..... “In the birth of societies,” says Montesquieu, “it is the chiefs of the republics who form the institution, and in the sequel it is the
institution which forms the chiefs of the republics.” And he adds, “One of the causes of the prosperity of Rome was the fact that its kings were all great men. We find nowhere else in history an uninterrupted series of such statesmen and such military commanders
The kingly power lasted a hundred and forty-four years, and at its fall Rome had become the most powerful state in Latium. The town was of vast extent, for, even at that epoch, the seven hills were nearly all inclosed within a wall protected internally and externally by a consecrated space called the Pomœrium
PLEBIANS
PATRICIANS
The Roman social body, which originated probably in ancient transformations of society, consisted, from the earliest ages, of a certain number of aggregations, called gentes, formed of the families of the conquerors, and bearing some resemblance to the clans of Scotland or to the Arabian tribes. The heads of families (patresfamilias) and their members (patricii) were united among themselves, not only by kindred, but also by political and
religious ties. Hence arose an hereditary nobility having for distinctive marks family names, special costume
The plebeians, perhaps a race who had been conquered at an earlier period, were, in regard to the dominant race, in a situation similar to that of the Anglo-Saxons in regard to the Normans in the eleventh century of our era, after the invasion of England. They were generally agriculturists, excluded originally from all military and civil office
The patrician families had gathered round them, under the name of clients, either foreigners, or a great portion of the plebeians. Dionysius of Halicarnassus even pretends that Romulus had required that each of these last should choose himself a patron
The clients cultivated the fields and formed part of the family
The relation of patronage had created such reciprocal obligations as amounted almost to the ties of kindred. For the patrons, they consisted in giving assistance to their clients in affairs public and private; and for the latter, in aiding constantly the patrons with their person and purse, and in preserving towards them an inviolable fidelity: they could not cite each other reciprocally in law, or bear witness one against the other
Slavery had long formed one of the constituent parts of society. The slaves, taken among foreigners and captives and associated in all the domestic labours of the family, often received their liberty as a recompense for their conduct. They were then named freedmen, and were received among the clients of the patron, without sharing in all the rights of a citizen
The Senate, composed of the richest and most illustrious of the patricians, to the number at first of a hundred, of two hundred after the union with the Sabines, and of three hundred after the admission of the gentes minores under Tarquin, was the council of the ancients, taking under its jurisdiction the interests of the town, in which were then concentrated all the interests of the State.
The patricians occupied all offices, supported alone the burden of war, and consequently had alone the right of voting in the assemblies
The gentes were themselves divided into three tribes. Each, commanded by a tribune
was obliged, under Romulus, to furnish a thousand soldiers (indeed, miles comes from mille) and a hundred horsemen (celeres). The tribe was divided into ten curiæ; at the head of each curia was a curion. The three tribes, furnishing three thousand foot soldiers and three hundred horsemen, formed at first the legion. Their number was soon doubled by the adjunction of new cities.
The curia, into which a certain number of gentes entered, was then the basis of the political and military organisation, and hence originated the name of Quirites to signify the Roman people.
The members of the curia were constituted into religious associations, having each its assemblies and solemn festivals which established bonds of affiliation between them. When their assemblies had a political aim, the votes were taken by head
they decided the question of peace or war; they nominated the magistrates of the town; and they confirmed or abrogated the laws
The policy of the kings consisted in blending together the different races and breaking down the barriers which separated the different classes. To effect the first of these objects, they divided the lower{10} class of the people into corporations,
and augmented the number of the tribes and changed their constitution;
Servius Tullius, though he preserved the curiæ, deprived them of their military organisation, that is, he no longer made it the basis of his system of recruiting. He instituted the centuries, with the double aim of giving as a principle the right of suffrage to all the citizens, and of creating an army which was more national, inasmuch as he introduced the plebeians into it; his design was indeed to throw on the richest citizens the burden of war,[39] which was just, each equipping and maintaining himself at his own cost. The citizens were no longer classified by castes, but according to their fortunes. Patricians and plebeians were placed in the same rank if their income was equal. The influence of the rich predominated, without doubt, but only in proportion to the sacrifices required of them.
SERVIUS TULIUS
Servius Tullius ordered a general report of the population to be made, in which every one was obliged to declare his age, his fortune, the name of his tribe and that of his father, and the number of his children and of his slaves. This operation was called census
The report was inscribed on tables
and, once terminated, all the citizens were called together in arms in the Campus Martius. This review was called the closing of the lustrum,
The citizens were divided into six classes
into a hundred and ninety-three centuries, according to the fortune of each, beginning with the richest and ending with the poorest. The first class comprised ninety-eight centuries, eighteen of which were knights; the second and fourth, twenty-two; the third, twenty; the fifth, thirty; and the sixth, although the most numerous, forming only one.[44] The first class contained a smaller number of citizens, yet, having a greater number of centuries, it was obliged to pay more than half the tax, and furnish more legionaries than any other class.
The votes continued to be taken by head, as in the curiæ, but the majority of the votes in each century counted only for one suffrage. Now, as the first class had ninety-eight centuries, while the others, taken together, had only ninety-five, it is clear that the votes of the first class were enough to carry the majority. The eighteen centuries of knights first gave their votes, and then the eighty centuries of the first class: if they were not agreed, appeal was made to the vote of the second class, and so on in succession; but, says Livy, it hardly ever happened that they were obliged to descend to the last.[45] Though, according to its original signification, the century should represent a hundred men, it already contained a considerably greater number. Each century was divided into the active part, including all the men from eighteen to forty-six years of age, and the sedentary part, charged{13} with the guard of the town, composed of men from forty-six to sixty years old
With regard to those of the sixth class, omitted altogether by many authors, they were exempt from all military service, or, at any rate, they were enrolled only in case of extreme danger
The centuries of knights, who formed the cavalry, recruited among the richest citizens, tended to introduce a separate order among the nobility,
The first census of Servius Tullius gave a force of{14} eighty thousand men in a condition to bear arms which is equivalent to two hundred and ninety thousand persons of the
wo sexes, to whom may be added, from conjectures, which, however, are rather vague, fifteen thousand artisans, merchants, or indigent people, deprived of all rights of citizenship, and fifteen thousand slaves.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULAR REPUBLIC.
THE kings are expelled from Rome. They disappear because their mission is accomplished. There exists, one would say, in moral as well as physical order, a supreme law which assigns to institutions, as to certain beings, a fated limit, marked by the term of their utility. Until this providential term has arrived, no opposition prevails; conspiracies, revolts, everything fails against the irresistible force which maintains what people seek to overthrow; but if, on the contrary, a state of things immovable in appearance ceases to be useful to the progress of humanity, then neither the empire of traditions, nor courage, nor the memory of a glorious past, can retard by a day the fall which has been decided by destiny.
Civilisation appears to have been transported from Greece into Italy to create there an immense focus from which it might spread itself over the whole world. From that moment the genius of force and imagination must necessarily preside over the first times of Rome. This is what happened under the kings, and, so long as their task was not accomplished, it triumphed over all obstacles. In vain the senators{26} attempted to obtain a share in the power by each exercising it for five days;[88] in vain men’s passions rebelled against the authority of a single chief: all was useless, and even the murder of the kings only added strength to royalty. But the moment once arrived when kings cease to be indispensable, the simplest accident hurls them down. A man outrages a woman, the throne gives way, and, in falling, it divides itself into two: the consuls succeed to all the prerogatives of the kings.[89] Nothing is changed in the Republic, except that instead of one chief, elective for life, there will be henceforward two chiefs, elected for a year. This transformation is evidently the work of the aristocracy; the senators will possess the government, and, by these annual elections, each hopes to take in his turn his share in the sovereign power. Such is the narrow calculation of man and his mean motive of action. Let us see what superior impulse he obeyed without knowing it.
tiber river of rome
That corner of land, situated on the bank of the Tiber, and predestined to hold the empire of the world, enclosed within itself, as we see, fruitful germs{27} which demanded a rapid expansion. This could only be effected by the absolute independence of the most enlightened class, seizing for its own profit all the prerogatives of royalty. The aristocratic government has this advantage over monarchy, that it is more immutable in its duration, more constant in its designs, more faithful to traditions, and that it can dare everything, because where a great number share the responsibility, no one is individually responsible. Rome, with its narrow limits, had no longer need of the concentration of authority in a single hand, but it was in need of a new order of things, which should give to the great free access to the supreme power, and should second, by the allurement of honours, the development of the faculties of each. The grand object was to create a race of men of choice, who, succeeding each other with the same principles and the same virtues, should perpetuate, from generation to generation, the system most calculated to assure the greatness of their country. The fall of the kingly power was thus an event favourable to the development of RomeRome The patricians monopolised during a long time the civil, military, and religious employments, and, these employments being for the most part annual, there was in the Senate hardly a member who had not filled them; so that this assembly was composed of men formed to the combats of the Forum as well as to those of the field of battle, schooled in the difficulties of the administration, and indeed worthy, by an experience laboriously acquired, to preside over the destinies of the Republic
the characteristic fact of the Roman institutions was to form men apt for all functions. As long{31} as on a narrow theatre the ruling class had the wisdom to limit its ambition to promoting the veritable interests of their country, as the seduction of riches and unbounded power did not come to exalt it beyond measure, the aristocratic system maintained itself with all its advantages, and overruled the instability of institutions. It alone, indeed, was capable of supporting long, without succumbing, a régime in which the direction of the State and the command of the armies passed annually into different hands, and depended upon elections the element of which is ever fickle. Besides, the laws gave rise to antagonisms more calculated to cause anarchy than to consolidate true liberty. Let us examine, in these last relations, the constitution of the Republic.
The two consuls were originally generals, judges, and administrators; equal in powers, they were often in disagreement, either in the Forum or on the field of battle
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA. (621-676.)
Caius Gracchus, indeed, nourished in his heart, as a sacred deposit, the ideas of his brother and the desire to revenge him. After serving in twelve campaigns, he returned to Rome to solicit the tribuneship. On his arrival, the nobles trembled, and, to combat his ascendency, they accused him of being concerned in the insurrection of Fregellæ; but his name brought him numerous sympathies. On the day of his election, a vast crowd of citizens arrived in Rome from all parts of Italy, and so great was the confluence that the Campus Martius could not hold them; and many gave their votes even from the roofs.[658] Invested with the tribunitian power, Gracchus made use of it to submit to the sanction of{239} the people several laws; some directed merely against the enemies of his brother;[659] others, of great political meaning, which require more particular notice.
During his absence, things took an entirely new turn. If, on the one hand, the measures of Drusus had satisfied a part of the people, on the other, Fulvius, the friend of Caius, a man of excessive zeal, compromised his cause by dangerous exaggerations. Opimius, the bitter enemy of the Gracchi, offered himself for the consulship. Informed of these different intrigues, Caius returned suddenly to Rome to solicit a third renewal of the tribuneship. He failed, while Opimius, elected consul, with the prospect of combating a party so redoubtable to the nobles, caused all citizens who were not Romans to be banished from the town, and, under a religious pretext, attempted to obtain the revocation of the decree relating to the colony of Carthage. When the day of deliberation arrived, two parties occupied the Capitol at an early hour.
The Senate, in consideration of the gravity of the circumstances and in the interest of the public safety, invested the consul with extraordinary powers, declaring that it was necessary to exterminate tyrants—a treacherous qualification always employed against the defenders of the people, and, in order to make more sure of triumph, they had recourse to foreign troops. The Consul Opimius, at the head of a body of Cretan archers, easily put to the rout a tumultuous assembly. Caius took flight, and, finding himself pursued, slew himself. Fulvius underwent a similar fate.{245} The head of the tribune was carried in triumph. Three thousand men were thrown into prison and strangled. The agrarian laws and the emancipation of Italy ceased, for some time, to torment the Senate.
Such was the fate of the Gracchi, two men who had at heart to reform the laws of their country, and who fell victims to selfish interests and prejudices still too powerful. “They perished,” says Appian,[678] “because they employed violence in the execution of an excellent measure.”[679] In fact, in a State where legal forms had been respected for four hundred years, it was necessary either to observe them faithfully, or to have an army at command.
Yet the work of the Gracchi did not die with them. Several of their laws continued long to subsist. The agrarian law was executed in part, inasmuch as, at a subsequent period, the nobles bought back the portions of lands which had been taken from them,[680] and its effects were only destroyed at the end of fifteen years. Implicated in the acts of corruption imputed to Jugurtha, of which we shall soon have to speak, the Consul Opimius had the same fate as Scipio Nasica, and a no less miserable end. It is curious to see two men, each vanquisher of a sedition, terminate their lives in a foreign land, exposed to the hatred and contempt of their fellow-citizens. Yet the reason is natural: they combated with arms ideas{246} which arms could not destroy. When, in the midst of general prosperity, dangerous Utopias spring up, without root in the country, the slightest employment of force extinguishes them; but, on the contrary, when society, deeply tormented by real and imperious needs, requires reform, the success of the most violent repression is but momentaneous: the ideas repressed appear again incessantly, and, like the fabled hydra, for one head struck off a hundred others grow up in its place.
An arrogant oligarchy had triumphed in Rome over the popular party: will it have at least the energy to raise again the honour of the Roman name abroad? Such will not be the case: events, of which Africa is on the point of becoming the theatre, will show the baseness of these men who sought to govern the world by repudiating the virtues of their ancestors
Jugurtha, natural son of Mastanabal, king of Numidia, by a concubine, had distinguished himself in the Roman legions at the siege of Numantia. Reckoning on the favour he enjoyed at Rome, he had resolved to seize the inheritance of Micipsa, to the prejudice of the two legitimate children, Hiempsal and Adherbal. The first was murdered by his orders, and, in spite of this crime, Jugurtha had succeeded in corrupting the Roman commissioners charged with the task of dividing the kingdom between him and Adherbal, and in obtaining from them the larger part. But soon master of the whole country by force of arms, he put Adherbal to death also. The Senate{247} sent against Jugurtha the consul Bestia Calpurnius, who, soon bribed as the commissioners had been, concluded a disgraceful peace. So many infamous deeds could not remain in the shade. The consul, on his return, was attacked by C. Memmius, who, in forcing Jugurtha to come to Rome to give an account of himself, seized the occasion of reminding his hearers of the grievances of the people and of the scandalous conduct of the nobles, in the following words:—
“After the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus, who, according to the nobles, aspired to the kingly power, the Roman people saw itself exposed to their vigorous persecutions. Similarly, after the murder of Caius Gracchus and Marcus Fulvius, how many people of your order have they not caused to be imprisoned? At either of these epochs it was not the law, but their caprice alone, which put an end to the massacres. Moreover, I acknowledge that to restore to the people their rights, is to aspire to the kingly power; and we must regard as legitimate all vengeance obtained by the blood of the citizens.... In these last years you groaned in secret to see the public treasure wasted, the kings and free people made the tributaries of a few nobles—of those who alone are in possession of splendid dignities and great riches. Nevertheless, it is too little for them to be able with impunity to commit such crimes; they have finished by delivering to the enemies of the State your laws, the dignity of your empire, and all that is sacred in the eyes of gods and men.... But who are they, then, those who have invaded the Republic? Villains covered with blood, devoured by a monstrous cupidity,{248} the most criminal, and at the same time the most arrogant, of men. For them, good faith, honour, religion, and virtue, are, like vice, objects of traffic. Some have put to death tribunes of the people; others have commenced unjust proceedings against you; most of them have shed your blood; and these excesses are their safeguard: the further they have gone in the course of their crimes, the more they feel themselves in safety.... Ah! could you count upon a sincere reconciliation with them? They seek to rule over you, you seek to be free; it is their will to oppress you, you resist oppression; lastly, they treat your allies as enemies, your enemies as allies.
While Marius was concluding the war with Jugurtha, a great danger threatened Italy. Since 641, an immense migration of barbarians had moved through Illyria into Cisalpine Gaul, and had defeated, at Noreia (in Carniola) the consul Papirius Carbo. They were the Cimbri, and all their peculiarities, manners, language, habits of pillage, and adventures, attested their relationship to the Gauls.[687] In their passage through Rhætia into the country of the Helvetii, they dragged with them different peoples, and during some years devastated Gaul; returned in 645 to the neighbourhood of the Roman province, they demanded of the Republic lands to settle in. The consular army sent to meet them was defeated, and they invaded the province itself. The Tigurini (647), a people of Helvetia, issuing from their mountains, slew the consul L. Cassius, and made his army pass under the yoke. It was only a prelude to greater disasters. A third invasion of the Cimbri, followed by two new defeats in 649, on the banks of the Rhine, excites the keenest apprehensions, and points to Marius as the only man capable of saving Italy; the nobles, moreover, in presence of this great danger, sought no longer to seize the power.[688] Marius was, contrary to the law, named a second time consul, in 650, and charged with the war in Gaul
This great captain laboured during several years{253} to restore military discipline, practise his troops, and familiarise them with their new enemies, whose aspect filled them with terror. Marius, considered indispensable, was re-elected from year to year; from 650 to 654, he was five times elected consul, and beat the Cimbri, united with the Ambrones and Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (Aix), re-passed into Italy, and exterminated, near Vercellæ, the Cimbri who had escaped from the last battle and those whom the Celtiberians had driven back from Spain. These immense butcheries, these massacres of whole peoples, removed for some time the barbarians from the frontiers of the Republic
Consul for the sixth time (654), the saviour of Rome and Italy, by a generous deference, would not triumph without his colleague Catulus,[689] and did not hesitate to exceed his powers in granting to two auxiliary cohorts of Cameria, who had distinguished themselves, the rights of city.[690] But his glory was obscured by culpable intrigues. Associated with the most turbulent chiefs of the democratic party, he excited them to revolt, and sacrificed them as soon as he saw that they could not succeed. When governments repulse the legitimate wishes of the people and true ideas, then factious men seize on them as a powerful arm to serve their passions and personal interests; the Senate having rejected all the proposals of reform, those who sought to raise disorders found in them a pretext and support in their perverse projects. L. Appuleius Saturninus, one of Marius’s creatures, and Glaucia, a fellow of loose manners, were{254} guilty of incredible violences. The first revived the agrarian laws of the Gracchi, and went beyond them in proposing the partition of the lands taken from the Cimbri; a measure which he sought to impose by terror and murder. In the troubles which broke out at the election of the consuls for 655, the urban tribes came to blows with the country tribes. In the midst of the tumult, Saturninus, followed by a troop of desperadoes, made himself master of the Capitol, and fortified himself in it. Charged, in his quality of consul, with the repression of sedition, Marius first favoured it by an intentional inaction; then, seeing all good citizens run to arms, and the factious without support, even deserted by the urban plebeians, he placed himself at the head of some troops, and occupied the avenues to the Capitol. From the first moment of the attack, the rebels threw down their arms and demanded quarter. Marius left them to be massacred by the people, as though he had wished that the secret of the sedition might die with them.
civil war, which was called the War of Allies,
The revolt burst out fortuitously before the day{258} fixed. It was provoked by the violence of a Roman magistrate, who was massacred by the inhabitants of Asculum; but all was ready for an insurrection, which{259} was not long before it became general. The allies had a secret government, chiefs appointed, and an army organised. At the head of the peoples confederated against Rome were distinguished the Marsi and the Samnites; the first excited rather by a feeling of national pride than by the memory of injuries to be revenged; the second, on the contrary, by the hatred which they had vowed against the Romans during long struggles for their independence—struggles renewed on the invasion of Hannibal.
While Italy was in flames, Mithridates VI., king of Pontus, determined to take advantage of the weakness of the Republic to aggrandise himself. In 664, he invaded Bithynia and Cappadocia, and expelled the kings, allies of Rome. At the same time he entered into communication with the Samnites, to whom he promised subsidies and soldiers. Such was the hatred then inspired by the Romans in foreign countries, that an order of Mithridates was sufficient to{262} raise the province of Asia, where, in one day, eighty thousand Romans were massacred.[698] At this time the Social War was already approaching its end. With the exception of Samnium, all Italy was subdued, and the Senate could turn its attention to the distant provinces.
Sylla, appointed consul in recompense for his services, was charged with the task of chastising Mithridates. While he was preparing for this mission, the tribune of the people, P. Sulpicius, had formed a powerful party. A remarkable man, though without scruples,
Sylla restored order, prevented pillage, convoked the assembly of the people, justified his conduct, and, wishing to secure for his party the preponderance in the public deliberations, he recalled to force the old custom of requiring the previous assent of the Senate before the presentation of a law. The comitia by{264} centuries were substituted for the comitia by tribes, to which was left only the election of the inferior magistrates.[703] Sylla caused Sulpicius to be put to death, and abrogated his decrees; and he set a price on the head of Marius, forgetting that he had himself, a short time before, found a refuge in the house of his rival. He proscribed the chiefs of the democratic faction, but most of them had fled before he entered Rome. Marius and his son had reached Africa through a thousand dangers. This revolution appears not to have been sanguinary, and, with the exception of Sulpicius, the historians of the time mention no considerable person as having been put to death. The terror inspired at first by Sylla lasted no long time. Reprobation of his acts was shown both in the Senate and among the people, who seized every opportunity to mark their discontent. Sylla was to resume the command of the army of Asia, and that of the army of Italy had fallen to Pompeius. The massacre of this latter by his own soldiers made the future dictator feel how insecure was his power; he sought to put a stop to the opposition to which he was exposed by accepting as a candidate at the consular comitia L. Cornelius Cinna, a known partisan of Marius, taking care, however, to exact from him a solemn oath of fidelity. But Cinna, once elected, held none of his engagements, and the other consul, Cn. Octavius, had neither the authority nor the energy necessary to balance the influence of his colleague.
Sylla, after presiding at the consular comitia, went in all haste to Capua to take the command of his troops, whom he led into Greece against the lieutenants of Mithridates. Cinna determined to execute the law of Sulpicius, which assimilated the new citizens to the old ones;[704] he demanded at the same time the return of the exiles, and made an appeal to the slaves. Immediately the Senate, and even the tribunes of the people, pronounced against him. He was declared deposed from the consulate.
While Rome and all Italy were plunged in this fearful anarchy, Sylla drove out of Greece the generals of Mithridates VI., and gained two great battles at Chæronea (668) and Orchomenus (669). He was still in Bœotia, when Valerius Flaccus, sent by Cinna to replace him, landed in Greece, penetrated into Thessaly, and thence passed into Asia. Sylla followed him thither immediately, in haste to conclude with the King of Pontus an arrangement which would enable him to lead his army back into Italy. Circumstances were favourable. Mithridates had need to repair his losses, and he found himself in presence of a new enemy, the lieutenant of Valerius Flaccus, the fierce Flavius Fimbria, who, having by the murder of his general become head of the army of Asia, had seized upon Pergamus. Mithridates subscribed to the conditions imposed by Sylla; he restored all the provinces of which he had taken possession, and{269} gave plate and money. Sylla then advanced into Lydia against Fimbria; but the latter, at the approach of the victor of Chæronea, could not restrain his soldiers. His whole army disbanded and passed over to Sylla. Threatened by his rival, the murderer of Flaccus was driven to slay himself. Nothing now stood in the way of Sylla’s projects on Italy, and he prepared to make his enemies at Rome pay dearly for their temporary triumph. At the moment of setting sail, he wrote to the Senate to announce the conclusion of the war in Asia, and his own speedy return. Three years, he said, had been sufficient to enable him to re-unite with the Roman empire Greece, Macedonia, Ionia, and Asia, and to shut up Mithridates within the limits of his old possessions; he was the first Roman who received an embassy from the King of the Parthians.[710] He complained of the violence exercised against his friends and his wife, who had fled with a crowd of fugitives to seek an asylum in his camp.[711] He added, without vain threats, his intention to restore order by force of arms; but he promised not to repeal the great measure of the emancipation of Italy, and ended by declaring that the good citizens, new as well as old, had nothing to fear from him.
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JULIUS CÆSAR
ABOUT the time when Marius, by his victories over the Cimbri and Teutones, saved Italy from a formidable invasion, was born at Rome the man who would one day, by again subduing the Gauls and Germans, retard for several centuries the irruption of the barbarians, give the knowledge of their rights to oppressed peoples, assure continuance to Roman civilisation, and bequeath his name to the future chiefs of nations, as a consecrated emblem of power.
Caius Julius Cæsar was born at Rome on the 4th of the ides of Quintilis (July 12), 654,[743] and the{282} month Quintilis, called Julius [July] in honour of him, has borne for 1,900 years the name of the great man. He was the son of C. Julius Cæsar
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WHEN Pompey and Crassus came to the consulship, Italy had been a prey to intestine convulsions for sixty-three years. But, notwithstanding the repose which society demanded, and which the reconciliation of the two rivals seemed to promise, many opposing passions and interests still seethed in her bosom
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pompey
By a line of conduct quite opposite to that of Cæsar, Pompey had greatly risen during the civil wars. From the age of twenty-three he had received from Sylla the title Imperator, and the name of “Great;”[842] he passed for the first warrior of his time, and had distinguished himself in Italy, Sicily, and Africa against the partisans of Marius, whom he caused to be pitilessly massacred.[843] Fate had ever favoured him. In Spain, the death of Sertorius had made victory easy to him; on his return, the fortuitous defeat of the fugitive remains of the army of Spartacus allowed him to assume the honour of having put an end to that formidable insurrection; soon he will profit by the success already obtained by Lucullus against Mithridates. Thus a distinguished writer has justly said that Pompey always came in time to terminate, to his own glory, the wars which were just going to end to the glory of another
The vulgar, who hail good fortune as the equal of genius, surrounded then the conqueror of Spain with their homage, and he himself, of a poor and vain spirit, referred the favours of fortune to his own sole merit. Seeking power for ornament rather than service, he courted it not in the hope of making a cause or a principle triumphant, but to enjoy it peaceably by trimming between different parties. Thus, whilst to Cæsar power was a means, to him it was only the end. Honest, but vacillating, he was unconsciously the instrument of those who flattered him. His courteous manners, and the show of disinterestedness which disguised his ambition, removed all suspicions of his aspiring to the supreme power.
Pompey’s colleague was M. Licinius Crassus. This remarkable man, as we have seen, had distinguished himself as a general, but his influence was owing rather to his wealth and his amiable and courteous disposition. Enriched under Sylla by purchasing the property of the proscribed, he possessed whole quarters of the city of Rome, rebuilt after several fires; his fortune was more than forty millions of francs [a million and a half sterling],[850] and he pretended that to be rich, one must be able to maintain an army at his own expense.[851] Though his chief passion was the love of gold, avarice did not with him exclude liberality. He lent to all his friends without interest, and sometimes scattered his largesses with profusion. Versed in letters, gifted with a rare eloquence, he accepted eagerly all the causes which Pompey, Cæsar, and Cicero disdained to defend; by his eagerness to oblige all those who claimed his services, either to{320} borrow, or to obtain some situation, he acquired a power which balanced that of Pompey. This last had accomplished greater deeds, but his airs of grandeur and dignity, his habit of avoiding crowds and sights, alienated the multitude from him; while Crassus, of easy access, always in the midst of the public and of business, had the advantage over him by his affable manners.[852] We do not find very defined principles in him, either in political or private life; he was neither a constant friend nor an irreconcilable enemy.[853] Fitter to serve as an instrument for the elevation of another, than to elevate himself to the front rank, he was very useful to Cæsar, who did his best to gain his confidence. “There existed then at Rome,” says Plutarch, “three factions, the chiefs of which were Pompey, Cæsar, and Crassus; Cato, whose power did not equal his glory, was more admired than followed. The wise and moderate part of the citizens were for Pompey; energetic, speculative, and bold men attached themselves to the hopes of Cæsar; Crassus, who held the mean between these two factions, used both.”
The ascendency of Pompey still continued, though, since his consulship, he had remained without command, having undertaken, in 684, not to accept the{327} government of any province at the expiration of his magistracy;[877] but his popularity began to disquiet the Senate, so much is it in the very essence of the aristocracy to distrust those who raise themselves, and extend their powers beyond itself. This was an additional motive for Cæsar to connect himself more closely with Pompey; whereupon he backed him with all his influence; and either to cement this alliance, or because of his inclination for a beautiful and graceful woman, shortly after his return he married Pompeia, the kinswoman of Pompey, and granddaughter of Sylla.[878] He was thus, at one and the same time, the arbiter of elegance, the hope of the democratic party, and the only public man whose opinions and conduct had never varied.
The decadence of a political body is evident when the measures most useful to the glory of a country, instead of arising from its provident initiative, are inaugurated by obscure and often disreputable men, the faithful but dishonoured organs of public opinion
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Whilst Cæsar endeavoured to react legally against the system of Sylla, another party, composed of the ambitious and discontented, ruined by debt, had long sought to arrive at power by plotting. Of this number had been, since 688, Cn. Piso, P. Sylla, P. Autronius, and Catiline. These men, with diverse antecedents and different qualities, were equally decried, yet they did not want for adherents among the lower class, whose passions they flattered, or among the upper class, to whose policy or enmity they were serviceable. P. Sylla and Autronius, after having been made consuls-elect in 688, had been effaced from the senatorial list for solicitation. Public report mixed up the names of Crassus and Cæsar with these secret manœuvres; but was it possible that these two men, in such opposite positions, and even divided between themselves, should enter into an understanding together for the sake of a vulgar plot; and was it not a new inconsistency of calumny to associate in the same conspiracy Cæsar because of his immense debts, and Crassus because of his immense riches?
The conspiracy, conducted by the adventurous spirit of its chief, had acquired considerable development. Senators, knights, young patricians, a great number of the notable citizens of the allied towns, partook in it. Cicero, informed of these designs, assembles the Senate in the Temple of Concord, and communicates to it the information he had received: he informs it that, on the 5th of the calends of November, a rising was to take place in Etruria; that on the morrow a riot would break out in Rome; that the lives of the consuls were threatened; that, lastly, everywhere stores of warlike arms and attempts to enlist the gladiators indicated the most alarming preparations. Catiline, questioned by the consul, exclaims, that the tyranny of some men, their avarice, their inhumanity, are the true causes of the uneasiness which torments the Republic; then, repelling with scorn the projects of revolt which they imputed to him, he concludes with this threatening figure of speech: “The Roman people is a robust body, but without head: I shall be that head.”[956] He departed with these words, leaving{360} the Senate undecided and trembling. The assembly, meanwhile, passed the usual decree, enjoining the consuls to watch that the Republic received no injury.
The election of consuls for the following year, till then deferred, took place on the 21st of October, 691, and Silanus having been nominated with Murena, Catiline was a third time rejected. He then dispatched to different parts of Italy his agents, and among others, C. Mallius into Etruria, Septimius to the Picenum, and C. Julius into Apulia, to organise the revolt.[957] At the mouth of the Tiber, a division of the fleet, previously employed against the pirates, was ready to second his projects.[958] At Rome even the assassination of Cicero was boldly attempted.
The Senate was convened again on the 8th of November. Catiline dared to attend, and take his seat in the midst of his colleagues. Cicero, in a speech which has become celebrated, apostrophised him in terms of the strongest indignation, and by a crushing denunciation forced him to retire.[959] Catiline, accompanied by three hundred of his adherents, left the capital next morning to join Mallius.[960] During the following days, alarming news arriving from all parts threw Rome into the utmost anxiety. Stupor reigned there. To the animation of fêtes and pleasures had,{361} all of a sudden, succeeded a gloomy silence. Troops were raised; armed outposts were placed at various points; Q. Marcius Rex is dispatched to Fæsulæ (Fiesole); Q. Metellus Creticus into Apulia; Pomponius Rufus to Capua; Q. Metellus Celer into the Picenum; and, lastly, the consul, C. Antonius, led an army into Etruria. Cicero had detached the latter from the conspiracy by giving him the lucrative government of Macedonia.[961] He accepted in exchange that of Gaul, which he also subsequently renounced, not wishing, after his consulship, to quit the city and depart as proconsul. The principal conspirators, at the head of whom were the prætor Lentulus and Cethegus, remained at Rome. They continued energetically the preparations for the insurrection, and entered into communication with the envoys of the Allobroges. Cicero, secretly informed by his spies, among others by Curius, watched their doings, and, when he had indisputable proofs, caused them to be arrested, convoked the Senate, and exposed the plan of the conspiracy.
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JULIUS CEASAR
The attitude of Cæsar in this matter presents nothing, then, which does not admit an easy explanation. Whilst blaming the conspiracy, he was unwilling that, to repress it, the eternal rules of justice should be set aside. He reminded men, blinded by passion and fear, that unnecessary rigour is always followed by fatal reactions. The examples drawn from history served him to prove that moderation is always the best adviser. It is clear also that, whilst despising most of the authors of the conspiracy, he was not without sympathy for a cause which approached his own by common instincts and enemies. In countries delivered up to party divisions, how many men are there not who desire the overthrow of the existing government, yet without the will to take part in a conspiracy? Such was the position of Cæsar.
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WHILST at Rome ancient reputations were sinking in struggles destitute alike of greatness and patriotism, others, on the contrary, were rising in the camps, through the lustre of military glory. Cæsar, on quitting his prætorship, had gone to Ulterior Spain (Hispania Ulterior), which had been assigned to him by lot. His creditors had vainly attempted to retard his departure: he had had recourse to the credit of Crassus, who had been his security for the sum of 830 talents (nearly five millions of francs [£200,000]).[1050] He had not even waited for the instructions of the Senate,[1051] which, indeed, could not be ready for some time, as that body had deferred all affairs concerning the consular provinces till after the trial of Clodius, which was only terminated in April, 693.[1052] This eagerness to reach his post could not therefore be caused by fear of fresh prosecutions, as has been supposed; but its motive was the desire to carry assistance to the allies, who were imploring the protection of the Romans against the mountaineers of Lusitania. Always devoted without reserve to those whose cause he espoused,[1053] he{403} took with him into Spain his client Masintha, a young African of high birth, whose cause he had recently defended at Rome with extreme zeal, and whom he had concealed in his house after his condemnation,[1054] to save him from the persecutions of Juba, son of Hiempsal, king of Numidia.
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It is related that, in crossing the Alps, Cæsar halted at a village, and his officers asked him, jocularly, if he thought that even in that remote place there were solicitations and rivalries for offices. He answered, gravely, “I would rather be first among these savages than second in Rome.”
On his arrival in Spain, he promptly raised ten new cohorts, which, joined to the twenty others already in the country, furnished him with three legions, a force sufficient for the speedy pacification of the province Its tranquillity was incessantly disturbed by the depredations of the inhabitants of Mount Herminium
Cæsar received from his soldiers the title of Imperator. When the news of his successes reached Rome, the Senate decreed in his honour a holiday,
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1 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45456/45456-h/45456-h.htm
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