No More Learning

But the corps of Mithrobarzanes was dispersed by the Roman van guard, and the Arabs by a detachment under Sextilius ; Lucullus gained the road leading from Tigranocerta to Artaxata, and, while on the right bank of the Tigris a Roman detachment pursued the great-king retreating northwards, Lucullus himself crossed to the left and marched forward to Tigranocerta.
The exhaustless showers of arrows which the garrison Siege and
poured upon the Roman army, and the setting fire to the battle of Tigrano
besieging machines by means of naphtha, initiated the cm Romans into the new dangers of Iranian warfare ; and the brave commandant Mancaeus maintained the city, till at length the great royal army of relief had assembled from
all parts of the vast empire and the adjoining countries that were open to Armenian recruiting oflicers, and had advanced through the north-eastern passes to the relief of the capital. The leader Taxiles, experienced in the wars of Mithradates, advised Tigranes to avoid a battle, and to surround and starve out the small Roman army by means of his cavalry. But when the king saw the Roman general, who had determined to give battle without raising the siege, move out with not much more than 10,000 men
against a force twenty times superior, and boldly cross the river which separated the two armies; when he surveyed on the one side this little band, “ too many for an embassy,
$1115’; Pminw
34o
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
09.
All the.
too few for an army,” and on the other side his own immense host, in which the peoples from the Black Sea and the Caspian met with those of the Mediterranean and of the Persian Gulf, in which the dreaded iron-clad lancers alone were more numerous than the whole army of Lucullus, and in which even infantry armed after the Roman fashion were not wanting; he resolved promptly to accept the battle desired by the enemy. But while the Armenians were still forming their array, the quick eye of Lucullus perceived that they had neglected to occupy a height which commanded the whole position of their cavalry. He hastened to occupy it with two cohorts, while at the same
time his weak cavalry by a flank attack diverted the at tention of the enemy from this movement ; and as soon as he had reached the height, he led his little hand against the rear of the enemy’s cavalry. They were totally broken and threw themselves on the not yet fully formed infantry, which fled without even striking a blow. The bulletin of the victor—that 100,000 Armenians and five Romans had fallen and that the king, throwing away his turban and
diadem, had galloped off unrecognized with a few horse men—is composed in the style of his master Sulla. Nevertheless the victory achieved on the 6th October 685 before Tigranocerta remains one of the most brilliant stars in the glorious history of Roman warfare; and it was not less momentous than brilliant.
All the provinces wrested from the Parthians or Syrians to the south of the Tigris were by this means strategically lost to the Armenians, and passed, for the most part, with
$1,? “ out delay into the possession of the victor. The newly
ROIMIB-
built second capital itself set the example. The Greeks, who had been forced in large numbers to settle there, rose against the garrison and opened to the Roman army the gates of the city, which was abandoned to the pillage of the soldiers. It had been created for the new great-kingdom,
CRAP. It RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
341
and, like this, was effaced by the victor. From Cilicia and Syria all the troops had already been withdrawn by the Armenian satrap Magadates to reinforce the relieving army before Tigranocerta. Lucullus advanced into Commagene, the most northern'province of Syria, and stormed Samosata,
the capital ; he did not reach Syria proper, but envoys arrived from the dynasts and communities as far as the Red Sea—from Hellenes, Syrians, Jews, Arabs—to do homage to the Romans as their sovereigns. Even the prince of Corduene, the province situated to the east of Tigranocerta, submitted; while, on the other hand, Guras the brother of the great-king maintained himself in Nisibis, and thereby in Mesopotamia. Lucullus came forward throughout as the protector of the Hellenic princes and municipalities: in Commagene he placed Antiochus, a prince of the Seleucid house, on the throne; he recognized
Antiochus Asiaticus, who after the withdrawal of the Armenians had returned to Antioch, as king of Syria; he sent the forced settlers of Tigranocerta once more away to their homes. The immense stores and treasures of the great-king—the grain amounted to 30,000,000 mm’z'mm', the money in Tigranocerta alone to 8000 talents (nearly £2,0oo,o00)—enabled Lucullus to defray the expenses of the war without making any demand on the state-treasury, and to bestow on each of his soldiers, besides the amplest maintenance, a present of 800 demm'i (£3
The great-king was deeply humbled. He was of Tignnu
and Mith
radates.
feeble character, arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted adversity. Probably an agreement would have been come to between him and Lucullus—an agreement which there was every reason that the great-king should purchase by considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should grant under tolerable conditions—had not the old Mithra dates been in existence. The latter had taken no part in the conflicts around Tigranocerta. Liberated after twenty
in a
3).
342
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
70. months’ captivity about the middle of 684 in consequence of the variance that had occurred between the great-king and the Romans, he had been despatched with 10,000 Armenian cavalry to his former kingdom, to threaten the communications of the enemy. Recalled even before he could accomplish anything there, when the great-king sum moned his whole force to relieve the capital which he had built, Mithradates was met on his arrival before Tigrano certa by the multitudes just fleeing from the field of battle. To every one, from the great-king down to the common soldier, all seemed lost. But if Tigranes should now make peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last chance of being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would be beyond doubt the first condition of peace; and cer tainly Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards him than Bocchus had formerly acted towards Jugurtha. The king accordingly staked his whole personal weight to prevent things from taking this turn, and to induce the Armenian court to continue the war, in which he had nothing to lose and everything to gain; and, fugitive and dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court was not slight. He was still a stately and powerful man, who, although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted on horseback in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict stood his ground like the best. Years and vicissitudes seemed to have steeled his spirit : while in earlier times he sent forth generals to lead his armies and took no direct part in war himself, we find him henceforth as an old man commanding in person and fighting in person on the field of battle. To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had witnessed so many unexampled changes of fortune, the cause of the great-king appeared by no means lost through the defeat of Tigranocerta ; whereas the position of Lucullus was very diflicult, and, if peace should not now take place and the war should be judiciously continued, even in
a high degree precarious.
CHAP. H RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
343
The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the Renewal great-king almost as a father, and was now able to exercise of the war a personal influence over him, overpowered by his energy
that weak man, and induced him not only to resolve on the continuance of the war, but also to entrust Mithradates
with its political and military management. The war was
now to be changed from a cabinet contest into a national
Asiatic struggle; the kings and peoples of Asia were to
unite for this purpose against the domineering and haughty Occidentals. The greatest exertions were made to recon
cile the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to
induce them to make common cause against Rome. At
the suggestion of Mithradates, Tigranes offered to give
back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who had reigned
since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians 70
Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the “great valleys ”—and to enter into friendship and alliance with him. But, after all that had previously taken place, this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception; Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans, and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient foreigner fought out their strife. Greater success attended the application of Mithradates to the peoples of the east than to the kings. It was not diflicult to represent the war as a national one of the east against the west, for such it was ; it might very well be made a religious war also, and the report might be spread that the object aimed at by the army of Lucullus was the temple of the Persian Nanaea or Anaitis in Elymais or the modern Luristan, the most celebrated and the richest shrine in the whole region of the Euphrates. 1 From far
1 Cicero (De Imp. Pump. 9, 23) hardly means any other than one of the rich temples of the province Elymais, whither the predatory expeditions of the Syrian and Parthian kings were regularly directed (Strabo, xvi. 744;
Polyb. xxxi. u " r Maccab. 6, etc. ). and probably this as the best known‘,
Dissatis faction
Lucullus in the capital and in the army.
and near the Asiatics flocked in crowds to the banner of the kings, who summoned them to protect the east and its gods from the impious foreigners. But facts had shown not only that the mere assemblage of enormous hosts was of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a mass rendered useless and involved in the general ruin. Mithradates sought above all to develop the arm which was at once weakest among the Occidentals and strongest among the Asiatics, the cavalry; in the army newly formed by him half of the force was mounted. For the ranks of the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass of recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service, and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic oflicers. The considerable army, however, which soon assembled under the banner of the great-king was destined not to measure its strength with the Roman veterans on the first chance field of battle, but to confine itself to defence and petty warfare. Mithradates had conducted the last war in his empire on the system of constantly retreating and avoiding battle ; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion, and Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war—the hereditary land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the enemy, and excellently adapted for this sort of warfare both by its physical character and by the patriotism of its inhabitants.
The year 686 found Lucullus in a position of difliculty, which daily assumed a more dangerous aspect. In spite of his brilliant victories, people in Rome were not at all satis tied with him. The senate felt the arbitrary nature of his conduct ; the capitalist party, sorely offended by him, set all means of intrigue and corruption at work to effect his recall. Daily the Forum echoed with just and unjust com
on no account can the allusion be to the temple of Comana or any shrine at all in the kingdom of Pontus,
344
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
CHAP. It RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
the foolhardy, the covetous, the un Roman, the traitorous general. The senate so far yielded
to the complaints regarding the union of such unlimited power—two ordinary governorships and an important extra ordinary command—|in the hands of such a man, as to assign the province of Asia to one of the praetors, and the province of Cilicia along with three newly-raised legions to the consul Quintus Marcius Rex, and to restrict the general to the command against Mithradates and Tigranes.
These accusations springing up against the general in Rome found a dangerous echo in the soldiers’ quarters on the Iris and on the Tigris; and the more so that several officers including the general’s own brother-in-law, Publius Clodius, worked upon the soldiers with this view. The report beyond doubt designedly circulated by these, that Lucullus now thought of combining with the Pontic Armenian war an expedition against the Parthians, fed the exasperation of the troops.
But while the troublesome temper of the government Lucullil
and of the soldiers thus threatened the victorious general advances into
with recall and mutiny, he himself continued like a desper Armenia. ate gambler to increase his stake and his risk. He did
not indeed march against the Parthians ; but when Tigranes
showed himself neither ready to make peace nor disposed,
as Lucullus wished, to risk a second pitched battle, Lucullus resolved to advance from Tigranocerta, through the difficult mountain-country along the eastern shore of the lake of Van, into the valley of the eastern Euphrates (or the Arsanias, now Myrad-Chai), and thence into that of the Araxes, where, on the northern slope of Ararat, lay Artaxata the capital of Armenia proper, with the hereditary castle and the harem of the king. He hoped, by threaten ing the king’s hereditary residence, to compel him to fight either on the way or at any rate before Artaxata. It was inevitably necessary to leave behind a division at Tigrano
plaints regarding
345
Lucullus retreats to Mesopo tamia.
68.
346
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
certa ; and, as the marching army could not possibly be further reduced, no course was left but to weaken the position in Pontus and to summon troops thence to
The main difliculty, however, was the short- ness of the Armenian summer, so inconvenient for military enterprises. On the tableland of Armenia, which lies 5000 feet and more above the level of the sea, the corn at Erzeroum only germinates in the beginning of June, and the winter sets in with the harvest in September;
Artaxata had to be reached and the campaign had to be ended in four months at the utmost.
At midsummer, 686, Lucullus set out from Tigrano certa, and, marching doubtless through the pass of Bitlis and farther to the westward along the lake of Van— arrived on the plateau of Musch and at the Euphrates. The march went 0n—amidst constant and very trouble some skirmishing with the enemy’s cavalry, and especially with the mounted archers. —slowly, but without material hindrance; and the passage of the Euphrates, which was seriously defended by the Armenian cavalry, was secured by a successful engagement; the Armenian infantry showed itself, but the attempt to involve it in the conflict did not succeed. Thus the army reached the tableland, properly so called, of Armenia, and continued its march into the unknown country. They had suffered no actual misfor tune; but the mere inevitable delaying of the march by the difficulties of the ground and the horsemen of the enemy was itself a very serious disadvantage. Long before they had reached Artaxata, winter set in; and when the
Italian soldiers saw snow and ice around them, the bow
of military discipline that had been far too tightly stretched
gave way.
A formal mutiny compelled the general to order a re
treat, which he effected with his usual skill. When he had safely reached Mesopotamia where the season still
Tigranocerta.
CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
347
farther operations, Lucullus crossed the Tigris,
and threw himself with the mass of his army on Nisibis,
the last city that here remained to the Armenians. The Capture of great-king, rendered wiser by the experience acquired Nisibil. before Tigranocerta, left the city to itself : notwithstanding
its brave defence it was stormed in a dark, rainy night by
the besiegers, and the army of Lucullus found there booty
not less rich and winter-quarters not less comfortable than
the year before in Tigranocerta.
permitted
But, meanwhile, the whole weight of the enemy's offen sive fell on the weak Roman divisions left behind in Pontus and in Armenia. ‘ Tigranes compelled the Roman commander of the latter corps, Lucius Fannius—the same who had formerly been the medium of communication between Sertorius and Mithradates 32 328, 334)—t0 throw himself into fortress, and kept him beleaguered there. Mithradates advanced into Pontus with 4000 Armenian horsemen and 4000 of his own, and as liberator and
avenger summoned the nation to rise against the common foe. All joined him; the scattered Roman soldiers were everywhere seized and put to death: when Hadrianus, the Roman commandant in Pontus 331), led his troops against him, the former mercenaries of the king and the numerous natives of Pontus following the army as slaves made common cause with the enemy. For two successive days the unequal conflict lasted; was only the circum stance that the king after receiving two wounds had to be carried off from the field of battle, which gave the Roman commander the opportunity of breaking off the virtually lost battle, and throwing himself with the small remnant of his troops into Cabira. Another of Lucullus’ lieuten ants who accidentally came into this region, the resolute Triarius, again gathered round him body of troops and fought successful engagement with the king; but he was much too weak to expel him afresh from Pontic soil,
Conflicts in Pontus and at Tigrano
a
a
it
(p.
a
(p. 3,
67. Farther
retreat 10 Forum.
and had to acquiesce while the king took up winter‘ quarters in Comana.
So the spring of 687 came on. The reunion of the army in Nisibis, the idleness of winter-quarters, the frequent absence of the general, had meanwhile increased the in subordination of the troops; not only did they vehemently demand to be led back, but it was already tolerably evident that, if the general refused to lead them home, they would break up of themselves. The supplies were scanty; Fannius and Triarius, in their distress, sent the most urgent entreaties to the general to furnish aid. With a heavy heart Lucullus resolved to yield to necessity, to give up Nisibis and Tigranocerta, and, renouncing all the brilliant hopes of his Armenian expedition, to return to the right bank of the Euphrates. Fannius was relieved; but in Pontus the help was too late. Triarius, not strong enough to fight with Mithradates, had taken up a strong
at Gaziura (Turksal on the Iris, to the west of Tokat), while the baggage was left behind at Dadasa. But when Mithradates laid siege to the latter place, the Roman soldiers, apprehensive for their property, compelled their leader to leave his secure position, and to give battle
to the king between Gaziura and Ziela (Zilleh) on the Scotian heights.
What Triarius had foreseen, occurred. In spite of the stoutest resistance the wing which the king commanded in person broke the Roman line and huddled the infantry together into a clayey ravine, where it could make neither a forward nor a lateral movement and was cut to pieces without pity. The king indeed was dangerously wounded by a Roman centurion, who sacrificed his life for it; but the defeat was not the less complete. The Roman camp was taken; the flower of the infantry, and almost all the staff and subaltern oflicers, strewed the ground; the dead were left lying unburied on the field of battle, and, when
Defeat of the
Romans in Pontus
at Ziela
348
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
position
CHAP- Il RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
349
Lucullus arrived on the right bank of the Euphrates, he learned the defeat not from his own soldiers, but through the reports of the natives.
Along with this defeat came the outbreak of the military Mutiny conspiracy. At this very time news arrived from Rome of the
soldiers. that the people had resolved to grant a discharge to the
soldiers whose legal term of service had expired, to wit, to the Fimbrians, and to entrust the chief command in Pontus and Bithynia to one of the consuls of the current year: the successor of Lucullus, the consul Manius Acilius
Glabrio, had already landed in Asia Minor. The disband
ing of the bravest and most turbulent legions and the - recall of the commander-in-chief, in connection with the impression produced by the defeat of Ziela, dissolved all the bonds of authority in the army just when the general had most urgent need of their aid. Near Talaura in Lesser Armenia he confronted the Pontic troops, at whose head Tigranes’ son-in-law, Mithradates of Media, had
already engaged the Romans successfully in a cavalry conflict; the main force of the great-king was advancing to the same point from Armenia. Lucullus sent to
Marcius the new governor of Cilicia, who had just arrived on the way to his province with three legions in Lycaonia, to obtain help from him; Marcius declared
that his soldiers refused to march to Armenia. He sent to Glabrio with the request that he would take up the
supreme command committed to him by the
Glabrio showed still less inclination to undertake this task, which had now become so diflicult and hazardous. Lucullus, compelled to retain the command, with the view of not being obliged to fight at Talaura against the Armenian and me Pontic armies conjoined, ordered a
movement against the advancing Armenians.
The soldiers obeyed the order to march; but, when
they reached the point where the routes to Armenia and
Quintus
people;
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v Farther Cappadocia diverged, the bulk of the army took the latter,
retreat to
35°
and proceeded to the province of Asia. There the Minor. Fimbrians demanded their immediate discharge; and al— though they desisted from this at the urgent entreaty of
the commander-in-chief and the other corps,
persevered in their purpose of disbanding if the winter should come on without an enemy confronting them; which accordingly was the case. Mithradates not only occupied once more almost his whole kingdom, but his cavalry ranged over all Cappadocia and as far as Bithynia ; king Ariobarzanes sought help equally in vain from Quintus Marcius, from Lucullus, and from Glabrio. It was a strange, almost incredible issue for a war conducted in' a . manner so glorious. If we look merely to military achieve ments, hardly any other Roman general accomplished so
much with so trifling means as Lucullus; the talent and the fortune of Sulla seemed to have devolved on this his disciple. That under the circumstances the Roman army should have returned from Armenia to Asia Minor un injured, is a military miracle which, so far as we can judge, far excels the retreat of Xenophon; and, although mainly doubtless to be explained by the solidity of the Roman, and the inefliciency of the Oriental, system of war, it at all events secures to the leader of this expedition an honourable name in the foremost rank of men of military
If the name of Lucullus is not usually included among these, it is to all appearance simply owing to the fact that no narrative of his campaigns which is in a military point of view even tolerable has come down to us, and to the circumstance that in everything, and particularly in war, nothing is taken into account but the final result; and this, in reality, was equivalent to a complete defeat. Through the last unfortunate turn of things, and principally through the mutiny of the soldiers, all the results of an
they yet
capacity.
67-66. eight years’ war had been lost ; in the winter of 687-688
CRAP. ll RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
35!
the Romans again stood exactly at the same spot as in the
the same time with the continental war and was all along the Dime“ most closely connected with yielded no better results.
It has been already mentioned 324) that the senate in
680 adopted the judicious resolution to entrust the task of
winter of 679—68o.
75-74. The maritime war against the pirates, which began at War with
clearing the seas from the corsairs to single admiral in supreme command, the praetor Marcus Antonius. But at the very outset they had made an utter mistake in the choice of the leader; or rather those, who had
carried this measure so appropriate in itself, had not taken into account that in the senate all personal questions were decided by the influence of Cethegus (p. 268) and similar coterie-considerations. They had moreover neglected to furnish the admiral of their choice with money and ships in manner befitting his comprehensive task, so that with his enormous requisitions he was almost as burdensome to
74
the provincials whom he befriended as were the corsairs. The results were corresponding. In the Campanian waters
Defeat of
the fleet of Antonius captured number of piratical vessels.
But an engagement took place with the Cretans, who had entered into friendship and alliance with the pirates and abruptly rejected his demand that they should desist from such fellowship; and the chains, with which the foresight
of Antonius had provided his vessels for the purpose of placing the captive buccaneers in irons, served/to fasten
the quaestor and the other Roman prisoners to the masts
of the captured Roman ships, when the Cretan generals Lasthenes and Panares steered back in triumph to Cydonia from the naval combat in which they had engaged the Romans off their island. Antonius, after having squan dered immense sums and accomplished not the slightest result his inconsiderate mode of warfare, died in 683 71. at Crete. The ill success of his expedition, the costliness
2,? ? ? “ donh.
by
a
it,
a
(p. a
Cretan war.
of building a fleet, and the repugnance of the oligarchy to confer any powers of a more comprehensive kind on the magistrates, led them, after the practical termination of this enterprise by Antonius’ death, to make no farther nomination of an admiral-in-chief, and to revert to the old system of leaving each governor to look after the suppres sion of piracy in his own province: the fleet equipped by Lucullus for instance 329) was actively employed for this purpose the Aegean sea.
So far however as the Cretans were concerned, disgrace like that endured off Cydonia seemed even to the degene rate Romans of this age as could be answered only by
declaration of war. Yet the Cretan envoys, who in the 70. year 684 appeared in Rome with the request that the
prisoners might be taken back and the old alliance re established, had almost obtained favourable decree of the senate what the whole corporation termed disgrace, the individual senator was ready to sell for substantial price.
was not till formal resolution of the senate rendered the loans of the Cretan envoys among the Roman bankers non-actionable—that not until the senate had incapa citated itself for undergoing bribery—that decree passed to the effect that the Cretan communities, they wished to avoid war, should hand over not only the Roman deserters but the authors of the outrage perpetrated off Cydonia the leaders Lasthenes and Panares—to the Romans for befitting punishment, should deliver up all ships and boats of four or more oars, should furnish 40o hostages, and should pay fine of 4000 talents (£975,000). When the envoys declared that they were not empowered to enter into such terms, one of the consuls of the next year was appointed to depart on the expiry of his official term for Crete, in order either to receive there what was demanded or to begin the war.
Accordingly in 685 the proconsul Quintus Metellus
352
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
a
if a
a
a is,
(p.
It
;-
a
a a
if it
a
in
CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
353
appeared in the Cretan waters. The communities of the Metellu island, with the larger towns Gortyna, Cnossus, Cydonia at 21:2” their head, were resolved rather to defend themselves in
arms than to submit to those excessive demands. The Cretans were a nefarious and degenerate people (iii. 291),
with whose public and private existence piracy was as intimately associated as robbery with the commonwealth of
the Aetolians ; but they resembled the Aetolians in valour
as in many other respects, and accordingly these two were
the only Greek communities that waged a courageous and honourable struggle for independence. At Cydonia, where Metellus landed his three legions, a Cretan army of 24,000
men under Lasthenes and Panares was ready to receive
him; a battle took place in the open field, in which the victory after a hard struggle remained with the Romans. Nevertheless the towns bade defiance from behind their
walls to the Roman general ; Metellus had to make up
his mind to besiege them in succession. First Cydonia, in
which the remains of the beaten army had taken refuge,
was after a long siege surrendered by Panares in return
for the promise of a free departure for himself. Lasthenes,
who had escaped from the town, had to be besieged a second time in Cnossus; and, when this fortress also
was on the point of falling, he destroyed its treasures
and escaped ohce more to places which still continued
their defence, such as Lyctus, Eleuthera, and others.
Two years (686, 687) elapsed, before Metellus became 68, 67 master of the whole island and the last spot of free Greek
soil thereby passed under the control of the dominant Romans ; the Cretan communities, as they were the first of all Greek commonwealths to develop the free urban con stitution and the dominion of the sea, were also to be the last of all those Greek maritime states that formerly filled
the Mediterranean to succumb to the Roman continental
power.
you IV
:23
354
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
All the legal conditions were fulfilled for celebrating another of the usual pompous triumphs; the gm: of the Metelli could add to its Macedonian, Numidian, Dalmatian, Balearic titles with equal right the new title of Creticus, and Rome possessed another name of pride. Nevertheless the power of the Romans in the Mediterranean was never lower, that of the corsairs never higher, than in those
Well might the Cilicians and Cretans of the seas, who are said to have numbered at this time 1000 ships, mock the Isauricus and the Creticus, and their empty victories. With what effect the pirates interfered in the Mithradatic war, and how the obstinate resistance of the Pontic maritime towns derived its best resources from the corsair-state, has been already related. But that state transacted business on a hardly less grand scale on its own behoof. Almost under the eyes of the fleet of Lucul
69. lus, the pirate Athenodorus surprised in 685 the island of Delos, destroyed its far-famed shrines and temples, and carried off the whole population into slavery. The island Lipara near Sicily paid to the pirates a fixed tribute annually, to remain exempt from like attacks. Another
12. pirate chief Heracleon destroyed in 682 the squadron equipped in Sicily against him, and ventured with no more than four open boats to sail into the harbour of Syracuse. Two years later his colleague'Pyrganion even landed at the same port, established himself there and sent forth flying parties into the island, till the Roman governor at last compelled him to re-embark. People grew at length quite accustomed to the fact that all the provinces equipped squadrons and raised coastguards, or were at any rate taxed for both; and yet the pirates appeared to plunder the provinces with as much regularity as the Roman
terranean.
years.
But even the sacred soil of Italy was now no longer respected by the shameless transgressors: from Croton they carried off with them the templetreasures
governors.
CHAP. n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
355
of the Lacinian Hera; they landed in Brundisium, Misenurn, Caieta, in the Etruscan ports, even in Ostia itself; they seized the most eminent Roman oflicers as captives, among others the admiral of the Cilician army and two praetors with their whole retinue, with the dreaded farcer themselves and all the insignia of their dignity; they carried away from a villa at Misenum the very sister of the Roman admiral-in-chief Antonius, who was sent forth to annihilate the pirates ; they destroyed in the port of Ostia the Roman war fleet equipped against them and commanded by a consul. The Latin husbandman, the traveller on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terres trial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their pro perty or their life for a single moment; all traflic and all intercourse were suspended; the most dreadful scarcity prevailed in Italy, and especially in the capital, which subsisted on transmarine corn. The contemporary world and history indulge freely in complaints of insupportable distress; in this case the epithet may have been appro
priate.
We have already described how the senate restored by Servile
Sulla carried out its guardianship of the frontier in Mace disturb donia, its discipline over the client kings of Asia Minor,
and lastly its marine police; the results were nowhere satisfactory. Nor did better success attend the government
in another and perhaps even more urgent matter, the supervision of the provincial, and above all of the Italian, proletariate. The gangrene of a slave-proletariate gnawed at the vitals of all the states of antiquity, and the more so, the more vigorously they had risen and prospered ; for the power and riches of the state regularly led, under the existing circumstances, to a disproportionate increase of the body of slaves. Rome naturally suffered more severely from this cause than any other state of antiquity. Even the government of the sixth century had been under the
.
355
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
necessity of sending troops against the gangs of runaway herdsmen and rural slaves. The plantation-system, spreading more and more among the Italian speculators, had infinitely increased the dangerous evil: in the time of the Gracchan and Marian crises and in close connection with them servile revolts had taken place at numerous points of the Roman empire, and in Sicily had even grown into two bloody wars
185-182. (619-622 and 652-654; iii. 309-311, 382-386). But the ten
102-100.
years of the rule of the restoration after Sulla’s death formed the golden age both for the buccaneers at sea and for bands of a similar character on land, above all in the Italian penin sula, which had hitherto been comparatively well regulated. The land could hardly be said any longer to enjoy peace. In the capital and the less populous districts of Italy robberies were of everyday occurrence, murders were frequent. A special decree of the people was issued-— perhaps at this epoch—against kidnapping of foreign slaves and of free men ; a special summary action was ab ut this time introduced against violent deprivation of landed
These crimes could not but appear specially dangerous, because, while they were usually perpetrated by the proletariate, the upper class were to a great extent also concerned in them as moral originators and partakers in the gain. The abduction of men and of estates was very frequently suggested by the overseers of the large estates and carried out by the gangs of slaves, frequently armed, that were collected there: and many a man even of high
property.
did not disdain what one of his oflicious slave-overseers thus acquired for him, as Mephistopheles
for Faust the lime-trees of Philemon. The state of things is shown by the aggravated punish ment for outrages on property committed by armed bands, which was introduced by one of the bette Optimates, Marcus Lucullus, as presiding over the administration of justice in the capital about the year
respectability
acquired
CHAP. u RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
357
676,1 with the express object of inducing the pro 78. prietors of large bands of slaves to exercise a more strict
over them and thereby avoid the penalty of seeing them judicially condemned. Where pillage and
murder were thus carried on by order of the world of quality, it was natural for these masses of slaves and pro letarians to prosecute the same business on their own account; a spark was sufficient to'set fire to so inflammable materials, and to convert the proletariate into an insurrec
superintendence
An occasion was soon found.
The gladiatorial games, which now held the first rank Outbreak
among the popular amusements in Italy, had led to the of the gla diatorial
institution of numerous establishments, more especially in war in and around Capua, designed partly for the custody, partly Italy. for the training of those slaves who were destined to kill or
be killed for the amusement of the sovereign multitude.
These were naturally in great part brave men captured in
war, who had not forgotten that they had once faced the
Romans in the field. A number of these desperadoes
broke out of one of the Capuan gladiatorial schools (681), 78.
and sought refuge on Mount Vesuvius. At their head
were two Celts, who were designated by their slave-names
Crixus and Oenomaus, and the Thracian Spartacus. The Spartacus. latter, perhaps a scion of the noble family of the Spartocids
which attained even to royal honours in its Thracian home and in Panticapaeum, had served among the Thracian auxiliaries in the Roman army, had deserted and gone as a brigand to the mountains, and had been there recaptured and destined for the gladiatorial games.
The inroads of this little band, numbering at first only The
seventy-four persons, but rapidly swelling by concourse from insurrec tion takel
the surrounding country, soon became so troublesome to shape. the inhabitants of the rich region of Campania, that these,
I These enactments gave rise to the conception of robbery as a separate crime, while the older law comprehended robbery under theft.
tionary army.
358
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
after having vainly attempted themselves to repel them, sought help against them from Rome. A division of
3000 men hurriedly collected appeared under the leadership of Clodius Glaber, and occupied the approaches to Vesuvius with the view of starving out the slaves. But the brigands in spite of their small number and their defective armament had the boldness to scramble down steep declivities and to fall upon the Roman posts; and when the wretched militia saw the little band of desperadoes unexpectedly assail them, they took to their heels and fled on all sides. This first success procured for the robbers arms and increased acces sions to their ranks. Although even now a great portion of them carried nothing but pointed clubs, the new and stronger division of the militia—two legions under the praetor Publius Varinius—which advanced from Rome into Campania, found them encamped almost like a regular army in the plain. Varinius had a diflicult position. His militia, compelled to bivouac opposite the enemy, were severely weakened by the damp autumn weather and the diseases which it engendered; and, worse than the epidemics, cowardice and insubordination thinned the ranks. At the very outset one of his divisions broke up entirely, so that the fugitives did not fall back on the main corps, but went straight home. Thereupon, when the order was given to advance against the enemy’s entrenchments and attack them, the greater portion of the troops refused to comply with it. Nevertheless Varinius set out with those who kept their ground against the robber-band ; but it was no longer to be found where he sought it. It had broken up in the deepest silence and had turned to the south towards Picentia (Vicenza near Amalfi), where Varinius overtook it indeed, but could not prevent it from retiring over the Silarus into the interior of Lucania, the chosen land of shepherds and robbers. Varinius followed thither, and there at length the despised enemy arrayed themselves for
CHAY’. ii RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
359
battle. All the circumstances under which the combat took place were to the disadvantage of the Romans: the soldiers,
as they had demanded battle a little before, fought ill; Varinius was completely vanquished; his horse and the insignia of his ofi’i'cial dignity fell with the Roman camp itself into the enemy’s hand. The south-Italian slaves, especially the brave half-savage herdsmen, flocked in crowds to the banner of the deliverers who had so unexpectedly appeared; according to the most moderate estimates the number of armed insurgents rose to 40,000 men. Campania, just evacuated, was speedily reoccupied, and the Roman corps which was left behind there under Gaius Thoranius, the quaestor of Varinius, was broken and
In the whole south and south-west of Italy the open country was in the hands of the victorious bandit chiefs; even considerable towns, such as Consentia in the Bruttian country, Thurii and Metapontum in Lucania, Nola and Nuceria in Campania, were stormed by them, and suffered all the atrocities which victorious barbarians could inflict on defenceless civilized men, and unshackled slaves on their former masters. That a conflict like this should be altogether abnormal and more a massacre than a war, was unhappily a matter of course : the masters duly crucified every captured slave; the slaves naturally killed their
vehemently
destroyed.
also, or with still more sarcastic retaliation even compelled their Roman captives to slaughter each other in gladiatorial sport; as was subsequently done with three hundred of them at the obsequies of a robber-captain who had fallen in combat
In Rome people were with reason apprehensive as to
the destructive conflagration which was daily spreading.
It was resolved next year (682) to send both consuls 72.
against the formidable leaders of the gang. The praetor Great
prisoners
Quintus Arrius, a lieutenant of the consul Lucius Gellius, actually succeeded in seizing and destroying at Mount
victories of Spartacus.
Internal dissension among thc insurgent
the
What might have come of had the national kings from the mountains of Auvergne or of the Balkan, and not runaway gladiatorial slaves, been at the head of the victorious bands, impossible to say; as was, the movement remained notwithstanding its brilliant victories a rising of robbers, and succumbed less to the superior force of its opponents than to internal discord and the want of definite plan. The unity in confronting the common foe, which was so remarkably conspicuous in the earlier servile wars of Sicily, was wanting in this Italian war-—a difference
36o
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
Garganus in Apulia the Celtic band, which under Crinus had separated from the mass of the robber-army and was levying contributions at its own hand. But Spartacus achieved all the more brilliant victories in the Apennines and in northern Italy, where first the consul Gnaeus Lentulus who had thought to surround and capture the robbers, then his colleague Gellius and the so recently victorious praetor Arrius, and lastly at Mutina the governor
78 of Cisalpine Gaul Gaius Cassius (consul 681) and praetor Gnaeus Manlius, one after another succumbed to his blows. The scarcely-armed gangs of slaves were the tenor of the legions ; the series of defeats recalled the first years of the Hannibalic war.
due to the fact that, while the Sicilian slaves found quasi-national point of union in the common Syrohellenism, the Italian slaves were separated into the two bodies of Helleno-Barbarians and Celto-Germans. The
probably
between the Celtic Crixus and the Thracian Spartacus—Oencmaus had fallen in one of the earliest conflicts—and other similar quarrels crippled them in turning to accormt the successes achieved, and procured for the Romans several important victories. But the want of a definite plan and aim produced far more injurious effects on the enterprise than the insubordination of the Celto-Germans. Spartacus doubtless—to judge by the
rupture
a
it is
it
it,
CHAP. I! RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
36!
little which we learn regarding that remarkable man—stood
in this respect above his party. Along with his strategic ability he displayed no ordinary talent for organization, as indeed from the very outset the uprightness, with which he presided over his band and distributed the spoil, had directed the eyes of the multitude to him quite as much at least as his valour. To remedy the severely felt want of cavalry and of arms, he tried with the help of the herds of horses seized in Lower Italy to train and discipline a cavalry, and, so soon as he got the port of Thurii into his hands, to procure from that quarter iron and copper, doubtless through the medium of the pirates. But in the main matters he was unable to induce the wild hordes whom he led to pursue any fixed ulterior aims. Gladly would
he have checked the frantic orgies of cruelty, in which the robbers indulged on the capture of towns, and which formed
the chief reason why no Italian city voluntarily made common cause with the insurgents; but the obedience which the bandit-chief found in the conflict ceased with the victory, and his representations and entreaties were in vain. After the victories obtained in the Apennines in 682 the 72. slave army was free to move in any direction. Spartacus himself is said to have intended to cross the Alps, with a view to open to himself and his followers the means of return to their Celtic or Thracian home: if the statement
is well founded, it shows how little the conqueror overrated his successes and his power. When his men refused so speedily to turn their backs on the riches of Italy, Spartacus took the route for Rome, and is said to have meditated blockading the capital. The troops, however, showed themselves also averse to this desperate but yet methodical enterprise; they compelled their leader, when he was desirous to be a general, to remain a mere captain of banditti and aimlessly to wander about Italy in search of
plunder.
Rome might think herself fortunate that the
362
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION noox v
Conflicts in the Bruttian country.
matter took this turn ; but even as it was, the perplexity was great. There was a want of trained soldiers as of experienced generals; Quintus Metellus and Gnaeus Pompeius were employed in Spain, Marcus Lucullus in Thrace, Lucius Lucullus in Asia Minor; and none but raw militia and, at best, mediocre oflicers were available. The extraordinary supreme command in Italy was given to the praetor Marcus Crassus, who was not a general of much reputation, but had fought with honour under Sulla and had at least character; and an army of eight legions, imposing if not by its quality, at any rate by its numbers, was placed at his disposal. The new commander-in-chief began by treating the first division, which again threw away its arms and fled before the banditti, with all the severity of martial law, and causing every tenth man in it to be executed; whereupon the legions in reality grew somewhat more manly. Spar tacus, vanquished in the next engagement, retreated and
sought to reach Rhegium through Lucania.
Just at that time the pirates commanded not merely
the Sicilian waters, but even the port of Syracuse (p. 354); with the help of their boats Spartacus proposed to throw a corps into Sicily, where the slaves only waited an impulse to break out a third time. The march to Rhegium was accomplished; but the corsairs, perhaps terrified by the
established in Sicily by the praetor Gaius Verres, perhaps also bribed by the Romans, took from Spartacus the stipulated hire without performing the service for which it was given. Crassus meanwhile had followed the robber-army nearly as far as the mouth of the Crathis, and, like Scipio before Numantia, ordered his soldiers,
seeing that they did not fight as they ought, to construct an entrenched wall of the length of thirty-five miles, which shut off the Bruttian peninsula from the rest of Italy,1 inter
' As the line was thirty-five miles long (Sallust. Hist. iv, 19. Dietleh; Plntarcb, Cnm. 10), it probably passed not from Squillaee to Piano, in
coastguards
CHAP- n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
363
cepted the insurgent army on the return from Rhegium, and
cut off its supplies. But in a dark winter night Spartacus broke through the lines of the enemy, and in the spring of 683 1 was once more in Lucania. The laborious work had 7L thus been in vain. Crassus began to despair of accom plishing his task and demanded that the senate should for
his support recall to Italy the armies stationed in Mace
donia under Marcus Lucullus and in Hither Spain under
Gnaeus Pompeius.
This extreme step however was not needed ;‘ the dis Disruption
union and the arrogance of the robber-bands sufliced again of the rebels and
to frustrate their successes Once more the Celts and their sub Germans broke off from the league of which the Thracian lueafiw was‘ the head and soul, in order that, under leaders of their
own nation Gannicus and Castus, they might separately
fall victims to the sword of the Romans. Once, at the Lucanian lake, the opportune appearance of Spartacus saved them, and thereupon they pitched their camp near to his; nevertheless Crassus succeeded in giving employ ment to Spartacus by means of the cavalry, and meanwhile surrounded the Celtic bands and compelled them to a. separate engagement, in which the whole body—numbering it is said r2,300 combatants-——fell fighting bravely all on the spot and with their wounds in front. Spartacus then attempted to throw himself with his division into the mountains round Petelia (near Strongoli in Calabria), and signally defeated the Roman vanguard, which followed his retreat. But this victory proved more injurious to the
victor than to the vanquished. Intoxicated by success, the robbers refused to retreat farther, and compelled their
more to the north, somewhere near Castrovlllarl and Cassano, over the peninsula which is here in a straight line about twenty-seven miles broad.
1 That Crassus was invested with the supreme command in 682, follows from the setting aside of the consuls (Plutarch, Crasr. 10); that the ‘data of 682-683 was spent by the two armies at the Bruttian wall, follows from the "snowy night" (Hut. 1. A).
72.
The
govern ment of the restoration as a whole.
acknowledged law over its living property that had rebelled.
Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten years of the Sullan restoration. No one of the movements, external or internal, which occurred during this period neither the insurrection of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars in Thrace and Mace donia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings of the pirates and the slaves——constituted of itself mighty danger necessarily
364
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
general to lead them through Lucania towards Apulia to face the last decisive struggle. Before the battle Spartacus stabbed his horse: as in prosperity and adversity he had faithfully kept by his men, he now by that act showed them that the issue for him and for all was victory or death. In the battle also he fought with the courage of a lion ; two centurions fell by his hand ; wounded and on his knees he still wielded his spear against the advancing foes. Thus the great robber-captain and with him the best of his comrades died the death of free men and of honourable
71. soldiers (683). After the dearly-bought victory the troops who had achieved and those of Pompeius that had meanwhile after conquering the Sertorians arrived from
instituted throughout Apulia and Lucania man hunt, such as there had never been before, to crush out the last sparks of the mighty conflagration. Although in the southern districts, where for instance the little town of
71. Tempsa was seized in 683 gang of robbers, and in Etruria, which was severely affected by Sulla’s evictions, there was by no means as yet real public tranquillity, peace was oflicially considered as re-established in Italy. At least the disgracefully lost eagles were recovered—after the victory over the Celts alone five of them were brought in and along the road from Capua to Rome the six thousand crosses bearing captured slaves testified to the re establishment of order, and t0 the renewed victory of
Spain,
a
by
;
a
a
a
it,
CHAP- ll- RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 365
affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet the state had in all these struggles well-nigh fought for its very existence. The reason was that the tasks were everywhere left unperformed, so long as they might still have been
performed with ease; the neglect of the simplest precau tionary measures produced the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed dependent classes and im potent kings into antagonists on a footing of equality. The democracy and the servile insurrection were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor was
neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them. It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief Sertorius and his Spanish guerillas, and that it was only the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian
war in favour of the legitimate government. As to the slaves, it was far less an honour to have con
them than a disgrace to have confronted them in equal strife for years. Little more than a century had elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush to the cheek of the honourable Roman, when he reflected on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age. Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans of Hannibal; now the Italian militia
were scattered like chaff before the bludgeons of their runaway serfs. Then every plain captain acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success, but always with honour; now it was diflicult to find among all the oflicers of rank a leader of even ordinary efliciency. Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired, merely that they might be
quered
366
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
able to defend themselves against the insurgent slaves at home. Spartacus too as well as Hannibal had traversed Italy with an army from the P0 to the Sicilian straits, beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with blockade ; the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti. Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories over insurgents and robber-chiefs P
The external wars, however, had produced a result still less gratifying. It is true that the Thraco-Macedonian war had yielded a result not directly unfavourable, although far from corresponding to the considerable expenditure of men and money. In the wars in Asia Minor and with the pirates on the other hand, the government had exhibited utter failure. The former ended with the loss of the whole conquests made in eight bloody campaigns, the latter with the total driving of the Romans from “their own sea. " Once Rome, fully conscious of the irresistibleness of her power by land, had transferred her superiority also to the other element ; now the mighty state was powerless at sea and, as it seemed, on the point of also losing its dominion at least over the Asiatic continent. The material benefits which a state exists to confer—security of frontier, undis turbed peaceful intercourse, legal protection, and regulated administration—began all of them to vanish for the whole of the nations united in the Roman state; the gods of blessing seemed all to have mounted up to Olympus and to have left the miserable earth at the mercy of the oflicially called or volunteer plunderers and tormentors. Nor was
this decay of the state felt as a public misfortune merely perhaps by such as had political rights and public spirit; the insurrection of the proletariate, and the brigandage and piracy which remind us of the times of the Neapolitan
CHAP. ll RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION
367
Ferdinands, carried the sense of this decay into the remotest valley and the humblest hut of Italy, and made every one who pursued trade and commerce, or who bought even a bushel of wheat, feel it as a personal calamity.
If inquiry was made as to the authors of this dreadful and unexampled misery, it was not diflicult to lay the blame of it with good reason on many. The slaveholders whose heart was in their money-bags, the insubordinate soldiers, the generals cowardly, incapable, or foolhardy, the demagogues of the market-place mostly pursuing a mistaken aim, bore their share of the blame; or, to speak more truly, who was there that did not share in it? It was instinct- ively felt that this misery, this disgrace, this disorder were too colossal to be the work of any one man. As the greatness of the Roman commonwealth was the work not of prominent individuals, but rather of a soundly-organized burgess-body, so the decay of this mighty structure was the result not of the destructive genius of individuals, but of a general disorganization. The great majority of the bur gesses were good for nothing, and every rotten stone in the building helped to bring about the ruin of the whole; the whole nation suffered for what was the whole nation’s fault. It was unjust to hold the government, as the ultimate tangible organ of the state, responsible for all its curable and incurable diseases; but it certainly was true that the government contributed after a very grave fashion to the general culpability. In the Asiatic war, for example, where no individual of the ruling lords conspicuously failed, and Lucullus, in a military point of view at least, behaved with ability and even glory, it was all the more clear that the blame of failure lay in the system and in the government as such—primarily, so far as that war was concerned, in the remissness with which Cappadocia and Syria were at first abandoned, and in the awkward position of the able
368
RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION BOOK v
general with reference to a governing college incapable of any energetic resolution. In maritime police likewise the true idea which the senate had taken up as to a general hunting out of the pirates was first spoilt by it in the execution and then totally dropped, in order to revert to the old foolish system of sending legions against the coursers of the sea. The expeditions of Servilius and Marcius to Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete, were undertaken on this system; and in accordance with it Triarius had the island of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against the pirates. Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas remind us of that Persian great-king, who ordered the sea to be scourged with rods to make it subject to him. Doubtless therefore the nation had good reason for laying the blame of its failure primarily on the government of the restoration. A similar misrule had indeed always come along with the re-establishment of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that of Marius and Saturninus ; yet never before had it shown such violence and at the same time such laxity, never had it previously emerged so corrupt and pernicious. But, when a government cannot govern, it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also the right to overthrow It no doubt, unhappily true that an incapable and flagitious government may for long period trample under foot the welfare and honour of the land, before the men are found who are able and willing to wield against that government the formidable weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolu tion which in such case legitimate. But the game attempted with the fortunes of nations may be merry one and may be played perhaps for long time without molestation, treacherous game, which in its own time entraps the players and no one then blames the axe,
laid to the root of the tree that bears such fruits. For
is
a ;
if it
it
is
is
a
a
if
is,
a
a
it.
can. u RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 369
the Roman oligarchy this time had now come. The Pontic-Armenian war and the affair of the pirates became the proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan con stitution and of the establishment of a. revolutionary military dictatorship.
‘01- W
124
Continued
THE Sullan constitution still stood unshaken. The assault,
370
THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY 3008 v
CHAPTER III
In: I'ALL OI‘ THE OLIGARCHY AND THE RULE OF POMPEIUS
subsistence which Lepidus and Sertorius had ventured to make on of the
Sullan con stltution.
had been repulsed with little loss. The government had neglected, true, to finish the half-completed building in the energetic spirit of its author. characteristic of the government, that neither distributed the lands which Sulla had destined for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional possession with out regulating their title, and indeed even allowed various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be arbi trarily taken’ possession of by individuals according to the old system of occupation, which was de jar: and de facto set aside by the Gracchan reforms r09). Whatever in the Sullan enactments was indifferent or inconvenient for the Optimates, was without scruple ignored or can celled; for instance, the sentences under which whole communities were deprived of the right of citizenship, the prohibition against conjoining the new farms, and several of the privileges conferred by Sulla on particular com munities—of course, without giving back to the com munities the sums paid for these exemptions. But though these violations of the ordinances of Sulla the govern
by
it
It is
it is
it,
CHAP- 111 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY
37!
ment itself contributed to shake the foundations of his structure, the Sempronian laws were substantially abolished and remained so.
There was no lack, indeed, of men who had in view Attacks of the re-establishment of the Gracchan constitution, or of ‘he d°' projects to attain piecemeal in the way of constitutional mocracy. reform what Lepidus and Sertorius had attempted by the
path of revolution. The government had already under Corn-laws. the pressure of the agitation of Lepidus immediately after
the death of Sulla consented to a limited revival of the
largesses of grain (676); and it did, moreover, what it 78.
could to satisfy the proletariate of the capital in regard to
this vital question. When, notwithstanding those distribu
tions, the high price of grain occasioned chiefly by piracy
produced so oppressive a dearth in Rome as to lead to a
violent tumult in the streets in 679, extraordinary purchases 75.
of Sicilian grain on account of the government relieved for
the time the most severe distress ; and a corn-law brought
in by the consuls of 681 regulated for the future the 78. purchases of Sicilian grain and furnished the government,
although at the expense of the provincials, with better
means of obviating similar evils. But the less material Attempts points of difference also-—the restoration of the tribunician to restore
the tribun power in its old compass, and the setting aside of the ician
senatorial tribunals—ceased not to form subjects of popular power. agitation; and in their case the government offered more decided resistance. The dispute regarding the tribunician magistracy was opened as early as 678, immediately after 76. the defeat of Lepidus, by the tribune of the people Lucius Sicinius, perhaps a descendant of the man of the same
name who had first filled this office more than four hundred years before; but it failed before the resistance offered to it by the active consul Gaius Curio. In 680 7| Lucius Quinctius resumed the agitation, but was induced
by the authority of the consul Lucius Lucullus to desist
37:
THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY BOOK v
from his purpose. The matter was taken up in the following year with greater zeal by Gaius Licinius Macer, who—in a way characteristic of the period—carried his literary studies into public life, and, just as he had read in the Annals, counselled the burgesses to refuse the con
scription.
Complaints also, only too well founded, prevailed re
specting the bad administration of justice by the senatorial tribunals. jurymen. The condemnation of a man of any influence
could hardly be obtained. Not only did colleague feel reasonable compassion for colleague, those who had been or were likely to be accused for the poor sinner under accusation at the moment; the sale also of the votes of jurymen was hardly any longer exceptional. Several senators had been judicially convicted of this crime :‘’men pointed with the finger at others equally guilty; the most respected Optimates, such as Quintus Catulus, granted in an open sitting of the senate that the complaints were quite well founded; individual specially striking cases
7‘. compelled the senate on several occasions, ag. in 680, to deliberate on measures to check the venality of juries, but only of course till the first outcry had subsided and the matter could be allowed to slip out of sight. The con sequences of this wretched administration of justice ap peared especially in a system of plundering and torturing the provincials, compared with which even previous out
seemed tolerable and moderate. Stealing and robbing had been in some measure legitimized by custom ; the commission on extortions might be regarded as an institution for taxing the senators returning from the provinces for the benefit of their colleagues that remained at home. But when an esteemed Siceliot, because he had not been ready to help the governor in a crime, was by the latter condemned to death in his absence and unheard ; when even Roman burgesses, if they were not equites or
Attacks on the senatorial
rages
can. in THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY
373
senators, were in the provinces no longer safe from the rods and axes of the Roman magistrate, and the oldest acquisition of the Roman democracy—security of life and person—began to be trodden under foot by the ruling oligarchy ; then even the public in the Forum at Rome had an ear for the complaints regarding its magistrates in the provinces, and regarding the unjust judges who morally shared the responsibility of such misdeeds. The opposition of course did not omit to assail its opponents in—what was almost the only ground left to it—the tribunals. The young Gaius Caesar, who also, so far as
his age allowed, took zealous part in the agitation for the re—establishment of the tribunician power, brought to trialv
in 677 one of the most respected partisans of Sulla the 77. consular Gnaeus Dolabella, and in the following year another Sullan officer Gaius Antonius; and Marcus Cicero
in 684 called to account Gaius Verres, one of the most 7G wretched of the creatures of Sulla, and one of the worst scourges of the provincials. Again and again were the pic tures of that dark period of the proscriptions, the fearful sufferings of the provincials, the disgraceful state of Roman criminal justice, unfolded before the assembled multitude with all the pomp of Italian rhetoric, and with all the bitterness of Italian sarcasm, and the mighty dead as well as his living instruments were unrelentingly exposed
to their wrath and scorn. The re-establishment of the full tribunician power, with the continuance of which the freedom, might, and prosperity of the republic seemed bound up as by a charm of primeval sacredness, the rein troduction of the “ stern ” equestrian tribunals, the renewal of the censorship, which Sulla had set aside, for the purify ing of the supreme governing board from its corrupt and
elements, were daily demanded with a loud voice by the orators of the popular party.
pernicious
But with all this no progress was made. There was
374
THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY noon v
scandal and outcry enough, but no real result was attained
Want of
results
from the
docratic beyond its deserts. The material power still lay, so long agitation.
by this exposure of the government according to and
as there was no military interference, in the hands of the burgesses of the capital; and the “people” that thronged the streets of Rome and made magistrates and laws in the Forum, was in fact nowise better than the governing senate. The government no doubt had to come to terms with the multitude, where its own immediate interest was at stake ; this was the reason for the renewal of the Sempronian com law. But it was not to be imagined that this populace would have displayed earnestness on behalf of an idea or even of a judicious reform. What Demosthenes said of his Athenians was justly applied to the Romans of this period—the people were very zealous for action, so long as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms; but when they went home, no one thought further of what he had heard in the market-place. However those democratic agitators might stir the fire, it was to no purpose, for the inflammable material was wanting. The
knew this, and allowed no sort of concession to be wrung from it on important questions of principle;
72. at the utmost it consented (about 682) to grant amnesty to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus. Any concessions that did take place, came not so much from the pressure of the democracy as from the attempts at mediation of the moderate aristocracy. But of the two laws which the single still surviving leader of this section
75. Gaius Cotta carried in his consulate of 679, that which concerned the tribunals was again set aside in the very next year; and the second, which abolished the Sullan enactment that those who had held the tribunate should be disqualified for undertaking other magistracies, but allowed the other limitations to continue, merely—like every half-measure-—excited the displeasure of both parties.
government
‘CRAP. In THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY
375
The party of conservatives friendly to reform which lost its most notable head by the early death of Cotta occurring soon after (about 681) dwindled away more and more— 18. crushed between the extremes, which were becoming daily more marked. But of these the party of the government, wretched and remiss as it was, necessarily retained the advantage in presence of the equally wretched and equally remiss opposition.
But this state of matters so favourable to the govern- Quarrel ment was altered, when the differences became more dis- zigzag,“ tinctly developed which subsisted between it and those of mental-id its partisans, whose hopes aspired to higher objects than the
seat of honour in the senate and the aristocratic villa. In Pompeiu the first rank of these stood Gnaeus Pompeius. He was doubt
less a Sullan ; but we have already shown (p. 274) how little
he was at home among his own party, how his lineage, his
past history, his hopes separated him withal from the nobility
as whose protector and champion he was officially regarded.
The breach already apparent had been widened irreparably
during the Spanish campaigns of the general (677-683). 77-71. With reluctance and semi-compulsion the government had
associated him as colleague with their true representative
Metellus ; and in turn he accused the senate, probably not without ground, of having by its careless or malicious neglect of the Spanish armies brought about their defeats and placed the fortunes of the expedition in jeopardy. Now he returned as victor over his open and his secret foes, at the head of an army inured to war and wholly devoted to him, desiring assignments of land for his soldiers, a triumph and the consulship for himself. The latter demands came into collision with the law. Pompeius, although several times invested in an extraordinary way with
Quintus
oflicial authority, had not yet administered any ordinary magistracy, not even the quaestorship, and was still not a member of the senate; and none but one who
supreme
376
THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY . noox v
had passed through the round of lesser ordinary magistracies could become consul, none but one who had been invested with the ordinary supreme power could triumph. The senate was legally entitled, if he became a candidate for the consulship, to bid him begin with the quaestorship; if he requested a triumph, to remind him of the great Scipio, who under like circumstances had renounced his triumph over conquered Spain. Nor was Pompeius less dependent constitutionally on the good will of the senate as re spected the lands promised to his soldiers. But, although the senate—as with its feebleness even in animosity was very conceivable—should yield those points and concede to the victorious general, in return for his executioner’s service against the democratic chiefs, the triumph, the consulate, and the assignations of land, an honourable annihilation in senatorial indolence among the long series of peaceful senatorial Imperators was the most favourable lot which the oligarchy was able to hold in readiness for the general of thirty-six. That which his heart really longed for~—the command in the Mithradatic wa. r—he could never expect to obtain from the voluntary bestowal of the senate: in their own well-understood interest the oligarchy could not permit him to add to his African and European trophies those of a third continent; the laurels which were to be plucked copiously and easily in the east were reserved at all events for the pure aristocracy. But if the celebrated
general did not find his account in the ruling oligarchy, there remained—for neither was the time ripe, nor was the temperament of Pompeius at all fitted, for a purely personal outspoken dynastic policy—no alternative save to make common cause with the democratic party. No interest of his own bound him to the Sullan constitution; he could pursue his personal objects quite as well, if not better, with one more democratic.