Part 105

The man to whom all this was due became at once the leading figure in the world. It became clear that when his career of conquest was over yet another task would devolve on him, if he chose to accept it—the re-organisation of the central government at Rome. … His gathered power overhung the state like an avalanche ready to fall; and in the possible path of an avalanche it is waste of time and labour to build any solid work. So these years, for Cæsar as for the rest, are years of plotting and intrigue on one side, and of half-hearted government on the other. … He was elected to the curule-ædileship—the next above the quæstorship in the series of magistracies—and entered on his office on January 1, 65 B. C. … Cæsar's political connection with Crassus at this time is by no means clear. The two were sailing the same course, and watching Pompeius with the same anxiety; but there could not have been much in common between them, and they were in fact rapidly getting in each other's way. The great money-lender, however, must have been in the main responsible for the enormous expenditure which Cæsar risked in this ædileship and the next three years. … At the close of the year 64 B. C., on the accession to office of a new board of tribunes, … an agrarian bill on a vast scale was promulgated by the tribune Servilius Rullus. {2688} The two most startling features of this were: first, the creation of a board of ten to carry out its provisions, each member of which was to be invested with military and judicial powers like those of the consuls and prætors; and secondly, the clauses which entrusted this board with enormous financial resources, to be raised by the public sale of all the territories and property acquired since the year 88 B. C., together with the booty and revenues now in the hands of Pompeius. The bill included, as its immediate object, a huge scheme of colonisation for Italy, on the lines of the Gracchan agrarian bills. … But it was really an attack on the weak fortress of senatorial government, in order to turn out its garrison, and occupy and fortify it in the name of the democratic or Marian party, against the return of the new Sulla, which was now thought to be imminent. The bill may also have had another and secondary object—namely, to force the hand of the able and ambitious consul [Cicero] who would come into office on January 1, 63; at any rate it succeeded in doing this, though it succeeded in nothing else. Cicero's great talents, and the courage and skill with which he had so far for the most part used them, had made him already a considerable power in Rome; but no one knew for certain to which party he would finally attach himself. … On the very first day of his office he attacked the bill in the Senate and exposed its real intention, and showed plainly that his policy was to convert Pompeius into a pillar of the constitution, and to counteract all democratic plots directed against him. … Whether it was his eloquence, or the people's indifference, that caused the bill to be dropped, can only be matter of conjecture; but it was withdrawn at once by its proposer, and the whole scheme fell through. This was Cicero's first and only real victory over Cæsar. … It was about this time, in the spring of 63 B. C., that the office of Pontifex Maximus became vacant by the death of old Metellus Pius, and Cæsar at once took steps to secure it for himself. The chances in his favour were small, but the prize was a tempting one. Success would place him at the head of the whole Roman religious system. … He was eligible, for he had already been for several years one of the college of pontifices, but as the law of election stood, a man so young and so democratic would have no chance against candidates like the venerable conservative leader Catulus, and Cæsar's own old commander in the East, Servilius Isauricus, both of whom were standing. Sulla's law, which placed the election in the hands of the college itself—a law framed expressly to exclude persons of Cæsar's stamp—must be repealed, and the choice vested once more in the people. The useful tribune Labienus was again set to work, the law was passed, and on March 6th Cæsar was elected by a large majority. … The latter part of this memorable year was occupied with a last and desperate attempt of the democratic party to possess themselves of the state power while there was yet time to forestall Pompeius. This is the famous conspiracy of Catilina; it was an attack of the left wing on the senatorial position, and the real leaders of the democracy took no open or active part in it."

_W. W. Fowler, Julius Cæsar, chapters 4-5._

ALSO IN _J. A. Froude, Cæsar, chapter 10._

_Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Cæsars: Julius, sections 7-13._

_C. Middleton, Life of Cicero, section 2._

ROME: B. C. 63. The conspiracy of Catiline.

The conspiracy organized against the senatorial government of Rome by L. Sergius Catilina, B. C. 63, owes much of its prominence in Roman history to the preservation of the great speeches in which Cicero exposed it, and by which he rallied the Roman people to support him in putting it down. Cicero was consul that year, and the official responsibility of the government was on his shoulders. The central conspirators were a desperate, disreputable clique of men, who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by revolution. Behind them were all the discontents and malignant tempers of demoralized and disorganized Rome; and still behind these were suspected to be, darkly hidden, the secret intrigues of men like Cæsar and Crassus, who watched and waited for the expiring breath of the dying republic. Cicero, having made a timely discovery of the plot, managed the disclosure of it with great adroitness and won the support of the people to his proceedings against the conspirators. Catiline made his escape from Rome and placed himself' at the head of a small army which his supporters had raised in Etruria; but he and it were both destroyed in the single battle fought. Five of his fellow-conspirators were hastily put to death without trial, by being strangled in the Tullianum.

_W. Forsyth, Life of Cicero, chapter 8._

ALSO IN _A. Trollope, Life of c, chapter 9._

_A. J. Church, Roman Life in the Days of Cicero, chapter 7._

_Cicero, Orations (translated by (J. D. Yonge), volume 2._

ROME: B. C. 63-58. Increasing disorders in the capital. The wasted opportunities of Pompeius. His alliance with Cæsar and Crassus. The First Triumvirate. Cæsar's consulship. His appointment to the command in Cisalpine Gaul. Exile of Cicero.

"Recent events had fully demonstrated the impotence of both the Senate and the democratic party; neither was strong enough to defeat the other or to govern the State. There was no third party—no class remaining out of which a government might be erected; the only alternative was monarchy—the rule of a single person. Who the monarch would be was still uncertain; though, at the present moment, Pompeius was clearly the only man in whose power it lay to take up the crown that offered itself. … For the moment the question which agitated all minds was whether Pompeius would accept the gift offered him by fortune, or would retire and leave the throne vacant. … In the autumn of 63 B. C. Quintus Metellus Nepos arrived in the capital from the camp of Pompeius, and got himself elected tribune with the avowed purpose of procuring for Pompeius the command against Catilina by special decree, and afterwards the consulship for 61 B. C. … The aristocracy at once showed their hostility to the proposals of Metellus, and Cato had himself elected tribune expressly for the purpose of thwarting him. But the democrats were more pliant, and it was soon evident that they had come to a cordial understanding with the general's emissary. Metellus and his master both adopted the democratic view of the illegal executions [of the Catilinarians]; and the first act of Cæsar's prætorship was to call Catulus to account for the moneys alleged to have been embezzled by him in rebuilding the Capitoline temple and to transfer the superintendence of the works to Pompeius. … On the day of voting, Cato and another of the tribunes put their veto upon the proposals of Metellus, who disregarded it. {2689} There were conflicts of the armed bands of both sides, which terminated in favour of the government. The Senate followed up the victory by suspending Metellus and Cæsar from their offices. Metellus immediately departed for the camp of Pompeius; and when Cæsar disregarded the decree of suspension against himself, the Senate had ultimately to revoke it. Nothing could have been more favourable to the interests of Pompeius than these late events. After the illegal executions of the Catilinarians, and the acts of violence against Metellus, he 'could appear at once as the defender of the two palladia of Roman liberty'—the right of appeal, and the inviolability of the tribunate,—and as the champion of the party of order against the Catilinarian band. But his courage was unequal to the emergency; he lingered in Asia during the winter of 63-62 B. C., and thus gave the Senate time to crush the insurrection in Italy, and deprived himself of a valid pretext for keeping his legions together. In the autumn of 62 B. C. he landed at Brundisium, and, disbanding his army, proceeded to Rome with a small escort. On his arrival in the city in 61 B. C. he found himself in a position of complete isolation; he was feared by the democrats, hated by the aristocracy, and distrusted by the wealthy class. He at once demanded for himself a second consulship, the confirmation of all his acts in the East, and the fulfilment of the promise he had made to his soldiers to furnish them with lands. But each of these demands was met with the most determined opposition. … His promise of lands to his soldiers was indeed ratified, but not executed, and no steps were taken to provide the necessary funds and lands. … From this disagreeable position, Pompeius was rescued by the sagacity and address of Cæsar, who saw in the necessities of Pompeius the opportunity of the democratic party. Ever since the return of Pompeius, Cæsar had grown rapidly in influence and weight. He had been prætor in 62 B. C., and, in 61, governor in Farther Spain, where he utilized his position to free himself from his debts, and to lay the foundation of the military position he desired for himself. Returning in 60 B. C., he readily relinquished his claim to a triumph, in order to enter the city in time to stand for the consulship. … It was quite possible that the aristocracy might be strong enough to defeat the candidature of Cæsar, as it had defeated that of Catilina; and again, the consulship was not enough; an extraordinary command, secured to him for several years, was necessary for the fulfilment of his purpose. Without allies such a command could not be hoped for; and allies were found where they had been found ten years before, in Pompeius and Crassus, and in the rich equestrian class. Such a treaty was suicide on the part of Pompeius; … but he had drifted into a situation so awkward that he was glad to be released from it on any terms. … The bargain was struck in the summer of 60 B. C. [forming what became known in Roman history as the First Triumvirate]. Cæsar was promised the consulship and a governorship afterwards; Pompeius, the ratification of his arrangements in the East, and land for his soldiers; Crassus received no definite equivalent, but the capitalists were promised a remission of part of the money they had undertaken to pay for the lease of the Asiatic taxes. … Cæsar was easily elected consul for 59 B. C. All that the exertions of the Senate could do was to give him an aristocratic colleague in Marcus Bibulus. Cæsar at once proceeded to fulfil his obligations to Pompeius by proposing an agrarian law. All remaining Italian domain land, which meant practically the territory of Capua, was to be given up to allotments, and other estates in Italy were to be purchased out of the revenues of the new Eastern provinces. The soldiers were simply recommended to the commission, and thus the principle of giving rewards of land for military service was not asserted. The execution of the bill was to be entrusted to a commission of twenty. … At length all these proposals were passed by the assembly [after rejection by the Senate], and the commission of twenty, with Pompeius and Crassus at their head, began the execution of the agrarian law. Now that the first victory was won, the coalition was able to carry out the rest of its programme without much difficulty. … It was determined by the confederates that Cæsar should be invested by decree of the people with a special command resembling that lately held by Pompeius. Accordingly the tribune Vatinius submitted to the tribes a proposal which was at once adopted. By it Cæsar obtained the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul, and the supreme command of the three legions stationed there, for five years, with the rank of proprætor for his adjutants. His jurisdiction extended southwards as far as the Rubicon, and included Luca and Ravenna. Subsequently the province of Narbo was added by the Senate, on the motion of Pompeius. … Cæsar had hardly laid down his consulship when it was proposed, in the Senate, to annul the Julian laws. …

See JULIAN LAWS.

The regents determined to make examples of some of the most determined of their opponents." Cicero was accordingly sent into exile, by a resolution of the tribes, and Cato was appointed to an odious public mission, which carried him out of the way, to Cyprus.

_T. Mommsen, History of the Roman Republic, (abridged by Bryan and Hendy), chapter 33._

ALSO IN _G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 3, chapters 17-20._

_C. Middleton, Life of Cicero, section 4_.

_Napoleon III., History of Julius Cæsar, chapters 3-4._

ROME: B. C. 58-51. Cæsar's conquest of Gaul.

See GAUL: B. C. 58-51.

ROME: B. C. 57-52. Effect of Cæsar's Gallic victories. Return of Cicero from exile. New arrangements of the Triumvirs. Cæsar's Proconsulship extended. The Trebonian Law. Disaster and death of Crassus at Carrhæ. Increasing anarchy in the city.

"In Rome the enemies of Cæsar … were awed into silence [by his victorious career in Gaul], and the Senate granted the unprecedented honour of fifteen days' 'supplicatio' to the gods for the brilliant successes in Gaul. Among the supporters of this motion was, as Cæsar learnt in the winter from the magistrates and senators who came to pay court to him at Ravenna, M. Tullius Cicero. From the day of his exile the efforts to secure his return had begun, but it was not until the 4th of August that the Senate, led by the consul, P. Lentulus Spinther, carried the motion for his return, in spite of the violence of the armed gang of Clodius, and summoned all the country tribes to crowd the comitia on Campus Martius, and ratify the senatus consultum. {2690} The return of the great orator to the country which he had saved in the terrible days of 63 B. C. was more like a triumph than the entrance of a pardoned criminal. … But he had come back on sufferance; the great Three must be conciliated. … Cicero, like many other optimates in Rome, was looking for the beginnings of a breach between Pompeius, Crassus and Cæsar, and was anxious to nourish any germs of opposition to the triple-headed monarchy. He pleaded against Cæsar's friend Vatinius, and he gave notice of a motion for checking the action of the agrarian law in Campania. But these signs of an independent opposition were suddenly terminated by a humiliating recantation; for before entering upon his third campaign Cæsar crossed the Apennines, and appeared at the Roman colony of Lucca. … Two hundred senators crowded to the rendezvous, but arrangements were made by the Three very independently of Senate in Rome or Senate in Lucca. It was agreed that Pompeius and Crassus should hold a joint consulship again next year, and before the expiration of Cæsar's five years they were to secure his reappointment for another five. … Unfortunate Cicero was awed, and in his other speeches of this year tried to win the favor of the great men by supporting their proposed provincial arrangements, and pleading in defence of Cæsar's friend and protege, L. Balbus." In the year 55 B. C. the Trebonian Law was passed, "which gave to Crassus and Pompeius, as proconsular provinces, Syria and Spain, for the extraordinary term of five years. In this repeated creation of extraordinary powers in favor of the coalition of dynasts, Cato rightly saw an end of republican institutions. … Crassus … started in 54 B. C., at the head of seven legions, in face of the combined opposition of tribunes and augurs, to secure the eastern frontier of Roman dominion by vanquishing the Parthian power, which, reared on the ruins of the kingdom of the Seleucids, was now supreme in Ctesiphon and Seleucia. Led into the desert by the Arab Sheikh Abgarus, acting as a traitor, the Roman army was surrounded by the fleet Parthian horsemen, who could attack and retreat, shooting their showers of missiles all the time. In the blinding sand and sun of the desert near Carrhæ [on the river Belik, one of the branches of the Euphrates, the supposed site of the Haran of Biblical history], Crassus experienced a defeat which took its rank with Cannæ and the Arausio. A few days afterwards (June 9th, 53 B. C.) he was murdered in a conference to which the commander of the Parthian forces invited him. … The shock of this event went through the Roman world, and though Cassius, the lieutenant of Crassus, retrieved the honour of the Roman arms against the Parthians in the following year, that agile people remained to the last unconquered, and the Roman boundary was never to advance further to the east. Crassus, then, was dead, and Pompeius, though he lent Cæsar a legion at the beginning of the year, was more ready to assume the natural antagonism to Cæsar, since the death of his wife Julia in September, 54 B. C., had broken a strong tie with his father-in-law. Further, the condition of the capital seemed reaching a point of anarchy at which Pompeius, as the only strong man on the spot, would have to be appointed absolute dictator. In 53 B. C. no consuls could, in the violence and turmoil of the comitia, be elected until July, and the year closed without any elections having taken place for 52 B. C. T. Annius Milo, who was a candidate for the consulship, and P. Clodius, who was seeking the prætorship, turned every street of Rome into a gladiatorial arena." In January Clodius was killed. "Pompeius was waiting in his new gardens near the Porta Carmentalis, until a despairing government should invest him with dictatorial power; he was altogether too timid and too constitutional to seize it. But with Cato in Rome no one dared mention the word dictator. Pompeius, disappointed, was named sole consul on the 4th of February [B. C. 52], and by July he had got as his colleague his new father-in-law, Metellus."

_R. F. Horton, History of the Romans, chapter 29._

ALSO IN _W. Forsyth, Life of Cicero, chapters 13-16 (volumes 1-2)._

_C. Merivale, The Roman Triumvirates, chapter 5._

_G. Rawlinson, The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy, chapter 11._

ROME: B. C. 55-54. Cæsar's invasions of Britain.

See BRITAIN: B. C. 55-54.

ROME: B. C. 52-50. Rivalry of Pompeius and Cæsar. Approach of the crisis. Cæsar's legions in motion towards the capital.