History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2

These facts, of small importance in themselves, yet testify to Cæsar’s goodness of heart, and to the delicacy of the well-bred man who is always observant of propriety.

To his natural qualities, developed by a brilliant education, were added physical advantages. His tall stature, his rounded and well-proportioned limbs, stamped his person with a grace that distinguished him from all others.[766 - “To the external advantages which distinguished him from all the other citizens, Cæsar joined an impetuous and powerful soul.” (Velleius Paterculus, II. 41.)] He had black eyes, a piercing look, a pale complexion, a straight and high nose. His mouth, small and regular, but with rather thick lips, gave a kindly expression to the lower part of his face, whilst his breadth of brow betokened the development of the intellectual faculties. His face was full, at least, in his youth; for in his busts, doubtless made towards the end of his life, his features are thinner, and bear traces of fatigue.[767 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 15.] He had a sonorous and penetrating voice, a noble gesture, and an air of dignity reigned over all his person.[768 - “By his voice, his gesture, the grand and noble air of his person, he had a certain brilliant manner of speech, without the least artifice.” (Cicero, Brutus, 75; copied by Suetonius, Cæsar, 55.)] His constitution, at first delicate, became robust by a frugal regimen and the habit of exposing himself to the inclemency of the weather.[769 - Plutarch, Cæsar, 18.] Accustomed from his youth to all bodily exercises, he was a bold horseman,[770 - “From his first youth he was much used to horseback, and had even acquired the facility of riding with dropped reins and his hands joined behind his back.” (Plutarch, Cæsar, 18.)] and bore privations and fatigues without difficulty.[771 - “He ate and slept without enjoying the pleasure of either, and only to obey necessity.” (Velleius Paterculus, II. 41.)] Habitually temperate, his health was impaired neither by excess of labour nor by excess of pleasure. However, on two occasions – the first at Corduba, the second at Thapsus – he was seized with nervous attacks, wrongly mistaken for epilepsy.[772 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 53. – (Plutarch, Cæsar, 18 and 58.)]

He paid special attention to his person, carefully shaved or plucked out his beard, and artistically brought his hair forward to the front of his head, which, in more advanced age, served to conceal his bald forehead. He was reproached with the affectation of scratching his head with one finger only, so that he should not disarrange his hair.[773 - “And when,” says Cicero, “I look at his hair, so artistically arranged; and when I see him scratch his head with one finger, I cannot believe that such a man could conceive so black a design as to overthrow the Roman Republic.” (Plutarch, Cæsar, 4.)] His toilette was refined; his toga was generally ornamented with a laticlavia, fringed down to the hands, and fastened by a girdle carelessly tied about his loins; a costume which distinguished the elegant and effeminate youths of the period. But Sylla was not deceived by these appearances of frivolity, and repeated that they must take care of this young man with the loose girdle.[774 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 45. – Cicero said likewise, “I suffered myself to be caught by the fashion of his girdle,” alluding to his hanging robe, which gave him an effeminate appearance. (Macrobius, Saturnalia, II. 3.)] He had a taste for pictures, statues, and jewels; and, in memory of his origin, always wore on his finger a ring, on which was engraved the figure of an armed Venus.[775 - Dio Cassius, XLIII. 43.]

In fine, we discover in Cæsar, both physically and morally, two natures rarely united in the same person. He joined an aristocratic delicacy of body to the muscular constitution of the warrior; the love of luxury and the arts to a passion for military life, in all its simplicity and rudeness: in a word, he allied the elegance of manner which seduces with the energy of character which commands.

Cæsar persecuted by Sylla (672).

II. Such was Cæsar at the age of eighteen, when Sylla seized the dictatorship.[776 - Velleius Paterculus, II. 41.] Already he attracted all eyes at Rome by his name, his intellect, his affable manners, which pleased men, and, perhaps, women still more.

The influence of his uncle Marius caused him to be nominated priest of Jupiter (flamen dialis) at the age of fourteen.[777 - Suetonius (Cæsar, 1) says that Cæsar was designated (destinatus) flamen. Velleius Paterculus (II. 43), that he was created flamen. In our opinion he was created, but not inaugurated, flamen. Now, as long as this formality was not accomplished, he was only the flamen designate. What proves that he had never been inaugurated is, that Sylla could revoke it; and, on another hand, Tacitus says (Annales, III. 53) that, after the death of Cornelius Merula, the flamenship of Jupiter remained vacant for seventy-two years, without any interruption to the special worship of this god. So that, evidently, they did not count the flamenship of Cæsar as real, since he had never entered on his office.] At sixteen, betrothed, doubtless against his will, to Cossutia, the daughter of a rich knight, he broke his engagement,[778 - “Dimissa Cossutia … quæ pretextato desponsata fuerat.” (Suetonius, Cæsar, 1.) – This passage from Suetonius clearly indicates that he was betrothed, and not married, to Cossutia; for Suetonius uses the word dimittere, which means “to free,” and not the word repudiare in its true meaning; besides, desponsata signifies betrothed. – Plutarch says that Cornelia was the first wife of Cæsar, though he pretends that he married Pompeia as his third. (Plutarch, Cæsar, 5.)] after the death of his father, to draw still closer his alliance with the popular party by marrying, a year after, in 671, Cornelia, daughter of L. Cornelius Cinna, the ancient colleague of Marius, and the representative of his cause. From this marriage was born, the following year, Julia, who became, in after time, the wife of Pompey.[779 - Plutarch, Cæsar, 5.]

Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more closely with those who were opposed to him. He wished to force him to divorce Cornelia, but he found him inflexible. When every one yielded to his will; when, by his orders, Piso separated from Annia, the widow of Cinna,[780 - Velleius Paterculus, II. 41.] and Pompey ignominiously dismissed his wife, the daughter of Antistius, who died for his cause,[781 - “What an infamy to introduce into his house a pregnant woman, with her husband still living; and to thrust from it, ignominiously and cruelly, Antistia, whose father had just perished for the husband who repudiated her!” (Plutarch, Pompey, 8.)] to marry Emilia, the daughter-in-law of the dictator, Cæsar maintained his independence at the price of his personal safety.

Become suspected, he was deprived of his priesthood,[782 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 1.] and of his wife’s dowry, and declared incapable of inheriting from his family. Obliged to conceal himself in the outskirts of Rome to escape persecution, he changed his place of retreat every night, though ill with fever; but, arrested by a band of assassins in the pay of Sylla, he gained the chief, Cornelius Phagita, by giving him two talents (about 12,000 francs),[783 - Plutarch, Cæsar, 1. – Suetonius, Cæsar, 74.] and his life was preserved. Let us note here that, arrived at sovereign power, Cæsar met this same Phagita, and treated him with indulgence, without reminding him of the past.[784 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 74.] Meanwhile, he still wandered about in the Sabine country. His courage, his constancy, his illustrious birth, his former quality of flamen, excited general interest. Soon important personages, such as Aurelius Cotta, his mother’s brother, and Mamercus Lepidus, a connection of his family, interceded in his favour.[785 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 1.] The vestals also, whose sole intervention put an end to all violence, did not spare their prayers.[786 - The vestals enjoyed great privileges: if they met by chance a criminal on his way to execution, he was set at liberty. (Plutarch, Numa, 14.) – Valerius Maximus (V. iv. 6) reports the following fact: “The vestal Claudia, seeing that a tribune of the people was about to drag her father, Appius Claudius Pulcher, with violence from his triumphal car, interfered between the tribune and him, by virtue of her right to oppose violence.” – Cicero (Oration for Cœlius, 14) likewise alludes to this celebrated anecdote.] Vanquished by so many solicitations, Sylla yielded at last, exclaiming, “Well! be it so, you will it; but know that he, whose pardon you demand, will one day ruin the party of the great for which we have fought together, for, trust me, there are several Mariuses in this young man.”[787 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 1.]

Sylla had judged truly: many Mariuses, in effect, had met together in Cæsar: Marius, the great captain, but with a larger military genius; Marius, the enemy of the oligarchy, but without hatred and without cruelty; Marius, in a word, no longer the man of a faction, but the man of his age.

Cæsar in Asia (673, 674).

III. Cæsar could not remain a cold spectator of the sanguinary reign of Sylla, and left for Asia, where he received the hospitality of Nicomedes, king of Bithynia. A short time afterwards he took part in the hostilities which continued against Mithridates. The young men of good family who wished to serve their military apprenticeship followed a general to the army. Admitted to his intimacy under the name of contubernales, they were attached to his person. It was in this capacity that Cæsar accompanied the prætor M. Minucius Thermus,[788 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 2.] who sent him to Nicomedes to claim his co-operation in the siege of Mitylene, occupied by the troops of Mithridates. Cæsar succeeded in his mission, and on his return aided in the capture of the city. Having saved the life of a Roman soldier, he received from Thermus a civic crown.[789 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 2. – Pliny, XVI. 4. – Aulus Gellius, V. 6.]

Shortly afterwards he returned to Bithynia, to defend the cause of one of his clients. His frequent presence at the court of Nicomedes served as the pretext for an accusation of shameful condescension. But Cæsar’s relations with the Bithynians may be explained quite naturally by his feelings of gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them; it was the reason which made him always defend their interests, and at a later period become their patron, as may be gathered from the fragment of a speech preserved by Aulus Gellius.[790 - C. Cæsar, grand pontiff, in his discourse for the Bithynians, thus expresses himself in his exordium: – “The hospitality which I have received from King Nicomedes, and the bond of friendship which unites me to those whose cause is under debate, do not permit me, Marcus Juncus, to decline this office (that of being the advocate of the Bithynians); for death ought not to efface from the memory of their kindred the recollection of those who have lived, and we could not, without the last degree of disgrace, abandon our clients, those to whom, after our kindred, we owe our support.” (Aulus Gellius, V. xiii. 1.)] The motives of his conduct were, nevertheless, so misconstrued, that insulting allusions are to be found in certain debates of the Senate, and even in the songs of the soldiers who followed his triumphal car.[791 - “Nothing damaged his reputation for chastity,” says Suetonius, “except his sojourn with Nicomedes; but the opprobrium which resulted from it was grave and lasting; it exposed him to the sneers of all. I will say nothing of those well-known verses of Calvus Licinius —… ‘Bithynia quidquidEt pedicator Cæsaris unquam habuit.’I will be silent on the speeches of Dolabella and Curio the father, … neither will I linger over the edicts in which Bibulus publicly exposed his colleague by speaking of him as the queen of Bithynia… M. Brutus informs us that a certain Octavius, whose craziness allowed him to say what he would, being one day in a numerous assembly, called Pompey king, then saluted Cæsar by the name of queen. C. Memmius also reproaches him for having mixed himself up with other debauchees to present Nicomedes with cups and wine at table, and he quotes the names of several Roman merchants who were among the guests… Cicero apostrophised him once in full Senate. Cæsar was defending there the cause of Nysa, daughter of Nicomedes; he recalled the obligations which he owed to this king. ‘Let us pass by all that, I beg you,’ cried Cicero: ‘we know only too well what he has given thee, and what he has received from thee.’ On his triumph over the Gauls, the soldiers, among other satirical verses which it was their custom to sing as they followed the car of the general, repeated these, which are well known: —‘Gallias Cæsar subegit, Nicomedes Cæsarem.Ecce Cæsar nunc triumphat, qui subegit Gallias;Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Cæsarem.’”(Suetonius, Cæsar, 40.)] But these sarcasms, which told rather of hatred than of truth, as Cicero himself says, magis odio firmata quam præsidio,[792 - Cicero, Letters to Atticus, II. 19.] were only set afloat by his adversaries very much later, that is to say, at one of those moments of excitement when political parties shrink from no calumny[793 - These reports, like other calumnies, were propagated by Cæsar’s enemies, such as Curio and Bibulus, and repeated in the ridiculous annals of Tanusius Geminus (Suetonius, Cæsar, 9), the authority of which Seneca despised. “Thou knowest that not much account is made of these annals of Tanusius, and how they are designated.” (Seneca, Epistle 93.) – Catullus (xxxvi. 1) gives us that term of contempt to which Seneca alludes (cacata charta).] to mutually decry each other. Notwithstanding the relaxation of morals, nothing could have ruined the reputation of Cæsar more than this accusation, for such a crime was not only abhorred in the army,[794 - “Marius had in his army a nephew, called Caius Lucius, who, overcome by a shameful passion for one of his subordinates, offered him an act of violence. The man drew his sword and killed him. Cited before the tribunal of Marius, instead of being punished he was loaded with praises by the consul, who gave him one of the crowns which were the usual reward of courage.” (Plutarch, Marius, 15.)] but, committed with a foreigner, would have been the most degrading disregard of Roman dignity. Wherefore Cæsar, whose love for women ought to have shielded him from such a suspicion, repelled it with just indignation.[795 - “Cæsar was not vexed at being accused of loving Cleopatra; but he could not bear that they should say he had been loved by Nicomedes. He swore it was a calumny.” (Xiphilinus, Julius Cæsar, p. 30, Paris edition, 1678.)]

After having made his first campaign at the siege of Mitylene, Cæsar served in the fleet of the proconsul P. Servilius (676), commissioned to make war on the Cilician pirates, who subsequently received the surname of Isauricus, because he had taken Isaura, their chief place of refuge,[796 - Orosius, V. 23.] and conquered part of Cilicia. However, he remained but a short time with Servilius, for, having been informed of the death of Sylla, he returned to Rome.[797 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 3.]

Cæsar on his return to Rome (676).

IV. The Republic, divided into two parties, was on the eve of falling into civil war through the diversity of opinion between the two consuls, Lepidus and Catulus. They were ready to come to blows. The former, elevated to the consulship by the influence of Pompey, against the advice of Sylla, fomented an insurrection. “He lighted up,” says Florus, “the fire of civil war at the very funeral pyre of the dictator.”[798 - Florus, III. 23.] He wished to abrogate the Cornelian laws, restore to the tribunes their power, to the proscribed their rights, to the allies their lands.[799 - Appian, I. 107.] These designs against the system established by the dictator agreed with Cæsar’s ideas, and endeavours were made, by seductive offers, to draw him into the intrigues which were then going on; but he kept aloof.[800 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 3.]

The Senate succeeded in making the consuls swear that they would be reconciled, and thought to ensure peace by giving each a military command. Catulus received the government of Italy, and Lepidus that of Cisalpine Gaul. The latter, before going to his province, visited Etruria, where the partisans of Marius flocked to him. The Senate, informed of these doings, recalled him to Rome, towards the end of the year, to hold the comitia.[801 - Sallust, Fragments, I., p. 363.] Lepidus, leaving Brutus the prætor encamped near Mutina (Modena), marched back to Rome at the head of his army. Beaten by Catulus and Pompey at the bridge of Milvius, he withdrew to the coast of Etruria, and, after a new defeat, fled to Sardinia, where he ended his career miserably.[802 - Florus, III. 23.] Perpenna, his lieutenant, went, with the wreck of his army, to rejoin Sertorius in Spain.

Cæsar acted wisely in keeping out of these movements, for not only did the character of Lepidus inspire him with no confidence,[803 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 3.] but he must have thought that the dictatorship of Sylla was too recent, that it had inspired too many fears, and created too many new interests, to admit of the reaction, still incomplete in men’s minds, succeeding by arms. For the present, they must limit themselves to acting on public opinion, by branding with words the instruments of the past tyranny.

The most general way of entering on a political career was by instituting a prosecution against some high personage.[804 - “The Romans regarded as honourable accusations which had no private enmity as their motive, and they liked to see young men attach themselves to the pursuit of the guilty, as generous dogs attack wild beasts.” (Plutarch, Lucullus, 1.)] Its success mattered little; the real point was to be brought prominently forward by some remarkable speech, and offer a proof of patriotism.

Cornelius Dolabella, one of the friends of Sylla, who had had the honours of the consulate and triumph, and who, two years before, was governor of Macedonia, was now accused by Cæsar of excesses committed in his government (677). He was acquitted by the tribunal composed of the creatures of the dictator.[805 - Plutarch, Cæsar, 4. – Asconius, Discourse for Scaurus, XVI. ii. 245, edit. Schütz.] Public opinion did not praise Cæsar the less for having dared to attack a man who was supported and defended by orators such as Hortensius and L. Aurelius Cotta. Besides, he displayed so much eloquence, that this first speech gave him at once a veritable celebrity.[806 - Valerius Maximus, VIII. ix. § 3. – “Cæsar was twenty-one years of age when he attacked Dolabella, in a speech which we still read to-day with admiration.” (Tacitus, Dialogue on the Orators, 34.) – According to the chronological order which we have adopted, Cæsar, instead of twenty-one, would have been twenty-three years old; but as Tacitus, in the same citation, also errs, by two years, in making Crassus, who had accused Carbo, nineteen instead of twenty-one, we may suppose that he has committed the same mistake with Cæsar. In fact, Crassus tells his own age in Cicero (On the Orators, III. 20, § 74): “Quippe qui omnium maturrime ad publicas causas accesserim, annosque natus unum et viginti nobilissimum hominem in judicium vocarim.” – Crassus, the orator, was born in 614; he accused Carbo in 635, the date given by Cicero.] Encouraged by this success, Cæsar cited C. Antonius Hybrida before the prætor M. Lucullus for having, at the head of a body of cavalry, pillaged certain parts of Greece when Sylla was returning from Asia.[807 - Plutarch, Cæsar, 3. – Asconius, Commentaries on the Oration, “In Toga Candida,” pp. 84, 89, edit. Orelli.] The accused was also acquitted, but the popularity of the accuser still increased. He also spoke, probably, in other causes now unknown. Tacitus speaks of a speech of Cæsar’s in favour of a certain Decius the Samnite,[808 - Dialogue on the Orators, 21.] without doubt the same mentioned by Cicero, who, flying from the proscription of Sylla, was kindly received by Aulus Cluentius.[809 - Cicero, Oration for Cluentius, 59. The manuscripts of Cicero bear Cn. Decitius.] Thus Cæsar boldly offered himself as the defender of the oppressed Greeks or Samnites, who had suffered so much from the regime preceding. He gained especially the good-will of the former, whose opinions, highly influential at Rome, helped to make reputations.

These attacks were certainly a means of attracting public attention, but they also showed the courage of the man, since the partisans of Sylla were still all in power.

Cæsar goes to Rhodes (678-680).

V. Notwithstanding his celebrity as an orator, Cæsar resolved to keep out of the troubles which agitated Italy, and doubtless felt his presence in Rome useless to his cause and irksome to himself. It is often advantageous to political men to disappear for a time from the scene; they thus avoid compromising themselves in daily struggles without aim, and their reputation, instead of losing, increases by absence. During the winter of 678 Cæsar again quitted Italy, for the purpose of going to Rhodes to complete his studies. This island, then the centre of intellectual lights, the dwelling-place of the most celebrated philosophers, was the school of all the well-born youth. Cicero himself had gone there for lessons some years before.

In his passage, Cæsar was taken by pirates near Pharmacusa, a small island in the archipelago of the Sporades, at the mouth of the Gulf of Jassius.[810 - This island, now called Fermaco, is at the entrance of the Gulf of Assem-Kalessi. Pliny and Stephen of Byzantium are the only geographers who mention it, and the last tells us further, that it was here that Attalus, the famous lieutenant of Philip of Macedon, was slain by Alexander’s order.] Notwithstanding the campaign of P. Servilius Isauricus, these pirates still infested the sea with numerous fleets. They demanded twenty talents (£2,329) for his ransom. He offered fifty (£11,640), which must naturally have given them a high notion of their prisoner, and insured him better treatment. He sent trusty agents, and among others Epicrates, one of his Milesian slaves, to raise this sum in the neighbouring towns.[811 - Polyænus, Stratagems, VII. 23.] Though the allied provinces and towns were in this case obliged to furnish the ransom, it was none the less curious, as a proof of their wealth, to see a young man of twenty-four, arrested in a little island of Asia Minor, instantly able to borrow so large a sum.

Left alone with a physician and two slaves[812 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 4.] in the midst of these ferocious brigands, he held them in awe by his force of character, and passed nearly forty days on board without ever loosing either his sandals or his girdle, to avoid all suspicion of wishing to escape by swimming.[813 - Velleius Paterculus, II. 41.] He seemed less a captive, says Plutarch, than a prince surrounded by his guards; now playing with them, now reciting poems to them, he made himself loved and feared, and laughingly told them that, once free, he would have them crucified.[814 - Plutarch, Cæsar, 2.] Yet the remembrance of Rome recurred to his mind, and recalled the strifes and enmities he had left there. He was often heard to say, “What pleasure Crassus will have at knowing me in these straits!”[815 - Plutarch, Crassus, 8.]

As soon as he received his ransom from Miletus and the other towns, he paid it. Landed on the coast, he hastened to equip ships, impatient to revenge himself. The pirates, surprised at anchor in the harbour of the island, were almost all made prisoners, and their booty fell into his hands. He secured them in the prison at Pergamus, to deliver them up to Junius Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, whose duty it was to punish them. But, wishing to sell them and make a profit, Junius replied in an evasive manner. Cæsar returned to Pergamus, and had them crucified.[816 - Suetonius mentions, as an act of humanity, that their corpses alone were nailed to the cross, Cæsar having had them strangled beforehand to shorten their agony. (Suetonius, Cæsar, 74. – Velleius Paterculus, II. 42.)]

He went afterwards to Rhodes, to attend the lessons of Apollonius Molo, the most illustrious of the masters of eloquence of that time, who had formerly been to Rome, in 672, as the Rhodian ambassador. About the same time one of his uncles, the proconsul M. Aurelius Cotta, was appointed governor of Bithynia, bequeathed by Nicomedes to the Roman people, and charged, with Lucullus, to oppose the new invasions of Mithridates. Cotta, beaten by land and sea near Chalcedon, was reduced to great straits, and Mithridates was advancing against Cyzicus, an allied town, which Lucullus afterwards relieved. On another side, Eumachius, a lieutenant of the King of Pontus, ravaged Phrygia, where he massacred all the Romans, and seized several of the southern provinces of Asia Minor. The rumours of war, the perils into which the allies were falling, took Cæsar from his studies. He went over into Asia, levied troops on his own authority, drove out from the province the king’s governor, and kept in allegiance towns whose faith was doubtful or shaken.[817 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 4.]

Cæsar Pontiff and Military Tribune (680-684).

VI. Whilst he was making war on the coasts of Asia, his friends at Rome did not forget him; and, seeing clearly the importance of Cæsar’s being clothed with a sacred character, they nominated him pontiff, in the place of his uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 680, who had died suddenly in Gaul the following year.[818 - Velleius Paterculus, II. 43. – Asconius, On the Oration of Cicero against Pisa; edit. Orelli.]

This circumstance obliged him to return to Rome. The sea continued to swarm with pirates, who must necessarily owe him a grudge for the death of their comrades. The better to escape them, he crossed the Adriatic in a boat of four oars, accompanied only by two friends and ten slaves.[819 - Velleius Paterculus, II. 53.] In the passage, thinking that he saw sails in the horizon, he seized his sword, resolved to sell his life dearly; but his fears were not justified, and he landed safe and sound in Italy.

Immediately on his return to Rome, he was elected military tribune, and succeeded by a large majority over his rival, C. Popilius.[820 - Suetonius, Cæsar, 5. – Plutarch, Cæsar, 5.] This already elevated rank, since it gave him the command of about a thousand men, was the first step which the young nobility easily attained, either by election or by the choice of the generals.[821 - The tribunes by the nomination of the general were usually called rufuli, because they were established by the law of Rutilius Rufus; the military tribunes elected by the people were called comitati; they were held as veritable magistrates. (Pseudo-Asconius, Commentary on the First Speech of Cicero against Verres, p. 142, edit. Orelli; and Festus under Rufuli, p. 261, edit. Müller.)] Cæsar does not seem to have profited by his new position to take part in the important wars in which the Republic was then engaged. And yet the clang of arms echoed from all quarters.

In Spain Sertorius successfully continued the war begun in 674 against the lieutenants of Sylla, joined in 677 by Perpenna, at the head of thirty cohorts,[822 - Plutarch, Sertorius, 15, 16.] he had got together a formidable army, bravely maintained the standard of Marius, and given the name of Senate to an assemblage of 300 Romans. Vanquisher of Metellus for several years, Sertorius, gifted with a vast military genius, exercising great influence over the Celtiberians and Lusitanians, and master of the passes,[823 - “The enemy was already master of the passes which lead to Italy; from the foot of the Alps, he (Pompey) drove him back to Spain.” (Sallust, Letter from Pompey to the Senate.)] was dreaming of crossing the Alps. The Spaniards had already given him the name of a second Hannibal. But Pompey, sent in all haste to Spain, reinforced the army of Metellus, deprived Sertorius of all hope of penetrating into Italy, and even drove him far back from the Pyrenees. The united efforts of the two generals, however, did not effect the subjugation of Spain, which, since 680, had been entirely re-conquered by Sertorius. But soon after this, his lieutenants experiencing reverses, desertion began among his soldiers, and he himself lost his confidence. Yet he would have resisted for a long time still, had not Perpenna caused him to be assassinated by an infamous act of treachery. This murder did not profit its author. Though Perpenna succeeded Sertorius in the command of the troops, he found himself an object of their hatred and contempt. Soon defeated and taken prisoner by Pompey, he was put to death. Thus ended the war in Spain in 682.

In Asia, Lucullus successfully pursued the campaign against Mithridates, who courageously maintained the struggle, and had even been able to come to an understanding with Sertorius. Lucullus beat him in Cappadocia (683), and forced him to take refuge with Tigranes, his son-in-law, King of Armenia, who soon experienced a sanguinary defeat, and lost his capital, Tigranocerta.

In the East, the barbarians infested the frontiers of Macedonia, the pirates of Cilicia sailed from end to end of all the seas with impunity, and the Cretans flew to arms to defend their independence.

Italy was torn by the Servile War. This disinherited class had risen up anew, despite the bloody repression of the Sicilian insurrection from 620 to 623. It had acquired the knowledge of its strength chiefly from the circumstance that each party in the civil troubles had by turns granted its liberty to increase the number of its respective adherents. In 681, seventy gladiators, kept at Capua, revolted; their chief was Spartacus, formerly a soldier, made prisoner, then sold as a slave. In less than a year his band had so much increased that consular armies were needed to combat him, and, having gained a victory in Picenum, for a moment he had entertained the thought of marching upon Rome at the head of 40,000 men.[824 - Velleius Paterculus, II. 30. – 100,000 according to Appian (Civil Wars, I. 117).] Nevertheless, forced to withdraw to the south of Italy, he contended against the Roman forces successfully for two years, when at last, in 683, Licinius Crassus, at the head of eight legions, conquered him in Apulia. Spartacus perished in the fight; the remainder of the army of slaves separated into four bodies, one of which, retiring towards Gaul, was easily dispersed by Pompey, who was returning from Spain. The 6,000 prisoners taken in the battle fought in Apulia were hanged all along the road from Capua to Rome.

Occasions for making himself perfect in the art of war were not wanting to Cæsar; but we can understand his inaction, for Sylla’s partisans alone were at the heads of the armies; in Spain, Metellus and Pompey – the first the brother-in-law of the Dictator, the second formerly his best lieutenant; in Italy, Crassus, the enemy of Cæsar, equally devoted to the party of Sylla; in Asia, Lucullus, an old friend of the Dictator, who had dedicated his “Memoirs”[825 - Plutarch, Lucullus, 8.] to him. Cæsar, then, found everywhere either a cause he would not defend, or a general under whom he would not serve. In Spain, however, Sertorius represented the party he would most willingly have embraced; but Cæsar had a horror of civil wars. Whilst faithful to his convictions, he seems, in the first years of his career, to have carefully avoided placing between him and his adversaries that eternal barrier which for ever separates the children of the same country, after blood has once been shed. He had it at heart to be able, in his exalted future, to appeal to a past pure from all violence, so that, instead of being the man of a party, he might rally round him all good citizens.

The Republic had triumphed everywhere, but she had yet to reckon with her conquering generals: she found herself in the presence of Crassus and Pompey, who, proud of their successes, advanced upon Rome at the head of their armies, to demand or seize the chief power. The Senate could be but little at ease as to the intentions of the latter, who, not long before, had sent an insolent letter from Spain, in which he menaced his country with the sword unless they sent him the supplies necessary to carry on the war against Sertorius.[826 - Sallust, Fragments, III. 258.] The same ambition animated Pompey and Crassus: neither of the two would be the first to disband his army; each, indeed, brought his own to the gates of the city. Both were elected consuls, allowed a triumph, and forced by the augurs and public opinion to be reconciled together; and they held out their hands to each other, disbanded their troops, and for some time the Republic recovered an unexpected calm.[827 - Appian, Civil Wars, I. xiv. 121.]

CHAPTER II

(684-691.)

State of the Republic (684).

I. WHEN Pompey and Crassus came to the consulship, Italy had been a prey to intestine convulsions for sixty-three years. But, notwithstanding the repose which society demanded, and which the reconciliation of the two rivals seemed to promise, many opposing passions and interests still seethed in her bosom.[828 - “The Republic, wounded and sick, so to say, had need of repose, no matter at what price.” (Sallust, Fragments, I. 68.)]

Sylla believed he had re-established the Republic on its ancient basis, but, instead, he had thrown everything into disorder. The property, the life even of each citizen, was at the mercy of the stronger; the people had lost the right of appeal, and their legitimate share in the elections; the poor, the distribution of wheat; the tribuneship, its secular privileges; and the influential order of the knights, their political and financial importance.

At Rome, no more guarantee for justice; in Italy, no more security for the rights of citizenship, so dearly acquired; in the provinces, no more consideration for subjects and allies. Sylla had restored their prerogatives to the upper class without being able to restore their former prestige; having made use of only corrupt elements, and appealed to only sordid passions, he left behind him a powerless oligarchy, and a thoroughly distracted people. The country was divided between those whom his tyranny had enriched and those whom it had despoiled; the one fearing to lose what they had just acquired, the other hoping to regain what they had lost.

The aristocracy, proud of their wealth and ancestry, absorbed in all the pleasures of luxury, kept the new men[829 - “We see how far are carried the jealousy and animosity which the virtue and activity of the new men light up in the heart of certain nobles. If we turn away our eyes never so little, what snares do they not lay for us! One would say that they were of another nature, another kind, so much are their feelings and wishes opposed to ours.” (Cicero, Second Prosecution of Verres, v. 71.) – “The nobility transmitted from hand to hand this supreme dignity (the consulship), of which they were in exclusive possession. Every new man, whatever his renown and the glory of his deeds, appeared unworthy of this honour; he was as if sullied by the stain of his birth.” (Sallust, Jugurtha, 63.)] out of the highest offices, and, by a long continuance of power, had come to look on the chief magistracies as their property. Cato, in a discourse to the Senate, exclaimed: – “Instead of the virtues of our ancestors we have luxury and avarice; the poverty of the State, and the opulence of individuals; we boast of our riches, we cherish idleness; no distinction is made between the good and the wicked; all rewards due to merit are the price of intrigue. Why then are we astonished at this, since each man, isolating himself from the rest, consults only his own interest? At home, the slaves of pleasure; here, of wealth or of favour.”[830 - Sallust, Catilina, 52.]

The elections had for a long time been the result of a shameless traffic, where every mean of success was allowable. Lucullus himself, to obtain the government of Asia, did not blush to have recourse to the good offices of a courtesan, the mistress of Cethegus.[831 - Plutarch, Lucullus, 9.] The sale of consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that the several instruments of electoral corruption had functions and titles almost recognised. Those who bought votes were called divisores; the go-betweens were interpretes; and those with whom was deposited the purchase money[832 - Cicero, First Prosecution of Verres, 8, 9, 12; Second Prosecution, i. 29. – Pseudo-Asconius, On the first Prosecution of Verres, page 145, edit. Orelli. The orations of Cicero are full of allusions to these agents for the purchase of votes and judges.] were sequestres. Numerous secret societies were formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage; they were divided into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a supreme head, who treated with the candidates and sold the votes of the associates, either for money, or on the stipulation of certain advantages for himself or his friends. These societies carried most of the elections, and Cicero himself, who so often boasted of the unanimity with which he had been chosen consul, owed to them a great part of the suffrages he obtained.[833 - “In these later years, the men who make a trade of intriguing in elections have been enabled, by diligence and address, to obtain from the citizens of their tribes all that they chose to demand. Endeavour, by any means you will, to make these men serve you sincerely and with the steadfast will to succeed. You would obtain it if men were as grateful as they ought to be; and you will obtain it, I am afraid, since, for two years, four societies of those most influential in elections – those of Marcus Fundanius, Quintas Gallius, Gaius Cornelius, and Gaius Orcivius – have engaged themselves for you. I was present when the causes of these men were entrusted to you, and I know what was promised to you, and what guarantees have been given to you by their associates.” (On the Petition for the Consulship addressed to Cicero by his brother Quintus, 5.)]

All the sentences of the tribunals composed of senators were dictated by a venality so flagrant, that Cicero brands it in these terms: – “I will demonstrate by positive proofs the guilty intrigues, the infamies which have sullied the judicial powers for the ten years that they have been entrusted to the Senate. The Roman people shall learn from me how the knightly order has administered justice for nearly fifty consecutive years, without the faintest suspicion resting on any of its members of having received money for a judgment delivered; how, since senators alone have composed our tribunals, since the people have been despoiled of the right which they had over each of us, Q. Calidius has been able to say, after his condemnation, that they could not honestly require less than 300,000 sestertii to condemn a prætor; how, when the senator P. Septimius was found guilty of embezzlement before the prætor Hortensius, the money he had received in his quality of judge was included in his fine; how C. Herennius and C. Popilius, both senators, having been convicted of the crime of peculation, and M. Atilius of the crime of high treason, it was proved that they had received money as the price of one of their sentences; how it was found that certain senators, when their names were taken from the urn held by C. Verres, then prætor urbanus, instantly went to vote against the accused, without having heard the suit; how, finally, we have seen a senator, judge in this same suit, receive money from the accused to distribute to the other judges, and money from the accuser to condemn the accused. Can I, then, sufficiently deplore this blot, this shame, this calamity which weighs on the whole order?”[834 - Cicero, First Prosecution of Verres, 13.]

Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against the avidity of the generals and farmers of the revenues, notwithstanding the patronage of the great at Rome, the conquered peoples[835 - “Each city of the conquered peoples has a patron at Rome.” (Appian, Civil Wars, II. 4.)] were always a prey to the exactions of the magistrates, and Verres was a type of the most shameless immorality, which drew this exclamation from Cicero: “All the provinces groan; all free peoples lament; all the kingdoms cry out against our cupidity and our violence. There is not between the Ocean and ourselves a spot so remote or so little known that the injustice and tyranny of our fellow-citizens of these days have not penetrated to it.”[836 - Cicero, Second Prosecution of Verres, III. 89. Cicero adds in a letter, “We may judge, by the sufferings of our own fellow-citizens, of what the inhabitants of the provinces have to endure from the public farmers (publicani). When several tolls were suppressed in Italy, remonstrances were made not so much against the principle of taxation as against abuses in levying it, and the cries of the Romans on the soil of the country tell only too plainly what must be the fate of the allies at the extremity of the empire.” (Letters to Quintus, I. 1, § 33.)] The inhabitants of foreign countries were obliged to borrow, either to satisfy the immoderate demands of their governors and their retinue, or to pay the farmers of the public revenues. Now, capital being nowhere but at Rome, they could only procure it at an excessive rate of interest; and the nobles, giving themselves up to usury, held the provinces in their power.

The army itself had been demoralised by civil wars, and the chiefs no longer maintained discipline. “Flamininus, Aquilius, Paulus Æmilius,” says Dio Cassius, “commanded men well disciplined, who had learnt to execute the orders of their generals in silence. The law was their rule; with a royal soul, simple in life, bounding their expenses within reasonable limits, they held it more shameful to flatter the soldiery than to fear the enemy. From the time of Sylla, on the contrary, the generals, raised to the first rank by violence and not by merit, forced to turn their arms against each other rather than against the enemy, were reduced to court popularity. Charged with the command, they squandered gold to procure enjoyments for an army, the fatigues of which they paid dearly; they rendered their country venal, without caring for it; and made themselves the slaves of the most depraved men, to bring under their authority those who were worth more than themselves. This is what drove Marius out of Rome, and led him back against Sylla; this is what made Cinna the murderer of Octavius, and Fimbria the murderer of Flaccus. Sylla was the principal cause of these evils, he who, to seduce the soldiers enrolled under other chiefs, and bring them under his own flag, scattered gold in handfuls among his army.”[837 - Dio Cassius, 86; Fragments, CCCI. edit. Gros.]

Far were they from the times when the soldier, after a short campaign, laid down his arms to take up the plough again; since then, retained under his standards for long years, and returning in the train of a victorious general to vote in the Campus Martius, the citizen had disappeared; there remained the warrior, with the sole inspiration of the camp. At the end of the expeditions, the army was disbanded, and Italy thus found itself overrun with an immense number of veterans, united in colonies or dispersed over the territory, more inclined to follow a leader than to obey the law. The veterans of the ancient legions of Marius and Sylla were to be counted by hundreds of thousands.

A State, moreover, is often weakened by an exaggeration of the principle on which it rests; and as war was the chief occupation at Rome, all the institutions had originally a military character. The consuls, the first magistrates of the Republic, elected by centuries – that is to say, by the people voting under arms – commanded the troops. The army, composed of all there was most honourable in the nation, did not take an oath to the Republic, but to the chief who recruited it and led it against the enemy; this oath, religiously kept, rendered the generals the absolute masters of their soldiers, who, in their turn, decreed to them the title of Imperator after a victory: what more natural, then, even after the transformation of society, than that these soldiers should believe themselves the real people, and the generals elected by them the legitimate chiefs of the Republic? Every abuse has deep roots in the past, and we may find the original cause of the power of the prætorians under the emperors in the primitive organisation and functions of the centuries established by Servius Tullius.