height of his victories he sent word to Metellus and Pompey that he was ready to lay down his arms and lead a private life if he were allowed to return home, declaring that he had rather live as the meanest citizen in Rome than, exiled from it, be supreme commander of all other cities together.

His negotiations with Mithridates further argue the greatness of his mind. For when Mithridates, recovering himself from his overthrow by Sylla--like a strong wrestler that gets up to try another fall--was again endeavoring to re-establish his power in Asia, at this time the great fame of Sertorius was celebrated in all places. Accordingly, Mithridates sends messengers into Spain with letters and instructions and commission to promise ships and money toward the charge of the war if Sertorius would confirm his pretensions on Asia, and authorize him to possess all that he had surrendered to the Romans in his treaty with Sylla.

Sertorius would by no means agree to it; declaring that King Mithridates should exercise all royal power and authority over Bithynia and Cappadocia--countries accustomed to a monarchical government and not belonging to Rome--but that he could never consent that he should seize or detain a province which, by the justest right and title, was possessed by the Romans. For he looked upon it as his duty to enlarge the Roman possessions by his conquering arms, and not to increase his power by the diminution of Roman territories.

When this was related to Mithridates he was struck with amazement, and said to his intimate friends: “What will Sertorius enjoin on us to do when he comes to be seated in the Palatium at Rome, who, at present, when he is driven out to the borders of the Atlantic Sea, sets bounds to our kingdoms in the East, and threatens us with war if we attempt the recovery of Asia?”

JULIUS CÆSAR.

BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

[A Roman general and statesman and founder of the empire, though its first ruler was Octavianus, his nephew and adopted son, who mounted the throne under the name of Augustus Cæsar. Born 100 B.C., assassinated in the senate-house 44 B.C. By many historians and critics Julius Cæsar is regarded as the greatest man who lived before the Christian era.]

In person Cæsar was tall and slight. His features were more refined than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray, like an eagle’s, the neck extremely thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and mustache were kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally scanty, falling off toward the end of his life, and leaving him partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high and shrill. His health was uniformly good, until his last year when he became subject to epileptic fits.

He was a great bather, and scrupulously neat in his habits, abstemious in his food, and careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching wine, and noting sobriety as the highest of qualities in describing any new people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all manly exercises, and especially in riding. From his boyhood it was observed of him that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quarrels, and was easily appeased when offended. In manner he was quiet and gentleman-like, with the natural courtesy of high breeding.

Like Cicero, Cæsar entered public life at the bar. It was by accident that he took up the profession of the soldier; yet, perhaps, no commander who ever lived showed greater military genius. The conquest of Gaul was effected by a force numerically insignificant, which was worked with the precision of a machine. The variety of uses to which it was capable of being turned implied, in the first place, extraordinary forethought in the selection of materials. Men whose nominal duty was merely to fight were engineers, architects, and mechanics of the highest order. In a few hours they could extemporize an impregnable fortress on the highest hill-side. They bridged the Rhine in a week. They built a fleet in a month.

The legions at Alesia held twice their number pinned within their works, while they kept at bay the whole force of insurgent Gaul by scientific superiority. The machine, which was thus perfect, was composed of human beings who required supplies of tools and arms and clothes and food and shelter; and for all these it depended on the forethought of its commander. Maps there were none. Countries entirely unknown had to be surveyed; routes had to be laid out; the depths and courses of rivers, the character of mountain-passes had all to be ascertained. Allies had to be found in tribes as yet unheard of.

He was rash, but with a calculated rashness which the event never failed to justify. His greatest successes were due to the rapidity of his movements, which brought him to the enemy before they heard of his approach. No obstacles stopped him when he had a definite end in view. Again and again by his own efforts he recovered a day that was half lost. He once seized a panic-stricken standard-bearer, turned him around, and told him that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy.

Yet he was singularly careful of his soldiers. He rarely fought a battle at a disadvantage. When a gallant action was performed, he knew by whom it had been done, and every soldier, however humble, might feel assured that if he deserved praise he would have it. The army was Cæsar’s family. In discipline, he was lenient to ordinary faults, and not careful to make curious inquiries into such things. He liked his men to enjoy themselves. Military mistakes in his officers he always endeavored to excuse, never blaming them for misfortunes unless there had been a defect of courage as well as of judgment.

Cicero has said of Cæsar’s oratory that he surpassed those who had practiced no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is yet more delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writings are lost; but there remain seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul (the eighth was added by another hand) and three books on the civil war, containing an account of its causes and history. Of these it was that Cicero said, in an admirable image, that fools might think to improve on them, but that no wise man would try it; they were bare of ornament, the dress of style dispensed with, like an undraped human figure in all its lines as nature made it. In his composition, as in his actions, Cæsar is entirely simple. He indulges in no images, no labored descriptions, no conventional reflections. His art is unconscious, as the highest art always is.

Of Cæsar it may be said that he came into the world at a special time and for a special object. The old religions were dead from the Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles on which human society had been constructed were dead also. There remained of spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of justice and morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of government had to be constructed, under which quiet men could live and labor and eat the fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there can be no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life was about to dawn for mankind.

Poetry and faith and devotion were to spring again out of the seeds which were sleeping in the heart of humanity. But the life which is to endure grows slowly; and as the soil must be prepared before the wheat can be sown, so before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up its shoots, there was needed a kingdom of this world where the nations were neither torn in pieces by violence, nor were rushing after false ideals and spurious ambitions. Such a kingdom was the empire of the Cæsars, a kingdom where peaceful men could work, think, and speak as they pleased, and travel freely among provinces ruled for the most part by Gallios[13] who protected life and property, and forbade fanatics to tear each other to pieces for their religious opinions.

“It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” was the complaint of the Jewish priests to the Roman governor. Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent nations, each with a local religion represented in its ruling powers, Christianity must have been stifled in its cradle. If St. Paul had escaped the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, he would have been torn to death by the silversmiths at Ephesus. The appeal to Cæsar’s judgment-seat was the shield of his mission, and alone made possible his success.

And this spirit which confined government to its simple duties, while it left opinion unfettered, was specially present in Julius Cæsar himself. From cant of all kinds he was totally free. He was a friend of the people, but indulged in no enthusiasm for liberty. He never dilated on the beauties of virtue, or complimented, as Cicero did, a Providence in which he did not believe. He was too sincere to stoop to unreality. He held to the facts of this life and to his own convictions; and as he found no reason for supposing that there was a life beyond the grave, he did not pretend to expect it. He respected the religion of the Roman state as an institution established by the laws.

He encouraged or left unmolested the creeds and practices of the uncounted sects and tribes who were gathered under the eagles. But his own writings contain nothing to indicate that he himself had any religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically interfered in human affairs. He never pretended that Jupiter was on his side. He thanked his soldiers after a victory, but he did not order _Te Deums_ to be sung for it; and in the absence of these conventionalisms he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have displayed by the freest use of the formulas of piety. He fought his battles to establish some tolerable degree of justice in the government of this world; and he succeeded though he was murdered for doing it.

TRAJAN.

BY CHARLES MERIVALE.

[M. Ulpius Trajanus, successor as Roman emperor to Nerva, born A.D. 53, ascended the throne 99; died 118. One of the most illustrious among those who wore the Roman purple, his reign was distinguished as much by happiness and prosperity as by lofty virtues. As a soldier, Trajan subdued the Dacians, completed the conquest of Germany and Sarmatia, annexed Armenia to the empire, and subdued the Parthians to the Roman yoke. His civic administration was no less notable than his military conquests and organization.]

The princely prodigality of Trajan’s taste was defrayed by the plunder or the tribute of conquered enemies, and seems to have laid at least no extraordinary burden on his subjects. His rage for building had the further merit of being directed for the most part to works of public utility and interest. He built for the gods, the senate, and the people, and not for himself; he restored the palaces, enlarged the halls and places of public resort; but he was content himself with the palaces of his predecessors. A writer three centuries later declares of Trajan that he built the world over; and the wide diffusion and long continuance of his fame beyond that of so many others of the imperial series may be partly attributed to the constant recurrence of his name conspicuously inscribed on the most solid and best known monuments of the empire.

The care of this wise and liberal ruler extended from the harbors, aqueducts, and bridges to the general repair of the highways of the empire. He was the great improver, though not the inventor of the system of posts on the chief roads, which formed a striking feature of Roman civilization as an instrument for combining the remotest provinces under a central organization.

The legislation of this popular emperor is marked generally by a special consideration for Italian interests. The measures by which he secured a constant supply of grain from the provinces, exempting its exportation from all duties, and stimulating the growers at one extremity of the empire to relieve the deficiencies of another, were directed to the maintenance of abundance in Rome and Italy. Thus, on the casual failure of the harvest in Egypt, her empty granaries were at once replenished from the superfluous stores of Gaul, Spain, or Africa.

Though Trajan’s mind did not rise to wide and liberal views for the advantages of the provinces, he neglected no favorable opportunity for the benefit of particular localities. His hand was open to bestow endowments and largesses, to relieve public calamities, to increase public enjoyments, to repair the ravages of earthquakes and tempests, to construct roads and canals, theatres and aqueducts. The activity displayed through the empire in works of this unproductive nature shows a great command of money, an abundant currency, easy means of transacting business, ample resources of labor, and well devised schemes of combining and unfolding them. Judicious economy went ever hand in hand with genuine magnificence.

The monuments of Roman jurisprudence contain many examples of Trajan’s legislation. Like the great statesmen of the republic, he returned from the camp to the city to take his seat daily on the tribunals with the ablest judges for his assessors. He heard appeals from the highest courts throughout his dominion, and the final sentence he pronounced assumed the validity of a legal enactment. The clemency of Trajan was as conspicuous as his love of justice, and to him is ascribed the noble sentiment, that it is better that the guilty should escape than the innocent suffer.