← catalogue

Caesar: A Sketch

by James Anthony Froude · English · Gutenberg #8425 · 958,545 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Caesar: A Sketch
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Caesar: A Sketch

Author: James Anthony Froude


        
Release date: July 1, 2005 [eBook #8425]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8425

Credits: Eric Eldred, Robert Connal and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAESAR: A SKETCH ***




[Illustration: Julius Caesar]


CAESAR

_A SKETCH_




BY

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A.

FORMERLY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD




                   _"Pardon, gentles all
  The flat unraised spirit that hath dared
  On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
  So great an object."_

  --SHAKESPEARE, Henry V.




PREFACE.


I have called this work a "sketch" because the materials do not exist
for a portrait which shall be at once authentic and complete. The
original authorities which are now extant for the life of Caesar are
his own writings, the speeches and letters of Cicero, the eighth book
of the "Commentaries" on the wars in Gaul and the history of the
Alexandrian war, by Aulus Hirtius, the accounts of the African war and
of the war in Spain, composed by persons who were unquestionably
present in those two campaigns. To these must be added the "Leges
Juliae" which are preserved in the Corpus Juris Civilis. Sallust
contributes a speech, and Catullus a poem. A few hints can be gathered
from the Epitome of Livy and the fragments of Varro; and here the
contemporary sources which can be entirely depended upon are brought to
an end.

The secondary group of authorities from which the popular histories of
the time have been chiefly taken are Appian, Plutarch, Suetonius, and
Dion Cassius. Of these the first three were divided from the period
which they describe by nearly a century and a half, Dion Cassius by
more than two centuries. They had means of knowledge which no longer
exist--the writings, for instance, of Asinius Pollio, who was one of
Caesar's officers. But Asinius Pollio's accounts of Caesar's actions,
as reported by Appian, cannot always be reconciled with the
Commentaries; and all these four writers relate incidents as facts
which are sometimes demonstrably false. Suetonius is apparently the
most trustworthy. His narrative, like those of his contemporaries, was
colored by tradition. His biographies of the earlier Caesars betray the
same spirit of animosity against them which taints the credibility of
Tacitus, and prevailed for so many years in aristocratic Roman society.
But Suetonius shows nevertheless an effort at veracity, an antiquarian
curiosity and diligence, and a serious anxiety to tell his story
impartially. Suetonius, in the absence of evidence direct or
presumptive to the contrary, I have felt myself able to follow. The
other three writers I have trusted only when I have found them
partially confirmed by evidence which is better to be relied upon.

The picture which I have drawn will thus be found deficient in many
details which have passed into general acceptance, and I have been
unable to claim for it a higher title than that of an outline drawing.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I.

Free Constitutions and Imperial Tendencies.--Instructiveness of Roman
History.--Character of Historical Epochs.--The Age of
Caesar.--Spiritual State of Rome.--Contrasts between Ancient and Modern
Civilization.


CHAPTER II.

The Roman Constitution.--Moral Character of the Romans.--Roman
Religion.--Morality and Intellect.--Expansion of Roman Power.--The
Senate.--Roman Slavery.--Effects of Intercourse with Greece.--Patrician
Degeneracy.--The Roman Noble.--Influence of Wealth.--Beginnings of
Discontent.


CHAPTER III.

Tiberius Gracchus.--Decay of the Italian Yeomanry.--Agrarian
Law.--Success and Murder of Gracchus.--Land Commission.--Caius
Gracchus.--Transfer of Judicial Functions from the Senate to the
Equites.--Sempronian Laws.--Free Grants of Corn.--Plans for Extension
of the Franchise.--New Colonies.--Reaction.--Murder of Caius Gracchus


CHAPTER IV.

Victory of the Optimates.--The Moors.--History of Jugurtha.--The Senate
corrupted.--Jugurthine War.--Defeat of the Romans.--Jugurtha comes to
Rome.--Popular Agitation.--The War renewed.--Roman Defeats in Africa
and Gaul.--Caecilius Metellus and Caius Marius.--Marriage of
Marius.--The Caesars.--Marius Consul.--First Notice of Sylla.--Capture
and Death of Jugurtha


CHAPTER V.

Birth of Cicero.--The Cimbri and Teutons.--German Immigration into
Gaul.--Great Defeat of the Romans on the Rhone.--Wanderings of the
Cimbri.--Attempted Invasion of Italy.--Battle of Aix.--Destruction of
the Teutons.--Defeat of the Cimbri on the Po.--Reform in the Roman
Army.--Popular Disturbances in Rome.--Murder of Memmius.--Murder of
Saturninus and Glaucia


CHAPTER VI.

Birth and Childhood of Julius Caesar.--Italian Franchise.--Discontent
of the Italians.--Action of the Land Laws.--The Social War.--Partial
Concessions.--Sylla and Marius.--Mithridates of Pontus.--First Mission
of Sylla into Asia.


CHAPTER VII.

War with Mithridates.--Massacre of Italians in Asia.--Invasion of
Greece.--Impotence and Corruption of the Senate.--End of the Social
War.--Sylla appointed to the Asiatic Command.--The Assembly transfer
the Command to Marius.--Sylla marches on Rome.--Flight of
Marius.--Change of the Constitution.--Sylla sails for the East.--Four
Years' Absence.--Defeat of Mithridates.--Contemporary Incidents at
Rome.--Counter Revolution.--Consulship of Cinna.--Return of
Marius.--Capitulation of Rome.--Massacre of Patricians and
Equites.--Triumph of Democracy.


CHAPTER VIII.

The Young Caesar.--Connection with Marius.--Intimacy with the
Ciceros.--Marriage of Caesar with the Daughter of
Cinna.--Sertorius.--Death of Cinna.--Consulships of Norbanus and
Scipio.--Sylla's Return.--First Appearance of Pompey.--Civil
War.--Victory of Sylla.--The Dictatorship and the
Proscription.--Destruction of the Popular Party and Murder of the
Popular Leaders.--General Character of Aristocratic Revolutions.--The
Constitution remodelled.--Concentration of Power in the
Senate.--Sylla's General Policy.--The Army.--Flight of Sertorius to
Spain.--Pompey and Sylla.--Caesar refuses to divorce his Wife at
Sylla's Order.--Danger of Caesar.--His Pardon.--Growing Consequence of
Cicero.--Defence of Roscius.--Sylla's Abdication and Death


CHAPTER IX.

Sertorius in Spain.--Warning of Cicero to the Patricians.--Leading
Aristocrats.--Caesar with the Army in the East.--Nicomedes of
Bithynia.--The Bithynian Scandal.--Conspiracy of Lepidus.--Caesar
returns to Rome.--Defeat of Lepidus.--Prosecution of Dolabella.--Caesar
taken by Pirates.--Senatorial Corruption.--Universal Disorder.--Civil
War in Spain.--Growth of Mediterranean Piracy.--Connivance of the
Senate.--Provincial Administration.--Verres in Sicily.--Prosecuted by
Cicero.--Second War with Mithridates.--First Success of
Lucullus.--Failure of Lucullus, and the Cause of it.--Avarice of Roman
Commanders.--The Gladiators.--The Servile War.--Results of the Change
in the Constitution introduced by Sylla


CHAPTER X.

Caesar Military Tribune.--Becomes known as a Speaker.--Is made
Quaestor.--Speech at his Aunt's Funeral.--Consulship of Pompey and
Crassus.--Caesar marries Pompey's Cousin.--Mission to
Spain.--Restoration of the Powers of the Tribunes.--The Equites and the
Senate.--The Pirates.--Food Supplies cut off from Rome.--The Gabinian
Law.--Resistance of the Patricians.--Suppression of the Pirates by
Pompey.--The Manilian Law.--Speech of Cicero.--Recall of
Lucullus.--Pompey sent to command in Asia.--Defeat and Death of
Mithridates.--Conquest of Asia by Pompey


CHAPTER XI.

History of Catiline.--A Candidate for the Consulship.--Catiline and
Cicero.--Cicero chosen Consul.--Attaches Himself to the Senatorial
Party.--Caesar elected Aedile.--Conducts an Inquiry into the Syllan
Proscriptions.--Prosecution of Rabirius.--Caesar becomes Pontifex
Maximus--and Praetor.--Cicero's Conduct as Consul.--Proposed Agrarian
Law.--Resisted by Cicero.--Catiline again stands for the
Consulship.--Violent Language in the Senate.--Threatened
Revolution.--Catiline again defeated.--The Conspiracy.--Warnings sent
to Cicero.--Meeting at Catiline's House.--Speech of Cicero in the
Senate.--Cataline joins an Army of Insurrection in Etruria.--His
Fellow-conspirators.--Correspondence with the Allobroges.--Letters read
in the Senate.--The Conspirators seized.--Debate upon their
Fate.--Speech of Caesar.--Caesar on a Future State.--Speech of
Cato--and of Cicero.--The Conspirators executed untried.--Death of
Catiline.


CHAPTER XII.

Preparations for the Return of Pompey.--Scene in the Forum.--Cato and
Metellus.--Caesar suspended from the Praetorship.--Caesar supports
Pompey.--Scandals against Caesar's Private Life.--General Character of
them.--Festival of the Bona Dea.--Publius Clodius enters Caesar's House
dressed as a Woman.--Prosecution and Trial of Clodius.--His Acquittal,
and the Reason of it.--Successes of Caesar as Propraetor in
Spain.--Conquest of Lusitania.--Return of Pompey to Italy.--First
Speech in the Senate.--Precarious Position of Cicero.--Cato and the
Equites.--Caesar elected Consul.--Revival of the Democratic
Party.--Anticipated Agrarian Law.--Uneasiness of Cicero.


CHAPTER XIII.

The Consulship of Caesar.--Character of his Intended Legislation.--The
Land Act first proposed in the Senate.--Violent Opposition.--Caesar
appeals to the Assembly.--Interference of the Second Consul
Bibulus.--The Land Act submitted to the People.--Pompey and Crassus
support it.--Bibulus interposes, but without Success.--The Act
carried--and other Laws.--The Senate no longer being
Consulted.--General Purpose of the Leges Juliae.--Caesar appointed to
Command in Gaul for Five Years.--His Object in accepting that
Province.--Condition of Gaul, and the Dangers to be apprehended from
it.--Alliance of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.--The
Dynasts.--Indignation of the Aristocracy.--Threats to repeal Caesar's
Laws.--Necessity of Controlling Cicero and Cato.--Clodius is made
Tribune.--Prosecution of Cicero for Illegal Acts when Consul.--Cicero's
Friends forsake him.--He flies, and is banished.


CHAPTER XIV.

Caesar's Military Narrative.--Divisions of Gaul.--Distribution of
Population.--The Celts.--Degree of Civilization.--Tribal System.--The
Druids.--The AEdui and the Sequani.--Roman and German
Parties.--Intended Migration of the Helvetii.--Composition of Caesar's
Army.--He goes to Gaul.--Checks the Helvetii.--Returns to Italy for
Larger Forces.--The Helvetii on the Saône.--Defeated, and sent back to
Switzerland.--Invasion of Gaul by Ariovistus.--Caesar invites him to a
Conference.--He refuses.--Alarm in the Roman Army.--Caesar marches
against Ariovistus.--Interview between them.--Treachery of the Roman
Senate.--Great Battle at Colmar.--Defeat and Annihilation of the
Germans.--End of the First Campaign.--Confederacy among the
Belgae.--Battle on the Aisne.--War with the Nervii.--Battle of
Maubeuge.--Capture of Namur.--The Belgae conquered.--Submission of
Brittany.--End of the Second Campaign.


CHAPTER XV.

Cicero and Clodius.--Position and Character of Clodius.--Cato sent to
Cyprus.--Attempted Recall of Cicero defeated by Clodius.--Fight in the
Forum.--Pardon and Return of Cicero.--Moderate Speech to the
People.--Violence in the Senate.--Abuse of Piso and Gabinius.--Coldness
of the Senate toward Cicero.--Restoration of Cicero's
House.--Interfered with by Clodius.--Factions of Clodius and
Milo.--Ptolemy Auletes expelled by his Subjects.--Appeals to Rome for
Help.--Alexandrian Envoys assassinated.--Clodius elected aedile.--Fight
in the Forum.--Parties in Rome.--Situation of Cicero.--Rally of the
Aristocracy.--Attempt to repeal the Leges Juliae.--Conference at
Lucca.--Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.--Cicero deserts the
Senate.--Explains his Motives.--Confirmation of the Ordinances of
Lucca.--Pompey and Crassus Consuls.--Caesar's Command prolonged for
Five Additional Years.--Rejoicings in Rome.--Spectacle in the
Amphitheater.


CHAPTER XVI.

Revolt of the Veneti.--Fleet prepared in the Loire.--Sea-fight at
Quiberon.--Reduction of Normandy and of Aquitaine.--Complete Conquest
of Gaul.--Fresh Arrival of Germans over the Lower Rhine.--Caesar orders
them to retire, and promises them Lands elsewhere.--They refuse to
go--and are destroyed.--Bridge over the Rhine.--Caesar invades
Germany.--Returns after a Short Inroad.--First Expedition into
Britain.--Caesar lands at Deal, or Walmer.--Storm and Injury to the
Fleet.--Approach of the Equinox.--Further Prosecution of the Enterprise
postponed till the following Year.--Caesar goes to Italy for the
Winter.--Large Naval Preparations.--Return of Spring.--Alarm on the
Moselle.--Fleet collects at Boulogne.--Caesar sails for Britain a
Second Time.--Lands at Deal.--Second and more Destructive Storm.--Ships
repaired, and placed out of Danger.--Caesar marches through
Kent.--Crosses the Thames, and reaches St. Albans.--Goes no further,
and returns to Gaul.--Object of the Invasion of Britain.--Description
of the Country and People.


CHAPTER XVII.

Distribution of the Legions after the Return from Britain.--Conspiracy
among the Gallic Chiefs.--Rising of the Eburones.--Destruction of
Sabinus, and a Division of the Roman Army.--Danger of Quintus
Cicero.--Relieved by Caesar in Person.--General Disturbance.--Labienus
attacked at Lavacherie.--Defeats and kills Induciomarus.--Second
Conquest of the Belgae.--Caesar again crosses the Rhine.--Quintus
Cicero in Danger a Second Time.--Courage of a Roman
Officer.--Punishment of the Revolted Chiefs.--Execution of Acco.


CHAPTER XVIII.

Correspondence of Cicero with Caesar.--Intimacy with Pompey and
Crassus.--Attacks on Piso and Gabinius.---Cicero compelled to defend
Gabinius--and Vatinius.--Dissatisfaction with his Position.--Corruption
at the Consular Elections.--Public Scandal.--Caesar and Pompey.--Deaths
of Aurelia and Julia.--Catastrophe in the East.--Overthrow and Death of
Crassus.--Intrigue to detach Pompey from Caesar.---Milo a Candidate for
the Consulship.--Murder of Clodius.--Burning of the
Senate-house.--Trial and Exile of Milo.--Fresh Engagements with
Caesar.--Promise of the Consulship at the End of his Term in Gaul.


CHAPTER XIX.

Last Revolt of Gaul.--Massacre of Romans at
Gien.--Vercingetorix.--Effect on the Celts of the Disturbances at
Rome.--Caesar crosses the Cevennes.--Defeats the Arverni.--Joins his
Army on the Seine.--Takes Gien, Nevers, and Bourges.--Fails at
Gergovia.--Rapid March to Sens.--Labienus at Paris.--Battle of the
Vingeanne.--Siege of Alesia.--Caesar's Double Lines.--Arrival of the
Relieving Army of Gauls.--First Battle on the Plain.--Second
Battle.--Great Defeat of the Gauls.--Surrender of Alesia.--Campaign
against the Carnutes and the Bellovaci.--Rising on the
Dordogne.--Capture of Uxellodunum.--Caesar at Arras.--Completion of the
Conquest.


CHAPTER XX.

Bibulus in Syria.--Approaching Term of Caesar's Government.--Threats of
Impeachment.--Caesar to be Consul or not to be Consul?--Caesar's
Political Ambition.--Hatred felt toward him by the Aristocracy.--Two
Legions taken from him on Pretense of Service against the
Parthians.--Caesar to be recalled before the Expiration of his
Government.--Senatorial Intrigues.--Curio deserts the Senate.--Labienus
deserts Caesar.--Cicero in Cilicia.--Returns to Rome.--Pompey
determined on War.--Cicero's Uncertainties.--Resolution of the Senate
and Consuls.--Caesar recalled.--Alarm in Rome.--Alternative
Schemes.--Letters of Cicero.--Caesar's Crime in the Eyes of the
Optimates.


CHAPTER XXI.

Caesar appeals to his Army.--The Tribunes join him at Rimini.--Panic
and Flight of the Senate.--Incapacity of Pompey.--Fresh
Negotiations.--Advance of Caesar.--The Country Districts refuse to arm
against him.--Capture of Corfinium.--Release of the Prisoners.--Offers
of Caesar.--Continued Hesitation of Cicero.--Advises Pompey to make
Peace.--Pompey, with the Senate and Consuls, flies to Greece.--Cicero's
Reflections.--Pompey to be another Sylla.--Caesar Mortal, and may die
by more Means than one.


CHAPTER XXII.

Pompey's Army in Spain.--Caesar at Rome.--Departure for
Spain.--Marseilles refuses to receive him.--Siege of
Marseilles.--Defeat of Pompey's Lieutenants at Lerida.--The whole Army
made Prisoners.--Surrender of Varro.--Marseilles taken.--Defeat of
Curio by King Juba in Africa.--Caesar named Dictator.--Confusion in
Rome.--Caesar at Brindisi.--Crosses to Greece in Midwinter.--Again
offers Peace.--Pompey's Fleet in the Adriatic.--Death of
Bibulus.--Failure of Negotiations.--Caelius and Milo killed.--Arrival
of Antony in Greece with the Second Division of Caesar's Army.--Siege
of Durazzo.--Defeat and Retreat of Caesar.--The Senate and
Pompey.--Pursuit of Caesar.--Battle of Pharsalia.--Flight of
Pompey.--The Camp taken.--Complete Overthrow of the Senatorial
Faction.--Cicero on the Situation once more.


CHAPTER XXIII.

Pompey flies to Egypt.--State of Parties in Egypt.--Murder of
Pompey.--His Character.--Caesar follows him to Alexandria.--Rising in
the City.--Caesar besieged in the Palace.--Desperate Fighting.--Arrival
of Mithridates of Pergamus.--Battle near Cairo, and Death of the Young
Ptolemy.--Cleopatra.--The Detention of Caesar enables the Optimates to
rally.--Ill Conduct of Caesar's Officers in Spain.--War with
Pharnaces.--Battle of Zela, and Settlement of Asia Minor.


CHAPTER XXIV.

The Aristocracy raise an Army in Africa.--Supported by Juba.--Pharsalia
not to end the War.--Caesar again in Rome.--Restores Order.--Mutiny in
Caesar's Army.--The Mutineers submit.--Caesar lands in
Africa.--Difficulties of the Campaign.--Battle of Thapsus.--No more
Pardons.--Afranius and Faustus Sylla put to Death.--Cato kills himself
at Utica.--Scipio killed.--Juba and Petreius die on each other's
Swords.--A Scene in Caesar's Camp.


CHAPTER XXV.

Rejoicings in Rome.--Caesar Dictator for the Year.--Reforms the
Constitution.--Reforms the Calendar--and the Criminal
Law.--Dissatisfaction of Cicero.--Last Efforts in Spain of Labienus and
the Young Pompeys.--Caesar goes thither in Person, accompanied by
Octavius.--Caesar's Last Battle at Munda.--Death of Labienus.--Capture
of Cordova.--Close of the Civil War.--General Reflections.


CHAPTER XXVI.

Caesar once more in Rome.--General Amnesty.--The Surviving Optimates
pretend to submit.--Increase in the Number of Senators.--Introduction
of Foreigners.--New Colonies.--Carthage.--Corinth.--Sumptuary
Regulations.--Digest of the Law.--Intended Parthian War.--Honors heaped
on Caesar.--The Object of them.--Caesar's Indifference.--Some
Consolations.--Hears of Conspiracies, but disregards
them.--Speculations of Cicero in the Last Stage of the War.--Speech in
the Senate.--A Contrast, and the Meaning of it.--The Kingship.--Antony
offers Caesar the Crown, which Caesar refuses.--The Assassins.--Who
they were.--Brutus and Cassius.--Two Officers of Caesar's among
them.--Warnings.--Meeting of the Conspirators.--Caesar's Last
Evening.--The Ides of March.--The Senate-house.--Caesar killed.


CHAPTER XXVII.

Consternation in Rome.--The Conspirators in the Capitol.--Unforeseen
Difficulties.--Speech of Cicero.--Caesar's Funeral.--Speech of
Antony.--Fury of the People.--The Funeral Pile in the Forum.--The King
is dead, but the Monarchy survives.--Fruitlessness of the
Murder.--Octavius and Antony.--Union of Octavius, Antony, and
Lepidus.--Proscription of the Assassins.--Philippi, and the end of
Brutus and Cassius.--Death of Cicero.--His Character.


CHAPTER XXVIII.

General Remarks on Caesar.--Mythological Tendencies.--Supposed
Profligacy of Caesar.--Nature of the
Evidence.--Servilia.--Cleopatra.--Personal Appearance of Caesar.--His
Manners in Private Life.--Considerations upon him as a Politician, a
Soldier, and a Man of Letters.--Practical Justice his Chief Aim as a
Politician.--Universality of Military Genius.--Devotion of his Army to
him, how deserved.--Art of reconciling Conquered Peoples.--General
Scrupulousness and Leniency.--Oratorical and Literary Style.--Cicero's
Description of it.--His Lost Works.--Cato's Judgment on the Civil
War.--How Caesar should be estimated.--Legend of Charles V.--Spiritual
Condition of the Age in which Caesar lived.--His Work on Earth to
establish Order and Good Government, to make possible the Introduction
of Christianity.--A Parallel.






CAESAR: A SKETCH



CHAPTER I.


To the student of political history, and to the English student above
all others, the conversion of the Roman Republic into a military empire
commands a peculiar interest. Notwithstanding many differences, the
English and the Romans essentially resemble one another. The early
Romans possessed the faculty of self-government beyond any people of
whom we have historical knowledge, with the one exception of ourselves.
In virtue of their temporal freedom, they became the most powerful
nation in the known world; and their liberties perished only when Rome
became the mistress of conquered races, to whom she was unable or
unwilling to extend her privileges. If England was similarly supreme,
if all rival powers were eclipsed by her or laid under her feet, the
Imperial tendencies, which are as strongly marked in us as our love of
liberty, might lead us over the same course to the same end. If there
be one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this, that free
nations cannot govern subject provinces. If they are unable or
unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution,
the constitution itself will fall in pieces from mere incompetence for
its duties.

We talk often foolishly of the necessities of things, and we blame
circumstances for the consequences of our own follies and vices; but
there are faults which are not faults of will, but faults of mere
inadequacy to some unforeseen position. Human nature is equal to much,
but not to everything. It can rise to altitudes where it is alike
unable to sustain itself or to retire from them to a safer elevation.
Yet when the field is open it pushes forward, and moderation in the
pursuit of greatness is never learnt and never will be learnt. Men of
genius are governed by their instinct; they follow where instinct leads
them; and the public life of a nation is but the life of successive
generations of statesmen, whose horizon is bounded, and who act from
day to day as immediate interests suggest. The popular leader of the
hour sees some present difficulty or present opportunity of
distinction. He deals with each question as it arises, leaving future
consequences to those who are to come after him. The situation changes
from period to period, and tendencies are generated with an
accelerating force, which, when once established, can never be
reversed. When the control of reason is once removed, the catastrophe
is no longer distant, and then nations, like all organized creations,
all forms of life, from the meanest flower to the highest human
institution, pass through the inevitably recurring stages of growth and
transformation and decay. A commonwealth, says Cicero, ought to be
immortal, and for ever to renew its youth. Yet commonwealths have
proved as unenduring as any other natural object:

                    Everything that grows
  Holds in perfection but a little moment,
  And this huge state presenteth nought but shows,
  Whereon the stars in silent influence comment.

Nevertheless, "as the heavens are high above the earth, so is wisdom
above folly." Goethe compares life to a game at whist, where the cards
are dealt out by destiny, and the rules of the game are fixed: subject
to these conditions, the players are left to win or lose, according to
their skill or want of skill. The life of a nation, like the life of a
man, may be prolonged in honor into the fulness of its time, or it may
perish prematurely, for want of guidance, by violence or internal
disorders. And thus the history of national revolutions is to
statesmanship what the pathology of disease is to the art of medicine.
The physician cannot arrest the coming on of age. Where disease has
laid hold upon the constitution he cannot expel it. But he may check
the progress of the evil if he can recognize the symptoms in time. He
can save life at the cost of an unsound limb. He can tell us how to
preserve our health when we have it; he can warn us of the conditions
under which particular disorders will have us at disadvantage. And so
with nations: amidst the endless variety of circumstances there are
constant phenomena which give notice of approaching danger; there are
courses of action which have uniformly produced the same results; and
the wise politicians are those who have learnt from experience the real
tendencies of things, unmisled by superficial differences, who can shun
the rocks where others have been wrecked, or from foresight of what is
coming can be cool when the peril is upon them.

For these reasons, the fall of the Roman Republic is exceptionally
instructive to us. A constitutional government the most enduring and
the most powerful that ever existed was put on its trial, and found
wanting. We see it in its growth; we see the causes which undermined
its strength. We see attempts to check the growing mischief fail, and
we see why they failed. And we see, finally, when nothing seemed so
likely as complete dissolution, the whole system changed by a violent
operation, and the dying patient's life protracted for further
centuries of power and usefulness.

Again, irrespective of the direct teaching which we may gather from
them, particular epochs in history have the charm for us which dramas
have--periods when the great actors on the stage of life stand before
us with the distinctness with which they appear in the creations of a
poet. There have not been many such periods; for to see the past, it is
not enough for us to be able to look at it through the eyes of
contemporaries; these contemporaries themselves must have been parties
to the scenes which they describe. They must have had full
opportunities of knowledge. They must have had eyes which could see
things in their true proportions. They must have had, in addition, the
rare literary powers which can convey to others through the medium of
language an exact picture of their own minds; and such happy
combinations occur but occasionally in thousands of years. Generation
after generation passes by, and is crumbled into sand as rocks are
crumbled by the sea. Each brought with it its heroes and its villains,
its triumphs and its sorrows; but the history is formless legend,
incredible and unintelligible; the figures of the actors are indistinct
as the rude ballad or ruder inscription, which may be the only
authentic record of them. We do not see the men and women, we see only
the outlines of them which have been woven into tradition as they
appeared to the loves or hatreds of passionate admirers or enemies. Of
such times we know nothing, save the broad results as they are measured
from century to century, with here and there some indestructible
pebble, some law, some fragment of remarkable poetry which has resisted
decomposition. These periods are the proper subject of the philosophic
historian, and to him we leave them. But there are others, a few, at
which intellectual activity was as great as it is now, with its written
records surviving, in which the passions, the opinions, the ambitions
of the age are all before us, where the actors in the great drama speak
their own thoughts in their own words, where we hear their enemies
denounce them and their friends praise them; where we are ourselves
plunged amidst the hopes and fears of the hour, to feel the conflicting
emotions and to sympathize in the struggles which again seem to live:
and here philosophy is at fault. Philosophy, when we are face to face
with real men, is as powerless as over the Iliad or King Lear. The
overmastering human interest transcends explanation. We do not sit in
judgment on the right or the wrong; we do not seek out causes to
account for what takes place, feeling too conscious of the inadequacy
of our analysis. We see human beings possessed by different impulses,
and working out a pre-ordained result, as the subtle forces drive each
along the path marked out for him; and history becomes the more
impressive to us where it least immediately instructs.

With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands
before us of Cato and Pompey, of Cicero and Julius Caesar; the more
distinctly because it was an age in so many ways the counterpart of our
own, the blossoming period of the old civilization, when the intellect
was trained to the highest point which it could reach, and on the great
subjects of human interest, on morals and politics, on poetry and art,
even on religion itself and the speculative problems of life, men
thought as we think, doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue,
aspired and struggled after the same objects. It was an age of material
progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and
intellectual culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and
of dinner-parties, of senatorial majorities and electoral corruption.
The highest offices of state were open in theory to the meanest
citizen; they were confined, in fact, to those who had the longest
purses, or the most ready use of the tongue on popular platforms.
Distinctions of birth had been exchanged for distinctions of wealth.
The struggles between plebeians and patricians for equality of
privilege were over, and a new division had been formed between the
party of property and a party who desired a change in the structure of
society. The free cultivators were disappearing from the soil. Italy
was being absorbed into vast estates, held by a few favored families
and cultivated by slaves, while the old agricultural population was
driven off the land, and was crowded into towns. The rich were
extravagant, for life had ceased to have practical interest, except for
its material pleasures; the occupation of the higher classes was to
obtain money without labor, and to spend it in idle enjoyment.
Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendency of
the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or would
overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good things which
alone were valued. Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule
of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The educated, in their
hearts, disbelieved it. Temples were still built with increasing
splendor; the established forms were scrupulously observed. Public men
spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their
opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any
serious meaning, there was none remaining beyond the circle of the
silent, patient, ignorant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was
saturated with cant--cant moral, cant political, cant religious; an
affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct,
and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech.
The truest thinkers were those who, like Lucretius, spoke frankly out
their real convictions, declared that Providence was a dream, and that
man and the world he lived in were material phenomena, generated by
natural forces out of cosmic atoms, and into atoms to be again resolved.

Tendencies now in operation may a few generations hence land modern
society in similar conclusions, unless other convictions revive
meanwhile and get the mastery of them; of which possibility no more
need be said than this, that unless there be such a revival in some
shape or other, the forces, whatever they be, which control the forms
in which human things adjust themselves, will make an end again, as
they made an end before, of what are called free institutions. Popular
forms of government are possible only when individual men can govern
their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is of more
importance than pleasure, and justice than material expediency. Rome at
any rate had grown ripe for judgment. The shape which the judgment
assumed was due perhaps, in a measure, to a condition which has no
longer a parallel among us. The men and women by whom the hard work of
the world was done were chiefly slaves, and those who constitute the
driving force of revolutions in modern Europe lay then outside society,
unable and perhaps uncaring to affect its fate. No change then possible
would much influence the prospects of the unhappy bondsmen. The triumph
of the party of the constitution would bring no liberty to them. That
their masters should fall like themselves under the authority of a
higher master could not much distress them. Their sympathies, if they
had any, would go with those nearest their own rank, the emancipated
slaves and the sons of those who were emancipated; and they, and the
poor free citizens everywhere, were to a man on the side which was
considered and was called the side of "the people," and was, in fact,
the side of despotism.




CHAPTER II.


The Roman Constitution had grown out of the character of the Roman
nation. It was popular in form beyond all constitutions of which there
is any record in history. The citizens assembled in the Comitia were
the sovereign authority in the State, and they exercised their power
immediately and not by representatives. The executive magistrates were
chosen annually. The assembly was the supreme Court of Appeal; and
without its sanction no freeman could be lawfully put to death. In the
assembly also was the supreme power of legislation. Any consul, any
praetor, any tribune, might propose a law from the Rostra to the
people. The people if it pleased them might accept such law, and
senators and public officers might be sworn to obey it under pains of
treason. As a check on precipitate resolutions, a single consul or a
single tribune might interpose his veto. But the veto was binding only
so long as the year of office continued. If the people were in earnest,
submission to their wishes could be made a condition at the next
election, and thus no constitutional means existed of resisting them
when these wishes showed themselves.

In normal times the Senate was allowed the privilege of preconsidering
intended acts of legislation, and refusing to recommend them if
inexpedient, but the privilege was only converted into a right after
violent convulsions, and was never able to maintain itself. That under
such a system the functions of government could have been carried on at
all was due entirely to the habits of self-restraint which the Romans
had engraved into their nature. They were called a nation of kings,
kings over their own appetites, passions, and inclinations. They were
not imaginative, they were not intellectual; they had little national
poetry, little art, little philosophy. They were moral and practical.
In these two directions the force that was in them entirely ran. They
were free politically, because freedom meant to them not freedom to do
as they pleased, but freedom to do what was right; and every citizen,
before he arrived at his civil privileges, had been schooled in the
discipline of obedience. Each head of a household was absolute master
of it, master over his children and servants, even to the extent of
life and death. What the father was to the family, the gods were to the
whole people, the awful lords and rulers at whose pleasure they lived
and breathed. Unlike the Greeks, the reverential Romans invented no
idle legends about the supernatural world. The gods to them were the
guardians of the State, whose will in all things they were bound to
seek and to obey. The forms in which they endeavored to learn what that
will might be were childish or childlike. They looked to signs in the
sky, to thunder-storms and comets and shooting stars. Birds, winged
messengers, as they thought them, between earth and heaven, were
celestial indicators of the gods' commands. But omens and auguries were
but the outward symbols, and the Romans, like all serious peoples, went
to their own hearts for their real guidance. They had a unique
religious peculiarity, to which no race of men has produced anything
like. They did not embody the elemental forces in personal forms; they
did not fashion a theology out of the movements of the sun and stars or
the changes of the seasons. Traces may be found among them of cosmic
traditions and superstitions, which were common to all the world; but
they added of their own this especial feature: that they built temples
and offered sacrifices to the highest human excellences, to "Valor," to
"Truth," to "Good Faith," to "Modesty," to "Charity," to "Concord." In
these qualities lay all that raised man above the animals with which he
had so much in common. In them, therefore, were to be found the link
which connected him with the divine nature, and moral qualities were
regarded as divine influences which gave his life its meaning and its
worth. The "Virtues" were elevated into beings to whom disobedience
could be punished as a crime, and the superstitious fears which run so
often into mischievous idolatries were enlisted with conscience in the
direct service of right action.

On the same principle the Romans chose the heroes and heroines of their
national history. The Manlii and Valerii were patterns of courage, the
Lucretias and Virginias of purity, the Decii and Curtii of patriotic
devotion, the Reguli and Fabricii of stainless truthfulness. On the
same principle, too, they had a public officer whose functions
resembled those of the Church courts in mediaeval Europe, a Censor
Morum, an inquisitor who might examine into the habits of private
families, rebuke extravagance, check luxury, punish vice and
self-indulgence, nay, who could remove from the Senate, the great
council of elders, persons whose moral conduct was a reproach to a body
on whose reputation no shadow could be allowed to rest.

Such the Romans were in the day when their dominion had not extended
beyond the limits of Italy; and because they were such they were able
to prosper under a constitution which to modern experience would
promise only the most hopeless confusion.

Morality thus engrained in the national character and grooved into
habits of action creates strength, as nothing else creates it. The
difficulty of conduct does not lie in knowing what it is right to do,
but in doing it when known. Intellectual culture does not touch the
conscience. It provides no motives to overcome the weakness of the
will, and with wider knowledge it brings also new temptations. The
sense of duty is present in each detail of life; the obligatory "must"
which binds the will to the course which right principle has marked out
for it produces a fibre like the fibre of the oak. The educated Greeks
knew little of it. They had courage and genius and enthusiasm, but they
had no horror of immorality as such. The Stoics saw what was wanting,
and tried to supply it; but though they could provide a theory of
action, they could not make the theory into a reality, and it is
noticeable that Stoicism as a rule of life became important only when
adopted by the Romans. The Catholic Church effected something in its
better days when it had its courts which treated sins as crimes.
Calvinism, while it was believed, produced characters nobler and
grander than any which Republican Rome produced. But the Catholic
Church turned its penances into money payments. Calvinism made demands
on faith beyond what truth would bear; and when doubt had once entered,
the spell of Calvinism was broken. The veracity of the Romans, and
perhaps the happy accident that they had no inherited religious
traditions, saved them for centuries from similar trials. They had hold
of real truth unalloyed with baser metal; and truth had made them free
and kept them so. When all else has passed away, when theologies have
yielded up their real meaning, and creeds and symbols have become
transparent, and man is again in contact with the hard facts of nature,
it will be found that the "Virtues" which the Romans made into gods
contain in them the essence of true religion, that in them lies the
special characteristic which distinguishes human beings from the rest
of animated things. Every other creature exists for itself, and cares
for its own preservation. Nothing larger or better is expected from it
or possible to it. To man it is said, you do not live for yourself. If
you live for yourself you shall come to nothing. Be brave, be just, be
pure, be true in word and deed; care not for your enjoyment, care not
for your life; care only for what is right. So, and not otherwise, it
shall be well with you. So the Maker of you has ordered, whom you will
disobey at your peril.

Thus and thus only are nations formed which are destined to endure; and
as habits based on such convictions are slow in growing, so when grown
to maturity they survive extraordinary trials. But nations are made up
of many persons in circumstances of endless variety. In country
districts, where the routine of life continues simple, the type of
character remains unaffected; generation follows on generation exposed
to the same influences and treading in the same steps. But the morality
of habit, though the most important element in human conduct, is still
but a part of it. Moral habits grow under given conditions. They
correspond to a given degree of temptation. When men are removed into
situations where the use and wont of their fathers no longer meets
their necessities; where new opportunities are offered to them; where
their opinions are broken in upon by new ideas; where pleasures tempt
them on every side, and they have but to stretch out their hand to take
them--moral habits yield under the strain, and they have no other
resource to fall back upon. Intellectual cultivation brings with it
rational interests. Knowledge, which looks before and after, acts as a
restraining power, to help conscience when it flags. The sober and
wholesome manners of life among the early Romans had given them
vigorous minds in vigorous bodies. The animal nature had grown as
strongly as the moral nature, and along with it the animal appetites;
and when appetites burst their traditionary restraints, and man in
himself has no other notion of enjoyment beyond bodily pleasure, he may
pass by an easy transition into a mere powerful brute. And thus it
happened with the higher classes at Rome after the destruction of
Carthage. Italy had fallen to them by natural and wholesome expansion;
but from being sovereigns of Italy, they became a race of imperial
conquerors. Suddenly, and in comparatively a few years after the one
power was gone which could resist them, they became the actual or
virtual rulers of the entire circuit of the Mediterranean. The
south-east of Spain, the coast of France from the Pyrenees to Nice, the
north of Italy, Illyria and Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, and the Greek
Islands, the southern and western shores of Asia Minor, were Roman
provinces, governed directly under Roman magistrates. On the African
side Mauritania (Morocco) was still free. Numidia (the modern Algeria)
retained its native dynasty, but was a Roman dependency. The
Carthaginian dominions, Tunis and Tripoli, had been annexed to the
Empire. The interior of Asia Minor up to the Euphrates, with Syria and
Egypt, were under sovereigns called Allies, but, like the native
princes in India, subject to a Roman protectorate. Over this enormous
territory, rich with the accumulated treasures of centuries, and
inhabited by thriving, industrious races, the energetic Roman men of
business had spread and settled themselves, gathering into their hands
the trade, the financial administration, the entire commercial control
of the Mediterranean basin. They had been trained in thrift and
economy, in abhorrence of debt, in strictest habits of close and
careful management. Their frugal education, their early lessons in the
value of money, good and excellent as those lessons were, led them, as
a matter of course, to turn to account their extraordinary
opportunities. Governors with their staffs, permanent officials,
contractors for the revenue, negotiators, bill-brokers, bankers,
merchants, were scattered everywhere in thousands. Money poured in upon
them in rolling streams of gold. The largest share of the spoils fell
to the Senate and the senatorial families. The Senate was the permanent
Council of State, and was the real administrator of the Empire. The
Senate had the control of the treasury, conducted the public policy,
appointed from its own ranks the governors of the provinces. It was
patrician in sentiment, but not necessarily patrician in composition.
The members of it had virtually been elected for life by the people,
and were almost entirely those who had been quaestors, aediles,
praetors, or consuls; and these offices had been long open to the
plebeians. It was an aristocracy, in theory a real one, but tending to
become, as civilization went forward, an aristocracy of the rich. How
the senatorial privileges affected the management of the provinces will
be seen more particularly as we go on. It is enough at present to say
that the nobles and great commoners of Rome rapidly found themselves in
possession of revenues which their fathers could not have imagined in
their dreams, and money in the stage of progress at which Rome had
arrived was convertible into power.

The opportunities opened for men to advance their fortunes in other
parts of the world drained Italy of many of its most enterprising
citizens. The grandsons of the yeomen who had held at bay Pyrrhus and
Hannibal sold their farms and went away. The small holdings merged
rapidly into large estates bought up by the Roman capitalists. At the
final settlement of Italy, some millions of acres had been reserved to
the State as public property. The "public land," as the reserved
portion was called, had been leased on easy terms to families with
political influence, and by lapse of time, by connivance and right of
occupation, these families were beginning to regard their tenures as
their private property, and to treat them as lords of manors in England
have treated the "commons." Thus everywhere the small farmers were
disappearing, and the soil of Italy was fast passing into the hands of
a few territorial magnates, who, unfortunately (for it tended to
aggravate the mischief), were enabled by another cause to turn their
vast possessions to advantage. The conquest of the world had turned the
flower of the defeated nations into slaves. The prisoners taken either
after a battle or when cities surrendered unconditionally were bought
up steadily by contractors who followed in the rear of the Roman
armies. They were not ignorant like the negroes, but trained, useful,
and often educated men, Asiatics, Greeks, Thracians, Gauls, and
Spaniards, able at once to turn their hands to some form of skilled
labor, either as clerks, mechanics, or farm-servants. The great
landowners might have paused in their purchases had the alternative
lain before them of letting their lands lie idle or of having freemen
to cultivate them. It was otherwise when a resource so convenient and
so abundant was opened at their feet. The wealthy Romans bought slaves
by thousands. Some they employed in their workshops in the capital.
Some they spread over their plantations, covering the country, it might
be, with olive gardens and vineyards, swelling further the plethoric
figures of their owners' incomes. It was convenient for the few, but
less convenient for the Commonwealth. The strength of Rome was in her
free citizens. Where a family of slaves was settled down, a village of
freemen had disappeared; the material for the legions diminished; the
dregs of the free population which remained behind crowded into Rome,
without occupation except in politics, and with no property save in
their votes, of course to become the clients of the millionaires, and
to sell themselves to the highest bidders. With all his wealth there
were but two things which the Roman noble could buy, political power
and luxury; and in these directions his whole resources were expended.
The elections, once pure, became matters of annual bargain between
himself and his supporters. The once hardy, abstemious mode of living
degenerated into grossness and sensuality.

And his character was assailed simultaneously on another side with
equally mischievous effect. The conquest of Greece brought to Rome a
taste for knowledge and culture; but the culture seldom passed below
the surface, and knowledge bore but the old fruit which it had borne in
Eden. The elder Cato used to say that the Romans were like their
slaves--the less Greek they knew the better they were. They had
believed in the gods with pious simplicity. The Greeks introduced them
to an Olympus of divinities whom the practical Roman found that he must
either abhor or deny to exist. The "Virtues" which he had been taught
to reverence had no place among the graces of the new theology.
Reverence Jupiter he could not, and it was easy to persuade him that
Jupiter was an illusion; that all religions were but the creations of
fancy, his own among them. Gods there might be, airy beings in the
deeps of space, engaged like men with their own enjoyments; but to
suppose that these high spirits fretted themselves with the affairs of
the puny beings that crawled upon the earth was a delusion of vanity.
Thus, while morality was assailed on one side by extraordinary
temptations, the religious sanction of it was undermined on the other.
The Romans ceased to believe, and in losing their faith they became as
steel becomes when it is demagnetized; the spiritual quality was gone
out of them, and the high society of Rome itself became a society of
powerful animals with an enormous appetite for pleasure. Wealth poured
in more and more, and luxury grew more unbounded. Palaces sprang up in
the city, castles in the country, villas at pleasant places by the sea,
and parks, and fish-ponds, and game-preserves, and gardens, and vast
retinues of servants. When natural pleasures had been indulged in to
satiety, pleasures which were against nature were imported from the
East to stimulate the exhausted appetite. To make money--money by any
means, lawful or unlawful--became the universal passion. Even the most
cultivated patricians were coarse alike in their habits and their
amusements. They cared for art as dilettanti, but no schools either of
sculpture or painting were formed among themselves. They decorated
their porticos and their saloons with the plunder of the East. The
stage was never more than an artificial taste with them; their delight
was the delight of barbarians, in spectacles, in athletic exercises, in
horse-races and chariot-races, in the combats of wild animals in the
circus, combats of men with beasts on choice occasions, and, as a rare
excitement, in fights between men and men, when select slaves trained
as gladiators were matched in pairs to kill each other. Moral habits
are all-sufficient while they last; but with rude strong natures they
are but chains which hold the passions prisoners. Let the chain break,
and the released brute is but the more powerful for evil from the force
which his constitution has inherited. Money! the cry was still
money!--money was the one thought from the highest senator to the
poorest wretch who sold his vote in the Comitia. For money judges gave
unjust decrees and juries gave corrupt verdicts. Governors held their
provinces for one, two, or three years; they went out bankrupt from
extravagance, they returned with millions for fresh riot. To obtain a
province was the first ambition of a Roman noble. The road to it lay
through the praetorship and the consulship; these offices, therefore,
became the prizes of the State; and being in the gift of the people,
they were sought after by means which demoralized alike the givers and
the receivers. The elections were managed by clubs and coteries; and,
except on occasions of national danger or political excitement, those
who spent most freely were most certain of success.

Under these conditions the chief powers in the Commonwealth necessarily
centred in the rich. There was no longer an aristocracy of birth, still
less of virtue. The patrician families had the start in the race. Great
names and great possessions came to them by inheritance. But the door
of promotion was open to all who had the golden key. The great
commoners bought their way into the magistracies. From the magistracies
they passed into the Senate; and the Roman senator, though in Rome
itself and in free debate among his colleagues he was handled as an
ordinary man, when he travelled had the honors of a sovereign. The
three hundred senators of Rome were three hundred princes. They moved
about in other countries with the rights of legates, at the expense of
the province, with their trains of slaves and horses. The proud
privilege of Roman citizenship was still jealously reserved to Rome
itself and to a few favored towns and colonies; and a mere subject
could maintain no rights against a member of the haughty oligarchy
which controlled the civilized world. Such generally the Roman Republic
had become, or was tending to become, in the years which followed the
fall of Carthage, B.C. 146. Public spirit in the masses was dead or
sleeping; the Commonwealth was a plutocracy. The free forms of the
constitution were themselves the instruments of corruption. The rich
were happy in the possession of all that they could desire. The
multitude was kept quiet by the morsels of meat which were flung to it
when it threatened to be troublesome. The seven thousand in Israel, the
few who in all states and in all times remained pure in the midst of
evil, looked on with disgust, fearing that any remedy which they might
try might be worse than the disease. All orders in a society may be
wise and virtuous, but all cannot be rich. Wealth which is used only
for idle luxury is always envied, and envy soon curdles into hate. It
is easy to persuade the masses that the good things of this world are
unjustly divided, especially when it happens to be the exact truth. It
is not easy to set limits to an agitation once set on foot, however
justly it may have been provoked, when the cry for change is at once
stimulated by interest and can disguise its real character under the
passionate language of patriotism. But it was not to be expected that
men of noble natures, young men especially whose enthusiasm had not
been cooled by experience, would sit calmly by while their country was
going thus headlong to perdition. Redemption, if redemption was to be
hoped for, could come only from free citizens in the country districts
whose manners and whoso minds were still uncontaminated, in whom the
ancient habits of life still survived, who still believed in the gods,
who were contented to follow the wholesome round of honest labor. The
numbers of such citizens were fast dwindling away before the omnivorous
appetite of the rich for territorial aggrandizement. To rescue the land
from the monopolists, to renovate the old independent yeomanry, to
prevent the free population of Italy, out of which the legions had been
formed which had built up the Empire, from being pushed out of their
places and supplanted by foreign slaves, this, if it could be done,
would restore the purity of the constituency, snatch the elections from
the control of corruption, and rear up fresh generations of peasant
soldiers to preserve the liberties and the glories which their fathers
had won.




CHAPTER III.


Tiberius Gracchus was born about the year 164 B.C. He was one of twelve
children, nine of whom died in infancy, himself, his brother Caius, and
his sister Cornelia being the only survivors. His family was plebeian,
but of high antiquity, his ancestors for several generations having
held the highest offices in the Republic. On the mother's side he was
the grandson of Scipio Africanus. His father, after a distinguished
career as a soldier in Spain and Sardinia, had attempted reforms at
Rome. He had been censor, and in this capacity he had ejected
disreputable senators from the Curia; he had degraded offending
equites; he had rearranged and tried to purify the Comitia. But his
connections were aristocratic. His wife was the daughter of the most
illustrious of the Scipios. His own daughter was married to the second
most famous of them, Scipio Africanus the Younger. He had been himself
in antagonism with the tribunes, and had taken no part at any time in
popular agitations.

The father died when Tiberius was still a boy, and the two brothers
grew up under the care of their mother, a noble and gifted lady. They
displayed early remarkable talents. Tiberius, when old enough, went
into the army, and served under his brother-in-law in the last
Carthaginian campaign. He was first on the walls of the city in the
final storm. Ten years later he went to Spain as Quaestor, where he
carried on his father's popularity, and by taking the people's side in
some questions fell into disagreement with his brother-in-law. His
political views had perhaps already inclined to change. He was still of
an age when indignation at oppression calls out a practical desire to
resist it. On his journey home from Spain he witnessed scenes which
confirmed his conviction and determined him to throw all his energies
into the popular cause. His road lay through Tuscany, where he saw the
large-estate system in full operation--the fields cultivated by the
slave gangs, the free citizens of the Republic thrust away into the
towns, aliens and outcasts in their own country, without a foot of soil
which they could call their own. In Tuscany, too, the vast domains of
the landlords had not even been fairly purchased. They were parcels of
the _ager publicus_, land belonging to the State, which, in spite of a
law forbidding it, the great lords and commoners had appropriated and
divided among themselves. Five hundred acres of State land was the most
which by statute any one lessee might be allowed to occupy. But the law
was obsolete or sleeping, and avarice and vanity were awake and active.
Young Gracchus, in indignant pity, resolved to rescue the people's
patrimony. He was chosen tribune in the year 133. His brave mother and
a few patricians of the old type encouraged him, and the battle of the
revolution began. The Senate, as has been said, though without direct
legislative authority, had been allowed the right of reviewing any new
schemes which were to be submitted to the assembly. The constitutional
means of preventing tribunes from carrying unwise or unwelcome measures
lay in a consul's veto, or in the help of the College of Augurs, who
could declare the auspices unfavorable, and so close all public
business. These resources were so awkward that it had been found
convenient to secure beforehand the Senate's approbation, and the
encroachment, being long submitted to, was passing by custom into a
rule. But the Senate, eager as it was, had not yet succeeded in
engrafting the practice into the constitution. On the land question the
leaders of the aristocracy were the principal offenders. Disregarding
usage, and conscious that the best men of all ranks were with him,
Tiberius Gracchus appealed directly to the people to revive the
agrarian law. His proposals were not extravagant. That they should have
been deemed extravagant was a proof of how much some measure of the
kind was needed. Where lands had been enclosed and money laid out on
them he was willing that the occupants should have compensation. But
they had no right to the lands themselves. Gracchus persisted that the
_ager publicus_ belonged to the people, and that the race of yeomen,
for whose protection the law had been originally passed, must be
re-established on their farms. No form of property gives to its owners
so much consequence as land, and there is no point on which in every
country an aristocracy is more sensitive. The large owners protested
that they had purchased their interests on the faith that the law was
obsolete. They had planted and built and watered with the sanction of
the government, and to call their titles in question was to shake the
foundations of society. The popular party pointed to the statute. The
monopolists were entitled in justice to less than was offered them.
They had no right to a compensation at all. Political passion awoke
again after the sleep of a century. The oligarchy had doubtless
connived at the accumulations. The suppression of the small holdings
favored their supremacy, and placed the elections more completely in
their control. Their military successes had given them so long a tenure
of power that they had believed it to be theirs in perpetuity; and the
new sedition, as they called it, threatened at once their privileges
and their fortunes. The quarrel assumed the familiar form of a struggle
between the rich and the poor, and at such times the mob of voters
becomes less easy to corrupt. They go with their order, as the prospect
of larger gain makes them indifferent to immediate bribes. It became
clear that the majority of the citizens would support Tiberius
Gracchus, but the constitutional forms of opposition might still be
resorted to. Octavius Caecina, another of the tribunes, had himself
large interests in the land question. He was the people's magistrate,
one of the body appointed especially to defend their rights, but he
went over to the Senate, and, using a power which undoubtedly belonged
to him, he forbade the vote to be taken.

There was no precedent for the removal of either consul, praetor, or
tribune, except under circumstances very different from any which could
as yet be said to have arisen. The magistrates held office for a year
only, and the power of veto had been allowed them expressly to secure
time for deliberation and to prevent passionate legislation. But
Gracchus was young and enthusiastic. Precedent or no precedent, the
citizens were omnipotent. He invited them to declare his colleague
deposed. They had warmed to the fight, and complied. A more experienced
statesman would have known that established constitutional bulwarks
cannot be swept away by a momentary vote. He obtained his agrarian law.
Three commissioners were appointed, himself, his younger brother, and
his father-in-law, Appius Claudius, to carry it into effect; but the
very names showed that he had alienated his few supporters in the
higher circles, and that a single family was now contending against the
united wealth and distinction of Rome. The issue was only too certain.
Popular enthusiasm is but a fire of straw. In a year Tiberius Gracchus
would be out of office. Other tribunes would be chosen more amenable to
influence, and his work could then be undone. He evidently knew that
those who would succeed him could not be relied on to carry on his
policy. He had taken one revolutionary step already; he was driven on
to another, and he offered himself illegally to the Comitia for
re-election. It was to invite them to abolish the constitution and to
make him virtual sovereign; and that a young man of thirty should have
contemplated such a position for himself as possible is of itself a
proof of his unfitness for it. The election-day came. The noble lords
and gentlemen appeared in the Campus Martius with their retinues of
armed servants and clients; hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain
for demagogues, and meaning to read a lesson to sedition which it would
not easily forget. Votes were given for Gracchus. Had the hustings been
left to decide the matter, he would have been chosen; but as it began
to appear how the polling would go, sticks were used and swords; a riot
rose, the unarmed citizens were driven off, Tiberius Gracchus himself
and three hundred of his friends were killed and their bodies were
flung into the Tiber.

Thus the first sparks of the coming revolution were trampled out. But
though quenched and to be again quenched with fiercer struggles, it was
to smoulder and smoke and burst out time after time, till its work was
done. Revolution could not restore the ancient character of the Roman
nation, but it could check the progress of decay by burning away the
more corrupted parts of it. It could destroy the aristocracy and the
constitution which they had depraved, and under other forms present for
a few more centuries the Roman dominion. Scipio Africanus, when he
heard in Spain of the end of his brother-in-law, exclaimed, "May all
who act as he did perish like him!" There were to be victims enough and
to spare before the bloody drama was played out. Quiet lasted for ten
years, and then, precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius
Gracchus came forward to avenge him, and carry the movement through
another stage. Young Caius had been left one of the commissioners of
the land law; and it is particularly noticeable that though the author
of it had been killed, the law had survived him being too clearly right
and politic in itself to be openly set aside. For two years the
commissioners had continued to work, and in that time forty thousand
families were settled on various parts of the _ager publicus_, which
the patricians had been compelled to resign. This was all which they
could do. The displacement of one set of inhabitants and the
introduction of another could not be accomplished without quarrels,
complaints, and perhaps some injustice. Those who were ejected were
always exasperated. Those who entered on possession were not always
satisfied. The commissioners became unpopular. When the cries against
them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was then
quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over the assembly,
and had a further opportunity of showing its recovered ascendency when,
two years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends
introduced a bill to make the tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius
Gracchus actively supported the change, but it had no success; and,
waiting till times had altered, and till he had arrived himself at an
age when he could carry weight, the young brother retired from
politics, and spent the next few years with the army in Africa and
Sardinia. He served with distinction; he made a name for himself both
as a soldier and an administrator. Had the Senate left him alone, he
might have been satisfied with a regular career, and have risen by the
ordinary steps to the consulship. But the Senate saw in him the
possibilities of a second Tiberius; the higher his reputation, the more
formidable he became to them. They vexed him with petty prosecutions,
charged him with crimes which had no existence, and at length by
suspicion and injustice drove him into open war with them. Caius
Gracchus had a broader intellect than his brother, and a character
considerably less noble. The land question he perceived was but one of
many questions. The true source of the disorders of the Commonwealth
was the Senate itself. The administration of the Empire was in the
hands of men totally unfit to be trusted with it, and there he thought
the reform must commence. He threw himself on the people. He was chosen
tribune in 123, ten years exactly after Tiberius. He had studied the
disposition of parties. He had seen his brother fall because the
equites and the senators, the great commoners and the nobles, were
combined against him. He revived the agrarian law as a matter of
course, but he disarmed the opposition to it by throwing an apple of
discord between the two superior orders. The high judicial functions in
the Commonwealth had been hitherto a senatorial monopoly. All cases of
importance, civil or criminal, came before courts of sixty or seventy
jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be necessarily senators. The
privilege had been extremely lucrative. The corruption of justice was
already notorious, though it had not yet reached the level of infamy
which it attained in another generation. It was no secret that in
ordinary causes jurymen had sold their verdicts; and, far short of
taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many ways in
which they could let themselves be approached and their favor
purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in
the sale of justice is alike hateful to those who abhor iniquity on
principle and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But
this was not the worst. The governors of the provinces, being chosen
from those who had been consuls or praetors, were necessarily members
of the Senate. Peculation and extortion in these high functions were
offences in theory of the gravest kind; but the offender could only be
tried before a limited number of his peers, and a governor who had
plundered a subject state, sold justice, pillaged temples, and stolen
all that he could lay hands on, was safe from punishment if he returned
to Rome a millionaire and would admit others to a share in his spoils.
The provincials might send deputations to complain, but these
complaints came before men who had themselves governed provinces or
else aspired to govern them. It had been proved in too many instances
that the law which professed to protect them was a mere mockery.

Caius Gracchus secured the affections of the knights to himself, and
some slightly increased chance of an improvement in the provincial
administration, by carrying a law in the assembly disabling the
senators from sitting on juries of any kind from that day forward, and
transferring the judicial functions to the equites. How bitterly must
such a measure have been resented by the Senate, which at once robbed
them of their protective and profitable privileges, handed them over to
be tried by their rivals for their pleasant irregularities, and stamped
them at the same time with the brand of dishonesty! How certainly must
such a measure have been deserved when neither consul nor tribune could
be found to interpose his veto! Supported by the grateful knights,
Caius Gracchus was for the moment all-powerful. It was not enough to
restore the agrarian law. He passed another, aimed at his brother's
murderers, which was to bear fruit in later years, that no Roman
citizen might be put to death by any person, however high in authority,
without legal trial, and without appeal, if he chose to make it, to the
sovereign people. A blow was thus struck against another right claimed
by the Senate, of declaring the Republic in danger, and the temporary
suspension of the constitution. These measures might be excused, and
perhaps commended; but the younger Gracchus connected his name with
another change less commendable, which was destined also to survive and
bear fruit. He brought forward and carried through, with enthusiastic
clapping of every pair of hands in Rome that were hardened with labor,
a proposal that there should be public granaries in the city,
maintained and filled at the cost of the State, and that corn should be
sold at a rate artificially cheap to the poor free citizens. Such a law
was purely socialistic. The privilege was confined to Rome, because in
Rome the elections were held, and the Roman constituency was the one
depositary of power. The effect was to gather into the city a mob of
needy, unemployed voters, living on the charity of the State, to crowd
the circus and to clamor at the elections, available no doubt
immediately to strengthen the hands of the popular tribune, but certain
in the long-run to sell themselves to those who could bid highest for
their voices. Excuses could be found, no doubt, for this miserable
expedient in the state of parties, in the unscrupulous violence of the
aristocracy, in the general impoverishment of the peasantry through the
land monopoly, and in the intrusion upon Italy of a gigantic system of
slave labor. But none the less it was the deadliest blow which had yet
been dealt to the constitution. Party government turns on the
majorities at the polling-places, and it was difficult afterward to
recall a privilege which once conceded appeared to be a right. The
utmost that could be ventured in later times with any prospect of
success was to limit an intolerable evil; and if one side was ever
strong enough to make the attempt, their rivals had a bribe ready in
their hands to buy back the popular support. Caius Gracchus, however,
had his way, and carried all before him. He escaped the rock on which
his brother had been wrecked. He was elected tribune a second time. He
might have had a third term if he had been contented to be a mere
demagogue. But he, too, like Tiberius, had honorable aims. The powers
which he had played into the hands of the mob to obtain he desired to
use for high purposes of statesmanship, and his instrument broke in his
hands. He was too wise to suppose that a Roman mob, fed by bounties
from the treasury, could permanently govern the world. He had schemes
for scattering Roman colonies, with the Roman franchise, at various
points of the Empire. Carthage was to be one of them. He thought of
abolishing the distinction between Romans and Italians, and
enfranchising the entire peninsula. These measures were good in
themselves--essential, indeed, if the Roman conquests were to form a
compact and permanent dominion. But the object was not attainable on
the road on which Gracchus had entered. The vagabond part of the
constituency was well contented with what it had obtained--a life in
the city, supported at the public expense, with politics and games for
its amusements. It had not the least inclination to be drafted off into
settlements in Spain or Africa, where there would be work instead of
pleasant idleness. Carthage was still a name of terror. To restore
Carthage was no better than treason. Still less had the Roman citizens
an inclination to share their privileges with Samnites and Etruscans,
and see the value of their votes watered down. Political storms are
always cyclones. The gale from the east to-day is a gale from the west
to-morrow. Who and what were the Gracchi, then?--the sweet voices began
to ask--ambitious intriguers, aiming at dictatorship or perhaps the
crown. The aristocracy were right after all; a few things had gone
wrong, but these had been amended. The Scipios and Metelli had
conquered the world: the Scipios and Metelli were alone fit to govern
it. Thus when the election time came round, the party of reform was
reduced to a minority of irreconcilable radicals who were easily
disposed of. Again, as ten years before, the noble lords armed their
followers. Riots broke out and extended day after day. Caius Gracchus
was at last killed, as his brother had been, and under cover of the
disturbance three thousand of his friends were killed along with him.
The power being again securely in their hands, the Senate proceeded at
their leisure, and the surviving patriots who were in any way notorious
or dangerous were hunted down in legal manner and put to death or
banished.




CHAPTER IV.


Caius Gracchus was killed at the close of the year 122. The storm was
over. The Senate was once more master of the situation, and the
optimates, "the best party in the State," as they were pleased to call
themselves, smoothed their ruffled plumes and settled again into their
places. There was no more talk of reform. Of the Gracchi there remained
nothing but the forty thousand peasant-proprietors settled on the
public lands; the jury law, which could not be at once repealed for
fear of the equites; the corn grants, and the mob attracted by the
bounty, which could be managed by improved manipulation; and the law
protecting the lives of Roman citizens, which survived in the
statute-book, although the Senate still claimed the right to set it
aside when they held the State to be in danger. With these exceptions,
the administration fell back into its old condition. The tribunes
ceased to agitate. The consulships and the praetorships fell to the
candidates whom the Senate supported. Whether the oligarchy had learnt
any lessons of caution from the brief political earthquake which had
shaken but not overthrown them remained to be seen. Six years after the
murder of Caius Gracchus an opportunity was afforded to this
distinguished body of showing on a conspicuous scale the material of
which they were now composed.

Along the south shore of the Mediterranean, west of the Roman province,
extended the two kingdoms of the Numidians and the Moors. To what race
these people belonged is not precisely known. They were not negroes.
The negro tribes have never extended north of the Sahara. Nor were they
Carthaginians or allied to the Carthaginians. The Carthaginian colony
found them in possession on its arrival. Sallust says that they were
Persians left behind by Hercules after his invasion of Spain. Sallust's
evidence proves no more than that their appearance was Asiatic, and
that tradition assigned them an Asiatic origin. They may be called
generically Arabs, who at a very ancient time had spread along the
coast from Egypt to Morocco. The Numidians at this period were
civilized according to the manners of the age. They had walled towns;
they had considerable wealth; their lands were extensively watered and
cultivated; their great men had country houses and villas, the surest
sign of a settled state of society. Among the equipments of their army
they had numerous elephants (it may be presumed of the African breed),
which they and the Carthaginians had certainly succeeded in
domesticating. Masinissa, the king of this people, had been the ally of
Rome in the last Carthaginian war; he had been afterward received as "a
friend of the Republic," and was one of the protected sovereigns. He
was succeeded by his son Micipsa, who in turn had two legitimate
children, Hiempsal and Adherbal, and an illegitimate nephew Jugurtha,
considerably older than his own boys, a young man of striking talent
and promise. Micipsa, who was advanced in years, was afraid that if he
died this brilliant youth might be a dangerous rival to his sons. He
therefore sent him to serve under Scipio in Spain, with the hope, so
his friends asserted, that he might there perhaps be killed. The Roman
army was then engaged in the siege of Numantia. The camp was the
lounging-place of the young patricians who were tired of Rome and
wished for excitement. Discipline had fallen loose; the officers'
quarters were the scene of extravagance and amusement. Jugurtha
recommended himself on the one side to Scipio by activity and good
service, while on the other he made acquaintances among the high-bred
gentlemen in the mess-rooms. He found them in themselves dissolute and
unscrupulous. He discovered, through communications which he was able
with their assistance to open with their fathers and relatives at Rome,
that a man with money might do what he pleased. Micipsa's treasury was
well supplied, and Jugurtha hinted among his comrades that if he could
be secure of countenance in seizing the kingdom, he would be in a
position to show his gratitude in a substantial manner. Some of these
conversations reached the ears of Scipio, who sent for Jugurtha and
gave him a friendly warning. He dismissed him, however, with honor at
the end of the campaign. The young prince returned to Africa loaded
with distinctions, and the king, being now afraid to pass him over,
named him as joint-heir with his children to a third part of Numidia.
The Numidians perhaps objected to being partitioned. Micipsa died soon
after. Jugurtha at once murdered Hiempsal, claimed the sovereignty, and
attacked his other cousin. Adherbal, closely besieged in the town of
Cirta, which remained faithful to him, appealed to Rome; but Jugurtha
had already prepared his ground, and knew that he had nothing to fear.
The Senate sent out commissioners. The commissioners received the
bribes which they expected. They gave Jugurtha general instructions to
leave his cousin in peace; but they did not wait to see their orders
obeyed, and went quietly home. The natural results immediately
followed. Jugurtha pressed the siege more resolutely. The town
surrendered; Adherbal was taken, and was put to death after being
savagely tortured; and there being no longer any competitor alive in
whose behalf the Senate could be called on to interfere, he thought
himself safe from further interference. Unfortunately in the capture of
Citra a number of Romans who resided there had been killed after the
surrender, and after a promise that their lives should be spared. An
outcry was raised in Rome, and became so loud that the Senate was
forced to promise investigation; but it went to work languidly, with
reluctance so evident as to rouse suspicion. Notwithstanding the fate
of the Gracchi and their friends, Memmius, a tribune, was found bold
enough to tell the people that there were men in the Senate who had
taken bribes.

The Senate, conscious of its guilt, was now obliged to exert itself.
War was declared against Jugurtha, and a consul was sent to Africa with
an army. But the consul, too, had his fortune to make, and Micipsa's
treasures were still unexpended. The consul took with him a staff of
young patricians, whose families might be counted on to shield him in
return for a share of the plunder. Jugurtha was as liberal as avarice
could desire, and peace was granted to him on the easy conditions of a
nominal fine, and the surrender of some elephants, which the consul
privately restored.

Public opinion was singularly patient. The massacre six years before
had killed out the liberal leaders, and there was no desire on any side
as yet to renew the struggle with the Senate. But it was possible to
presume too far on popular acquiescence. Memmius came forward again,
and in a passionate speech in the Forum exposed and denounced the
scandalous transaction. The political sky began to blacken again. The
Senate could not face another storm with so bad a cause, and Jugurtha
was sent for to Rome. He came, with contemptuous confidence, loaded
with gold. He could not corrupt Memmius, but he bought easily the rest
of the tribunes. The leaders in the Curia could not quarrel with a
client of such delightful liberality. He had an answer to every
complaint, and a fee to silence the complainer. He would have gone back
in triumph, had he not presumed a little too far. He had another cousin
in the city who he feared might one day give him trouble, so he
employed one of his suite to poison him. The murder was accomplished
successfully; and for this too he might no doubt have secured his
pardon by paying for it; but the price demanded was too high, and
perhaps Jugurtha, villain as he was, came at last to disdain the
wretches whom he might consider fairly to be worse than himself. He had
come over under a safe-conduct, and he was not detained. The Senate
ordered him to leave Italy; and he departed with the scornful phrase on
his lips which has passed into history: "Venal city, and soon to perish
if only it can find a purchaser." [1]

A second army was sent across, to end the scandal. This time the Senate
was in earnest, but the work was less easy than was expected. Army
management had fallen into disorder. In earlier times each Roman
citizen had provided his own equipments at his own expense. To be a
soldier was part of the business of his life, and military training was
an essential feature of his education. The old system had broken down;
the peasantry, from whom the rank and file of the legions had been
recruited, were no longer able to furnish their own arms. Caius
Gracchus had intended that arms should be furnished by the government,
that a special department should be constituted to take charge of the
arsenals and to see to the distribution. But Gracchus was dead, and his
project had died with him. When the legions were enrolled, the men were
ill armed, undrilled, and unprovided--a mere mob, gathered hastily
together and ignorant of the first elements of their duty. With the
officers it was still worse. The subordinate commands fell to young
patricians, carpet knights who went on campaigns with their families of
slaves. The generals, when a movement was to be made, looked for
instruction to their staff. It sometimes happened that a consul waited
for his election to open for the first time a book of military history
or a Greek manual of the art of war.[2]


[Sidenote: B.C 109.] An army so composed and so led was not likely to
prosper. The Numidians were not very formidable enemies, but, after a
month or two of manoeuvring, half the Romans were destroyed and the
remainder were obliged to surrender. About the same time, and from
similar causes, two Roman armies were cut to pieces on the Rhone. While
the great men at Rome were building palaces, inventing new dishes, and
hiring cooks at unheard-of salaries, the barbarians were at the gates
of Italy. The passes of the Alps were open, and if a few tribes of
Gauls had cared to pour through them, the Empire was at their mercy.
Stung with these accumulating disgraces, and now really alarmed, the
Senate sent Caecilius Metellus, the best man that they had and the
consul for the year following to Africa. Metellus was an aristocrat,
and he was advanced in years; but he was a man of honor and integrity.
He understood the danger of further failure; and he looked about for
the ablest soldier that he could find to go with him, irrespective of
his political opinions.

Caius Marius was at this time forty-eight years old. Two thirds of his
life were over, and a name which was to sound throughout the world and
be remembered through all ages had as yet been scarcely heard of beyond
the army and the political clubs in Rome. He was born at Arpinum, a
Latin township, seventy miles from the capital, in the year 157. His
father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plough. He
joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by his punctual
discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was
strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in
the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha was there, and made himself
especially useful to Scipio; he forced his way steadily upward, by his
mere soldierlike qualities, to the rank of military tribune. Rome, too,
had learned to know him, for he was chosen tribune of the people the
year after the murder of Caius Gracchus. Being a self-made man, he
belonged naturally to the popular party. While in office he gave
offence in some way to the men in power, and was called before the
Senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is
likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could
make nothing of their charges against him. He was not bidding at this
time, however, for the support of the mob. He had the integrity and
sense to oppose the largesses of corn; and he forfeited his popularity
by trying to close the public granaries before the practice had passed
into a system. He seemed as if made of a block of hard Roman oak,
gnarled and knotted, but sound in all its fibres. His professional
merit continued to recommend him. At the age of forty he became
praetor, and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark again by the
successful severity by which he cleared the province of banditti. He
was a man neither given himself to talking nor much talked about in the
world; but he was sought for wherever work was to be done, and he had
made himself respected and valued in high circles, for after his return
from the peninsula he had married into one of the most distinguished of
the patrician families.

The Caesars were a branch of the Gens Julia, which claimed descent from
Iulus the son of Aeneas, and thus from the gods. Roman etymologists
could arrive at no conclusion as to the origin of the name. Some
derived it from an exploit on an elephant-hunt in Africa--Caesar
meaning elephant in Moorish; some to the entrance into the world of the
first eminent Caesar by the aid of a surgeon's knife;[3]some from the
color of the eyes prevailing in the family. Be the explanation what it
might, eight generations of Caesars had held prominent positions in the
Commonwealth. They had been consuls, censors, praetors, aediles, and
military tribunes, and in politics, as might be expected from their
position, they had been moderate aristocrats. Like other families they
had been subdivided, and the links connecting them cannot always be
traced. The pedigree of the Dictator goes no further than to his
grandfather, Caius Julius. In the middle of the second century before
Christ, this Caius Julius, being otherwise unknown to history, married
a lady named Marcia, supposed to be descended from Ancus Marcius, the
fourth king of Rome. By her he had three children, Caius Julius, Sextus
Julius, and a daughter named Julia. Caius Julius married Aurelia,
perhaps a member of the consular family of the Cottas, and was the
father of the Great Caesar. Julia became the wife of Caius Marius, a
_mésalliance_ which implied the beginning of a political split in the
Caesar family. The elder branches, like the Cromwells of Hinchinbrook,
remained by their order. The younger attached itself for good or ill to
the party of the people.

Marius by this marriage became a person of social consideration. His
father had been a client of the Metelli; and Caecilius Metellus, who
must have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited
him to go as second in command in the African campaign. He was
moderately successful. Towns were taken; battles were won: Metellus was
incorruptible, and the Numidians sued for peace. But Jugurtha wanted
terms, and the consul demanded unconditional surrender. Jugurtha
withdrew into the desert; the war dragged on; and Marius, perhaps
ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general's want of vigor, began to
think that he could make quicker work of it. The popular party were
stirring again in Rome, the Senate having so notoriously disgraced
itself. There was just irritation that a petty African prince could
defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic
consul had been unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to
be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The
law required that he must be present in person at the election, and he
applied to his commander for leave of absence. Metellus laughed at his
pretensions, and bade him wait another twenty years. Marius, however,
persisted, and was allowed to go. The patricians strained their
resources to defeat him, but he was chosen with enthusiasm. Metellus
was recalled, and the conduct of the Numidian war was assigned to the
new hero of the "populares."

A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the senate-house when the
determination of the people was known. A successful general could not
be disposed of so easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately Marius was
not a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier, and
had a soldier's way of thinking on government and the methods of it.
His first step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman
legions had been no more than the citizens in arms, called for the
moment from their various occupations, to return to them when the
occasion for their services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer
men, better trained and disciplined, could he made more effective and
be more easily handled. He had studied war as a science. He had
perceived that the present weakness need be no more than an accident,
and that there was a latent force in the Roman State which needed only
organization to resume its ascendency. "He enlisted," it was said, "the
worst of the citizens," men, that is to say, who had no occupation and
who became soldiers by profession; and as persons without property
could not have furnished themselves at their own cost, he must have
carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and equipped them at the
expense of the State. His discipline was of the sternest. The
experiment was new; and men of rank who had a taste for war in earnest,
and did not wish that the popular party should have the whole benefit
and credit of the improvements, were willing to go with him; among them
a dissipated young patrician called Lucius Sylla, whose name also was
destined to be memorable.

By these methods and out of these materials an army was formed such as
no Roman general had hitherto led. It performed extraordinary marches,
carried its water-supplies with it in skins, and followed the enemy
across sandy deserts hitherto found impassable. In less than two years
the war was over. The Moors to whom Jugurtha had fled surrendered him
to Sylla, and he was brought in chains to Rome, where he finished his
life in a dungeon.

So ended a curious episode in Roman history, where it holds a place
beyond its intrinsic importance, from the light which it throws on the
character of the Senate and on the practical working of the
institutions which the Gracchi had perished in unsuccessfully
attempting to reform.

[1] "Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem
invenenit."--Sallust,
    _De Bello Jugurthino_, c. 35. Livy's account of the business,
    however, differs from Sallust's, and the expression is perhaps not
    authentic.

[2] "At ego scio, Quirites, qui, postquam consules facti sunt, acta
    majorum, et Graecorum militaria praecepta legere coeperint. Homines
    praeposteri!"--Speech of Marius, Sallust, _Jugurtha_, 85.

[3] "Caesus ab utero matris."




CHAPTER V.


The Jugurthine war ended in the year 106 B.C. At the same Arpinum which
had produced Marius another actor in the approaching drama was in that
year ushered into the world, Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Ciceros had
made their names, and perhaps their fortunes, by their skill in raising
_cicer_, or vetches. The present representative of the family was a
country gentleman in good circumstances given to literature, residing
habitually at his estate on the Liris and paying occasional visits to
Rome. In that household was born Rome's most eloquent master of the art
of using words, who was to carry that art as far, and to do as much
with it, as any man who has ever appeared on the world's stage.

Rome, however, was for the present in the face of enemies who had to be
encountered with more material weapons. Marius had formed an army
barely in time to save Italy from being totally overwhelmed. A vast
migratory wave of population had been set in motion behind the Rhine
and the Danube. The German forests were uncultivated. The hunting and
pasture grounds were too strait for the numbers crowded into them, and
two enormous hordes were rolling westward and southward in search of
some new abiding-place. The Teutons came from the Baltic down across
the Rhine into Luxemburg. The Cimbri crossed the Danube near its
sources into Illyria. Both Teutons and Cimbri were Germans, and both
were making for Gaul by different routes. The Celts of Gaul had had
their day. In past generations they had held the German invaders at
bay, and had even followed them into their own territories. But they
had split among themselves. They no longer offered a common front to
the enemy. They were ceasing to be able to maintain their own
independence, and the question of the future was whether Gaul was to be
the prey of Germany or to be a province of Rome.

Events appeared already to have decided. The invasion of the Teutons
and the Cimbri was like the pouring in of two great rivers. Each
division consisted of hundreds of thousands. They travelled with their
wives and children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians and
with the modern South African Dutch, being at once their conveyance and
their home. Gray-haired priestesses tramped along among them,
barefooted, in white linen dresses, the knife at their girdle; northern
Iphigenias, sacrificing prisoners as they were taken to the gods of
Valhalla. On they swept, eating up the country, and the people flying
before them. In 113 B.C. the skirts of the Cimbri had encountered a
small Roman force near Trieste, and destroyed it. Four years later
another attempt was made to stop them, but the Roman army was beaten
and its camp taken. The Cimbrian host did not, however, turn at that
time upon Italy. Their aim was the south of France. They made their way
through the Alps into Switzerland, where the Helvetii joined them, and
the united mass rolled over the Jura and down the bank of the Rhone.
Roused at last into exertion, the Senate sent into Gaul the largest
force which the Romans had ever brought into the field. They met the
Cimbri at Orange, and were simply annihilated. Eighty thousand Romans
and forty thousand camp-followers were said to have fallen. The numbers
in such cases are generally exaggerated, but the extravagance of the
report is a witness to the greatness of the overthrow. The Romans had
received a worse blow than at Cannae. They were brave enough, but they
were commanded by persons whose recommendations for command were birth
or fortune; "preposterous men," as Marius termed them, who had waited
for their appointment to open the military manuals.

Had the Cimbri chosen at this moment to recross the Alps into Italy,
they had only to go and take possession, and Alaric would have been
antedated by five centuries. In great danger it was the Senate's
business to suspend the constitution. The constitution was set aside
now, but it was set aside by the people themselves, not by the Senate.
One man only could save the country, and that man was Marius. His
consulship was over, and custom forbade his re-election. The Senate
might have appointed him dictator, but would not. The people, custom or
no custom, chose him consul a second time--a significant acknowledgment
that the Empire, which had been won by the sword, must be held by the
sword, and that the sword itself must be held by the hand that was best
fitted to use it. Marius first triumphed for his African victory, and,
as an intimation to the Senate that the power for the moment was his
and not theirs, he entered the Curia in his triumphal dress. He then
prepared for the barbarians who, to the alarmed imagination of the
city, were already knocking at its gates. Time was the important
element in the matter. Had the Cimbri come at once after their victory
at Orange, Italy had been theirs. But they did not come. With the
unguided movements of some wild force of nature they swerved away
through Aquitaine to the Pyrenees. They swept across the mountains into
Spain. Thence, turning north, they passed up the Atlantic coast and
round to the Seine, the Gauls flying before them; thence on to the
Rhine, where the vast body of the Teutons joined them and fresh
detachments of the Helvetii. It was as if some vast tide-wave had
surged over the country and rolled through it, searching out the
easiest passages. At length, in two divisions, the invaders moved
definitely toward Italy, the Cimbri following their old tracks by the
eastern Alps toward Aquileia and the Adriatic, the Teutons passing down
through Provence and making for the road along the Mediterranean. Two
years had been consumed in these wanderings, and Marius was by this
time ready for them. The Senate had dropped the reins, and no longer
governed or misgoverned; the popular party, represented by the army,
was supreme. Marius was continued in office, and was a fourth time
consul. He had completed his military reforms, and the army was now a
professional service, with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were
attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were thenceforward
to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as much as with sword and
javelin, and the soldiers learnt the use of tools as well as arms.
Moral discipline was not forgotten. The foulest of human vices was
growing fashionable in high society in the capital. It was not allowed
to make its way into the army. An officer in one of the legions, a near
relative of Marius, made filthy overtures to one of his men. The man
replied with a thrust of his sword, and Marius publicly thanked and
decorated him.

The effect of the change was like enchantment. The delay of the Germans
made it unnecessary to wait for them in Italy. Leaving Catulus, his
colleague in the consulship, to check the Cimbri in Venetia, Marius
went himself, taking Sylla with him, into the south of France. As the
barbarian host came on, he occupied a fortified camp near Aix. He
allowed the enormous procession to roll past him in their wagons toward
the Alps. Then, following cautiously, he watched his opportunity to
fall on them. The Teutons were brave, but they had no longer mere
legionaries to fight with, but a powerful machine, and the entire mass
of them, men, women, and children, in numbers which however uncertain
were rather those of a nation than an army, were swept out of existence.

The Teutons were destroyed on the 20th of July, 102. In the year
following the same fate overtook their comrades. The Cimbri had forced
the passes through the mountains. They had beaten the unscientific
patrician Catulus, and had driven him back on the Po. But Marius came
to his rescue. The Cimbri were cut to pieces near Mantua, in the summer
of 101, and Italy was saved.

The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Roman history. The legions
were no longer the levy of the citizens in arms, who were themselves
the State for which they fought. The legionaries were citizens still.
They had votes, and they used them; but they were professional soldiers
with the modes of thought which belong to soldiers, and beside the
power of the hustings was now the power of the sword. The constitution
remained to appearance intact, and means were devised sufficient to
encounter, it might be supposed, the new danger. Standing armies were
prohibited in Italy. Victorious generals returning from campaigns
abroad were required to disband their legions on entering the sacred
soil. But the materials of these legions remained a distinct order from
the rest of the population, capable of instant combination, and in
combination irresistible save by opposing combinations of the same
kind. The Senate might continue to debate, the Comitia might elect the
annual magistrates. The established institutions preserved the form and
something of the reality of power in a people governed so much by habit
as the Romans. There is a long twilight between the time when a god is
first suspected to be an idol and his final overthrow. But the
aristocracy had made the first inroad on the constitution by
interfering at the elections with their armed followers and killing
their antagonists. The example once set could not fail to be repeated,
and the rule of an organized force was becoming the only possible
protection against the rule of mobs, patrician or plebeian.

The danger from the Germans was no sooner gone than political anarchy
broke loose again. Marius, the man of the people, was the saviour of
his country. He was made consul a fifth time and a sixth. The party
which had given him his command shared, of course, in his pre-eminence.
The elections could be no longer interfered with or the voters
intimidated. The public offices were filled with the most violent
agitators, who believed that the time had come to revenge the Gracchi
and carry out the democratic revolution, to establish the ideal
Republic and the direct rule of the citizen assembly. This, too, was a
chimera. If the Roman Senate could not govern, far less could the Roman
mob govern. Marius stood aside and let the voices rage. He could not be
expected to support a system which had brought the country so near to
ruin. He had no belief in the visions of the demagogues, but the time
was not ripe to make an end of it all. Had he tried, the army would not
have gone with him, so he sat still till faction had done its work. The
popular heroes of the hour were the tribune Saturninus and the praetor
Glaucia. They carried corn laws and land laws--whatever laws they
pleased to propose. The administration remaining with the Senate, they
carried a vote that every senator should take an oath to execute their
laws under penalty of fine and expulsion. Marius did not like it, and
even opposed it, but let it pass at last. The senators, cowed and
humiliated, consented to take the oath, all but one, Marius's old
friend and commander in Africa, Caecilius Metellus. No stain had ever
rested on the name of Metellus. He had accepted no bribes. He had half
beaten Jugurtha, for Marius to finish; and Marius himself stood in a
semi-feudal relation to him. It was unlucky for the democrats that they
had found so honorable an opponent. Metellus persisted in refusal.
Saturninus sent a guard to the senate-house, dragged him out, and
expelled him from the city. Aristocrats and their partisans were
hustled and killed in the street. The patricians had spilt the first
blood in the massacre in 121: now it was the turn of the mob.

Marius was an indifferent politician. He perceived as well as any one
that violence must not go on, but he hesitated to put it down. He knew
that the aristocracy feared and hated him. Between them and the
people's consul no alliance was possible. He did not care to alienate
his friends, and there may have been other difficulties which we do not
know in his way. The army itself was perhaps divided. On the popular
side there were two parties: a moderate one, represented by Memmius,
who, as tribune, had impeached the senators for the Jugurthine
infamies; the other, the advanced radicals, led by Glaucia and
Saturninus. Memmius and Glaucia were both candidates for the
consulship; and as Memmius was likely to succeed, he was murdered.

Revolutions proceed like the acts of a drama, and each act is divided
into scenes which follow one another with singular uniformity. Ruling
powers make themselves hated by tyranny and incapacity. An opposition
is formed against them, composed of all sorts, lovers of order and
lovers of disorder, reasonable men and fanatics, business-like men and
men of theory. The opposition succeeds; the government is overthrown;
the victors divide into a moderate party and an advanced party. The
advanced party go to the front, till they discredit themselves with
crime or folly. The wheel has then gone round, and the reaction sets
in. The murder of Memmius alienated fatally the respectable citizens.
Saturninus and Glaucia were declared public enemies. They seized the
Capitol, and blockaded it. Patrician Rome turned out and besieged them,
and Marius had to interfere. The demagogues and their friends
surrendered, and were confined in the Curia Hostilia till they could be
tried. The noble lords could not allow such detested enemies the chance
of an acquittal. To them a radical was a foe of mankind, to be hunted
down like a wolf, when a chance was offered to destroy him. By the law
of Caius Gracchus no citizen could be put to death without a trial. The
persons of Saturninus and Glaucia were doubly sacred, for one was
tribune and the other praetor. But the patricians were satisfied that
they deserved to be executed, and in such a frame of mind it seemed but
virtue to execute them. They tore off the roof of the senate house, and
pelted the miserable wretches to death with stones and tiles.




CHAPTER VI.


Not far from the scene of the murder of Glaucia and Saturninus there
was lying at this time in his cradle, or carried about in his nurse's
arms, a child who, in his manhood, was to hold an inquiry into this
business, and to bring one of the perpetrators to answer for himself.
On the 12th of the preceding July, B.C. 100,[1] was born into the world
Caius Julius Caesar, the only son of Caius Julius and Aurelia, and
nephew of the then Consul Marius. His father had been praetor, but had
held no higher office. Aurelia was a strict stately lady of the old
school, uninfected by the lately imported fashions. She, or her
husband, or both of them, were rich; but the habits of the household
were simple and severe, and the connection with Marius indicates the
political opinions which prevailed in the family.

No anecdotes are preserved, of Caesar's childhood. He was taught Greek
by Antonius Gnipho, an educated Gaul from the north of Italy. He wrote
a poem when a boy in honor of Hercules. He composed a tragedy on the
story of Oedipus. His passionate attachment to Aurelia in after-years
shows that between mother and child the relations had been affectionate
and happy. But there is nothing to indicate that there was any early
precocity of talent; and leaving Caesar to his grammar and his
exercises, we will proceed with the occurrences which he must have
heard talked of in his father's house, or seen with his eyes when he
began to open them. The society there was probably composed of his
uncle's friends; soldiers and statesmen who had no sympathy with mobs,
but detested the selfish and dangerous system on which the Senate had
carried on the government, and dreaded its consequences. Above the
tumults of the factions in the Capitol a cry rising into shrillness
began to be heard from Italy. Caius Gracchus had wished to extend the
Roman franchise to the Italian States, and the suggestion had cost him
his popularity and his life. The Italian provinces had furnished their
share of the armies which had beaten Jugurtha, and had destroyed the
German invaders. They now demanded that they should have the position
which Gracchus designed for them: that they should be allowed to
legislate for themselves, and no longer lie at the mercy of others, who
neither understood their necessities nor cared for their interests.
They had no friends in the city, save a few far-sighted statesmen.
Senate and mob had at least one point of agreement, that the spoils of
the Empire should be fought for among themselves; and at the first
mention of the invasion of their monopoly a law was passed making the
very agitation of the subject punishable by death.

Political convulsions work in a groove, the direction of which varies
little in any age or country. Institutions once sufficient and salutary
become unadapted to a change of circumstances. The traditionary holders
of power see their interests threatened. They are jealous of
innovations. They look on agitators for reform as felonious persons
desiring to appropriate what does not belong to them. The complaining
parties are conscious of suffering and rush blindly on the superficial
causes of their immediate distress. The existing authority is their
enemy; and their one remedy is a change in the system of government.
They imagine that they see what the change should be, that they
comprehend what they are doing, and know where they intend to arrive.
They do not perceive that the visible disorders are no more than
symptoms which no measures, repressive or revolutionary, can do more
than palliate. The wave advances and the wave recedes. Neither party in
the struggle can lift itself far enough above the passions of the
moment to study the drift of the general current. Each is violent, each
is one-sided, and each makes the most and the worst of the sins of its
opponents. The one idea of the aggressors is to grasp all that they can
reach. The one idea of the conservatives is to part with nothing,
pretending that the stability of the State depends on adherence to the
principles which have placed them in the position which they hold; and
as various interests are threatened, and as various necessities arise,
those who are one day enemies are frightened the next into unnatural
coalitions, and the next after into more embittered dissensions.

To an indifferent spectator, armed especially with the political
experiences of twenty additional centuries, it seems difficult to
understand how Italy could govern the world. That the world and Italy
besides should continue subject to the population of a single city, of
its limited Latin environs, and of a handful of townships exceptionally
favored, might even then be seen to be plainly impossible. The Italians
were Romans in every point, except in the possession of the franchise.
They spoke the same language; they were subjects of the same dominion.
They were as well educated, they were as wealthy, they were as capable
as the inhabitants of the dominant State. They paid taxes, they fought
in the armies; they were strong; they were less corrupt, politically
and morally, as having fewer temptations and fewer opportunities of
evil; and in their simple country life they approached incomparably
nearer to the old Roman type than the patrician fops in the circus or
the Forum, or the city mob which was fed in idleness on free grants of
corn. When Samnium and Tuscany were conquered, a third of the lands had
been confiscated to the Roman State, under the name of _Ager Publicus_.
Samnite and Etruscan gentlemen had recovered part of it under lease,
much as the descendants of the Irish chiefs held their ancestral
domains as tenants of the Cromwellians. The land law of the Gracchi was
well intended, but it bore hard on many of the leading provincials, who
had seen their estates parcelled out, and their own property, as they
deemed it, taken from them under the land commission. If they were to
be governed by Roman laws, they naturally demanded to be consulted when
the laws were made. They might have been content under a despotism to
which Roman and Italian were subject alike. To be governed under the
forms of a free constitution by men no better than themselves was
naturally intolerable.

[Sidenote: B.C. 95.] [Sidenote: B.C. 91.] The movement from without
united the Romans for the instant in defence of their privileges. The
aristocracy resisted change from instinct; the mob, loudly as they
clamored for their own rights, cared nothing for the rights of others,
and the answer to the petition of the Italians, five years after the
defeat of the Cimbri, was a fierce refusal to permit the discussion of
it. Livius Drusus, one of those unfortunately gifted men who can see
that in a quarrel there is sometimes justice on both sides, made a vain
attempt to secure the provincials a hearing, but he was murdered in his
own house. To be murdered was the usual end of exceptionally
distinguished Romans, in a State where the lives of citizens were
theoretically sacred. His death was the signal for an insurrection,
which began in the mountains of the Abruzzi and spread over the whole
peninsula.

The contrast of character between the two classes of population became
at once uncomfortably evident. The provincials had been the right arm
of the Empire. Rome, a city of rich men with families of slaves, and of
a crowd of impoverished freemen without employment to keep them in
health and strength, could no longer bring into the field a force which
could hold its ground against the gentry and peasants of Samnium. The
Senate enlisted Greeks, Numidians, any one whose services they could
purchase. They had to encounter soldiers who had been trained and
disciplined by Marius, and they were taught by defeat upon defeat that
they had a worse enemy before them than the Germans. Marius himself had
almost withdrawn from public life. He had no heart for the quarrel, and
did not care greatly to exert himself. At the bottom, perhaps, he
thought that the Italians were in the right. The Senate discovered that
they were helpless, and must come to terms if they would escape
destruction. They abandoned the original point of difference, and they
offered to open the franchise to every Italian state south of the Po
which had not taken arms or which returned immediately to its
allegiance. The war had broken out for a definite cause. When the cause
was removed no reason remained for its continuance. The Italians were
closely connected with Rome. Italians were spread over the Roman world
in active business. They had no wish to overthrow the Empire if they
were allowed to share in its management. The greater part of them
accepted the Senate's terms; and only those remained in the field who
had gone to war in the hope of recovering the lost independence which
their ancestors had so long heroically defended.

The panting Senate was thus able to breathe again. The war continued,
but under better auspices. Sound material could now be collected again
for the army. Marius being in the background, the chosen knight of the
aristocracy, Lucius Sylla, whose fame in the Cimbrian war had been only
second to that of his commander's, came at once to the front.

Sylla, or Sulla, as we are now taught to call him, was born in the year
138 B.C. He was a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a
moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank,
lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a
poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of
an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither
obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated
man of fashion. His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person.
He had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple,
with the colors so ill-mixed that his face was compared to a mulberry
sprinkled with flour. Ambition he appeared to have none; and when he
exerted himself to be appointed quaestor to Marius on the African
expedition, Marius was disinclined to take him as having no
recommendation beyond qualifications which the consul of the plebeians
disdained and disliked.

Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Beneath his
constitutional indolence Sylla was by nature a soldier, a statesman, a
diplomatist. He had been too contemptuous of the common objects of
politicians to concern himself with the intrigues of the Forum, but he
had only to exert himself to rise with easy ascendency to the command
of every situation in which he might be placed. He had entered with
military instinct into Marius's reform of the army, and became the most
active and useful of his officers. He endeared himself to the
legionaries by a tolerance of vices which did not interfere with
discipline; and to Sylla's combined adroitness and courage Marius owed
the final capture of Jugurtha.

Whether Marius became jealous of Sylla on this occasion must be decided
by those who, while they have no better information than others as to
the actions of men, possess, or claim to possess, the most intimate
acquaintance with their motives. They again served together, however,
against the Northern invaders, and Sylla a second time lent efficient
help to give Marius a victory. Like Marius, he had no turn for platform
oratory and little interest in election contests and intrigues. For
eight years he kept aloof from politics, and his name and that of his
rival were alike for all that time almost unheard of. He emerged into
special notice only when he was praetor in the year 93 B.C., and when
he characteristically distinguished his term of office by exhibiting a
hundred lions in the arena matched against Numidian archers. There was
no such road to popularity with the Roman multitude. It is possible
that the little Caesar, then a child of seven, may have been among the
spectators, making his small reflections on it all.

[Sidenote: B.C. 120.] In 92 Sylla went as propraetor to Asia, where the
incapacity of the Senate's administration was creating another enemy
likely to be troublesome. Mithridates, "child of the sun," pretending
to a descent from Darius Hystaspes, was king of Pontus, one of the
semi-independent monarchies which had been allowed to stand in Asia
Minor. The coast-line of Pontus extended from Sinope to Trebizond, and
reached inland to the line of mountains where the rivers divide which
flow into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The father of
Mithridates was murdered when he was a child, and for some years he led
a wandering life, meeting adventures which were as wild and perhaps as
imaginary as those of Ulysses. In later life he became the idol of
Eastern imagination, and legend made free with his history; but he was
certainly an extraordinary man. He spoke the unnumbered dialects of the
Asiatic tribes among whom he had travelled. He spoke Greek with ease
and freedom. Placed, as he was, on the margin where the civilizations
of the East and the West were brought in contact, he was at once a
barbarian potentate and an ambitious European politician. He was well
informed of the state of Rome, and saw reason, perhaps, as well he
might, to doubt the durability of its power. At any rate, he was no
sooner fixed on his own throne than he began to annex the territories
of the adjoining princes. He advanced his sea frontier through Armenia
to Batoum, and thence along the coast of Circassia. He occupied the
Greek settlements on the Sea of Azof. He took Kertch and the Crimea,
and with the help of pirates from the Mediterranean he formed a fleet
which gave him complete command of the Black Sea. In Asia Minor no
power but the Roman could venture to quarrel with him. The Romans ought
in prudence to have interfered before Mithridates had grown to so large
a bulk, but money judiciously distributed among the leading politicians
had secured the Senate's connivance; and they opened their eyes at last
only when Mithridates thought it unnecessary to subsidize them further,
and directed his proceedings against Cappadocia, which was immediately
under Roman protection. He invaded the country, killed the prince whom
Rome had recognized, and placed on the throne a child of his own, with
the evident intention of taking Cappadocia for himself.

This was to go too far. Like Jugurtha, he had purchased many friends in
the Senate, who, grateful for past favors and hoping for more,
prevented the adoption of violent measures against him; but they sent a
message to him that he must not have Cappadocia, and Mithridates,
waiting for a better opportunity, thought proper to comply. Of this
message the bearer was Lucius Sylla. He had time to study on the spot
the problem of how to deal with Asia Minor. He accomplished his mission
with his usual adroitness and apparent success, and he returned to Rome
with new honors to finish the Social war.

It was no easy work. The Samnites were tough and determined. For two
years they continued to struggle, and the contest was not yet over when
news came from the East appalling as the threatened Cimbrian invasion,
which brought both parties to consent to suspend their differences by
mutual concessions.

[1] I follow the ordinary date, which has been fixed by the positive
    statement that Caesar was fifty-six when he was killed, the date of
    his death being March, B.C. 44. Mommsen, however, argues plausibly
    for adding another two years to the beginning of Caesar's life, and
    brings him into the world at the time of the battle at Aix.




CHAPTER VII.


Barbarian kings, who found Roman senators ready to take bribes from
them, believed, not unnaturally, that the days of Roman dominion were
numbered. When the news of the Social war reached Mithridates, he
thought it needless to temporize longer, and he stretched out his hand
to seize the prize of the dominion of the East. The Armenians, who were
at his disposition, broke into Cappadocia and again overthrew the
government, which was in dependence upon Rome. Mithridates himself
invaded Bithynia, and replied to the remonstrances of the Roman
authorities by a declaration of open war. He called under arms the
whole force of which he could dispose; frightened rumor spoke of it as
amounting to three hundred thousand men. His corsair fleets poured down
through the Dardanelles into the archipelago; and so detested had the
Roman governors made themselves by their extortion and injustice that
not only all the islands, but the provinces on the continent, Ionia,
Lydia, and Caria, rose in revolt. The rebellion was preconcerted and
simultaneous. The Roman residents, merchants, bankers, farmers of the
taxes, they and all their families, were set upon and murdered; a
hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children were said to have
been destroyed in a single day. If we divide by ten, as it is generally
safe to do with historical round numbers, still beyond doubt the signal
had been given in an appalling massacre to abolish out of Asia the
Roman name and power. Swift as a thunderbolt Mithridates himself
crossed the Bosphorus, and the next news that reached Rome was that
northern Greece had risen also and was throwing itself into the arms of
its deliverers.

The defeat at Cannae had been received with dignified calm. Patricians
and plebeians forgot their quarrels and thought only how to meet their
common foe. The massacre in Asia and the invasion of Mithridates let
loose a tempest of political frenzy. Never was indignation more
deserved. The Senate had made no preparation. Such resources as they
could command had been wasted in the wars with the Italians. They had
no fleet, they had no armies available; nor, while the civil war was
raging, could they raise an army. The garrisons in Greece were
scattered or shut in within their lines and unable to move. The
treasury was empty. Individuals were enormously rich and the State was
bankrupt. Thousands of families had lost brothers, cousins, or friends
in the massacre, and the manifest cause of the disaster was the
inefficiency and worthlessness of the ruling classes. In Africa, in
Gaul, in Italy, and now in Asia it had been the same story. The
interests of the Commonwealth had been sacrificed to fill the purses of
the few. Dominion, wealth, honors, all that had been won by the hardy
virtues of earlier generations, seemed about to be engulfed forever.

In their panic the Senate turned to Sylla, whom they had made consul.
An imperfect peace was patched up with the Italians. Sylla was bidden
to save the Republic and to prepare in haste for Greece. But Sylla was
a bitter aristocrat, the very incarnation of the oligarchy, who were
responsible for every disaster which had happened. The Senate had taken
bribes from Jugurtha. The Senate had chosen the commanders whose
blunders had thrown open the Alps to the Germans; and it was only
because the people had snatched the power out of their hands and had
trusted it to one of themselves that Italy had not been in flames.
Again the oligarchy had recovered the administration, and again by
following the old courses they had brought on this new catastrophe.
They might have checked Mithridates while there was time. They had
preferred to accept his money and look on. The people naturally thought
that no successes could be looked for under such guidance, and that
even were Sylla to be victorious, nothing was to be expected but the
continuance of the same accursed system. Marius was the man. Marius
after his sixth consulship had travelled in the East, and understood it
as well as Sylla. Not Sylla but Marius must now go against Mithridates.
Too late the democratic leaders repented of their folly in encouraging
the Senate to refuse the franchise to the Italians. The Italians, they
began to perceive, would be their surest political allies. Caius
Gracchus had been right after all. The Roman democracy must make haste
to offer the Italians more than all which the Senate was ready to
concede to them. Together they could make an end of misrule and place
Marius once more at their head.

Much of this was perhaps the scheming passion of revolution; much of it
was legitimate indignation, penitent for its errors and anxious to
atone for them. Marius had his personal grievances. The aristocrats
were stealing from him even his military reputation, and claiming for
Sylla the capture of Jugurtha. He was willing, perhaps anxious, to take
the Eastern command. Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the Senate and
the most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people in the
excitement. Rufus was chosen tribune, and at once proposed to
enfranchise the remainder of Italy. He denounced the oligarchy. He
insisted that the Senate must be purged of its corrupt members and
better men be introduced, that the people must depose Sylla, and that
Marius must take his place. The Empire was tottering, and the mob and
its leaders were choosing an ill moment for a revolution. The tribune
carried the assembly along with him. There were fights again in the
Forum, the young nobles with their gangs once more breaking up the
Comitia and driving the people from the voting-places. The voting,
notwithstanding, was got through as Sulpicius Rufus recommended, and
Sylla, so far as the assembly could do it, was superseded. But Sylla
was not so easily got rid of. It was no time for nice considerations.
He had formed an army in Campania out of the legions which had served
against the Italians. He had made his soldiers devoted to him. They
were ready to go anywhere and do anything which Sylla bade them. After
so many murders and so many commotions, the constitution had lost its
sacred character; a popular assembly was, of all conceivable bodies,
the least fit to govern an empire; and in Sylla's eyes the Senate,
whatever its deficiencies, was the only possible sovereign of Rome. The
people were a rabble, and their voices the clamor of fools, who must be
taught to know their masters. His reply to Sulpicius and to the vote
for his recall was to march on the city. He led his troops within the
circle which no legionary in arms was allowed to enter, and he lighted
his watch-fires in the Forum itself. The people resisted; Sulpicius was
killed; Marius, the saviour of his country, had to fly for his life,
pursued by assassins, with a price set upon his head. Twelve of the
prominent popular leaders were immediately executed without trial, and
in hot haste swift decisive measures were taken which permanently, as
Sylla hoped, or if not permanently at least for the moment, would lame
the limbs of the democracy. The Senate, being below its numbers, was
hastily filled up from the patrician families. The arrangements of the
Comitia were readjusted to restore to wealth a decisive preponderance
in the election of the magistrates. The tribunes of the people were
stripped of half their power. Their veto was left to them, but the
right of initiation was taken away, and no law or measure of any kind
was thenceforth to be submitted to the popular assembly till it had
been considered in the Curia and had received the Senate's sanction.

Thus the snake was scotched, and it might be hoped would die of its
wounds. Sulpicius and his brother demagogues were dead. Marius was
exiled. Time pressed, and Sylla could not wait to see his reforms in
operation. Signs became visible before he went that the crisis would
not pass off so easily. Fresh consuls had to be elected. The changes in
the method of voting were intended to secure the return of the Senate's
candidates, and one of the consuls chosen, Cnaeus Octavius, was a man
on whom Sylla could rely. His colleague, Lucius Cinna, though elected
under the pressure of the legions, was of more doubtful temper. But
Cinna was a patrician, though given to popular sentiments. Sylla was
impatient to be gone; more important work was waiting for him than
composing factions in Rome. He contented himself with obliging the new
consuls to take an oath to maintain the constitution in the shape in
which he left it, and he sailed from Brindisi in the winter of B.C. 88.

The campaign of Sylla in the East does not fall to be described in this
place. He was a second Coriolanus, a proud, imperious aristocrat,
contemptuous, above all men living, of popular rights; but he was the
first soldier of his age; he was himself, though he did not know it, an
impersonation of the change which was passing over the Roman character.
He took with him at most 30,000 men. He had no fleet. Had the corsair
squadrons of Mithridates been on the alert, they might have destroyed
him on his passage. Events at Rome left him almost immediately without
support from Italy. He was impeached; he was summoned back. His troops
were forbidden to obey him, and a democratic commander was sent out to
supersede him. The army stood by their favorite commander. Sylla
disregarded his orders from home. He found men and money as he could.
He supported himself out of the countries which he occupied, without
resources save in his own skill and in the fidelity and excellence of
his legions. He defeated Mithridates, he drove him back out of Greece
and pursued him into Asia. The interests of his party demanded his
presence at Rome; the interests of the State required that he should
not leave his work in the East unfinished, and he stood to it through
four hard years till he brought Mithridates to sue for peace upon his
knees. He had not the means to complete the conquest or completely to
avenge the massacre with which the Prince of Pontus had commenced the
war. He left Mithridates still in possession of his hereditary kingdom,
but he left him bound, so far as treaties could bind so ambitious a
spirit, to remain thenceforward within his own frontiers. He recovered
Greece and the islands, and the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. He
extorted an indemnity of five millions, and executed many of the
wretches who had been active in the murders. He raised a fleet in
Egypt, with which he drove the pirates out of the archipelago back into
their own waters. He restored the shattered prestige of Roman
authority, and he won for himself a reputation which his later
cruelties might stain but could not efface.

The merit of Sylla shows in more striking colors when we look to what
was passing, during these four years of his absence, in the heart of
the Empire. He was no sooner out of Italy than the democratic party
rose, with Cinna at their head, to demand the restoration of the old
constitution. Cinna had been sworn to maintain Sylla's reforms, but no
oath could be held binding which was extorted at the sword's point. A
fresh Sulpicius was found in Carbo, a popular tribune. A more valuable
supporter was found in Quintus Sertorius, a soldier of fortune, but a
man of real gifts, and even of genius. Disregarding the new obligation
to obtain the previous consent of the Senate, Cinna called the assembly
together to repeal the acts which Sylla had forced on them. Sylla, it
is to be remembered, had as yet won no victories, nor was expected to
win victories. He was the favorite of the Senate, and the Senate had
become a byword for incapacity and failure. Again, as so many times
before, the supremacy of the aristocrats had been accompanied with
dishonor abroad and the lawless murder of political adversaries at
home. No true lover of his country could be expected, in Cinna's
opinion, to sit quiet under a tyranny which had robbed the people of
their hereditary liberties.

The patricians took up the challenge. Octavius, the other consul, came
with an armed force into the Forum, and ordered the assembly to
disperse. The crowd was unusually great. The country voters had come in
large numbers to stand up for their rights. They did not obey, They
were not called on to obey. But because they refused to disperse they
were set upon with deliberate fury, and were hewn down in heaps where
they stood. No accurate register was, of course, taken of the numbers
killed; but the intention of the patricians was to make a bloody
example, and such a scene of slaughter had never been witnessed in Rome
since the first stone of the city was laid. It was an act of savage,
ruthless ferocity, certain to be followed with a retribution as sharp
and as indiscriminating. Men are not permitted to deal with their
fellow-creatures in these methods. Cinna and the tribunes fled, but
fled only to be received with open arms by the Italians. The wounds of
the Social war were scarcely cicatrized, and the peace had left the
allies imperfectly satisfied. Their dispersed armies gathered again
about Cinna and Sertorius. Old Marius, who had been hunted through
marsh and forest, and had been hiding with difficulty in Africa, came
back at the news that Italy had risen again; and six thousand of his
veterans flocked to him at the sound of his name. The Senate issued
proclamations. The limitations on the Italian franchise left by Sylla
were abandoned. Every privilege which had been asked for was conceded.
It was too late. Concessions made in fear might be withdrawn on the
return of safety. Marius and Cinna joined their forces. The few troops
in the pay of the Senate deserted to them. They appeared together at
the gate's of the city, and Rome capitulated.

There was a bloody score to be wiped out. There would have been neither
cruelty nor injustice in the most severe inquiry into the massacre in
the Forum, and the most exemplary punishment of Octavius and his
companions. But the blood of the people was up, and they had suffered
too deeply to wait for the tardy processes of law. They had not been
the aggressors. They had assembled lawfully, to assert their
constitutional rights; they had been cut in pieces as if they had been
insurgent slaves, and the assassins were not individuals, but a
political party in the State.

Marius bears the chief blame for the scenes which followed. Undoubtedly
he was in no pleasant humor. A price had been set on his head, his
house had been destroyed, his property had been confiscated, he himself
had been chased like a wild beast, and he had not deserved such
treatment. He had saved Italy when but for him it would have been
wasted by the swords of the Germans. His power had afterward been
absolute, but he had not abused it for party purposes. The Senate had
no reason to complain of him. He had touched none of their privileges,
incapable and dishonest as he knew them to be. His crime in their eyes
had been his eminence. They had now shown themselves as cruel as they
were worthless; and if public justice was disposed to make an end of
them, he saw no cause for interference.

Thus the familiar story repeated itself; wrong was punished by wrong,
and another item was entered on the bloody account which was being
scored up year after year. The noble lords and their friends had killed
the people in the Forum. They were killed in turn by the soldiers of
Marius. Fifty senators perished; not those who were specially guilty,
but those who were most politically marked as patrician leaders. With
them fell a thousand equites, commoners of fortune, who had thrown in
their lot with the aristocracy. From retaliatory political revenge the
transition was easy to pillage and wholesale murder, and for many days
the wretched city was made a prey to robbers and cutthroats.

So ended the year 87, the darkest and bloodiest which the guilty city
had yet experienced. Marius and Cinna were chosen consuls for the year
ensuing, and a witch's prophecy was fulfilled that Marius should have a
seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun was
already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a fortnight
after his inauguration, and he died in his bed on the 13th of January,
at the age of seventy-one.

"The mother of the Gracchi," said Mirabeau, "cast the dust of her
murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Caius Marius." The
Gracchi were perhaps not forgotten in the retribution; but the crime
which had been revenged by Marius was the massacre in the Forum by
Octavius and his friends. The aristocracy found no mercy, because they
had shown no mercy. They had been guilty of the most wantonly wicked
cruelty which the Roman annals had yet recorded. They were not
defending their country against a national danger. They were engaged in
what has been called in later years "saving society;" that is to say,
in saving their own privileges, their opportunities for plunder, their
palaces, their estates, and their game-preserves. They had treated the
people as if they were so many cattle grown troublesome to their
masters, and the cattle were human beings with rights as real as their
own.

The democratic party were now masters of the situation, and so
continued for almost four years. Cinna succeeded to the consulship term
after term, nominating himself and his colleagues. The franchise was
given to the Italians without reserve or qualification. Northern Italy
was still excluded, being not called Italy, but Cisalpine Gaul. South
of the Po distinctions of citizenship ceased to exist. The constitution
became a rehearsal of the Empire, a democracy controlled and guided by
a popular dictator. The aristocrats who had escaped massacre fled to
Sylla in Asia, and for a brief interval Rome drew its breath in peace.




CHAPTER VIII.


Revolutionary periods are painted in history in colors so dark that the
reader wonders how, amidst such scenes, peaceful human beings could
continue to exist. He forgets that the historian describes only the
abnormal incidents which broke the current of ordinary life, and that
between the spasms of violence there were long quiet intervals when the
ordinary occupations of men went on as usual. Cinna's continuous
consulship was uncomfortable to the upper classes, but the daily
business of a great city pursued its beaten way. Tradesmen and
merchants made money, and lawyers pleaded, and priests prayed in the
temples, and "celebrated" on festival and holy day. And now for the
first time we catch a personal view of young Julius Caesar. He was
growing up, in his father's house, a tall, slight, handsome youth, with
dark piercing eyes,[1] a sallow complexion, large nose, lips full,
features refined and intellectual, neck sinewy and thick beyond what
might have been expected from the generally slender figure. He was
particular about his appearance, used the bath frequently, and attended
carefully to his hair. His dress was arranged with studied negligence,
and he had a loose mode of fastening his girdle so peculiar as to catch
the eye.

It may be supposed that he had witnessed Sylla's coming to Rome, the
camp-fires in the Forum, the Octavian massacre, the return of his uncle
and Cinna, and the bloody triumph of the party to which his father
belonged. He was just at the age when such scenes make an indelible
impression; and the connection of his family with Marius suggests
easily the persons whom he must have most often seen, and the
conversation to which he must have listened at his father's table. His
most intimate companions were the younger Marius, the adopted son of
his uncle; and, singularly enough, the two Ciceros, Marcus and his
brother Quintus, who had been sent by their father to be educated at
Rome. The connection of Marius with Arpinum was perhaps the origin of
the intimacy. The great man may have heard of his fellow-townsman's
children being in the city, and have taken notice of them. Certain, at
any rate, it is that these boys grew up together on terms of close
familiarity.[2]

Marius had observed his nephew, and had marked him for promotion.
During the brief fortnight of his seventh consulship he gave him an
appointment which reminds us of the boy-bishops of the middle ages. He
made him _flamen dialis_, or priest of Jupiter, and a member of the
Sacred College, with a handsome income, when he was no more than
fourteen. Two years later, during the rule of Cinna, his father
arranged a marriage for him with a lady of fortune named Cossutia. But
the young Caesar had more ambitious views for himself. His father died
suddenly at Pisa, in B.C. 84; he used his freedom to break off his
engagement, and instead of Cossutia he married Cornelia, the daughter
of no less a person than the all-powerful Cinna himself. If the date
commonly received for Caesar's birth is correct, he was still only in
his seventeenth year. Such connections were rarely formed at an age so
premature; and the doubt is increased by the birth of his daughter,
Julia, in the year following. Be this as it may, a marriage into
Cinna's family connected Caesar more closely than ever with the popular
party. Thus early and thus definitively he committed himself to the
politics of his uncle and his father-in-law; and the comparative quiet
which Rome and Italy enjoyed under Cinna's administration may have left
a permanent impression upon him.

The quiet was not destined to be of long endurance. The time was come
when Sylla was to demand a reckoning for all which had been done in his
absence. No Roman general had deserved better of his country than
Sylla. He had driven Mithridates out of Greece, and had restored Roman
authority in Asia under conditions peculiarly difficult. He had clung
resolutely to his work, while his friends at home were being trampled
upon by the populace whom he despised. He perhaps knew that in subduing
the enemies of the State by his own individual energy he was taking the
surest road to regain his ascendency. His task was finished.
Mithridates was once more a petty Asiatic prince existing upon
sufferance, and Sylla announced his approaching return to Italy. By his
victories he had restored confidence to the aristocracy, and had won
the respect of millions of his countrymen. But the party in power knew
well that if he gained a footing in Italy their day was over, and the
danger to be expected from him was aggravated by his transcendent
services. The Italians feared naturally that they would lose the
liberties which they had won. The popular faction at Rome was combined
and strong, and was led by men of weight and practical ability. No
reconciliation was possible between Cinna and Sylla. They were the
respective chiefs of heaven and hell, and which of the two represented
the higher power and which the lower could be determined only when the
sword had decided between them. In Cinna lay the presumed lawful
authority. He represented the people as organized in the Comitia, and
his colleague in the consulship when the crisis came was the popular
tribune Carbo. Italy was ready with armies; and as leaders there were
young Marius, already with a promise of greatness in him, and
Sertorius, gifted, brilliant, unstained by crime, adored by his troops
as passionately as Sylla himself, and destined to win a place for
himself elsewhere in the Pantheon of Rome's most distinguished men.

Sylla had measured the difficulty of the task which lay before him. But
he had an army behind him accustomed to victory, and recruited by
thousands of exiles who had fled from the rule of the democracy. He had
now a fleet to cover his passage; and he was watching the movements of
his enemies before deciding upon his own, when accident came suddenly
to his help. Cinna had gone down to Brindisi, intending himself to
carry his army into Greece, and to spare Italy the miseries of another
civil war, by fighting it out elsewhere. The expedition was unpopular
with the soldiers, and Cinna was killed in a mutiny. The democracy was
thus left without a head, and the moderate party in the city who
desired peace and compromise used the opportunity to elect two neutral
consuls, Scipio and Norbanus. Sylla, perhaps supposing the change of
feeling to be more complete than it really was, at once opened
communications with them. But his terms were such as he might have
dictated if the popular party were already under his feet. He intended
to re-enter Rome with the glory of his conquests about him, for revenge
and a counter-revolution. The consuls replied with refusing to treat
with a rebel in arms, and with a command to disband his troops.

Sylla had lingered at Athens, collecting paintings and statues and
manuscripts, the rarest treasures on which he could lay his hands, to
decorate his Roman palace. On receiving the consuls' answer, he sailed
for Brindisi in the spring of 83, with forty thousand legionaries and a
large fleet. The south of Italy made no resistance, and he secured a
standing-ground where his friends could rally to him. They came in
rapidly, some for the cause which he represented, some for private
hopes or animosities, some as aspiring military adventurers, seeking
the patronage of the greatest soldier of the age. Among these last came
Cnaeus Pompey, afterward Pompey the Great, son of Pompey, surnamed
Strabo, or the squint-eyed, either from some personal deformity or
because he had trimmed between the two factions and was distrusted and
hated by them both.

Cnaeus Pompey had been born in the same year with Cicero, and was now
twenty-three. He was a high--spirited ornamental youth, with soft
melting eyes, as good as he was beautiful, and so delightful to women
that it was said they all longed to bite him. The Pompeys had been
hardly treated by Cinna. The father had been charged with embezzlement.
The family house in Rome had been confiscated; the old Strabo had been
killed; the son had retired to his family estate in Picenum,[3] where
he was living when Sylla landed. To the young Roman chivalry Sylla was
a hero of romance. Pompey raised a legion out of his friends and
tenants, scattered the few companies that tried to stop him, and rushed
to the side of the deliverer. Others came, like Sergius Catiline or
Oppianicus of Larino,[4] men steeped in crime, stained with murder,
incest, adultery, forgery, and meaning to secure the fruits of their
villanies by well-timed service. They were all welcome, and Sylla was
not particular. His progress was less rapid than it promised to be at
the outset. He easily defeated Norbanus; and Scipio's troops, having an
aristocratic leaven in them, deserted to him. But the Italians,
especially the Samnites, fought most desperately. The war lasted for
more than a year, Sylla slowly advancing. The Roman mob became furious.
They believed their cause betrayed, and were savage from fear and
disappointment. Suspected patricians were murdered: among them fell the
Pontifex Maximus, the venerable Scaevola. At length the contest ended
in a desperate fight under the walls of Rome itself on the 1st of
November, B.C. 82. The battle began at four in the afternoon, and
lasted through the night to the dawn of the following day. The popular
army was at last cut to pieces; a few thousand prisoners were taken,
but they were murdered afterward in cold blood. Young Marius killed
himself, Sertorius fled to Spain, and Sylla and the aristocracy were
masters of Rome and Italy. Such provincial towns as continued to resist
were stormed and given up to pillage, every male inhabitant being put
to the sword. At Norba, in Latium, the desperate citizens fired their
own houses and perished by each other's hands.

Sylla was under no illusions. He understood the problem which he had in
hand. He knew that the aristocracy were detested by nine tenths of the
people; he knew that they deserved to be detested; but they were at
least gentlemen by birth and breeding. The democrats, on the other
hand, were insolent upstarts, who, instead of being grateful for being
allowed to live and work and pay taxes and serve in the army, had dared
to claim a share in the government, had turned against their masters,
and had set their feet upon their necks. The miserable multitude were
least to blame. They were ignorant, and without leaders could be
controlled easily. The guilt and the danger lay with the men of wealth
and intellect, the country gentlemen, the minority of knights and
patricians like Cinna, who had taken the popular side and had deserted
their own order. Their motives mattered not; some might have acted from
foolish enthusiasm, some from personal ambition; but such traitors,
from the Gracchi onward, had caused all the mischief which had happened
to the State. They were determined, they were persevering. No
concessions had satisfied them, and one demand had been a prelude to
another. There was no hope for an end of agitation till every one of
these men had been rooted out, their estates taken from them, and their
families destroyed.

To this remarkable work Sylla addressed himself, unconscious that he
was attempting an impossibility, that opinion could not be controlled
by the sword, and that for every enemy to the oligarchy that he killed
he would create twenty by his cruelty. Like Marius after the Octavian
massacre, he did not attempt to distinguish between degrees of
culpability. Guilt was not the question with him. His object was less
to punish the past than to prevent a recurrence of it, and moderate
opposition was as objectionable as fanaticism and frenzy. He had no
intention of keeping power in his own hands. Personal supremacy might
end with himself, and he intended to create institutions which would
endure, in the form of a close senatorial monopoly. But for his purpose
it would be necessary to remove out of the way every single person
either in Rome or in the provinces who was in a position to offer
active resistance, and therefore for the moment he required complete
freedom of action. The Senate at his direction appointed him dictator,
and in this capacity he became absolute master of the life and property
of every man and woman in Italy. He might be impeached afterward and
his policy reversed, but while his office lasted he could do what he
pleased.

He at once outlawed every magistrate, every public servant of any kind,
civil or municipal, who had held office under the rule of Cinna. Lists
were drawn for him of the persons of wealth and consequence all over
Italy who belonged to the liberal party. He selected agents whom he
could trust, or supposed he could trust, to enter the names for each
district. He selected, for instance, Oppianicus of Larino, who
inscribed individuals whom he had already murdered, and their relations
whose prosecution he feared. It mattered little to Sylla who were
included, if none escaped who were really dangerous to him; and an
order was issued for the slaughter of the entire number, the
confiscation of their property, and the division of it between the
informers and Sylla's friends and soldiers. Private interest was thus
called in to assist political animosity, and to stimulate the zeal for
assassination a reward of £500 was offered for the head of any person
whose name was in the schedule.

It was one of those deliberate acts, carried out with method and order,
which are possible only in countries in an advanced stage of
civilization, and which show how thin is the film spread over human
ferocity by what is called progress and culture. We read in every page
of history of invasions of hostile armies, of towns and villages
destroyed and countries wasted and populations perishing of misery; the
simplest war brings a train of horrors behind it; but we bear them with
comparative equanimity. Personal hatreds are not called out on such
occasions. The actors in them are neither necessarily nor generally
fiends. The grass grows again on the trampled fields. Peace returns,
and we forget and forgive. The coldly ordered massacres of selected
victims in political and spiritual struggles rise in a different order
of feelings, and are remembered through all ages with indignation and
shame. The victims perish as the champions of principles which survive
through the changes of time. They are marked for the sacrifice on
account of their advocacy of a cause which to half mankind is the cause
of humanity. They are the martyrs of history, and the record of
atrocity rises again in immortal witness against the opinions out of
which it rose.

Patricians and plebeians, aristocrats and democrats, have alike stained
their hands with blood in the working out of the problem of politics.
But impartial history declares also that the crimes of the popular
party have in all ages been the lighter in degree, while in themselves
they have more to excuse them; and if the violent acts of
revolutionists have been held up more conspicuously for condemnation,
it has been only because the fate of noblemen and gentlemen has been
more impressive to the imagination than the fate of the peasant or the
artisan. But the endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is
the marvel of human society. When the people complain, said Mirabeau,
the people are always right. The popular cause has been the cause of
the laborer struggling for a right to live and breathe and think as a
man. Aristocracies fight for wealth and power, wealth which they waste
upon luxury, and power which they abuse for their own interests. Yet
the cruelties of Marius were as far exceeded by the cruelties of Sylla
as the insurrection of the beggars of Holland was exceeded by the
bloody tribunal of the Duke of Alva, or as "the horrors of the French
Revolution" were exceeded by the massacre of the Huguenots two hundred
years before, for which the Revolution was the expiatory atonement.

Four thousand seven hundred persons fell in the proscription of Sylla,
all men of education and fortune. The real crime of many of them was
the possession of an estate or a wife which a relative or a neighbor
coveted. The crime alleged against all was the opinion that the people
of Rome and Italy had rights which deserved consideration as well as
the senators and nobles. The liberal party were extinguished in their
own blood. Their estates were partitioned into a hundred and twenty
thousand allotments, which were distributed among Sylla's friends, or
soldiers, or freedmen. The land reform of the Gracchi was mockingly
adopted to create a permanent aristocratic garrison. There were no
trials, there were no pardons. Common report or private information was
at once indictment and evidence, and accusation was in itself
condemnation.

The ground being thus cleared, the Dictator took up again his measures
of political reform. He did not attempt a second time to take the
franchise from the Italians. Romans and Italians he was ready to leave
on the same level, but it was to be a level of impotence. Rome was to
be ruled by the Senate, and as a first step, and to protect the
Senate's dignity, he enfranchised ten thousand slaves who had belonged
to the proscribed gentlemen, and formed them into a senatorial guard.
Before departing for the East he had doubled the Senate's numbers out
of the patrician order. Under Cinna the new members had not claimed
their privilege, and had probably been absent from Italy. They were now
installed in their places, and the power of the censors to revise the
list and remove those who had proved unworthy was taken away. The
senators were thus peers for life, peers in a single chamber which
Sylla meant to make omnipotent. Vacancies were to be supplied as before
from the retiring consuls, praetors, aediles, and quaestors. The form
of a popular constitution would remain, since the road into the council
of State lay through the popular elections. But to guard against
popular favorites finding access to the consulship, a provision was
made that no person who had been a tribune of the people could be
chosen afterward to any other office.

The Senate's power depended on the withdrawal from the assembly of
citizens of the right of original legislation. So long as the citizens
could act immediately at the invitation of either consul or tribune,
they could repeal at their pleasure any arrangement which Sylla might
prescribe. As a matter of course, therefore, he re-enacted the
condition which restricted the initiation of laws to the Senate. The
tribunes still retained their veto, but a penalty was attached to the
abuse of the veto, the Senate being the judge in its own cause, and
possessing a right to depose a tribune.

In the Senate so reconstituted was thus centred a complete restrictive
control over the legislation and the administration. And this was not
all. The senators had been so corrupt in the use of their judicial
functions that Gracchus had disabled them from sitting in the law
courts, and had provided that the judges should be chosen in future
from the equites. The knights had been exceptionally pure in their
office. Cicero challenged his opponents on the trial of Verres[5] to
find a single instance in which an equestrian court could be found to
have given a corrupt verdict during the forty years for which their
privilege survived. But their purity did not save them, nor, alas!
those who were to suffer by a reversion to the old order. The
equestrian courts were abolished: the senatorial courts were
reinstated. It might be hoped that the senators had profited by their
lesson, and for the future would be careful of their reputation.

Changes were made also in the modes of election to office. The College
of Priests had been originally a close corporation, which filled up its
own numbers. Democracy had thrown it open to competition, and given the
choice to the people. Sylla reverted to the old rule. Consuls like
Marius and Cinna, who had the confidence of the people, had been
re-elected year after year, and had been virtual kings. Sylla provided
that ten years must elapse between a first consulship and a second. Nor
was any one to be a consul who was not forty-three years old and had
not passed already through the lower senatorial offices of praetor or
quaestor.

The assembly of the people had been shorn of its legislative powers.
There was no longer, therefore, any excuse for its meeting, save on
special occasions. To leave the tribunes power to call the citizens to
the Forum was to leave them the means of creating inconvenient
agitation. It was ordered, therefore, that the assembly should only
come together at the Senate's invitation. The free grants of corn,
which filled the city with idle vagrants, were abolished. Sylla never
courted popularity, and never shrank from fear of clamor.

The Senate was thus made omnipotent and irresponsible. It had the
appointment of all the governors of the provinces. It was surrounded by
its own body-guard. It had the administration completely in hand. The
members could be tried only by their peers, and were themselves judges
of every other order. No legal force was left anywhere to interfere
with what it might please them to command. A senator was not
necessarily a patrician, nor a patrician a senator. The Senate was,[6]
or was to be as time wore on, a body composed of men of any order who
had secured the suffrages of the people. But as the value of the prize
became so vast, the way to the possession of it was open practically to
those only who had wealth or interest. The elections came to be worked
by organized committees, and except in extraordinary circumstances no
candidate could expect success who had not the Senate's support, or who
had not bought the services of the managers, at a cost within the reach
only of the reckless spendthrift or the speculating millionaire.

What human foresight could do to prevent democracy from regaining the
ascendency, Sylla had thus accomplished. He had destroyed the
opposition; he had reorganized the constitution on the most strictly
conservative lines. He had built the fortress, as he said; it was now
the Senate's part to provide a garrison; and here it was, as Caesar
said afterward, that Sylla had made his great mistake. His arrangements
were ingenious, and many of them excellent; but the narrower the body
to whose care the government was entrusted, the more important became
the question of the composition of this body. The theory of election
implied that they would be the best that the Republic possessed; but
Sylla must have been himself conscious that fact and theory might be
very far from corresponding.

The key of the situation was the army. As before, no troops were to be
maintained in Italy; but beyond the frontiers the provinces were held
by military force, and the only power which could rule the Empire was
the power which the army would obey. It was not for the Senate's sake
that Sylla's troops had followed him from Greece. It was from their
personal devotion to himself. What charm was there in this new
constructed aristocratic oligarchy, that distant legions should defer
to it--more than Sylla's legions had deferred to orders from Cinna and
Carbo? Symptoms of the danger from this quarter were already growing
even under the Dictator's own eyes, and at the height of his authority.
Sertorius had escaped the proscription. After wandering in Africa he
made his way into Spain, where, by his genius as a statesman and a
soldier, he rose into a position to defy the Senate and assert his
independence. He organized the peninsula after the Roman model; he
raised armies, and defeated commander after commander who was sent to
reduce him. He revived in the Spaniards a national enthusiasm for
freedom. The Roman legionaries had their own opinions, and those whose
friends Sylla had murdered preferred Sertorius and liberty to Rome and
an aristocratic Senate. Unconquerable by honorable means, Sertorius was
poisoned at last. But his singular history suggests a doubt whether, if
the Syllan constitution had survived, other Sertoriuses might not have
sprung up in every province, and the Empire of Rome have gone to pieces
like the Macedonian. The one condition of the continuance of the Roman
dominion was the existence of a central authority which the army as a
profession could respect, and the traditionary reverence which attached
to the Roman Senate would scarcely have secured their disinterested
attachment to five hundred elderly rich men who had bought their way
into pre-eminence.

Sylla did not live to see the significance of the Sertorian revolt. He
experienced, however, himself, in a milder form, an explosion of
military sauciness. Young Pompey had been sent, after the occupation of
Rome, to settle Sicily and Africa. He did his work well and rapidly,
and when it was over he received orders from the Senate to dismiss his
troops. An order from Sylla Pompey would have obeyed; but what was the
Senate, that an ambitious brilliant youth with arms in his hands should
send away an army devoted to him and step back into common life? Sylla
himself had to smooth the ruffled plumes of his aspiring follower. He
liked Pompey, he was under obligations to him, and Pompey had not acted
after all in a manner so very unlike his own. He summoned him home, but
he gave him a triumph for his African conquests, and allowed him to
call himself by the title of "_Magnus_," or "_The Great_." Pompey was a
promising soldier, without political ambition, and was worth an effort
to secure. To prevent the risk of a second act of insubordination,
Sylla made personal arrangements to attach Pompey directly to himself.
He had a step-daughter, named Aemilia. She was already married, and was
pregnant. Pompey too was married to Antistia, a lady of good family;
but domestic ties were not allowed to stand in the way of higher
objects. Nor did it matter that Antistia's father had been murdered by
the Roman populace for taking Sylla's side, or that her mother had gone
mad and destroyed herself, on her husband's horrible death. Late
Republican Rome was not troubled with sentiment. Sylla invited Pompey
to divorce Antistia and marry Aemilia. Pompey complied. Antistia was
sent away. Aemilia was divorced from her husband, and was brought into
Pompey's house, where she immediately died.

In another young man of high rank, whom Sylla attempted to attach to
himself by similar means, he found less complaisance. Caesar was now
eighteen, his daughter Julia having been lately born. He had seen his
party ruined, his father-in-law and young Marius killed, and his
nearest friends dispersed or murdered. He had himself for a time
escaped proscription; but the Dictator had his eye on him, and Sylla
had seen something in "the youth with the loose girdle" which struck
him as remarkable. Closely connected though Caesar was both with Cinna
and Marius, Sylla did not wish to kill him if he could help it. There
was a cool calculation in his cruelties. The existing generation of
democrats was incurable, but he knew that the stability of the new
constitution must depend on his being able to conciliate the intellect
and energy of the next. Making a favor perhaps of his clemency, he
proposed to Caesar to break with his liberal associates, divorce
Cinna's daughter, and take such a wife as he would himself provide. If
Pompey had complied, who had made a position of his own, much more
might it be expected that Caesar would comply. Yet Caesar answered with
a distinct and unhesitating refusal. The terrible Sylla, in the fulness
of his strength, after desolating half the homes in Italy, after
revolutionizing all Roman society, from the peasant's cottage in the
Apennines to the senate-house itself, was defied by a mere boy!
Throughout his career Caesar displayed always a singular indifference
to life. He had no sentimental passion about him, no Byronic
mock-heroics. He had not much belief either in God or the gods. On all
such questions he observed from first to last a profound silence. But
one conviction he had. He intended, if he was to live at all, to live
master of himself in matters which belonged to himself. Sylla might
kill him if he so pleased. It was better to die than to put away a wife
who was the mother of his child, and to marry some other woman at a
dictator's bidding. Life on such terms was not worth keeping.

So proud a bearing may have commanded Sylla's admiration, but it taught
him, also, that a young man capable of assuming an attitude so bold
might be dangerous to the rickety institutions which he had constructed
so carefully. He tried coercion. He deprived Caesar of his priesthood.
He took his wife's dowry from him, and confiscated the estate which he
had inherited from his father. When this produced no effect, the
rebellious youth was made over to the assassins, and a price was set
upon his head. He fled into concealment. He was discovered once, and
escaped only by bribing Sylla's satellites. His fate would soon have
overtaken him, but he had powerful relations, whom Sylla did not care
to offend. Aurelius Cotta, who was perhaps his mother's brother,
Mamercus Aemilius, a distinguished patrician, and singularly also the
College of the Vestal Virgins, interceded for his pardon. The Dictator
consented at last, but with prophetic reluctance. "Take him," he said
at length, "since you will have it so--but I would have you know that
the youth for whom you are so earnest will one day overthrow the
aristocracy, for whom you and I have fought so hardly; in this young
Caesar there are many Mariuses." [7] Caesar, not trusting too much to
Sylla's forbearance, at once left Italy, and joined the army in Asia.
The little party of young men who had grown up together now separated,
to meet in the future on altered terms. Caesar held to his inherited
convictions, remaining constant through good and evil to the cause of
his uncle Marius. His companion Cicero, now ripening into manhood,
chose the other side. With his talents for his inheritance, and
confident in the consciousness of power, but with weak health and a
neck as thin as a woman's, Cicero felt that he had a future before him,
but that his successes must be won by other weapons than arms. He chose
the bar for his profession; he resolved to make his way into popularity
as a pleader before the Senate courts and in the Forum. He looked to
the Senate itself as the ultimate object of his ambition. There alone
he could hope to be distinguished, if distinguished he was to be.

Cicero, however, was no more inclined than Caesar to be subservient to
Sylla, as he took an early opportunity of showing. It was to the cause
of the constitution, and not to the person of the Dictator, that Cicero
had attached himself, and he, too, ventured to give free expression to
his thoughts when free speech was still dangerous.

Sylla's career was drawing to its close, and the end was not the least
remarkable feature of it. On him had fallen the odium of the
proscription and the stain of the massacres. The sooner the senators
could be detached from the soldier who had saved them from destruction,
the better chance they would have of conciliating quiet people on whose
support they must eventually rely. Sylla himself felt the position; and
having completed what he had undertaken, with a half-pitying,
half-contemptuous self-abandonment he executed what from the first he
had intended--he resigned the dictatorship, and became a private
citizen again, amusing the leisure of his age, as he had abused the
leisure of his youth, with theatres and actresses and dinner-parties.
He too, like so many of the great Romans, was indifferent to life; of
power for the sake of power he was entirely careless; and if his
retirement had been more dangerous to him than it really was, he
probably would not have postponed it. He was a person of singular
character, and not without many qualities which were really admirable.
He was free from any touch of charlatanry. He was true, simple, and
unaffected, and even without ambition in the mean and personal sense.
His fault, which he would have denied to be a fault, was that he had a
patrician disdain of mobs and suffrages and the cant of popular
liberty. The type repeats itself era after era. Sylla was but Graham of
Claverhouse in a Roman dress and with an ampler stage. His courage in
laying down his authority has been often commented on, but the risk
which he incurred was insignificant. There was in Rome neither soldier
nor statesman who could for a moment be placed in competition with
Sylla, and he was so passionately loved by the army, he was so sure of
the support of his comrades, whom he had quartered on the proscribed
lands, and who, for their own interest's sake, would resist attempts at
counter-revolution, that he knew that if an emergency arose he had but
to lift his finger to reinstate himself in command. Of assassination he
was in no greater danger than when dictator, while the temptation to
assassinate him was less. His influence was practically undiminished,
and as long as he lived he remained, and could not but remain, the
first person in the Republic.

Some license of speech he was, of course, prepared for, but it required
no small courage to make a public attack either on himself or his
dependants, and it was therefore most creditable to Cicero that his
first speech of importance was directed against the Dictator's
immediate friends, and was an exposure of the iniquities of the
proscription. Cicero no doubt knew that there would be no surer road to
favor with the Roman multitude than by denouncing Sylla's followers,
and that, young and unknown as he was, his insignificance might protect
him, however far he ventured. But he had taken the Senate's side. From
first to last he had approved of the reactionary constitution, and had
only condemned the ruthless methods by which it had been established.
He never sought the popularity of a demagogue, or appealed to popular
passions, or attempted to create a prejudice against the aristocracy,
into whose ranks he intended to make his way. He expressed the opinions
of the respectable middle classes, who had no sympathy with
revolutionists, but who dreaded soldiers and military rule and
confiscations of property.

The occasion on which Cicero came forward was characteristic of the
time. Sextus Roscius was a country gentleman of good position, residing
near Ameria, in Umbria. He had been assassinated when on a visit to
Rome by two of his relations, who wished to get possession of his
estate. The proscription was over, and the list had been closed; but
Roscius's name was surreptitiously entered upon it, with the help of
Sylla's favorite freedman, Chrysogonus. The assassins obtained an
acknowledgment of their claims, and they and Chrysogonus divided the
spoils. Sextus Roscius was entirely innocent. He had taken no part in
politics at all. He had left a son who was his natural heir, and the
township of Ameria sent up a petition to Sylla remonstrating against so
iniquitous a robbery. The conspirators, finding themselves in danger of
losing the reward of their crime, shifted their ground. They denied
that they had themselves killed Sextus Roscius. They said that the son
had done it, and they charged him with parricide. Witnesses were easily
provided. No influential pleader, it was justly supposed, would venture
into antagonism with Sylla's favorite and appear for the defence.
Cicero heard of the case, however, and used the opportunity to bring
himself into notice. He advocated young Roscius's cause with skill and
courage. He told the whole story in court without disguise. He did not
blame Sylla. He compared Sylla to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, who was
sovereign of the universe, and on the whole a good sovereign, but with
so much business on his hands that he had not time to look into
details. But Cicero denounced Chrysogonus as an accomplice in an act of
atrocious villainy. The court took the same view, and the rising orator
had the honor of clearing the reputation of the injured youth, and of
recovering his property for him.

Sylla showed no resentment, and probably felt none. He lived for a year
after his retirement, and died 78 B.C., being occupied at the moment in
writing his memoirs, which have been unfortunately lost. He was buried
gorgeously in the Campus Martius, among the old kings of Rome. The
aristocrats breathed freely when delivered from his overpowering
presence, and the constitution which he had set upon its feet was now
to be tried.

[1] "Nigris vegetisque oculis."--Suetonius.

[2] "Ac primum illud tempus familiaritatis et consuetudinis, quae mihi cum
    illo, quae fratri meo, quae Caio Varroni, consobrino nostro, ab omnium
    nostrum adolescentiâ fuit, praetermitto."--Cicero, _De Provinciis
    Consularibus_, 17. Cicero was certainly speaking of a time which
    preceded Sylla's dictatorship, for Caesar left Rome immediately after
    it, and when he came back he attached himself to the political party
    to which Cicero was most opposed.

[3] On the Adriatic, between Anconia and Pescara.

[4] See, for the story of Oppianicus, the remarkable speech of Cicero,
    _Pro Cluentio_.

[5] Appian, on the other hand, says that the courts of the equites had
    been more corrupt than the senatorial courts.--_De Bello Civili,
    i_. 22. Cicero was perhaps prejudiced in favor of his own order,
    but a contemporary statement thus publicly made is far more likely to
    be trustworthy.

[6] Sylla had himself nominated a large number of senators.

[7] So says Suetonius, reporting the traditions of the following century;
    but the authority is doubtful, and the story, like so many others, is
    perhaps apocryphal.




CHAPTER IX.


The able men of the democracy had fallen in the proscription.
Sertorius, the only eminent surviving soldier belonging to them, was
away, making himself independent in Spain. The rest were all killed.
But the Senate, too, had lost in Sylla the single statesman that they
possessed. They were a body of mediocrities, left with absolute power
in their hands, secure as they supposed from further interference, and
able to return to those pleasant occupations which for a time had been
so rudely interrupted. Sertorius was an awkward problem with which
Pompey might perhaps be entrusted to deal. No one knew as yet what
stuff might be in Pompey. He was for the present sunning himself in his
military splendors; too young to come forward as a politician, and
destitute, so far as appeared, of political ambition. If Pompey
promised to be docile, he might be turned to use at a proper time; but
the aristocracy had seen too much of successful military commanders,
and were in no hurry to give opportunities of distinction to a youth
who had so saucily defied them. Sertorius was far off, and could be
dealt with at leisure.

In his defence of Roscius, Cicero had given an admonition to the noble
lords that unless they mended their ways they could not look for any
long continuance.[1] They regarded Cicero perhaps, if they heard what
he said of them, as an inexperienced young man, who would understand
better by and by of what materials the world was made. There had been
excitement and anxiety enough. Conservatism was in power again. Fine
gentlemen could once more lounge in their clubs, amuse themselves with
their fish-ponds and horses and mistresses, devise new and ever new
means of getting money and spending it, and leave the Roman Empire for
the present to govern itself.

The leading public men belonging to the party in power had all served
in some capacity or other with Sylla or under him. Of those whose names
deserve particular mention there were at most five.

Licinius Lucullus had been a special favorite of Sylla. The Dictator
left him his executor, with the charge of his manuscripts. Lucullus was
a commoner, but of consular family, and a thorough-bred aristocrat. He
had endeared himself to Sylla by a languid talent which could rouse
itself when necessary into brilliant activity, by the easy culture of a
polished man of rank, and by a genius for luxury which his admirers
followed at a distance, imitating their master but hopeless of
overtaking him.

Caecilius Metellus, son of the Metellus whom Marius had superseded in
Africa, had been consul with Sylla in 80 B.C. He was now serving in
Spain against Sertorius, and was being gradually driven out of the
peninsula.

Lutatius Catulus was a proud but honest patrician, with the conceit of
his order, but without their vices. His father, who had been Marius's
colleague, and had been defeated by the Cimbri, had killed himself
during the Marian revolution. The son had escaped, and was one of the
consuls at the time of Sylla's death.

More noticeable than either of these was Marcus Crassus, a figure
singularly representative, of plebeian family, but a family long
adopted into the closest circle of the aristocracy, the leader and
impersonation of the great moneyed classes in Rome. Wealth had for
several generations been the characteristic of the Crassi. They had the
instinct and the temperament which in civilized ages take to
money-making as a natural occupation. In politics they aimed at being
on the successful side; but living as they did in an era of
revolutions, they were surprised occasionally in unpleasant situations.
Crassus the rich, father of Marcus, had committed himself against
Marius, and had been allowed the privilege of being his own
executioner. Marcus himself, who was a little older than Cicero, took
refuge in Sylla's camp. He made himself useful to the Dictator by his
genius for finance, and in return he was enabled to amass an enormous
fortune for himself out of the proscriptions. His eye for business
reached over the whole Roman Empire. He was banker, speculator,
contractor, merchant. He lent money to the spendthrift young lords, but
with sound securities and at usurious interest. He had an army of
slaves, but these slaves were not ignorant field-hands; they were
skilled workmen in all arts and trades, whose labors he turned to
profit in building streets and palaces. Thus all that he touched turned
to gold. He was the wealthiest single individual in the whole Empire,
the acknowledged head of the business world of Rome.

The last person who need be noted was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the
father of the future colleague of Augustus and Antony. Lepidus, too,
had been an officer of Sylla's. He had been rewarded for his services
by the government of Sicily, and when Sylla died was the second consul
with Catulus. It was said against him that, like so many other
governors, he had enriched himself by tyrannizing over his Sicilian
subjects. His extortions had been notorious; he was threatened with
prosecution as soon as his consulship should expire; and the adventure
to which he was about to commit himself was undertaken, so the
aristocrats afterward maintained, in despair of an acquittal. Lepidus's
side of the story was never told, but another side it certainly had.
Though one of Sylla's generals, he had married the daughter of the
tribune Saturninus. He had been elected consul by a very large majority
against the wishes of the Senate, and was suspected of holding popular
opinions. It may be that the prosecution was an after-thought of
revenge, and that Lepidus was to have been tried before a senatorial
jury already determined to find him guilty.

Among these men lay the fortunes of Rome when the departure of their
chief left the aristocrats masters of their own destiny.

During this time Caesar had been serving his apprenticeship as a
soldier. The motley forces which Mithridates had commanded had not all
submitted on the king's surrender to Sylla. Squadrons of pirates hung
yet about the smaller islands in the Aegean. Lesbos was occupied by
adventurers who were fighting for their own hand, and the praetor
Minucius Thermus had been sent to clear the seas and extirpate these
nests of brigands. To Thermus Caesar had attached himself. The praetor,
finding that his fleet was not strong enough for the work, found it
necessary to apply to Nicomedes, the allied sovereign of the adjoining
kingdom of Bithynia, to supply him with a few additional vessels; and
Caesar, soon after his arrival, was despatched on this commission to
the Bithynian court.

Long afterward, when Roman cultivated society had come to hate Caesar,
and any scandal was welcome to them which would make him odious, it was
reported that on this occasion he entered into certain relations with
Nicomedes of a kind indisputably common at the time in the highest
patrician circles. The value of such a charge in political controversy
was considerable, for whether true or false it was certain to be
believed; and similar accusations were flung indiscriminately, so
Cicero says, at the reputation of every eminent person whom it was
desirable to stain, if his personal appearance gave the story any air
of probability.[2]

The disposition to believe evil of men who have risen a few degrees
above their contemporaries is a feature of human nature as common as it
is base; and when to envy there are added fear and hatred, malicious
anecdotes spring like mushrooms in a forcing-pit. But gossip is not
evidence, nor does it become evidence because it is in Latin and has
been repeated through many generations. The strength of a chain is no
greater than the strength of its first link, and the adhesive character
of calumny proves only that the inclination of average men to believe
the worst of great men is the same in all ages. This particular
accusation against Caesar gains, perhaps, a certain credibility from
the admission that it was the only occasion on which anything of the
kind could be alleged against him. On the other hand, it was unheard of
for near a quarter of a century. It was produced in Rome in the midst
of a furious political contest. No witnesses were forthcoming; no one
who had been at Bithynia at the time; no one who ever pretended to have
original knowledge of the truth of the story. Caesar himself passed it
by with disdain, or alluded to it, if forced upon his notice, with
contemptuous disgust.

The Bithynian mission was otherwise successful. He brought the ships to
Thermus. He distinguished himself personally in the storming of
Mitylene, and won the oak-wreath, the Victoria Cross of the Roman army.
Still pursuing the same career, Caesar next accompanied Servilius
Isauricus in a campaign against the horde of pirates, afterwards so
famous, that was forming itself among the creeks and river-mouths of
Cilicia. The advantages which Servilius obtained over them were
considerable enough to deserve a triumph, but were barren of result.
The news that Sylla was dead reached the army while still in the field;
and the danger of appearing in Rome being over, Caesar at once left
Cilicia and went back to his family. Other causes are said to have
contributed to hasten his return. A plot had been formed, with the
consul Lepidus at its head, to undo Sylla's laws and restore the
constitution of the Gracchi. Caesar had been urged by letter to take
part in the movement, and he may have hurried home either to examine
the prospects of success or perhaps to prevent an attempt which, under
the circumstances, he might think criminal and useless. Lepidus was not
a wise man, though he may have been an honest one. The aristocracy had
not yet proved that they were incapable of reform. It might be that
they would digest their lesson after all, and that for a generation to
come no more revolutions would be necessary.

[Sidenote: B.C. 77. Caesar aet. 23.] Caesar at all events declined to
connect himself with this new adventure. He came to Rome, looked at
what was going on, and refused to have anything to do with it. The
experiment was tried without him. Young Cinna, his brother-in-law,
joined Lepidus. Together they raised a force in Etruria, and marched on
Rome. They made their way into the city, but were met in the Campus
Martius by Pompey and other consul, Catulus, at the head of some of
Sylla's old troops; and an abortive enterprise, which, if it had
succeeded, would probably have been mischievous, was ended almost as
soon as it began. The two leaders escaped. Cinna joined Sertorius in
Spain. Lepidus made his way to Sardinia, where in the next year he
died, leaving a son to play the game of democracy under more brilliant
auspices.

[Sidenote: Caesar aet. 24.] Caesar meanwhile felt his way, as Cicero
was doing in the law-courts, attacking the practical abuses which the
Roman administration was generating everywhere. Cornelius Dolabella had
been placed by Sylla in command of Macedonia. His father had been a
friend of Saturninus, and had fallen at his side. The son had gone over
to the aristocracy, and for this reason was perhaps an object of
aversion to the younger liberals. The Macedonians pursued him, when his
government had expired, with a list of grievances of the usual kind.
Young Caesar took up their cause, and prosecuted him. Dolabella was a
favorite of the Senate; he had been allowed a triumph for his services,
and the aristocracy adopted his cause as their own. The unpractised
orator was opposed at the trial by his kinsman Aurelius Cotta and the
most celebrated pleaders in Rome. To have crossed swords with such
opponents was a dangerous honor for him; success against them was not
to be expected, and Caesar was not yet master of his art. Dolabella was
acquitted. Party feeling had perhaps entered into the accusation.
Caesar found it prudent to retire again from the scene. There were but
two roads to eminence in Rome--oratory and service in the army. He had
no prospect of public employment from the present administration, and
the platform alone was open to him. Plain words with a plain meaning in
them no longer carried weight with a people who expected an orator to
delight as well as instruct them. The use of the tongue had become a
special branch of a statesman's education, and Caesar, feeling his
deficiency, used his leisure to put himself in training and to go to
school at Rhodes with the then celebrated Apollonius Molo. He had
recovered his property and his priesthood, and was evidently in no want
of money. He travelled with the retinue of a man of rank, and on his
way to Rhodes he fell in with an adventure which may be something more
than legend. When he was crossing the Aegean his vessel is said to have
been taken by pirates. They carried him to Pharmacusa,[3] an island off
the Carian coast, which was then in their possession, and there he was
detained for six weeks with three of his attendants, while the rest of
his servants were sent to the nearest Roman station to raise his
ransom. The pirates treated him with politeness. He joined in their
sports, played games with them, looked into their habits, and amused
himself with them as well as he could, frankly telling them at the same
time that they would all be hanged.

The ransom, a very large one, about £10,000, was brought and paid.
Caesar was set upon the mainland near Miletus, where, without a
moment's delay, he collected some armed vessels, returned to the
island, seized the whole crew while they were dividing their plunder,
and took them away to Pergamus, the seat of government in the Asiatic
province, where they were convicted and crucified. Clemency was not a
Roman characteristic. It was therefore noted with some surprise that
Caesar interceded to mitigate the severity of the punishment. The poor
wretches were strangled before they were stretched on their crosses,
and were spared the prolongation of their torture. The pirate business
being disposed of, he resumed his journey to Rhodes, and there he
continued for two years practising gesture and expression under the
tuition of the great master.

[Sidenote: B.C. 78-72] During this time the government of Rome was
making progress in again demonstrating its unfitness for the duties
which were laid upon it, and sowing the seeds which in a few years were
to ripen into a harvest so remarkable. Two alternatives only lay before
the Roman dominion--either disruption or the abolition of the
constitution. If the aristocracy could not govern, still less could the
mob govern. The Latin race was scattered over the basin of the
Mediterranean, no longer bound by any special ties to Rome or Italy,
each man of it individually vigorous and  energetic, and bent before
all things on making his own fortune. If no tolerable administration
was provided from home, their obvious course could only be to identify
themselves with local interests and nationalities and make themselves
severally independent, as Sertorius was doing in Spain. Sertorius was
at last disposed of, but by methods promising ill for the future. He
beat Metellus till Metellus could do no more against him. The
all-victorious Pompey was sent at last to win victories and gain
nothing by them. Six campaigns led to no result and the difficulty was
only removed at last by treachery and assassination.

A more extraordinary and more disgraceful phenomenon was the growth of
piracy, with the skirts of which Caesar had come in contact at
Pharmacusa. The Romans had become masters of the world, only that the
sea from one end of their dominions to the other should be patrolled by
organized rovers. For many years, as Roman commerce extended, the
Mediterranean had become a profitable field of enterprise for those
gentry. From every country which they had overrun or occupied the
conquests of the Romans had let loose swarms of restless patriots who,
if they could not save the liberties of their own countries, could prey
upon the oppressor. Illyrians from the Adriatic, Greeks from the
islands and the Asiatic ports, Syrians, Egyptians, Africans, Spaniards,
Gauls, and disaffected Italians, trained many of them to the sea from
their childhood, took to the water in their light galleys with all the
world before them. Under most circumstances society is protected
against thieves by their inability to combine. But the pirates of the
Mediterranean had learnt from the Romans the advantage of union, and
had drifted into a vast confederation. Cilicia was their head-quarters.
Servilius had checked them for a time, but the Roman Senate was too
eager for a revenue, and the Roman governors and farmers of the taxes
were too bent upon filling their private purses, to allow fleets to be
maintained in the provincial harbors adequate to keep the peace. When
Servilius retired, the pirates reoccupied their old haunts. The
Cilician forests furnished them with ship timber. The mountain gorges
provided inaccessible storehouses for plunder. Crete was completely in
their hands also, and they had secret friends along the entire
Mediterranean shores. They grew at last into a thousand sail, divided
into squadrons under separate commanders. They were admirably armed.
They roved over the waters at their pleasure, attacking islands or
commercial ports, plundering temples and warehouses, arresting every
trading vessel they encountered, till at last no Roman could go abroad
on business save during the winter storms, when the sea was
comparatively clear. They flaunted their sails in front of Ostia
itself; they landed in their boats at the villas on the Italian coast,
carrying off lords and ladies, and holding them to ransom. They levied
black-mail at their pleasure. The wretched provincials had paid their
taxes to Rome in exchange for promised defence, and no defence was
provided.[4] The revenue which ought to have been spent on the
protection of the Empire a few patricians were dividing among
themselves. The pirates had even marts in different islands, where
their prisoners were sold to the slave-dealers; and for fifteen years
nothing was done or even attempted to put an end to so preposterous an
enormity. The ease with which these buccaneers of the old world were
eventually suppressed proved conclusively that they existed by
connivance. It was discovered at last that large sums had been sent
regularly from Crete to some of the most distinguished members of the
aristocracy. The Senate was again the same body which it was found by
Jugurtha, and the present generation were happier than their fathers in
that larger and richer fields were now open to their operation.

While the pirates were at work on the extremities, the senators in the
provinces were working systematically, squeezing the people as one
might squeeze a sponge of all the wealth that could be drained out of
them. After the failure of Lepidus the elections in Rome were wholely
in the Senate's hands. Such independence as had not been crushed was
corrupted. The aristocracy divided the consulships, praetorships, and
quaestorships among themselves, and after the year of office the
provincial prizes were then distributed. Of the nature of their
government a picture has been left by Cicero, himself one of the
senatorial party, and certainly not to be suspected of having
represented it as worse than it was in the famous prosecution of
Verres. There is nothing to show that Verres was worse than the rest of
his order. Piso, Gabinius, and many others equalled or perhaps excelled
him in villainy. But historical fate required a victim, and the
unfortunate wretch has been selected out of the crowd individually to
illustrate his class.

By family he was connected with Sylla. His father was noted as an
election manager at the Comitia. The son had been attached to Carbo
when the democrats were in power, but he had deserted them on Sylla's
return. He had made himself useful in the proscriptions, and had
scraped together a considerable fortune. He was employed afterward in
Greece and Asia, where he distinguished himself by fresh rapacity and
by the gross brutality with which he abused an innocent lady. With the
wealth which he had extorted or stolen he bought his way into the
praetorship, probably with his father's help; he then became a senator,
and was sent to govern Sicily--a place which had already suffered, so
the Senate said, from the malpractices of Lepidus, and needing,
therefore, to be generously dealt with.

Verres held his province for three years. He was supreme judge in all
civil and criminal cases. He negotiated with the parties to every suit
which was brought before him, and then sold his decisions. He
confiscated estates on fictitious accusations. The island was rich in
works of art. Verres had a taste for such things, and seized without
scruple the finest productions of Praxiteles or Zeuxis. If those who
were wronged dared to complain, they were sent to forced labor at the
quarries, or, as dead men tell no tales, were put out of the world

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/8425