Then, as at certain epochs of our own
revolution, we may say that the national honour had taken refuge under
the flag.
revolution, we may say that the national honour had taken refuge under
the flag.
Napoleon - History of Julius Caesar - b
“To seek to call,” says the Emperor
Napoleon I. in his _Mémoires_, “a nation to liberty and independence; to
desire that a public spirit should form in the midst of it, and that it
should furnish troops; and at the same time to take from it its
principal resources, are two contradictory ideas, and to conciliate them
is the province of talent. ”[559]
Thus, to fight between two and three hundred thousand Helvetii and
Germans, to hold in dominion eight millions of Gauls, and to maintain
the Roman province--such is the task which Cæsar has undertaken, and, to
carry it out, he has as yet only at hand a single legion. What means
will he have to overcome all these obstacles? His genius and the
ascendency of civilisation over barbarism.
[Sidenote: Campaign against the Helvetii. ]
II. Cæsar starts from Rome towards the middle of March, 696, and arrives
in eight days at Geneva. Immediately the Helvetii, who had appointed
their rendezvous on the banks of the Rhine towards the 24th of March,
the day of the equinox, ask his permission to cross Savoy, with the
intention of going to establish themselves in Saintonge. He adjourns his
answer to the 8th of April, and employs the fifteen days thus gained in
fortifying the left bank of the Rhone, from Geneva to the
Pas-de-l’Ecluse, in raising troops in the Roman province, and in
renewing the old bonds of friendship with the Burgundians,[560] who will
soon furnish him with men, horses, and provisions.
By rendering the passage of the Rhone impossible, and by binding to his
cause the peoples who occupied the whole course of the Saône, from
Pontailler to near Trévoux, he had cut off from the Helvetii the road to
the south, and thrown difficulties in their way towards the west. Still,
these persisted none the less in their design; they made an arrangement
with the people of Franche-Comté, to whom the passage of the
Pas-de-l’Ecluse belonged, to debouch by that defile into the plains of
Ambérieux and on the plateau of the Dombes. They could thus arrive at
the Saône, pass it peaceably or by force, proceed into the valley of the
Loire by crossing the mountains of Charolais, and penetrate thence into
Saintonge.
As soon as Cæsar was aware of this project, he immediately decided on
his course of action: he foresaw that a long time would elapse before
the Helvetii effected a passage across the unquiet countries of so many
hosts; he reckons that an agglomeration of 368,000 individuals, men,
women, and children, carrying three months’ provisions in wagons, would
be slow to move; he repairs to the Cisalpine, raises two legions there,
sends to Aquileia for the three who were in winter quarters there, and,
crossing the Alps again, arrives, two months afterwards, at the
confluence of the Rhone and the Saône, on the heights of Sathonay. He
learns that the Helvetii have been employed during twenty days in
crossing the Saône between Trévoux and Villefranche, but that a part of
them still remain on the left bank; seizes the opportunity, attacks the
latter, defeats them, and thus diminishes the number of his adversaries
by one-fourth; then, crossing the Saône, he follows during fifteen days
the mass of the Helvetian emigration, which was advancing towards the
sources of the Bourbince. As he finds himself in want of provisions, he
turns off from his road, and marches towards Bibracte (_Mont Beuvray_),
the citadel and principal town of the Burgundians. This march to the
right leads the Helvetii to believe that he is afraid of encountering
them; they then march back, and attack him unexpectedly; a great battle
is fought, and, with his four old legions only, Cæsar gains the victory.
The immigration, already considerably diminished by the battle of the
Saône, no longer counts more than 130,000 individuals, who make their
retreat towards the country of Langres. The Roman general does not
pursue them; he remains three days burying the dead and attending to the
wounded. But his influence is already so great, that, to deprive the
wreck of the vanquished army of provisions, he has only to give orders
to the peoples whose territory they cross. Deprived of all resources,
the fugitives discontinue their march, and make their submission. He
hastens to overtake them towards Tonnerre. When he arrives in the midst
of them, he adopts a generous policy, and gains, by his generous
behaviour, those whom he had subjugated by his arms.
There was in the Helvetic conglomeration a people renowned for their
valor, the Boii; Cæsar permits the Burgundians to receive them into the
number of their fellow-citizens, and give them lands at the confluence
of the Allier and the Loire. As to the other barbarians, with the
exception of 6,000 who had attempted to withdraw from the capitulation
by flight, he obliges them to return to their country, dismisses them
without ransom, instead of selling them as slaves, and thus drawing from
them a considerable profit, according to the general usage of that
period. [561] By preventing the Germans from establishing themselves in
the countries abandoned by the immigration, he made a calculation of
interest secondary to a high political sentiment, and foresaw that
Helvetia, by its geographical position, was destined to be a bulwark
against invasion from the north, and that, then as now, it was important
for the power seated on the Rhone and the Alps to have on its eastern
frontiers a friendly and independent people. [562]
[Sidenote: Campaign against Ariovistus. ]
III. The victory gained near Bibracte has, at one blow, restored the
prestige of the Roman arms. Cæsar has become the arbitrator of the
destinies of a part of Gaul: all the peoples comprised between the
Marne, the Rhone, and the mountains of Auvergne, obey him. [563] The
Helvetii have returned into their country; the Burgundians have
re-conquered their ancient preponderance. The assembly of Celtic Gaul,
held with his permission at Bibracte, invokes his protection against
Ariovistus, and, to the far north, the people of Trèves hasten to
denounce to him a threatened invasion of Germans. It had always been a
part of the policy of the Republic to extend its influence by going to
the succour of oppressed peoples. Cæsar could not fail to regulate his
conduct upon this principle. Not only did it concern him to deliver the
Gauls from a foreign yoke, but he sought to deprive the Germans of the
possibility of settling on the banks of the Saône, and thus threatening
the Roman province, and perhaps Italy itself.
Before having recourse to arms, Cæsar, who, during his consulship, had
caused Ariovistus to be declared the ally and friend of the Roman
republic, undertook to try upon him the means of persuasion. He sent to
demand an interview, and received only a haughty reply. Soon, informed
that, three days before, the German king has crossed his frontiers at
the head of a numerous army, and that, on another side, the hundred
cantons of the Suevi are threatening to cross the Rhine towards Mayence,
he starts from Tonnerre in haste to go forward to meet him. When he
arrives near Arc-en-Barrois, he learns that Ariovistus is marching with
all his troops upon Besançon. He then turns to the right, anticipates
him, and takes possession of that important place. No doubt, at the news
of the march of the Roman army, Ariovistus slackened his own, and halted
in the neighbourhood of Colmar.
After remaining a few days at Besançon, Cæsar takes the way to the
Rhine, avoids the mountainous spurs of the Jura, proceeds by
Pennesières, Arcey, and Belfort, and debouches towards Cernay in the
fertile plains of Alsace. The two armies are only twenty-four miles
apart. Cæsar and Ariovistus have an interview; its only result is to
increase their mutual resentment. The latter conceives the project of
cutting the line of operation of the Romans, and, passing near the site
of the modern Mulhouse, he proceeds, by a circuitous movement, to
establish himself on the stream of the little Doller, to the south of
the Roman army, which, encamped on the Thur, supports its rear on the
last spurs of the Vosges, near Cernay. In this position, Ariovistus
intercepts Cæsar’s communications with Franche-Comté and Burgundy. The
latter, to restore them, distributes his troops into two camps, and
causes a second camp to be made, less considerable than the first, on
his right, near the little Doller. During several days, he seeks in vain
to draw Ariovistus to a battle; then, learning that the matrons have
advised the Germans not to tempt fortune before the new moon, he unites
his legions, places all the auxiliaries on his right, marches resolutely
to assault the camp of the Germans, forces them to accept battle, and
defeats them after an obstinate resistance. In their flight, they take
the same road by which they had advanced, and, pursued for a distance of
fifty miles, they re-pass the Rhine towards Rhinau. As to the Suevi, who
had assembled near Mayence, when they are informed of the disaster of
their allies, they hasten to regain their country.
Thus, in his first campaign, Cæsar, by two great battles, had delivered
Gaul from the invasion of the Helvetii and the Germans; all the Gauls
looked upon him as a liberator. But services rendered are very soon
forgotten when people owe their liberty and independence to a foreign
army.
Cæsar places his troops in winter quarters in Franche-Comté, leaves the
command to Labienus, and starts for Cisalpine Gaul, where he is obliged,
as proconsul, to preside over the provincial assemblies. Nearer Rome
during the winter, he could follow more easily the political events of
the metropolis.
[Sidenote: Sequel of the Consulship of L. Calpurnius Piso and Aulus
Galbinus. ]
IV. While the armies were augmenting the power of the Republic without,
at Rome the intestine struggles continued with new fury. It could hardly
be otherwise among the elements of discord and anarchy which were at
work, and which, since the departure of Cæsar, were no longer held under
control by a lofty intelligence and a firm will. Moral force, so
necessary to every government, no longer existed anywhere, or rather, it
did not exist where the institutions willed it to be, in the Senate;
and, according to the remark of a celebrated German historian, this
assembly which ruled the world, was incapable of ruling the town. [564]
For a long time the prestige of one man in visible power was master over
that of the Senate; Pompey, by his military renown, and by his alliance
with Cæsar and Crassus, continued dominant, although he had not then any
legal power. Cæsar had reckoned upon him to continue his work, and curb
the bad passions which were in agitation in the highest regions as well
as in the lowest depths of society: but Pompey had neither the mind nor
energy necessary to master at the same time the arrogance of the nobles
and the turbulence of certain partisans of the demagogy; he was soon
exposed to the censure of both parties. [565] Moreover entirely under the
influence of the charms of his young wife, he appeared indifferent to
what was passing around him. [566]
The relation of the events at Rome during the eight years of Cæsar’s
abode in Gaul will only offer us an uninterrupted series of vengeances,
murders, and acts of violence of every description. How, indeed, could
order be maintained in so vast a city without a permanent military
force; when each man of importance took with him, for his escort, his
clients or slaves in arms, and thus, within it, everybody had an army
except the Republic? From this moment, as we shall see, the quarrels
which are about to spring up among the parties will result always in
riots; the slaves and gladiators will be enrolled as the ordinary
actors.
[Sidenote: Intrigues of Clodius. ]
V. Clodius, whose imprudent support of those who were subsequently
called the triumvirs had increased his influence, continued, after
Cæsar’s departure, to court a vain popularity, and to excite the
passions which had been imperfectly allayed. Not satisfied with having,
at the beginning of his tribuneship, re-established those religious,
commercial, and political associations, which, composed chiefly of the
dregs of the people, were a permanent danger to society; with having
made distributions of wheat, restrained the censors in their right of
exclusion, forbidden the auspices to be taken or the sky observed on the
day fixed for the meeting of the comitia,[567] and with having provoked
the exile of Cicero, he turned his restless activity against
Pompey,[568] whom he soon deeply offended, by causing to be taken away
and set at liberty a son of Tigranes, King of Armenia, made prisoner in
the war against Mithridates, and retained as a pledge for the
tranquillity of Asia. [569] At the same time he began judicial
proceedings against some of Pompey’s friends, and replied to the
expostulations which were addressed to him, “That he was glad to learn
how far the great man’s credit went. ”[570] The latter then conceived the
idea of recalling Cicero, to oppose him to Clodius, just as, a few
months before, he had raised Clodius against Cicero. We see the game of
political see-saw is not new.
[Sidenote: Pompey consults Cæsar on the Return of Cicero. ]
VI. Under these circumstances, the opinion of Cæsar was of great weight.
Pompey wrote to consult him,[571] and P. Sextius, one of those nominated
as the new tribunes, repaired to Gaul to ascertain his mind. [572] It
appears certain that it was favourable,[573] for, so early as the
Calends of June, 696, hardly two months after the decree against
Cicero, a tribune of the people, L. Ninnius, demanded his recall in the
Senate. This proposal was on the point of being carried, when another
tribune of the people, Ælius Ligus, _interceded_. [574] The Senate, in
its irritation, declared that it would take into consideration no
political or administrative affair until it had voted on Cicero’s
return. [575] We thus judge how much the assembly took to heart the
success of this measure, and how much, in supporting it, Pompey
flattered the sentiments of the majority.
[Sidenote: Pompey believes himself threatened by a Slave of Clodius. ]
VII. A singular occurrence determined his reconciliation with the
Senate: on the 3rd of the Ides of Sextilis (the 5th of August), a slave
of Clodius let a dagger fall in Pompey’s way, as he was entering the
curia; arrested by the lictors, and questioned by the consul A.
Gabinius, the slave declared that his master had ordered him to
assassinate the great citizen. [576] This attempt, whether serious or
not, produced a sufficient impression on Pompey to prevent him, for a
long time, from going to the Forum, or showing himself in public. [577]
The demands in favour of Cicero were renewed; and on the 4th of the
Calends of November (the 20th of October) eight tribunes of the people,
most of them men devoted to Pompey, proposed formally in the Senate the
recall of the exile. One of these was T. Annius Milo, a violent, bold
man, without scruples, and resembling Clodius in all things, but his
open adversary. Clodius and his brother, the prætor Appius, again
succeeded in defeating this motion. [578] At last, with the extreme of
audacity, the turbulent tribune, when near the close of his functions,
dared to attack Cæsar himself, and tried to obtain the revocation of the
Julian laws; but this attempt was powerless in face of the splendour of
the victories gained over the Helvetii and the Germans.
CHAPTER II.
EVENTS OF THE YEAR 697.
[Sidenote: War against the Belgæ. ]
I. Cæsar’s victories had awakened among the Gauls feelings of
admiration, but also of distrust; they could not see without fear that
it had required only six legions to scatter two invasions, each counting
100,000 combatants. There are successes which, by their very brilliancy,
alarm even those who profit by them. Nearly all Gaul looks on with
jealousy at events which prove the superiority of permanent armies over
populations without military organization. A small number of experienced
and disciplined soldiers, under the guidance of a great captain, make
all the peoples tremble from the Rhine to the ocean, and even the
islanders of Great Britain feel themselves unsafe against the attacks of
the Roman power; the Belgæ especially, proud of having formerly alone
repulsed the invasion of the Cimbri and the Teutones, feel their warlike
instincts revive. Provocations which have come from the other side of
the Straits increase their distrust; these picture to them the abode of
the Roman army in Franche-Comté as a threat against the independence of
the whole of Gaul. The greatest part of the peoples comprised between
the Rhine, the Scheldt, the Ocean, and the Seine, agitate, combine, and
assemble an army of 300,000 men.
Informed in Italy of these preparations, Cæsar raises two new legions,
rejoins his army in Franche-Comté, and decides immediately on invading
the country of the Belgæ. The first who present themselves on his road
are the people of Champagne. Surprised by his sudden arrival, they
submit, and even offer him subsidies and auxiliaries. Cæsar is able to
add to his eight legions and his light troops the contingents from
Rheims, and join them with those of Burgundy and Trèves. In spite of
this augmentation of his forces, the enemy he has to combat is four
times more numerous. To defeat them, he sends the Burgundians to make a
diversion and ravage the territory of Beauvais, then he crosses the
Aisne at Berry-au-Bac, and selects, behind the Miette, a marshy stream,
a defensive position which he renders inexpugnable.
The Belgæ, whose army occupies, on the right bank of the Miette, an
extent of twelve kilomètres, are powerless to force the position of the
Romans, and fail in all their attempts to cross the Aisne at Pontavert.
Soon, discouraged by the want of provisions, disputes among themselves,
and the news that the Burgundians have just invaded the territory of
Beauvais, they separate, because each, believing his own country
threatened, thinks only of going to its defence. The Belgian league is
thus dissolved almost without combat. Cæsar then hastens to chastise
each people one after the other; he seizes in their turn Soissons and
Breteuil, the principal citadels of the Soissonais and Beauvaisis, and
arrives at Amiens.
But the coalitions of the peoples of the north succeed each other like
the waves of the sea; after the Helvetii, the Germans; after the
Germans, the people of the Beauvaisis; after them, the inhabitants of
Hainault. These have assembled on the Sambre, and wait to be re-enforced
by the peoples of German origin established in the neighbourhood of
Namur. Cæsar then marches towards the Sambre by its left bank. When he
arrives near the enemy concealed in the woods of the right bank, on the
heights of Haumont, he unites six legions, places the two others in
reserve with the baggage of the army, and, reaching the heights of
Neuf-Mesnil, begins to fortify his camp; but hardly have the soldiers
commenced their work, when the Belgæ debouch from all the issues of the
forest, cross the shallow waters of the Sambre, scale the abrupt slopes,
and fall upon the Romans, who, taken by surprise and unable to form
their line of battle, range themselves without order under the first
ensigns which offer themselves. The confusion is extreme; Cæsar is
obliged, sword in hand, to throw himself into the thick of the fight.
Nevertheless, the fortune of the battle is gradually restored; the
centre and left wing have repulsed their assailants; the latter arrives
to succour the right wing in its peril; the two legions of the
rear-guard hasten to the field of battle; then victory decides for the
Romans, and the peoples of Hainault are nearly annihilated. In this
engagement the experience and valour of the old veteran soldiers save
the Roman army from the impetuosity of the Belgæ. After this exploit,
Cæsar marches towards Namur, in which the inhabitants of the whole
country have shut themselves up on the news of the defeat of their
allies, and he makes himself master of that place.
While he was completing the conquest of Belgic Gaul, one of his
lieutenants, the young Publius Crassus, detached, after the battle of
the Sambre, into Normandy and Brittany, reduced to submission the
peoples of those provinces, so that at that time the greatest part of
Gaul acknowledged the authority of the Republic: the effect of Cæsar’s
victories was such that the Ubii, a German people from beyond the Rhine,
established between the Maine and the Sieg, sent their congratulations
to the conqueror with the offer of their services.
Before leaving for the Cisalpine, Cæsar sent a legion into the Valais,
to chastise the inhabitants of those Alpine valleys, who, at the
beginning of the year, had attacked in their march the two new legions
on their way from Italy; it was his aim also to open easy communications
with the Cisalpine by the Simplon and Saint-Bernard. But his lieutenant
Galba, after a sanguinary battle, was obliged to retreat and take up his
winter quarters in Savoy. Thus Cæsar’s designs could not be realised. It
was reserved for another great man, nineteen centuries afterwards, to
level that formidable barrier of the Alps.
[Sidenote: Return of Cicero. ]
II. Let us now resume the account of events in Rome subsequent to the
Calends of January, 697 (20th of December, 696). The consuls who entered
upon their office were P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther and Q. Cecilius
Metellus Nepos; the first, a friend of Cicero; the second, favourable
to Clodius from hatred to the celebrated orator who had offended
him. [579]
Lentulus brought forward the question of the recall of the exile. [580]
L. Aurelius Cotta, a man of esteem and of consular dignity, declared
that the banishment of Cicero, pronounced in the sequel of extreme acts
of violence, carried in itself the cause of its nullity; and that,
therefore, there was no need of a law to revoke an act that was contrary
to the laws. [581] Pompey combated the opinion of Cotta, and sustained
that it was necessary that Cicero should owe his recall, not only to the
authority of the Senate, but also to a vote of the people. Nothing
further was proposed but to present a _plebiscitum_ to the comitia.
Nobody opposed it, when Sextus Atilius, tribune of the people, demanded
the adjournment,[582] and, by those dilatory manœuvres so familiar to
the Romans, obliged the Senate to defer the presentation of the law to
the 22nd of the same month. When the day arrived, the two parties
prepared to support their opinion by force. Q. Fabricius, tribune of the
people, favourable to Cicero, sought in the morning to gain possession
of the rostra. Clodius was no longer tribune, but he continued to guide
the populace. To the professional agitators in his pay he had joined a
troop of gladiators, brought to Rome, by his brother Appius, for the
funeral of one of his kinsmen. [583] The troop of Fabricius was easily
put to the rout; a tribune, M. Cistius, had hardly presented himself,
when he was driven away. Pompey had his toga covered with blood, and
Quintus Cicero, whom he had brought with him to the Forum to speak to
the people in favour of his brother, was obliged to hide himself; the
gladiators rushed upon another tribune, P. Sextius, and left him for
dead. “The struggle was so violent,” Cicero says, “that the corpses
obstructed the Tiber and filled the sewers, and the Forum was inundated
with blood to such a degree that it was found necessary to wash it with
sponges. A tribune was killed, and the house of another was threatened
with fire. ”[584] The amazement was so great, that the question of the
recall of the exile was again adjourned. It was thus by the sword that
everything was decided in Rome in its disorder and abasement.
In fact, to obtain the recall of Cicero, the Senate saw itself obliged
to oppose riot to riot, and to make use of P. Sextius, who had recovered
from his wounds, as well as of Milo, who had organised, with military
discipline, an armed band in condition to make head against the
rioters. [585] At the same time, it hoped to intimidate the urban mob by
bringing into Rome, from all parts of Italy,[586] the citizens upon whom
it relied. In fine, the very men who had, two years before, engaged
Bibulus to embarrass all Cæsar’s measures by observing the sky,[587] now
prohibited, under pain of being considered as an enemy of the
Republic,[588] those religious artifices which suspended all
deliberations. The result was that the law of recall was passed.
Cicero re-entered Rome on the eve of the Nones of September (the 15th of
August, 697), in the midst of the warmest demonstrations of joy. The
Senate had thus at last triumphed over the factious opposition of
Clodius; but it was not without great efforts, nor without frequently
having had recourse on its own side to violence and arbitrary acts.
[Sidenote: Pompey is charged with the Supplying of Food. ]
III. From the first moment of his return, Cicero gave all his care to
augmenting the influence of Pompey and reconciling him with the Senate.
The famine under which Italy suffered that year furnished him with the
occasion. The populace rose suddenly, hurried first to a theatre, where
games were celebrating, and afterwards to the Capitol, uttering threats
of death and fire against the Senate, to which they attributed the
public distress. [589] Before this, in July, at the time of the
Apollinarian games,[590] a riot had occurred from the same motive.
Cicero, by his persuasive eloquence, calmed the irritated mob, and
proposed to entrust to Pompey the care of provisioning, and to confer
upon him for five years proconsular powers in Italy and out of
Italy. [591] The senators, in their terror, adopted this measure
immediately. It was, as at the time of the war of the pirates, to give
to one man an excessive power _over all the earth_, according to the
words of the decree. Fifteen lieutenants were associated with him, of
whom Cicero was one. [592] But the creation of this new office did not
put an end to the discontent of the multitude. Clodius tried to persuade
the people that the famine was fictitious, and that the Senate had
created it, in order to have a pretext for making Pompey master over
everything. [593] He overlooked no occasion for stirring up troubles.
Although the Senate had given Cicero an indemnity of more than two
millions of sestertii,[594] and decided that his house should be rebuilt
in the same place, Clodius, who sought to prevent the rebuilding of it,
came several times to blows with Milo, in struggles which resembled
regular battles, their adherents carrying bucklers and swords. Every day
witnessed a riot in the streets. Milo swore he would kill Clodius, and
Cicero confessed at a later period that the victim and the arm which was
to strike were pointed out beforehand. [595]
[Sidenote: Festivals to commemorate Cæsar’s Victories. ]
IV. It was towards the end of the year 697 that the news of Cæsar’s
prodigious successes against the Belgæ reached Rome; they excited there
the warmest enthusiasm. As soon as the Senate was informed of them, it
voted fifteen days of thanksgiving to celebrate them. [596] This number
of days had never before been accorded to anybody. Marius had obtained
five, and Pompey, when he had vanquished Mithridates, only ten. The
decree of the Senate was expressed in more flattering terms than had
ever been used for any general. Cicero himself took part in obtaining
this high testimony of public gratitude. [597]
[Sidenote: Riots at Rome. ]
V. In spite of these demonstrations, there continued to exist among a
certain class a secret hatred against the conqueror of Gaul: in the
month of December, 697, Rutilius Lupus, named tribune for the following
year, proposed to revoke Cæsar’s laws, and to suspend the distribution
of the lands in Campania;[598] he expatiated in accusations against that
general and Pompey. The senators were silent; Cn. Marcellinus, the
consul nominate, declared that in the absence of Pompey nothing could be
decided. On another hand, Racilius, tribune of the people, rose to renew
the old accusations against Clodius. [599] In order to baffle the designs
of the latter, who aspired to the office of ædile, and who, once named,
would have been inviolable, the consuls nominate proposed that the
election of the judges should take place before that of the ædiles. Cato
and Cassius opposed this. Cicero eagerly seized the opportunity of
fulminating against Clodius; but the latter, who was prepared, defended
himself at length, and during this time his adherents excited, by
attacking Milo’s men, such an uproar on the steps of the Temple of
Castor, where the Senate held its sitting, that the Forum became a new
field of battle. The senators fled, and all projects of laws were
abandoned. [600]
In the presence of these sanguinary collisions, the elections of ædiles
and quæstors could not take place; moreover, Milo and Sextius, from
feelings of personal vengeance, prevented the Consul Q. Metellus from
convoking the comitia. As soon as the consul named a day of assembly,
the two tribunes declared immediately that _they were observing the
sky_; and, for fear that this cause of adjournment might not be
sufficient, Milo established himself in the Campus Martius with his
followers in arms. Metellus tried to hold the comitia by surprise,[601]
and proceeded by night to the Campus Martius through bye streets; but he
was well watched. Before he arrived at the place, he was met and
recognised by Milo, who signified to him, in virtue of his tribunitial
power, the _obnunciation_, that is, the declaration of a religious
obstacle to the holding of the popular assemblies. [602] Thus ended the
year 697.
During these inglorious struggles, in which both parties dishonoured
themselves by acts of violence, Cæsar had, in two campaigns, saved Italy
from the invasion of the barbarians, and vanquished the most warlike
peoples of Gaul. Thus, at Rome, venality and anarchy prevailed; with the
army, devotedness and glory.
Then, as at certain epochs of our own
revolution, we may say that the national honour had taken refuge under
the flag.
CHAPTER III.
EVENTS IN ROME DURING THE YEAR 698.
[Sidenote: Presence in Rome of Ptolemy Auletes. ]
I. The Consuls of the year preceding had just been succeeded by Cn.
Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus; the latter
allied by family to Cæsar, whose niece, Atia, he had married. [603] It
was in vain that the chief magistrates succeeded each other annually,
the change of persons led to no change in the state of the Republic.
There happened about this time a circumstance which showed to what a low
degree of contempt law and morality had fallen. Ptolemy Auletes, King of
Egypt, father of the famous Cleopatra, hated by his subjects, had fled
from Alexandria, and arrived in Rome, towards the end of 697, in spite
of the advice of M. Cato, whom he had met at Rhodes. He came to solicit
the protection of the Republic against the Egyptians, who, in his
absence, had given the crown to his daughter Berenice. He had obtained
the title, then the object of so much emulation, of friend and ally of
the Roman people, by purchasing the suffrages of a great number of
considerable personages, which had obliged him to exact heavy taxes from
his subjects. He was at first well received, for it was known that he
had brought with him his treasure, ready for distribution among his new
protectors. Pompey gave him a lodging in his house,[604] and declared
publicly in his favour. But the Egyptians, when they were informed of
his departure, sent an embassy, composed of more than a hundred persons,
to defend their cause; most of them were assassinated on their way by
Ptolemy’s agents; and the rest, terrified or corrupted by force of
bribery, never carried out their mission. [605] This affair made so much
noise, that Favonius, called the _ape_ of Cato, because he imitated his
austerity, denounced the conduct of Ptolemy in the Senate, and added
that he knew one of the Egyptian deputies, named Dio, who was ready to
confirm his assertions. Dio did not dare to appear, and, a short time
after, was assassinated. In spite of this crime, Pompey persisted in his
friendship for Ptolemy, and no one dared to prosecute the guest of so
powerful a man. [606]
Several plans were proposed for replacing the King of Egypt on the
throne, and this enterprise, which promised glory and profit, excited
everybody’s ambition. Those who, probably, were opposed to it, proposed
to consult the Sibylline books, which gave the answer: “If the King of
Egypt come to ask you for succour, do not refuse him your friendship,
but grant him no army. ” Caius Cato, tribune of the people, kinsman of M.
Porcius Cato, and yet his adversary, lost no time in divulging this
reply, although it was not permitted, without a decree of the Senate, to
publish the Sibylline oracles. [607] The Senate decreed that the King of
Egypt should be restored to his throne by the Roman magistrates, but
without an armed intervention. [608] But this mission was a cause of
great dispute: some proposed to charge Lentulus Spinther with it, others
preferred Pompey, with the obligation to employ only two lictors; the
jealousy of the candidates caused it soon to be renounced. Ptolemy,
abandoning all hope, quitted Rome and retired to Ephesus. [609] He was
restored subsequently by Gabinius.
[Sidenote: Clodius named Ædile. Trial of Milo. ]
II. The election for the ædileship had taken place on the 11th of the
Calends of February of the year 698 (28th of December, 697), and, thanks
to the money he had distributed, Clodius had been named ædile. [610] He
had hardly been invested with this office, which protected him from the
prosecutions of Milo, when he turned round and attacked his accuser,
charging him with an armed conspiracy, precisely the same crime with
which Milo reproached him. It was not Milo he had in view, but his
powerful protectors. Moreover, alleging unfavourable auspicia, or
employing for that purpose some tribunes of the people, he absolutely
opposed the presentation by the consuls of all public affairs of any
importance, not excepting the curiate law, which decreed their commands
to the proconsuls and proprætors. [611]
The trial with which he was threatened by Clodius gave little uneasiness
to Milo, who had lost none of his habitual audacity. In fact, at a time
when a political personage could not be in safety unless escorted by a
band of armed men, it was difficult to condemn Milo for having
gladiators in his pay, especially when his enemies had set the example
of having recourse to similar auxiliaries.
The judicial struggle was at hand, and preparations were made as for a
combat. The accused had for his defenders Cicero and Pompey; the greater
part of the Senate was favourable to him, and, as a precaution against
riots, his friends brought their clients from all parts of Italy, and
even from Cisalpine Gaul. [612] Clodius and Caius Cato, on their side,
had assembled all their forces. They calculated, moreover, that the
populace, rendered still more turbulent by the dearth, would give a very
ill reception to Pompey, who found no remedy for the public misery; and
to Cicero, who, as superstitious people said, had drawn upon the town
the anger of the gods, by choosing to rebuild his house on a piece of
ground consecrated to the goddess _Libertas_. [613] It appears that many
enemies of Pompey secretly encouraged and aided Clodius. Crassus himself
was suspected of giving money to him, as well as to Caius Cato.
On the 8th of the Ides of February, (the 12th January, 698), Milo
appeared before his judges. [614] When Pompey presented himself to speak
in his defence, the mob, excited by Clodius, received him with hooting
and insults. The town mob knew all Pompey’s vanities, and wounded them
with subtle cruelty. He, meanwhile, though every moment interrupted,
kept his temper, and strove to speak. Clodius replied to him; but his
adversaries also had a mob organised and paid to abuse him, and to sing
infamous verses on the subject of his amours with his own sister. [615]
In this strange and ignoble dispute Milo was forgotten; it had become
nothing more than a sort of duel between Clodius and Pompey. Clodius, in
the midst of his satellites, cried out at the utmost extent of his
voice, “Who is the man who makes us die of hunger? ” And all the
populace, with the unity of a tragic chorus, cried “Pompey! ”--“Who wants
to go into Egypt? ” cried Clodius again. A thousand voices replied,
“Pompey! ”--“Who ought to be sent there? ” “Crassus! ”[616] Clodius added,
“Who is the autocrat whom nothing satisfies? Who is the man who seeks a
man? Who scratches his head with a single finger? ” “Pompey! Pompey! ” the
crowd continued repeating. After all these mutual provocations, the two
parties, tired of shouting, came to blows. Cicero prudently made his
escape,[617] and the victory once again remained with the nobles, who
were probably supported by a greater number of gladiators. [618] The
judgment of Milo, adjourned to another day, gave rise again to similar
scenes; but he was acquitted.
[Sidenote: Return of Cato. ]
III. In the midst of these intestine quarrels, M. Cato returned from
Cyprus to Rome. He brought with him the treasure of Ptolemy, the brother
of Ptolemy Auletes, amounting to 7,000 talents (about 40,000,000
francs), a considerable quantity of personal goods, and a great number
of slaves. Ptolemy had poisoned himself on the report of Cato’s arrival,
leaving him no other trouble than that of collecting his treasures, for
the Cypriots, then slaves, in the hope of becoming the allies and
friends of Rome, received him with open arms. Proud of his expedition,
which he had carried out with the most perfect integrity, he was very
anxious that it should be approved. [619]
The return of Cato could bring no remedy to the deeply troubled state of
the Republic. [620] His virtue was not one of those which attract, but of
those which repulse. Blaming everybody, because, perhaps, everybody was
to blame, he remained the only one of his party.
From the moment of his arrival, he found himself at the same time in
opposition with Cicero, who attacked the legality of his mission; and
with Clodius, who, having entrusted it to him in his quality of tribune,
counted on appropriating all the glory of it to himself. In these new
intrigues of Clodius, Cæsar, it is said, supported him, and furnished
him with subjects of accusation against Cato. [621]
[Sidenote: State of Anarchy in Rome. ]
IV. A concise view of the events at Rome at this time shows to what a
degree the moral level had been abased. It was no longer those memorable
struggles between the patricians and the plebeians, where the greatness
of the object aimed at ennobled the means. It was no longer a question
of defending secular rights, or of acquiring new rights, but of vulgar
ambitions and personal interests to be satisfied.
Nothing indicates more the decay of society than when law becomes an
engine of war for the use of the different parties, instead of remaining
the sincere expression of the general needs. Each man who arrived at
power rendered himself guilty on the morrow of that which he had
condemned on the eve, and made the institutions of his country the
slaves of his momentary passion. At one time it was the Consul Metellus
who, in 697, retarded the nomination of the quæstors, in order to
prevent that of the judges, with the view of shielding Clodius, his
kinsman, from a judiciary accusation;[622] at another time it was Milo
and Sextius who, by way of reprisals against the same consul, opposed
all imaginable obstacles to the convocation of the comitia;[623] lastly,
it was the Senate itself which (in 698) sought to retard the election of
the judges, in order to deprive Clodius of the chance of being named
ædile. The ancient custom of taking the auspices was no longer, in the
eyes of anybody, more than a political manœuvre. Not one of the great
personages whom the momentary favour of the people and the Senate raise
to distinction preserve any true sentiment of rectitude. Cicero, who
sees the whole Republic in himself, and who attacks as monstrous all
which is done against him and without him, declares all the acts of the
tribuneship of Clodius illegal; the rigid Cato, on the contrary,
defends, through personal interest, these same acts, because Cicero’s
pretension wounds his pride, and invalidates the mission he has received
from Clodius. [624] Caius Cato violates the law by making public the
Sibylline oracle. On all sides people have recourse to illegal means,
which vary according to their several tempers; some, like Milo, Sextius,
and Clodius, openly place themselves at the head of armed bands; others
act with timidity and dissimulation, like Cicero, who, one day, after a
previous unsuccessful attempt, carries away by stealth from the Capitol
the plate of brass which bore inscribed the law which had proscribed
him. A singular error of men, who believe that they efface history by
destroying a few visible signs of the past!
This relaxation of the social bonds caused inevitably the dispersion of
all the forces, the union of which would have been so useful to the
public good. It was no sooner agreed, in a moment of danger, to give to
one man the authority necessary to restore order and tranquillity, than,
at the same moment, everybody united to attack and degrade him, as if
each were afraid of his own work. Cicero has hardly returned from exile,
when the friends who have recalled him become jealous of his influence;
they see with pleasure a certain degree of coldness arise between Pompey
and him, and secretly support the intrigues of Clodius. [625] Pompey,
amid the famine and the public agitation, is hardly invested with new
powers, before the Senate on one side, and the popular faction on the
other, plot together to ruin his credit: by clever intrigues, they
awaken the old hatred between him and Crassus.
Pompey believed, or pretended to believe, that there was a conspiracy
against his life. He would no longer attend the Senate, unless the
session were held close to his residence, he seemed to think it so
dangerous to pass through the town. [626] “Clodius,” he said, “seeks to
assassinate me. Crassus pays him, and Cato encourages him. All the
talkers, Curio, Bibulus, all my enemies excite him against me. The
populace, who love the tattle of the tribune, have almost abandoned me;
the nobility is hostile to me; the Senate is unjust towards me; the
youth is entirely perverted. ” He added that he would take his
precautions, and that he would surround himself with people from the
country. [627]
Nobody was safe from the most odious imputations. Caius Cato accused the
Consul P. Lentulus of having assisted Ptolemy with the means of
quitting Rome clandestinely. [628] M. Cato was exasperated against
everybody. Lastly, an implacable party never ceased manifesting, by its
motions, without result, it is true, its rancour and animosity against
the proconsul of Gaul. Towards the spring of 698, L. Domitius
Ahenobarbus, the brother-in-law of Cato, whose sister Porcia he had
espoused, and who had enriched himself with the spoils of the victims of
Sylla, proposed to deprive him of his command. [629] Others renewed the
proposal to put an end to the distribution of the lands of the Campania,
and revived the opposition to the Julian laws. [630] But Cicero, at the
request of Pompey, obtained the adjournment of this question to the
month of May. [631] He was, indeed, himself perplexed on this question,
and confessed that he had no very clear views upon it. [632]
[Sidenote: The Interview at Lucca. ]
V. In the midst of the general confusion, many citizens turned their
eyes towards Cæsar. Appius Claudius had already paid him a visit. [633]
Crassus left Rome suddenly to join him at Ravenna, at the beginning of
the spring of 698, before the campaign against the Veneti, and explain
to him the state of affairs, for, as Cicero says in a letter of a
subsequent date, there was no occurrence so small in Rome that Cæsar was
not informed of it. [634]
Some time afterwards, Pompey, who was to embark at Pisa, to proceed to
Sardinia, in order to hasten the supply of wheat, arrived at Lucca,
where he had an interview with Cæsar and Crassus. A crowd of people
assembled similarly in that town; some were drawn thither by the
prestige of Cæsar’s glory, others by his well-known generosity, all by
the vague instinct which, in moments of crisis, points to the place
where strength exists, and gives a presentiment of the side from which
safety is to come. The Roman people sent him a deputation of
senators. [635] All the most illustrious and powerful personages in Rome,
such as Pompey, Crassus, Appius, governor of Sardinia, Nepos, proconsul
of Spain,[636] came to show their warm admiration for him and invoke his
support;[637] even women repaired to Lucca, and the concourse was so
great that as many as 200 senators were seen there at a time; 120
lictors, the obligatory escort of the first magistrates,[638] besieged
the door of the proconsul. “Already,” Appius writes, “he disposed of
everything by his ascendance, by his riches, and by the affectionate
eagerness with which he conferred obligations upon everybody. ”[639]
What took place in this interview? No one knows; but we may conjecture
from the events which were the immediate consequences of it. It is
evident, in the first place, that Crassus and Pompey, who had recently
quarrelled, were reconciled by Cæsar, who, no doubt, placed before their
eyes the arguments most calculated to reconcile them: “The public
interest required it; they alone could put an end to the state of
anarchy which afflicted the capital; in a country which was a prey to
vulgar ambitions, it required, to control them, ambitions which were
greater, but, at the same time, purer and more honourable; they must
easily have seen that it was not in the power of a man like Cicero, with
his tergiversations, his cowardice, and his vanity, or Cato, with his
stoicism, belonging to another age, or Domitius Ahenobarbus, with his
implacable hatred and his selfish passions, to restore order, or put an
end to the divisions of opinion. In order to obtain these results, it
was necessary that Crassus and Pompey should labour resolutely to obtain
the consulship. [640] As to himself, he only asked to remain at the head
of his army, and complete the conquest he had undertaken. Gaul was
vanquished, but not subjugated. Some years were still necessary to
establish there the Roman domination. This fickle and warlike people,
always ready for revolt, was secretly incited and openly supported by
two neighbouring nations, the Britons and the Germans. In the last war
against the Belgæ, the promoters of the rising, according to the
confession of the Bellovaci, had clearly shown, by taking refuge in
Britain after their defeat, whence came the provocation. Even at this
very moment, the insurrection which was in preparation among the tribes
of the Veneti, on the shores of the ocean, was instigated by these same
islanders. As to the Germans, the defeat of Ariovistus had not
discouraged them; and several contingents of that nation were lately
found with the troops of Hainault. He intends to chastise these two
peoples, and to carry his arms beyond the Rhine as well as beyond the
sea; let them, then, leave him to finish his enterprise. Already the
Alps are levelled; the barbarians, who, hardly forty-four years ago,
were ravaging Italy, are driven back into their deserts and forests. A
few years more, and fear or hope, punishments or recompenses, arms or
laws, will have bound for ever Gaul to the empire. ”[641]
Language like this could not fail to be understood by Pompey and by
Crassus. People are easily persuaded when the public interest offers
itself through the prism of self-love and personal interest. Beyond the
consulship, Crassus and Pompey saw at once the government of provinces
and the command of armies. As to Cæsar, the logical realisation of his
desires was the prolongation of his powers. Only one difficulty lay in
the way of the execution of this plan. The period of the elections was
near at hand, and neither Pompey nor Crassus had taken steps to offer
themselves as candidates for the consulship within the time fixed by the
law; but it had been so usual for many years to delay the comitia, under
frivolous pretexts, that the same thing might easily be done on the
present occasion with a more legitimate object.
Cæsar promised to support their election with all his power, by his
recommendations, and by sending his soldiers on leave to vote in the
comitia. In fact, his soldiers, either recruited from the veterans whom
he had carried from Rome, or among Roman citizens established in great
numbers in Cisalpine Gaul, had the right to give their vote in Rome, and
enjoy the legitimate influence which is the reward of a life of dangers
and self-denial. Cicero assures us of this in these words: “Do you
consider, in seeking the consulship, as a weak support the will of the
soldiers, so powerful by their number and by the influence which they
exercise in their families? Moreover, what authority must the vote of
our warriors have over the whole Roman people in the question of
nominating a consul! For, in the consular comitia, it is the generals
they choose, and not the rhetoricians. It is a very powerful
recommendation to be able to say, I was wounded, he has restored me to
life; he shared the booty with me. It was under him that we captured the
enemy’s camp, that we gave battle; he never required from the soldier
more labour than he took upon himself; his success is as great as his
courage. Can you imagine what a favourable influence such discourses
have upon people’s minds? ”[642] Thus Cæsar conformed to the established
practice, in allowing his soldiers to exercise their rights of citizens.
[Sidenote: Consequences of the interview at Lucca. Conduct of Cicero. ]
VI. The result of the interview at Lucca had been to unite in a common
feeling the most important men in the Republic. Some historians have
seen in it a mysterious conspiracy, and they have not hesitated to
qualify it with the name of _triumvirate_, a denomination as
inapplicable to this agreement as to that which took place in 694. An
interview in the midst of so many illustrious citizens, who have
assembled from all sides to salute a victorious general, had hardly the
appearance of a mystery, and the mutual understanding of some men of
influence in the same political thought was not a conspiracy. Some
authors have, nevertheless, pretended that the Senate, informed of this
plot devised in Cisalpine Gaul, had expressed its indignation; but there
is nothing to support this allegation; if it had been the case, would
they, a few months after the interview at Lucca, have granted Cæsar
everything he desired, and rejected everything that was displeasing to
him? We see, indeed, that at the annual distribution of the governments
of provinces, the senators hostile to Cæsar proposed that he should be
deprived of his command, or, at least, of the part of his command
decreed by the Senate. [643] Yet, not only was this proposal rejected,
but the Senate gave him ten lieutenants and subsidies to pay the legions
he had raised on his own authority, in addition to the four legions
originally placed at his disposal by the Senate. In fact, the triumphs
of Cæsar had excited people’s minds. Public opinion, that irresistible
force in all times, had declared loudly for him, and his popularity
reflected upon Pompey and Crassus. [644] The Senate had then silenced
its animosity, and even Cæsar showed himself full of deference for that
assembly. [645]
It must be said, in praise of humanity, that true glory possesses the
privilege of rallying all generous hearts; only men who are madly in
love with themselves, or hardened by party fanaticism, can resist this
general attraction towards those who constitute the greatness of their
country. At this period, with the exception of a few spiteful and
intractable individuals, the greater part of the senators felt the
general impulse, as we learn from the orations of Cicero. [646]
But if, on one side, the members of this pretended triumvirate are
represented as closely leagued together against the Republic, on the
other, Dio Cassius asserts that, at this time, Pompey and Crassus were
conspiring against Cæsar. This opinion has no better foundation. We see,
on the contrary, by a letter of Cicero, how warmly Pompey at that time
advocated the party of his father-in-law. Pompey, when he was leaving
Lucca, met with Quintus Cicero, and, addressing him with warmth, he bade
him remind his brother of his past engagements: “Cicero ought not to
forget that what Pompey had done for his recall was also the work of
Cæsar, whose acts he had promised not to attack; if he would not serve
him, at least let him abstain from all hostility. ”[647] These reproaches
did not remain without effect. Cicero, very apt to turn to the side of
fortune, wrote to Atticus: “There is an end to everything; and since
those who are without power will have me no longer, I will seek friends
among those who have the power. ”[648]
He had already acted with the senators in voting thanks for Cæsar’s
victories, since which he had employed all his efforts in seconding
every proposal in favour of the conqueror of Gaul. As the part Cicero
acted on this occasion has had a particular importance, it will not be
uninteresting to quote his words: “Could I be the enemy of a man whose
couriers and letters, in concert with his renown, make our ears listen
every day to the names of so many peoples, of so many nations, of so
many countries which he has added to our empire? I am inflamed with
enthusiasm, senators, and you are the less inclined to doubt it, since
you are animated by the same sentiments. [649] He has combated, with the
greatest success, the most warlike and powerful nations of the Germans
and Helvetii; he has overthrown, subdued, and driven back the others,
and has accustomed them to obey the Roman people. Countries, which no
history, no relation, no public report had hitherto brought to our
knowledge, have been overrun by our general, our troops, our arms. We
had formerly but one way into Gaul; the other parts were occupied by
peoples who were either enemies of this empire, or little to be
trusted, or unknown, or at least ferocious, barbarous, and warlike;
there was no one who was not desirous of seeing them vanquished and
subdued. [650] A report has been recently presented to us on the pay of
the troops. I was not satisfied with giving my opinion, but I laboured
to secure its adoption; I replied at great length to those who held a
contrary opinion; I assisted in drawing up the decree; then, again, I
granted more to the person than to I know not what necessity. I thought
that, even without such a succour of money, with the mere produce of the
booty, Cæsar might have maintained his army and terminated the war; but
I did not consider that we ought, by a narrow parsimony, to diminish the
lustre and glory of his triumph.
“Moreover, there has been a question of giving Cæsar ten lieutenants:
some absolutely opposed the grant, others required precedents; these
would have put off the consideration to another day; those granted it,
without employing flattering terms. Under these circumstances, from the
manner in which I spoke, everybody understood that, while I sought to
serve the interests of the Republic, I did still more to honour Cæsar. ”
In another speech, the same orator exclaims: “The Senate has decreed
Cæsar public prayers in the most honourable form, and for a number of
days hitherto without example. In spite of the exhausted state of the
treasury, it has provided for the pay of his victorious army; it has
decided that ten lieutenants shall be given to the general, and that,
by derogation of the law Sempronia, a successor should not be sent him.
It was I who moved these measures, and who spoke in support of them;
and, rather than listen to my old disagreement with Cæsar, I lent myself
to what is demanded, under present circumstances, by the interest of the
Republic and the need of peace. ”[651]
But if in public Cicero expressed himself with so much clearness, in his
private intercourse he was still tender of the opinion of his former
friends. It is, indeed, the only manner in which we can explain a
contradiction too glaring even in a temper so inconstant. In fact, at
the moment when he was boasting openly of the services he had assisted
in rendering to Cæsar, he wrote to his friend P. Lentulus, proconsul in
Cilicia: “They have just granted Cæsar subsidies and ten lieutenants,
and they have paid no regard to the law Sempronia, which required that a
successor should be given to him. But it is too sorrowful a subject, and
I will not dwell upon it. ”[652]
[Sidenote: Intrigues of Pompey and Crassus to obtain the Consulship. ]
VII. From what precedes, it is evident that unpopularity did not fall
upon Cæsar, but upon the means employed by Crassus and Pompey for the
purpose of obtaining the consulship.
They made use of Caius Cato, kinsman of the Stoic, and of other men
equally undeserving of esteem, to cause delay in the time of holding the
comitia, and thus lead to the creation of an interrex,[653] which would
facilitate their election, since the consuls, who were the ordinary
presidents of the assembly of the people, were opposed to them.
The relations of the events of this period present great confusion. Dio
Cassius informs us that, in the sequel of violent disputes in the curia,
between Pompey, who had recently returned from Sardinia, and the Consul
Marcellinus, the Senate, in sign of its displeasure, decreed that it
would go into mourning, as for a public calamity, and immediately
carried the decree into effect. Caius Cato opposed his veto. Then the
Consul Cn. Marcellinus, at the head of the Senate, proceeded to the
Forum, and harangued the people to ask it for the comitia, without
success probably, since the senators returned immediately to the place
of their session. Clodius, who, since the conference of Lucca, had
become more intimate with Pompey, appeared suddenly among the crowd,
interrupted the consul, and bantered him on this display of untimely
mourning.
Napoleon I. in his _Mémoires_, “a nation to liberty and independence; to
desire that a public spirit should form in the midst of it, and that it
should furnish troops; and at the same time to take from it its
principal resources, are two contradictory ideas, and to conciliate them
is the province of talent. ”[559]
Thus, to fight between two and three hundred thousand Helvetii and
Germans, to hold in dominion eight millions of Gauls, and to maintain
the Roman province--such is the task which Cæsar has undertaken, and, to
carry it out, he has as yet only at hand a single legion. What means
will he have to overcome all these obstacles? His genius and the
ascendency of civilisation over barbarism.
[Sidenote: Campaign against the Helvetii. ]
II. Cæsar starts from Rome towards the middle of March, 696, and arrives
in eight days at Geneva. Immediately the Helvetii, who had appointed
their rendezvous on the banks of the Rhine towards the 24th of March,
the day of the equinox, ask his permission to cross Savoy, with the
intention of going to establish themselves in Saintonge. He adjourns his
answer to the 8th of April, and employs the fifteen days thus gained in
fortifying the left bank of the Rhone, from Geneva to the
Pas-de-l’Ecluse, in raising troops in the Roman province, and in
renewing the old bonds of friendship with the Burgundians,[560] who will
soon furnish him with men, horses, and provisions.
By rendering the passage of the Rhone impossible, and by binding to his
cause the peoples who occupied the whole course of the Saône, from
Pontailler to near Trévoux, he had cut off from the Helvetii the road to
the south, and thrown difficulties in their way towards the west. Still,
these persisted none the less in their design; they made an arrangement
with the people of Franche-Comté, to whom the passage of the
Pas-de-l’Ecluse belonged, to debouch by that defile into the plains of
Ambérieux and on the plateau of the Dombes. They could thus arrive at
the Saône, pass it peaceably or by force, proceed into the valley of the
Loire by crossing the mountains of Charolais, and penetrate thence into
Saintonge.
As soon as Cæsar was aware of this project, he immediately decided on
his course of action: he foresaw that a long time would elapse before
the Helvetii effected a passage across the unquiet countries of so many
hosts; he reckons that an agglomeration of 368,000 individuals, men,
women, and children, carrying three months’ provisions in wagons, would
be slow to move; he repairs to the Cisalpine, raises two legions there,
sends to Aquileia for the three who were in winter quarters there, and,
crossing the Alps again, arrives, two months afterwards, at the
confluence of the Rhone and the Saône, on the heights of Sathonay. He
learns that the Helvetii have been employed during twenty days in
crossing the Saône between Trévoux and Villefranche, but that a part of
them still remain on the left bank; seizes the opportunity, attacks the
latter, defeats them, and thus diminishes the number of his adversaries
by one-fourth; then, crossing the Saône, he follows during fifteen days
the mass of the Helvetian emigration, which was advancing towards the
sources of the Bourbince. As he finds himself in want of provisions, he
turns off from his road, and marches towards Bibracte (_Mont Beuvray_),
the citadel and principal town of the Burgundians. This march to the
right leads the Helvetii to believe that he is afraid of encountering
them; they then march back, and attack him unexpectedly; a great battle
is fought, and, with his four old legions only, Cæsar gains the victory.
The immigration, already considerably diminished by the battle of the
Saône, no longer counts more than 130,000 individuals, who make their
retreat towards the country of Langres. The Roman general does not
pursue them; he remains three days burying the dead and attending to the
wounded. But his influence is already so great, that, to deprive the
wreck of the vanquished army of provisions, he has only to give orders
to the peoples whose territory they cross. Deprived of all resources,
the fugitives discontinue their march, and make their submission. He
hastens to overtake them towards Tonnerre. When he arrives in the midst
of them, he adopts a generous policy, and gains, by his generous
behaviour, those whom he had subjugated by his arms.
There was in the Helvetic conglomeration a people renowned for their
valor, the Boii; Cæsar permits the Burgundians to receive them into the
number of their fellow-citizens, and give them lands at the confluence
of the Allier and the Loire. As to the other barbarians, with the
exception of 6,000 who had attempted to withdraw from the capitulation
by flight, he obliges them to return to their country, dismisses them
without ransom, instead of selling them as slaves, and thus drawing from
them a considerable profit, according to the general usage of that
period. [561] By preventing the Germans from establishing themselves in
the countries abandoned by the immigration, he made a calculation of
interest secondary to a high political sentiment, and foresaw that
Helvetia, by its geographical position, was destined to be a bulwark
against invasion from the north, and that, then as now, it was important
for the power seated on the Rhone and the Alps to have on its eastern
frontiers a friendly and independent people. [562]
[Sidenote: Campaign against Ariovistus. ]
III. The victory gained near Bibracte has, at one blow, restored the
prestige of the Roman arms. Cæsar has become the arbitrator of the
destinies of a part of Gaul: all the peoples comprised between the
Marne, the Rhone, and the mountains of Auvergne, obey him. [563] The
Helvetii have returned into their country; the Burgundians have
re-conquered their ancient preponderance. The assembly of Celtic Gaul,
held with his permission at Bibracte, invokes his protection against
Ariovistus, and, to the far north, the people of Trèves hasten to
denounce to him a threatened invasion of Germans. It had always been a
part of the policy of the Republic to extend its influence by going to
the succour of oppressed peoples. Cæsar could not fail to regulate his
conduct upon this principle. Not only did it concern him to deliver the
Gauls from a foreign yoke, but he sought to deprive the Germans of the
possibility of settling on the banks of the Saône, and thus threatening
the Roman province, and perhaps Italy itself.
Before having recourse to arms, Cæsar, who, during his consulship, had
caused Ariovistus to be declared the ally and friend of the Roman
republic, undertook to try upon him the means of persuasion. He sent to
demand an interview, and received only a haughty reply. Soon, informed
that, three days before, the German king has crossed his frontiers at
the head of a numerous army, and that, on another side, the hundred
cantons of the Suevi are threatening to cross the Rhine towards Mayence,
he starts from Tonnerre in haste to go forward to meet him. When he
arrives near Arc-en-Barrois, he learns that Ariovistus is marching with
all his troops upon Besançon. He then turns to the right, anticipates
him, and takes possession of that important place. No doubt, at the news
of the march of the Roman army, Ariovistus slackened his own, and halted
in the neighbourhood of Colmar.
After remaining a few days at Besançon, Cæsar takes the way to the
Rhine, avoids the mountainous spurs of the Jura, proceeds by
Pennesières, Arcey, and Belfort, and debouches towards Cernay in the
fertile plains of Alsace. The two armies are only twenty-four miles
apart. Cæsar and Ariovistus have an interview; its only result is to
increase their mutual resentment. The latter conceives the project of
cutting the line of operation of the Romans, and, passing near the site
of the modern Mulhouse, he proceeds, by a circuitous movement, to
establish himself on the stream of the little Doller, to the south of
the Roman army, which, encamped on the Thur, supports its rear on the
last spurs of the Vosges, near Cernay. In this position, Ariovistus
intercepts Cæsar’s communications with Franche-Comté and Burgundy. The
latter, to restore them, distributes his troops into two camps, and
causes a second camp to be made, less considerable than the first, on
his right, near the little Doller. During several days, he seeks in vain
to draw Ariovistus to a battle; then, learning that the matrons have
advised the Germans not to tempt fortune before the new moon, he unites
his legions, places all the auxiliaries on his right, marches resolutely
to assault the camp of the Germans, forces them to accept battle, and
defeats them after an obstinate resistance. In their flight, they take
the same road by which they had advanced, and, pursued for a distance of
fifty miles, they re-pass the Rhine towards Rhinau. As to the Suevi, who
had assembled near Mayence, when they are informed of the disaster of
their allies, they hasten to regain their country.
Thus, in his first campaign, Cæsar, by two great battles, had delivered
Gaul from the invasion of the Helvetii and the Germans; all the Gauls
looked upon him as a liberator. But services rendered are very soon
forgotten when people owe their liberty and independence to a foreign
army.
Cæsar places his troops in winter quarters in Franche-Comté, leaves the
command to Labienus, and starts for Cisalpine Gaul, where he is obliged,
as proconsul, to preside over the provincial assemblies. Nearer Rome
during the winter, he could follow more easily the political events of
the metropolis.
[Sidenote: Sequel of the Consulship of L. Calpurnius Piso and Aulus
Galbinus. ]
IV. While the armies were augmenting the power of the Republic without,
at Rome the intestine struggles continued with new fury. It could hardly
be otherwise among the elements of discord and anarchy which were at
work, and which, since the departure of Cæsar, were no longer held under
control by a lofty intelligence and a firm will. Moral force, so
necessary to every government, no longer existed anywhere, or rather, it
did not exist where the institutions willed it to be, in the Senate;
and, according to the remark of a celebrated German historian, this
assembly which ruled the world, was incapable of ruling the town. [564]
For a long time the prestige of one man in visible power was master over
that of the Senate; Pompey, by his military renown, and by his alliance
with Cæsar and Crassus, continued dominant, although he had not then any
legal power. Cæsar had reckoned upon him to continue his work, and curb
the bad passions which were in agitation in the highest regions as well
as in the lowest depths of society: but Pompey had neither the mind nor
energy necessary to master at the same time the arrogance of the nobles
and the turbulence of certain partisans of the demagogy; he was soon
exposed to the censure of both parties. [565] Moreover entirely under the
influence of the charms of his young wife, he appeared indifferent to
what was passing around him. [566]
The relation of the events at Rome during the eight years of Cæsar’s
abode in Gaul will only offer us an uninterrupted series of vengeances,
murders, and acts of violence of every description. How, indeed, could
order be maintained in so vast a city without a permanent military
force; when each man of importance took with him, for his escort, his
clients or slaves in arms, and thus, within it, everybody had an army
except the Republic? From this moment, as we shall see, the quarrels
which are about to spring up among the parties will result always in
riots; the slaves and gladiators will be enrolled as the ordinary
actors.
[Sidenote: Intrigues of Clodius. ]
V. Clodius, whose imprudent support of those who were subsequently
called the triumvirs had increased his influence, continued, after
Cæsar’s departure, to court a vain popularity, and to excite the
passions which had been imperfectly allayed. Not satisfied with having,
at the beginning of his tribuneship, re-established those religious,
commercial, and political associations, which, composed chiefly of the
dregs of the people, were a permanent danger to society; with having
made distributions of wheat, restrained the censors in their right of
exclusion, forbidden the auspices to be taken or the sky observed on the
day fixed for the meeting of the comitia,[567] and with having provoked
the exile of Cicero, he turned his restless activity against
Pompey,[568] whom he soon deeply offended, by causing to be taken away
and set at liberty a son of Tigranes, King of Armenia, made prisoner in
the war against Mithridates, and retained as a pledge for the
tranquillity of Asia. [569] At the same time he began judicial
proceedings against some of Pompey’s friends, and replied to the
expostulations which were addressed to him, “That he was glad to learn
how far the great man’s credit went. ”[570] The latter then conceived the
idea of recalling Cicero, to oppose him to Clodius, just as, a few
months before, he had raised Clodius against Cicero. We see the game of
political see-saw is not new.
[Sidenote: Pompey consults Cæsar on the Return of Cicero. ]
VI. Under these circumstances, the opinion of Cæsar was of great weight.
Pompey wrote to consult him,[571] and P. Sextius, one of those nominated
as the new tribunes, repaired to Gaul to ascertain his mind. [572] It
appears certain that it was favourable,[573] for, so early as the
Calends of June, 696, hardly two months after the decree against
Cicero, a tribune of the people, L. Ninnius, demanded his recall in the
Senate. This proposal was on the point of being carried, when another
tribune of the people, Ælius Ligus, _interceded_. [574] The Senate, in
its irritation, declared that it would take into consideration no
political or administrative affair until it had voted on Cicero’s
return. [575] We thus judge how much the assembly took to heart the
success of this measure, and how much, in supporting it, Pompey
flattered the sentiments of the majority.
[Sidenote: Pompey believes himself threatened by a Slave of Clodius. ]
VII. A singular occurrence determined his reconciliation with the
Senate: on the 3rd of the Ides of Sextilis (the 5th of August), a slave
of Clodius let a dagger fall in Pompey’s way, as he was entering the
curia; arrested by the lictors, and questioned by the consul A.
Gabinius, the slave declared that his master had ordered him to
assassinate the great citizen. [576] This attempt, whether serious or
not, produced a sufficient impression on Pompey to prevent him, for a
long time, from going to the Forum, or showing himself in public. [577]
The demands in favour of Cicero were renewed; and on the 4th of the
Calends of November (the 20th of October) eight tribunes of the people,
most of them men devoted to Pompey, proposed formally in the Senate the
recall of the exile. One of these was T. Annius Milo, a violent, bold
man, without scruples, and resembling Clodius in all things, but his
open adversary. Clodius and his brother, the prætor Appius, again
succeeded in defeating this motion. [578] At last, with the extreme of
audacity, the turbulent tribune, when near the close of his functions,
dared to attack Cæsar himself, and tried to obtain the revocation of the
Julian laws; but this attempt was powerless in face of the splendour of
the victories gained over the Helvetii and the Germans.
CHAPTER II.
EVENTS OF THE YEAR 697.
[Sidenote: War against the Belgæ. ]
I. Cæsar’s victories had awakened among the Gauls feelings of
admiration, but also of distrust; they could not see without fear that
it had required only six legions to scatter two invasions, each counting
100,000 combatants. There are successes which, by their very brilliancy,
alarm even those who profit by them. Nearly all Gaul looks on with
jealousy at events which prove the superiority of permanent armies over
populations without military organization. A small number of experienced
and disciplined soldiers, under the guidance of a great captain, make
all the peoples tremble from the Rhine to the ocean, and even the
islanders of Great Britain feel themselves unsafe against the attacks of
the Roman power; the Belgæ especially, proud of having formerly alone
repulsed the invasion of the Cimbri and the Teutones, feel their warlike
instincts revive. Provocations which have come from the other side of
the Straits increase their distrust; these picture to them the abode of
the Roman army in Franche-Comté as a threat against the independence of
the whole of Gaul. The greatest part of the peoples comprised between
the Rhine, the Scheldt, the Ocean, and the Seine, agitate, combine, and
assemble an army of 300,000 men.
Informed in Italy of these preparations, Cæsar raises two new legions,
rejoins his army in Franche-Comté, and decides immediately on invading
the country of the Belgæ. The first who present themselves on his road
are the people of Champagne. Surprised by his sudden arrival, they
submit, and even offer him subsidies and auxiliaries. Cæsar is able to
add to his eight legions and his light troops the contingents from
Rheims, and join them with those of Burgundy and Trèves. In spite of
this augmentation of his forces, the enemy he has to combat is four
times more numerous. To defeat them, he sends the Burgundians to make a
diversion and ravage the territory of Beauvais, then he crosses the
Aisne at Berry-au-Bac, and selects, behind the Miette, a marshy stream,
a defensive position which he renders inexpugnable.
The Belgæ, whose army occupies, on the right bank of the Miette, an
extent of twelve kilomètres, are powerless to force the position of the
Romans, and fail in all their attempts to cross the Aisne at Pontavert.
Soon, discouraged by the want of provisions, disputes among themselves,
and the news that the Burgundians have just invaded the territory of
Beauvais, they separate, because each, believing his own country
threatened, thinks only of going to its defence. The Belgian league is
thus dissolved almost without combat. Cæsar then hastens to chastise
each people one after the other; he seizes in their turn Soissons and
Breteuil, the principal citadels of the Soissonais and Beauvaisis, and
arrives at Amiens.
But the coalitions of the peoples of the north succeed each other like
the waves of the sea; after the Helvetii, the Germans; after the
Germans, the people of the Beauvaisis; after them, the inhabitants of
Hainault. These have assembled on the Sambre, and wait to be re-enforced
by the peoples of German origin established in the neighbourhood of
Namur. Cæsar then marches towards the Sambre by its left bank. When he
arrives near the enemy concealed in the woods of the right bank, on the
heights of Haumont, he unites six legions, places the two others in
reserve with the baggage of the army, and, reaching the heights of
Neuf-Mesnil, begins to fortify his camp; but hardly have the soldiers
commenced their work, when the Belgæ debouch from all the issues of the
forest, cross the shallow waters of the Sambre, scale the abrupt slopes,
and fall upon the Romans, who, taken by surprise and unable to form
their line of battle, range themselves without order under the first
ensigns which offer themselves. The confusion is extreme; Cæsar is
obliged, sword in hand, to throw himself into the thick of the fight.
Nevertheless, the fortune of the battle is gradually restored; the
centre and left wing have repulsed their assailants; the latter arrives
to succour the right wing in its peril; the two legions of the
rear-guard hasten to the field of battle; then victory decides for the
Romans, and the peoples of Hainault are nearly annihilated. In this
engagement the experience and valour of the old veteran soldiers save
the Roman army from the impetuosity of the Belgæ. After this exploit,
Cæsar marches towards Namur, in which the inhabitants of the whole
country have shut themselves up on the news of the defeat of their
allies, and he makes himself master of that place.
While he was completing the conquest of Belgic Gaul, one of his
lieutenants, the young Publius Crassus, detached, after the battle of
the Sambre, into Normandy and Brittany, reduced to submission the
peoples of those provinces, so that at that time the greatest part of
Gaul acknowledged the authority of the Republic: the effect of Cæsar’s
victories was such that the Ubii, a German people from beyond the Rhine,
established between the Maine and the Sieg, sent their congratulations
to the conqueror with the offer of their services.
Before leaving for the Cisalpine, Cæsar sent a legion into the Valais,
to chastise the inhabitants of those Alpine valleys, who, at the
beginning of the year, had attacked in their march the two new legions
on their way from Italy; it was his aim also to open easy communications
with the Cisalpine by the Simplon and Saint-Bernard. But his lieutenant
Galba, after a sanguinary battle, was obliged to retreat and take up his
winter quarters in Savoy. Thus Cæsar’s designs could not be realised. It
was reserved for another great man, nineteen centuries afterwards, to
level that formidable barrier of the Alps.
[Sidenote: Return of Cicero. ]
II. Let us now resume the account of events in Rome subsequent to the
Calends of January, 697 (20th of December, 696). The consuls who entered
upon their office were P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther and Q. Cecilius
Metellus Nepos; the first, a friend of Cicero; the second, favourable
to Clodius from hatred to the celebrated orator who had offended
him. [579]
Lentulus brought forward the question of the recall of the exile. [580]
L. Aurelius Cotta, a man of esteem and of consular dignity, declared
that the banishment of Cicero, pronounced in the sequel of extreme acts
of violence, carried in itself the cause of its nullity; and that,
therefore, there was no need of a law to revoke an act that was contrary
to the laws. [581] Pompey combated the opinion of Cotta, and sustained
that it was necessary that Cicero should owe his recall, not only to the
authority of the Senate, but also to a vote of the people. Nothing
further was proposed but to present a _plebiscitum_ to the comitia.
Nobody opposed it, when Sextus Atilius, tribune of the people, demanded
the adjournment,[582] and, by those dilatory manœuvres so familiar to
the Romans, obliged the Senate to defer the presentation of the law to
the 22nd of the same month. When the day arrived, the two parties
prepared to support their opinion by force. Q. Fabricius, tribune of the
people, favourable to Cicero, sought in the morning to gain possession
of the rostra. Clodius was no longer tribune, but he continued to guide
the populace. To the professional agitators in his pay he had joined a
troop of gladiators, brought to Rome, by his brother Appius, for the
funeral of one of his kinsmen. [583] The troop of Fabricius was easily
put to the rout; a tribune, M. Cistius, had hardly presented himself,
when he was driven away. Pompey had his toga covered with blood, and
Quintus Cicero, whom he had brought with him to the Forum to speak to
the people in favour of his brother, was obliged to hide himself; the
gladiators rushed upon another tribune, P. Sextius, and left him for
dead. “The struggle was so violent,” Cicero says, “that the corpses
obstructed the Tiber and filled the sewers, and the Forum was inundated
with blood to such a degree that it was found necessary to wash it with
sponges. A tribune was killed, and the house of another was threatened
with fire. ”[584] The amazement was so great, that the question of the
recall of the exile was again adjourned. It was thus by the sword that
everything was decided in Rome in its disorder and abasement.
In fact, to obtain the recall of Cicero, the Senate saw itself obliged
to oppose riot to riot, and to make use of P. Sextius, who had recovered
from his wounds, as well as of Milo, who had organised, with military
discipline, an armed band in condition to make head against the
rioters. [585] At the same time, it hoped to intimidate the urban mob by
bringing into Rome, from all parts of Italy,[586] the citizens upon whom
it relied. In fine, the very men who had, two years before, engaged
Bibulus to embarrass all Cæsar’s measures by observing the sky,[587] now
prohibited, under pain of being considered as an enemy of the
Republic,[588] those religious artifices which suspended all
deliberations. The result was that the law of recall was passed.
Cicero re-entered Rome on the eve of the Nones of September (the 15th of
August, 697), in the midst of the warmest demonstrations of joy. The
Senate had thus at last triumphed over the factious opposition of
Clodius; but it was not without great efforts, nor without frequently
having had recourse on its own side to violence and arbitrary acts.
[Sidenote: Pompey is charged with the Supplying of Food. ]
III. From the first moment of his return, Cicero gave all his care to
augmenting the influence of Pompey and reconciling him with the Senate.
The famine under which Italy suffered that year furnished him with the
occasion. The populace rose suddenly, hurried first to a theatre, where
games were celebrating, and afterwards to the Capitol, uttering threats
of death and fire against the Senate, to which they attributed the
public distress. [589] Before this, in July, at the time of the
Apollinarian games,[590] a riot had occurred from the same motive.
Cicero, by his persuasive eloquence, calmed the irritated mob, and
proposed to entrust to Pompey the care of provisioning, and to confer
upon him for five years proconsular powers in Italy and out of
Italy. [591] The senators, in their terror, adopted this measure
immediately. It was, as at the time of the war of the pirates, to give
to one man an excessive power _over all the earth_, according to the
words of the decree. Fifteen lieutenants were associated with him, of
whom Cicero was one. [592] But the creation of this new office did not
put an end to the discontent of the multitude. Clodius tried to persuade
the people that the famine was fictitious, and that the Senate had
created it, in order to have a pretext for making Pompey master over
everything. [593] He overlooked no occasion for stirring up troubles.
Although the Senate had given Cicero an indemnity of more than two
millions of sestertii,[594] and decided that his house should be rebuilt
in the same place, Clodius, who sought to prevent the rebuilding of it,
came several times to blows with Milo, in struggles which resembled
regular battles, their adherents carrying bucklers and swords. Every day
witnessed a riot in the streets. Milo swore he would kill Clodius, and
Cicero confessed at a later period that the victim and the arm which was
to strike were pointed out beforehand. [595]
[Sidenote: Festivals to commemorate Cæsar’s Victories. ]
IV. It was towards the end of the year 697 that the news of Cæsar’s
prodigious successes against the Belgæ reached Rome; they excited there
the warmest enthusiasm. As soon as the Senate was informed of them, it
voted fifteen days of thanksgiving to celebrate them. [596] This number
of days had never before been accorded to anybody. Marius had obtained
five, and Pompey, when he had vanquished Mithridates, only ten. The
decree of the Senate was expressed in more flattering terms than had
ever been used for any general. Cicero himself took part in obtaining
this high testimony of public gratitude. [597]
[Sidenote: Riots at Rome. ]
V. In spite of these demonstrations, there continued to exist among a
certain class a secret hatred against the conqueror of Gaul: in the
month of December, 697, Rutilius Lupus, named tribune for the following
year, proposed to revoke Cæsar’s laws, and to suspend the distribution
of the lands in Campania;[598] he expatiated in accusations against that
general and Pompey. The senators were silent; Cn. Marcellinus, the
consul nominate, declared that in the absence of Pompey nothing could be
decided. On another hand, Racilius, tribune of the people, rose to renew
the old accusations against Clodius. [599] In order to baffle the designs
of the latter, who aspired to the office of ædile, and who, once named,
would have been inviolable, the consuls nominate proposed that the
election of the judges should take place before that of the ædiles. Cato
and Cassius opposed this. Cicero eagerly seized the opportunity of
fulminating against Clodius; but the latter, who was prepared, defended
himself at length, and during this time his adherents excited, by
attacking Milo’s men, such an uproar on the steps of the Temple of
Castor, where the Senate held its sitting, that the Forum became a new
field of battle. The senators fled, and all projects of laws were
abandoned. [600]
In the presence of these sanguinary collisions, the elections of ædiles
and quæstors could not take place; moreover, Milo and Sextius, from
feelings of personal vengeance, prevented the Consul Q. Metellus from
convoking the comitia. As soon as the consul named a day of assembly,
the two tribunes declared immediately that _they were observing the
sky_; and, for fear that this cause of adjournment might not be
sufficient, Milo established himself in the Campus Martius with his
followers in arms. Metellus tried to hold the comitia by surprise,[601]
and proceeded by night to the Campus Martius through bye streets; but he
was well watched. Before he arrived at the place, he was met and
recognised by Milo, who signified to him, in virtue of his tribunitial
power, the _obnunciation_, that is, the declaration of a religious
obstacle to the holding of the popular assemblies. [602] Thus ended the
year 697.
During these inglorious struggles, in which both parties dishonoured
themselves by acts of violence, Cæsar had, in two campaigns, saved Italy
from the invasion of the barbarians, and vanquished the most warlike
peoples of Gaul. Thus, at Rome, venality and anarchy prevailed; with the
army, devotedness and glory.
Then, as at certain epochs of our own
revolution, we may say that the national honour had taken refuge under
the flag.
CHAPTER III.
EVENTS IN ROME DURING THE YEAR 698.
[Sidenote: Presence in Rome of Ptolemy Auletes. ]
I. The Consuls of the year preceding had just been succeeded by Cn.
Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus; the latter
allied by family to Cæsar, whose niece, Atia, he had married. [603] It
was in vain that the chief magistrates succeeded each other annually,
the change of persons led to no change in the state of the Republic.
There happened about this time a circumstance which showed to what a low
degree of contempt law and morality had fallen. Ptolemy Auletes, King of
Egypt, father of the famous Cleopatra, hated by his subjects, had fled
from Alexandria, and arrived in Rome, towards the end of 697, in spite
of the advice of M. Cato, whom he had met at Rhodes. He came to solicit
the protection of the Republic against the Egyptians, who, in his
absence, had given the crown to his daughter Berenice. He had obtained
the title, then the object of so much emulation, of friend and ally of
the Roman people, by purchasing the suffrages of a great number of
considerable personages, which had obliged him to exact heavy taxes from
his subjects. He was at first well received, for it was known that he
had brought with him his treasure, ready for distribution among his new
protectors. Pompey gave him a lodging in his house,[604] and declared
publicly in his favour. But the Egyptians, when they were informed of
his departure, sent an embassy, composed of more than a hundred persons,
to defend their cause; most of them were assassinated on their way by
Ptolemy’s agents; and the rest, terrified or corrupted by force of
bribery, never carried out their mission. [605] This affair made so much
noise, that Favonius, called the _ape_ of Cato, because he imitated his
austerity, denounced the conduct of Ptolemy in the Senate, and added
that he knew one of the Egyptian deputies, named Dio, who was ready to
confirm his assertions. Dio did not dare to appear, and, a short time
after, was assassinated. In spite of this crime, Pompey persisted in his
friendship for Ptolemy, and no one dared to prosecute the guest of so
powerful a man. [606]
Several plans were proposed for replacing the King of Egypt on the
throne, and this enterprise, which promised glory and profit, excited
everybody’s ambition. Those who, probably, were opposed to it, proposed
to consult the Sibylline books, which gave the answer: “If the King of
Egypt come to ask you for succour, do not refuse him your friendship,
but grant him no army. ” Caius Cato, tribune of the people, kinsman of M.
Porcius Cato, and yet his adversary, lost no time in divulging this
reply, although it was not permitted, without a decree of the Senate, to
publish the Sibylline oracles. [607] The Senate decreed that the King of
Egypt should be restored to his throne by the Roman magistrates, but
without an armed intervention. [608] But this mission was a cause of
great dispute: some proposed to charge Lentulus Spinther with it, others
preferred Pompey, with the obligation to employ only two lictors; the
jealousy of the candidates caused it soon to be renounced. Ptolemy,
abandoning all hope, quitted Rome and retired to Ephesus. [609] He was
restored subsequently by Gabinius.
[Sidenote: Clodius named Ædile. Trial of Milo. ]
II. The election for the ædileship had taken place on the 11th of the
Calends of February of the year 698 (28th of December, 697), and, thanks
to the money he had distributed, Clodius had been named ædile. [610] He
had hardly been invested with this office, which protected him from the
prosecutions of Milo, when he turned round and attacked his accuser,
charging him with an armed conspiracy, precisely the same crime with
which Milo reproached him. It was not Milo he had in view, but his
powerful protectors. Moreover, alleging unfavourable auspicia, or
employing for that purpose some tribunes of the people, he absolutely
opposed the presentation by the consuls of all public affairs of any
importance, not excepting the curiate law, which decreed their commands
to the proconsuls and proprætors. [611]
The trial with which he was threatened by Clodius gave little uneasiness
to Milo, who had lost none of his habitual audacity. In fact, at a time
when a political personage could not be in safety unless escorted by a
band of armed men, it was difficult to condemn Milo for having
gladiators in his pay, especially when his enemies had set the example
of having recourse to similar auxiliaries.
The judicial struggle was at hand, and preparations were made as for a
combat. The accused had for his defenders Cicero and Pompey; the greater
part of the Senate was favourable to him, and, as a precaution against
riots, his friends brought their clients from all parts of Italy, and
even from Cisalpine Gaul. [612] Clodius and Caius Cato, on their side,
had assembled all their forces. They calculated, moreover, that the
populace, rendered still more turbulent by the dearth, would give a very
ill reception to Pompey, who found no remedy for the public misery; and
to Cicero, who, as superstitious people said, had drawn upon the town
the anger of the gods, by choosing to rebuild his house on a piece of
ground consecrated to the goddess _Libertas_. [613] It appears that many
enemies of Pompey secretly encouraged and aided Clodius. Crassus himself
was suspected of giving money to him, as well as to Caius Cato.
On the 8th of the Ides of February, (the 12th January, 698), Milo
appeared before his judges. [614] When Pompey presented himself to speak
in his defence, the mob, excited by Clodius, received him with hooting
and insults. The town mob knew all Pompey’s vanities, and wounded them
with subtle cruelty. He, meanwhile, though every moment interrupted,
kept his temper, and strove to speak. Clodius replied to him; but his
adversaries also had a mob organised and paid to abuse him, and to sing
infamous verses on the subject of his amours with his own sister. [615]
In this strange and ignoble dispute Milo was forgotten; it had become
nothing more than a sort of duel between Clodius and Pompey. Clodius, in
the midst of his satellites, cried out at the utmost extent of his
voice, “Who is the man who makes us die of hunger? ” And all the
populace, with the unity of a tragic chorus, cried “Pompey! ”--“Who wants
to go into Egypt? ” cried Clodius again. A thousand voices replied,
“Pompey! ”--“Who ought to be sent there? ” “Crassus! ”[616] Clodius added,
“Who is the autocrat whom nothing satisfies? Who is the man who seeks a
man? Who scratches his head with a single finger? ” “Pompey! Pompey! ” the
crowd continued repeating. After all these mutual provocations, the two
parties, tired of shouting, came to blows. Cicero prudently made his
escape,[617] and the victory once again remained with the nobles, who
were probably supported by a greater number of gladiators. [618] The
judgment of Milo, adjourned to another day, gave rise again to similar
scenes; but he was acquitted.
[Sidenote: Return of Cato. ]
III. In the midst of these intestine quarrels, M. Cato returned from
Cyprus to Rome. He brought with him the treasure of Ptolemy, the brother
of Ptolemy Auletes, amounting to 7,000 talents (about 40,000,000
francs), a considerable quantity of personal goods, and a great number
of slaves. Ptolemy had poisoned himself on the report of Cato’s arrival,
leaving him no other trouble than that of collecting his treasures, for
the Cypriots, then slaves, in the hope of becoming the allies and
friends of Rome, received him with open arms. Proud of his expedition,
which he had carried out with the most perfect integrity, he was very
anxious that it should be approved. [619]
The return of Cato could bring no remedy to the deeply troubled state of
the Republic. [620] His virtue was not one of those which attract, but of
those which repulse. Blaming everybody, because, perhaps, everybody was
to blame, he remained the only one of his party.
From the moment of his arrival, he found himself at the same time in
opposition with Cicero, who attacked the legality of his mission; and
with Clodius, who, having entrusted it to him in his quality of tribune,
counted on appropriating all the glory of it to himself. In these new
intrigues of Clodius, Cæsar, it is said, supported him, and furnished
him with subjects of accusation against Cato. [621]
[Sidenote: State of Anarchy in Rome. ]
IV. A concise view of the events at Rome at this time shows to what a
degree the moral level had been abased. It was no longer those memorable
struggles between the patricians and the plebeians, where the greatness
of the object aimed at ennobled the means. It was no longer a question
of defending secular rights, or of acquiring new rights, but of vulgar
ambitions and personal interests to be satisfied.
Nothing indicates more the decay of society than when law becomes an
engine of war for the use of the different parties, instead of remaining
the sincere expression of the general needs. Each man who arrived at
power rendered himself guilty on the morrow of that which he had
condemned on the eve, and made the institutions of his country the
slaves of his momentary passion. At one time it was the Consul Metellus
who, in 697, retarded the nomination of the quæstors, in order to
prevent that of the judges, with the view of shielding Clodius, his
kinsman, from a judiciary accusation;[622] at another time it was Milo
and Sextius who, by way of reprisals against the same consul, opposed
all imaginable obstacles to the convocation of the comitia;[623] lastly,
it was the Senate itself which (in 698) sought to retard the election of
the judges, in order to deprive Clodius of the chance of being named
ædile. The ancient custom of taking the auspices was no longer, in the
eyes of anybody, more than a political manœuvre. Not one of the great
personages whom the momentary favour of the people and the Senate raise
to distinction preserve any true sentiment of rectitude. Cicero, who
sees the whole Republic in himself, and who attacks as monstrous all
which is done against him and without him, declares all the acts of the
tribuneship of Clodius illegal; the rigid Cato, on the contrary,
defends, through personal interest, these same acts, because Cicero’s
pretension wounds his pride, and invalidates the mission he has received
from Clodius. [624] Caius Cato violates the law by making public the
Sibylline oracle. On all sides people have recourse to illegal means,
which vary according to their several tempers; some, like Milo, Sextius,
and Clodius, openly place themselves at the head of armed bands; others
act with timidity and dissimulation, like Cicero, who, one day, after a
previous unsuccessful attempt, carries away by stealth from the Capitol
the plate of brass which bore inscribed the law which had proscribed
him. A singular error of men, who believe that they efface history by
destroying a few visible signs of the past!
This relaxation of the social bonds caused inevitably the dispersion of
all the forces, the union of which would have been so useful to the
public good. It was no sooner agreed, in a moment of danger, to give to
one man the authority necessary to restore order and tranquillity, than,
at the same moment, everybody united to attack and degrade him, as if
each were afraid of his own work. Cicero has hardly returned from exile,
when the friends who have recalled him become jealous of his influence;
they see with pleasure a certain degree of coldness arise between Pompey
and him, and secretly support the intrigues of Clodius. [625] Pompey,
amid the famine and the public agitation, is hardly invested with new
powers, before the Senate on one side, and the popular faction on the
other, plot together to ruin his credit: by clever intrigues, they
awaken the old hatred between him and Crassus.
Pompey believed, or pretended to believe, that there was a conspiracy
against his life. He would no longer attend the Senate, unless the
session were held close to his residence, he seemed to think it so
dangerous to pass through the town. [626] “Clodius,” he said, “seeks to
assassinate me. Crassus pays him, and Cato encourages him. All the
talkers, Curio, Bibulus, all my enemies excite him against me. The
populace, who love the tattle of the tribune, have almost abandoned me;
the nobility is hostile to me; the Senate is unjust towards me; the
youth is entirely perverted. ” He added that he would take his
precautions, and that he would surround himself with people from the
country. [627]
Nobody was safe from the most odious imputations. Caius Cato accused the
Consul P. Lentulus of having assisted Ptolemy with the means of
quitting Rome clandestinely. [628] M. Cato was exasperated against
everybody. Lastly, an implacable party never ceased manifesting, by its
motions, without result, it is true, its rancour and animosity against
the proconsul of Gaul. Towards the spring of 698, L. Domitius
Ahenobarbus, the brother-in-law of Cato, whose sister Porcia he had
espoused, and who had enriched himself with the spoils of the victims of
Sylla, proposed to deprive him of his command. [629] Others renewed the
proposal to put an end to the distribution of the lands of the Campania,
and revived the opposition to the Julian laws. [630] But Cicero, at the
request of Pompey, obtained the adjournment of this question to the
month of May. [631] He was, indeed, himself perplexed on this question,
and confessed that he had no very clear views upon it. [632]
[Sidenote: The Interview at Lucca. ]
V. In the midst of the general confusion, many citizens turned their
eyes towards Cæsar. Appius Claudius had already paid him a visit. [633]
Crassus left Rome suddenly to join him at Ravenna, at the beginning of
the spring of 698, before the campaign against the Veneti, and explain
to him the state of affairs, for, as Cicero says in a letter of a
subsequent date, there was no occurrence so small in Rome that Cæsar was
not informed of it. [634]
Some time afterwards, Pompey, who was to embark at Pisa, to proceed to
Sardinia, in order to hasten the supply of wheat, arrived at Lucca,
where he had an interview with Cæsar and Crassus. A crowd of people
assembled similarly in that town; some were drawn thither by the
prestige of Cæsar’s glory, others by his well-known generosity, all by
the vague instinct which, in moments of crisis, points to the place
where strength exists, and gives a presentiment of the side from which
safety is to come. The Roman people sent him a deputation of
senators. [635] All the most illustrious and powerful personages in Rome,
such as Pompey, Crassus, Appius, governor of Sardinia, Nepos, proconsul
of Spain,[636] came to show their warm admiration for him and invoke his
support;[637] even women repaired to Lucca, and the concourse was so
great that as many as 200 senators were seen there at a time; 120
lictors, the obligatory escort of the first magistrates,[638] besieged
the door of the proconsul. “Already,” Appius writes, “he disposed of
everything by his ascendance, by his riches, and by the affectionate
eagerness with which he conferred obligations upon everybody. ”[639]
What took place in this interview? No one knows; but we may conjecture
from the events which were the immediate consequences of it. It is
evident, in the first place, that Crassus and Pompey, who had recently
quarrelled, were reconciled by Cæsar, who, no doubt, placed before their
eyes the arguments most calculated to reconcile them: “The public
interest required it; they alone could put an end to the state of
anarchy which afflicted the capital; in a country which was a prey to
vulgar ambitions, it required, to control them, ambitions which were
greater, but, at the same time, purer and more honourable; they must
easily have seen that it was not in the power of a man like Cicero, with
his tergiversations, his cowardice, and his vanity, or Cato, with his
stoicism, belonging to another age, or Domitius Ahenobarbus, with his
implacable hatred and his selfish passions, to restore order, or put an
end to the divisions of opinion. In order to obtain these results, it
was necessary that Crassus and Pompey should labour resolutely to obtain
the consulship. [640] As to himself, he only asked to remain at the head
of his army, and complete the conquest he had undertaken. Gaul was
vanquished, but not subjugated. Some years were still necessary to
establish there the Roman domination. This fickle and warlike people,
always ready for revolt, was secretly incited and openly supported by
two neighbouring nations, the Britons and the Germans. In the last war
against the Belgæ, the promoters of the rising, according to the
confession of the Bellovaci, had clearly shown, by taking refuge in
Britain after their defeat, whence came the provocation. Even at this
very moment, the insurrection which was in preparation among the tribes
of the Veneti, on the shores of the ocean, was instigated by these same
islanders. As to the Germans, the defeat of Ariovistus had not
discouraged them; and several contingents of that nation were lately
found with the troops of Hainault. He intends to chastise these two
peoples, and to carry his arms beyond the Rhine as well as beyond the
sea; let them, then, leave him to finish his enterprise. Already the
Alps are levelled; the barbarians, who, hardly forty-four years ago,
were ravaging Italy, are driven back into their deserts and forests. A
few years more, and fear or hope, punishments or recompenses, arms or
laws, will have bound for ever Gaul to the empire. ”[641]
Language like this could not fail to be understood by Pompey and by
Crassus. People are easily persuaded when the public interest offers
itself through the prism of self-love and personal interest. Beyond the
consulship, Crassus and Pompey saw at once the government of provinces
and the command of armies. As to Cæsar, the logical realisation of his
desires was the prolongation of his powers. Only one difficulty lay in
the way of the execution of this plan. The period of the elections was
near at hand, and neither Pompey nor Crassus had taken steps to offer
themselves as candidates for the consulship within the time fixed by the
law; but it had been so usual for many years to delay the comitia, under
frivolous pretexts, that the same thing might easily be done on the
present occasion with a more legitimate object.
Cæsar promised to support their election with all his power, by his
recommendations, and by sending his soldiers on leave to vote in the
comitia. In fact, his soldiers, either recruited from the veterans whom
he had carried from Rome, or among Roman citizens established in great
numbers in Cisalpine Gaul, had the right to give their vote in Rome, and
enjoy the legitimate influence which is the reward of a life of dangers
and self-denial. Cicero assures us of this in these words: “Do you
consider, in seeking the consulship, as a weak support the will of the
soldiers, so powerful by their number and by the influence which they
exercise in their families? Moreover, what authority must the vote of
our warriors have over the whole Roman people in the question of
nominating a consul! For, in the consular comitia, it is the generals
they choose, and not the rhetoricians. It is a very powerful
recommendation to be able to say, I was wounded, he has restored me to
life; he shared the booty with me. It was under him that we captured the
enemy’s camp, that we gave battle; he never required from the soldier
more labour than he took upon himself; his success is as great as his
courage. Can you imagine what a favourable influence such discourses
have upon people’s minds? ”[642] Thus Cæsar conformed to the established
practice, in allowing his soldiers to exercise their rights of citizens.
[Sidenote: Consequences of the interview at Lucca. Conduct of Cicero. ]
VI. The result of the interview at Lucca had been to unite in a common
feeling the most important men in the Republic. Some historians have
seen in it a mysterious conspiracy, and they have not hesitated to
qualify it with the name of _triumvirate_, a denomination as
inapplicable to this agreement as to that which took place in 694. An
interview in the midst of so many illustrious citizens, who have
assembled from all sides to salute a victorious general, had hardly the
appearance of a mystery, and the mutual understanding of some men of
influence in the same political thought was not a conspiracy. Some
authors have, nevertheless, pretended that the Senate, informed of this
plot devised in Cisalpine Gaul, had expressed its indignation; but there
is nothing to support this allegation; if it had been the case, would
they, a few months after the interview at Lucca, have granted Cæsar
everything he desired, and rejected everything that was displeasing to
him? We see, indeed, that at the annual distribution of the governments
of provinces, the senators hostile to Cæsar proposed that he should be
deprived of his command, or, at least, of the part of his command
decreed by the Senate. [643] Yet, not only was this proposal rejected,
but the Senate gave him ten lieutenants and subsidies to pay the legions
he had raised on his own authority, in addition to the four legions
originally placed at his disposal by the Senate. In fact, the triumphs
of Cæsar had excited people’s minds. Public opinion, that irresistible
force in all times, had declared loudly for him, and his popularity
reflected upon Pompey and Crassus. [644] The Senate had then silenced
its animosity, and even Cæsar showed himself full of deference for that
assembly. [645]
It must be said, in praise of humanity, that true glory possesses the
privilege of rallying all generous hearts; only men who are madly in
love with themselves, or hardened by party fanaticism, can resist this
general attraction towards those who constitute the greatness of their
country. At this period, with the exception of a few spiteful and
intractable individuals, the greater part of the senators felt the
general impulse, as we learn from the orations of Cicero. [646]
But if, on one side, the members of this pretended triumvirate are
represented as closely leagued together against the Republic, on the
other, Dio Cassius asserts that, at this time, Pompey and Crassus were
conspiring against Cæsar. This opinion has no better foundation. We see,
on the contrary, by a letter of Cicero, how warmly Pompey at that time
advocated the party of his father-in-law. Pompey, when he was leaving
Lucca, met with Quintus Cicero, and, addressing him with warmth, he bade
him remind his brother of his past engagements: “Cicero ought not to
forget that what Pompey had done for his recall was also the work of
Cæsar, whose acts he had promised not to attack; if he would not serve
him, at least let him abstain from all hostility. ”[647] These reproaches
did not remain without effect. Cicero, very apt to turn to the side of
fortune, wrote to Atticus: “There is an end to everything; and since
those who are without power will have me no longer, I will seek friends
among those who have the power. ”[648]
He had already acted with the senators in voting thanks for Cæsar’s
victories, since which he had employed all his efforts in seconding
every proposal in favour of the conqueror of Gaul. As the part Cicero
acted on this occasion has had a particular importance, it will not be
uninteresting to quote his words: “Could I be the enemy of a man whose
couriers and letters, in concert with his renown, make our ears listen
every day to the names of so many peoples, of so many nations, of so
many countries which he has added to our empire? I am inflamed with
enthusiasm, senators, and you are the less inclined to doubt it, since
you are animated by the same sentiments. [649] He has combated, with the
greatest success, the most warlike and powerful nations of the Germans
and Helvetii; he has overthrown, subdued, and driven back the others,
and has accustomed them to obey the Roman people. Countries, which no
history, no relation, no public report had hitherto brought to our
knowledge, have been overrun by our general, our troops, our arms. We
had formerly but one way into Gaul; the other parts were occupied by
peoples who were either enemies of this empire, or little to be
trusted, or unknown, or at least ferocious, barbarous, and warlike;
there was no one who was not desirous of seeing them vanquished and
subdued. [650] A report has been recently presented to us on the pay of
the troops. I was not satisfied with giving my opinion, but I laboured
to secure its adoption; I replied at great length to those who held a
contrary opinion; I assisted in drawing up the decree; then, again, I
granted more to the person than to I know not what necessity. I thought
that, even without such a succour of money, with the mere produce of the
booty, Cæsar might have maintained his army and terminated the war; but
I did not consider that we ought, by a narrow parsimony, to diminish the
lustre and glory of his triumph.
“Moreover, there has been a question of giving Cæsar ten lieutenants:
some absolutely opposed the grant, others required precedents; these
would have put off the consideration to another day; those granted it,
without employing flattering terms. Under these circumstances, from the
manner in which I spoke, everybody understood that, while I sought to
serve the interests of the Republic, I did still more to honour Cæsar. ”
In another speech, the same orator exclaims: “The Senate has decreed
Cæsar public prayers in the most honourable form, and for a number of
days hitherto without example. In spite of the exhausted state of the
treasury, it has provided for the pay of his victorious army; it has
decided that ten lieutenants shall be given to the general, and that,
by derogation of the law Sempronia, a successor should not be sent him.
It was I who moved these measures, and who spoke in support of them;
and, rather than listen to my old disagreement with Cæsar, I lent myself
to what is demanded, under present circumstances, by the interest of the
Republic and the need of peace. ”[651]
But if in public Cicero expressed himself with so much clearness, in his
private intercourse he was still tender of the opinion of his former
friends. It is, indeed, the only manner in which we can explain a
contradiction too glaring even in a temper so inconstant. In fact, at
the moment when he was boasting openly of the services he had assisted
in rendering to Cæsar, he wrote to his friend P. Lentulus, proconsul in
Cilicia: “They have just granted Cæsar subsidies and ten lieutenants,
and they have paid no regard to the law Sempronia, which required that a
successor should be given to him. But it is too sorrowful a subject, and
I will not dwell upon it. ”[652]
[Sidenote: Intrigues of Pompey and Crassus to obtain the Consulship. ]
VII. From what precedes, it is evident that unpopularity did not fall
upon Cæsar, but upon the means employed by Crassus and Pompey for the
purpose of obtaining the consulship.
They made use of Caius Cato, kinsman of the Stoic, and of other men
equally undeserving of esteem, to cause delay in the time of holding the
comitia, and thus lead to the creation of an interrex,[653] which would
facilitate their election, since the consuls, who were the ordinary
presidents of the assembly of the people, were opposed to them.
The relations of the events of this period present great confusion. Dio
Cassius informs us that, in the sequel of violent disputes in the curia,
between Pompey, who had recently returned from Sardinia, and the Consul
Marcellinus, the Senate, in sign of its displeasure, decreed that it
would go into mourning, as for a public calamity, and immediately
carried the decree into effect. Caius Cato opposed his veto. Then the
Consul Cn. Marcellinus, at the head of the Senate, proceeded to the
Forum, and harangued the people to ask it for the comitia, without
success probably, since the senators returned immediately to the place
of their session. Clodius, who, since the conference of Lucca, had
become more intimate with Pompey, appeared suddenly among the crowd,
interrupted the consul, and bantered him on this display of untimely
mourning.
