[779]
Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s
thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more
closely with those who were opposed to him.
Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s
thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more
closely with those who were opposed to him.
Napoleon - History of Julius Caesar - a
The Etruscan peasants accused the Senate as the cause
of all their sufferings; and the enemy of the nobles and the rich
appeared to them as an avenger sent by the gods. In ranging themselves
under his banner, they believed that they were on the way with him to
the pillage of the eternal city.
War was on the point of re-commencing, and this time Romans and
Italiotes marched united against Rome. From the north, Marius,
Sertorius, and Carbo were advancing with considerable forces. Cinna,
master of Campania, was penetrating into Latium, while a Samnite army
invaded it on the other side. To these five armies the Senate could
oppose but one; that of Cn. Pompeius Strabo, an able general, but an
intriguing politician, who hoped to raise himself under favour of the
disorder. Quitting his cantonments in Apulia, he had arrived, by forced
marches, under the walls of Rome, seeking either to sell his services to
the Senate or to effect a conciliation with Marius. He soon saw that the
insurgents were strong enough to do without him. His soldiers, raised in
the Picenum and in the country of the Marsi, refused to fight for the
Senate against their old confederates, and would have abandoned their
general but for the courage and presence of mind of his son, a youth of
twenty years of age, the same who subsequently was the great Pompey. One
day the legionaries, snatching their ensigns, threatened to desert in
mass: young Pompey laid himself across the gateway of the camp, and
challenged them to pass over his body. [706] Death delivered Pompeius
Strabo from the shame of being present at an inevitable catastrophe.
According to some authors, he sank under the attacks of an epidemic
disease; according to others, he was struck by lightning in the very
midst of his camp. Deprived of its chief, his army passed over to the
enemy; the Senate was without defenders, and the populace rose against
it: Rome opened her gates to Cinna and Marius.
The conquerors were without pity in putting to death, often with
refinements in cruelty unknown to the Romans, the partisans of the
aristocratic faction who had fallen into their hands. During several
days, the slaves, whom Cinna had restored to liberty, gave themselves up
to every excess. Sertorius, the only one of the chiefs of the democratic
party who had some feelings of justice, made an example of these
wretches, and massacred nearly four thousand of them. [707]
Marius and Cinna had proclaimed, as they advanced upon Rome in arms,
that their aim was to assure to the Italiotes the entire enjoyment of
the rights of Roman city; they declared themselves both consuls for the
year 668. Their power was too considerable to be contested, for the new
citizens furnished them with a contingent of thirty legions, or about
150,000 men. [708] Marius died suddenly thirteen days after entering upon
office, and the democratic party lost in him the only man who still
preserved his prestige. A fact which arose out of his funeral, paints
the manners of the epoch, and the character of the revolution which had
just been effected. An extraordinary sacrifice was wanted for his tomb:
the pontiff Q. Mucius Scævola, one of the most respectable old men of
the nobility, was chosen as the victim. Conducted in pomp before the
funeral pile of the conqueror of the Cimbri, he was struck by the
sacrificer, who, with an inexperienced hand, plunged the knife into his
throat without killing him. Restored to life, Scævola was cited in
judgment, by a tribune of the people, for not having received the blow
_fairly_. [709]
While Rome and all Italy were plunged in this fearful anarchy, Sylla
drove out of Greece the generals of Mithridates VI. , and gained two
great battles at Chæronea (668) and Orchomenus (669). He was still in
Bœotia, when Valerius Flaccus, sent by Cinna to replace him, landed
in Greece, penetrated into Thessaly, and thence passed into Asia. Sylla
followed him thither immediately, in haste to conclude with the King of
Pontus an arrangement which would enable him to lead his army back into
Italy. Circumstances were favourable. Mithridates had need to repair his
losses, and he found himself in presence of a new enemy, the lieutenant
of Valerius Flaccus, the fierce Flavius Fimbria, who, having by the
murder of his general become head of the army of Asia, had seized upon
Pergamus. Mithridates subscribed to the conditions imposed by Sylla; he
restored all the provinces of which he had taken possession, and gave
plate and money. Sylla then advanced into Lydia against Fimbria; but the
latter, at the approach of the victor of Chæronea, could not restrain
his soldiers. His whole army disbanded and passed over to Sylla.
Threatened by his rival, the murderer of Flaccus was driven to slay
himself. Nothing now stood in the way of Sylla’s projects on Italy, and
he prepared to make his enemies at Rome pay dearly for their temporary
triumph. At the moment of setting sail, he wrote to the Senate to
announce the conclusion of the war in Asia, and his own speedy return.
Three years, he said, had been sufficient to enable him to re-unite with
the Roman empire Greece, Macedonia, Ionia, and Asia, and to shut up
Mithridates within the limits of his old possessions; he was the first
Roman who received an embassy from the King of the Parthians. [710] He
complained of the violence exercised against his friends and his wife,
who had fled with a crowd of fugitives to seek an asylum in his
camp. [711] He added, without vain threats, his intention to restore
order by force of arms; but he promised not to repeal the great measure
of the emancipation of Italy, and ended by declaring that the good
citizens, new as well as old, had nothing to fear from him.
This letter, which the Senate ventured to receive, redoubled the fury of
the men who had succeeded Marius. Blood flowed again. Cinna, who caused
himself to be re-elected consul for the fourth time, and Cn. Papirius
Carbo, his colleague, collecting in haste numerous troops, but ill
disciplined, prepared to do their best to make head against the storm
which was approaching. Persuaded that Sylla would proceed along the
Adriatic to invade Italy from the north, Cinna had collected at Ancona a
considerable army, with the design of surprising him in the midst of his
march, and attacking him either in Epirus or Illyria. But his soldiers,
Italiotes in great part, encouraged by the promises of Sylla, and,
moreover, full of contempt for their own general, said openly that they
would not pass the sea. Cinna attempted to make an example of some of
the mutineers. A revolt broke out, and he was massacred. To avoid a
similar lot, Carbo, who came to take the command, hastened to promise
the rebels that they should not quit Italy.
Sylla landed at Brundusium, in 671, at the head of an army of forty
thousand men, composed of five legions, six thousand cavalry, and
contingents from Peloponnesus and Macedonia. The fleet numbered sixteen
hundred vessels. [712] He followed the Appian Way, and reached Campania
after a single battle, fought not far from Canusium. [713] He brought the
gold of Mithridates and the plunder of the temples of Greece, means of
seduction still more dangerous than his ability on the field of battle.
Hardly arrived in Italy, he rallied round him the proscripts and all
those who detested the inapt and cruel government of the successors of
Marius. The remains of the great families decimated by them repaired to
his camp as to a safe place of refuge. M. Licinius Crassus became one of
his ablest lieutenants, and it was then that Cn. Pompeius, the son of
Strabo, a general at twenty-three years of age, raised an army in the
Picenum, beat three bodies of the enemies, and came to offer to Sylla
his sword, already redoubtable.
It was the beginning of the year 672 when Sylla entered Latium; he
completely defeated, near Signia, the legions of the younger Marius,
whose name had raised him to the consulship. This battle rendered Sylla
master of Rome; but to the north, in Cisalpine Gaul and Etruria, Carbo,
in spite of frequent defeats, disputed the ground with obstinacy against
Pompey and Sylla’s other lieutenants. In the south, the Samnites had
raised all their forces, and were preparing to succour Præneste,
besieged by Sylla in person, and defended by young Marius. Pontius
Telesinus, the general of the Samnites, finding it out of his power to
raise the siege, conceived then the audacious and almost desperate idea
of carrying his whole army to Rome, taking it by surprise, and sacking
it. “Let us burn the wolves’ den,”[714] he said to his soldiers: “so
long as it exists, there will be no liberty in Italy. ”
By a rapid night-march, Telesinus deceived the vigilance of his
adversary; but, exhausted with fatigue, on arriving at the foot of the
ramparts of Rome, the Samnites were unable to give the assault, and
Sylla had time to arrive with the choicest of his legions.
A sanguinary battle took place at the very gates of the town, on the day
of the calends of November, 672, and it continued far into the night.
The left wing of the Romans was beaten and took to flight, in spite of
the efforts of Sylla to rally it; Telesinus perished in the fight, and
Crassus, who commanded the right wing, gained a complete victory. At
daylight, the Samnites who had escaped the slaughter laid down their
arms and demanded quarter. [715]
More than a year still passed away before the complete pacification of
Italy, and it was only obtained by employing the most violent and
sanguinary measures. Sylla made this terrible declaration, that he would
not pardon one of his enemies. At Præneste, all the senators who were
the partisans of Marius had their throats cut, and the inhabitants were
put to the sword. Those of Norba, surprised through treason, rather than
surrender, buried themselves under the ruins of their city.
Sylla had scrupled at nothing in his way to power; the corruption of the
armies,[716] the pillage of towns, the massacre of the inhabitants, and
the extermination of his enemies; nor did he show any more scruples in
maintaining himself in it. He inaugurated his return to the Senate by
the slaughter, near the Temple of Bellona, of three thousand Samnites
who had surrendered prisoners. [717] A considerable number of the
inhabitants of Italy were deprived of the right of city which had been
granted them after the war of the allies;[718] he invented a new
punishment, that of proscription,[719] and, in Rome alone, he banished
four thousand seven hundred citizens, among whom were ninety senators,
fifteen consulars, and two thousand seven hundred knights. [720] His fury
fell heaviest upon the Samnites, whose spirit of independence he feared,
and he almost entirely annihilated that nation. [721] Although his
triumph had been a reaction against the popular party, he treated as
prisoners of war the children of the noblest and most respectable
families, and, by a monstrous innovation, even the women suffered the
same lot. [722] Lists of proscription, placarded on the Forum with the
names of the intended victims, threw terror into families; to laugh or
cry on looking at these was a crime. [723] M. Pletorius was slaughtered
for having fainted at the sight of the punishment inflicted on the
prætor, M. Marius;[724] to denounce the hiding-place of the proscripts,
or put them to death, formed a title to recompenses paid from the public
treasury, amounting in some cases to twelve thousand drachmas (about
11,640 francs [£460]) a head;[725] to assist them, to have had friendly
or any other relations with the enemies of Sylla, was enough to subject
the offender to capital punishment. From one end of Italy to the other,
all those who had served under the orders of Marius, Carbo, or Norbanus,
were massacred or banished, and their goods sold by auction. They were
to be struck even in their posterity: the children and grandchildren of
the proscripts were deprived of the right of inheritance and of being
candidates for public offices. [726] All these acts of pitiless vengeance
had been authorised by a law called _Valeria_, promulgated in 672, and
which, in appointing Sylla dictator, conferred upon him unlimited
powers. Yet, though Sylla kept the supreme power, he permitted the
election of the consuls every year, an example which was subsequently
followed by the emperors.
Calm re-established in Rome, a new constitution was promulgated, which
restored the aristocracy to its ascendency. The dictator fell into the
delusion of believing that a system founded by violence, upon selfish
interests, could survive him. It is easier to change laws than to arrest
the course of ideas.
The legislation of the Gracchi was abolished. The senators, by the law
_judiciaria_, acquired again the exclusive privilege of the judicatory
functions. The colony of Capua, a popular creation, was destroyed and
restored to the domain. Sylla assumed to himself one of the first
privileges of the censorship, which he had suppressed--the nomination
of the members of the Senate. He introduced into that assembly,
decimated during the civil wars, three hundred knights. By the law on
the priesthood, he removed from the votes of the people and restored to
the college the choice of the pontiffs and of the sovereign pontiff. He
limited the power of the tribunes, leaving them only the right of
protection (_auxilium_),[727] and forbidding their access to the
superior magistracies. [728] He flattered himself that he had thus
removed the ambitious from a career henceforward profitless.
He admitted into Rome ten thousand new citizens (called
_Cornelians_),[729] taken from among the slaves whose masters had been
proscribed. Similar enfranchisements took place in the rest of Italy. He
had almost exterminated two nations, the Etruscans and the Samnites; he
re-peopled their deserted countries by distributing the estates of his
adversaries among a considerable number of his soldiers, whom some
authors raise to the prodigious number of forty-seven legions,[730] and
created for his veterans twenty-three military colonies on the territory
taken from the rebel towns. [731]
All these arbitrary measures were dictated by the spirit of reaction;
but those which follow were inspired by the desire to re-establish order
and the hierarchy.
The rules formerly adopted for the succession of the magistracies were
restored. [732] No person could offer himself for the consulship without
having previously held the office of prætor; or for the prætorship
before he had held that of questor. Thirty years were fixed as the age
necessary for the questorship, forty for the prætorship, and forty-three
for the consulship. The law required an interval of two years between
the exercise of two different magistracies, and often between the same
magistracy, a rule so severely maintained, that, for having braved it in
merely soliciting for the consulship,[733] Lucretius Ofella, one of
Sylla’s most devoted partisans, was put to death. The dictator withdrew
from the freedmen the right of voting, from the knights the places of
honour in the spectacles; he put a stop to the adjudications entrusted
to the farmers-general and the distributions of wheat, and suppressed
the corporations, which threatened a real danger to public tranquillity.
Lastly, to put limits to extravagance, the sumptuary laws were
promulgated. [734]
By the law _de provinciis ordinandis_, he sought to regulate the
provinces and ameliorate their administration. The two consuls and the
eight prætors were retained at Rome during their year of office by the
administration of civil affairs. They took afterwards, in quality of
proconsuls or proprætors, the command of one of the ten provinces, which
they exercised during a year; after which a new curiate law became
necessary to renew the _imperium_; they preserved it until their return
to Rome. Thirty days were allowed to them for quitting the province
after the arrival of their successors. [735] The number of prætors,
questors, pontiffs, and augurs was augmented. [736] Every year twenty
questors were to be named, which would ensure the recruitment of the
Senate, since this office gave entrance to it. Sylla multiplied the
commissions of justice. He took measures for putting a stop to the
murders which desolated Italy (_lex de sicariis_), and to protect the
citizens against outrages (_lex de injuriis_). The _lex magistratis_
completed, so to say, the preceding. [737] In the number of _crimes of
high treason_, punished capitally, are the excesses of magistrates
charged with the administration of the provinces; quitting their
government without leave of the Senate; conducting an army beyond the
limits of his province; undertaking a war unauthorised; treating with
foreign chiefs: such were the principal acts denounced as crimes against
the Republic. There was not one of them of which Sylla himself had not
been guilty.
Sylla abdicated in 675, the only extraordinary act which remained for
him to accomplish. He who had carried mourning into so many families
returned into his own house alone, through a respectful and submissive
crowd. Such was the ascendency of his old power, supported, moreover,
by the ten thousand Cornelians present in Rome and devoted to his
person,[738] that, though he had resumed his position of simple citizen,
he was still allowed to act as absolute master, and even on the eve of
his death, which occurred in 676, he made himself the executioner of
pitiless justice, in daring to cause to be slaughtered before his eyes
the prætor Granius, guilty of exaction. [739]
Unexampled magnificence was displayed at his funeral; his body was
carried to the Campus Martius, where previously none but the kings had
been inhumed. [740] He left Italy tamed, but not subdued; the great
nobles in power, but without moral authority; his partisans enriched,
but trembling for their riches; the numerous victims of tyranny held
down, but growling under the oppression; lastly, Rome taught that
henceforth she is without protection against the boldness of any
fortunate soldier. [741]
[Sidenote: Effects of Sylla’s Dictatorship. ]
VII. The history of the last fifty years, and especially the
dictatorship of Sylla, show beyond doubt that Italy demanded a master.
Everywhere institutions gave way before the power of an individual,
sustained not only by his own partisans, but also by the irresolute
multitude, which, fatigued by the action and reaction of so many
opposite parties, aspired to order and repose. If the conduct of Sylla
had been moderated, what is called the Empire would probably have
commenced with him; but his power was so cruel and so partial, that
after his death, the abuses of liberty were forgotten in the memory of
abuses of tyranny. The more the democratic spirit had expanded, the more
the ancient institutions lost their prestige. In fact, as democracy,
trusting and passionate, believes always that its interests are better
represented by an individual than by a political body, it was
incessantly disposed to deliver its future to the man who raised himself
above others by his own merit. The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla, had in
turn disposed at will of the destinies of the Republic, and trampled
under foot with impunity ancient institutions and ancient customs; but
their reign was ephemeral,[742] for they only represented factions.
Instead of embracing collectively the hopes and interests of all the
peninsula of Italy, they favoured exclusively particular classes of
society. Some sought before all to secure the prosperity of the
proletaries of Rome, or the emancipation of the Italiotes, or the
preponderance of the knights; others, the privileges of the aristocracy.
They failed.
To establish a durable order of things there wanted a man who, raising
himself above vulgar passions, should unite in himself the essential
qualities and just ideas of each of his predecessors, avoiding their
faults as well as their errors. To the greatness of soul and love of the
people of certain tribunes, it was needful to join the military genius
of great generals and the strong sentiments of the Dictator in favour of
order and the hierarchy.
The man capable of so lofty a mission already existed; but perhaps, in
spite of his name, he might have still remained long unknown, if the
penetrating eye of Sylla had not discovered him in the midst of the
crowd, and, by persecution, pointed him out to public attention. That
man was Cæsar.
BOOK II.
HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
CHAPTER I.
(654-684. )
[Sidenote: First Years of Cæsar. ]
I. About the time when Marius, by his victories over the Cimbri and
Teutones, saved Italy from a formidable invasion, was born at Rome the
man who would one day, by again subduing the Gauls and Germans, retard
for several centuries the irruption of the barbarians, give the
knowledge of their rights to oppressed peoples, assure continuance to
Roman civilisation, and bequeath his name to the future chiefs of
nations, as a consecrated emblem of power.
Caius Julius Cæsar was born at Rome on the 4th of the ides of Quintilis
(July 12), 654,[743] and the month Quintilis, called _Julius_ [July] in
honour of him, has borne for 1,900 years the name of the great man. He
was the son of C. Julius Cæsar,[744] prætor, who died suddenly at Pisa
about 670,[745] and of Aurelia, descended from an illustrious plebeian
family.
By ancestry and alliances, Cæsar inherited that double prestige which is
derived from ancient origin and recent renown.
On one side, he claimed to be descended from Anchises and Venus;[746] on
the other, he was the nephew of the famous Marius who had married his
aunt Julia. When the widow of this great captain died in 686, Cæsar
pronounced her funeral oration, and thus traced out his own
genealogy:--“My aunt Julia, on the maternal side, is of the issue of
kings; on the paternal side, she descends from the immortal gods: for
her mother was a Marcia,[747] and the family Marcius Rex are the
descendants of Ancus Marcius. The Julia family, to which I belong,
descends from Venus herself. Thus our house unites to the sacred
character of kings, who are the most powerful among men, the venerated
holiness of the gods, who hold kings themselves under their
subjection. ”[748]
This proud glorification of his race attests the value which was set at
Rome upon antiquity of origin; but Cæsar, sprung from that aristocracy
which had produced so many illustrious men, and impatient to follow in
their footsteps, showed, from early youth, that nobility obliges,
instead of imitating those whose conduct would make one believe that
nobility dispenses.
Aurelia, a woman of lofty character and severe morals,[749] helped above
all in the development of his great abilities, by a wise and enlightened
education, and prepared him to make himself worthy of the part which
destiny had reserved for him. [750] This first education, given by a
tender and virtuous mother, has ever as much influence over our future
as the most precious natural qualities. Cæsar reaped the fruits of it.
He also received lessons from M. Antonius Gnipho, the Gaul, a
philosopher and master of eloquence, of a rare mind, of vast learning,
and well versed in Greek and Latin letters, which he had cultivated at
Alexandria. [751]
Greece was always the country of the arts and sciences, and the language
of Demosthenes was familiar to every lettered Roman. [752] Thus Greek and
Latin might be called the two languages of Italy, as they were, at a
later period, by the Emperor Claudius. [753] Cæsar spoke both with the
same facility; and, when falling beneath the dagger of Brutus, he
pronounced in Greek the last words that issued from his lips. [754]
Though eager for pleasure, he neglected nothing, says Suetonius, by
which to acquire those talents which lead to the highest honours. Now,
according to Roman habits, the first offices were attainable only by the
union of the most diverse merits. The patrician youth, still worthy of
their ancestors, were not idle: they sought religious appointments, to
give them power over consciences; administrative employments, to
influence material interests; discussions and public discourses, to
captivate minds by their eloquence; finally, military labours, to strike
imaginations by the brilliancy of their glory. Emulous of distinction in
all, Cæsar did not confine himself to the study of letters; he early
composed works, among which are cited “The Praises of Hercules,” a
tragedy of “Œdipus,” “A Collection of Choice Phrases,”[755] a book on
“Divination. ”[756] It seems that these works were written in a style so
pure and correct, that they gained for him the reputation of an eminent
writer, _gravis auctor linguæ Latinæ_. [757] He was less happy in the art
of poetry, if we may believe Tacitus. [758] However, there remain to us
some verses addressed to the memory of Terence, which are not wanting in
elegance. [759]
Education, then, had made Cæsar a distinguished man before he was a
great man. He united to goodness of heart a high intelligence, to an
invincible courage,[760] an enthralling eloquence,[761] a wonderful
memory,[762] an unbounded generosity; finally, he possessed one very
rare quality--calmness under anger. [763] “His affability,” says
Plutarch, “his politeness, his gracious address--qualities which he had
to a degree beyond his age--gained him the affection of the
people. ”[764]
Two anecdotes of later date must come in here. Plutarch relates that
Cæsar, during his campaigns, one day, surprised by a violent storm, took
shelter in a hut where was only one room, too small to contain many
people. He hastened to offer it to Oppius, one of his officers, who was
sick; and himself passed the night in the open air, saying to those who
accompanied him, “We must leave to the great the places of honour, but
yield to the sick those that are necessary to them. ” Another time,
Valerius Leo, with whom he was dining at Milan, having set before him an
ill-seasoned dish, the companions of Cæsar remonstrated, but he
reproached them sharply for their want of consideration for his host,
saying “that they were free not to eat of a dish they did not like, but
that to complain of it aloud was a want of good breeding. ”[765]
These facts, of small importance in themselves, yet testify to Cæsar’s
goodness of heart, and to the delicacy of the well-bred man who is
always observant of propriety.
To his natural qualities, developed by a brilliant education, were added
physical advantages. His tall stature, his rounded and well-proportioned
limbs, stamped his person with a grace that distinguished him from all
others. [766] He had black eyes, a piercing look, a pale complexion, a
straight and high nose. His mouth, small and regular, but with rather
thick lips, gave a kindly expression to the lower part of his face,
whilst his breadth of brow betokened the development of the intellectual
faculties. His face was full, at least, in his youth; for in his busts,
doubtless made towards the end of his life, his features are thinner,
and bear traces of fatigue. [767] He had a sonorous and penetrating
voice, a noble gesture, and an air of dignity reigned over all his
person. [768] His constitution, at first delicate, became robust by a
frugal regimen and the habit of exposing himself to the inclemency of
the weather. [769] Accustomed from his youth to all bodily exercises, he
was a bold horseman,[770] and bore privations and fatigues without
difficulty. [771] Habitually temperate, his health was impaired neither
by excess of labour nor by excess of pleasure. However, on two
occasions--the first at Corduba, the second at Thapsus--he was seized
with nervous attacks, wrongly mistaken for epilepsy. [772]
He paid special attention to his person, carefully shaved or plucked out
his beard, and artistically brought his hair forward to the front of his
head, which, in more advanced age, served to conceal his bald forehead.
He was reproached with the affectation of scratching his head with one
finger only, so that he should not disarrange his hair. [773] His
toilette was refined; his toga was generally ornamented with a
laticlavia, fringed down to the hands, and fastened by a girdle
carelessly tied about his loins; a costume which distinguished the
elegant and effeminate youths of the period. But Sylla was not deceived
by these appearances of frivolity, and repeated that they must take care
of this young man with the loose girdle. [774] He had a taste for
pictures, statues, and jewels; and, in memory of his origin, always
wore on his finger a ring, on which was engraved the figure of an armed
Venus. [775]
In fine, we discover in Cæsar, both physically and morally, two natures
rarely united in the same person. He joined an aristocratic delicacy of
body to the muscular constitution of the warrior; the love of luxury and
the arts to a passion for military life, in all its simplicity and
rudeness: in a word, he allied the elegance of manner which seduces with
the energy of character which commands.
[Sidenote: Cæsar persecuted by Sylla (672). ]
II. Such was Cæsar at the age of eighteen, when Sylla seized the
dictatorship. [776] Already he attracted all eyes at Rome by his name,
his intellect, his affable manners, which pleased men, and, perhaps,
women still more.
The influence of his uncle Marius caused him to be nominated priest of
Jupiter (_flamen dialis_) at the age of fourteen. [777] At sixteen,
betrothed, doubtless against his will, to Cossutia, the daughter of a
rich knight, he broke his engagement,[778] after the death of his
father, to draw still closer his alliance with the popular party by
marrying, a year after, in 671, Cornelia, daughter of L. Cornelius
Cinna, the ancient colleague of Marius, and the representative of his
cause. From this marriage was born, the following year, Julia, who
became, in after time, the wife of Pompey.
[779]
Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s
thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more
closely with those who were opposed to him. He wished to force him to
divorce Cornelia, but he found him inflexible. When every one yielded to
his will; when, by his orders, Piso separated from Annia, the widow of
Cinna,[780] and Pompey ignominiously dismissed his wife, the daughter of
Antistius, who died for his cause,[781] to marry Emilia, the
daughter-in-law of the dictator, Cæsar maintained his independence at
the price of his personal safety.
Become suspected, he was deprived of his priesthood,[782] and of his
wife’s dowry, and declared incapable of inheriting from his family.
Obliged to conceal himself in the outskirts of Rome to escape
persecution, he changed his place of retreat every night, though ill
with fever; but, arrested by a band of assassins in the pay of Sylla,
he gained the chief, Cornelius Phagita, by giving him two talents (about
12,000 francs),[783] and his life was preserved. Let us note here that,
arrived at sovereign power, Cæsar met this same Phagita, and treated him
with indulgence, without reminding him of the past. [784] Meanwhile, he
still wandered about in the Sabine country. His courage, his constancy,
his illustrious birth, his former quality of flamen, excited general
interest. Soon important personages, such as Aurelius Cotta, his
mother’s brother, and Mamercus Lepidus, a connection of his family,
interceded in his favour. [785] The vestals also, whose sole intervention
put an end to all violence, did not spare their prayers. [786] Vanquished
by so many solicitations, Sylla yielded at last, exclaiming, “Well! be
it so, you will it; but know that he, whose pardon you demand, will one
day ruin the party of the great for which we have fought together, for,
trust me, there are several Mariuses in this young man. ”[787]
Sylla had judged truly: many Mariuses, in effect, had met together in
Cæsar: Marius, the great captain, but with a larger military genius;
Marius, the enemy of the oligarchy, but without hatred and without
cruelty; Marius, in a word, no longer the man of a faction, but the man
of his age.
[Sidenote: Cæsar in Asia (673, 674). ]
III. Cæsar could not remain a cold spectator of the sanguinary reign of
Sylla, and left for Asia, where he received the hospitality of
Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. A short time afterwards he took part in the
hostilities which continued against Mithridates. The young men of good
family who wished to serve their military apprenticeship followed a
general to the army. Admitted to his intimacy under the name of
_contubernales_, they were attached to his person. It was in this
capacity that Cæsar accompanied the prætor M. Minucius Thermus,[788] who
sent him to Nicomedes to claim his co-operation in the siege of
Mitylene, occupied by the troops of Mithridates. Cæsar succeeded in his
mission, and on his return aided in the capture of the city. Having
saved the life of a Roman soldier, he received from Thermus a civic
crown. [789]
Shortly afterwards he returned to Bithynia, to defend the cause of one
of his clients. His frequent presence at the court of Nicomedes served
as the pretext for an accusation of shameful condescension. But Cæsar’s
relations with the Bithynians may be explained quite naturally by his
feelings of gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them; it
was the reason which made him always defend their interests, and at a
later period become their patron, as may be gathered from the fragment
of a speech preserved by Aulus Gellius. [790] The motives of his conduct
were, nevertheless, so misconstrued, that insulting allusions are to be
found in certain debates of the Senate, and even in the songs of the
soldiers who followed his triumphal car. [791] But these sarcasms, which
told rather of hatred than of truth, as Cicero himself says, _magis odio
firmata quam præsidio_,[792] were only set afloat by his adversaries
very much later, that is to say, at one of those moments of excitement
when political parties shrink from no calumny[793] to mutually decry
each other. Notwithstanding the relaxation of morals, nothing could have
ruined the reputation of Cæsar more than this accusation, for such a
crime was not only abhorred in the army,[794] but, committed with a
foreigner, would have been the most degrading disregard of Roman
dignity. Wherefore Cæsar, whose love for women ought to have shielded
him from such a suspicion, repelled it with just indignation. [795]
After having made his first campaign at the siege of Mitylene, Cæsar
served in the fleet of the proconsul P. Servilius (676), commissioned to
make war on the Cilician pirates, who subsequently received the surname
of _Isauricus_, because he had taken Isaura, their chief place of
refuge,[796] and conquered part of Cilicia. However, he remained but a
short time with Servilius, for, having been informed of the death of
Sylla, he returned to Rome. [797]
[Sidenote: Cæsar on his return to Rome (676). ]
IV. The Republic, divided into two parties, was on the eve of falling
into civil war through the diversity of opinion between the two consuls,
Lepidus and Catulus. They were ready to come to blows. The former,
elevated to the consulship by the influence of Pompey, against the
advice of Sylla, fomented an insurrection. “He lighted up,” says Florus,
“the fire of civil war at the very funeral pyre of the dictator. ”[798]
He wished to abrogate the Cornelian laws, restore to the tribunes their
power, to the proscribed their rights, to the allies their lands. [799]
These designs against the system established by the dictator agreed with
Cæsar’s ideas, and endeavours were made, by seductive offers, to draw
him into the intrigues which were then going on; but he kept aloof. [800]
The Senate succeeded in making the consuls swear that they would be
reconciled, and thought to ensure peace by giving each a military
command. Catulus received the government of Italy, and Lepidus that of
Cisalpine Gaul. The latter, before going to his province, visited
Etruria, where the partisans of Marius flocked to him. The Senate,
informed of these doings, recalled him to Rome, towards the end of the
year, to hold the comitia. [801] Lepidus, leaving Brutus the prætor
encamped near Mutina (_Modena_), marched back to Rome at the head of his
army. Beaten by Catulus and Pompey at the bridge of Milvius, he withdrew
to the coast of Etruria, and, after a new defeat, fled to Sardinia,
where he ended his career miserably. [802] Perpenna, his lieutenant,
went, with the wreck of his army, to rejoin Sertorius in Spain.
Cæsar acted wisely in keeping out of these movements, for not only did
the character of Lepidus inspire him with no confidence,[803] but he
must have thought that the dictatorship of Sylla was too recent, that it
had inspired too many fears, and created too many new interests, to
admit of the reaction, still incomplete in men’s minds, succeeding by
arms. For the present, they must limit themselves to acting on public
opinion, by branding with words the instruments of the past tyranny.
The most general way of entering on a political career was by
instituting a prosecution against some high personage. [804] Its success
mattered little; the real point was to be brought prominently forward by
some remarkable speech, and offer a proof of patriotism.
Cornelius Dolabella, one of the friends of Sylla, who had had the
honours of the consulate and triumph, and who, two years before, was
governor of Macedonia, was now accused by Cæsar of excesses committed in
his government (677). He was acquitted by the tribunal composed of the
creatures of the dictator. [805] Public opinion did not praise Cæsar the
less for having dared to attack a man who was supported and defended by
orators such as Hortensius and L. Aurelius Cotta. Besides, he displayed
so much eloquence, that this first speech gave him at once a veritable
celebrity. [806] Encouraged by this success, Cæsar cited C. Antonius
Hybrida before the prætor M. Lucullus for having, at the head of a body
of cavalry, pillaged certain parts of Greece when Sylla was returning
from Asia. [807] The accused was also acquitted, but the popularity of
the accuser still increased. He also spoke, probably, in other causes
now unknown. Tacitus speaks of a speech of Cæsar’s in favour of a
certain Decius the Samnite,[808] without doubt the same mentioned by
Cicero, who, flying from the proscription of Sylla, was kindly received
by Aulus Cluentius. [809] Thus Cæsar boldly offered himself as the
defender of the oppressed Greeks or Samnites, who had suffered so much
from the regime preceding. He gained especially the good-will of the
former, whose opinions, highly influential at Rome, helped to make
reputations.
These attacks were certainly a means of attracting public attention, but
they also showed the courage of the man, since the partisans of Sylla
were still all in power.
[Sidenote: Cæsar goes to Rhodes (678-680). ]
V. Notwithstanding his celebrity as an orator, Cæsar resolved to keep
out of the troubles which agitated Italy, and doubtless felt his
presence in Rome useless to his cause and irksome to himself. It is
often advantageous to political men to disappear for a time from the
scene; they thus avoid compromising themselves in daily struggles
without aim, and their reputation, instead of losing, increases by
absence. During the winter of 678 Cæsar again quitted Italy, for the
purpose of going to Rhodes to complete his studies. This island, then
the centre of intellectual lights, the dwelling-place of the most
celebrated philosophers, was the school of all the well-born youth.
Cicero himself had gone there for lessons some years before.
In his passage, Cæsar was taken by pirates near Pharmacusa, a small
island in the archipelago of the Sporades, at the mouth of the Gulf of
Jassius. [810] Notwithstanding the campaign of P. Servilius Isauricus,
these pirates still infested the sea with numerous fleets. They demanded
twenty talents (£2,329) for his ransom. He offered fifty (£11,640),
which must naturally have given them a high notion of their prisoner,
and insured him better treatment. He sent trusty agents, and among
others Epicrates, one of his Milesian slaves, to raise this sum in the
neighbouring towns. [811] Though the allied provinces and towns were in
this case obliged to furnish the ransom, it was none the less curious,
as a proof of their wealth, to see a young man of twenty-four, arrested
in a little island of Asia Minor, instantly able to borrow so large a
sum.
Left alone with a physician and two slaves[812] in the midst of these
ferocious brigands, he held them in awe by his force of character, and
passed nearly forty days on board without ever loosing either his
sandals or his girdle, to avoid all suspicion of wishing to escape by
swimming. [813] He seemed less a captive, says Plutarch, than a prince
surrounded by his guards; now playing with them, now reciting poems to
them, he made himself loved and feared, and laughingly told them that,
once free, he would have them crucified. [814] Yet the remembrance of
Rome recurred to his mind, and recalled the strifes and enmities he had
left there. He was often heard to say, “What pleasure Crassus will have
at knowing me in these straits! ”[815]
As soon as he received his ransom from Miletus and the other towns, he
paid it. Landed on the coast, he hastened to equip ships, impatient to
revenge himself. The pirates, surprised at anchor in the harbour of the
island, were almost all made prisoners, and their booty fell into his
hands. He secured them in the prison at Pergamus, to deliver them up to
Junius Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, whose duty it was to punish them.
But, wishing to sell them and make a profit, Junius replied in an
evasive manner. Cæsar returned to Pergamus, and had them crucified. [816]
He went afterwards to Rhodes, to attend the lessons of Apollonius Molo,
the most illustrious of the masters of eloquence of that time, who had
formerly been to Rome, in 672, as the Rhodian ambassador. About the same
time one of his uncles, the proconsul M. Aurelius Cotta, was appointed
governor of Bithynia, bequeathed by Nicomedes to the Roman people, and
charged, with Lucullus, to oppose the new invasions of Mithridates.
Cotta, beaten by land and sea near Chalcedon, was reduced to great
straits, and Mithridates was advancing against Cyzicus, an allied town,
which Lucullus afterwards relieved. On another side, Eumachius, a
lieutenant of the King of Pontus, ravaged Phrygia, where he massacred
all the Romans, and seized several of the southern provinces of Asia
Minor. The rumours of war, the perils into which the allies were
falling, took Cæsar from his studies. He went over into Asia, levied
troops on his own authority, drove out from the province the king’s
governor, and kept in allegiance towns whose faith was doubtful or
shaken. [817]
[Sidenote: Cæsar Pontiff and Military Tribune (680-684). ]
VI. Whilst he was making war on the coasts of Asia, his friends at Rome
did not forget him; and, seeing clearly the importance of Cæsar’s being
clothed with a sacred character, they nominated him pontiff, in the
place of his uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 680, who had died
suddenly in Gaul the following year. [818]
This circumstance obliged him to return to Rome. The sea continued to
swarm with pirates, who must necessarily owe him a grudge for the death
of their comrades. The better to escape them, he crossed the Adriatic in
a boat of four oars, accompanied only by two friends and ten
slaves. [819] In the passage, thinking that he saw sails in the horizon,
he seized his sword, resolved to sell his life dearly; but his fears
were not justified, and he landed safe and sound in Italy.
Immediately on his return to Rome, he was elected military tribune, and
succeeded by a large majority over his rival, C. Popilius. [820] This
already elevated rank, since it gave him the command of about a thousand
men, was the first step which the young nobility easily attained, either
by election or by the choice of the generals. [821] Cæsar does not seem
to have profited by his new position to take part in the important wars
in which the Republic was then engaged. And yet the clang of arms echoed
from all quarters.
In Spain Sertorius successfully continued the war begun in 674 against
the lieutenants of Sylla, joined in 677 by Perpenna, at the head of
thirty cohorts,[822] he had got together a formidable army, bravely
maintained the standard of Marius, and given the name of _Senate_ to an
assemblage of 300 Romans. Vanquisher of Metellus for several years,
Sertorius, gifted with a vast military genius, exercising great
influence over the Celtiberians and Lusitanians, and master of the
passes,[823] was dreaming of crossing the Alps. The Spaniards had
already given him the name of a _second Hannibal_. But Pompey, sent in
all haste to Spain, reinforced the army of Metellus, deprived Sertorius
of all hope of penetrating into Italy, and even drove him far back from
the Pyrenees. The united efforts of the two generals, however, did not
effect the subjugation of Spain, which, since 680, had been entirely
re-conquered by Sertorius. But soon after this, his lieutenants
experiencing reverses, desertion began among his soldiers, and he
himself lost his confidence. Yet he would have resisted for a long time
still, had not Perpenna caused him to be assassinated by an infamous act
of treachery. This murder did not profit its author. Though Perpenna
succeeded Sertorius in the command of the troops, he found himself an
object of their hatred and contempt. Soon defeated and taken prisoner by
Pompey, he was put to death. Thus ended the war in Spain in 682.
In Asia, Lucullus successfully pursued the campaign against
Mithridates, who courageously maintained the struggle, and had even been
able to come to an understanding with Sertorius. Lucullus beat him in
Cappadocia (683), and forced him to take refuge with Tigranes, his
son-in-law, King of Armenia, who soon experienced a sanguinary defeat,
and lost his capital, Tigranocerta.
In the East, the barbarians infested the frontiers of Macedonia, the
pirates of Cilicia sailed from end to end of all the seas with impunity,
and the Cretans flew to arms to defend their independence.
Italy was torn by the Servile War. This disinherited class had risen up
anew, despite the bloody repression of the Sicilian insurrection from
620 to 623. It had acquired the knowledge of its strength chiefly from
the circumstance that each party in the civil troubles had by turns
granted its liberty to increase the number of its respective adherents.
In 681, seventy gladiators, kept at Capua, revolted; their chief was
Spartacus, formerly a soldier, made prisoner, then sold as a slave. In
less than a year his band had so much increased that consular armies
were needed to combat him, and, having gained a victory in Picenum, for
a moment he had entertained the thought of marching upon Rome at the
head of 40,000 men. [824] Nevertheless, forced to withdraw to the south
of Italy, he contended against the Roman forces successfully for two
years, when at last, in 683, Licinius Crassus, at the head of eight
legions, conquered him in Apulia. Spartacus perished in the fight; the
remainder of the army of slaves separated into four bodies, one of
which, retiring towards Gaul, was easily dispersed by Pompey, who was
returning from Spain. The 6,000 prisoners taken in the battle fought in
Apulia were hanged all along the road from Capua to Rome.
Occasions for making himself perfect in the art of war were not wanting
to Cæsar; but we can understand his inaction, for Sylla’s partisans
alone were at the heads of the armies; in Spain, Metellus and
Pompey--the first the brother-in-law of the Dictator, the second
formerly his best lieutenant; in Italy, Crassus, the enemy of Cæsar,
equally devoted to the party of Sylla; in Asia, Lucullus, an old friend
of the Dictator, who had dedicated his “_Memoirs_”[825] to him. Cæsar,
then, found everywhere either a cause he would not defend, or a general
under whom he would not serve. In Spain, however, Sertorius represented
the party he would most willingly have embraced; but Cæsar had a horror
of civil wars. Whilst faithful to his convictions, he seems, in the
first years of his career, to have carefully avoided placing between him
and his adversaries that eternal barrier which for ever separates the
children of the same country, after blood has once been shed. He had it
at heart to be able, in his exalted future, to appeal to a past pure
from all violence, so that, instead of being the man of a party, he
might rally round him all good citizens.
The Republic had triumphed everywhere, but she had yet to reckon with
her conquering generals: she found herself in the presence of Crassus
and Pompey, who, proud of their successes, advanced upon Rome at the
head of their armies, to demand or seize the chief power. The Senate
could be but little at ease as to the intentions of the latter, who, not
long before, had sent an insolent letter from Spain, in which he menaced
his country with the sword unless they sent him the supplies necessary
to carry on the war against Sertorius. [826] The same ambition animated
Pompey and Crassus: neither of the two would be the first to disband his
army; each, indeed, brought his own to the gates of the city. Both were
elected consuls, allowed a triumph, and forced by the augurs and public
opinion to be reconciled together; and they held out their hands to each
other, disbanded their troops, and for some time the Republic recovered
an unexpected calm. [827]
CHAPTER II.
(684-691. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic (684). ]
I. When Pompey and Crassus came to the consulship, Italy had been a prey
to intestine convulsions for sixty-three years. But, notwithstanding the
repose which society demanded, and which the reconciliation of the two
rivals seemed to promise, many opposing passions and interests still
seethed in her bosom. [828]
Sylla believed he had re-established the Republic on its ancient basis,
but, instead, he had thrown everything into disorder. The property, the
life even of each citizen, was at the mercy of the stronger; the people
had lost the right of appeal, and their legitimate share in the
elections; the poor, the distribution of wheat; the tribuneship, its
secular privileges; and the influential order of the knights, their
political and financial importance.
At Rome, no more guarantee for justice; in Italy, no more security for
the rights of citizenship, so dearly acquired; in the provinces, no more
consideration for subjects and allies. Sylla had restored their
prerogatives to the upper class without being able to restore their
former prestige; having made use of only corrupt elements, and appealed
to only sordid passions, he left behind him a powerless oligarchy, and
a thoroughly distracted people. The country was divided between those
whom his tyranny had enriched and those whom it had despoiled; the one
fearing to lose what they had just acquired, the other hoping to regain
what they had lost.
The aristocracy, proud of their wealth and ancestry, absorbed in all the
pleasures of luxury, kept the _new men_[829] out of the highest offices,
and, by a long continuance of power, had come to look on the chief
magistracies as their property. Cato, in a discourse to the Senate,
exclaimed:--“Instead of the virtues of our ancestors we have luxury and
avarice; the poverty of the State, and the opulence of individuals; we
boast of our riches, we cherish idleness; no distinction is made between
the good and the wicked; all rewards due to merit are the price of
intrigue. Why then are we astonished at this, since each man, isolating
himself from the rest, consults only his own interest? At home, the
slaves of pleasure; here, of wealth or of favour. ”[830]
The elections had for a long time been the result of a shameless
traffic, where every mean of success was allowable. Lucullus himself, to
obtain the government of Asia, did not blush to have recourse to the
good offices of a courtesan, the mistress of Cethegus. [831] The sale of
consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that the several
instruments of electoral corruption had functions and titles almost
recognised. Those who bought votes were called _divisores_; the
go-betweens were _interpretes_; and those with whom was deposited the
purchase money[832] were _sequestres_. Numerous secret societies were
formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage; they were divided
into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a supreme head, who
treated with the candidates and sold the votes of the associates, either
for money, or on the stipulation of certain advantages for himself or
his friends. These societies carried most of the elections, and Cicero
himself, who so often boasted of the unanimity with which he had been
chosen consul, owed to them a great part of the suffrages he
obtained. [833]
All the sentences of the tribunals composed of senators were dictated by
a venality so flagrant, that Cicero brands it in these terms:--“I will
demonstrate by positive proofs the guilty intrigues, the infamies which
have sullied the judicial powers for the ten years that they have been
entrusted to the Senate. The Roman people shall learn from me how the
knightly order has administered justice for nearly fifty consecutive
years, without the faintest suspicion resting on any of its members of
having received money for a judgment delivered; how, since senators
alone have composed our tribunals, since the people have been despoiled
of the right which they had over each of us, Q. Calidius has been able
to say, after his condemnation, that they could not honestly require
less than 300,000 sestertii to condemn a prætor; how, when the senator
P. Septimius was found guilty of embezzlement before the prætor
Hortensius, the money he had received in his quality of judge was
included in his fine; how C. Herennius and C. Popilius, both senators,
having been convicted of the crime of peculation, and M. Atilius of the
crime of high treason, it was proved that they had received money as the
price of one of their sentences; how it was found that certain senators,
when their names were taken from the urn held by C. Verres, then prætor
urbanus, instantly went to vote against the accused, without having
heard the suit; how, finally, we have seen a senator, judge in this same
suit, receive money from the accused to distribute to the other judges,
and money from the accuser to condemn the accused. Can I, then,
sufficiently deplore this blot, this shame, this calamity which weighs
on the whole order? ”[834]
Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against the avidity of the
generals and farmers of the revenues, notwithstanding the patronage of
the great at Rome, the conquered peoples[835] were always a prey to the
exactions of the magistrates, and Verres was a type of the most
shameless immorality, which drew this exclamation from Cicero: “All the
provinces groan; all free peoples lament; all the kingdoms cry out
against our cupidity and our violence. There is not between the Ocean
and ourselves a spot so remote or so little known that the injustice and
tyranny of our fellow-citizens of these days have not penetrated to
it. ”[836] The inhabitants of foreign countries were obliged to borrow,
either to satisfy the immoderate demands of their governors and their
retinue, or to pay the farmers of the public revenues. Now, capital
being nowhere but at Rome, they could only procure it at an excessive
rate of interest; and the nobles, giving themselves up to usury, held
the provinces in their power.
The army itself had been demoralised by civil wars, and the chiefs no
longer maintained discipline. “Flamininus, Aquilius, Paulus Æmilius,”
says Dio Cassius, “commanded men well disciplined, who had learnt to
execute the orders of their generals in silence. The law was their rule;
with a royal soul, simple in life, bounding their expenses within
reasonable limits, they held it more shameful to flatter the soldiery
than to fear the enemy. From the time of Sylla, on the contrary, the
generals, raised to the first rank by violence and not by merit, forced
to turn their arms against each other rather than against the enemy,
were reduced to court popularity. Charged with the command, they
squandered gold to procure enjoyments for an army, the fatigues of which
they paid dearly; they rendered their country venal, without caring for
it; and made themselves the slaves of the most depraved men, to bring
under their authority those who were worth more than themselves. This is
what drove Marius out of Rome, and led him back against Sylla; this is
what made Cinna the murderer of Octavius, and Fimbria the murderer of
Flaccus. Sylla was the principal cause of these evils, he who, to seduce
the soldiers enrolled under other chiefs, and bring them under his own
flag, scattered gold in handfuls among his army. ”[837]
Far were they from the times when the soldier, after a short campaign,
laid down his arms to take up the plough again; since then, retained
under his standards for long years, and returning in the train of a
victorious general to vote in the Campus Martius, the citizen had
disappeared; there remained the warrior, with the sole inspiration of
the camp. At the end of the expeditions, the army was disbanded, and
Italy thus found itself overrun with an immense number of veterans,
united in colonies or dispersed over the territory, more inclined to
follow a leader than to obey the law. The veterans of the ancient
legions of Marius and Sylla were to be counted by hundreds of thousands.
A State, moreover, is often weakened by an exaggeration of the principle
on which it rests; and as war was the chief occupation at Rome, all the
institutions had originally a military character. The consuls, the first
magistrates of the Republic, elected by centuries--that is to say, by
the people voting under arms--commanded the troops. The army, composed
of all there was most honourable in the nation, did not take an oath to
the Republic, but to the chief who recruited it and led it against the
enemy; this oath, religiously kept, rendered the generals the absolute
masters of their soldiers, who, in their turn, decreed to them the title
of _Imperator_ after a victory: what more natural, then, even after the
transformation of society, than that these soldiers should believe
themselves the real people, and the generals elected by them the
legitimate chiefs of the Republic? Every abuse has deep roots in the
past, and we may find the original cause of the power of the prætorians
under the emperors in the primitive organisation and functions of the
centuries established by Servius Tullius.
Although the army had not as yet acquired this preponderance, it
nevertheless weighed heavily on the decisions of the Forum. By the side
of men habituated to the noble chances of the fight existed a true army
of turbulence, kept at the expense of the State or of private persons,
in the principal towns of Italy--above all, at Capua: these were the
gladiators, ever ready to undertake anything for those who paid them,
either in the electoral contests[838] or as soldiers in the times of
civil war. [839]
Thus all was struck with decadence. Brute force bestowed power, and
corruption the magistracies. The empire no longer belonged to the
Senate, but to the commanders of the armies; the armies no longer
belonged to the Republic, but to the chiefs who led them to victory.
Numerous elements of dissolution afflicted society: the venality of the
judges, the traffic in elections, the absolutism of the Senate, the
tyranny of wealth, which oppressed the poor by usury, and braved the law
with impunity.
Rome found herself divided into two thoroughly distinct parties; the
one, seeing salvation only in the past, attached itself to abuses, in
the fear that to displace one stone would be to shatter the whole
edifice; the other wished to consolidate it by rendering the base larger
and the summit less unsteady. The first party supported itself on the
institutions of Sylla; the second had taken the name of Marius as the
symbol of its hopes.
Great causes need an historical figure to personify their interests and
tendencies. The man once adopted, his faults, his very crimes are
forgotten, and his great deeds alone remembered. Thus, the vengeance
and massacres of Marius had faded away from memory at Rome. Only his
victories, which had preserved Italy from the invasions of the Cimbri
and the Teutones, were recalled; his misfortunes were pitied, his hatred
to the aristocracy vaunted.
of all their sufferings; and the enemy of the nobles and the rich
appeared to them as an avenger sent by the gods. In ranging themselves
under his banner, they believed that they were on the way with him to
the pillage of the eternal city.
War was on the point of re-commencing, and this time Romans and
Italiotes marched united against Rome. From the north, Marius,
Sertorius, and Carbo were advancing with considerable forces. Cinna,
master of Campania, was penetrating into Latium, while a Samnite army
invaded it on the other side. To these five armies the Senate could
oppose but one; that of Cn. Pompeius Strabo, an able general, but an
intriguing politician, who hoped to raise himself under favour of the
disorder. Quitting his cantonments in Apulia, he had arrived, by forced
marches, under the walls of Rome, seeking either to sell his services to
the Senate or to effect a conciliation with Marius. He soon saw that the
insurgents were strong enough to do without him. His soldiers, raised in
the Picenum and in the country of the Marsi, refused to fight for the
Senate against their old confederates, and would have abandoned their
general but for the courage and presence of mind of his son, a youth of
twenty years of age, the same who subsequently was the great Pompey. One
day the legionaries, snatching their ensigns, threatened to desert in
mass: young Pompey laid himself across the gateway of the camp, and
challenged them to pass over his body. [706] Death delivered Pompeius
Strabo from the shame of being present at an inevitable catastrophe.
According to some authors, he sank under the attacks of an epidemic
disease; according to others, he was struck by lightning in the very
midst of his camp. Deprived of its chief, his army passed over to the
enemy; the Senate was without defenders, and the populace rose against
it: Rome opened her gates to Cinna and Marius.
The conquerors were without pity in putting to death, often with
refinements in cruelty unknown to the Romans, the partisans of the
aristocratic faction who had fallen into their hands. During several
days, the slaves, whom Cinna had restored to liberty, gave themselves up
to every excess. Sertorius, the only one of the chiefs of the democratic
party who had some feelings of justice, made an example of these
wretches, and massacred nearly four thousand of them. [707]
Marius and Cinna had proclaimed, as they advanced upon Rome in arms,
that their aim was to assure to the Italiotes the entire enjoyment of
the rights of Roman city; they declared themselves both consuls for the
year 668. Their power was too considerable to be contested, for the new
citizens furnished them with a contingent of thirty legions, or about
150,000 men. [708] Marius died suddenly thirteen days after entering upon
office, and the democratic party lost in him the only man who still
preserved his prestige. A fact which arose out of his funeral, paints
the manners of the epoch, and the character of the revolution which had
just been effected. An extraordinary sacrifice was wanted for his tomb:
the pontiff Q. Mucius Scævola, one of the most respectable old men of
the nobility, was chosen as the victim. Conducted in pomp before the
funeral pile of the conqueror of the Cimbri, he was struck by the
sacrificer, who, with an inexperienced hand, plunged the knife into his
throat without killing him. Restored to life, Scævola was cited in
judgment, by a tribune of the people, for not having received the blow
_fairly_. [709]
While Rome and all Italy were plunged in this fearful anarchy, Sylla
drove out of Greece the generals of Mithridates VI. , and gained two
great battles at Chæronea (668) and Orchomenus (669). He was still in
Bœotia, when Valerius Flaccus, sent by Cinna to replace him, landed
in Greece, penetrated into Thessaly, and thence passed into Asia. Sylla
followed him thither immediately, in haste to conclude with the King of
Pontus an arrangement which would enable him to lead his army back into
Italy. Circumstances were favourable. Mithridates had need to repair his
losses, and he found himself in presence of a new enemy, the lieutenant
of Valerius Flaccus, the fierce Flavius Fimbria, who, having by the
murder of his general become head of the army of Asia, had seized upon
Pergamus. Mithridates subscribed to the conditions imposed by Sylla; he
restored all the provinces of which he had taken possession, and gave
plate and money. Sylla then advanced into Lydia against Fimbria; but the
latter, at the approach of the victor of Chæronea, could not restrain
his soldiers. His whole army disbanded and passed over to Sylla.
Threatened by his rival, the murderer of Flaccus was driven to slay
himself. Nothing now stood in the way of Sylla’s projects on Italy, and
he prepared to make his enemies at Rome pay dearly for their temporary
triumph. At the moment of setting sail, he wrote to the Senate to
announce the conclusion of the war in Asia, and his own speedy return.
Three years, he said, had been sufficient to enable him to re-unite with
the Roman empire Greece, Macedonia, Ionia, and Asia, and to shut up
Mithridates within the limits of his old possessions; he was the first
Roman who received an embassy from the King of the Parthians. [710] He
complained of the violence exercised against his friends and his wife,
who had fled with a crowd of fugitives to seek an asylum in his
camp. [711] He added, without vain threats, his intention to restore
order by force of arms; but he promised not to repeal the great measure
of the emancipation of Italy, and ended by declaring that the good
citizens, new as well as old, had nothing to fear from him.
This letter, which the Senate ventured to receive, redoubled the fury of
the men who had succeeded Marius. Blood flowed again. Cinna, who caused
himself to be re-elected consul for the fourth time, and Cn. Papirius
Carbo, his colleague, collecting in haste numerous troops, but ill
disciplined, prepared to do their best to make head against the storm
which was approaching. Persuaded that Sylla would proceed along the
Adriatic to invade Italy from the north, Cinna had collected at Ancona a
considerable army, with the design of surprising him in the midst of his
march, and attacking him either in Epirus or Illyria. But his soldiers,
Italiotes in great part, encouraged by the promises of Sylla, and,
moreover, full of contempt for their own general, said openly that they
would not pass the sea. Cinna attempted to make an example of some of
the mutineers. A revolt broke out, and he was massacred. To avoid a
similar lot, Carbo, who came to take the command, hastened to promise
the rebels that they should not quit Italy.
Sylla landed at Brundusium, in 671, at the head of an army of forty
thousand men, composed of five legions, six thousand cavalry, and
contingents from Peloponnesus and Macedonia. The fleet numbered sixteen
hundred vessels. [712] He followed the Appian Way, and reached Campania
after a single battle, fought not far from Canusium. [713] He brought the
gold of Mithridates and the plunder of the temples of Greece, means of
seduction still more dangerous than his ability on the field of battle.
Hardly arrived in Italy, he rallied round him the proscripts and all
those who detested the inapt and cruel government of the successors of
Marius. The remains of the great families decimated by them repaired to
his camp as to a safe place of refuge. M. Licinius Crassus became one of
his ablest lieutenants, and it was then that Cn. Pompeius, the son of
Strabo, a general at twenty-three years of age, raised an army in the
Picenum, beat three bodies of the enemies, and came to offer to Sylla
his sword, already redoubtable.
It was the beginning of the year 672 when Sylla entered Latium; he
completely defeated, near Signia, the legions of the younger Marius,
whose name had raised him to the consulship. This battle rendered Sylla
master of Rome; but to the north, in Cisalpine Gaul and Etruria, Carbo,
in spite of frequent defeats, disputed the ground with obstinacy against
Pompey and Sylla’s other lieutenants. In the south, the Samnites had
raised all their forces, and were preparing to succour Præneste,
besieged by Sylla in person, and defended by young Marius. Pontius
Telesinus, the general of the Samnites, finding it out of his power to
raise the siege, conceived then the audacious and almost desperate idea
of carrying his whole army to Rome, taking it by surprise, and sacking
it. “Let us burn the wolves’ den,”[714] he said to his soldiers: “so
long as it exists, there will be no liberty in Italy. ”
By a rapid night-march, Telesinus deceived the vigilance of his
adversary; but, exhausted with fatigue, on arriving at the foot of the
ramparts of Rome, the Samnites were unable to give the assault, and
Sylla had time to arrive with the choicest of his legions.
A sanguinary battle took place at the very gates of the town, on the day
of the calends of November, 672, and it continued far into the night.
The left wing of the Romans was beaten and took to flight, in spite of
the efforts of Sylla to rally it; Telesinus perished in the fight, and
Crassus, who commanded the right wing, gained a complete victory. At
daylight, the Samnites who had escaped the slaughter laid down their
arms and demanded quarter. [715]
More than a year still passed away before the complete pacification of
Italy, and it was only obtained by employing the most violent and
sanguinary measures. Sylla made this terrible declaration, that he would
not pardon one of his enemies. At Præneste, all the senators who were
the partisans of Marius had their throats cut, and the inhabitants were
put to the sword. Those of Norba, surprised through treason, rather than
surrender, buried themselves under the ruins of their city.
Sylla had scrupled at nothing in his way to power; the corruption of the
armies,[716] the pillage of towns, the massacre of the inhabitants, and
the extermination of his enemies; nor did he show any more scruples in
maintaining himself in it. He inaugurated his return to the Senate by
the slaughter, near the Temple of Bellona, of three thousand Samnites
who had surrendered prisoners. [717] A considerable number of the
inhabitants of Italy were deprived of the right of city which had been
granted them after the war of the allies;[718] he invented a new
punishment, that of proscription,[719] and, in Rome alone, he banished
four thousand seven hundred citizens, among whom were ninety senators,
fifteen consulars, and two thousand seven hundred knights. [720] His fury
fell heaviest upon the Samnites, whose spirit of independence he feared,
and he almost entirely annihilated that nation. [721] Although his
triumph had been a reaction against the popular party, he treated as
prisoners of war the children of the noblest and most respectable
families, and, by a monstrous innovation, even the women suffered the
same lot. [722] Lists of proscription, placarded on the Forum with the
names of the intended victims, threw terror into families; to laugh or
cry on looking at these was a crime. [723] M. Pletorius was slaughtered
for having fainted at the sight of the punishment inflicted on the
prætor, M. Marius;[724] to denounce the hiding-place of the proscripts,
or put them to death, formed a title to recompenses paid from the public
treasury, amounting in some cases to twelve thousand drachmas (about
11,640 francs [£460]) a head;[725] to assist them, to have had friendly
or any other relations with the enemies of Sylla, was enough to subject
the offender to capital punishment. From one end of Italy to the other,
all those who had served under the orders of Marius, Carbo, or Norbanus,
were massacred or banished, and their goods sold by auction. They were
to be struck even in their posterity: the children and grandchildren of
the proscripts were deprived of the right of inheritance and of being
candidates for public offices. [726] All these acts of pitiless vengeance
had been authorised by a law called _Valeria_, promulgated in 672, and
which, in appointing Sylla dictator, conferred upon him unlimited
powers. Yet, though Sylla kept the supreme power, he permitted the
election of the consuls every year, an example which was subsequently
followed by the emperors.
Calm re-established in Rome, a new constitution was promulgated, which
restored the aristocracy to its ascendency. The dictator fell into the
delusion of believing that a system founded by violence, upon selfish
interests, could survive him. It is easier to change laws than to arrest
the course of ideas.
The legislation of the Gracchi was abolished. The senators, by the law
_judiciaria_, acquired again the exclusive privilege of the judicatory
functions. The colony of Capua, a popular creation, was destroyed and
restored to the domain. Sylla assumed to himself one of the first
privileges of the censorship, which he had suppressed--the nomination
of the members of the Senate. He introduced into that assembly,
decimated during the civil wars, three hundred knights. By the law on
the priesthood, he removed from the votes of the people and restored to
the college the choice of the pontiffs and of the sovereign pontiff. He
limited the power of the tribunes, leaving them only the right of
protection (_auxilium_),[727] and forbidding their access to the
superior magistracies. [728] He flattered himself that he had thus
removed the ambitious from a career henceforward profitless.
He admitted into Rome ten thousand new citizens (called
_Cornelians_),[729] taken from among the slaves whose masters had been
proscribed. Similar enfranchisements took place in the rest of Italy. He
had almost exterminated two nations, the Etruscans and the Samnites; he
re-peopled their deserted countries by distributing the estates of his
adversaries among a considerable number of his soldiers, whom some
authors raise to the prodigious number of forty-seven legions,[730] and
created for his veterans twenty-three military colonies on the territory
taken from the rebel towns. [731]
All these arbitrary measures were dictated by the spirit of reaction;
but those which follow were inspired by the desire to re-establish order
and the hierarchy.
The rules formerly adopted for the succession of the magistracies were
restored. [732] No person could offer himself for the consulship without
having previously held the office of prætor; or for the prætorship
before he had held that of questor. Thirty years were fixed as the age
necessary for the questorship, forty for the prætorship, and forty-three
for the consulship. The law required an interval of two years between
the exercise of two different magistracies, and often between the same
magistracy, a rule so severely maintained, that, for having braved it in
merely soliciting for the consulship,[733] Lucretius Ofella, one of
Sylla’s most devoted partisans, was put to death. The dictator withdrew
from the freedmen the right of voting, from the knights the places of
honour in the spectacles; he put a stop to the adjudications entrusted
to the farmers-general and the distributions of wheat, and suppressed
the corporations, which threatened a real danger to public tranquillity.
Lastly, to put limits to extravagance, the sumptuary laws were
promulgated. [734]
By the law _de provinciis ordinandis_, he sought to regulate the
provinces and ameliorate their administration. The two consuls and the
eight prætors were retained at Rome during their year of office by the
administration of civil affairs. They took afterwards, in quality of
proconsuls or proprætors, the command of one of the ten provinces, which
they exercised during a year; after which a new curiate law became
necessary to renew the _imperium_; they preserved it until their return
to Rome. Thirty days were allowed to them for quitting the province
after the arrival of their successors. [735] The number of prætors,
questors, pontiffs, and augurs was augmented. [736] Every year twenty
questors were to be named, which would ensure the recruitment of the
Senate, since this office gave entrance to it. Sylla multiplied the
commissions of justice. He took measures for putting a stop to the
murders which desolated Italy (_lex de sicariis_), and to protect the
citizens against outrages (_lex de injuriis_). The _lex magistratis_
completed, so to say, the preceding. [737] In the number of _crimes of
high treason_, punished capitally, are the excesses of magistrates
charged with the administration of the provinces; quitting their
government without leave of the Senate; conducting an army beyond the
limits of his province; undertaking a war unauthorised; treating with
foreign chiefs: such were the principal acts denounced as crimes against
the Republic. There was not one of them of which Sylla himself had not
been guilty.
Sylla abdicated in 675, the only extraordinary act which remained for
him to accomplish. He who had carried mourning into so many families
returned into his own house alone, through a respectful and submissive
crowd. Such was the ascendency of his old power, supported, moreover,
by the ten thousand Cornelians present in Rome and devoted to his
person,[738] that, though he had resumed his position of simple citizen,
he was still allowed to act as absolute master, and even on the eve of
his death, which occurred in 676, he made himself the executioner of
pitiless justice, in daring to cause to be slaughtered before his eyes
the prætor Granius, guilty of exaction. [739]
Unexampled magnificence was displayed at his funeral; his body was
carried to the Campus Martius, where previously none but the kings had
been inhumed. [740] He left Italy tamed, but not subdued; the great
nobles in power, but without moral authority; his partisans enriched,
but trembling for their riches; the numerous victims of tyranny held
down, but growling under the oppression; lastly, Rome taught that
henceforth she is without protection against the boldness of any
fortunate soldier. [741]
[Sidenote: Effects of Sylla’s Dictatorship. ]
VII. The history of the last fifty years, and especially the
dictatorship of Sylla, show beyond doubt that Italy demanded a master.
Everywhere institutions gave way before the power of an individual,
sustained not only by his own partisans, but also by the irresolute
multitude, which, fatigued by the action and reaction of so many
opposite parties, aspired to order and repose. If the conduct of Sylla
had been moderated, what is called the Empire would probably have
commenced with him; but his power was so cruel and so partial, that
after his death, the abuses of liberty were forgotten in the memory of
abuses of tyranny. The more the democratic spirit had expanded, the more
the ancient institutions lost their prestige. In fact, as democracy,
trusting and passionate, believes always that its interests are better
represented by an individual than by a political body, it was
incessantly disposed to deliver its future to the man who raised himself
above others by his own merit. The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla, had in
turn disposed at will of the destinies of the Republic, and trampled
under foot with impunity ancient institutions and ancient customs; but
their reign was ephemeral,[742] for they only represented factions.
Instead of embracing collectively the hopes and interests of all the
peninsula of Italy, they favoured exclusively particular classes of
society. Some sought before all to secure the prosperity of the
proletaries of Rome, or the emancipation of the Italiotes, or the
preponderance of the knights; others, the privileges of the aristocracy.
They failed.
To establish a durable order of things there wanted a man who, raising
himself above vulgar passions, should unite in himself the essential
qualities and just ideas of each of his predecessors, avoiding their
faults as well as their errors. To the greatness of soul and love of the
people of certain tribunes, it was needful to join the military genius
of great generals and the strong sentiments of the Dictator in favour of
order and the hierarchy.
The man capable of so lofty a mission already existed; but perhaps, in
spite of his name, he might have still remained long unknown, if the
penetrating eye of Sylla had not discovered him in the midst of the
crowd, and, by persecution, pointed him out to public attention. That
man was Cæsar.
BOOK II.
HISTORY OF JULIUS CÆSAR.
CHAPTER I.
(654-684. )
[Sidenote: First Years of Cæsar. ]
I. About the time when Marius, by his victories over the Cimbri and
Teutones, saved Italy from a formidable invasion, was born at Rome the
man who would one day, by again subduing the Gauls and Germans, retard
for several centuries the irruption of the barbarians, give the
knowledge of their rights to oppressed peoples, assure continuance to
Roman civilisation, and bequeath his name to the future chiefs of
nations, as a consecrated emblem of power.
Caius Julius Cæsar was born at Rome on the 4th of the ides of Quintilis
(July 12), 654,[743] and the month Quintilis, called _Julius_ [July] in
honour of him, has borne for 1,900 years the name of the great man. He
was the son of C. Julius Cæsar,[744] prætor, who died suddenly at Pisa
about 670,[745] and of Aurelia, descended from an illustrious plebeian
family.
By ancestry and alliances, Cæsar inherited that double prestige which is
derived from ancient origin and recent renown.
On one side, he claimed to be descended from Anchises and Venus;[746] on
the other, he was the nephew of the famous Marius who had married his
aunt Julia. When the widow of this great captain died in 686, Cæsar
pronounced her funeral oration, and thus traced out his own
genealogy:--“My aunt Julia, on the maternal side, is of the issue of
kings; on the paternal side, she descends from the immortal gods: for
her mother was a Marcia,[747] and the family Marcius Rex are the
descendants of Ancus Marcius. The Julia family, to which I belong,
descends from Venus herself. Thus our house unites to the sacred
character of kings, who are the most powerful among men, the venerated
holiness of the gods, who hold kings themselves under their
subjection. ”[748]
This proud glorification of his race attests the value which was set at
Rome upon antiquity of origin; but Cæsar, sprung from that aristocracy
which had produced so many illustrious men, and impatient to follow in
their footsteps, showed, from early youth, that nobility obliges,
instead of imitating those whose conduct would make one believe that
nobility dispenses.
Aurelia, a woman of lofty character and severe morals,[749] helped above
all in the development of his great abilities, by a wise and enlightened
education, and prepared him to make himself worthy of the part which
destiny had reserved for him. [750] This first education, given by a
tender and virtuous mother, has ever as much influence over our future
as the most precious natural qualities. Cæsar reaped the fruits of it.
He also received lessons from M. Antonius Gnipho, the Gaul, a
philosopher and master of eloquence, of a rare mind, of vast learning,
and well versed in Greek and Latin letters, which he had cultivated at
Alexandria. [751]
Greece was always the country of the arts and sciences, and the language
of Demosthenes was familiar to every lettered Roman. [752] Thus Greek and
Latin might be called the two languages of Italy, as they were, at a
later period, by the Emperor Claudius. [753] Cæsar spoke both with the
same facility; and, when falling beneath the dagger of Brutus, he
pronounced in Greek the last words that issued from his lips. [754]
Though eager for pleasure, he neglected nothing, says Suetonius, by
which to acquire those talents which lead to the highest honours. Now,
according to Roman habits, the first offices were attainable only by the
union of the most diverse merits. The patrician youth, still worthy of
their ancestors, were not idle: they sought religious appointments, to
give them power over consciences; administrative employments, to
influence material interests; discussions and public discourses, to
captivate minds by their eloquence; finally, military labours, to strike
imaginations by the brilliancy of their glory. Emulous of distinction in
all, Cæsar did not confine himself to the study of letters; he early
composed works, among which are cited “The Praises of Hercules,” a
tragedy of “Œdipus,” “A Collection of Choice Phrases,”[755] a book on
“Divination. ”[756] It seems that these works were written in a style so
pure and correct, that they gained for him the reputation of an eminent
writer, _gravis auctor linguæ Latinæ_. [757] He was less happy in the art
of poetry, if we may believe Tacitus. [758] However, there remain to us
some verses addressed to the memory of Terence, which are not wanting in
elegance. [759]
Education, then, had made Cæsar a distinguished man before he was a
great man. He united to goodness of heart a high intelligence, to an
invincible courage,[760] an enthralling eloquence,[761] a wonderful
memory,[762] an unbounded generosity; finally, he possessed one very
rare quality--calmness under anger. [763] “His affability,” says
Plutarch, “his politeness, his gracious address--qualities which he had
to a degree beyond his age--gained him the affection of the
people. ”[764]
Two anecdotes of later date must come in here. Plutarch relates that
Cæsar, during his campaigns, one day, surprised by a violent storm, took
shelter in a hut where was only one room, too small to contain many
people. He hastened to offer it to Oppius, one of his officers, who was
sick; and himself passed the night in the open air, saying to those who
accompanied him, “We must leave to the great the places of honour, but
yield to the sick those that are necessary to them. ” Another time,
Valerius Leo, with whom he was dining at Milan, having set before him an
ill-seasoned dish, the companions of Cæsar remonstrated, but he
reproached them sharply for their want of consideration for his host,
saying “that they were free not to eat of a dish they did not like, but
that to complain of it aloud was a want of good breeding. ”[765]
These facts, of small importance in themselves, yet testify to Cæsar’s
goodness of heart, and to the delicacy of the well-bred man who is
always observant of propriety.
To his natural qualities, developed by a brilliant education, were added
physical advantages. His tall stature, his rounded and well-proportioned
limbs, stamped his person with a grace that distinguished him from all
others. [766] He had black eyes, a piercing look, a pale complexion, a
straight and high nose. His mouth, small and regular, but with rather
thick lips, gave a kindly expression to the lower part of his face,
whilst his breadth of brow betokened the development of the intellectual
faculties. His face was full, at least, in his youth; for in his busts,
doubtless made towards the end of his life, his features are thinner,
and bear traces of fatigue. [767] He had a sonorous and penetrating
voice, a noble gesture, and an air of dignity reigned over all his
person. [768] His constitution, at first delicate, became robust by a
frugal regimen and the habit of exposing himself to the inclemency of
the weather. [769] Accustomed from his youth to all bodily exercises, he
was a bold horseman,[770] and bore privations and fatigues without
difficulty. [771] Habitually temperate, his health was impaired neither
by excess of labour nor by excess of pleasure. However, on two
occasions--the first at Corduba, the second at Thapsus--he was seized
with nervous attacks, wrongly mistaken for epilepsy. [772]
He paid special attention to his person, carefully shaved or plucked out
his beard, and artistically brought his hair forward to the front of his
head, which, in more advanced age, served to conceal his bald forehead.
He was reproached with the affectation of scratching his head with one
finger only, so that he should not disarrange his hair. [773] His
toilette was refined; his toga was generally ornamented with a
laticlavia, fringed down to the hands, and fastened by a girdle
carelessly tied about his loins; a costume which distinguished the
elegant and effeminate youths of the period. But Sylla was not deceived
by these appearances of frivolity, and repeated that they must take care
of this young man with the loose girdle. [774] He had a taste for
pictures, statues, and jewels; and, in memory of his origin, always
wore on his finger a ring, on which was engraved the figure of an armed
Venus. [775]
In fine, we discover in Cæsar, both physically and morally, two natures
rarely united in the same person. He joined an aristocratic delicacy of
body to the muscular constitution of the warrior; the love of luxury and
the arts to a passion for military life, in all its simplicity and
rudeness: in a word, he allied the elegance of manner which seduces with
the energy of character which commands.
[Sidenote: Cæsar persecuted by Sylla (672). ]
II. Such was Cæsar at the age of eighteen, when Sylla seized the
dictatorship. [776] Already he attracted all eyes at Rome by his name,
his intellect, his affable manners, which pleased men, and, perhaps,
women still more.
The influence of his uncle Marius caused him to be nominated priest of
Jupiter (_flamen dialis_) at the age of fourteen. [777] At sixteen,
betrothed, doubtless against his will, to Cossutia, the daughter of a
rich knight, he broke his engagement,[778] after the death of his
father, to draw still closer his alliance with the popular party by
marrying, a year after, in 671, Cornelia, daughter of L. Cornelius
Cinna, the ancient colleague of Marius, and the representative of his
cause. From this marriage was born, the following year, Julia, who
became, in after time, the wife of Pompey.
[779]
Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s
thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more
closely with those who were opposed to him. He wished to force him to
divorce Cornelia, but he found him inflexible. When every one yielded to
his will; when, by his orders, Piso separated from Annia, the widow of
Cinna,[780] and Pompey ignominiously dismissed his wife, the daughter of
Antistius, who died for his cause,[781] to marry Emilia, the
daughter-in-law of the dictator, Cæsar maintained his independence at
the price of his personal safety.
Become suspected, he was deprived of his priesthood,[782] and of his
wife’s dowry, and declared incapable of inheriting from his family.
Obliged to conceal himself in the outskirts of Rome to escape
persecution, he changed his place of retreat every night, though ill
with fever; but, arrested by a band of assassins in the pay of Sylla,
he gained the chief, Cornelius Phagita, by giving him two talents (about
12,000 francs),[783] and his life was preserved. Let us note here that,
arrived at sovereign power, Cæsar met this same Phagita, and treated him
with indulgence, without reminding him of the past. [784] Meanwhile, he
still wandered about in the Sabine country. His courage, his constancy,
his illustrious birth, his former quality of flamen, excited general
interest. Soon important personages, such as Aurelius Cotta, his
mother’s brother, and Mamercus Lepidus, a connection of his family,
interceded in his favour. [785] The vestals also, whose sole intervention
put an end to all violence, did not spare their prayers. [786] Vanquished
by so many solicitations, Sylla yielded at last, exclaiming, “Well! be
it so, you will it; but know that he, whose pardon you demand, will one
day ruin the party of the great for which we have fought together, for,
trust me, there are several Mariuses in this young man. ”[787]
Sylla had judged truly: many Mariuses, in effect, had met together in
Cæsar: Marius, the great captain, but with a larger military genius;
Marius, the enemy of the oligarchy, but without hatred and without
cruelty; Marius, in a word, no longer the man of a faction, but the man
of his age.
[Sidenote: Cæsar in Asia (673, 674). ]
III. Cæsar could not remain a cold spectator of the sanguinary reign of
Sylla, and left for Asia, where he received the hospitality of
Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. A short time afterwards he took part in the
hostilities which continued against Mithridates. The young men of good
family who wished to serve their military apprenticeship followed a
general to the army. Admitted to his intimacy under the name of
_contubernales_, they were attached to his person. It was in this
capacity that Cæsar accompanied the prætor M. Minucius Thermus,[788] who
sent him to Nicomedes to claim his co-operation in the siege of
Mitylene, occupied by the troops of Mithridates. Cæsar succeeded in his
mission, and on his return aided in the capture of the city. Having
saved the life of a Roman soldier, he received from Thermus a civic
crown. [789]
Shortly afterwards he returned to Bithynia, to defend the cause of one
of his clients. His frequent presence at the court of Nicomedes served
as the pretext for an accusation of shameful condescension. But Cæsar’s
relations with the Bithynians may be explained quite naturally by his
feelings of gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them; it
was the reason which made him always defend their interests, and at a
later period become their patron, as may be gathered from the fragment
of a speech preserved by Aulus Gellius. [790] The motives of his conduct
were, nevertheless, so misconstrued, that insulting allusions are to be
found in certain debates of the Senate, and even in the songs of the
soldiers who followed his triumphal car. [791] But these sarcasms, which
told rather of hatred than of truth, as Cicero himself says, _magis odio
firmata quam præsidio_,[792] were only set afloat by his adversaries
very much later, that is to say, at one of those moments of excitement
when political parties shrink from no calumny[793] to mutually decry
each other. Notwithstanding the relaxation of morals, nothing could have
ruined the reputation of Cæsar more than this accusation, for such a
crime was not only abhorred in the army,[794] but, committed with a
foreigner, would have been the most degrading disregard of Roman
dignity. Wherefore Cæsar, whose love for women ought to have shielded
him from such a suspicion, repelled it with just indignation. [795]
After having made his first campaign at the siege of Mitylene, Cæsar
served in the fleet of the proconsul P. Servilius (676), commissioned to
make war on the Cilician pirates, who subsequently received the surname
of _Isauricus_, because he had taken Isaura, their chief place of
refuge,[796] and conquered part of Cilicia. However, he remained but a
short time with Servilius, for, having been informed of the death of
Sylla, he returned to Rome. [797]
[Sidenote: Cæsar on his return to Rome (676). ]
IV. The Republic, divided into two parties, was on the eve of falling
into civil war through the diversity of opinion between the two consuls,
Lepidus and Catulus. They were ready to come to blows. The former,
elevated to the consulship by the influence of Pompey, against the
advice of Sylla, fomented an insurrection. “He lighted up,” says Florus,
“the fire of civil war at the very funeral pyre of the dictator. ”[798]
He wished to abrogate the Cornelian laws, restore to the tribunes their
power, to the proscribed their rights, to the allies their lands. [799]
These designs against the system established by the dictator agreed with
Cæsar’s ideas, and endeavours were made, by seductive offers, to draw
him into the intrigues which were then going on; but he kept aloof. [800]
The Senate succeeded in making the consuls swear that they would be
reconciled, and thought to ensure peace by giving each a military
command. Catulus received the government of Italy, and Lepidus that of
Cisalpine Gaul. The latter, before going to his province, visited
Etruria, where the partisans of Marius flocked to him. The Senate,
informed of these doings, recalled him to Rome, towards the end of the
year, to hold the comitia. [801] Lepidus, leaving Brutus the prætor
encamped near Mutina (_Modena_), marched back to Rome at the head of his
army. Beaten by Catulus and Pompey at the bridge of Milvius, he withdrew
to the coast of Etruria, and, after a new defeat, fled to Sardinia,
where he ended his career miserably. [802] Perpenna, his lieutenant,
went, with the wreck of his army, to rejoin Sertorius in Spain.
Cæsar acted wisely in keeping out of these movements, for not only did
the character of Lepidus inspire him with no confidence,[803] but he
must have thought that the dictatorship of Sylla was too recent, that it
had inspired too many fears, and created too many new interests, to
admit of the reaction, still incomplete in men’s minds, succeeding by
arms. For the present, they must limit themselves to acting on public
opinion, by branding with words the instruments of the past tyranny.
The most general way of entering on a political career was by
instituting a prosecution against some high personage. [804] Its success
mattered little; the real point was to be brought prominently forward by
some remarkable speech, and offer a proof of patriotism.
Cornelius Dolabella, one of the friends of Sylla, who had had the
honours of the consulate and triumph, and who, two years before, was
governor of Macedonia, was now accused by Cæsar of excesses committed in
his government (677). He was acquitted by the tribunal composed of the
creatures of the dictator. [805] Public opinion did not praise Cæsar the
less for having dared to attack a man who was supported and defended by
orators such as Hortensius and L. Aurelius Cotta. Besides, he displayed
so much eloquence, that this first speech gave him at once a veritable
celebrity. [806] Encouraged by this success, Cæsar cited C. Antonius
Hybrida before the prætor M. Lucullus for having, at the head of a body
of cavalry, pillaged certain parts of Greece when Sylla was returning
from Asia. [807] The accused was also acquitted, but the popularity of
the accuser still increased. He also spoke, probably, in other causes
now unknown. Tacitus speaks of a speech of Cæsar’s in favour of a
certain Decius the Samnite,[808] without doubt the same mentioned by
Cicero, who, flying from the proscription of Sylla, was kindly received
by Aulus Cluentius. [809] Thus Cæsar boldly offered himself as the
defender of the oppressed Greeks or Samnites, who had suffered so much
from the regime preceding. He gained especially the good-will of the
former, whose opinions, highly influential at Rome, helped to make
reputations.
These attacks were certainly a means of attracting public attention, but
they also showed the courage of the man, since the partisans of Sylla
were still all in power.
[Sidenote: Cæsar goes to Rhodes (678-680). ]
V. Notwithstanding his celebrity as an orator, Cæsar resolved to keep
out of the troubles which agitated Italy, and doubtless felt his
presence in Rome useless to his cause and irksome to himself. It is
often advantageous to political men to disappear for a time from the
scene; they thus avoid compromising themselves in daily struggles
without aim, and their reputation, instead of losing, increases by
absence. During the winter of 678 Cæsar again quitted Italy, for the
purpose of going to Rhodes to complete his studies. This island, then
the centre of intellectual lights, the dwelling-place of the most
celebrated philosophers, was the school of all the well-born youth.
Cicero himself had gone there for lessons some years before.
In his passage, Cæsar was taken by pirates near Pharmacusa, a small
island in the archipelago of the Sporades, at the mouth of the Gulf of
Jassius. [810] Notwithstanding the campaign of P. Servilius Isauricus,
these pirates still infested the sea with numerous fleets. They demanded
twenty talents (£2,329) for his ransom. He offered fifty (£11,640),
which must naturally have given them a high notion of their prisoner,
and insured him better treatment. He sent trusty agents, and among
others Epicrates, one of his Milesian slaves, to raise this sum in the
neighbouring towns. [811] Though the allied provinces and towns were in
this case obliged to furnish the ransom, it was none the less curious,
as a proof of their wealth, to see a young man of twenty-four, arrested
in a little island of Asia Minor, instantly able to borrow so large a
sum.
Left alone with a physician and two slaves[812] in the midst of these
ferocious brigands, he held them in awe by his force of character, and
passed nearly forty days on board without ever loosing either his
sandals or his girdle, to avoid all suspicion of wishing to escape by
swimming. [813] He seemed less a captive, says Plutarch, than a prince
surrounded by his guards; now playing with them, now reciting poems to
them, he made himself loved and feared, and laughingly told them that,
once free, he would have them crucified. [814] Yet the remembrance of
Rome recurred to his mind, and recalled the strifes and enmities he had
left there. He was often heard to say, “What pleasure Crassus will have
at knowing me in these straits! ”[815]
As soon as he received his ransom from Miletus and the other towns, he
paid it. Landed on the coast, he hastened to equip ships, impatient to
revenge himself. The pirates, surprised at anchor in the harbour of the
island, were almost all made prisoners, and their booty fell into his
hands. He secured them in the prison at Pergamus, to deliver them up to
Junius Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, whose duty it was to punish them.
But, wishing to sell them and make a profit, Junius replied in an
evasive manner. Cæsar returned to Pergamus, and had them crucified. [816]
He went afterwards to Rhodes, to attend the lessons of Apollonius Molo,
the most illustrious of the masters of eloquence of that time, who had
formerly been to Rome, in 672, as the Rhodian ambassador. About the same
time one of his uncles, the proconsul M. Aurelius Cotta, was appointed
governor of Bithynia, bequeathed by Nicomedes to the Roman people, and
charged, with Lucullus, to oppose the new invasions of Mithridates.
Cotta, beaten by land and sea near Chalcedon, was reduced to great
straits, and Mithridates was advancing against Cyzicus, an allied town,
which Lucullus afterwards relieved. On another side, Eumachius, a
lieutenant of the King of Pontus, ravaged Phrygia, where he massacred
all the Romans, and seized several of the southern provinces of Asia
Minor. The rumours of war, the perils into which the allies were
falling, took Cæsar from his studies. He went over into Asia, levied
troops on his own authority, drove out from the province the king’s
governor, and kept in allegiance towns whose faith was doubtful or
shaken. [817]
[Sidenote: Cæsar Pontiff and Military Tribune (680-684). ]
VI. Whilst he was making war on the coasts of Asia, his friends at Rome
did not forget him; and, seeing clearly the importance of Cæsar’s being
clothed with a sacred character, they nominated him pontiff, in the
place of his uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 680, who had died
suddenly in Gaul the following year. [818]
This circumstance obliged him to return to Rome. The sea continued to
swarm with pirates, who must necessarily owe him a grudge for the death
of their comrades. The better to escape them, he crossed the Adriatic in
a boat of four oars, accompanied only by two friends and ten
slaves. [819] In the passage, thinking that he saw sails in the horizon,
he seized his sword, resolved to sell his life dearly; but his fears
were not justified, and he landed safe and sound in Italy.
Immediately on his return to Rome, he was elected military tribune, and
succeeded by a large majority over his rival, C. Popilius. [820] This
already elevated rank, since it gave him the command of about a thousand
men, was the first step which the young nobility easily attained, either
by election or by the choice of the generals. [821] Cæsar does not seem
to have profited by his new position to take part in the important wars
in which the Republic was then engaged. And yet the clang of arms echoed
from all quarters.
In Spain Sertorius successfully continued the war begun in 674 against
the lieutenants of Sylla, joined in 677 by Perpenna, at the head of
thirty cohorts,[822] he had got together a formidable army, bravely
maintained the standard of Marius, and given the name of _Senate_ to an
assemblage of 300 Romans. Vanquisher of Metellus for several years,
Sertorius, gifted with a vast military genius, exercising great
influence over the Celtiberians and Lusitanians, and master of the
passes,[823] was dreaming of crossing the Alps. The Spaniards had
already given him the name of a _second Hannibal_. But Pompey, sent in
all haste to Spain, reinforced the army of Metellus, deprived Sertorius
of all hope of penetrating into Italy, and even drove him far back from
the Pyrenees. The united efforts of the two generals, however, did not
effect the subjugation of Spain, which, since 680, had been entirely
re-conquered by Sertorius. But soon after this, his lieutenants
experiencing reverses, desertion began among his soldiers, and he
himself lost his confidence. Yet he would have resisted for a long time
still, had not Perpenna caused him to be assassinated by an infamous act
of treachery. This murder did not profit its author. Though Perpenna
succeeded Sertorius in the command of the troops, he found himself an
object of their hatred and contempt. Soon defeated and taken prisoner by
Pompey, he was put to death. Thus ended the war in Spain in 682.
In Asia, Lucullus successfully pursued the campaign against
Mithridates, who courageously maintained the struggle, and had even been
able to come to an understanding with Sertorius. Lucullus beat him in
Cappadocia (683), and forced him to take refuge with Tigranes, his
son-in-law, King of Armenia, who soon experienced a sanguinary defeat,
and lost his capital, Tigranocerta.
In the East, the barbarians infested the frontiers of Macedonia, the
pirates of Cilicia sailed from end to end of all the seas with impunity,
and the Cretans flew to arms to defend their independence.
Italy was torn by the Servile War. This disinherited class had risen up
anew, despite the bloody repression of the Sicilian insurrection from
620 to 623. It had acquired the knowledge of its strength chiefly from
the circumstance that each party in the civil troubles had by turns
granted its liberty to increase the number of its respective adherents.
In 681, seventy gladiators, kept at Capua, revolted; their chief was
Spartacus, formerly a soldier, made prisoner, then sold as a slave. In
less than a year his band had so much increased that consular armies
were needed to combat him, and, having gained a victory in Picenum, for
a moment he had entertained the thought of marching upon Rome at the
head of 40,000 men. [824] Nevertheless, forced to withdraw to the south
of Italy, he contended against the Roman forces successfully for two
years, when at last, in 683, Licinius Crassus, at the head of eight
legions, conquered him in Apulia. Spartacus perished in the fight; the
remainder of the army of slaves separated into four bodies, one of
which, retiring towards Gaul, was easily dispersed by Pompey, who was
returning from Spain. The 6,000 prisoners taken in the battle fought in
Apulia were hanged all along the road from Capua to Rome.
Occasions for making himself perfect in the art of war were not wanting
to Cæsar; but we can understand his inaction, for Sylla’s partisans
alone were at the heads of the armies; in Spain, Metellus and
Pompey--the first the brother-in-law of the Dictator, the second
formerly his best lieutenant; in Italy, Crassus, the enemy of Cæsar,
equally devoted to the party of Sylla; in Asia, Lucullus, an old friend
of the Dictator, who had dedicated his “_Memoirs_”[825] to him. Cæsar,
then, found everywhere either a cause he would not defend, or a general
under whom he would not serve. In Spain, however, Sertorius represented
the party he would most willingly have embraced; but Cæsar had a horror
of civil wars. Whilst faithful to his convictions, he seems, in the
first years of his career, to have carefully avoided placing between him
and his adversaries that eternal barrier which for ever separates the
children of the same country, after blood has once been shed. He had it
at heart to be able, in his exalted future, to appeal to a past pure
from all violence, so that, instead of being the man of a party, he
might rally round him all good citizens.
The Republic had triumphed everywhere, but she had yet to reckon with
her conquering generals: she found herself in the presence of Crassus
and Pompey, who, proud of their successes, advanced upon Rome at the
head of their armies, to demand or seize the chief power. The Senate
could be but little at ease as to the intentions of the latter, who, not
long before, had sent an insolent letter from Spain, in which he menaced
his country with the sword unless they sent him the supplies necessary
to carry on the war against Sertorius. [826] The same ambition animated
Pompey and Crassus: neither of the two would be the first to disband his
army; each, indeed, brought his own to the gates of the city. Both were
elected consuls, allowed a triumph, and forced by the augurs and public
opinion to be reconciled together; and they held out their hands to each
other, disbanded their troops, and for some time the Republic recovered
an unexpected calm. [827]
CHAPTER II.
(684-691. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic (684). ]
I. When Pompey and Crassus came to the consulship, Italy had been a prey
to intestine convulsions for sixty-three years. But, notwithstanding the
repose which society demanded, and which the reconciliation of the two
rivals seemed to promise, many opposing passions and interests still
seethed in her bosom. [828]
Sylla believed he had re-established the Republic on its ancient basis,
but, instead, he had thrown everything into disorder. The property, the
life even of each citizen, was at the mercy of the stronger; the people
had lost the right of appeal, and their legitimate share in the
elections; the poor, the distribution of wheat; the tribuneship, its
secular privileges; and the influential order of the knights, their
political and financial importance.
At Rome, no more guarantee for justice; in Italy, no more security for
the rights of citizenship, so dearly acquired; in the provinces, no more
consideration for subjects and allies. Sylla had restored their
prerogatives to the upper class without being able to restore their
former prestige; having made use of only corrupt elements, and appealed
to only sordid passions, he left behind him a powerless oligarchy, and
a thoroughly distracted people. The country was divided between those
whom his tyranny had enriched and those whom it had despoiled; the one
fearing to lose what they had just acquired, the other hoping to regain
what they had lost.
The aristocracy, proud of their wealth and ancestry, absorbed in all the
pleasures of luxury, kept the _new men_[829] out of the highest offices,
and, by a long continuance of power, had come to look on the chief
magistracies as their property. Cato, in a discourse to the Senate,
exclaimed:--“Instead of the virtues of our ancestors we have luxury and
avarice; the poverty of the State, and the opulence of individuals; we
boast of our riches, we cherish idleness; no distinction is made between
the good and the wicked; all rewards due to merit are the price of
intrigue. Why then are we astonished at this, since each man, isolating
himself from the rest, consults only his own interest? At home, the
slaves of pleasure; here, of wealth or of favour. ”[830]
The elections had for a long time been the result of a shameless
traffic, where every mean of success was allowable. Lucullus himself, to
obtain the government of Asia, did not blush to have recourse to the
good offices of a courtesan, the mistress of Cethegus. [831] The sale of
consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that the several
instruments of electoral corruption had functions and titles almost
recognised. Those who bought votes were called _divisores_; the
go-betweens were _interpretes_; and those with whom was deposited the
purchase money[832] were _sequestres_. Numerous secret societies were
formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage; they were divided
into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a supreme head, who
treated with the candidates and sold the votes of the associates, either
for money, or on the stipulation of certain advantages for himself or
his friends. These societies carried most of the elections, and Cicero
himself, who so often boasted of the unanimity with which he had been
chosen consul, owed to them a great part of the suffrages he
obtained. [833]
All the sentences of the tribunals composed of senators were dictated by
a venality so flagrant, that Cicero brands it in these terms:--“I will
demonstrate by positive proofs the guilty intrigues, the infamies which
have sullied the judicial powers for the ten years that they have been
entrusted to the Senate. The Roman people shall learn from me how the
knightly order has administered justice for nearly fifty consecutive
years, without the faintest suspicion resting on any of its members of
having received money for a judgment delivered; how, since senators
alone have composed our tribunals, since the people have been despoiled
of the right which they had over each of us, Q. Calidius has been able
to say, after his condemnation, that they could not honestly require
less than 300,000 sestertii to condemn a prætor; how, when the senator
P. Septimius was found guilty of embezzlement before the prætor
Hortensius, the money he had received in his quality of judge was
included in his fine; how C. Herennius and C. Popilius, both senators,
having been convicted of the crime of peculation, and M. Atilius of the
crime of high treason, it was proved that they had received money as the
price of one of their sentences; how it was found that certain senators,
when their names were taken from the urn held by C. Verres, then prætor
urbanus, instantly went to vote against the accused, without having
heard the suit; how, finally, we have seen a senator, judge in this same
suit, receive money from the accused to distribute to the other judges,
and money from the accuser to condemn the accused. Can I, then,
sufficiently deplore this blot, this shame, this calamity which weighs
on the whole order? ”[834]
Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against the avidity of the
generals and farmers of the revenues, notwithstanding the patronage of
the great at Rome, the conquered peoples[835] were always a prey to the
exactions of the magistrates, and Verres was a type of the most
shameless immorality, which drew this exclamation from Cicero: “All the
provinces groan; all free peoples lament; all the kingdoms cry out
against our cupidity and our violence. There is not between the Ocean
and ourselves a spot so remote or so little known that the injustice and
tyranny of our fellow-citizens of these days have not penetrated to
it. ”[836] The inhabitants of foreign countries were obliged to borrow,
either to satisfy the immoderate demands of their governors and their
retinue, or to pay the farmers of the public revenues. Now, capital
being nowhere but at Rome, they could only procure it at an excessive
rate of interest; and the nobles, giving themselves up to usury, held
the provinces in their power.
The army itself had been demoralised by civil wars, and the chiefs no
longer maintained discipline. “Flamininus, Aquilius, Paulus Æmilius,”
says Dio Cassius, “commanded men well disciplined, who had learnt to
execute the orders of their generals in silence. The law was their rule;
with a royal soul, simple in life, bounding their expenses within
reasonable limits, they held it more shameful to flatter the soldiery
than to fear the enemy. From the time of Sylla, on the contrary, the
generals, raised to the first rank by violence and not by merit, forced
to turn their arms against each other rather than against the enemy,
were reduced to court popularity. Charged with the command, they
squandered gold to procure enjoyments for an army, the fatigues of which
they paid dearly; they rendered their country venal, without caring for
it; and made themselves the slaves of the most depraved men, to bring
under their authority those who were worth more than themselves. This is
what drove Marius out of Rome, and led him back against Sylla; this is
what made Cinna the murderer of Octavius, and Fimbria the murderer of
Flaccus. Sylla was the principal cause of these evils, he who, to seduce
the soldiers enrolled under other chiefs, and bring them under his own
flag, scattered gold in handfuls among his army. ”[837]
Far were they from the times when the soldier, after a short campaign,
laid down his arms to take up the plough again; since then, retained
under his standards for long years, and returning in the train of a
victorious general to vote in the Campus Martius, the citizen had
disappeared; there remained the warrior, with the sole inspiration of
the camp. At the end of the expeditions, the army was disbanded, and
Italy thus found itself overrun with an immense number of veterans,
united in colonies or dispersed over the territory, more inclined to
follow a leader than to obey the law. The veterans of the ancient
legions of Marius and Sylla were to be counted by hundreds of thousands.
A State, moreover, is often weakened by an exaggeration of the principle
on which it rests; and as war was the chief occupation at Rome, all the
institutions had originally a military character. The consuls, the first
magistrates of the Republic, elected by centuries--that is to say, by
the people voting under arms--commanded the troops. The army, composed
of all there was most honourable in the nation, did not take an oath to
the Republic, but to the chief who recruited it and led it against the
enemy; this oath, religiously kept, rendered the generals the absolute
masters of their soldiers, who, in their turn, decreed to them the title
of _Imperator_ after a victory: what more natural, then, even after the
transformation of society, than that these soldiers should believe
themselves the real people, and the generals elected by them the
legitimate chiefs of the Republic? Every abuse has deep roots in the
past, and we may find the original cause of the power of the prætorians
under the emperors in the primitive organisation and functions of the
centuries established by Servius Tullius.
Although the army had not as yet acquired this preponderance, it
nevertheless weighed heavily on the decisions of the Forum. By the side
of men habituated to the noble chances of the fight existed a true army
of turbulence, kept at the expense of the State or of private persons,
in the principal towns of Italy--above all, at Capua: these were the
gladiators, ever ready to undertake anything for those who paid them,
either in the electoral contests[838] or as soldiers in the times of
civil war. [839]
Thus all was struck with decadence. Brute force bestowed power, and
corruption the magistracies. The empire no longer belonged to the
Senate, but to the commanders of the armies; the armies no longer
belonged to the Republic, but to the chiefs who led them to victory.
Numerous elements of dissolution afflicted society: the venality of the
judges, the traffic in elections, the absolutism of the Senate, the
tyranny of wealth, which oppressed the poor by usury, and braved the law
with impunity.
Rome found herself divided into two thoroughly distinct parties; the
one, seeing salvation only in the past, attached itself to abuses, in
the fear that to displace one stone would be to shatter the whole
edifice; the other wished to consolidate it by rendering the base larger
and the summit less unsteady. The first party supported itself on the
institutions of Sylla; the second had taken the name of Marius as the
symbol of its hopes.
Great causes need an historical figure to personify their interests and
tendencies. The man once adopted, his faults, his very crimes are
forgotten, and his great deeds alone remembered. Thus, the vengeance
and massacres of Marius had faded away from memory at Rome. Only his
victories, which had preserved Italy from the invasions of the Cimbri
and the Teutones, were recalled; his misfortunes were pitied, his hatred
to the aristocracy vaunted.
