No More Learning

To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist on the maintenance of the agreements—which certainly, as it would seem, were only concluded
orally-—respecting the Euphrates boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous reply that the territory of Rome extended as far as her
The remarkable intercourse between the Roman commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps of the region of Media and even of the distant province Elymais
rights.
(between
Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern
seemed a commentary on this speech. 1 The viceroys of this latter mountainous, warlike, and remote land had always exerted themselves to acquire a position
1 This view rests on the narrative of Plutarch (Porn). 36) which is sup ported by Strabo's (xvi. 744) description of the position of the satrap 0f
It is an embellishment of the matter, when in the lists of the countries and kings conquered by Pompeius Media and its king Darius are enumerated (Diodorus, Fr. Vat. p. 14. 0; Appian, Milltr. 117); and from this there has been further concocted the war of Pompeius with the Medes (Vell. ii. 40; Appian, Mil/tr. r06, I14) and then even his ex‘ pedition to Ecbatana (Oros. vi. 5). A confusion with the fabulous town of the same name on Carmel has hardly taken place here; it is simply that intolerable exaggeration-apparently originating in the grandiloquent and designedly ambiguous bulletins of Pompeius—which has converted his
Luristan)
Elymais.
can. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
435
independent of the great-king; it was the more offensive and menacing to the Parthian government, when Pompeius
the proffered homage of this dynast. Not less was the fact that the title of “king of kings,”
accepted
significant
which had been hitherto conceded to the Parthian king by the Romans in official intercourse, was now all at once exchanged by them for the simple title of king. This was even more a threat than a violation of etiquette. Since Rome had entered on the heritage of the Seleucids, it seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert at a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran and Turan were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet no Parthian empire but merely a Parthian satrapy. The court of Ctesiphon would thus have had reason enough for going to war with Rome; it seemed the prelude to its doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia on account of the question of the frontier. But Phraates had not the courage to come to an open rupture with the Romans at a time when the dreaded general with his strong army was on the borders of the Parthian empire. When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle amicably the dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded to the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in their award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene and northern Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards his daughter with her son and her husband adorned the triumph of the Roman general. Even the Parthians trembled before the superior power of Rome; and, if they had not, like the inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the Roman arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had not ventured to stand the conflict.
razzia against the Gaetulians (p. 94) into a march to the west coast of Africa (Plut. Pump. 38), his abortive expedition against the'Nabataeans into a conquest of the city of Petra, and his award as to the boundaries of Armenia into a fixing of the boundary of the Roman empire beyond Nrsibir.
tion ofthe provinces.
There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and of removing as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years’ desolating war. The work of organization begun in Asia Minor by Lucullus and the commission associated with him, and in Crete by Metellus, received its final conclusion from Pompeius. The former province of Asia, which embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was con verted from a frontier province into a central one. The newly-erected provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus, which was formed out of the whole former kingdom of
Nicomedes and the western half of the former Pontic state as far as and beyond the Halys; that of Cilicia, which indeed was older, but was now for the first time enlarged and organized in a manner befitting its name, and compre hended also Pamphylia and Isauria; that of Syria, and that of Crete. Much was no doubt wanting to render
that mass of countries capable of being regarded as the territorial possession of Rome in the modern sense of the term. The form and order of the government remained substantially as they were; only the Roman community came in place of the former monarchs. Those Asiatic
436
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK V
consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of domanial possessions, urban territories de facto or de jure autonomous, lordships pertaining to princes and priests, and kingdoms, all of which were as regards internal
provinces
more or less left to themselves, and in other respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its pro
consuls very much as formerly on the great-king and his
satraps.
The first place, in rank at least, among the dependent
dynasts was held by the king of Cappadocia, whose terri tory Lucullus had already enlarged by investing him with the province of Melitene (about Malatia) as far as the
administration
can. rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
437
and to whom Pompeius farther granted on the western frontier some districts taken off Cilicia from Casta
bala as far as Derbe near Iconium, and on the eastern frontier the province of Sophene situated on the left bank
of the Euphrates opposite Melitene and at first destined
for the Armenian prince Tigranes; so that the most im
portant passage of the Euphrates thus came wholly into the
power of the Cappadocian prince. The small province of Commagene between Syria and Cappadocia with its capital Comma Samosata (Samsat) remained a dependent kingdom in the gem hands of the already-named Seleucid Antiochus;1 to him
too were assigned the important fortress of Seleucia (near Biradjik) commanding the more southern passage of the Euphrates, and the adjoining tracts on the left bank of
that river; and thus care was taken that the two chief passages of the Euphrates with a corresponding territory
on the eastern bank were left in the hands of two dynasts
wholly dependent on Rome. Alongside of the kings of Cappadocia and Commagene, and in real power far superior
to them, the new king Deiotarus ruled in Asia Minor.
One of the tetrarchs of the Celtic stock of the Tolistobogii Galatin. settled round Pessinus, and summoned by Lucullus and Pompeius to render military service with the other small
Roman clients, Deiotarus had in these campaigns so brilliantly proved his trustworthiness and his energy as contrasted with all the indolent Orientals that the Roman
Euphrates,
conferred upon him, in addition to his Galatian heritage and his possessions in the rich country between Amisus and the mouth of the Halys, the eastern half of the former Pontic empire with the maritime towns of
1 The war which this Antiochus is alleged to have waged with Pompeius (Appian, Mil/tr. r06, n7) is not very consistent with the treaty which he concluded with Lucullus (Dio, xxxvi. 4), and his undisturbed continuance in his sovereignty; presumably it has been concocted simply from the circumstance, that Antiochus of Commagene figured among the kings subdued by Pompeius.
generals
Princes and chiefs.
Vassals of lesser importance were, the other numerous Galatian tetrarchs, one of whom, Bogodiatarus prince of the Trocmi, was on account of his tried valour in the Mithradatic war presented by Pompeius with the formerly Pontic frontier-town of Mithradatium ; Attalus prince of Paphlagonia, who traced back his lineage to the old ruling house of the Pylaemenids; Aristarchus and other
lords in the Colchian territory; Tarcondimotus who ruled in eastern Cilicia in the mountain-valleys of the Amanus ; Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus who continued to rule in Chalcis on the Libanus ; Aretas king of the Nabataeans as lord of Damascus; lastly, the Arabic emirs in the countries on either side of the Euphrates, Abgarus in Osrhoene, whom the Romans endeavoured in every way to draw over to their interest with the view of using him as an advanced post against the Parthians, Sampsiceramus in Hemesa, Alchaudonius the Rhambaean, and another emir in Bostra.
To these fell to be added the spiritual lords who in the east frequently ruled over land and people like secular dynasts, and whose authority firmly established in that native home of fanaticism the Romans prudently refrained from disturbing, as they refrained from even robbing the temples of their treasures: the high-priest of the Goddess Mother in Pessinus; the two high-priests of the goddess Ma in the Cappadocian Comana (on the upper Sarus) and
438
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
Pharnacia and Trapezus and the Pontic Armenia as far as the frontier of Colchis and the Greater Armenia, to form the kingdom of Lesser Armenia. Soon afterwards he increased his already considerable territory by the country of the Celtic Trocmi, whose tetrarch he dispossessed. Thus the petty feudatory became one of the most powerful dynasts of Asia Minor, to whom might be entrusted the
guardianship empire.
of an important part of the frontier of the
Priestly princes.
. v:
petty
CHAP. rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
439
in the Pontic city of the same name (Gumenek near Tocat), both lords who were in their countries inferior only to the king in power, and each of whom even at a much later period possessed extensive estates with special jurisdiction and about six thousand temple-slaves—Archelaus, son of the general of that name who passed over from Mithradates to the Romans, was invested by Pompeius with the Pontic high-priesthood—the high-priest of the Venasian Zeus in the Cappadocian district of Morimene, whose revenues amounted annually to £3600 (r5 talents); the “arch priest and lord " of that territory in Cilicia Trachea, where Teucer the son of Ajax had founded a temple to Zeus, over which his descendants presided by virtue of hereditary right; the "arch-priest and lord of the people” of the Jews, to whom Pompeius, after having razed the walls of the capital and the royal treasuries and strongholds in the land, gave back the presidency of the nation with a serious admonition to keep the peace and no longer to aim at conquests.
Alongside of these secular and spiritual potentates stood the urban communities. These were partly associated into larger unions which rejoiced in a comparative independence, such as in particular the league of the twenty-three Lycian cities, which was well organized and constantly, for instance, kept aloof from participation in the disorders of piracy; whereas the numerous detached communities, even if they had self-government secured by charter, were in practice wholly dependent on the Roman governors.
Urban communi tiu.
The Romans failed not to see that with the task of Elevation
representing Hellenism and protecting and extending the of urban lifein
domain of Alexander in the east there devolved on them Asia. the primary duty of elevating the urban system ; for, while
cities are everywhere the pillars of civilization, the antagon ism between Orientals and Occidentals was especially and most sharply embodied in the contrast between the Oriental,
44o
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST aoox \
military-despotic, feudal hierarchy and the Hellen0-Italic urban commonwealth prosecuting trade and commerce. Lucullus and Pompeius, however little they in other respects aimed at the reduction of things to one level in the east, and however much the latter was
disposed in questions of detail to censure and alter the arrange
ments of his predecessor, were yet completely agreed in the principle of promoting as far as they could an urban life in Asia Minor and Syria. Cyzicus, on whose vigorous resistance the first violence of the last war had spent itself, received from Lucullus a considerable extension of its domain. The Pontic Heraclea, energetically as it had
resisted the Romans, yet recovered its territory and its harbours; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against the unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate. Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had refused him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus from devastation by the Pontic soldiery and his own : he did at least what he could to restore them, extended con siderably their territories, peopled them afresh-—partly with the old inhabitants, who at his invitation returned in troops to their beloved homes, partly with new settlers of Hellenic descent-—and provided for the reconstruction of the build
ings destroyed. Pompeius acted in the same spirit and on a. greater scale. Already after the subjugation of the pirates he had, instead of following the example of his predecessors and crucit'ying his prisoners, whose number exceeded 20,000, settled them partly in the desolated cities of the Plain Cilicia, such as Mallus, Adana, Epi.
and especially in Soli, which thenceforth bore the name of Pompeius’ city (Pompeiupolis), partly at Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum. This colonizing by means of pirates met with manifold censure,l as it
1 To this Cicero's reproach presumably points (De 0}. ‘ iii. 12, 49): jiratu immuner luzbemus, rociar vechlgaler; in so far, namely, as those
phaneia,
CHAP. 1v POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
441
seemed in some measure to set a premium on crime; in reality it was, politically and morally, well justified, for, as things then stood, piracy was something different from robbery and the prisoners might fairly be treated according to martial law.
But Pompeius made it his business above all to promote New towns
urban life in the new Roman provinces. We have already stab lished.
observed how poorly provided with towns the Pontic empire was 12): most districts of Cappadocia even century after this had no towns, but merely mountain fortresses as refirge for the agricultural population in war the whole cast of Asia Minor, apart from the sparse Greek colonies on the coasts, must have been at this time in similar plight. The number of towns newly established by Pom peius in these provinces including the Cilician settle ments, stated at thirty-nine, several of which attained great
The most notable of these townships in the former kingdom of Pontus were Nicopolis, the “city of victory,” founded on the spot where Mithradates sustained the last decisive defeat 4o9)-—the fairest memorial of general rich in similar trophies Megalopolis, named from Pompeius’ surname, on the frontier of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia, the subsequent Sebasteia (now Siwas) Ziela, where the Romans fought the unfortunate battle (p. 348), a township which had arisen round the temple of Anaitis there and hitherto had belonged to its high-priest, and to which Pompeius now gave the form and privileges of city Diopolis, formerly Cabira, afterwards Neocaesarea (Niksar), likewise one of the battle-fields of the late war; Magnopolis or Pompeiupolis, the restored Eupatoria at the confluence of the Lycus and the Iris, originally built by Mithradates, but again destroyed him on account of
pirate-colonies probably had the privilege of immunity conferred on them by Pompeius, while, as well known, the provincial communities de pendent on Rome were, as a rule, liable to taxation.
prosperity.
is
by
a ;
(p.
(p. ;
is,
a ;aa
;
a
442
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
the defection of the city to the Romans 404) Neapolis, formerly Phazemon, between Amasia and the Halys. Most of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing colonists from distance, but by the suppression of villages and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring wall only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and veterans of his army, who preferred to establish home for themselves there at once rather than afterwards in Italy. But at other places also there arose on the sugges tion of the regent new centres of Hellenic civilization. In Paphlagonia third Pompeiupolis marked the spot where the
88. army of Mithradates in 666 achieved the great victory over the Bithynians 29 f). In Cappadocia, which perhaps had suffered more than any other province by the war, the royal residence Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea, now Kaisarieh) and seven other townships were re-established
Pompeius and received urban institutions. In Cilicia and Coelesyria there were enumerated twenty towns laid out Pompeius.
In the districts ceded by the Jews, Gadara in the Decapolis rose from its ruins at the command of Pompeius, and the city of Seleucis was founded. By far the greatest portion of the domain-land at his disposal on the Asiatic continent must have been applied by Pompeius for his new settle ments; whereas in Crete, about which Pompeius troubled himself little or not at all, the Roman domanial possessions seem to have continued tolerably extensive.
Pompeius was no less intent on regulating and elevating the existing communities than on founding new townships. The abuses and usurpations which prevailed were done away with as far as lay in his power; detailed ordinances drawn up carefully for the different provinces regulated the particulars of the municipal system. A number of the
most considerable cities had fresh privileges conferred on them. Autonomy was bestowed on Antioch on the Orontes, the most important city of Roman Asia and but
by
by ; a
a (p.
a
;
(p.
CHAP. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
443
little inferior to the Egyptian Alexandria and to the Bagdad of antiquity, the city of Seleucia in the Parthian empire; as also on the neighbour of Antioch, the Pierian Seleucia, which was thus rewarded for its courageous resistance to Tigranes; on Gaza and generally on all the towns liberated from the Jewish rule; on Mytilene in the west of Asia Minor; and on Phanagoria on the Black Sea.
Thus was completed the structure of the Roman state in Asia, which with its feudatory kings and vassals, its priests made into princes, and its series of free and half-free cities puts us vividly in mind of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties overcome or as respects the consum mation attained; nor was it made so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise of Pompeius. Pompeius in particular consented to be praised, and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was. If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their deliverer and founder, as the man who had as well by land as by sea terminated the wars with which the world was filled, such a homage might not seem too extravagant for the vanquisher of the pirates and of the empires of the east. But the Romans this time surpassed the Greeks. The triumphal inscriptions of Pompeius himself enumerated
12 millions of people as subjugated and 1538 cities and strongholds as conquered-——it seemed as if quantity was to
make up for quality—and made the circle of his victories extend from the Maeotic Sea to the Caspian and from the latter to the Red Sea, when his eyes had never seen any one of the three ; nay farther, if he did not exactly say so, he at any rate induced the public to suppose that the annexation of Syria, which in truth was no heroic deed, had added the whole east as far as Bactria and India to the
Aggregate results.
444
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
Roman empire—so dim was the mist of distance, amidst which according to his statements the boundary-line of his eastern conquests was lost. The democratic servility, which has at all times rivalled that of courts, readily entered into these insipid extravagances. It was not satisfied by the pompous triumphal procession, which moved through the
O1. streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept. 693-—the forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great—adorned, to say nothing of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of Mithradates and by the children of the three mightiest kings ofAsia, Mithradates, Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its general, who had conquered twenty-two kings, with regal honours and bestowed on him the golden chaplet and the insignia of the magistracy for life. The coins struck in his honour exhibit the globe itself placed amidst the triple laurels brought home from the three continents, and sur mounted by the golden chaplet conferred by the burgesses on the man who had triumphed over Africa, Spain, and
Asia. It need excite no surprise, if in presence of such childish acts of homage voices were heard of an opposite import. Among the Roman world of quality it was currently aflirmed that the true merit of having subdued the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only gone thither to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around his own brow the laurels which another hand had plucked. Both statements were totally erroneous: it was not Pompeius but Glabrio that was sent to Asia to relieve Lucullus, and, bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was a fact that, when Pompeius took the supreme command, the Romans had forfeited all their earlier successes and had not a foot’s breadth of Pontic soil in their possession. More pointed and effective was the ridicule of the inhabitants of the capital, who failed not to nickname the mighty conqueror of the globe after the great powers which he had con quered, and saluted him now as “conqueror of Salem,’
CHAP- rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
445
now as “emir” (Arabarc/zcs), now as the Roman Sampsi ceramus.
The unprejudiced judge will not agree either with those exaggerations or with these disparagements. Lucullus and Pompeius, in subduing and regulating Asia, showed them as admin!
selves to be, not heroes and state-creators, but sagacious and energetic army-leaders and governors. As general Lucullus displayed no common talents and a self-confidence bordering on rashness, while Pompeius displayed military judgment and a rare self-restraint; for hardly has any general with such forces and a position so wholly free ever acted so cautiously as Pompeius in the east. The most brilliant undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him on all sides; he was free to start for the Cimmerian Bosporus and for the Red Sea ; he had opportunity of de claring war against the Parthians ; the revolted provinces of
Egypt invited him to dethrone king Ptolemaeus who was not recognized by the Romans, and to carry out the testament of Alexander; but Pompeius marched neither to Pantica paeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria; throughout he gathered only those fruits which of them selves fell to his hand. In like manner he fought all his battles by sea and land with a crushing superiority of force. Had this moderation proceeded from the strict observance
of the instructions given to him, as Pompeius was wont to profess, or even from a perception that the conquests of Rome must somewhere find a limit and that fresh acces
sions of territory were not advantageous to the state, it would deserve a higher praise than history confers on the most talented oflicer; but constituted as Pompeius was, his self-restraint was beyond doubt solely the result of his peculiar want of decision and of initiative—defects, indeed, which were in his case far more useful to the state than the opposite excellences of his predecessor. Certainly very grave errors were perpetrated both by Lucullus and by
Lucullus
Pompeius strators.
446
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST Boox v
Pompeius. Lucullus reaped their fruits himself, when his imprudent conduct wrested from him all the results of his victories; Pompeius left it to his successors to bear the consequences of his false policy towards the Parthians. He might either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized, as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood, which the court of
Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised, impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation. As administrator of Asia Lucullus acquired a more than princely wealth; and Pompeius also received as reward for its organization large sums in cash and still more considerable promissory notes from the king of Cappadocia, from the rich city of Antioch, and from other lords and communities. But such exactions had become almost a customary tax ; and both generals showed them selves at any rate to be not altogether venal in questions of greater importance, and, if possible, got themselves paid by the party whose interests coincided with those of Rome. Looking to the state of the times, this does not prevent us from characterizing the administration of both as compara tively commendable and conducted primarily in the interest of Rome, secondarily in that of the provincials.
The conversion of the clients into subjects, the better
of the eastern frontier, the establishment of a single and strong government, were full of blessing for the rulers as well as for the ruled. The financial gain acquired by Rome was immense; the new property tax, which with the exception of some specially exempted communities all those princes, priests, and cities had to pay to Rome, raised the Roman state-revenues almost by a half above their
regulation
can. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 447
former amount. Asia indeed suffered severely. Pompeius brought in money and jewels an amount of £2,000,000 (200,000,000 sesterces) into the state-chest and distributed £3,900,000 (1 6,000 talents) among his oflicers and soldiers ; if we add to this the considerable sums brought home by Lucullus, the non-oflicial exactions of the Roman army, and the amount of the damage done by the war, the financial exhaustion of the land may be readily conceived. The Roman taxation of Asia was perhaps in itself not worse than that of its earlier rulers, but it formed a heavier burden on the land, in so far as the taxes thenceforth went out of the country and only the lesser portion of the proceeds was again expended in Asia; and at any rate it was, in the old as well as the newly-acquired provinces, based on a system atic plundering of the provinces for the benefit of Rome. But the responsibility for this rests far less on the generals
personally than on the parties at home, whom these had to consider; Lucullus had even exerted himself energetically to set limits to the usurious dealings of the Roman capital ists in Asia, and this essentially contributed to bring about his fall. How much both men earnestly sought to revive the prosperity of the reduced provinces, is shown by their action in cases where no considerations of party policy tied their hands, and especially in their care for the cities of Asia Minor. Although for centuries afterwards many an Asiatic village lying in ruins recalled the times of the great war, Sinope might well begin a new era with the date of its re-establishment by Lucullus, and almost all the more con siderable inland towns of the Pontic kingdom might grate fully honour Pompeius as their founder. The organization of Roman Asia by Lucullus and Pompeius may with all its undeniable defects be described as on the whole judicious and praiseworthy ,; serious as were the evils that might still adhere to could not but be welcome to the sorely tormented Asiatics for the very reason that came attended
it
it, it
The east after the departure
Pompeius.
by the inward and outward peace, the absence of which had been so long and so painfully felt.
Peace continued substantially in the east, till the idea— merely indicated by Pompeius with his characteristic timidity —of joining the regions eastward of the Euphrates to the Roman empire was taken up again energetically but unsuc
cessfully by the new triumvirate of Roman regents, and soon thereafter the civil war drew the eastern provinces as well as all the rest into its fatal vortex. In the interval the governors of Cilicia had to fight constantly with the mountain tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes of the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins especially many Roman troops were destroyed; but these movements had no farther significance. More remarkable was the obstinate resistance, which the tough Jewish nation opposed to the conquerors. Alexander son of the deposed king Aristobulus, and Aristobulus himself who after some time succeeded in escaping from captivity, excited during
448
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK v
57-54. the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700) three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which the govem ment of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently succumbed. It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous of these revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army of occu pation in consequence of the Egyptian crisis furnished the immediate impulse, began with the murder of the Romans settled in Palestine. It was not without difliculty that the able governor succeeded in rescuing the few Romans, who had escaped this fate and found a temporary refuge on Mount Gerizim, from the insurgents who kept them block aded there, and in overpowering the revolt after several severely contested battles and tedious sieges. In consequence
of this the monarchy of the high-priests was abolished and
can. iv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
4. 49
the Jewish land was broken up, as Macedonia had formerly been, into five independent districts administered by governing colleges with an Optimate organization ; Samaria and other townships razed by the Jews were re-established, to form a counterpoise to Jerusalem ; and lastly a heavier tribute was imposed on the Jews than on the other Syrian
subjects of Rome
It still remains that we should glance at the kingdom of The
Egypt along with the last dependency that remained to it of ‘Si-“Egg; the extensive acquisitions of the Lagids, the fair island of
Cyprus. Egypt was now the only state of the Hellenic cast
that was still at least nominally independent ; just as formerly, when the Persians established themselves along
the eastern half of the Mediterranean, Egypt was their last conquest, so now the mighty conquerors from the west long delayed the annexation of that opulent and peculiar country. The reason lay, as was already indicated, neither in any fear of the resistance of Egypt nor in the want of a fitting occasion. Egypt was just about as powerless as Syria, and had already in 673 fallen in all due form of law to the ar. Roman community (p. 318). The control exercised over
the court of Alexandria by the royal guard—which appointed and deposed ministers and occasionally kings, took for itself what it pleased, and, if it was refused a rise of pay, besieged the king in his palace—was by no means liked in the country or rather in the capital (for the country with its population of agricultural slaves was hardly taken into account); and at least a party there wished for the annexa tion of Egypt by Rome, and even took steps to procure it. But the less the kings of Egypt could think of contending in arms against Rome, the more energetically Egyptian gold set itself to resist the Roman plans of union ; and in con sequence ofthe peculiar despotico-communistic centralization of the Egyptian finances the revenues of the court of
Alexandria were still nearly equal to the public income of
von iv
I29
450
POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 800! v
Cyprus armored.
58,
Rome even after its augmentation by Pompeius. The suspicious jealousy of the oligarchy, which was chary of allowing any individual either to conquer or to administer Egypt, operated in the same direction. So the d: fade rulers of Egypt and Cyprus were enabled by bribing the leading men in the senate not merely to respite their totter ing crowns, but even to fortify them afresh and to purchase from the senate the confirmation of their royal title. But with this they had not yet obtained their object. Formal state-law required a decree of the Roman burgesses; until this was issued, the Ptolemies were dependent on the caprice of every democratic holder of power, and they had thus to commence the warfare of bribery also against the
other Roman party, which as the more powerful stipulated for far higher prices.
The result in the two cases was different. The annexa tion of Cyprus was decreed in 696 by the people, that
by the leaders of the democracy, the support given to piracy the Cypriots being alleged as the official reason why that course should now be adopted. Marcus Cato, entrusted by his opponents with the execution of this measure, came to the island without an army but he had no need of one. The king took poison; the inhabitants submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate, and were placed under the governor of Cilicia. The ample treasure of nearly 7000 talents (£1,700,000), which the
covetous and miserly king could not prevail on himself to apply for the bribes requisite to save his crown, fell along with the latter to the Romans, and filled after desirable fashion the empty vaults of their treasury.
On the other hand the brother who reigned in Egypt
decree of the the purchase
said to have amounted to 6000 talents
exasperated
equally
Ptolemaeus
25553;,’ succeeded in purchasing his recognition but [59. people from the new masters of Rome in 69
money
subjects, (£1,460,000). The citizens indeed, long
gpglsed
is
by
5 ;
by
;
a
is,
cr-rn. rv POMPEIUS AND THE EAST
451
against their good flute-player and bad ruler, and now reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus and the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans (696), chased him on that account out of the country. us. When the king thereupon applied, as if on account of his eviction from the estate which he had purchased, to those who sold these were reasonable enough to see that
was their duty as honest men of business to get back his kingdom for Ptolemaeus only the parties could not agree as to the person to whom the important charge of occupying
Egypt by force along with the perquisites thence to be
should be assigned. It was only when the triumvirate was confirmed anew at the conference of Luca, that this afl‘air was also arranged, after Ptolemaeus had agreed to further payment of 10,000 talents (£2,400,000) the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, now obtained orders from those in power to take the necessary steps immediately for bringing back the king. The citizens of Alexandria had meanwhile placed the crown on the head of Berenice the eldest daughter of the ejected king, and given to her a husband in the person of one of the spiritual princes of Roman Asia, Archelaus the high-priest of Comana
expected
439), who possessed ambition enough to hazard his secure and
respectable position in the hope of mounting the throne of the Lagids. His attempts to gain the Roman regents to his interests remained without success; but he did not recoil before the idea of being obliged to maintain his new kingdom with arms in hand even against the Romans.
Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war and
against Egypt but directed to do so by the regents, made
pretext out of the alleged furtherance of piracy the Gabinlu Egyptians and the ‘building of fleet Archelaus, and
started without delay for the Egyptian frontier (699). 55,
The march through the sandy desert between Gaza and
gags;
a
by
by
(p.
a ; it
a
it,
;
A Roman garrison remains in Alexandria.
country
45: POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK V
Pelusium, in which so many invasions
against Egypt had broken down, was on this occasion successfully accomplished—a result especially due to the quick and skilful leader of the cavalry Marcus Antonius. The frontier fortress of Pelusium also was surrendered without resistance by the Jewish garrison stationed there.
In front of this city the Romans met the Egyptians, defeated them—on which occasion Antonius again distinguished himself—and arrived, as the first Roman army, at the Nile. Here the fleet and army of the Egyptians were drawn up for the last decisive struggle; but the Romans once more conquered, and Archelaus himself with many of his followers perished in the combat. Immediately after this battle the capital surrendered, and therewith all resistance was at an
end The unhappy land was handed over to its legitimate oppressor ; the hanging and beheading, with which, but for the intervention of the chivalrous Antonius, Ptolemaeus would have already in Pelusium begun to celebrate the restoration of the legitimate government, now took its course unhindered, and first of all the innocent daughter was sent by her father to the scaffold. The payment of the reward
with the regents broke down through the absolute impossibility of exacting from the exhausted land the enormous sums required, although they took from the
poor people the last penny; but care was taken that the
should at least be kept quiet by the garrison of Roman infantry and Celtic and German cavalry left in the capital, which took the place of the native praetorians and otherwise emulated them not unsuccessfully. The previous hegemony of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a direct military occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double burden imposed on it.
agreed upon
previously directed
CHAP. v PARTIES DURING ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
453
CHAPTER V
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS.
WITH the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the The
capital changed positions. From the time that the elected defeated
' general of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his aristocracy.
party, or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance in the capital. The nobility doubtless still stood in compact array, and still as before there issued from the comitial machinery none but consuls, who according to the ex pression of the democrats were already designated to the consulate in their cradles ; to command the elections and break down the influence of the old families over them was beyond the power even of the holders of power. But unfortunately the consulate, at the very moment when they
had got the length of virtually excluding the “new men” from began itself to grow pale before the newly-risen star of the exceptional military power. The aristocracy
felt this, though they did not exactly confess it; they gave themselves up as lost. Except Quintus Catulus, who with honourable firmness persevered at his far from pleasant post as champion of vanquished party down to his death (694), no Optimate could be named from the highest ranks 60 of the nobility, who would have sustained the interests of the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness. Their very men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus
a
it,
Cato.
95.
Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired, so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas, in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the senate-house amidst their gardens and libraries, their aviaries and fish-ponds. Still more, of course, was this the case with the younger generation of the aristocracy, which was either wholly absorbed in luxury and literature or turning towards the rising sun.
There was among the younger men a single exception ; it was Marcus Porcius Cato (born in 6 5 man of the best intentions and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most Quixotic and one of the most cheerless phenomena in this age so abounding in political caricatures. Honourable and steadfast, earnest in purpose and in action, full of attach ment to his country and to its hereditary constitution, but dull in intellect and sensuously as well as morally destitute of passion, he might certainly have made tolerable state accountant. But unfortunately he fell early under the power of formalism, and swayed partly the phrases of the
toa, which in their abstract baldness and spiritless isolation were current among the genteel world of that day, partly by the example of his great-grandfather whom he deemed
his especial task to reproduce, he began to walk about in the sinful capital as model burgess and mirror of virtue, to scold at the times like the old Cato, to travel on foot instead of riding, to take no interest, to decline badges of distinction as soldier, and to introduce the restoration of the good old days by going after the precedent of king Romulus without shirt.
A strange caricature of his ancestor—the gray-haired farmer whom hatred and anger made an orator, who wielded in masterly style the plough as well as the sword, who with his narrow, but original and sound common sense ordinarily hit the nail on the head— was this young unimpassioned pedant from whose
454
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK . V
lips dropped scholastic wisdom and who was everywhere seen
a a
a
it
by
a
9), a
CHAP. v DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
sitting book in hand, this philosopher who understood neither the art of war nor any other art whatever, this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals. Yet he attained to moral and thereby even to political importance. In an utterly wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told powerfully on the multitude; he
even formed a school, and there were individuals—it is true they were but few—who in their turn copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher. On the same cause depended also his political influence. As he was the only conservative of note who possessed if not talent and insight, at any rate integrity and courage, and was always ready to throw himself into the breach whether it was necessary to do so or not, he soon became the
recognized champion of the Optimate party, although neither his age nor his rank nor his intellect entitled him to be so. Where the perseverance of a single resolute man could decide, he no doubt sometimes achieved a success, and in questions of detail, more particularly of a financial character, he often judiciously interfered, as indeed he was absent from no meeting of the senate; his quaestorship in fact formed an epoch, and as long as he lived he checked the details of the public budget, regarding which he maintained of course a constant warfare with the farmers of the taxes.
For the rest, he lacked simply every ingredient of a states man. He was incapable of even comprehending a political aim and of surveying political relations; his whole tactics consisted in setting his face against every one who deviated or seemed to him to deviate from the traditionary moral and political catechism of the aristocracy, and thus of course he worked as often into the hands of his opponents as into those of his own party. The Don Quixote of the aristocracy, he
proved by his character and his actions that at this time, while there was certainly still an aristocracy in existence, the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.
4'J5
456 Democra
tic attacks.
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK v
To continue the conflict with this aristocracy brought little honour. Of course the attacks of the democracy on the vanquished foe did not on that account cease. The pack of the Populares threw themselves on the broken ranks of the nobility like the sutlers on a conquered camp, and the surface at least of politics was by this agitation ruffled into high waves of foam. The multitude entered into the matter the more readily, as Gaius Caesar especially kept them in good humour by the extravagant magnificence of his games (689)—in which all the equipments, even the cages of the wild beasts, appeared of massive silver—and generally by a liberality which was all the more princely that it was based solely on the contraction of debt. The attacks on the nobility were of the most varied kind. The abuses of aristocratic rule afforded copious materials; magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed a
iberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, Marcus Cicero, continued systematically to unveil the most offensive and scandalous aspects of the Optimate doings and to propose laws against them. The senate was directed to give access to foreign envoys on set days, with the view of preventing the usual postponement of audiences. Loans raised by foreign ambassadors in Rome were declared non actionable, as this was the only means of seriously checking the corruptions which formed the order of the day in the
07. senate (68 The right of the senate to give dispensation 67. in particular cases from the laws was restricted (687) as was also the abuse whereby every Roman of rank, who had private business to attend to in the provinces, got
himself invested by the senate with the character of 68. Roman envoy thither (691). They heightened the penalties against the purchase of votes and electioneering intrigues
57, es. (687, 691); which latter were especially increased in scandalous fashion by the attempts of the individuals ejected from the senate 380) to get back to through re-election.
(p.
it
aa
;
7).
CHAP. v DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
457
What had hitherto been simply understood as matter of course was now expressly laid down as a law, that the
were bound to administer justice in conformity with the rules set forth by them, after the Roman fashion,
at their entering on office (687). 67.
But, above all, efforts were made to complete the democratic restoration and to realize the leading ideas of the Gracchan period in a form suitable to the times. The
election of the priests by the comitia, which Gnaeus Domitius had introduced (iii. 46 3) and Sulla had again done away 115), was established by law of the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 69 r. The democrats were fond 68. of pointing out how much was still wanting towards the restoration of the Sempronian corn-laws in their full extent, and at the same time passed over in silence the fact that under the alteredb circumstances—with the straitened condition of the public finances and the great increase in
the number of fully-privileged Roman citizens—that restora
tion was absolutely impracticable. In the country between Trans the Po and the Alps they zealously fostered the agitation padanes. for political equality with the Italians. As early as 686 68. Gaius Caesar travelled from place to place there for this purpose; in 689 Marcus Crassus as censor made arrange 65. ments to enrol the inhabitants directly in the burgess-roll
—which was only frustrated by the resistance of his colleague; in the following censorships this attempt seems
praetors
to have been repeated. As formerly Gracchus and Flaccus had been the patrons of the Latins, so the present leaders of the democracy gave themselves forth as
of the Transpadanes, and Gaius Piso (consul in i
687) had bitterly to regret that he had ventured to outrage 67.
one of these clients of Caesar and Crassus. On the other Freedmen. hand the same leaders appeared no means disposed to
advocate the political equalization of the freedmen the
tribune of the people Gaius Manilius, who thinly
regularly
protectors
in a
;
by
(p.
a
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK V
67. attended assembly had procured the renewal (31 Dec. 687) of the Sulpician law as to the suffrage of freedmen (iii. 53! ), was immediately disavowed by the leading men of the democracy, and with their consent the law was cancelled by the senate on the very day after its passing. In the same spirit all the strangers, who possessed neither Roman nor Latin burgess-rights, were ejected from the capital by decree of the people in 689. It is obvious that the intrinsic inconsistency of the Gracchan policy—in abetting at once the effort of the excluded to obtain admission into the circle of the privileged, and the effort of the privileged to maintain their distinctive rights—had passed over to their successors; while Caesar and his friends on the one hand held forth to the Transpadanes the prospect of the franchise, they on the other hand gave their assent to the continuance of the disabilities of the freedmen, and to the
65.
458
Process against Rabirius.
barbarous setting aside of the rivalry which the industry and trading skill of the Hellenes and Orientals maintained with the Italians in Italy itself.
The mode in which the democracy dealt with the ancient criminal jurisdiction of the comitia was characteristic. It had not been properly abolished by Sulla, but practically the jury-commissions on high treason and murder had superseded it (p. 128), and no rational man could think of seriously re-establishing the old procedure which long before Sulla had been thoroughly unpractical. But as the
idea of the sovereignty of the people appeared to require a recognition at least in principle of the penal jurisdiction of the burgesses, the tribune of the people Titus Labienus
68. in 691 brought the old man, who thirty-eight years before had slain or was alleged to have slain the tribune of the people Lucius Saturninus (iii. 476), before the same high court of criminal jurisdiction, by virtue of which, if the annals reported truly, king Tullus had procured the
acquittal of the Horatius who had killed his sister. The
CHAP. v DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
459
accused was one Gaius Rabirius, who, if he had not killed Saturninus, had at least paraded with his cut-off head at the tables of men of rank, and who moreover was notorious among the Apulian landholders for his kidnapping and his bloody deeds. The object, if not of the accuser himself, at any rate of the more sagacious men who backed him, was not at all to make this pitiful wretch die the death of the cross; they were not unwilling to acquiesce, when first the form of the impeachment was materially modified by the senate, and then the assembly of the people called to pronounce sentence on the guilty was dissolved under some sort of pretext by the opposite party—so that the whole
was set aside. At all events by this process the two palladia of Roman freedom, the right of the citizens to appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes of the people, were once more established as practical rights, and the legal basis on which the democracy rested was adjusted afresh.
procedure
The democratic reaction manifested still greater vehe-
mence in all personal questions, wherever it could and dared. attacks’ Prudence indeed enjoined it not to urge the restoration of
the estates confiscated by Sulla to their former owners, that
it might not quarrel with its own allies and at the same
time fall into a conflict with material interests, for which a
policy with a set purpose is rarely a match; the recall of
the emigrants was too closely connected with this question
of property not to appear quite as unadvisable. On the
other hand great exertions were made to restore to the children of the proscribed the political rights withdrawn
from them (691), and the heads of the senatorial party were 68. incessantly subjected to personal attacks. Thus Gaius Memmius set on foot a process aimed at Marcus Lucullus
in 688. Thus they allowed his more famous brother to 66. wait for three years before the gates of the capital for his well-deserved triumph (688—69r). Quintus Rex and the “-68. conqueror of Crete Quintus Metellus were similarly insulted.
Personal
460
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK v
It produced a still greater sensation, when the young leader . of the democracy Gaius Caesar in 691 not merely presumed to compete with the two most distinguished men of the
nobility, Quintus Catulus and Publius Servilius the victor of Isaura, in the candidature for the supreme pontificate, but even carried the day among the burgesses. The heirs of Sulla, especially his son Faustus, found themselves constantly threatened with an action tor the refunding of the public moneys which, it was alleged, had been embezzled by the regent. They talked even of resuming the demo
90. cratic impeachments suspended in 664 on the basis of the Varian law (iii. 516). The individuals who had taken part in the Sullan executions were, as may readily be conceived, judicially prosecuted with the utmost zeal. When the quaestor Marcus Cato, in his pedantic integrity, himself made a beginning by demanding back from them the rewards which they had received for murder as property
65. illegally alienated from the state (689), it can excite no . surprise that in the following year (690) Gaius Caesar, as president of the commission regarding murder, summarily treated the clause in the Sullan ordinance, which declared that a proscribed person might be killed with impunity, as null and void, and caused the most noted of Sulla’s
Rehabilita tion of Saturninus and Marina.
executioners, Lucius Catilina, Lucius Bellienus, Lucius Luscius to be brought before his jurymen and, partially, to be condemned.
Lastly, they did not hesitate now to name once more in public the long-proscribed names of the heroes and martyrs
of the democracy, and to celebrate their memory. We have already mentioned how Saturninus was rehabilitated by the process directed against his murderer. But a differ ent sound withal had the name of Gaius Marius, at the mention of which all hearts once had throbbed ; and it happened that the man, to whom Italy owed her deliverance
from the northern barbarians, was at the same time the
CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
461
uncle of the present leader of the democracy. Loudly had
the multitude rejoiced, when in 686 Gaius Caesar ventured 68. in spite of the prohibitions publicly to show the honoured features of the hero in the Forum at the interment of the
widow of Marius. But when, three years afterwards (689), the emblems of victory, which Marius had caused to be erected in the Capitol and Sulla had ordered to be thrown down, one morning unexpectedly glittered afresh in gold and marble at the old spot, the veterans from the African
and Cimbrian wars crowded, with tears in their eyes, around the statue of their beloved general ; and in presence of the rejoicing masses the senate did not venture to seize the trophies which the same bold hand had renewed in defiance of the laws.
But all these doings and disputes, however much noise they made, were, politically considered, of but very subor dinate importance. The oligarchy was vanquished; the democracy had attained the helm. That underlings of various grades should hasten to inflict an additional kick on the prostrate foe; that the democrats also should have their basis in law and their worship of principles ; that their
doctrz'naz'rer should not rest till the whole privileges of the community were in all particulars restored, and should in that respect occasionally make themselves ridiculous, as legitimists are wont to do—all this was just as much to be
Wortnlen ness of the democratic successes.
as it was matter of indifference. Taken as a whole, the agitation was aimless; and we discern in it the perplexity of its authors to find an object for their activity, for it turned almost wholly on things already essentially settled or on subordinate matters.
expected
It could not be otherwise. In the struggle with the aristocracy the democrats had remained victors; but they
had not conquered alone, and the fiery trial still awaited the demo
them-——the reckoning not with their former foe, but with cutsand
their too powerful ally, to whom in the struggle with the
Impending collision between
Pompeius.
46:
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK 1
Schemes for ap pointing a.
aristocracy they were substantially indebted for victory, and to whose hands they had now entrusted an unexampled military and political power, because they dared not refuse it to him. The general of the east and of the seas was still employed in appointing and deposing kings. How long time he would take for that work, or when he would declare the business of the war to be ended, no one could tell but himself; since like everything else the time of his return to Italy, or in other words the day of decision, was left in his own hands. The parties in Rome meanwhile sat and waited. The Optimates indeed looked forward to the arrival of the dreaded general with comparative calm
ness ; by the rupture between Pompeius and the democracy, which they saw to be approaching, they could not lose, but could only gain. The democrats on the contrary waited with painful anxiety, and sought, during the interval still allowed to them by the absence of Pompeius, to lay a countermine against the impending explosion.
In this policy they again coincided with Crassus, to
whom no course was left for encountering his envied and
democratic hated rival but that of allying himself afresh, and more
military
dictator
ship. first coalition a special approximation had taken place
closely than before, with the democracy. Already in the
between Caesar and Crassus as the two weaker parties; a common interest and a common danger tightened yet more the bond which joined the richest and the most insolvent of Romans in closest alliance. While in public the demo- crats described the absent general as the head and pride of their party and seemed to direct all their arrows against the aristocracy, preparations were secretly made against Pompeius ; and these attempts of the democracy to escape from the impending military dictatorship have historically a far higher significance than the noisy agitation, for the most part employed only as a mask, against the nobility.
It is true that they were carried on amidst a darkness, upon
CHAP- V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
463
which our tradition allows only some stray gleams of light to fall; for not the present alone, but the succeeding age also had its reasons for throwing a veil over the matter. But in general both the course and the object of these efforts are completely clear. The military power could only be effectually checkmated by another military power. The design of the democrats was to possess themselves of the reins of government after the example of Marius and Cinna, then to entrust one of their leaders either with the conquest of Egypt or with the governorship of Spain or some similar ordinary or extraordinary office, and thus to find in him and his military force a counterpoise to Pompeius and his army. For this they required a revolution, which was directed immediately against the nominal government, but in reality against Pompeius as the designated monarch ;1 and, to effect this revolution, there was from the passing of the Gabinio-Manilian laws down to the return of Pompeius
perpetual conspiracy in Rome. The capital 686$ was in anxious suspense; the depressed temper of the capitalists, the suspensions of payment, the frequent bank ruptcies were heralds of the fermenting revolution, which seemed as though it must at the same time produce a totally
new position of parties. The project of the democracy,
which pointed beyond the senate at Pompeius, suggested
an approximation between that general and the senate.
But the democracy in attempting to oppose to the dictator
ship of Pompeius that of a man more agreeable to recog
nized, strictly speaking, on its part also the military govern
Any one who surveys the whole state of the political relations of this
period will need no special proofs to help him to see that the ultimate
object of the democratic machinations in 688 et req. was not the overthrow
of the senate, but that of Pompeius. Yet such proofs are not wanting.
Sallust states that the Gabinio-Manilian laws inflicted mortal blow on the democracy (Cat. 39); that the conspiracy of 688-689 and the Servilian 66-65 rogatio were specially directed against Pompeius, likewise attested
(Sallust -. Cal. 19; Val. Max. vi. 2, 4; Cic. d: Leg: Agr. 17, 46).
Besides the attitude of Crassus towards the conspiracy alone shows nrficiently that was directed against Pompeius.
(688—692)
66.
it
is ii.
a
1
it,
of the democrats and the anarchists.
464 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES 800K ‘
ment, and in reality drove out Satan by Beelzebub ; the ques tion of principles became in its hands a question of persons. The first step towards the revolution projected by the
leaders of the democracy was thus to be the overthrow of
existing government by means of an insurrection
primarily instigated in Rome by democratic
The moral condition of the lowest as of the highest ranks of society in the capital presented the materials for this purpose in lamentable abundance. We need not here repeat what was the character of the free and the servile proletariate of the capital. The significant saying was already heard, that only the poor man was qualified to represent the poor 5 the idea was thus suggested, that the mass of the poor might constitute itself an independent power as well as the oligarchy of the rich, and instead of allowing itself to be tyrannized over, might perhaps in its own turn play the tyrant. But even in the circles of the young men of rank similar ideas found an echo. The fashionable life of the capital shattered not merely the fortunes of men, but also their vigour of body and mind. That elegant world of fragrant ringlets, of fashionable mustachios and rufi‘les—merry as were its doings in the dance and with the harp, and early and late at the wine cup-—yet concealed in its bosom an alarming abyss of moral and economic ruin, of well or ill concealed despair, and frantic or knavish resolves. These circles sighed without disguise for a return of the time of Cinna with its
the
conspirators.
and confiscations and its annihilation of account-books for debt ; there were people enough, includ ing not a few of no mean descent and unusual abilities, who only waited the signal to fall like a gang of robbers on civil society and to recruit by pillage the fortune which they had squandered. Where a band gathers, leaders are
not wanting; and in this case the men were soonI,‘ found
proscriptions
who were fitted to be captains of banditti.
'
CIIAP. v DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
465
The late praetor Lucius Catilina, and the quaestor Catilina. Gnaeus Piso, were distinguished among their fellows not
merely by their genteel birth and their superior rank. They
had broken down the bridge completely behind them, and impressed their accomplices by their dissoluteness quite as
much as by their talents. Catilina especially was one of the most wicked men in that wicked age. His villanies belong to the records of crime, not to history; but his very outward appearance-—the pale countenance, the wild glance, the gait by turns sluggish and hurried—betrayed his dismal past. He possessed in a high degree the qualities which are required in the leader of such a band— the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of hearing all privations, courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the energy of a felon, and that horrible mastery of vice, which knows how to bring the weak to fall and how to train the fallen to crime.
To form out of such elements a conspiracy for the overthrow of the existing order of things could not be diflicult to men who possessed money and political influ ence. Catilina, Piso, and their fellows entered readily into any plan which gave the prospect of proscriptions and cancelling of debtor-books ; the former had moreover special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for the consulship. As he had formerly in the character of
an executioner of Sulla hunted the proscribed at the head of a band of Celts and had killed among others his own aged father-in-law with his own hand, he now readily con sented to promise similar services to the opposite party. A secret league was formed. The number of individuals received into it is said to have exceeded 400; it included associates in all the districts and urban communities of Italy; besides which, as a matter of course, numerous recruits would flock unbidden from the ranks of the dis
voL. w
130
66. Failure of
the first conspiracy.
solute youth to an insurrection, which inscribed or. its banner the seasonable programme of wiping out debts.
In December 688—so we are told—the leaders of the
league thought that they had found the fitting occasion
466
THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES B001K V
plans [65. for striking a blow. The two consuls chosen for 689,
of Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Autronius Paetus, had
recently been judicially convicted of electoral bribery, and therefore had according to legal rule forfeited their expect ancy of the highest oflice. Both thereupon joined the league. The conspirators resolved to procure the consul ship for them by force, and thereby to put themselves in possession of the supreme power in the state. On the day when the new consuls should enter on their office-—
65. the 1st Jan. 689—the senate-house was to be assailed by armed men, the new consuls and the victims otherwise designated were to be put to death, and Sulla and Paetus were to be proclaimed as consuls after the cancelling of the judicial sentence which excluded them. Crassus was then to be invested with the dictatorship and Caesar with the mastership of the horse, doubtless with a view to raise an imposing military force, while Pompeius was employed afar off at the Caucasus. Captains and common soldiers were hired and instructed; Catilina waited on the appointed day in the neighbourhood of the senate-house for the con certed signal, which was to be given him by Caesar on a hint from Crassus. But he waited in vain; Crassus was absent from the decisive sitting of the senate, and for this time the projected insurrection failed. A similar still more comprehensive plan of murder was then concerted for the 5th Feb. ; but this too was frustrated, because Catilina
the signal too early, before the bandits who were
gave
bespoken
divulged. The government did not venture openly to proceed against the conspiracy, but it assigned a guard to the consuls who were primarily threatened, and it opposed
had all arrived. Thereupon the secret was
CHAP. v DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS
467
to the band of the conspirators a band paid by the govern ment. To remove Piso, the proposal was made that he should be sent as quaestor with praetorian powers to Hither Spain; to which Crassus consented, in the hope of secur
him the resources of that important province for the insurrection. Proposals going farther were pre vented by the tribunes.
So runs the account that has come down to us, which evidently gives the version current in the government circles, and the credibility of which in detail must, in the absence of any means of checking be left an open question. As to the main matter—the participation of Caesar and Crassus —the testimony of their political opponents certainly cannot be regarded as suflicient evidence of it. But their notorious action at this epoch corresponds with striking exactness to the secret action which this report ascribes to them. The attempt of Crassus, who in this year was censor, ofticially to enrol the Transpadanes in the burgess-list 457) was of itself directly revolutionary enterprise. still more remarkable, that Crassus on the same occasion made preparations to enrol Egypt and Cyprus in the list of Roman domains,1 and that Caesar about the same time (689 or 690) got proposal submitted some tribunes to the burgesses to send him to Egypt, in order to reinstate king
ing through
whom the Alexandrians had expelled. These machinations suspiciously coincide with the charges raised
Plutarch, Crasr. r3; Cicero, a’: Legs agr. 17, 44. To this year (689) belongs Cicero's oration d: reg: Alexandrina, which has been in- correctly assigned to the year 698. In Cicero refutes, as the fragments clearly show, the assertion of Crassus, that Egypt had been rendered Roman property by the testament of king Alexander. This question of law might and must have been discussed in 689 but in 698 had been deprived of its significance through the Julian law of 695. In 698 more- over the discussion related not to the question to whom Egypt belonged, but to the restoration of the king driven out by a revolt, and in this trans action which well known to us Crassus played no part. Lastly, Cicero
after the conference of Luca was not at all in a position seriously to oppose one of the triumvirs.
65. 64.
65, 56,
85, 56. 5,, 66
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renewing their attempt to get possession of the consulate; which may have been partly owing to the fact that a relative of the leader of the democracy, Lucius Caesar, a weak man who was not unfrequently employed by his kinsman as a tool, was on this occasion a candidate for the consulship. But the reports from Asia urged them to make haste. The affairs of Asia Minor and Armenia were already completely arranged. However clearly democratic strategists showed that the Mithradatic war could only be regarded as ter minated by the capture of the king, and that it was there fore necessary to undertake the pursuit round the Black Sea, and above all things to keep aloof from Syria
64. out in the spring of 690 from Armenia and marched towards
If Egypt was really selected as the headquarters of the democracy, there was no time to be lost; otherwise Pompeius might easily arrive in Egypt sooner than Caesar. The conspiracy of 688, far from being broken up by the lax and timid measures of repression, was again astir when
68. the consular elections for 691 approached.