The history of Rome

THE

HISTORY OF ROME

MOMMSEN

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THE

HISTORY OF ROiME

BY

THEODOR MOMMSEN

TRANSLATED
WITH THE SANCTION OF THE AUTHOR

BY

WILLIAM PURDIE DICKSON, D.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OUtSCOW

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CONTKNTS

BOOK FOURTH
The Revolution — Continued

CHAPTER VIII

PACK

The East anu King Mithradates .... 3

CHAPTER IX
CiNNA AND Sulla ...... 56

CHAPTER -X
The Sullan Constitution ..... 97

CHAPTER XI
The Co.m.monweai.th and its Economy '53

CHAPTER XII
Nationality, Kelic.ion, and Education .180

CHAPTER XIII

LiTRRATURF. AND .XrT. . ?I0

VI CONTENTS

BOOK FIFTH

The ESTABLISHINIENT OF THE MILITARY MONARCHY

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius . . .263

CHAPTER II
Rule of the Sui.lan Restoration . . -305

CHAPTER III

The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of PoiMpeius 370

CHAPTER IV

POMPEIUS AND THE EaST ..... 4°°

CHAPTER V

The Struggle of Parties during the Absence of

PoMPEius .....•• 453

CHAPTER VI

Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pre-
tenders . . . . • • • 492

BOOK FOURTH

THE REVOLUTION
Contimied

vol.. IV lOI

CHAPTER VITI

THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES

The state of breathless excitement, in which the revolution State of
kept the Roman government by perpetually renewing the '^'^ ^^^
alarm of fire and the cry to quench it, made them lose sight
of provincial matters generally ; and that most of all in the
case of the Asiatic lands, whose remote and unwarlike
nations did not thrust themselves so directly on the atten-
tion of the government as Africa, Spain, and its Transalpine
neighbours. After the annexation of the kingdom of
Attalus, which took place contemporaneously with the
outbreak of Ihe revolution, for a whole generation there is
hardly any evidence of Rome taking a serious part in
Oriental affairs — with the exception of the establishment
of the province of Cilicia in 652 (iii. 3S2), to which the 102.
Romans were driven by the boundless audacity of the
Cilician pirates, and which was in reality nothing more
than the institution of a permanent station for a small
division of the Roman army and fleet in the eastern waters. .

It was not till the downfall of Marius in 654 had in some 100. J
measure consolidated the government of the restoration,
that the Roman authorities began anew to bestow some
attention on the events in the east

In many respects matters still stood as they had done F-ir»'pt-
thirty years ago. The kingdom of Egypt with its two

4 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

appendages of Cyrene and Cyprus was broken up, partly
117. de jure, partly de facto, on the death of Euergetes 11. (637).
Cyrene went to his natural son, Ptolemaeus Apion, and
was for ever separated from Eg}'pt. The sovereignty of
the latter formed a subject of contention between the
89. widow of the last king Cleopatra (f 665), and his two sons
81. 88. Soter II. Lathyrus (f 673) and Alexander I. (f 666);
which gave occasion to Cyprus also to separate itself for
Cyrene a considerable period from Egypt. The Romans did
Roman. ^^^ interfere in these complications ; in fact, when the
96. Cyrenaean kingdom fell to them in 658 by the testament
of the childless king Apion, while not directly rejecting the
acquisition, they left the country in substance to itself by
declaring the Greek towns of the kingdom, Cyrene,
Ptolemais, and Berenice, free cities and even handing over
to them the use of the royal domains. The supervision of
the governor of Africa over this territory was from its
remoteness merely nominal, far more so than that of the
governor of Macedonia over the Hellenic free cities. The
consequences of this measure — which beyond doubt
originated not in Philhellenism, but simply in the weakness
and negligence of the Roman government — were sub-
stantially similar to those which had occurred under the
like circumstances in Hellas ; civil wars and usurpations so
rent the land that, when a Roman officer of rank accident-
86. ally made his appearance there in 668, the inhabitants
urgently besought him to regulate their affairs and to
establish a permanent government among them.
Syria. In Syria also during the interval there had not been

much change, and still less any improvement. During the
twenty years' war of succession between the two half-brothers
96. 95. Antiochus Grypus (f 658) and Antiochus of Cyzicus(t 659),
which after their death was inherited by their sons, the
kingdom which was the object of contention became almost
an empty name, inasmuch as the Cilician sea-kings, the

Parthian
state.

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 5

Arab sheiks of the Syrian desert, the princes of the Jews,
and the magistrates of the larger towns had ordinarily more
to say than the wearers of the diadem. Meanwhile the
Romans established themselves in western Cilicia, and the
important Mesopotamia passed over definitively to the I'ar-
thians.

The monarchy of the Arsacids had to pass through a The
dangerous crisis about the time of the Gracchi, chiefly in
consequence of the inroads of Turanian tribes. The ninth
Arsacid, Mithradates II. or the Great (63o?-667?), had 124-87.
recovered for the state its position of ascendency in the
interior of Asia, repulsed the Scythians, and advanced the
frontier of the kingdom towards Syria and Armenia ; but
towards the end of his life new troubles disturbed his reign ;
and, while the grandees of the kingdom including his own
brother Orodes rebelled against the king and at length that
brother overthrew him and had put him to death, the
hitherto unimportant Armenia rose into power. This Armenia.
country, which since its declaration of independence
(ii. 473) had been divided into the north-eastern portion
or Armenia proper, the kingdom of the Artaxiads, and the
south-western or Sophenc, the kingdom of the Zariadrids,
was for the first time united into one kingdom by the
Artaxiad Tigranes (who had reigned since 660) ; and this 94.
doubling of his power on the one hand, and the weakness
of the Parthian rule on the other, enabled the new king of
all Armenia not only to free himself from dependence on
the Parthians and to recover the provinces formerly ceded
to them, but even to bring to Armenia the titular supremacy
of Ashy as it had passed from the Achaemcnids to (h>
Seleucids and from the Selcucids to the Arsacids.

Lastly in Asia Minor the territorial arrangements, which Asia
had been made under Roman influence after the dissolution
of the kingdom of Attains (iii. 2S0), still subsisted in the
main unchanged. In the condition of the dependent states

6 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

— the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia, Pontus, the prin-
cipalities of Paphlagonia and Galatia, the numerous city-
leagues and free towns — no outward change was at first
discernible. But, intrinsically, the character of the Roman
rule had certainly undergone everywhere a material altera-
tion. Partly through the constant growth of oppression
naturally incident to every tyrannic government, partly
through the indirect operation of the Roman revolution —
in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the soil in
the province of Asia by Gaius Gracchus, in the Roman
tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the
collectors of the revenue added to their other avocations
there — the Roman rule, barely tolerable even from the
first, pressed so heavily on Asia that neither the crown of
the king nor the hut of the peasant there was any longer
safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn seemed to
grow for the Roman decumafius, and every child of free
parents seemed to be born for the Roman slave-drivers.
It is true that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his
inexhaustible passive endurance ; but it was not patience
and reflection that made him bear it peacefully. It was
rather the peculiarly Oriental lack of initiative ; and in
these peaceful lands, amidst these effeminate nations,
strange and terrible things might happen, if once there
should appear among them a man who knew how to give
the signal for revolt.
Mithra- There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus

Eu*^at r Mithradates VI. surnamed Eupator (born about 624, f 691)
130-63. who traced back his lineage on the father's side in the six-
teenth generation to king Darius the son of Hystaspes and
in the eighth to Mithradates I. the founder of the Pontic
kingdom, and was on the mother's side descended from
the Alexandrids and the Seleucids. After the early death
of his father Mithradates Euergetes, who fell by the hand
of an assassin at Sinope, he had received the title of king

CHAP, vin THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 7

about 634, when a boy of eleven years of age; but the 120.
diadem brought to him only trouble and danger. His
guardians, and even as it would seem his own mother
called to take a part in the government by his father's will,
conspired against the boy- king's life. It is said that, in
order to escape from the daggers of his legal protectors, he
became of his own accord a wanderer, and during seven
years, changing his resting-place night after night, a fugitive
in his own kingdom, led the homeless life of a hunter.
Thus the boy grew into a powerful man. Although our
accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to
written records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradi-
tion, which is generated in the east with the rapidity of
lightning, early adorned the mighty king with many of
the traits of its Samsons and Rustems. These traits, how-
ever, belong to the character, just as the crown of clouds
belongs to the character of the highest mountain - peaks ;
the outlines of the figure appear in both cases only more
coloured and fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered.
The armour, which fitted the gigantic frame of king Mithra-
dates, excited the wonder of the Asiatics and still more that
of the Italians. As a runner he overtook the swiftest deer ;
as a rider he broke in the wild steed, and was able by
changing horses to accomplish 120 miles in a day; as a
charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand, and gained in
competition many a prize — it was dangerous, no doubt, in
such sport to carry off victory from the king. In hunting
on horseback, he hit the game at full gallop and never
missed his aim. He challenged competition at table also
— he arranged banqueting matches and carried off in person
the prizes proposed for the most substantial eater and the
hardest drinker — and not less so in the pleasures of the
harem, as was shown among other things by the licentious
letters of his Greek mistresses, which were found among
his papers. His intellectual wants he satisfied by the

8 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

wildest superstition — the interpretation of dreams and the
Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king's hours —
and by a rude adoption of Hellenic civilization. He was
fond of Greek art and music ; that is to say, he collected
precious articles, rich furniture, old Persian and Greek
objects of luxury — his cabinet of rings was famous — he had
constantly Greek historians, philosophers, and poets in his
train, and proposed prizes at his court-festivals not only for
the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest
jester and the best singer. Such was the man ; the sultan
corresponded. In the east, where the relation between
the ruler and the ruled bears the character of natural rather
than of moral law, the subject resembles the dog alike in
fidelity and in falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful.
In both respects Mithradates has hardly been surpassed.
By his orders there died or pined in perpetual captivity for
real or alleged treason his mother, his brother, his sister
espoused to him, three of his sons and as many of his
daughters. Still more revolting perhaps is the fact, that
among his secret papers were found sentences of death,
drawn up beforehand, against several of his most con-
fidential servants. In like manner it was a genuine trait
of the sultan, that he afterwards, for the mere purpose of
withdrawing from his enemies the trophies of victor}',
caused his two Greek wives, his sister and his whole harem
to be put to death, and merely left to the women the
choice of the mode of dying. He prosecuted the experi-
mental study of poisons and antidotes as an important
branch of the business of government, and tried to inure
his body to particular poisons. He had early learned to
look for treason and assassination at the hands of every-
body and especially of his nearest relatives, and he had
early learned to practise them against everybody and most
of all against those nearest to him ; of which the necessary
consequence — attested by all his history — was, that all his

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 9

undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those
whom he trusted. At the same time we doubtless meet
with isolated traits of high - minded justice : when he
punished traitors, he ordinarily spared those who had
become involved in the crime simply from their personal
relations with the leading culprit ; but such fits of equity
are not wholly wanting in every barbarous tyrant What
really distinguishes jMithradates amidst the multitude of
similar sultans, is his boundless activity. He disappeared
one fine morning from his palace and remained unheard of
for months, so that he was given over as lost ; when he
returned, he had wandered incognito through all western
Asia and reconnoitred everywhere the country and the
people. In like manner he was not only in general a man
of fluent speech, but he administered justice to each of the
twenty-two nations over which he ruled in its own language
without needing an interpreter — a trait significant of the
versatile ruler of the many-tongued east. His whole activity
as a ruler bears the same character. So far as we know
(for our authorities are unfortunately altogether silent as to
his internal administration) his energies, like those of every
other sultan, were spent in collecting treasures, in assem-
bling armies — which were usually, in his earlier years at least,
led against the enemy not by the king in person, but by
some Greek condottierc — in efforts to add new satrapies to
the old. Of higher elements — desire to advance civiliza-
tion, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special
gifts of genius — there are found, in our traditional accounts
at least, no distinct traces in Mithradates, and we have no
reason to place him on a level even with the great rulers
of the Osmans, such as Mohammed H. and Suleiman.
Notwithstanding his Hellenic culture, which sat on him
not much better than the Roman armour sat on his Cappa-
docians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary
stamp, coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, super-

lo THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

slitious, cruel, perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous
in organization, so powerful in physical endowments, that
his defiant laying about him and his unshaken courage in
resistance look frequently like talent, sometimes even like
genius. Granting that during the death-struggle of the re-
public it was easier to offer resistance to Rome than in the
times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only the complica-
tion of the Asiatic events with the internal commotions of
Italy which rendered it possible for Mithradates to resist the
Romans twice as long as Jugurtha did, it remains neverthe-
less true that before the Parthian wars he was the only enemy
who gave serious trouble to the Romans in the east, and that
he defended himself against them as the lion of the desert
defends himself against the hunter. Still we are not entitled,
in accordance with what we know, to recognize in him more
than the resistance to be expected from so vigorous a nature.
But, whatever judgment we may form as to the
individual character of the king, his historical position
remains in a high degree significant. The Mithradatic wars
formed at once the last movement of the political opposition
offered by Hellas to Rome, and the beginning of a revolt
against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and
far deeper grounds of antagonism — the national reaction of
the Asiatics against the Occidentals. The empire of
Mithradates was, like himself. Oriental ; polygamy and the
system of the harem prevailed at court and generally among
persons of rank ; the religion of the inhabitants of the country
as well as the official religion of the court was pre-eminently
the old national worship ; the Hellenism there was
little different from the Hellenism of the Armenian Tigra-
nids and the Arsacids of the Parthian empire. The
Greeks of Asia Minor might imagine for a brief moment
that they had found in this king a support for their political
dreams ; his battles were really fought for matters very
different from those which were decided on the fields of

Minor.

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRAUATES ii

Magnesia and Pydna. They formed — after a long truce —
a new passage in the huge duel between the west and the
east, which has been transmitted from the conflicts at
Marathon to the present generation and will perhaps reckon
its future by thousands of years as it has reckoned its past.

Manifest however as is the foreign and un-Hellcnic cha- The
racter of the whole life and action of the Cappadocian king, "j^'of
it is difficult definitely to specify the national element pre- Asia
ponderating in it, nor will research perhaps ever succeed in
getting beyond generalities or in attaining clear views on
this point. In the whole circle of ancient civilization there
is no region where the stocks subsisting side by side or cross-
ing each other were so numerous, so heterogeneous, so
variously from the remotest times intermingled, and where
in consequence the relations of the nationalities were less
clear than in Asia Minor. The Semitic population continued
in an unbroken chain from Syria to Cyprus and Cilicia, and
to it the original stock of the population along the west
coast in the regions of Caria and Lydia seems also to have
belonged, while the north-western point was occupied by the
Bithynians, who were akin to the Thracians in Europe. The
interior and the north coast, on the other hand, were filled
chiefly by Indo-Germanic peoples most nearly cognate to the
Iranian. In the case of the Armenian and Phr)*gian
languages ^ it is ascertained, in that of the Cappadocian it
is highly probable, that they had immediate affinity with the
Zend ; and the statement made as to the Mysians, that
among them the Lydian and Phrj'gian languages met, just
denotes a mixed Semitic-Iranian population that may be
compared perhajjs with that of Assyria. As to the regions
stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially I.ydia,
there is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the native

' The words quoted as Phrygian 8070101 = Zeus and thf- nW r^rri! rnme
Mdus have been beyond doubt correctly referred to tli I

and the Germanic A/annus, Indian .tAi/iu^ (I^asscn, Zfi.'-. •• • -"'

mors^inldnJ. Ceiellichaft, vol. x. p. 329 f. ).

12 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

language and writing that are in this particular instance
extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable
that these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo-
Germans rather than the Semites. How all this confused
mass of peoples was overlaid first with a net of Greek
mercantile cities, and then with the Hellenism called into
life by the military as well as intellectual ascendency ot
the Greek nation, has been set forth in outline already.
Pontus. In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first

of all in Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it
was called, a district in which, situated as it was at the north-
eastern extremity of Asia Minor towards Armenia and in
constant contact with the latter, the Iranian nationality pre-
sumably preserved itself with less admixture than anywhere
else in Asia Minor. Not even Hellenism had penetrated far
into that region. With the exception of the coast where several
originally Greek settlements subsisted — especially the im-
portant commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all
Sinope, the birthplace and residence of Mithradates and the
most flourishing city of the empire — the country was still in a
very primitive condition. Not that it had lain waste ; on the
contrar)', as the region of Pontus is still one of the most fertile
on the face of the earth, with its fields of grain alternating
with forests of wild fruit trees, it was bevond doubt even
in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also compara-
tively populous. But there were hardly any towns properly
so called ; the country possessed nothing but strongholds,
which served the peasants as places of refuge and the king
as treasuries for the custody of the revenues which accrued
to him ; in the Lesser Armenia alone, in fact, there were
counted seventy-five of these little royal forts. We do not
find that Mithradates materially contributed to promote the
growth of towns in his empire ; and situated as he was, — in
practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite conscious,
reaction against Hellenism, — this is easily conceivable.

CHAP, viri THE EAST AND KINT, MITIIRADATES 13

He appears more actively employed — likewise quite in Acquis!-
the Oriental style — in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, J].'^,^,!^^
which was even then not small, though its compass is prob- by Muhm
ably over-stated at 2300 miles ; we find his armies, his fleets, '''^'**"
and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well as towards
Armenia and towards Asia Minor. But nowhere did so free
and ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern
and northern shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at
that time we must not omit to glance at, however difticult
or in fact impossible it is to give a really distinct idea of it.
On the eastern coast of the Black Sea — which, previously
almost unknown, was first opened up to more general
knowledge by Mithradates — the region of Colchis on the
Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important com- Colchis,
mercial town of Dioscurias was wrested from the native
princes and converted into a satrapy of Pontus. Of still
greater moment were his enterprises in the northern regions.^
The wide steppes destitute of hills and trees, which stretch Northern
to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus, and of the ^J;°'" °[
Caspian, arc by reason of their natural conditions — more .s^^
especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating
between the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and
from the absolute destitution of rain or snow which occurs
not unfrequently and lasts for a period of twenty-two months
or longer — little adapted for agriculture or for permanent
settlement at all ; and they always were so, although two
thousand years ago the state of the climate was presumably
somewhat less unfavourable than it is at the present

' They are here grouped together, because, though ihcy were in jxirt
doubtless not executed till between the first and the second war with Kcmir.
they to some extent preceded even the first (Mcmn. 30 ; Justin, xxxviii. 7
ap.Jin. ; App. Mithr. 13 ; Eutrop. v. 5) and a narrative in chronologicnl
order is in this case absolutely impracticable. Even the recently found
decree of Chersonesus (p. 17) h;is given no information in this respect.
According to it Diophantus was twice sent against the Taurian Sc>-thian3 ;
but that the second insurrection of these is conncctetl with the decrre of
the Roman senate in favour of the Scythian princes (p. 21) is not clear
from the document, and is not even probable.

14

THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

Hellenism
in that
quarter.

day.^ The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them
into these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and
led (and still to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life
with their herds of oxen or still more frequently of horses,
changing their places of abode and pasture, and carrying
their effects along with them in waggon-houses. Their
equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode
of life ; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great
measure on horseback and always in loose array, equipped
with helmet and coat of mail of leather and leather-covered
shield, armed with sword, lance, and bow — the ancestors of
the modern Cossacks. The Scythians originally settled
there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race and akin
in their habits and physical appearance to the present
inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian
tribes advancing from east to west, — Sauromatae, Roxolani,
Jazyges, — who are commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent,
although the proper names, which we are entitled to ascribe
to them, show more affinity with Median and Persian names
and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the great
Zend stock. Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direc-
tion, particularly the Getae, who reached as far as the
Dniester. Between the two there intruded themselves —
probably as offsets of the great Germanic migration, the
main body of which seems not to have touched the Black
Sea — the Celts, as they were called, on the Dnieper, the
Bastarnae in the same quarter, and the Peucini at the mouth
of the Danube. A state, in the proper sense, was nowhere
formed; every tribe lived by itself under its princes and
elders.

In sharp contrast to all these barbarians stood the

^ It is very probable that the extraordinary drought, which is the chief
obstacle now to agriculture in the Crimea and in these regions generally,
has been greatly increased by the disappearance of the forests of central and
southern Russia, which formerly to some extent protected the coast-provinces
from the parching north-cast wind.

CHAP. VIII Tin: EAST AND KIXCl MITIIRADATES 15

Hellenic settlements, which at the time of the mij^hty
impetus given to Greek commerce had been founded chiefly
by the efforts of Miletus on these coasts, partly as trading-
marts, partly as stations for prosecuting,' important fisheries
and even for agriculture, for which, as we have already said,
the north-western shores of the Black Sea presented in
antiquity conditions less unfavourable than at the present
day. For the use of the soil the Hellenes paid here, like
the Phoenicians in Libya, tax and ground-rent to the native
rulers. The most important of these settlements were the
free city of Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), built on
the territory of the Scythians in the Tauric peninsula
(Crimea), and maintaining itself in moderate prosperity,
under circumstances far from favourable, by virtue of its
good constitution and the public spirit of its citizens ; and
Panticapaeum (Kertch) at the opposite side of the peninsula
on the straits leading from the Black Sea to the Sea of
Azov, governed since the year 457 by hereditary burgo- 297.
masters, afterwards called kings of the Bosporus, the
Archaeanactidae, Spartocidae, and Paerisadae. The culture
of corn and the fisheries of the Sea of Azov had rapidly
raised the city to prosperity. Its territory still in the time
of Mithradates embraced the lesser eastern division of the
Crimea including the town of Theodosia, and on the
opposite Asiatic continent the town of Phanagoria and the
district of Sindica. In better times the lords of Panti-
capaeum had by land ruled the peoples on the east
coast of the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Kuban, and
had commanded the Black Sea with their fleet ; but Panti-
capaeum was no longer what it had been. Nowhere was
the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt more deeply
than at these distant outposts. Athens in its good times
had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the
duties of a leading power — duties which certainly were
specially brought home to the Athenians by their need of

l6

THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

Mithra-
dates
master of
the Bos-
poran
kingdom.

Pontic grain. After the downfall of the Attic maritime
power these regions were, on the whole, left to themselves.
The Greek land -powers never got so far as to intervene
seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and
Lysimachus sometimes attempted it ; and the Romans, on
whom with the conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor
devolved the political obligation of becoming the strong
protectors of Greek civilization at the point where it needed
such protection, utterly neglected the summons of interest
as well as of honour. The fall of Sinope, the decline of
Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the
northern shore of the Black Sea. A vivid picture of their
position with reference to the roving barbarians is given to
us by an inscription of Olbia (near Oczakow not far from
the mouth of the Dnieper), which apparently may be placed
not long before the time of Mithradates. The citizens had
not only to send annual tribute to the court-camp of the
barbarian king, but also to make him a gift when he
encamped before the town or even simply passed by, and
in a similar way to buy off minor chieftains and in fact
sometimes the whole horde with presents ; and it fared ill
with them if the gift appeared too small. The treasury of
the town was bankrupt and they had to pledge the temple-
jewels. Meanwhile the savage tribes were thronging with-
out in front of the gates ; the territory was laid waste, the
field-labourers were dragged away en masse, and, what was
worst of all, the weaker of their barbarian neighbours, the
Scythians, sought, in order to shelter themselves from the
pressure of the more savage Celts, to obtain possession of
the walled town, so that numerous citizens were leaving it
and the inhabitants already contemplated its entire surrender.
Such was the state in which Mithradates found matters,
when his Macedonian phalanx crossing the ridge of the
Caucasus descended into the valleys of the Kuban and
Terek and his fleet at the same time appeared in the

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 17

Crimean waters. No wonder that here too, as had already
been the case in Dioscurias, the Hellenes everywhere
received the king of Pontus with open arms and regarded
the half- Hellene and his Cappadocians armed in Greek
fashion as their deliverers. What Rome had here neglected,
became apparent. The demands on the rulers of Panti-
capaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exor-
bitant height ; the town of Chersonesus found itself hard
pressed by Scilurus king of the Scythians dwelling in the
peninsula and his fifty sons ; the former were glad to sur-
render their hereditary lordship, and the latter their long-
preserved freedom, in order to save their last possession,
their Hellenism. It was not in vain. Mithradates' brave
generals, Diophantus and Neoptolemus, and his disciplined
troops easily got the better of the peoples of the steppes.
Neoptolemus defeated them at the straits of Panticapaeum
partly by water, partly in winter on the ice ; Chersonesus
was delivered, the strongholds of the Taurians were broken,
and the possession of the peninsula was secured by judi-
ciously constructed fortresses. Diophantus marched against
the Reuxinales or, as they were afterwards called, the
Roxolani (between the Dnieper and Don) who came forward
to the aid of the Taurians ; 50,000 of them fled before his
6000 phalangites, and the Pontic arms penetrated as far as
the Dnieper.^ Thus Mithradates acquired here a second

^ The recently discovered decree of the town of Chersonesus in honour
of this Diophantus (Dittenberger, Syll. n. 252) thoroughly confirms the
traditional account It shows us the city in the immediate vicinity — the
port of Balaclava must at that time have been in the power of the Tauri
and Simferopol in that of the Scythians — hard pressctl partly by the Tauri
on the south coast of the Crimea, partly and cs|K'ci.illy by the Sc\th:.ms
who held in their power the whole interior of the peninsula and the iiiam-
land adjoining ; it shows us further how the general of king Mithradates
relieves on all sides the Greek city, defeats the Tauri, and erects in their
territory a stronghold (probably Eupatorion), restores the connection
between the western and the eastern Hellenes of the pcnins .' r-

powers in the west the dyn.isty of .Scilunis, and in the e.ist " s

prince of the Scythians, pursues the Scythians even to the niainlan.!, and .it
length conquers them with the Reuxinales — such is the name given to tlic

VOL. IV '02

i8

THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES

BOOK IV

Lesser
Armenia.

Alliance

with

Tigranes.

kingdom combined with that of Pontus and, Uke the latter,
mainly based on a number of Greek commercial towns.
It was called the kingdom of the Bosporus ; it embraced
the modern Crimea with the opposite Asiatic promontory,
and annually furnished to the royal chests and magazines
200 talents (;^48,ooo) and 270,000 bushels of grain. The
tribes of the steppe themselves from the north slope of the
Caucasus to the mouth of the Danube entered, at least in
great part, into relations of dependence on, or treaty with,
the Pontic king and, if they furnished him with no other
aid, afforded at any rate an inexhaustible field for recruiting
his armies.

While thus the most important successes were gained
towards the north, the king at the same time extended his
dominions towards the east and the west. The Lesser
Armenia was annexed by him and converted from a de-
pendent principality into an integral part of the Pontic
kingdom ; but still more important was the close connection
which he formed with the king of the Greater Armenia.
He not only gave his daughter Cleopatra in marriage to
Tigranes, but it was mainly through his support that Tigranes
shook off the yoke of the Arsacids and took their place in
Asia. An agreement seems to have been made between
the two to the effect that Tigranes should take in hand to
occupy Syria and the interior of Asia, and Mithradates
Asia Minor and the coasts of the Black Sea, under promise
of mutual support ; and it was beyond doubt the more active
and capable Mithradates who brought about this agreement
with a view to cover his rear and to secure a powerful ally.

later Roxolani here, where they first appear — in the great pitched battle,
which is mentioned also in the traditional account. There does not seem
to have been any formal subordination of the Greek city under the king ;
Mithradates appears only as protecting ally, who fights the battles against
the Scythians that passed as invincible {roi's dwiroaTCLTov^ SoKovvras elfifv),
on behalf of the Greek city, which probably stood to liim nearly in the
relation of Massilia and Athens to Rome. The Scythians on the other
hand in the Crimea become subjects {vTraKooi) of Mithradates.

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 19

Lastly, in Asia Minor the king turned his eyes towards Paphia-
the interior of Paphlagonia — the coast had for long belonged f°"'* *"
to the Pontic empire — and towards Cappadocia.^ The docia
former was claimed on the part of Pontus as having **^*'"'
been bequeathed by the testament of the last of the
Pylaemenids to king Mithradates Euergetes : against this,
however, legitimate or illegitimate pretenders and the land
itself protested. As to Cappadocia, the Pontic rulers had
not forgotten that this country and Cappadocia on the sea had
been formerly united, and continually cherished ideas of re-
union. Paphlagonia was occupied by Mithradates in concert
with Nicomedes king of Bithynia, with whom he shared
the land. When the senate raised objections to this course,
Mithradates yielded to its remonstrance, while Nicomedes
equipped one of his sons with the name of Pylaemenes and
under this title retained the country to himself. The policy
of the allies adopted still worse expedients in Cappadocia.
King Ariarathes VI. was killed by Gordius, it was said by
the orders, at any rate in the interest, of Ariarathes' brother-
in-law Mithradates Eupator : his young son Ariarathes knew
no means of meeting the encroachments of the king of
Bithynia except the ambiguous help of his uncle, in return for
which the latter then suggested to him that he should allow
the murderer of his father, who had taken flight, to return to
Cappadocia. This led to a rupture and to war ; but when
the two armies confronted each other ready for battle, the

^ The chronology of the following events can only be determined approxi-
mately. Mithradates Eupator seems to have practically entered on the
government somewhere about 640 ; Sulla's inter\cntion took place in 663 114. P2.
(Liv. Ep. 70) with which accords the calcul.ition assigning to the Mith-
radatic wars a period of thirty years (662-691) (I'lin. //. A', vii. a6. 97). 92-63.
In the interval fell the quarrels as to the Paphlagonian and Cappailwi.in
succession, with which the bribery attempted by Mithradates in Rome
(Diod. 631) app.ircntly in the first tribunate of Saturninus in 651 (iii. 466) lOS.
was probably connected. Marius, who left Rome in 665 and did not 99.
remain long in the cast, found Mithr.idatcs .nlrcady in Cappadocia and
negoti.ited with him regarding his aggressions (( ic. •;./ />>/</. i. 5 ; I'luU
Mar. 31) ; Ariarathes VI. had consequently been by that time put to
death.

20 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

uncle requested a previous conference with the nephew and
thereupon cut down the unarmed youth with his own hand.
Gordius, the murderer of the father, then undertook the
government by the directions of Mithradates ; and although
the indignant population rose against him and called the
younger son of the last king to the throne, the latter was
unable to offer any permanent resistance to the superior
forces of Mithradates. The speedy death of the youth
placed by the people on the throne gave to the Pontic king
the greater liberty of action, because with that youth the
Cappadocian royal house became extinct. A pseudo-
Ariarathes was proclaimed as nominal regent, just as
had been done in Paphlagonia ; under whose name
Gordius administered the kingdom as lieutenant of
Mithradates.
Empire of Mightier than any native monarch for many a day had

dates. been, Mithradates bore rule alike over the northern and

the southern shores of the Black Sea and far into the
interior of Asia Minor. The resources of the king for war
by land and by sea seemed immeasurable. His recruiting
field stretched from the mouth of the Danube to the
Caucasus and the Caspian Sea; Thracians, Scythians,
Sauromatae, Bastarnae, Colchians, Iberians (in the modern
Georgia) crowded under his banners ; above all he recruited
his war-hosts from the brave Bastarnae. For his fleet the
satrapy of Colchis supplied him with the most excellent
timber, which was floated down from the Caucasus, besides
flax, hemp, pitch, and wax ; pilots and officers were hired in
Phoenicia and Syria. The king, it was said, had marched
into Cappadocia with 600 scythe-chariots, 10,000 horse,
80,000 foot; and he had by no means mustered for this
war all his resources. In the absence of any Roman or
other naval power worth mentioning, the Pontic fleet, with
Sinope and the ports of the Crimea as its rallying points,
had exclusive command of the Black Sea.

CHAP. VIII THE LAST AND KING MITHKADATES 21

That the Roman senate asserted its general policy — of Thr
keeping down the states more or less dependent on it — also
in dealing with that of Pontus, is shown by its attitude on radaiea.
occasion of the succession to the throne after the sudden
death of Mithradates V, From the boy in minority who
followed him there was taken away Great Phr)-gia, which
had been conferred on his father for his taking part in
the war against Aristonicus or rather for his good money
(iii. 358), and this region was added to the territory im-
mediately subject to Rome.^ But, after this boy had at
length attained majority, the same senate showed utter
passiveness towards his aggressions on all sides and towards
the formation of this imposing power, the development
of which occupies perhaps a period of twenty years. It
was passive, while one of its dependent states became
developed into a great military power, having at command
more than a hundred thousand armed men ; while the ruler
of that state entered into the closest connection with the
new great-king of the east, who was placed partly by his aid
at the head of the states in the interior of Asia ; while he
annexed the neighbouring Asiatic kingdoms and principalities
under pretexts which sounded almost like a mockery of the
ill-informed and far-distant protecting power; while, in
fine, he even established himself in Europe and ruled as
king over the Tauric peninsula, and as lord-protector almost
to the Macedono-Thracian frontier. These circumstances
indeed formed the subject of discussion in the senate ; but
when the illustrious corporation consoled itself in the affair
of the Paphlagonian succession with the fact that Nicomedes
appealed to his pseudo-Pylaemenes, it was evidently not so

* A decree of the senate of the year 638 recently found in the village 116.
Aresii to the south of Synn;ul:i (Virreck. Strmo (/r..v<j*j ,,-u
A'omanus usus sit, p. 51) conlirnis all the rcjjulations made by th'
to his dctth and thus shows that Great Phrygia after the death of the
father w;is not mert-ly taken from the son, as .Appian .ilso states, but was
thereby brought directly under Roman allegiance.

22 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

much deceived as grateful for any pretext which spared it
from serious interference. Meanwhile the complaints
became daily more numerous and more urgent. The
princes of the Tauric Scythians, whom Mithradates had
driven from the Crimea, turned for help to Rome ; those
of the senators who at all reflected on the traditional
maxims of Roman policy could not but recollect that
formerly, under circumstances so wholly different, the
crossing of king Antiochus to Europe and the occupation
of the Thracian Chersonese by his troops had become the
signal for the Asiatic war (ii. 453), and could not but see
that the occupation of the Tauric Chersonese by the Pontic
Iiuerven- king ought Still less to be tolerated now. The scale was at
senate. ^^^^ turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom of
Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of
Bithynia — who on his part had hoped to gain possession of
Cappadocia by another pseudo-Ariarathes, and now saw
that the Pontic pretender excluded his own — would hardly
fail to urge the Roman government to intervention. The
senate resolved that Mithradates should reinstate the
Scythian princes — so far were they driven out of the track
of right policy by their negligent style of government, that
instead of supporting the Hellenes against the barbarians
they had now on the contrary to support the Scythians
against those who were half their countrymen. Paphlagonia
was declared independent, and the pseudo-Pylaemenes of
Nicomedes was directed to evacuate the country. In like
manner the pseudo-x\riarathes of Mithradates was to retire
from Cappadocia, and, as the representatives of the country
refused the freedom proffered to it, a king was once more
to be appointed by free popular election.
Sulla sent The decrees sounded energetic enough ; only it was an

dod '^^^" ^rror, that instead of sending an army they directed the
governor of Cilicia, Lucius Sulla, with the handful of troops
whom he commanded there against the pirates and robbers,

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND Kl'SC MITIIRADATES 23

to intervene in Cappadocia. Fortunately the remembrance
of the former energy of the Romans defended their interests
in the east better than their present government did, and the
energy and dexterity of the governor supplied what the senate
lacked in both respects. Mithradates kept back and con-
tented himself with inducing Tigranes the great- king of
Armenia, who held a more free position with reference to
the Romans than he did, to send troops to Cappadocia.
Sulla quickly collected his forces and the contingents of
the Asiatic allies, crossed the Taurus, and drove the
governor Gordius along with his Armenian auxiliaries out
of Cappadocia. This proved effectual. Mithradates
yielded on all points ; Gordius had to assume the blame
of the Cappadocian troubles, and the pseudo-Ariaraihes
disappeared ; the election of king, which the Pontic
faction had vainly attempted to direct towards Gordius, fell
on the respected Cappadocian Ariobarzanes.

When Sulla in following out his expedition arrived in First
the region of the Euphrates, in whose waters the Roman ^"^.^
standards were then first mirrored, the Romans came for «hc
the first time into contact with the Parthians, who in con- ^^^^ ^^^^
sequence of the variance between them and Tigranes had Parthians.
occasion to make approaches to the Romans. On both
sides there seemed a feeling that it was of some moment, in
this first contact between the two great powers of the east
and the west, that neither should renounce its claims to the
sovereignty of the world ; but Sulla, bolder than the Parthian
envoy, assumed and maintained in the conference the place
of honour between the king of Cappadocia and the Par-
thian ambassador. Sulla's fame was more increased by this
greatly celebrated conference on the Euphrates than by his
victories in the east; on its account the Parthian envoy after-
wards forfeited his life to his master's resentment But for
the moment this contact had no further result. Nicomedes in
reliance on the favour of the Romans omitted to evacuate

24 THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES BOOK iv

Paphlagonia, but the decrees adopted by the senate against
Mithradates were carried further into effect, the reinstatement
of the Scythian chieftains was at least promised by him; the
92. earlier status quo in the east seemed to be restored (662).
New So it was alleged ; but in fact there was little trace of

of Mlthra"^ any real return of the former order of things. Scarce had
dates. Sulla left Asia, when Tigranes king of Great Armenia fell

upon Ariobarzanes the new king of Cappadocia, expelled
him, and reinstated in his stead the Pontic pretender
Ariarathes. In Bithynia, where after the death of the old
91. king Nicomedes II. (about 663) his son Nicomedes III.
Philopator had been recognized by the people and by the
Roman senate as legitimate king, his younger brother
Socrates came forward as pretender to the crown and
possessed himself of the sovereignty. It was clear that the
real author of the Cappadocian as of the Bithynian troubles
was no other than Mithradates, although he refrained from
taking any open part. Every one knew that Tigranes only
acted at his beck ; but Socrates also had marched into
Bithynia with Pontic troops, and the legitimate king's life
was threatened by the assassins of Mithradates. In the
Crimea even and the neighbouring countries the Pontic
king had no thought of receding, but on the contrary
carried his arms farther and farther,
Aquiiiius The Roman government, appealed to for aid by the

^5j^ kings Ariobarzanes and Nicomedes in person, despatched

to Asia Minor in support of Lucius Cassius who was
governor there the consular Manius Aquiiiius — an officer
tried in the Cimbrian and Sicilian wars — not, however, as
general at the head of an army, but as an ambassador,
and directed the Asiatic client states and Mithradates in
particular to lend armed assistance in case of need. The
result was as it had been two years before. The Roman
officer accomplished the commission entrusted to him with
the aid of the small Roman corps which the governor of

CHAP. VIII TIIH KAST AM) KIN(; MITIIRAI)ATF«; 25

the province of Asia had at his disposal, and of the levy of
the Phrygians and Galatians ; king Nicomedcs and king
Ariobarzanes again ascended their tottering thrones ;
Mithradates under various pretexts evaded the summons to
furnish contingents, but gave to the Romans no ojicn
resistance; on the contrary the Bithynian pretender
Socrates was even put to death by his orders (664). 90.

It was a singular complication. Mithradates was fully The sute
convinced that he could do nothing against the Romans in ^^ '^'"K*
open conflict, and was therefore firmly resolved not to allow mediate
matters to come to an open rupture and war with them. ^'^"^
Had he not been so resolved, there was no more favourable peace.
opportunity for beginning the struggle than the present :
just at the time when Aquillius marched into Bithynia and
Cappadocia, the Italian insurrection was at the height of
its power and might encourage even the weak to declare
against Rome ; yet Mithradates allowed the year 664 to 90.
pass without profiting by the opportunity. Nevertheless he
pursued with equal tenacity and activity his plan of ex-
tending his territory in Asia Minor. This strange combina-
tion of a policy of peace at any price with a policy of
conquest was certainly in itself untenable, and was simply
a fresh proof that Mithradates did not belong to the class
of genuine statesmen ; he knew neither how to prepare for
conflict like king Philip nor how to submit like king
Attalus, but in the true style of a sultan was perpetually
fluctuating between a greedy desire of conquest and the
sense of his own weakness. But even in this point of view
his proceedings can only be understood, when we recollect
that Mithradates had become acquainted by twenty years'
experience with the Roman policy of that day. He knew
very well that the Roman government were far from
desirous of war ; that they in fact, looking to the serious
danger which threatened their rule from any general of
reputation, and with the fresh remembrance of the Cinibrian

26 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

war and Marius, dreaded war still more if possible than he
did himself. He acted accordingly. He was not afraid to
demean himself in a way which would have given to any
energetic government not fettered by selfish considerations
manifold ground and occasion for declaring war ; but he
carefully avoided any open rupture which would have
placed the senate under the necessity of declaring it. As
soon as men appeared to be in earnest he drew back, before
Sulla as well as before Aquillius ; he hoped, doubtless, that
he would not always be confronted by energetic generals,
that he too would, as well as Jugurtha, fall in with his
Scaurus or Albinus. It must be owned that this hope was
not without reason ; although the very example of Jugurtha
had on the other hand shown how foolish it was to
confound the bribery of a Roman commander and the
corruption of a Roman army with the conquest ot the
Roman people.
Aquillius Thus matters stood between peace and war, and looked

abom war. Q^ite as if they would drag on for long in the same in-
decisive position. But it was not the intention of Aquillius
to allow this ; and, as he could not compel his government
to declare war against Mithradates, he made use of
Nico- Nicomedes for that purpose. The latter, who was under

the power of the Roman general and was, moreover, his
debtor for the accumulated war expenses and for sums
promised to the general in person, could not avoid comply-
ing with the suggestion that he should begin w^ar with
Mithradates. The declaration of war by Bithynia took
place ; but, even when the vessels of Nicomedes closed the
Bosporus against those of Pontus, and his troops marched
into the frontier districts of Pontus and laid waste the
region of Amastris, Mithradates remained still unshaken in
his policy of peace ; instead of driving the Bithynians over
the frontier, he lodged a complaint with the Roman envoys
and asked them either to mediate or to allow him the

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 27

privilege of self-defence. But he was informed by
Aquillius, that he niust under all circumstances refrain
from war against Nicomedes. That indeed was plain.
They had employed e.xactly the same policy against
Carthage ; they allowed the victim to be set upon by the
Roman hounds and forbade its defending itself against
them. Mithradates reckoned himself lost, just as the
Carthaginians had done ; but, while the Phoenicians
yielded from despair, the king of Sinope did the very
opposite and assembled his troops and ships. " Does not
even he who must succumb," he is reported to have said,
"defend himself against the robber?" His son Ariobar-
zanes received orders to advance into Cappadocia ; a
message was sent once more to the Roman envoys to
inform them of the step to which necessity had driven the
king, and to demand their ultimatum. It was to the effect
which was to be anticipated. Although neither the Roman
senate nor king Mithradates nor king Nicomedes had
desired the rupture, Aquillius desired it and war ensued
(end of 665). 89.

Mithradates prosecuted the political and military pre- Prcpar.i-
parations for the passage of arms thus forced upon him ^J*^^.
with all his characteristic energy. First of all he drew dates,
closer his alliance with Tigranes king of Armenia, and
obtained from him the promise of an au.xiliary army which
was to march into western Asia and to take possession of
the soil there for king Mithradates and of the moveable
property for king Tigranes. The Parthian king, offended
by the haughty carriage of Sulla, though not e.\actly coming
forward as an antagonist to the Romans, did not act as
their ally. To the Greeks the king endeavoured to present
himself in the character of Philip and Perseus, as the
defender of the Greek nation against the alien rule of the
Romans. Pontic envoys were sent to the king of Egypt
and to the last remnant of free Greece, the league of the

28 THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

Cretan cities, and adjured those for whom Rome had
already forged her chains to rise now at the last moment
and save Hellenic nationality ; the attempt was in the case
of Crete at least not wholly in vain, and numerous Cretans
took service in the Pontic army. Hopes were entertained
that the lesser and least of the protected states — Numidia,
Syria, the Hellenic republics — would successively rebel,
and that the provinces would revolt, particularly the west of
Asia Minor, the victim of unbounded oppression. Efforts
were made to excite a Thracian rising, and even to arouse
Macedonia to revolt. Piracy, which even previously was
flourishing, was now everywhere let loose as a most
welcome ally, and with alarming rapidity squadrons of
corsairs, calling themselves Pontic privateers, filled the
Mediterranean far and wide. With eagerness and delight
accounts were received of the commotions among the
Roman burgesses, and of the Italian insurrection subdued
yet far from extinguished. No direct relations, however,
were formed with the discontented and the insurgents in
Italy ; except that a foreign corps armed and organized in
the Roman fashion was created in Asia, the flower of
which consisted of Roman and Italian refugees. Forces
like those of Mithradates had not been seen in Asia since
the Persian wars. The statements that, leaving out of
account the Armenian auxiliary army, he took the field
with 250,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry, and that 300
Pontic decked and 100 open vessels put to sea, seem not
too exaggerated in the case of a warlike sovereign who had
at his disposal the numberless inhabitants of the steppes.
His generals, particularly the brothers Neoptolemus and
Archelaus, were experienced and cautious Greek captains ;
among the soldiers of the king there was no want of brave
men who despised death ; and the armour glittering with
gold and silver and the rich dresses of the Scythians and
Medes mingled gaily with the bronze and steel of the

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIKADATES 29

Greek troopers. No unity of military organization, it is
true, bound together these party-coloured masses; the
army of Mithradates was just one of those unwieldy Asiatic
war-machines, which had so often already — on the last
occasion exactly a century before at Magnesia — succumbed
to a superior military organization ; but still the east was in
arms against the Romans, while in the western half of the
empire also matters looked far from peaceful.

However much it was in itself a political necessity for Weak
Rome to declare war against Mithradates, yet the particular prcpara*.
moment was as unhappily chosen as possible ; and for this t'of" of ^^
reason it is very probable that Manius Aquillius brought
about the rupture between Rome and Mithradates at this
precise time primarily from regard to his own interests.
For the moment they had no other troops at their disposal
in Asia than the small Roman division under Lucius
Cassias and the militia of western Asia, and, owing to the
military and financial distress in which they were placed at
home in consequence of the insurrectionary war, a Roman
army could not in the most favourable case land in Asia
before the summer of 666. Hitherto the Roman magistrates 88.
there had a difficult position ; but they hoped to protect
the Roman province and to be able to hold their ground as
they stood — the Bithynian army under king Nicomedes in
its position taken up in the previous year in the Paphla-
gonian territory between Amastris and Sinope, and the
divisions under Lucius Cassius, Manius Aquillius, and
Quintus Oppius, farther back in the Bithynian, C.alatian,
and Cappadocian territories, while the Bithyno-Roman fleet
continued to blockade the Bosporus.

In the beginning of the spring of 666 Miihr.adates •'^'"h- [98.

1 fiiTi I- radaics

assumed the offensive. On a tributary of the Halys, the occupies
.Amnias (near the modern Tesch Kopri), the Pontic van- ^"•■»
guard of cavalry and light-armed troops encountered the
Bithynian army, and notwiilistanding its very sui)crior

30 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army
dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the
hands of the victors. It was mainly to Neoptolemus and
Archelaus that the king was indebted for this brilliant
success. The far more wretched Asiatic militia, stationed
farther back, thereupon gave themselves up as vanquished,
even before they encountered the enemy ; when the
generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed.
A Roman division was defeated in Cappadocia ; Cassius
sought to keep the field in Phrygia with the militia, but he
discharged it again without venturing on a battle, and threw
himself with his few trustworthy troops into the townships
on the upper Maeander, particularly into Apamea. Oppius
in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself up
in the Phrygian Laodicea ; Aquillius was overtaken while
retreating at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and
so totally defeated that he lost his camp and had to seek
refuge at Pergamus in the Roman province ; the latter also
was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell into the hands
of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships that
were there. After each victory Mithradates had dismissed
all the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor,
and had neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the
national sympathies that were from the first turned towards
him. Now the whole country as far as the Maeander was
with the exception of a few fortresses in his power ; and
news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution had
broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act
against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia
marched on Rome, that the most celebrated Roman
generals were fighting battles with each other in order to
settle to whom the chief command in the Asiatic war
And- should belong. Rome seemed zealously employed in the

Oman ^ygrk of self-destruction : it is no wonder that, though even

movements ' °

there. now minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great

CHAP. VIM THE KAST AND KING MITHRADATES 31

body of the natives of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king.
Hellenes and Asiatics united in the rejoicing which
welcomed the deliverer ; it became usual to compliment
the king, in whom as in the divine concjueror of the
Indians Asia and Hellas once more found a common
meeting-point, under the name of the new Dionysus. The
cities and islands sent messengers to meet him, wherever
he went, and to invite " the delivering god " to visit them ;
and in festal attire the citizens flocked forth in front of
their gates to receive him. Several places delivered the
Roman officers sojourning among them in chains to the
king ; I^odicea thus surrendered Quintus Oppius, the
commandant of the town, and Mytilene in Lesbos the
consular Manius Aquillius.^ The whole fury of the
barbarian, who gets the man before whom he has trembled
into his power, discharged itself on the unhappy author of
the war. The aged man was led throughout Asia Minor,
sometimes on foot chained to a powerful mounted
Bastarnian, sometimes bound on an ass and proclaiming
his own name ; and, when at length the pitiful spectacle
again arrived at the royal quarters in Pergamus, by the
king's orders molten gold was poured down his throat
— in order to satiate his avarice, which had really
occasioned the war — till he expired in torture.

But the king was not content with this savage mockery, Orders
which alone suffices to erase its author's name from the roll j^p'jj^^'*"
of true nobility. From Ephesus king Mithradates issued for a
orders to all the governors and cities dependent on him to ^^^^^^
put to death on one and the same day all Italians residing
within their bounds, whether free or slaves, without distinc-
tion of se.\ or age, and on no account, under severe penalties,
to aid any of the proscribed to escape ; to cast forth the

1 Retribution came upon the authors of the arrest and surrender of

Aquillius twenty-five yciirs afterwards, whrn after Mithmdaics" dr--' '
son Phamaces handed them over to the Romans.

32 THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

corpses of the slain as a prey to the birds ; to confiscate
their property and to hand over one half of it to the
murderers, and the other half to the king. The horrible
orders were — excepting in a few districts, such as the island
of Cos — punctually executed, and eighty, or according to
other accounts one hundred and fifty, thousand — if not
innocent, at least defenceless — men, women, and children
were slaughtered in cold blood in one day in Asia Minor ;
a fearful execution, in which the good opportunity of getting
rid of debts and the Asiatic servile willingness to perform
any executioner's office at the bidding of the sultan had at
least as much part as the comparatively noble feeling of
revenge. In a political point of view this measure was not
only without any rational object — for its financial purpose
might have been attained without this bloody edict, and the
natives of Asia Minor were not to be driven into warlike
zeal even by the consciousness of the most blood-stained
guilt — but even opposed to the king's designs, for on the
one hand it compelled the Roman senate, so far as it was
still capable of energy at all, to an energetic prosecution of
the war, and on the other hand it struck at not the Romans
merely, but the king's natural allies as well, the non-Roman
Italians. This Ephesian massacre was altogether a mere
meaningless act of brutally blind revenge, which obtains
a false semblance of grandeur simply through the colossal
proportions in which the character of sultanic rule was
here displayed.
Organiza- The king's views altogether grew high ; he had begun

tion of the ^^^ ^^^ ^j.^^^ despair, but the unexpectedly easy victory and

conquered '■ t. j j j

provinces, the non-arrival of the dreaded Sulla occasioned a transi-
tion to the most highflown hopes. He set up his home
in the west of Asia Minor ; Pergamus the seat of the
Roman governor became his new capital, the old kingdom
of Sinope was handed over to the king's son Mithradates
to be administered as a viceroyship ; Cappadocia, Phrygia,

CHAP, viii THE EAST AND KING MITHriAOATES 33

Bithynia were organized as Pontic satrapies. The grandees
of the empire and the king's favourites were loaded with
rich gifts and fiefs, and not only were the arrears of
taxes remitted, but exemption from taxation for five years
was promised, to all the communities — a measure which
was as much a mistake as the massacre of the Romans, if
the king expected thereby to secure the fidelity of the
inhabitants of Asia Minor.

The king's treasury was, no doubt, copiously replenished
otiierwise by tlic immense sums which accrued from the
property of the Italians and other confiscations ; for instance
in Cos alone 800 talents (^195,00©) which the Jews had
deposited there were carried off by Mithradates. The
northern portion of Asia Minor and most of the islands
belonging to it were in the king's power ; except some
petty Paphlagonian dynasts, there was hardly a district
which still adhered to Rome ; the whole Aegean Sea was
commanded by his fleets. The south-west alone, the city-
leagues of Caria and Lycia and the city of Rhodes, resisted
him. In Caria, no doubt, Stratonicea was reduced by force
of arms; but Magnesia on the Sipylus successfully withstood
a severe siege, in which Mithradates' ablest oflficer Archelaus
was defeated and wounded. Rhodes, the asylum of the
Romans who had escaped from Asia with the governor
Lucius Cassius among them, was assailed on the part of
Mithradates by sea and land with immense superiority of
force. But his sailors, courageously as they did their duty
under the eyes of the king, were awkward novices, and so
Rhodian squadrons vancjuished those of Pontus four times
as strong and returned home with captured vessels. By
land also the siege made no progress ; after a part of the
works had been destroyed, Mithradates abandoned the
enterprise, and the important island as well as the main-
land opposite remained in the hands of the Romans.

But not only was the Asiatic province occupied by
VOL. IV 103

34 THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

Pontic Mithradates almost without defending itself, chiefly in con-
Europe" ° sequence of the Sulpician revolution breaking out at a
most unfavourable time ; Mithradates even directed an
92. attack against Europe. Already since 662 the neighbours
of Macedonia on her northern and eastern frontier had been
renewing their incursions with remarkable vehemence and
90. 89. perseverance ; in the years 664, 665 the Thracians overran
inroads of Macedonia and all Epirus and plundered the temple of
the Thra- Dodona. Still more singular was the circumstance, that
with these movements was combined a renewed attempt
to place a pretender on the Macedonian throne in the
person of one Euphenes. Mithradates, who from the
Crimea maintained connections with the Thracians, was
hardly a stranger to all these events. The praetor Gains
Sentius defended himself, it is true, against these intruders
with the aid of the Thracian Dentheletae ; but it was
not long before mightier opponents came against him.
Mithradates, carried away by his successes, had formed the
bold resolution that he would, like Antiochus, bring the
war for the sovereignty of Asia to a decision in Greece, and
had by land and sea directed thither the flower of his
Thrace and troops. His son Ariarathes penetrated from Thrace into
occupied'^ the weakly-defended Macedonia, subduing the country as
by the he advanced and parcelling it into Pontic satrapies. Abdera
armies. ^^'^ Philippi became the principal bases for the operations
Pontic of the Pontic arms in Europe. The Pontic fleet, corn-
Aegean, manded by Mithradates' best general Archelaus, appeared
in the Aegean Sea, where scarce a Roman sail was to be
found. Delos, the emporium of the Roman commerce in
those waters, was occupied and nearly 20,000 men, mostly
Italians, were massacred there ; Euboea suffered a similar
fate ; all the islands to the east of the Malean promontory
were soon in the hands of the enemy ; they might proceed
to attack the mainland itself. The assault, no doubt, which
the Pontic fleet made from Euboea on the important

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES 35

Demetrias, was repelled by Bruttius Sura, the brave lieu-
tenant of the governor of Macedonia, with his handful of
troops and a few vessels hurriedly collected, and he even
occupied the island of Sciathus ; but he could not
prevent the enemy from establishing himself in Greece
proper.

There Mithradates carried on his operations not only The Pontic
by arms, but at the same time by national propagandism. f)[^ j^ '
His chief instrument for Athens was one Aristion, by birth Greece,
an Attic slave, by profession formerly a teacher of the
Epicurean philosophy, now a minion of Mithradates ; an
excellent master of persuasion, who by the brilliant career
which he pursued at court knew how to dazzle the mob,
and with due gravity to assure them that help was already
on the way to Mithradates from Carthage, which had been
for about sixty years lying in ruins. These addresses of the
new Pericles were so far effectual that, while the few persons
possessed of judgment escaped from Athens, the mob and
one or two literati whose heads were turned formally
renounced the Roman rule. So the ex-philosopher became
a despot who, supported by his bands of Pontic mercenaries,
commenced an infamous and bloody rule ; and the Piraeeus
was converted into a Pontic harbour. As soon as the troops
of Mithradates gained a footing on the Greek continent,
most of the small free states — the Achaeans, Laconians,
Boeotians — as far as Thessaly joined them. Sura, after
having drawn some reinforcements from Macedonia, ad-
vanced into Boeotia to bring help to the besieged Thcspiae
and engaged in conflicts with Archelaus and Aristion during
three days at Chaeronea ; but they led to no decision and
Sura was obliged to retire when the Pontic reinforcements
from the Peloponnesus approached (end of 666, beg. of 667), 88. 87.

So commanding was the position of Mithradates, parti-
cularly by sea, that an embassy of Italian insurgents could
invite him to make an attempt to land in Italy ; but their

36

THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES

BOOK IV

Position
of the
Romans,

cause was already by that time lost, and the king rejected
the suggestion.

The position of the Roman government began to be
critical. Asia Minor and Hellas were wholly, Macedonia
to a considerable extent, in the enemy's hands ; by sea the
Pontic flag ruled without a rival. Then there was the
Italian insurrection, which, though baffled on the whole,
still held the undisputed command of wide districts of
Italy ; the barely hushed revolution, which threatened
every moment to break out afresh and more formidably ;
and, lastly, the alarming commercial and monetary crisis
(iii. 530) occasioned by the internal troubles of Italy and
the enormous losses of the Asiatic capitalists, and the want
of trustworthy troops. The government would have
required three armies, to keep down the revolution in
Rome, to crush completely the insurrection in Italy, and
to wage war in Asia ; it had but one, that of Sulla ; for
the northern army was, under the untrustworthy Gnaeus
Strabo, simply an additional embarrassment. Sulla had
to choose which of these three tasks he would undertake ;
he decided, as we have seen, for the Asiatic war. It was
no trifling matter — we should perhaps say, it was a great
act of patriotism — that in this conflict between the general
interest of his country and the special interest of his party
the former retained the ascendency ; and that Sulla, in
spite of the dangers which his removal from Italy involved
for his constitution and his party, landed in the spring of
87. 667 on the coast of Epirus.
Sulla's But he came not, as Roman commanders-in-chief had

been wont to make their appearance in the East. That
his army of five legions or of at most 30,000 men,^ was
little stronger than an ordinary consular army, was the

landing.

1 We must recollect that after the outbreak of the Social War the
legion had at least not more than half the number of men which it had
previously, as it was no longer accompanied by Italian contingents.

CHAV. VIM THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES 37

least element of diflerence. Formerly in the eastern wars
a Roman fleet had never been wanting, and had in fact
without exception commanded the sea ; Sulla, sent to
reconquer two continents and the islands of the Aegean
sea, arrived without a single vessel of war. Formerly the
general had brought with him a full chest and drawn the
greatest portion of his supplies by sea from home ; Sulla
came with empty hands — for the sums raised with difficulty
for the campaign of 666 were expended in Italy — and 88.
found himself exclusively left dependent on requisitions.
Formerly the general had found his only opponent in the
enemy's camp, and since the close of the struggle between
the orders political factions had without exception been
united in opposing the public foe ; but Romans of note
fought under the standards of Mithradates, large districts
of Italy desired to enter into alliance with him, and it was
at least doubtful whether the democratic party would follow
the glorious example that Sulla had set before it, and keep
truce with him so long as he was fighting against the
Asiatic king. But the vigorous general, who had to
contend with all these embarrassments, was not accus-
tomed to trouble himself about more remote dangers
before finishing the task immediately in hand. When
his proposals of peace addressed to the king, which sub-
stantially amounted to a restoration of the state of matters
before the war, met with no acceptance, he advanced just
as he had landed, from the harbours of Epirus to Boeotia, Greece
defeated the generals of the enemy Archelaus and Aristion °*^*^P'
there at Mount Tilphossium, and after that victory possessed
himself almost without resistance of the whole (Irccian
mainland with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and
the I'iraeeus, into which .\ristion and .^rrhelaus had thrown
themselves, and which he failed to carry by a coup J< main,
A Roman division under Lucius Hortensius occupied
Thessaly and made incursions into Macedonia ; another

38

THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES

BOOK IV

Protracted
siege of
Athens
and the
Piraeeus.

under Munatius stationed itself before Chalcis, to keep
off the enemy's corps under Neoptolemus in Euboea; Sulla
himself formed a camp at Eleusis and Megara, from which
he commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and prose-
cuted the siege of the city and harbour of Athens. The
Hellenic cities, governed as they always were by their
immediate fears, submitted unconditionally to the Romans,
and were glad when they were allowed to ransom them-
selves from more severe punishment by supplying provisions
and men and paying fines.

The sieges in Attica advanced less rapidly. Sulla
found himself compelled to prepare all sorts of heavy
besieging implements for which the trees of the Academy
and the Lyceum had to supply the timber. Archelaus
conducted the defence with equal vigour and judgment ;
he armed the crews of his vessels, and thus reinforced
repelled the attacks of the Romans with superior strength
and made frequent and not seldom successful sorties. The
Pontic army of Dromichaetes advancing to the relief of the
city was defeated under the walls of Athens by the Romans
after a severe struggle, in which Sulla's brave legate Lucius
Licinius Murena particularly distinguished himself; but the
siege did not on that account advance more rapidly. From
Macedonia, where the Cappadocians had meanwhile defini-
tively established themselves, plentiful and regular supplies
arrived by sea, which Sulla was not in a condition to cut off
from the harbour -fortress ; in Athens no doubt provisions
were beginning to fail, but from the proximity of the two
fortresses Archelaus was enabled to make various attempts
to throw quantities of grain into Athens, which were not
87-86. wholly unsuccessful. So the winter of 667-8 passed away
tediously without result. As soon as the season allowed,
Sulla threw himself with vehemence on the Piraeeus ; he
in fact succeeded by missiles and mines in making a breach
in part of the strong walls of Pericles, and immediately the

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 39

Romans advanced to the assault ; but it was repulsed, and
on its being renewed crescent -shaped entrenchments were
found constructed behind the fallen walls, from which the
invaders found themselves assailed on three sides with
missiles and compelled to retire. Sulla then raised the
siege, and contented himself with a blockade. In the mean-
while the provisions in Athens were wholly exhausted ; the
garrison attempted to procure a capitulation, but Sulla sent
back their fluent envoys with the hint that he stood before
them not as a student but as a general, and would accept
only unconditional surrender. When Aristion, well knowing
what fate was in store for him, delayed compliance,
the ladders were applied and the city, hardly any longer
defended, was taken by storm (i March 66S). Aristion Athens [8ft
threw himself into the .Acropolis, where he soon afterwards ^^^
surrendered. The Roman general left the soldiery to
murder and plunder in the captured city and the more
considerable ringleaders of the revolt to be executed ; but
the city itself obtained back from him its liberty and its
possessions — even the important Delos, — and was thus
once more saved by its illustrious dead.

The Epicurean schoolmaster had thus been vanquished; Cntxal
but the position of Sulla remained in the highest degree s^na^°" °
difficult, and even desperate. He had now been more
than a year in the field without having advanced a step
worth mentioning ; a single port mocked all his exertions,
while Asia was utterly left to itself, and the conquest of
Macedonia by Mithradates' lieutenants had recently been
completed by the capture of Aniphipolis. Without a fleet Want of a
— it was becoming daily more apiiarcnt — it was not only
impossible to secure his communications and supplies in
presence of the ships of the enemy anil the numerous
pirates, but impossible to recover even the Piraeeus, to
say nothing of Asia and the islands; and yet it was difficult
to see how ships of war were to be got. As early as the

40 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

87-86. winter of 667-8 Sulla had despatched one of his ablest
and most dexterous officers, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, into
the eastern waters, to raise ships there if possible. Lucullus
put to sea with six open boats, which he had borrowed
from the Rhodians and other small communities ; he him-
self merely by an accident escaped from a piratic squadron,
which captured most of his boats ; deceiving the enemy by
changing his vessels he arrived by way of Crete and Cyrene
at Alexandria ; but the Egyptian court rejected his request
for the support of ships of war with equal courtesy and de-
cision. Hardly anything illustrates so clearly as does this
fact the sad decay of the Roman state, which had once
been able gratefully to decline the offer of the kings of
Egypt to assist the Romans with all their naval force, and
now itself seemed to the Alexandrian statesmen bankrupt.
To all this fell to be added the financial embarrassment ;
Sulla had already been obliged to empty the treasuries of
the Olympian Zeus, of the Delphic Apollo, and of the
Epidaurian Asklepios, for which the gods were compensated
by the moiety, confiscated by way of penalty, of the Theban
territory. But far worse than all this military and financial
perplexity was the reaction of the political revolution in
Rome ; the rapid, sweeping, violent accomplishment of
which had far surpassed the worst apprehensions. The
revolution conducted the government in the capital ; Sulla
had been deposed, his Asiatic command had been entrusted
to the democratic consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who
might be daily looked for in Greece. The soldiers had no
doubt adhered to Sulla, who made every effort to keep them
in good humour; but what could be expected, when money
and supplies were wanting, when the general was deposed
and proscribed, when his successor was on the way, and,
in addition to all this, the war against the tough antagonist
who commanded the sea was protracted without prospect
of a close ?

CHAP. VIM THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES 41

King Mithradates undertook to deliver his antagonist Pontic
from his perilous position. He it was, to all appearance, *■"',','"'
who disapproved the defensive system of his generals and Greece,
sent orders to them to vanquish the enemy with the utmost
speed. As early as 667 his son Ariarathes had started from 87.
Macedonia to combat Sulla in Greece proper ; only the
sudden death, which overtook the prince on the march at
the Tisaean promontory in Thessaly, had at that time led
to the abandonment of the expedition. His successor
Taxiles now appeared (668), driving before him the Roman 86.
corps stationed in Thessaly, with an army of, it is said,
100,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry at Thermopylae.
Dromichaetes joined him. Archelaus also — compelled, Evacuation
apparently, not so much by Sulla's arms as by his master's ^^^'^
orders — evacuated the Piraeeus first partially and then
entirely, and joined the Pontic main army in Boeotia.
Sulla, after the Piraeeus with all its greatly-admired fortifica-
tions had been by his orders destroyed, followed the Pontic
army, in the hope of being able to fight a pitched
battle before the arrival of Flaccus. In vain Archelaus
advised that they should avoid such a battle, but should
keep the sea and the coast occupied and the enemy in
suspense. Now just as formerly under Darius and
Antiochus, the masses of the Orientals, like animals
terrified in the midst of a fire, flung themselves hastily and
blindly into battle ; and did so on this occasion more
foolishly than ever, since the Asiatics might perhaps have
needed to wait but a few months in order to be the
spectators of a battle between Sulla and Flaccus.

In the plain of the Cephissus not far from Chaeronea, Ritile of
in March 668, the armies met. Even including the ^^'^^'^o"*^-^
division driven back from Thessaly, which had succeeded
in accomjjlishing its junction with the Roman main army,
and including the Greek contingents, the Roman army
found itself opposed to a foe three times as strong and

42 THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

particularly to a cavalry far superior and from the nature of
the field of battle very dangerous, against which Sulla found
it necessary to protect his flanks by digging trenches, while
in front he caused a chain of palisades to be introduced
between his first and second lines for protection against the
enemy's war-chariots. When the war-chariots rolled on to
open the battle, the first line of the Romans withdrew
behind this row of stakes : the chariots, rebounding from it
and scared by the Roman slingers and archers, threw them-
selves on their own line and carried confusion both into
the Macedonian phalanx and into the corps of the Italian
refugees. Archelaus brought up in haste his cavalry from
both flanks and sent it to engage the enemy, with a view to
gain time for rearranging his infantry ; it charged with great
fury and broke through the Roman ranks ; but the Roman
infantry rapidly formed in close masses and courageously
withstood the horsemen assailing them on every side.
Meanwhile Sulla himself on the right wing led his cavalry
against the exposed flank of the enemy ; the Asiatic infantry
gave way before it was even properly engaged, and its
giving way carried confusion also into the masses of the
cavalry. A general attack of the Roman infantry, which
through the wavering demeanour of the hostile cavalry
gained time to breathe, decided the victory. The closing
of the gates of the camp, which Archelaus ordered to check
the flight, only increased the slaughter, and when the gates
at length were opened, the Romans entered at the same
time with the Asiatics. It is said that Archelaus brought
not a twelfth part of his force in safety to Chalcis ; Sulla
followed him to the Euripus ; he was not in a position to
cross that narrow arm of the sea.
Slight It was a great victory, but the results were trifling,

partly because of the want of a fleet, partly because the
Roman conqueror, instead of pursuing the vanquished, was
under the necessity in the first instance of protecting himself

effect of the
victory,

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIkADATES 43

against his own countrymen. The sea was still exclusively
covered by Pontic squadrons, which now showed themselves
even to the westward of the Malean promontory ; even
after the battle of Chaeronea Archclaus landed troops on
Zacynthus and made an attempt to establish himself on that
island. Moreover Lucius Flaccus had in the meanwhile
actually landed with two legions in Epirus, not without
having sustained severe loss on the way from storms and
from the war-vessels of the enemy cruising in the Adriatic ;
his troops were already in Thessaly ; thither Sulla had in
the first instance to turn. The two Roman armies
encamped over against each other at Mclitaea on the
northern slope of Mount Othrys ; a collision seemed
inevitable. But Flaccus, after he had opportunity of
convincing himself that Sulla's soldiers were by no means
inclined to betray their victorious leader to the totally
unknown democratic commander-in-chief, but that on the
contrary his own advanced guard began to desert to Sulla's
camp, evaded a conflict to which he was in no respect
equal, and set out towards the north, with the view of
getting through Macedonia and Thrace to Asia and there
paving the way for further results by subduing Mithradates.
That Sulla should have allowed his weaker opponent to
depart without hindrance, and instead of following him
should have returned to Athens, where he seems to
have passed the winter of 668-9, is in a military point 86S&.
of view surprising. We may suppose perhaps that in
this also he was guided by political motives, and that
he was sufficiently moderate and patriotic in his views
willingly to forgo a victory over his countrymen, at
least so long as they had still the Asiatics to deal
with, and to find the most tolerable solution of the un-
happy dilemma in allowing the armies of the revolution
in Asia and of the oligarchy in Europe to fight against the
common foe.

44

THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES

BOOK IV

Second [85.
Pontic
army sent
to Greece.

Battle of

Orcho-

menus.

In the spring of 669 there was again fresh work in
Europe. Mithradates, who continued his preparations inde-
fatigably in Asia Minor, had sent an army not much less
than that which had been extirpated at Chaeronea, under
Dorylaus to Euboea ; thence it had, after a junction with
the remains of the army of Archelaus, passed over the
Euripus to Boeotia. The Pontic king, who judged of what
his army could do by the standard of victories over the
Bithynian and Cappadocian militia, did not understand the
unfavourable turn which things had taken in Europe ; the
circles of the courtiers were already whispering as to the
treason of Archelaus ; peremptory orders were issued to
fight a second battle at once with the new army, and not
to fail on this occasion to annihilate the Romans. The
master's will was carried out, if not in conquering, at least
in fighting. The Romans and Asiatics met once more in
the plain of the Cephissus, near Orchomenus. The
numerous and excellent cavalry of the latter flung itself
impetuously on the Roman infantry, which began to waver
and give way : the danger was so urgent, that Sulla seized
a standard and advancing with his adjutants and orderlies
against the enemy called out with a loud voice to the
soldiers that, if they should be asked at home where they
had abandoned their general, they might reply — at Orcho-
menus. This had its effect ; the legions rallied and
vanquished the enemy's horse, after which the infantry were
overthrown with little difificulty. On the following day the
camp of the Asiatics was surrounded and stormed ; far the
greatest portion of them fell or perished in the Copaic
marshes ; a few only, Archelaus among the rest, reached
Euboea. The Boeotian communities had severely to pay
for their renewed revolt from Rome, some of them even to
annihilation. Nothing opposed the advance into Mace-
donia and Thrace ; Philippi was occupied, Abdera was
voluntarily evacuated by the Pontic garrison, the European

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KINC. MITIIRADATES 45

continent in general was cleared of the enemy. At the
end of the third year of the war (669) Sulla was able to 85.
take up winter-quarters in Thessaly, with a view to begin
the Asiatic campaign in the spring of 670,' for which 84.
purpose he gave orders to build ships in the Thessalian
ports.

Meanwhile the circumstances of Asia Minor also had Kcaction
undergone a material change. If king Mithradates had '."«' "'^

° 00 Minor

once come forward as the liberator of the Hellenes, if he against
had introduced his rule with the recognition of civic inde- da'iei*
pendence and with remission of taxes, they had after this
brief ecstasy been but too rapidly and too bitterly
undeceived. He had very soon emerged in his true
character, and had begun to exercise a despotism far
surpassing the tyranny of the Roman governors — a
despotism which drove even the patient inhabitants of
Asia Minor to open revolt. The sultan again resorted to
the most violent expedients. His decrees granted inde-
pendence to the townships which turned to him, citizenship
to the nietocci, full remission of debts to the debtors, lands
to those that had none, freedom to the slaves ; nearly
15,000 such manumitted slaves fought in the army of
Archelaus. The most fearful scenes were the result of this
high-handed subversion of all existing order. The most
considerable mercantile cities, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus,
Tralles, Sardes, closed their gates against the king's

* The chronology of these events is, like all their details, enveloped in
an obscurity which investigation is able to dispel, at most, i • .lly.

That the battle of Chaeronca took place, if not on the san the

stornung of Athens (Pausan. i. 20), at any rate soon afterwards, |xThaps
in March 668, is tolerably certain. That the succeeding Thcssiilian and 86.
the second Boeotian campaign took up not merely the remainder of 663 86.
but also the whole of 669, is in itself probable and is rendered st ' • ' S5.
so by the fact that Sulla's enterprises in Asia are not suflicicni to :
than a single campaign. I.icinianus n trs to indicate t!

returned to Athens for the winter of (<- ind there took in 1 "'(J-SS.

work of investigation and punishment ; alter which he relates the liatile
of Orchomenus. The crossing of Sulla to Asia lias accordingly U-cn
placed not in 669, but in 670. 85. 84

46 THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

governors or put them to death, and declared for Rome.'
On the other hand the king's lieutenant Diodorus, a
philosopher of note like Aristion, of another school, but
equally available for the worst subservience, under the
instructions of his master caused the whole town-council of
Adramyttium to be put to death. The Chians, who were
suspected of an inclination to Rome, were fined in the first
instance in 2000 talents (;^48o,ooo) and, when the pay-
ment was found not correct, they were en masse put on
board ship and deported in chains under the charge of
their own slaves to the coast of Colchis, while their island
was occupied with Pontic colonists. The king gave orders
that the chiefs of the Celts in Asia Minor should all be put
to death along with their wives and children in one day,
and that Galatia should be converted into a Pontic satrapy.
Most of these bloody edicts were carried into effect either
at Mithradates' own headquarters or in Galatia, but the
few who escaped placed themselves at the head of their
powerful tribes and expelled Eumachus, the governor of
the king, out of their bounds. It may readily be conceived
that such a king would be pursued by the daggers of
assassins ; sixteen hundred men were condemned to death
by the royal courts of inquisition as having been implicated
in such conspiracies.
Lucullus While the king was thus by his suicidal fury provoking

fleet on the ^^^^ temporary subjects to rise in arms against him, he was
Asiatic at the same time hard pressed by the Romans in Asia,
both by sea and by land. Lucullus, after the failure of his
attempt to lead forth the Egyptian fleet against Mithra-
dates, had with better success repeated his efforts to procure

1 The resolution of the citizens of Ephesiis to this effect has recently
been found (Waddington, Additions to Lebas, Inscr. iii. 136 a). They
had, according to their own declaration, fallen into the power of Mithra-
dates " the king of Cappadocia," being frightened by the magnitude of his
forces and the suddenness of his attack ; but, when opportunity offered,
they declared war against him " for the rule (■JTyeyuoj'ia) of the Romans
and the common weal."

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KINCl MITIIRADATES 47

vessels of war in the Syrian maritime towns, and reinforced
his nascent fleet in the ports of Cyprus, Pamphylia, and
Rhodes till he found himself strong enough to proceed to
the attack. He dexterously avoided measuring himself
against superior forces and yet obtained no inconsiderable
advantages. The Cnidian island and peninsula were
occupied by him, Samos was assailed, Colophon and
Chios were wrested from the enemy.

Meanwhile Flaccus had proceeded with his army through Flaccus
Macedonia and Thrace to Byzantium, and thence, passing ^^^ '"
the straits, had reached Chalcedon (end of 668). There 86.
a military insurrection broke out against the general,
ostensibly because he embezzled the spoil from the
soldiers. The soul of it was one of the chief officers of
the army, a man whose name had become a proverb in
Rome for a true mob-orator, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who. Fimbria,
after having differed with his commander-in-chief, trans-
ferred the demagogic practices which he had begun in the
Forum to the camp. Flaccus was deposed by the army
and soon afterwards put to death at Nicomedia, not far
from Chalcedon ; Fimbria was installed by decree of the
soldiers in his stead. As a matter of course he allowed
his troops every indulgence ; in the friendly Cyzicus, for
instance, the citizens were ordered to surrender all their
property to the soldiers on pain of death, and by way of
warning example two of the most respectable citizens were
at once executed. Nevertheless in a military point of view
the change of commander-in-chief was a gain ; Fimbria
was not, like Flaccus, an incapable general, but energetic
and talented. At Miletopolis (on the Rhyndacus to the Fimbrias
west of Brussa) he defeated the younger Mithradates, who ;^, . .
as governor of the satrapy of Pontus had marched against l-
him, completely in a nocturnal assault, and by this victory
opened his way to Pergamus, the capital formerly of the
Roman province and now of the Pontic king, whence he

48

THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES

BOOK IV

Perilous
position
of [85.
Mithra-
dates.

Negotia-
tions for
peace.

dislodged the king and compelled him to take flight to the
port of Pitane not far off, with the view of there embarking.
Just at that moment LucuUus appeared in those waters
with his fleet ; Fimbria adjured him to render assistance so
that he might be enabled to capture the king. But the
Optimate was stronger in Lucullus than the patriot ; he
sailed onward and the king escaped to Mitylene. The
situation of Mithradates was even thus sufficiently embar-
rassed. At the end of 669 Europe was lost, Asia Minor
was partly in rebellion against him, partly occupied by a
Roman army ; and he was himself threatened by the latter
in his immediate vicinity. The Roman fleet under Lucullus
had maintained its position on the Trojan coast by two
successful naval engagements at the promontory of Lectum
and at the island of Tenedos ; it was joined there by the
ships which had in the meanwhile been built by Sulla's
orders in Thessaly, and by its position commanding the
Hellespont it secured to the general of the Roman sena-
torial army a safe and easy passage next spring to Asia.

Mithradates attempted to negotiate. Under other
circumstances no doubt the author of the edict for the
Ephesian massacre could never have cherished the hope of
being admitted at all to terms of peace with Rome ; but
amidst the internal convulsions of the Roman republic,
when the ruling government had declared the general sent
against Mithradates an outlaw and subjected his partisans
at home to the most fearful persecutions, when one Roman
general opposed the other and yet both stood opposed to
the same foe, he hoped that he should be able to obtain
not merely a peace, but a favourable peace. He had the
choice of applying to Sulla or to Fimbria ; he caused
negotiations to be instituted with both, yet it seems from
the first to have been his design to come to terms with
Sulla, who, at least from the king's point of view, seemed
decidedly superior to his rival. His general Archelaus, as

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 49

instructed by his master, asked Sulla to cede Asia to the
king and to expect in return the king's aid against the
democratic party in Rome. But Sulla, cool and clear
as ever, while urgently desiring a speedy settlement
of Asiatic affairs on account of the position of things
in Italy, estimated the advantages of the Cappadocian
alliance for the war impending over him in Italy as
very slight, and was altogether too much of a Roman
to consent to so disgraceful and so injurious a con-
cession.

In the peace conferences, which took place in the winter Prciimi-
of 669-70, at Delium on the coast of Boeotia opposite to oeVium.
Euboea, Sulla distinctly refused to cede even a foot's- 85-84.
breadth of land, but, with good reason faithful to the old
Roman custom of not increasing after victory the demands
made before battle, did not go beyond the conditions
previously laid down. He required the restoration of all
the conquests made by the king and not wrested from him
again — Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, Asia
Minor and the islands — the surrender of prisoners and
deserters, the delivering up of the eighty war-vessels of
Archelaus to reinforce the still insignificant Roman fleet ;
lastly, pay and provisions for the army and the very
moderate sum of 3000 talents (;^7 20,000) as indemnity
for the expenses of the war. The Chians carried off to the
Black Sea were to be sent home, the families of the Mace-
donians who were friendly to Rome and had become
refugees were to be restored, and a number of war-vessels
were to be delivered to the cities in alliance with Rome.
Respecting Tigranes, who in strictness should likewise have
been included in the peace, there was silence on both sides,
since neither of the contracting parties cared for the endless
further steps which would be occasioned by making him a
party. The king thus retained the state of possession
which he had before the war, nor was he subjected to any
VOL. IV 104

so THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

humiliation affecting his honour.^ Archelaus, clearly per-
ceiving that much comparatively beyond expectation was
obtained and that more was not obtainable, concluded the
preliminaries and an armistice on these conditions, and
withdrew the troops from the places which the Asiatics still
possessed in Europe.
New But Mithradates rejected the peace and demanded at least

1 cuties. ^i^^j. j.j^g Romans should not insist on the surrender of the
war- vessels and should concede to him Paphlagonia ; while
he at the same time asserted that Fimbria was ready to
grant him far more favourable conditions. Sulla, offended
by this placing of his offers on an equal footing with those
of an unofificial adventurer, and having already gone to the
utmost measure of concession, broke off the negotiations.
He had employed the interval to reorganize Macedonia and
to chastise the Dardani, Sinti, and Maedi, in doing which
he at once procured booty for his army and drew nearer
Sulla Asia ; for he was resolved at any rate to go thither, in order

procee s to come to a reckoning with Fimbria. He now at once

Asia. o

put his legions stationed in Thrace as well as his fleet in
motion towards the Hellespont. Then at length Archelaus
succeeded in wringing from his obstinate master a reluctant
consent to the treaty ; for which he was subsequently
regarded with an evil eye at court as the author of the
injurious peace, and even accused of treason, so that some
time afterwards he found himself compelled to leave the
country and to take refuge with the Romans, who readily
received him and loaded him with honours. The Roman
soldiers also murmured ; their disappointment doubtless at
not receiving the expected spoil of Asia probably contributed

^ The statement that Mithradates in the peace stipulated for impunity
to the towns which had embraced his side (Memnon, 35) seems, looking
to the character of the victor and of the vanquished, far from credible, and
it is not given by Appian or by Licinianus. They neglected to draw up
the treaty of peace in writing, and this neglect afterwards left room for
various piisrepresentations.

CHAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 51

to that murmuring more than their indignation — in itself
very justifiable — that the barbarian prince, who had
murdered eighty thousand of their countrymen and had
brought unspeakable misery on Italy and Asia, should be
allowed to return home unpunished with the greatest part
of the treasures which he had collected by the pillage of
Asia. Sulla himself may have been painfully sensible that
the political complications thwarted in a most vexatious
way a task which was in a military point of view so simple,
and compelled him after such victories to content himself
with such a peace. But the self-denial and the sagacity
with which he had conducted this whole war were only dis-
played afresh in the conclusion of this peace ; for war with
a prince, to whom almost the whole coast of the Black Sea
belonged, and whose obstinacy was clearly displayed by
the very last negotiations, would still under the most
favourable circumstances require years, and the situation of
Italy was such that it seemed almost too late even for Sulla
to oppose the party in power there with the few legions
which he possessed.^ Before this could be done, however,

' Armenian tradition also is acquainted with the first Mithradatic war.
Ardasches king of .Armenia — Moses of Chorene tells us — was not contt-nt
with the second rank which rightfully belonged to him in the Persian
(Parthian) empire, but compelled the Parthian king .Arschagan to .-.■.!,• to
him the supreme power, whereupon he had a palace built for ! :i

Persia and had coins struck there with his own image. He . . 1

Arschagan viceroy of Persia and his son Dicran (Tigrancs) uccroy of
Armenia, and gave his daughter Ardaschama in marriage to the great-
prince of the Iberians Mihrdates (Mithradates) who was descended from
Mihrdates satrap of Darius and governor appointed by ." " ' nvcr

the conquered Iberians, and ruled in the northern mount I as

over the Black Sea. Ardasches then took Croesus the ; ^

prisoner, sulxlucd the mainland between the two gnsit
and crossed the sea with innumerable vessels to subjugate the west. As
there was anarchy at that time in Rome, he nowhere encountered serious
resistance, but his soldiers killctl each other and Ardasches fell bv the
hands of his own troops. .Aftt-r Ardasches" death hr ' n

marched against the amiy of the Greeks (1.^. the Rci 1

turn invaded the Armenian land ; he set a limit to their ndvan. 1

over to his brother-in-law Mihrdates the administration of ' :

(Maz-aca in Cappadocia) and of the interior along with a ct>
force, and returned to Armenix Many years afterwards there »< n vt.!

52

THE EAST AND KING MITHRADATES book iv

Peace at
Dardanus.

Sulla

against

Fimbria.

it was absolutely necessary to overthrow the bold officer
who was at the head of the democratic army in Asia, in
order that he might not at some future time come from
Asia to the help of the Italian revolution, just as Sulla now
hoped to return from Asia and crush it. At Cypsela on
the Hebrus Sulla obtained accounts of the ratification of
the peace by Mithradates ; but the march to Asia went on.
The king, it was said, desired personally to confer with
the Roman general and to cement the peace with him ; it
may be presumed that this was simply a convenient pretext
for transferring the army to Asia and there putting an end
to Fimbria.

So Sulla, attended by his legions and by Archelaus,
crossed the Hellespont ; after he had met with Mithradates
on its Asiatic shore at Dardanus and had orally concluded
the treaty, he made his army continue its march till he
came upon the camp of Fimbria at Thyatira not far from
Pergamus, and pitched his own close beside it. The
SuUan soldiers, far superior to the Fimbrians in number,
discipline, leadership, and ability, looked with contempt on
the dispirited and demoralized troops and their uncalled
commander-in-chief Desertions from the ranks of the
Fimbrians became daily more numerous. When Fimbria
ordered an attack, the soldiers refused to fight against their

pointed out in the Armenian towns statues of Greek gods by well-known
masters, trophies of this campaign.

We have no difficulty in recognizing here various facts of the first
Mithradatic war, but the whole narrative is evidently confused, furnished
with heterogeneous additions, and in particular transferred by patriotic
falsification to Armenia. In just the same way the victory over Crassus is
afterwards attributed to the Armenians. These Oriental accounts are to
be received with all the greater caution, that they are by no means mere
popular legends ; on the contrary the accounts of Josephus, Eusebius, and
other authorities current among the Christians of the fifth century have been
amalgamated with the Armenian traditions, and the historical romances
of the Greeks and beyond doubt the patriotic fancies also of Moses himself
have been laid to a considerable extent under contribution. Bad as is our
Occidental tradition in itself, to call in the aid of Oriental tradition in
this and similar cases — as has been attempted for instance by the un-
critical Saint-Martin — can only lead to still further confusion.

CMAP. VIII THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES 53

fellow-citizens, or even to take the oath which he required
that they would stand faithfully by each other in battle.
An attempt to assassinate Sulla miscarried ; at the confer-
ence which Fimbria requested Sulla did not make his
appearance, but contented himself with suggesting to him
through one of his officers a means of personal escape.
Fimbria was of an insolent temperament, but he was no Fimbria's
poltroon ; instead of accepting the vessel which Sulla '^'^^^^
oflered to him and fleeing to the barbarians, he went to
Pergamus and fell on his own sword in the temple of
Asklepios. Those who were most compromised in his army
resorted to Mithradates or to the pirates, with whom they
found ready reception ; the main body placed itself under
the orders of Sulla.

Sulla determined to leave these two legions, whom he Regulation
did not trust for the impending war, behind in Asia, where ^r-^^
the fearful crisis left for long its lingering traces in the
several cities and districts. The command of this corps
and the governorship of Roman Asia he committed to his
best officer, Lucius Licinius Murena. The revolutionary
measures of Mithradates, such as the liberation of the
slaves and the annulling of debts, were of course cancelled ;
a restoration, which in many places could not be carried
into effect without force of arms. The towns of the
territory on the eastern frontier underwent a comprehensive
reorganization, and reckoned from the year 670 as the date 84.
of their being constituted. Justice moreover was exercised,
as the victors understood the term. The most noted
adherents of Mithradates and the authors of the massacre
of the Italians were punished with death. The persons
liable to taxes were obliged immediately to pay down in
cash according to valuation the whole arrears of tenths and
customs for the last five years ; besides which they had to
pay a war-indemnity of 20,000 talents (;^4,8oo,ooo), for
the collection of which Lucius I.ucullus was left behind.

54 THE EAST AND KING MITIIRADATES book iv

These were measures fearful in their rigour and dreadful in
their effects ; but when we recall the Ephesian decree and
its execution, we feel inclined to regard them as a com-
paratively mild retaliation. That the exactions in other
respects were not unusually oppressive, is shown by the value
of the spoil afterwards carried in triumph, which amounted
in precious metal to only about ;2^i, 000,000. The few
communities on the other hand that had remained faithful
— particularly the island of Rhodes, the region of Lycia,
Magnesia on the Maeander — were richly rewarded : Rhodes
received back at least a portion of the possessions withdrawn
from it after the war against Perseus (ii. 515). In like
manner compensation was made as far as possible by free
charters and special favours to the Chians for the hardships
which they had borne, and to the Ilienses for the insanely
cruel maltreatment inflicted on them by Fimbria on account
of the negotiations into which they had entered with Sulla.
Sulla had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappa-
docia to meet the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made
them all promise to live in peace and good neighbourhood ;
on which occasion, however, the haughty Mithradates had
refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not descended of
royal blood — the slave, as he called him — to his presence.
Gaius Scribonius Curio was commissioned to superintend
the restoration of the legal order of things in the two
kingdoms evacuated by Mithradates.

The goal was thus attained. After four years of war the
Pontic king was again a client of the Romans, and a single
and settled government was re-established in Greece, Mace-
donia, and Asia Minor ; the requirements of interest and
honour were satisfied, if not adequately, yet so far as circum-
stances would allow ; Sulla had not only brilliantly distin-
guished himself as a soldier and general, but had the skill,
in his path crossed by a thousand obstacles, to preserve the
difificult mean between bold perseverance and prudent

CHAP, vm THE EAST AND KING MITIIKADATES 55

concession. Almost like Hannibal he had fought and
conquered, in order that with the forces, which the first
victory gave him, he might prepare forthwith for a second
and severer struggle. After he had in some degree com-
pensated his soldiers for the fatigues which they had
undergone by luxurious winter-quarters in the rich west of
Asia Minor, he in the spring of 671 transferred them in SulL-i [83.
1 600 vessels from Ephesus to the Piraeeus and thence by f^*i^^|[^
the land route to Patrae, where the vessels again lay ready
to convey the troops to Brundisium. His arrival was pre-
ceded by a report addressed to the senate respecting his
campaigns in Greece and Asia, the writer of which appeared
to know nothing of his deposition ; it was the mute herald
of the impending restoration.

56 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

CHAPTER IX

CINNA AND SULLA

Ferment in The State of suspense and uncertainty existing in Italy when
gj Sulla took his departure for Greece in the beginning of 667
has been already described : the half-suppressed insurrection,
the principal army under the more than half-usurped com-
mand of a general whose politics were very doubtful, the
confusion and the manifold activity of intrigue in the
capital. The victory of the oligarchy by force of arms had,
in spite or because of its moderation, engendered manifold
discontent. The capitalists, painfully affected by the blows
of the most severe financial crisis which Rome had yet wit-
nessed, were indignant at the government on account of the
law which it had issued as to interest, and on account of the
Italian and Asiatic wars which it had not prevented. The
insurgents, so far as they had laid down their arms, bewailed
not only the disappointment of their proud hopes of obtain-
ing equal rights with the ruling burgesses, but also the
forfeiture of their venerable treaties, and their new position
as subjects utterly destitute of rights. The communities
between the Alps and the Po were likewise discontented
with the partial concessions made to them, and the new
burgesses and freedmen were exasperated by the cancelling
of the Sulpician laws. The populace of the city suffered
amid the general distress, and found it intolerable that the
government of the sabre was no longer disposed to acquiesce

/

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 57

in the constitutional rule of the bludgeon. The adherents,
resident in the capital, of those outlawed after the Sulpician
revolution — adherents who remained very numerous in
consequence of the remarkable moderation of Sulla —
laboured zealously to procure permission for the outlaws to
return home ; and in particular some ladies of wealth and
distinction spared for this inirpose neither trouble nor money.
None of these grounds of ill-humour were such as to furnish
any immediate prospect of a fresh violent collision between
the parties ; they were in great part of an aimless and tem-
porary nature ; but they all fed the general discontent, and
had already been more or less concerned in producing the
murder of Rufus, the repeated attempts to assassinate Sulla, .

the issue of the consular and tribunician elections for 667 87. J
partly in favour of the opposition.

The name of the man whom the discontented had sum- Cinna.
moned to the head of the state, Lucius Cornelius Cinna,
had been hitherto scarcely heard of, except so far as he had
borne himself well as an officer in the Social war. We
have less information regarding the personality and the
original designs of Cinna than regarding those of any other
party leader in the Roman revolution. The reason is, to all
appearance, simply that this man, altogether vulgar and
guided by the lowest selfishness, had from the first no
ulterior politioil plans whatever. It was asserted at his very
first appearance that he had sold himself for a round sum of
money to the new burgesses and the coterie of Marius, and
the charge looks very credible ; but even were it false, it
remains nevertheless significant that a suspicion of the sort,
such as was never expressed against Saturninus and Sulpicius,
attached to Cinna. In fact the movement, at the head of
which he put himself, has altogether the appearance of
worthlessness both as to motives ami as to aims. It pro-
ceeded not so much from a i)arty as from a number of mal-
contents without proper political aims or notable support,

58

CINNA AND SULLA

BOOK IV

Carbo.

Sertorius.

who had mainly undertaken to effect the recall of the exiles
by legal or illegal means. Cinna seems to have been
admitted into the conspiracy only by an afterthought and
merely because the intrigue, which in consequence of the
restriction of the tribunician powers needed a consul to
bring forward its proposals, saw in him among the consular

87. candidates for 667 its fittest instrument and so pushed him
forward as consul. Among the leaders appearing in the
second rank of the movement were some abler heads ; such
was the tribune of the people Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, who
had made himself a name by his impetuous popular elo-
quence, and above all Quintus Sertorius, one of the most
talented of Roman officers and a man in every respect
excellent, who since his candidature for the tribunate of the
people had been a personal enemy to Sulla and had been
led by this quarrel into the ranks of the disaffected to which
he did not at all by nature belong. The proconsul Strabo,
although at variance with the government, was yet far from
going along with this faction.

So long as Sulla was in Italy, the confederates for good
reasons remained quiet. But when the dreaded proconsul,
revolution, yielding not to the exhortations of the consul Cinna but to
the urgent state of matters in the east, had embarked,
Cinna, supported by the majority of the college of tribunes,
immediately submitted the projects of law which had been
concerted as a partial reaction against the Sullan restoration

88. of 666. They embraced the political equalization of the
new burgesses and the freedmen, as Sulpicius had proposed
it, and the restitution of those who had been banished in
consequence of the Sulpician revolution to their former
status. The new burgesses flocked efi masse to the capital,
that along with the freedmen they might terrify, and in case
of need force, their opponents into compliance. But the
government party was determined not to yield ; consul
stood against consul, Gnaeus Octavius against Lucius Cinna,

Outbreak
of the
Cinnan

CHAI-. IX CINNA AND SULLA 59

and tribune against tribune ; both sides appeared in great
part armed on the day and at the place of voting. The
tribunes of the senatorial party interposed their veto ; when
swords were drawn against them even on the rostra, Octavius
employed force against force. His compact bands of armed Victory of
men not only cleared the Via Sacra and the Forum, but mem.°^*^'^°
also, disregarding the commands of their more gentle-minded
leader, exercised horrible atrocities against the assembled
multitude. The Forum swam with blood on this " Octavius'
day," as it never did before or afterwards — the number of
corpses was estimated at ten thousand. Cinna called on
the slaves to purchase freedom for themselves by sharing in
the struggle ; but his appeal was as unsuccessful as the like
appeal of Marius in the previous year, and no course was
left to the leaders of the movement but to take flight. The
constitution supplied no means of proceeding farther against
the chiefs of the conspiracy, so long as their year of office
lasted. But a prophet presumably more loyal than pious
had announced that the banishment of the consul Cinna
and of the six tribunes of the people adhering to him would
restore peace and tranquillity to the country ; and, in con-
formity not with the constitution but with this counsel of the
gods fortunately laid hold of by the custodiers of oracles, the
consul Cinna was by decree of the senate deprived of his
office, Lucius Cornelius Merula was chosen in his stead,
and outlawry was pronounced against the chiefs who had
fled. It seemed as if the whole crisis were about to end in
a few additions to the number of the men who were exiles
in Numidia.

Beyond doubt nothing further would have come of the The
movement, had not the senate on the one hand with its ;„ j,^
usual remissness omitted to compel the fugitives at least
rapidly to quit Italy, and had the latter on the other hand
been, as champions of the emancipation of the new bur-
gesses, in a position to renew to some extent in their own

6o CINNA AND SULLA book iv

favour the revolt of the Italians. Without obstruction they
appeared in Tibur, in Praeneste, in all the important com-
munities of new burgesses in Latium and Campania, and
asked and obtained everywhere money and men for the
furtherance of the common cause. Thus supported, they
made their appearance at the army besieging Nola. The
armies of this period were democratic and revolutionary in
their views, wherever the general did not attach them to
himself by the weight of his personal influence ; the
speeches of the fugitive magistrates, some of whom,
especially Cinna and Sertorius, were favourably remem-
bered by the soldiers in connection with the last campaigns,
made a deep impression ; the unconstitutional deposition
of the popular consul and the interference of the senate
with the rights of the sovereign people told on the common
soldier, and the gold of the consul or rather of the new
burgesses made the breach of the constitution clear to the
ofificers. The Campanian army recognized Cinna as consul
and swore the oath of fidelity to him man by man ; it be-
came a nucleus for the bands that flocked in from the new
burgesses and even from the allied communities ; a con-
siderable army, though consisting mostly of recruits, soon
moved from Campania towards the capital. Other bands
approached it from the north. On the invitation of Cinna
those who had been banished in the previous year had
landed at Telamon on the Etruscan coast. There were
not more than some 500 armed men, for the most part
slaves of the refugees and enlisted Numidian horsemen ;
Landing of but, as Gaius Marius had in the previous year been willing
^'^'"^' to fraternize with the rabble of the capital, so he now
ordered the ergastula in which the landholders of this
region shut up their field-labourers during the night to be
broken open, and the arms which he offered to these for
the purpose of achieving their freedom were not despised.
Reinforced by these men and the contingents of the new

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 6i

burgesses, as well as by the exiles who flocked to him with
their partisans from all sides, he soon numbered 6000 men
under his eagles and was able to man forty ships, which
took their station before the mouth of the Tiber and gave
chase to the corn-ships sailing towards Rome. With these
he placed himself at the disposal of the "consul" Cinna.
The leaders of the Campanian army hesitated ; the more
sagacious, Sertorius in particular, seriously pointed out the
danger of too closely connecting themselves with a man
whose name would necessarily place him at the head of the
movement, and who yet was notoriously incapable of any
statesmanlike action and haunted by an insane thirst for
revenge ; but Cinna disregarded these scruples, and con-
firmed Marius in the supreme command in Etruria and at
sea with proconsular powers.

Thus the storm gathered around the capital, and the Dubious
government could no longer delay bringing forward their 'j;trabo.
troops to protect it.^ But the forces of Metellus were
detained by the Italians in Samnium and before Nola ;
Strabo alone was in a position to hasten to the help of the
capital. He appeared and pitched his camp at the Colline
gate : with his numerous and experienced army he might
doubtless have rapidly and totally annihilated the still weak
bands of insurgents ; but this seemed to be no part of his
design. On the contrary he allowed Rome to be actually The
invested by the insurgents. Cinna witii his corps and that ^'""^"^

JO » around

of Carbo took post on the right bank of the Tiber opposite Rome,
to the Janiculum, Sertorius on the left bank confronting
I'ompcius over against the Servian wall. Marius with his
band which had gradually increased to three legions, and
in possession of a number of war-vessels, occupied one

' Thi; whole of the representation that follows is based in substance on
the recently discovered account of Licini;inus, which communicates a
nunilx-T of facts previously unknown, and in particular enables us to per-
ceive the sequence and connection of these events more clearly tlian w.is
possible iK'fore.

62

CINNA AND SULLA

BOOK IV

Negotia-
tions of
parties
with the
Italians.

place on the coast after another till at length even Ostia
fell into his hands through treachery, and, by way of pre-
lude as it were to the approaching reign of terror, was
abandoned by the general to the savage band for massacre
and pillage. The capital was placed, even by the mere
obstruction of traffic, in great danger ; by command of the
senate the walls and gates were put in a state of defence
and the burgess-levy was ordered to the Janiculum. The
inaction of Strabo excited among all classes alike surprise
and indignation. The suspicion that he was negotiating
secretly with Cinna was natural, but was probably without
foundation. A serious conflict in which he engaged the
band of Sertorius, and the support which he gave to the
consul Octavius when Marius had by an understanding
with one of the officers of the garrison penetrated into the
Janiculum, and by which in fact the insurgents were
successfully beaten off again with much loss, showed that
he was far from intending to unite with, or rather to place
himself under, the leaders of the insurgents. It seems
rather to have been his design to sell his assistance in sub-
duing the insurrection to the alarmed government and
citizens of the capital at the price of the consulship for the
next year, and thereby to get the reins of government into
his own hands.

The senate was not, however, inclined to throw itself
into the arms of one usurper in order to escape from
another, and sought help elsewhere. The franchise was
by decree of the senate supplementarily conferred on all
the Italian communities involved in the Social war, which
had laid down their arms and had in consequence thereof
forfeited their old alliance.^ It seemed as it were their

1 iii. 527. That there was no confirmation by the coniitia, is clear
from Cic. Phil. xii. 11, 27. The senate seems to have made use of the
form of simply prolonging the term of the Plautio-Papirian law (iii. 517),
a course which by use and wont (i. 409) was open to it and practically
amounted to conferring the franchise on all Italians.

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 63

intention officially to demonstrate that Rome in the war
against the Italians had staked her existence for the sake
not of a great object but of her own vanity : in the first
momentary embarrassment, for the purpose of bringing
into the field an additional thousand or two of soldiers, she
sacrificed everything which had been gained at so terribly
dear a cost in the Social war. In fact, troops arrived
from the communities who were benefited by this con-
cession ; but instead of the many legions promised, their
contingent on the whole amounted to not more than, at
most, ten thousand men. It would have been of more
moment that an agreement should be come to with the
Samnites and Nolans, so that the troops of the thoroughly
trustworthy Metellus might be employed for the protection
of the capital. But the Samnites made demands which
recalled the yoke of Caudium — restitution of the spoil
taken from the Samnites and of their prisoners and de-
serters, renunciation of the booty wrested by the Samnites
from the Romans, the bestowal of the franchise on the
Samnites themselves as well as on the Romans who had
passed over to them. The senate rejected even in this
emergency terms of peace so disgraceful, but instructed
Metellus to leave behind a small division and to lead in
person all the troops that could at all be dispensed with
in southern Italy as quickly as possible to Rome. He
obeyed. But the consequence was, that the Samnites
attacked and defeated Plautius the legate left behind by
Metellus and his weak band ; that the garrison of Nola
marched out and set on fire the neighbouring town of
Abella in alliance with Rome ; that Cinna and Marius,
moreover, granted to the Samnites everj'thing they asked
— what mattered Roman honour to them! — and a Samnite
contingent reinforced the ranks of the insurgents. It was
a severe loss also, when after a combat unfavourable to the
troops of the government Ariminum was occupied by the

64

CINNA AND SULLA

BOOK IV

Death of
Strabo.

Vacillation
of the
govern-
ment.

insurgents and thus the important communication between
Rome and the valley of the Po, whence men and supplies
were expected, was interrupted. Scarcity and famine set
in. The large populous city numerously garrisoned with
troops was but inadequately supplied with provisions ; and
Marius in particular took care to cut off its supplies more
and more. He had already blocked up the Tiber by a
bridge of ships ; now by the capture of Antium, Lanuvium,
Aricia, and other townships he gained control over the
means of land communication still open, and at the same
time appeased temporarily his revenge by causing all the
citizens, wherever resistance was offered, to be put to the
sword with the exception of those who had possibly be-
trayed to him the town. Contagious diseases followed on
the distress and committed dreadful ravages among the
masses of soldiers densely crowded round the capital ; of
Strabo's veteran army i i,ooo, and of the troops of Octavius
6000 are said to have fallen victims to them. Yet the
government did not despair ; and the sudden death of
Strabo was a fortunate event for it. He died of the
pestilence •,^ the masses, exasperated on many grounds
against him, tore his corpse from the bier and dragged it
through the streets. The remnant of his troops was in-
corporated by the consul Octavius with his army.

After the arrival of Metellus and the decease of Strabo
the army of the government was again at least a match for
its antagonists, and was able to array itself for battle against
the insurgents at the Alban Mount. But the minds of the
soldiers of the government were deeply agitated ; when Cinna
appeared in front of them, they received him with acclama-
tion as if he were still their general and consul ; Metellus

^ " Adflatus sidcre," as Livy (according to Obsequens, 56) expresses
it, means "seized by the pestilence" (Petron. Sat. 2; Plin. H. N. ii.
41, 108; Liv. viii. 9, 12), not "struck by lightning," as later writers
have misunderstood it.

cirAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 65

deemed it advisable not to allow the battle to come on, but
to lead back the troops to their camp. The Opiimates
themselves wavered, and fell at variance with each other.
While one party, with the honourable but stubborn and
shortsighted consul Octavius at their head, perseveringly
opposed all concession, Metellus more experienced in war
and more judicious attempted to bring about a compromise ;
but his conference with Cinna excited the wrath of the
extreme men on both sides : Cinna was called by Marius a
weakling, Metellus was called by Octavius a traitor. The
soldiers, unsettled otherwise and not without cause distrust-
ing the leadership of the untried Octavius, suggested to
Metellus that he should assume the chief command, and,
when he refused, began in crowds to throw away their arms
or even to desert to the enemy. The temper of the bur-
gesses became daily more depressed and troublesome. On
the proclamation of the heralds of Cinna guaranteeing
freedom to the slaves who should desert, these flocked in
troops from the capital to the enemy's camp. But the
proposal that the senate should guarantee freedom to the
slaves willing to enter the army was decidedly resisted by
Octavius. The government could not conceal from itself Rome
that it was defeated, and that nothing remained but to come
to terms if possible with the leaders of the band, as the
overpowered traveller comes to terms with the captain of
banditti. Envoys went to Cinna ; but, while they foolishly
made difficulties as to recognizing him as consul, and Cinna
in the interval thus prolonged transferred his camp close to
the city-gates, the desertion spread to so great an extent that
it was no longer possible to settle any terms. The senate
submitted itself unconditionally to the outlawed consul,
adding only a request that he would refrain from bloodshed.
Cinna promised this, but refused to ratit'y his promise by an
oath ; Marius, who kept by his side during the negotiations,
maintained a sullen silence- ^

VOL. IV 105

66 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

Marian The gates of the capital were opened. The consul

reign of marched in with his legions ; but Marius, scoffingly recalling
the law of outlawry, refused to set foot in the city until the
law allowed him to do so, and the burgesses hastily assembled
in the Forum to pass the annulling decree. He then
j entered, and with him the reign of terror. It was deter-
mined not to select individual victims, but to have all the
notable men of the Optimate party put to death and to
confiscate their property. The gates were closed ; for five
days and five nights the slaughter continued without inter-
ruption ; even afterwards the execution of individuals who
had escaped or been overlooked was of daily occurrence, and

J for months the bloody persecution went on throughout
Italy. The consul Gnaeus Octavius was the first victim.
True to his often-expressed principle, that he would rather
suffer death than make the smallest concession to men acting
illegally, he refused even now to take flight, and in his
consular robes awaited at the Janiculum the assassin, who
was not slow to appear. Among the slain were Lucius

90. Caesar (consul in 664) the celebrated victor of Acerrae
(iii. 511); his brother Gaius, whose unseasonable ambition
had provoked the Sulpician tumult (iii. 532), well known as
an orator and poet and as an amiable companion ; Marcus

99. Antonius (consul in 655), after the death of Lucius Crassus
beyond dispute the first pleader of his time ; Publius Crassus

97. (consul in 657) who had commanded with distinction in
the Spanish and in the Social wars and also during the siege
of Rome ; and a multitude of the most considerable men of
the government party, among whom the wealthy were
traced out with especial zeal by the greedy executioners.
Peculiarly sad seemed the death of Lucius Merula, who very
much against his own wish had become Cinna's successor,
and who now, when criminally impeached on that account
and cited before the comitia, in order to anticipate the
inevitable condemnation opened his veins, and at the altar

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 67

of the Supreme Jupiter whose priest he was, after laying
aside the priestly headband as the religious duty of the
dying Flamen required, breathed his last ; and still more
the death of Quintus Catulus (consul in 652), once in better 102.
days the associate of the most glorious victory and triumph
of that same Marius who now had no other answer for the
suppliant relatives of his aged colleague than the mono-
syllabic order, "he must die." -
The originator of all these outrages was Gaius Marius. The last /

. . , , " . , • davs of '

He designated the victmis and the executioners — only in Darius,
exceptional cases, as in those of Merula and Catulus, was
any form of law observed ; not unfrequently a glance or the
silence with which he received those who saluted him formed
the sentence of death, which was always executed at once.
His revenge was not satisfied even with the death of his
victim ; he forbade the burial of the dead bodies : he gave
orders — anticipated, it is true, in this respect by Sulla — that
the heads of the senators slain should be fixed to the rostra /
in the Forum ; he ordered particular corpses to be dragged
through the Forum, and that of Gaius Caesar to be stabbed
afresh at the tomb of Quintus Varius, whom Caesar presum-
ably had once impeached (iii. 516); he publicly embraced
the man who delivered to him as he sat at table the head of
Antonius, whom he had been with difficulty restrained from
seeking out in his hiding-place, and slaying with his own
hand. His legions of slaves, and in particular a division of
Ardyaeans (iii. 427), chiefly served as his executioners, and
did not neglect, amidst these Saturnalia of their new freedom,
to plunder the houses of their former masters and to dis-
honour and murder all whom they met with there. His
own associates were in despair at this insane fury ; Sertorius .
adjured the consul to put a stop to it at any price, and even
Cinna was alarmed. But in times such as these were, mad-
ness itself becomes a power ; man hurls himself into the
abyss, to save himself from giddiness. It was not easy to

J

68 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

restrain the furious old man and his band, and least of all
had Cinna the courage to do so ; on the contrary, he chose
Marius as his colleague in the consulship for the next year.
The reign of terror alarmed the more moderate of the victors
not much less than the defeated party ; the capitalists alone
were not displeased to see that another hand lent itself to
the work of thoroughly humbling for once the haughty
oligarchs, and that at the same time, in consequence of the
extensive confiscations and auctions, the best part of the
spoil came to themselves — in these times of terror they
acquired from the people the surname of the " hoarders."

Fate had thus granted to the author of this reign of
terror, the old Gains Marius, his two chief wishes. He had
taken vengeance on the whole genteel pack that had em-
bittered his victories and envenomed his defeats ; he had
been enabled to retaliate for every sarcasm by a stroke of
the dagger. Moreover he entered on the new year once
more as consul ; the vision of a seventh consulate, which
the oracle had promised him, and which he had sought for
thirteen years to grasp, had now been realized. The gods
had granted to him what he wished ; but now too, as in the
old legendary period, they practised the fatal irony of
destroying man by the fulfilment of his wishes. In his early
consulates the pride, in his sixth the laughing-stock, of his
V fellow-citizens, he was now in his seventh loaded with the
si execration of all parties, with the hatred of the whole nation ;
he, the originally upright, capable, gallant man, was branded
as the crackbrained chief of a reckless band of robbers.
He himself seemed to feel it. His days were passed as in
delirium, and by night his couch denied him rest, so that
he grasped the wine-cup in order merely to drown thought,
A burning fever seized him ; after being stretched for seven
days on a sick bed, in the wild fancies of which he was
fighting on the fields of Asia Minor the battles of which the
laurels were destined for Sulla, he expired on the 13th Jan.

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 69

fe68! I He died, more than seventy years old, in full Death (86
possession of what he called power and honour, and in his ° ' *"*"■
bed ; but Nemesis assumes various shapes, and does not
always expiate blood with blood. Was there no sort of
retaliation in the fact, that Rome and Italy now breathed
more freely on the news of the death of the famous saviour
of the people than at the tidings of the battle on the
Raudine plain ?

Even after his death individual incidents no doubt
occurred, which recalled that time of terror ; Gaius Fimbria,
for instance, who more than any other during the Marian
butcheries had dipped his hand in blood, made an attempt
at the very funeral of Marius to kill the universally revered
pontifex maxiimts Quintus Scaevola (consul in 659) who 95.
had been spared even by Marius, and then, when Scaevola
recovered from the wound he had received, indicted him
criminally on account of the oftence, as Fimbria jestingly
expressed it, of having not been willing to let himself be
murdered. But the orgies of murder at any rate were over.
Sertorius called together the Marian bandits, under pretext j
of giving them their pay, surrounded them with his trusty /
Celtic troops, and caused them to be cut down en masse to
the number, according to the lowest estimate, of 4000.

Along with the reign of terror came the tyrannis. Cinna Ciovcm-
not only stood at the head of the state for four years in ^1".^°
succession (667-670) as consul, but he regularly nominated 87-84.
himself and his colleagues without consulting the people ;
it seemed as if these democrats set aside the sovereign
popular assembly with intentional contempt. No other
chief of the popular party, before or afterwards, possessed
so perfectly absolute a power in Italy and in the greater
part of the provinces for so long a time almost undisturbed,
as Cinna ; but no one can be named, whose government
was so utterly worthless and aimless. The law proposed
by Sulpicius and thereafter by Cinna himself, which

70 CINNA AND SULL.\ book iv

promised to the new burgesses and the freedmen equality
of suffrage with the old burgesses, was naturally revived :
and it was formally confirmed by a decree of the senate as
84. So", yolid in law (670). Censors were nominated (66S) for
the purpose of distributing all the Italians, in accordance
with it, into the thirty-five burgess-districts — by a singular
conjuncture, in consequence of a want of qualified candidates
for the censorship the same Philippus, who when consul in

9L 663 had chiefiy occasioned the miscarriage of the plan of
Drusus for bestowing the franchise on the Italians (iii. 487),
was now selected as censor to inscribe them in the burgess-
rolls. The reactionary institutions established by Sulla in

88. 666 were of course overthrown. Some steps were taken
to please the proletariate — for instance, the restrictions on
the distribution of grain introduced some years ago {iii. 504),
were probably now once more removed ; the design of Gaius
Gracchus to found a colony at Capua was in reality carried

33. out in the spring of 6 7 1 on the proposal of the tribune of
the people, Marcus Junius Brutus ; Lucius Valerius Flaccus
the younger introduced a law as to debt, which reduced
every private claim to the fourth part of its nominal amount
and cancelled three-fourths in favour of the debtors. But
these measures, the only positive ones during the whole
Cinnan government, were without exception the dictates of
the moment ; they were based — and this is perhaps the
most shocking feature in this whole catastrophe — not on a
plan possibly erroneous, but on no political plan at all.
The populace were caressed, and at the same time offended
in a very unnecessary way by a meaningless disregard of
the constitutional arrangements for election. The capitalist
party might have furnished a support, but it was injured in
the most sensitive point by the law as to debt. The true
mainstay of the government was — wholly without any co-
operation on its part — the new burgesses ; their assistance
was acquiesced in, but nothing was done to regulate the

CHAP. IX CIWA AND SULLA 71

strange position of the Samnites, who were now nominally
Roman citizens, but evidently regarded their country's
independence as practically the real object and prize of the
struggle and remained in arms to defend it against all and
sundry. Illustrious senators were struck down like mad
dogs ; but not the smallest step was taken to reorganize
the senate in the interest of the government, or even per-
manently to terrify it ; so that the government was by no
means sure of its aid. Gaius Gracchus had not understood
the fall of the oligarchy as implying that the new master
might conduct himself on his self-created throne, as legiti-
mate cipher-kings think proper to do. But this Cinna had
been elevated to power not by his will, but by pure acci-
dent ; was there any wonder that he remained where the
storm-wave of revolution had washed him up, till a second
wave came to sweep him away again ?

The same union of the mightiest plenitude of power with Cinna and
the most utter impotence and incapacity in those who held
it, was apparent in the warfare waged by the revolutionary
government against the oligarchy — a warfare on which
withal its existence primarily depended. In Italy it ruled luly and
with absolute sway. Of the old burgesses a very large ^^^^^^
portion were on principle favourable to democratic views ; favour of
and the still greater mass of quiet people, while disappronng g^fj^"^^'
the Marian horrors, saw in an oligarchic restoration simply
the commencement of a second reign of terror by the
opposite party. The impression of the outrages of 667 on 87.
the nation at large had been comparatively slight, as they
had chiefly affected the mere aristocracy of the capital ;
and it was moreover somewhat effaced by tiie three years
of tolerably peaceful government that ensued. lastly the
whole mass of the new burgesses — three-fifths |>erhaps of
the Italians — were decidedly, if not favourable to the present
government, yet opposed to the oligarchy.

Like Italy, most of the provinces adhered to the oligarchy

72 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

— Sicily, Sardinia, the two Gauls, the two Spains. In Africa
Quintus Metellus, who had fortunately escaped the mur-
derers, made an attempt to hold that province for the
Optimates ; Marcus Crassus, the youngest son of the Publius
Crassus who had perished in the Marian massacre, resorted
to him from Spain, and reinforced him by a band which he
had collected there. But on their quarrelling with each
other they were obliged to yield to Gains Fabius Hadrianus,
the governor appointed by the revolutionary government.
Asia was in the hands of Mithradates ; consequently the
province of Macedonia, so far as it was in the power of
Sulla, remained the only asylum of the exiled oligarchy.
Sulla's wife and children who had with difficulty escaped
death, and not a few senators who had made their escape,
sought refuge there, so that a sort of senate was soon formed
at his head-quarters.
Measures The government did not fail to issue decrees against

against jj^g oligarchic proconsul. Sulla was deprived by the
comitia of his command and of his other honours and
dignities and outlawed, as was also the case with Metellus,
Appius Claudius, and other refugees of note ; his house in
Rome was razed, his country estates were laid waste. But
such proceedings did not settle the matter. Had Gains
Marius lived longer, he would doubtless have marched in
person against Sulla to those fields whither the fevered
visions of his death-bed drew him ; the measures which the
government took after his death have been stated already.
Lucius Valerius Flaccus the younger,^ who after Marius'

86. ^ Lucius Valerius Flaccus, whom the Fasti name as consul in 668, was
100. not the consul of 654, but a younger man of the same name, perhaps son
of the preceding. For, first, the law which prohibited re-election to the
15L 8L consulship remained legally in full force from c. 603 (iii. 299) to 673, and
it is not probable that what was done in the case of Scipio Aemilianus and
Marius was done also for Flaccus. Secondly, there is no mention any-
where, when either Flaccus is named, of a double consulship, not even
where it was necessary as in Cic. pro Flacc. 32, 77. Thirdly, the Lucius
85. Valerius Flaccus who was active in Rome in 669 z.s princeps senatus and
consequently of consular rank (Liv. 83), cannot have been the consul of

CHAI-. IX CINNA AND SULLA 73

death was invested with the consulship and the command
in the east (668), was neither soldier nor officer; Gaius 86.
Fimbria who accompanied him was not without ability, but
insubordinate ; the army assigned to them was even in
numbers three times weaker than the army of Sulla.
Tidings successively arrived, that Flaccus, in order not to
be crushed by Sulla, had marched past him onward to Asia
(668); that Fimbria had set him aside and installed himself 86.
in his room (beg. of 669) ; that Sulla had concluded peace 85.
with Mithradates (669-670). Hitherto Sulla had been 85-84.
silent so far as the authorities ruling in the capital were
concerned. Now a letter from him reached the senate, in
which he reported the termination of the war and announced
his return to Italy ; he stated that he would respect the
rights conferred on the new burgesses, and that, while
penal measures were inevitable, they would light not on
the masses, but on the authors of the mischief. This
announcement frightened Cinna out of his inaction : while
he had hitherto taken no step against Sulla e.xcept the
placing some men under arms and collecting a number of
vessels in the Adriatic, he now resolved to cross in all haste
to Greece.

On the other hand Sulla's letter, which in the circum- Attempts
stances might be called extremely moderate, awakened in pron,*;^
the middle-party hopes of a peaceful adjustment. The
majority of the senate resolved, on the proposal of the
elder Flaccus, to set on foot an attempt at reconciliation,
and with that view to summon Sulla to come under the
guarantee of a safe-conduct to Italy, and to suggest to the

668, for the latter had already at that lime departed for .\sia and wxs 86.

probably already dead. The consul of 654, censor in 657, is the person 100. 97

whom Cicero (aJ Alt. viii. 3, 6) mentions among the consulars present

in Rome in 667 ; he was in 669 beyond doubt the oldest of the old censors 87. 85.

living and thus lilted to be /r/mv/vj sftiatus ; he was also the inttrrtx and

the magister tquitum of 672. On ihe other hand, the consul of 668. who 82. 86.

})orished at Nicomcdia (p. 47), was the father of the Lucius Flaccus

defended by Cicero {pro Flacc. 25, 61. comp. 23, 55. 33. 77).

74 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

consuls Cinna and Carbo that they should suspend their
preparations till the arrival of Sulla's answer, Sulla did not
absolutely reject the proposals. Of course he did not
come in person, but he sent a message that he asked
nothing but the restoration of the banished to their former
status and the judicial punishment of the crimes that had
been perpetrated, and moreover that he did not desire
security to be provided for himself, but proposed to bring
it to those who were at home. His envoys found the state
of things in Italy essentially altered. Cinna had, without
concerning himself further about that decree of the senate,
immediately after the termination of its sitting proceeded to
the army and urged its embarkation. The summons to
trust themselves to the sea at that unfavourable season
of the year provoked among the already dissatisfied troops
in the head-quarters at Ancona a mutiny, to which Cinna
Death of fell a victim (beg. of 670) ; whereupon his colleague Carbo
Carbo and found himself compelled to bring back the divisions that
the new had already crossed and, abandoning the idea of taking

bur^'essGS

arm" ^^P the war m Greece, to enter mto wmter-quarters m

against Ariminum. But Sulla's offers met no better reception on
that account ; the senate rejected his proposals without
even allowing the envoys to enter Rome, and enjoined him
summarily to lay down arms. It was not the coterie of the
Marians which primarily brought about this resolute attitude.
That faction was obliged to abandon its hitherto usurped
occupation of the supreme magistracy at the very time when
it was of moment, and again to institute consular elections
83. for the decisive year 671. The suffrages on this occasion
were united not in favour of the former consul Carbo or of
any of the able officers of the hitherto ruling clique, such
as Quintus Sertorius or Gains Marius the younger, but in
favour of Lucius Scipio and Gains Norbanus, two incapables,
neither of whom knew how to fight and Scipio not even
how to speak ; the former of these recommended himself

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 75

to the multitude only as the great-grandson of the conqueror
of Antiochus, and the latter as a political opponent of the
oligarchy (iii. 478). The Marians were not so much al>
horrcd for their misdeeds as despised for their incapacity ;
but if the nation would have nothing to do with these,
the great majority of it would have still less to do with Sulla
and an oligarchic restoration. Earnest measures of self-
defence were contemplated. While Sulla crossed to Asia
and induced such defection in the army of Fimbria that its
leader fell by his own hand, the government in Italy
employed the further interval of a year granted to it by
these steps of Sulla in energetic preparations ; it is said
that at Sulla's landing 100,000 men, and afterwards even
double that number of troops, were arrayed in arms
against him.

Against this Italian force Sulla had nothing to place in Difficult
the scale except his five legions, which, even including 5^!^°" "
some contingents levied in Macedonia and the Pelo-
ponnesus, probably amounted to scarce 40,000 men. It
is true that this army had been, during its seven years'
conflicts in Italy, Greece, and Asia, weaned from politics,
and adhered to its general — who pardoned everj-thing in
his soldiers, debauchery, brutality, even mutiny against
their officers, required notliing but valour and fidelity
towards their general, and set before them the prospect of
the most extravagant rewards in the event of victor)' — with
all that soldierly enthusiasm, which is the more powerful
that the noblest and the meanest passions often combine
to produce it in the same breast. The soldiers of Sulla
voluntarily according to the' Roman custom swore mutual
oaths that they would stand firmly by each other, and each
voluntarily brought to the general his savings as a contribu-
tion to the costs of the war. But considerable as was the
weight of this solid and select body of troops in comparison
with the masses of the enemy, Sulla saw very well that Italy

76 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

could not be subdued with five legions if it remained
united in resolute resistance. To settle accounts with the
popular party and their incapable autocrats would not have
been difficult ; but he saw opposed to him and united
with that party the whole mass of those who desired no
oligarchic restoration with its terrors, and above all the
whole body of new burgesses — both those who had been
withheld by the Julian law from taking part in the insur-
rection, and those whose revolt a few years before had
brought Rome to the brink of ruin.
His mode- Sulla fully surveyed the situation of affairs, and was far
ration. removed from the blind exasperation and the obstinate
rigour which characterized the majority of his party.
While the edifice of the state was in flames, while his
friends were being murdered, his houses destroyed, his
family driven into exile, he had remained undisturbed at
his post till the public foe was conquered and the Roman
frontier was secured. He now treated Italian affairs in the
same spirit of patriotic and judicious moderation, and did
whatever he could to pacify the moderate party and the
new burgesses, and to prevent the civil war from assuming
the far more dangerous form of a fresh war between the
Old Romans and the Italian allies. The first letter which
Sulla addressed to the senate had asked nothing but what
was right and just, and had expressly disclaimed a reign
of terror. In harmony with its terms, he now presented
the prospect of unconditional pardon to all those who
should even now break off from the revolutionary govern-
ment, and caused his soldiers man by man to swear that
they would meet the Italian^ thoroughly as friends and
fellow-citizens. The most binding declarations secured
to the new burgesses the political rights which they had
acquired ; so that Carbo, for that reason, wished hostages
to be furnished to him by every civic community in Italy,
but the proposal broke down under general mdignation

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 77

and under the opposition of the senate. The chief diffi-
culty in the position of Sulla really consisted in the fact,
that in consequence of the faithlessness and perfidy which
prevailed the new burgesses had every reason, if not to
suspect his personal designs, to doubt at any rate whether
he would be able to induce his party to keep their word
after the victory.

In the spring of 671 Sulla landed with his legions in Sulla [S3
the port of Brundisium. The senate, on receiving the jj". * '"
news, declared the commonwealth in danger, and com-
mitted to the consuls unlimited powers; but these incapable
leaders had not looked before them, and were surprised by
a landing which had nevertheless been foreseen for years.
The army was still at Ariminum, the ports were not garri-
soned, and — what is almost incredible — there was not a
man under arms at all along the whole south-eastern coast.
The consequences were soon apparent. Brundisium itself, and is
a considerable community of new burgesses, at once opened "^'"'^°'''^."^
its gates without resistance to the oligarchic general, and sans and
all Messapia and Apulia followed its example. The army °*^^'^^'^-
marched through these regions as through a friendly country,
and mindful of its oath uniformly maintained the strictest
discipline. From all sides the scattered remnant of the
Optimate party flocked to the camp of Sulla. Quintus
Mctellus came from the mountain ravines of Liguria,
whither he had made his escape from Africa, and resumed,
as colleague of Sulla, the proconsular command committed
to him in 667 (iii. 547), and withdrawn from him by the 87.
revolution. Marcus Crassus in like manner appeared from
Africa with a small band of armed men. Most of the
Optimates, indeed, came as emigrants of quality with great
pretensions and small desire for fighting, so that they had
to listen to bitter language from Sulla himself regarding
the noble lords who wished to have themselves preserved
for the good of the state and could not even be brought to

78 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

arm their slaves. It was of more importance, that deserters
already made their appearance from the democratic camp
— for instance, the refined and respected Lucius Philippus,
who was, along with one or two notoriously incapable
persons, the only consular that had come to terms with the
revolutionary government and accepted ofifices under it.
He met with the most gracious reception from Sulla, and
obtained the honourable and easy charge of occupying for
him the province of Sardinia. Quintus Lucretius Ofella
and other serviceable officers were likewise received and
at once employed ; even Publius Cethegus, one of the
senators banished after the Sulpician emeute by Sulla,
obtained pardon and a position in the army.
Pompeius. Still more important than these individual accessions

was the gain of the district of Picenum, which was sub-
stantially due to the son of Strabo, the young Gnaeus
Pompeius. The latter, like his father originally no ad-
herent of the oligarchy, had acknowledged the revolutionary
government and even taken service in Cinna's army ; but
in his case the fact was not forgotten, that his father had
borne arms against the revolution ; he found himself
assailed in various forms and even threatened with the loss
of his very considerable wealth by an indictment charging
him to give up the booty which was, or was alleged to
have been, embezzled by his father after the capture of
Asculum. The protection of the consul Carbo, who was
personally attached to him, still more than the eloquence
of the consular Lucius Philippus and of the young
Quintus Hortensius, averted from him financial ruin ; but
the dissatisfaction remained. On the news of Sulla's
landing he went to Picenum, where he had extensive
possessions and the best municipal connections derived
from his father and the Social war, and set up the
standard of the Optimate party in Auximum (Osimo).
The district, which was mostly inhabited by old burgesses,

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA

79

joined him ; the young men, many of whom had sen-cd
with him under his father, readily ranged themselves under
the courageous leader who, not yet twenty-three years of
age, was as much soldier as general, sprang to the front of
his cavalry in combat, and vigorously assailed the enemy
along with them. The corps of Picenian volunteers soon
grew to three legions; divisions under Cloelius, Gaius
Carrinas, Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus,^ were de-
spatched from the capital to put down the Picenian
insurrection, but the extemporized general, de.xterously
taking advantage of the dissensions that arose among them,
had the skill to evade them or to beat them in detail and
to eflTect his junction with the main army of Sulla,
apparently in Apulia. Sulla saluted him as imperator, that
is, as an officer commanding in his own name and not
subordinate but co-ordinate, and distinguished the youth
by marks of honour such as he showed to none of his
noble clients — presumably not without the collateral design
of thereby administering an indirect rebuke to the lack of
energetic character among his own partisans.

Reinforced thus considerably both in a moral and Suiia in
material point of view, Sulla and Metellus marched from Campania

opposed bj

Apulia through the still msurgent Samnite districts towards Norbanus

Campania. The main force of the enemy also proceeded '^"'^ ■'^'P'°-

thither, and it seemed as if the matter could not but there

be brought to a decision. The army of the consul Gaius

Norbanus was already at Capua, where the new colony had

just established itself with all democratic pomp; the second

consular army was likewise advancing along the Appian

road. But, before it arrived, Sulla was in front of Norbanus.

A last attempt at mediation, which Sulla made, led only Sulla gains

to the arrest of his envoys. With fresh indignation his " "'^^°''y

' ° over

Nortxinus
' Wc can only suppose this to be the Brutus referred to. since Marcus ^' Mount
Brutus tlic f.\thcr of the so-called Liltcrator was tribune of the people in Tifata.
671, and therefore could not command in the field. 83.

So CINNA AND SULLA book iv

veteran troops threw themselves on the enemy ; their
vehement charge down from Mount Tifata at the first
onset broke the enemy drawn up in the plain ; with the
remnant of his force Norbanus threw himself into the
revolutionary colony of Capua and the new-burgess town
of Neapolis, and allowed himself to be blockaded there.
Sulla's troops, hitherto not without apprehension as they
compared their weak numbers with the masses of the
enemy, had by this victory gained a full conviction of their
military superiority ; instead of pausing to besiege the
remains of the defeated army, Sulla left the towns where
they took shelter to be invested, and advanced along the

Defection Appian highway against Teanum, where Scipio was posted.

army^'°^ To him also, before beginning battle, he made fresh
proposals for peace ; apparently in good earnest. Scipio,
weak as he was, entered into them ; an armistice was
concluded ; between Cales and Teanum the two generals,
both members of the same noble gens^ both men of culture
and refinement and for many years colleagues in the
senate, met in personal conference ; they entered upon the
several questions ; they had already made such progress,
that Scipio despatched a messenger to Capua to procure
the opinion of his colleague. Meanwhile the soldiers of
the two camps mingled ; the Sullans, copiously furnished
with money by their general, had no great difficulty in
persuading the recruits — not too eager for warfare — over
their cups that it was better to have them as comrades than
as foes ; in vain Sertorius warned the general to put a stop
to this dangerous intercourse. The agreement, which had
seemed so near, was not effected ; it was Scipio who
denounced the armistice. But Sulla maintained that it
was too late and that the agreement had been already
concluded ; whereupon Scipio's soldiers, under the pretext
that their general had wrongfully denounced the armistice,
passed over en masse to the ranks of the enemy. The

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 8l

scene closed with an universal embracing, at which the
commanding officers of the revolutionary army had to look
on. Sulla gave orders that the consul should be summoned
to resign his office — which he did — and should along with
his stafT be escorted by his cavalry to whatever point they
desired ; but Scipio was hardly set at liberty when he
resumed the insignia of his dignity and began afresh to
collect troops, without however executing anything further
of moment. Sulla and Metellus took up winter-quarters in
Campania and, after the failure of a second attempt to
come to terms with Norbanus, maintained the blockade of
Capua during the winter.

The results of the first campaign in favour of Sulla were Prepara-
the submission of Apulia, Picenum, and Campania, the dis- ehherTide
solution of the one, and the vanquishing and blockading of
the other, consular army. The Italian communities, com-
pelled severally to choose between their twofold oppressors,
already in numerous instances entered into negotiations
with him, and caused the political rights, which had been
won from the opposition party, to be guaranteed to them by
formal separate treaties on the part of the general of the
oligarchy. Sulla cherished the distinct expectation, and
intentionally made boast of it, that he would overthrow the
revolutionary government in the next campaign and again
march into Rome.

But despair seemed to furnish the revolution with fresh
energies. The consulship was committed to two of its
most decided leaders, to Carbo for the third time and to
Gaius Marius the younger ; the circumstance that the latter,
who was just twenty years of age, could not legally be
invested with the consulship, was as little heeded as any
other point of the constitution. Quintus Sertorius, who in
this and other matters proved an inconvenient critic, was
ordered to proceed to Etruria with a view to procure new
levies, and thence to his province Hither Spain. To
VOL. tv :o6

82 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

replenish the treasury, the senate was obliged to decree the
melting down of the gold and silver vessels of the temples
in the capital ; how considerable the produce was, is clear
from the fact that after several months' warfare there was
still on hand nearly ;j{^6oo,ooo (14,000 pounds of gold and
6000 pounds of silver). In the considerable portion of
Italy, which still voluntarily or under compulsion adhered
to the revolution, warlike preparations were prosecuted
with vigour. Newly- formed divisions of some strength
came from Etruria, where the communities of new burgesses
were very numerous, and from the region of the Po. The
veterans of Marius in great numbers ranged themselves
under the standards at the call of his son. But nowhere
were preparations made for the struggle against Sulla with
such eagerness as in the insurgent Samnium and some
districts of Lucania. It was owing to anything but
devotion towards the revolutionary Roman government,
that numerous contingents from the Oscan districts rein-
forced their armies ; but it was well understood there that
an oligarchy restored by Sulla would not acquiesce, like the
lax Cinnan government, in the independence of these lands
as now de facto subsisting ; and therefore the primitive
rivalry between the Sabellians and the Latins was roused
afresh in the struggle against Sulla. For Samnium and
Latium this war was as much a national struggle as the
wars of the fifth century ; they strove not for a greater or
less amount of political rights, but for the purpose of
appeasing long-suppressed hate by the annihilation of their
antagonist. It was no wonder, therefore, that the war in
this region bore a character altogether different from the
conflicts elsewhere, that no compromise was attempted
there, that no quarter was given or taken, and that the
pursuit was continued to the very uttermost.
82. Thus the campaign of 672 was begun on both sides
with augmented military resources and increased animosity.

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 83

The revolution in particular threw away the scabbard : at
the suggestion of Carbo the Roman romitia outlawed all
the senators that should be found in Sulla's caniji. Sulla
was silent ; he probably thought that they were pronouncing
sentence beforehand on themselves.

The army of the Optimates was divided. The pro- Suiia pro-
consul Metellus undertook, resting on the support of the t*^^^ *°

' ° ' ^ Latium to

Picenian insurrection, to advance to Upper Italy, while oppose the
Sulla marched from Campania straight against the capital. y°""R*-'''
Carbo threw himself in the way of the former ; Marius
would encounter the main army of the enemy in Latium.
Advancing along the Via Latina, Sulla fell in with the
enemy not far from Signia ; they retired before him as
far as the so-called " Port of Sacer," between Signia and
the chief stronghold of the Marians, the strong Praeneste.
There Marius drew up his force for battle. His army was His victory
about 40,000 strong, and he was in savage fury and ^' ^'^''
personal bravery the true son of his father ; but his troops
were not the well-trained bands with which the latter had
fought his battles, and still less might this inexperienced
young man bear comparison with the old master of war.
His troops soon gave way ; the defection of a division
even during the battle accelerated the defeat. More than
the half of the Marians were dead or prisoners ; the
remnant, unable either to keep the field or to gain the
other bank of the Tiber, was compelled to seek protection
in the neighbouring fortresses ; the capital, which they had
neglected to provision, was irrecoverably lost. In con- Demo-
sequence of this Marius gave orders to Lucius Brutus '^'^"'^

^ _ "^ m.TSS.icres

Damasippus, the praetor commanding there, to evacuate in Rome,
it, but before doing so to put to death all the esteemed
men, hitherto spared, of the opposite party. This in-
junction, by which the son even outdid the proscriptions
of his father, was carried into eftect ; Damasippus made
a pretext for con\oking the senate, and the marked men

84 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

were struck down partly in the sitting itself, partly on their
flight from the senate-house. Notwithstanding the thorough
clearance previously effected, there were still found several
victims of note. Such were the former aedilc Publius
Antistius, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompcius, and the
former praetor Gaius Carbo, son of the well-known friend
and subsequent opponent of the Gracchi (iii. 372), since
the death of so many men of more distinguished talent
the two best orators in the judicial courts of the desolated
Forum ; the consular Lucius Domitius, and above all the
venerable pontifex maxh/ius Quintus Scaevola, who had
escaped the dagger of Fimbria only to bleed to death during
these last throes of the revolution in the vestibule of the
temple of Vesta entrusted to his guardianship. With speech-
less horror the multitude saw the corpses of these last victims
of the reign of terror dragged through the streets, and thrown
into the river.
Siege of The broken bands of Marius threw themselves into the

Praeneste. neighbouring and strong cities of new burgesses Norba
and Praeneste : Marius in person with the treasure and
the greater part of the fugitives entered the latter. Sulla
left an able officer, Quintus Ofella, before Praeneste just
as he had done in the previous year before Capua, with
instructions not to expend his strength in the siege of the
strong town, but to enclose it with an extended line of
Occupation blockade and starve it into surrender. He himself advanced
of Rome. (,^q^-^ different sides upon the capital, which as well as the
whole surrounding district he found abandoned by the
enemy, and occupied without resistance. He barely took
time to compose the minds of the people by an address
and to make the most necessary arrangements, and im-
mediately passed on to Etruria, that in concert with
Metellus he might dislodge his antagonists from Northern
Italy.

Metellus had meanwhile encountered and defeated

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 85

Carbo's lieiUcnant Carrinas at the river Aesis (Ksino Mcteiius
between Ancona and Sinigaglia), which separated the r^^j^jn
district of Picenum from the Gallic province ; when Carbo Northern
in person came up with his superior army, Metellus had ^'
been obliged to abstain from any farther advance. But
on the news of the battle at Sacriportus, Carbo, anxious about
his communications, had retreated to the Flaminian road,
with a view to take up his headquarters at the meeting-
point of Ariminum, and from that point to hold the passes
of the Apennines on the one hand and the valley of the
Po on the other. In this retrograde movement different
divisions fell into the hands of the enemy, and not only
so, but Sena Gallica was stormed and Carbo's rearguard Carbo
was broken in a brilliant cavalry engagement by Pompeius; ^j^g sides
nevertheless Carbo attained on the whole his object. The of Eiruria.
consular Norbanus took the command in the valley of the
Po ; Carbo himself proceeded to Etruria. But the march
of Sulla with his victorious legions to Etruria altered the
position of affairs ; soon three Sullan armies from Gaul,
Umbria, and Rome established communications with each
other. Metellus with the fleet went past Ariminum to
Ravenna, and at Faventia cut off the communication
between Ariminum and the valley of the Po, into which
he sent forward a division along the great road to Placentia
under Marcus LucuUus, the quaestor of Sulla and brother
of his admiral in the Mithradatic war. The young Pompeius
and his contemporary and rival Crassus penetrated from
Picenum by mountain- paths into Umbria and gained the
Flaminian road at Spoletium, where they defeated Carbo's
legate Carrinas and shut him up in the town; he succeeded,
however, in escaping from it on a rainy night and making
his way, though not without loss, to the army of Carbo.
Sulla himself marched from Rome into Etruria with his
army in two divisions, one of which advancing along the
coast defeated the corps opposed to it nt Saturnia (between

86

CINNA AND SULLA

BOOK IV

Conflicts

about

Praeneste.

the rivers Ombrone and Albegna) ; the second led by Sulla
in person fell in with the army of Carbo in the valley of the
Clanis, and sustained a successful conflict with his Spanish
cavalry. But the pitched battle which was fought between
Carbo and Sulla in the region of Chiusi, although it ended
without being properly decisive, was so far at any rate
in favour of Carbo that Sulla's victorious advance was
checked.

In the vicinity of Rome also events appeared to assume
a more favourable turn for the revolutionary party, and the
war seemed as if it would again be drawn chiefly towards
this region. For, while the oligarchic party were concen-
trating all their energies on Etruria, the democracy every-
where put forth the utmost efforts to break the blockade
of Praeneste. Even the governor of Sicily Marcus Perpenna
set out for that purpose ; it does not appear, however, that
he reached Praeneste. Nor was the very considerable corps
under Marcius, detached by Carbo, more successful in this;
assailed and defeated by the troops of the enemy which were
at Spoletium, demoralized by disorder, want of supplies, and
mutiny, one portion went back to Carbo, another to
Ariminum ; the rest dispersed. Help in earnest on the
other hand came from Southern Italy. There the Samnites
under Pontius of Telesia, and the Lucanians under their
experienced general Marcus Lamponius, set out without its
being possible to prevent their departure, were joined in
Campania where Capua still held out by a division of the
garrison under Gutta, and thus to the number, it was said,
of 70,000 marched upon Praeneste. Thereupon Sulla
himself, leaving behind a corps against Carbo, returned
to Latium and took up a well-chosen position in the defiles
in front of Praeneste, where he barred the route of the
relieving army.^ In vain the garrison attempted to break

1 It is stated, that Sulla occupied the defile by which alone Praeneste
was accessible (App. i, 90) ; and the further events showed that the road

CMAI-. IX CINNA AND SULLA 87

through the lines of Ofella, in vain tlie relieving army
attempted to dislodge Sulla ; both remained immoveable
in their strong positions, even after Damasippus, sent
by Carbo, had reinforced the relieving army with two
legions.

But while the war stood still in Etruria and in I^tium, Successes
matters came to a decision in the valley of the Po. There ^J^^^^ j^
the general of the democracy, Gaius Norbanus, had hitherto Upper
maintained the upper hand, had attacked Marcus LucuUus '^^'
the legate of Metellus with superior force and compelled
him to shut himself up in Placentia, and had at length
turned against Metellus in person. He encountered the
latter at Faventia, and immediately made his attack late in
the afternoon with his troops fatigued by their march ; the
consequence was a complete defeat and the total breaking
up of his corps, of which only about 1000 men returned to
Etruria. On the news of this battle Lucullus sallied from
Placentia, and defeated the division left behind to oppose
him at Fidcntia (between Piacenza and Parma). The
Lucanian troops of Albinovanus deserted in a body : their
leader made up for his hesitation at first by inviting the
chief officers of tlie revolutionary army to banquet with
him and causing them to be put to death ; in general
every one, who at all could, now concluded his peace.
Ariminum with all its stores and treasures fell into the
power of Metellus ; Norbanus embarked for Rhodes ; the
whole land between the Alps and Apennines acknowledged
the government of the Oj)tiniates. The troops hitherto Ku-uri.i
employed there were enabled to turn to the attack of o<^<="P"^
Etruria, the last province where their antagonists still kept Suilans.
the field. When Carbo received this news in the camp

to Rome was open to him as well as to the relieving army. Beyond
doubt Sulla posted himself on the cross road which turns off from the
Via Latina, along which the .Samnitcs advanced, at Valmontone towards
Palestrina ; in this case Sulla comnninicatcd with the capital by the
Praencstine, and the enemy by the I-itin or I^nbican, road.

88

CINNA AND SULLA

BOOK IV

The

Samnites

and

democrats

attack

Rome.

82.

at Clusium, he lost his self-command ; although he had
still a considerable body of troops under his orders, he
secretly escaped from his headquarters and embarked
for Africa. Part of his abandoned troops followed the
example which their general had set, and went home ;
part of them were destroyed by Pompeius : Carrinas
gathered together the remainder and led them to Latium
to join the army of Praeneste. There no change had
in the meanwhile taken place ; and the final decision
drew nigh. The troops of Carrinas were not numerous
enough to shake Sulla's position; the vanguard of the army
of the oligarchic party, hitherto employed in Etruria, was
approaching under Pompeius ; in a few days the net would
be drawn tight around the army of the democrats and the
Samnites.

Its leaders then determined to desist from the relief of
Praeneste and to throw themselves with all their united
strength on Rome, which was only a good day's march
distant. By so doing they were, in a military point of view,
ruined ; their line of retreat, the Latin road, would by such
a movement fall into Sulla's hands ; and, even if they got
possession of Rome, they would be infallibly crushed there,
enclosed within a city by no means fitted for defence, and
wedged in between the far superior armies of Metellus and
Sulla. Safety, however, was no longer thought of; revenge
alone dictated this march to Rome, the last outbreak of fury
in the passionate revolutionists and especially in the despair-
ing Sabellian nation. Pontius of Telesia was in earnest,
when he called out to his followers that, in order to get rid
of the wolves which had robbed Italy of freedom, the forest
in which they harboured must be destroyed. Never was
Rome in a more fearful peril than on the ist November
672, when Pontius, Lamponius, Carrinas, Damasippus ad-
vanced along the Latin road towards Rome, and encamped
about a mile from the CoUine gate. It was threatened with

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 89

a day like the 20th July 365 u.c. or the i5lh June 455 389.
A.D. — the days of the Celts and the Vandals. 'Ihc time
was gone by when a coup de main against Rome was a
foolish enterprise, and the assailants could have no want of
connections in the capital. The band of volunteers which
sallied from the city, mostly youths of quality, was scattered
like chaff before the immense superiority of force. The
only hope of safety rested on Sulla. The latter, on receiv- Battle nt
ing accounts of the departure of the Samnite army in the ^^^ °
direction of Rome, had likewise set out in all liastc to the
assistance of the capital. The appearance of his foremost
horsemen under Balbus in the course of the morning
revived the sinking courage of the citizens ; about midday
he appeared in person with his main force, and immediately
drew up his ranks for battle at the temple of the Erycine
Aphrodite before the CoUine gate (not far from Porta Pia).
His lieutenants adjured him not to send the troops exhausted
by the forced march at once into action ; but Sulla took
into consideration what the night might bring on Rome,
and, late as it was in the afternoon, ordered the attack.
The battle was obstinately contested and bloody. The
left wing of Sulla, which he led in person, gave way as
far as the city wall, so that it became necessary to close the
city gates ; stragglers even brought accounts to Ofella that
the battle was lost. But on the right wing Alarcus Crassus
overthrew the enemy and i)ursued him as far as Antemnae ;
this somewhat relieved the left wing also, and an hour after
sunset it in turn began to advance. The fight continued
the whole night and even on the following morning ; it was
only the defection of a division of 3000 men, who immedi-
ately turned their arms against their former comrades, that
{)ut an end to the struggle. Rome was saved. The army of
the insurgents, fur which there was no retreat, was completely
extirpated. The prisoners taken in the battle — between M.niKii-.cr
3000 and 4000 in number, including the generals Dama- '' .

90

CINNA AND SULLA

BOOK IV

sippus, Carrinas, and the severely-wounded Pontius — were
by Sulla's orders on the third day after the battle brought
to the Villa Publica in the Campus Martins and there
massacred to the last man, so that the clatter of arms and
the groans of the dying were distinctly heard in the
neighbouring temple of Bellona, where Sulla was just
holding a meeting of the senate. It was a ghastly execu-
tion, and it ought not to be excused ; but it is not right to
forget that those very men who perished there had fallen
like a band of robbers on the capital and the burgesses, and,
had they found time, would have destroyed them as far as
fire and sword can destroy a city and its citizens.

Sieges. With this battle the war was, in the main, at an end.

Praeneste. The garrison of Praeneste surrendered, when it learned the
issue of the battle of Rome from the heads of Carrinas and
other officers thrown over the walls. The leaders, the con-
sul Gains Marius and the son of Pontius, after having failed
in an attempt to escape, fell on each other's swords. The
multitude cherished the hope, in which it was confirmed by
Cethegus, that the victor would even now have mercy upon
them. But the times of mercy were past. The more un-
conditionally Sulla had up to the last moment granted full
pardon to those who came over to him, the more inexorable
he showed himself toward the leaders and communities that
had held out to the end. Of the Praenestine prisoners,
12,000 in number, most of the Romans and individual
Praenestines as well as the women and children were re-
leased, but the Roman senators, almost all the Praenestines
and the whole of the Samnites, were disarmed and cut to
pieces ; and the rich city was given up to pillage. It was
natural that, after such an occurrence, the cities of new bur-
gesses which had not yet passfed over should continue their
resistance with the utmost obstinacy. In the Latin town

Norba. of Norba for instance, when Aemilius Lepidus got into it
by treason, the citizens killed each other and set fire them-

CHAP. IX CINNA AND SULLA 91

selves to their town, solely in order to deprive their execu-
tioners of vengeance and of booty. In Lower Italy Neapolis
had already been taken by assault, and Capua had, as it
would seem, been voluntarily surrendered ; but Nola was N'fla-
only evacuated by the Samnites in 674. On his flight from 80.
Nola the last surviving leader of note among the Italians,
the consul of the insurgents in the hopeful year 664, 90.
Gaius Papius Mutilus, disowned by his wife to whom he
had stolen in disguise and with whom he had hoped to find
an asylum, fell on his sword in Teanum before the door of
his own house. As to the Samnites, the dictator declared
that Rome would have no rest so long as Samnium existed,
and that the Samnite name must therefore be extirpated
from the earth ; and, as he verified these words in terrible
fashion on the prisoners taken before Rome and in Prae-
neste, so he appears to have also undertaken a raid for the
purpose of laying waste the country, to have captured
Aesernia^ (674?), and to have converted that hitherto flou- 80.
rishing and populous region into the desert which it has
since remained. In the same manner Tuder in Umbria
was stormed by Marcus Crassus. A longer resistance was
offered in Etruria by Populonium and above all by the im-
pregnable Volaterrae, which gathered out of the remains of
the beaten party an army of four legions, and stood a two
years' siege conducted first by Sulla in person and then by
the former praetor Gaius Carbo, the brother of the demo-
cratic consul, till at length in the third year after the battle
at the Colline gate (675) the garrison capitulated on 79.
condition of free departure. But in this terrible time neither
military law nor military discipline was regarded ; the
soldiers raised a cry of treason and stoned their too com-
pliant general ; a troop of horse sent by the Roman govern-
ment cut down the garrison as it withdrew in terms of the

' Hardly any other n.ime can well be concealed under ihc corrupt
reading in Liv. 89 miain in Samnio; conip. Strabo, v. 3, 10.

92 CINNA AND SULLA BOOK iv

capitulation. The victorious army was distributed through-
out Italy, and all the insecure townships were furnished with
strong garrisons : under the iron hand of the Sullan officers
the last palpitations of the revolutionary and national
opposition slowly died away.
The There was still work to be done in the provinces. Sar-

provinces, ^jjj^jg^ ^^^ been speedily wrested by Lucius Philippus from
the governor of the revolutionary government Quintus
82. Antonius (672), and Transalpine Gaul offered little or no
resistance ; but in Sicily, Spain, and Africa the cause of the
party defeated in Italy seemed still by no means lost. Sicily
was held for them by the trustworthy governor Marcus
Perpenna. Quintus Sertorius had the skill to attach to him-
self the provincials in Hither Spain, and to form from
among the Romans settled in that quarter a not inconsider-
able army, which in the first instance closed the passes of
the Pyrenees : in this he had given fresh proof that, wherever
he was stationed, he was in his place, and amidst all the
incapables of the revolution was the only man practically
useful. In Africa the governor Hadrianus, who followed
out the work of revolutionizing too thoroughly and began to
give liberty to the slaves, had been, on occasion of a tumult
instigated by the Roman merchants of Utica, attacked in his
82. official residence and burnt with his attendants (672) ; never-
theless the province adhered to the revolutionary govern-
ment, and Cinna's son-in-law, the young and able Gnaeus
Domitius Ahenobarbus, was invested with the supreme
command there. Propagandism had even been carried
from thence into the client-states, Numidia and Mauretania.
Their legitimate rulers, Hiempsal II. son of Gauda, and
Bogud son of Bocchus, adhered doubtless to Sulla ; but with
the aid of the Cinnans the former had been dethroned by
the democratic pretender Hiarbas, and similar feuds agitated
the Mauretanian kingdom. The consul Carbo who had fled
from Italy tarried on the island Cossyra (Pantellaria) between

CHAP. IX CINXA AND SULLA 93

Africa and Sicily, at a loss, apparently, whether he should
flee to Kgypt or should attempt to renew the strn-rgle in
one of the faithful provinces.

Sulla sent to Spain Gaius Annius and (Jaius Valerius Spiin.
Flaccus, the former as governor of Further Spain, the latter
as governor of the province of the Ebro. They were
spared the difficult task of opening up the passes of the
Pyrenees by force, in consequence of the general who was
sent thither by Sertorius having been killed by one of his
officers and his troops having thereafter melted away.
Sertorius, much too weak to maintain an equal struggle, Sertorius
hastily collected the nearest divisions and embarked at ^'" "^ *
New Carthage — for what destination he knew not himself,
perhaps for the coast of Africa, or for the Canary Islands
— it mattered little whither, provided only Sulla's arm did
not reach him. Spain then willingly submitted to the
SuUan magistrates (about 673) and Flaccus fought success- 8L
fully with the Celts, through whose territory he marched,
and with the Spanish Celtibcrians (674). 80,

Gnaeus Pompeius was sent as propraetor to Sicily, and, Sicily,
when he appeared on the coast with 120 sail and six
legions, the island was evacuated by Perpcnna without
resistance. Pompeius sent a squadron thence to Cossyra,
which captured the Marian officers sojourning there. ^Llrcus
Brutus and the others were immediately executed ; but
Pompeius had enjoined that the consul Carbo should be
brought before himself at Lilybaeum in order that, un-
mindful of the protection accorded to him in a season of
peril by that very man (p. 78), he might personally hand
him over to the executioner (672). 82.

Having been ordered to go on to Africa, Pompeius with Africa,
his army, which was certainly far more numerous, defeated
the not inconsiderable forces collected by Ahcnobarbus
and Hiarljas, and, declining for the time to be saluted as im-
pnator, he at once gave the signal for assault on the hostile

94 CINNA AND SULLA BOOK iv

camp. He thus became master of the enemy in one day ;
Ahenobarbus was among the fallen : with the aid of king
Bogud, Hiarbas was seized and slain at Bulla, and Hiempsal
was reinstated in his hereditary kingdom ; a great razzia
against the inhabitants of the desert, among whom a
number of Gaetulian tribes recognized as free by Marius
were made subject to Hiempsal, revived in Africa also the
fallen repute of the Roman name : in forty days after the
80. landing of Pompeius in Africa all was at an end (674?).
The senate instructed him to break up his army — an
implied hint that he was not to be allowed a triumph, to
which as an extraordinary magistrate he could according to
precedent make no claim. The general murmured secretly,
the soldiers loudly ; it seemed for a moment as if the
African army would revolt against the senate and Sulla
would have to take the field against his son-in-law. But
Sulla yielded, and allowed the young man to boast of being
the only Roman who had become a triumphator before he
9. was a senator (12 March 675); in fact the "Fortunate,"
not perhaps without a touch of irony, saluted the youth on
his return from these easy exploits as the " Great."
Fresh In the east also, after the embarkation of Sulla in the

with™ 'r83 sp^'"g of 671, there had been no cessation of warfare. The
Mithra restoration of the old state of things and the subjugation of
individual towns cost in Asia as in Italy various bloody
struggles. Against the free city of Mytilene in particular
Lucius LucuUus was obliged at length to bring up troops,
after having exhausted all gentler measures ; and even a
victory in the open field did not put an end to the obstinate
resistance of the citizens.

Meanwhile the Roman governor of Asia, Lucius Murena,
had fallen into fresh difficulties with king Mithradates.
The latter had since the peace busied himself in strength-
ening anew his rule, which was shaken even in the northern
provinces ; he had pacified the Colchians by appointing his

CHAP. IX CIXNA AND SULLA 95

able son Mithradates as their governor; he had then made
away with that son, and was now preparing for an ex-
pedition into his Bosporan kingdom. The assurances of
Archelaus who had meanwhile been obliged to seek an
asylum witli Murena (p. 50), that these preparations were
directed against Rome, induced Murena, under the pretext
that Mithradates still kept possession of Cappadocian
frontier districts, to move his troops towards the Cappa-
docian Coniana and thus to violate the Pontic frontier (671). 83.
Mithradates contented himself with complaining to Murena
and, when this was in vain, to the Roman government.
In fact commissioners from Sulla made their appearance to
dissuade the governor, but he did not submit ; on the
contrary he crossed the Halys and entered on the undis-
puted territory of Pontus, whereupon Mithradates re-
solved to repel force by force. His general Gordius
had to detain the Roman army till the king came up with
far superior forces and compelled battle ; Murena was
vanquished and with great loss driven back over the Roman
frontier to Phrygia, and the Roman garrisons were expelled
from all Cappadocia. Murena had the effrontery, no doubt,
to call himself the victor and to assume the title of itnperator
on account of these events (672); but the sharp lesson 82.
and a second admonition from Sulla induced him at last to
push the matter no farther ; the peace between Rome and .<^econd
Mithradates was renewed (673). 81^*^

This foolish feud, while it lasted, had postponed the Capture of
reduction of the Mytilenaeans ; it was only after a long * J"*^"*^
siege by land and by sea, in which the Bithynian fleet
rendered good ser\ice, that Murena's successor succeeded
in taking the city by storm (675). 79.

The ten years' revolution and insurrection were at an General
end in the west and in the east ; the state had once more P*^**-
unity of government and peace without and within. After
the terrible convulsions of the last years even this rest was

96 CINNA AND SULLA book iv

a relief. Whether it was to furnish more than a mere
rehef; whether the remarkable man, who had succeeded
in the difficult task of vanquishing the public foe and in
the more difficult work of subduing the revolution, would
be able to meet satisfactorily the most difficult task of all —
the re-establishing of social and political order shaken to its
very foundations — could not but be speedily decided

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 97

CHAPTER X

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

About the time when the first pitched battle was fought The
between Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July '■«'o^a"°"
671, the venerable temple, which had been erected by the 83.
kings, dedicated by the youthful republic, and spared by
the storms of five hundred years — the temple of the Roman
Jupiter in the Capitol — perished in the flames. It was no
augury, but it was an image of the state of the Roman
constitution. This, too, lay in ruins and needed reconstruc-
tion. The revolution was no doubt vanquished, but the
victory was far from implying as a matter of course the
restoration of the old government. The mass of the aris-
tocracy certainly was of opinion that now, after the death
of the two revolutionary consuls, it would be sufficient to
make arrangements for the ordinary supplemental election
and to leave it to the senate to take such steps as should
seem farther requisite for the rewarding of the victorious
army, for the punishment of the most guilty revolutionists,
and possibly also for the prevention of similar outbreaks.
But Sulla, in whose hands the victory had concentrated for
the moment all power, formed a more correct judgment of
affairs and of men. The aristocracy of Rome in its best
epoch had not risen above an adherence — partly noble and
partly narrow — to traditional forms ; how should the clumsy
collegiate government of this period be in a position to
vol. IV 107

98 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

carry out with energy and thoroughness a comprehensive
reform of the state ? And at the present moment, when the
last crisis had swept away ahnost all the leading men of the
senate, the vigour and intelligence requisite for such an enter-
prise were less than ever to be found there. How thoroughly
useless was the pure aristocratic blood, and how little doubt
Sulla had as to its worthlessness, is shown by the fact that,
with the exception of Quintus Metellus who was related to
him by marriage, he selected all his instruments out of what
was previously the middle party and the deserters from the
democratic camp — such as Lucius Flaccus, Lucius Philippus,
Quintus Ofella, Gnaeus Pompeius. Sulla was as much in
earnest about the re-establishment of the old constitution as
the most vehement aristocratic emigrant ; he understood
however, not perhaps to the full extent — for how in that
case could he have put hand to the work at all ? — but better
at any rate than his party, the enormous difficulties which
attended this work of restoration. Comprehensive con-
cessions so far as concession was possible without affecting
the essence of oligarchy, and the establishment of an ener-
getic system of repression and prevention, were regarded by
him as unavoidable ; and he saw clearly that the senate as
it stood would refuse or mutilate every concession, and
would parliamentarily ruin every systematic reconstructioii^)
llf Sulla had already after the Sulpician revolution carried
out what he deemed necessary in both respects without
asking much of their advice, he was now determined, under
circumstances of far more severe and intense excitement, to
restore the oligarchy — not with the aid, but in spite, of the
oligarchs — by his own hand/
Sulla '^ulla, however, was not now consul as he had been then,

regent of -^^^ ^^^ furnished merely with proconsular, that is to say,
purely military power : he needed an authority keeping as
near as possible to constitutional forms, but yet extraordinary,
in order to impose his reform on friends and foes. In a

CMAP. X TIIK SULLAN CONSTITUTION 90

letter to the senate he announced to them that it seemed
to him indispensable that they should place the regulation
of the state in the hands of a single man equipped with
unlimited plenitude of power, and that he deemed himself
qualified to fulfil this difficult task. This proposal, disagree-
able as it was to many, was under the existing circumstances
a command. By direction of the senate its chief, the in-
terrex Lucius Valerius Flaccus the father, as interim holder
of the supreme power, submitted to the burgesses the
proposal that the proconsul Lucius Cornelius Sulla should
receive for the past a supplementary approval of all the
official acts performed by him as consul and proconsul, and
should for the future be empowered to adjudicate without
appeal on the life and property of the burgesses, to deal at
his pleasure with the state-domains, to shift at discretion
the boundaries of Rome, of Italy, and of the state, to
dissolve or establish urban communities in Italy, to dispose
of the provinces and dependent states, to confer the supreme
imperium instead of the people and to nominate proconsuls
and propraetors, and lastly to regulate the state for the
future by means of new laws ; that it should be left to his
own judgment to determine when he had fulfilled his task
and might deem it time to resign this extraordinary magis-
tracy ; and, in fine, that during its continuance it should
depend on his pleasure whether the ordinary supreme
magistracy should subsist side by side with his own or should
remain in abeyance. As a matter of course, the proposal
was adopted without opposition (Nov. 672); and now the 82.
new master of the state, who hitherto had as proconsul
avoided entering the capital, appeared for the first time
within the walls of Rome. This new office derived its name
from the dictatorship, which had been practically abolished
since the Hannibalic war (iii. 56) ; but, as besides his armed
retinue he was preceded by twice as many lictors as the
dictator of earlier times, this new "dictatorship for the

loo THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

making of laws and the regulation of the commonwealth," as
its official title ran, was in fact altogether different from the
earlier magistracy which had been limited in point of dura-
tion and of powers, had not excluded appeal to the burgesses,
and had not annulled the ordinary magistracy. It much
more resembled that of the deceuiviri legilms scribundis, who
likewise came forward as an extraordinary government with
unlimited fulness of powers superseding the ordinary magis-
tracy, and practically at least administered their office as one
which was unlimited in point of time. Or, we should rather
say, this new office, with its absolute power based on a
decree of the people and restrained by no set term or col-
league, was no other than the old monarchy, which in fact
just rested on the free engagement of the burgesses to obey
one of their number as absolute lord. It was urged even
by contemporaries in vindication of Sulla that a king is
better than a bad constitution,^ and presumably the title of
dictator was only chosen to indicate that, as the former
dictatorship implied a reassumption with various limitations
(i. 325, 368, 401), so this new dictatorship involved a com.
plete reassumption, of the regal power. Thus, singularly
enough, the course of Sulla here also coincided with that on
which Gaius Gracchus had entered with so wholly different
a design. In this respect too the conservative party had to
borrow from its opponents ; the protector of the oligarchic
constitution had himself to come forward as a tyrant, in
order to avert the ever-impending tyrannis. There was not
a little of defeat in this last victory of the oligarchy.
Execu- Sulla had not sought and had not desired the difficult

and dreadful labour of the work of restoration ; but, as no
other choice was left to him but either to leave it to utterly
incapable hands or to undertake it in person, he set himself
to it with remorseless energy. First of all a settlement had
to be effected in respect to the guilty. Sulla was personally

1 Satius est titi regibus quam uti malis legibus {Ad Herenn. ii. 26).

tions.

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION loi

inclined to pardon. Sanguine as he was in temperament,
he could doubtless break forth into violent rage, and well
might those beware who saw his eye gleam and his cheeks
colour ; but the chronic vindictiveness, which characterized
Marius in the embitterment of his old age, was altogether
foreign to Sulla's easy disposition. Not only had he borne
himself with comparatively great moderation after the revolu-
tion of 666 (iii. 543) ; even the second revolution, which 88.
had perpetrated so fearful outrages and had affected him in
person so severely, had not disturbed his equilibrium. At
the same time that the executioner was dragging the bodies
of his friends through the streets of the capital, he had sought
to save the life of the blood-stained Fimbria, and, when the
latter died by his own hand, had given orders for his decent
burial. On landing in Italy he had earnestly offered to
forgive and to forget, and no one who came to make his
peace had been rejected. Even after the first successes he
had negotiated in this spirit with Lucius Scipio ; it was the
revolutionary party, which had not only broken off these
negotiations, but had subsequently, at the last moment
before their downfall, resumed the massacres afresh and
more fearfully than ever, and had in fact conspired with the
inveterate foes of their country for the destruction of the city
of Rome. The cup was now full. By virtue of his new
official authority Sulla, immediately after assuming the
regency, outlawed as enemies of their countr>' all the civil
and military officials who had taken an active part in favour
of the revolution after the convention with Scipio (which
according to Sull.i's assertion was validly concluded), and
such of the other burgesses as had in any marked manner
aided its cause. Whoever killed one of these outlaws was
not only exempt from punishment like an executioner duly
fulfilling his office, but also obtained for the execution a
compensation of 1 2,000 denarii (^480) ; any one on the
contrary who befriended an outlaw, even the nearest relative.

I02 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

was liable to the severest punishment. The property of
the proscribed was forfeited to the state like the spoil of
an enemy ; their children and grandchildren were excluded
from a political career, and yet, so far as they were of sena-
torial rank, were bound to undertake their share of senatorial
burdens. The last enactments also applied to the estates
and the descendants of those who had fallen in conflict for
the revolution — penalties which went even beyond those en-
joined by the earliest law in the case of such as had borne
arms against their fatherland. The most terrible feature in
this system of terror was the indefiniteness of the proposed
categories, against which there was immediate remonstrance
in the senate, and which Sulla himself sought to remedy by
directing the names of the proscribed to be publicly posted
81. up and fixing the ist June 673 as the final term for closing
the lists of proscription.
Proscrip- Much as this bloody roll, swelling from day to day and

tion-lists. amounting at last to 4700 names,^ excited the just horror

^ This total number is given by Valerius Maximus, ix. 2. i. According

to Appian {B. C. i. 95), there were proscribed by Sulla nearly 40 senators,

which number subsequently received some additions, and about 1600

equites ; according to Florus (ii. 9, whence Augustine de Civ. Dei, iii. 28),

2000 senators and equites. According to Plutarch (SuH. 31), 520 names

were placed on the list in the first three days ; according to Orosius (v. 21),

580 names during the first days. There is no material contradiction

between these various reports, for it was not senators and equites alone

that were put to death, and the list remained open for months. When

Appian, at another passage (i. 103), mentions as put to death or banished

by Sulla, 15 consulars, 90 senators, 2600 equites, he there confounds, as the

, connection shows, the victims of the civil war throughout with the victims

102. of Sulla. The 15 consulars were — Quintus Catulus, consul in 652; Marcus

99. 97. Antonius, 655 ; Publius Crassus, 657 ; Quintus Scaevola, 659 ; Lucius

95. 94. Domitius, 660 ; Lucius Caesar, 664 ; Quintus Rufus, 666 ; Lucius Cinna,

90. 88. 667-670 ; Gnaeus Octavius, 667 ; Lucius Merula, 667 ; Lucius Flaccus, 668 ;

87-4. 87. Gnaeus Carbo, 669, 670, 672; Gaius Norbanus, 671; Lucius Scipio, 671;

87. 86. Gaius Marius, 672 ; of whom fourteen were killed, and one, Lucius Scipio,

85. 84. vvas banished. When, on the other hand, the Livian account in Eutropius

82. 83. (v. 9) and Orosius (v. 22) specifies as swept away {consumpti) in the Social

83. 82. and Civil wars, 24 consulars, 7 praetorians, 60 aedilicians, 200 senators,

the calculation includes partly the men who fell in the Italian war, such
99. 98. as the consulars Aulus Albinus, consul in 655; Titus Didius, 656; Publius
90. 89. Lupus, 664 ; Lucius Cato, 665 ; partly perhaps Quintus Metellus

Numidicus (iii. 471), Manius Aquillius, Gaius Marius the father, Gnaeus

CHAC. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 103

of the multitude, it at any rate checked in some degree
the mere caprice of the executioners. It was not at least
to the personal resentment of the regent that the mass of
these victims were sacrificed; his furious hatred was directed
solely against the Marians, the autliors of the hideous
massacres of 667 and 672. By his command the tomb of 87. 82.
the victor of Aquae Sextiae was broken open and his ashes
were scattered in the Anio, the monuments of his victories
over Africans and Germans were overthrown, and, as death
had snatched himself and his son from Sulla's vengeance,
his adopted nephew Marcus Marius Gratidianus, who had
been twice praetor and was a great favourite with the Roman
burgesses, was executed amid the most cruel tortures at
the tomb of Catulus, who most deserved to be regretted
of all the Marian victims. In other cases also death had
already swept away the most notable of his opponents : of
the leaders there survived only Gaius Norbanus, who laid
hands on himself at Rhodes, while the ecdesia was deliberat-
ing on his surrender ; Lucius Scipio, for whom his insignifi-
cance and probably also his noble birth procured indulgence
and permission to end his days in peace at his retreat in
Massilia ; and Quintus Sertorius, who was wandering about
as an exile on the coast of Mauretania. But yet the heads
of slaughtered senators were piled up at the Servilian Basin,
at the point where the I'icus Jugarius opened into the
Forum, where the dictator had ordered them to be publicly
exposed ; and among men of the second and third rank in
particular death reaped a fearful harvest In addition to
those wlio were placed on the list for their services in or on

Stral)o, whom we m.iy certainly rcg.irtl .is also victims of th.it period, or
other men whoso fate is unknown to us. Of the fourtct-n consuhirs kilUtl.
three — Rufus. Cinna, and Flaccus — fell through milit;iry revolts, while
eight SulKin and three Marian consulars fell .is victims to the opposite party.
On a comparison of the figures given above, 50 senators and 1000 equites
were regarded .is victims of Marius, 40 senators and 1600 e<|uit<-s .is victims
of Sulla ; this furnishes a siand;ud— at least not altogether arbilrary— for
estimating the extent of the crimes on Ixjth sides.

104 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

behalf of the revolutionary army with little discrimination,
sometimes on account of money advanced to one of its
officers or on account of relations of hospitality formed with
such an one, the retaliation fell specially on those capitalists
who had sat in judgment on the senators and had speculated
in Marian confiscations — the "hoarders"; about 1600 of
the equites, as they were called,^ were inscribed on the pro-
scription-list. In like manner the professional accusers, the
worst scourge of the nobility, who made it their trade to
bring men of the senatorial order before the equestrian
courts, had now to suffer for it — " how comes it to pass,"
an advocate soon after asked, " that they have left to us the
courts, when they were putting to death the accusers and
judges ? " The most savage and disgraceful passions raged
without restraint for many months throughout Italy. In
the capital a Celtic band was primarily charged with the
executions, and Sullan soldiers and subaltern officers tra-
versed for the same purpose the different districts of Italy ;
but every volunteer was also welcome, and the rabble high
and low pressed forward not only to earn the rewards of
murder, but also to gratify their own vindictive or covetous
dispositions under the mantle of political prosecution. It
sometimes happened that the assassination did not follow,
but preceded, the placing of the name on the list of the
proscribed. One example shows the way in which these
executions took place. At Larinum, a town of new bur-
gesses and favourable to Marian views, one Statius Albius
Oppianicus, who had fled to Sulla's headquarters to avoid
a charge of murder, made his appearance after the victory
as commissioner of the regent, deposed the magistrates of
the town, installed himself and his friends in their room,
and caused the person who had threatened to accuse him,
along with his nearest relatives and friends, to be outlawed

^ The Sextus Alfenus, frequently mentioned in Cicero's oration on
behalf of Publius Quinctius, was one of these.

ciiAi-. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 105

and killed. Countless persons — including not a few decided
adherents of the oligarchy — thus fell as the victims of
private hostility or of their own riches: the fearful confusion,
and the culpable indulgence which Sulla displayed in this
as in every instance towards those more closely connected
with him, prevented any punishment even of the ordinary
crimes that were perpetrated amidst the disorder.

The confiscated property was dealt with in a similar Confisca-
way. Sulla from political considerations sought to induce "°"^
the respectable burgesses to take part in its purchase ; a
great portion of them, moreover, voluntarily pressed forward,
and none more zealously than the young Marcus Crassus.
Under the existing circumstances the utmost depreciation
was inevitable ; indeed, to some extent it was the necessary
result of the Roman plan of selling the property confiscated
by the state for a round sum payable in ready money.
Moreover, the regent did not forget himself; while his wife
Metella more especially and other persons high and low
closely connected with him, even freedmen and boon-com-
panions, were sometimes allowed to purchase without compe-
tition, sometimes had the purchase-money wholly or par-
tially remitted. One of his freedmen, for instance, is said to
have purchased a property of 6,000,000 sesterces (^60,000)
for 2000 {j^2o), and one of his subalterns is said to have
acquired by such speculations an estate of 10,000,000 ses-
terces (;^ 100,000). The indignation was great and just;
even during Sulla's regency an advocate asked whether the
nobility had waged civil war solely for the purpose of en-
riching their freedmen and slaves. But in spite of this
depreciation the whole proceeds of the confiscated estates
amounted to not less than 350,000,000 sesterces
(^3,500,000), which gives an ai>proximate idea of the
enormous extent of these confiscations falling chiefly on the
wealthiest portion of the burgesses. It was altogether a fearful
punishment. There was no longer any process or any jjardon :

to6 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION Book iv

mute terror lay like a weight of lead on the land, and free
speech was silenced in the market-place alike of the capital
and of the country -town. The oligarchic reign of terror
bore doubtless a different stamp from that of the revolution;
while Marius had glutted his personal vengeance in the
blood of his enemies, Sulla seemed to account terrorism in
the abstract, if we may so speak, a thing necessary to the
introduction of the new despotism, and to prosecute and
make others prosecute the work of massacre almost with
indifference. But the reign of terror presented an appearance
all the more horrible, when it proceeded from the con-
servative side and was in some measure devoid of passion ;
the commonwealth seemed all the more irretrievably lost,
when the frenzy and the crime on both sides were equally
balanced.
Mainten- In regulating the relations of Italy and of the capital,

th'^b Sulla — although he otherwise in general treated as null all

gess-rights state-acts done during the revolution except in the trans-
previous y g^^-jjQj^ Qf current business — firmly adhered to the principle,
which it had laid down, that every burgess of an Italian
community was by that very fact a burgess also of Rome; the
distinctions between burgesses and Italian allies, between
old burgesses with better, and new burgesses with more
restricted, rights, were abolished, and remained so. In
the case of the freedmen alone the unrestricted right of
suffrage was again withdrawn, and for them the old state
of matters was restored. To the aristocratic ultras this
might seem a great concession ; Sulla perceived that it
was necessary to wrest these mighty levers out of the
hands of the revolutionary chiefs, and that the rule of
the oligarchy was not materially endangered by increasing
the number of the burgesses.

But with this concession in principle was combined a
most rigid inquisition, conducted by special commissioners
with the co-operation of the garrisons distributed throughout

CHAi'. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 107

Italy, in respect to particular communities in all districts of Punish-
ihe land Several towns were rewarded ; for instance "'n"f •

' innictcu on

Brundisium, the first community which had joined Sulla, particular

now obtained the exemption from customs so important n^t^^"

for such a seaport ; more were punished. The less guilty

were required to pay fines, to pull down their walls, to raze

their citadels ; in the case of those whose opposition had

been most obstinate the regent confiscated a part of their

territory, in some cases even the whole of it — as it certainly

might be regarded in law as forfeited, whether they were to

be treated as burgess-communities which had borne arms

against their fatherland, or as allied states which had waged

war with Rome contrary to their treaties of perpetual peace.

In this case all the dispossessed burgesses — but these only

— were deprived of their municipal, and at the same time

of the Roman, franchise, receiving in return the lowest

Latin rights.^ Sulla thus avoided furnishing the opposition

with a nucleus in Italian subject-communities of inferior

rights ; the homeless dispossessed of necessity were soon

lost in the mass of the proletariate. In Campania not

only was the democratic colony of Capua done away and

its domain given back to the state, as was naturally to

be expected, but the island of Aenaria (Ischia) was also,

probably about this time, withdrawn from the community

of Neapolis. In Latium the whole territory of the large

and wealthy city of Praeneste and presumably of Norba

also was confiscated, as was likewise that of Spoletium

' ii. 52. To this was added the peculiar aggravation that, while in
other instances the right of the I^ntins, like that of the pirep-ini, implied
nKiiil)<.rship in a definite Latin or foreign coniniuniiy. in tliis case — just
as with the liter freednien of Latin and doditician rights (conip. iii. 527 n.)
— it was without any such right of urban membership. The consequence
was, that these Latins were destitute of the privileges attaching to an
urban constitution, and, strictly speaking, could not even make a testa-
n>ent, since no one could execute a testament otherwise than according
to the law of his town ; they could iloubtless, however, acquire uniK-r
Roman testaments, and among the living could hold dealings with each
other and with Romans or Latins in the forms of Roman law.

lions to the

soldiers.

loS THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

in Umbria. Sulmo in the Paelignian district was even
razed. But the iron arm of the regent fell with especial
weight on the two regions which had offered a serious
resistance up to the end and even after the battle at the
CoUine gate — Etruria and Samnium. There a number
of the most considerable communes, such as Florentia,
Faesulae, Arretium, Volaterrae, were visited with total
confiscation. Of the fate of Samnium we have already
spoken ; there was no confiscation there, but the land was
laid waste for ever, its flourishing towns, even the former
Latin colony of Aesernia, were left in ruins, and the country
was placed on the same footing with the Bruttian and
Lucanian regions.
Assigna- These arrangements as to the property of the Italian soil

placed on the one hand those Roman domain-lands which
had been handed over in usufruct to the former allied
communities and now on their dissolution reverted to the
Roman government, and on the other hand the confiscated
territories of the communities incurring punishment, at the
disposal of the regent ; and he employed them for the
purpose of settling thereon the soldiers of the victorious
army. Most of these new settlements were directed
towards Etruria, as for instance to Faesulae and Arre-
tium, others to Latium and Campania, where Praeneste and
Pompeii among other places became Sullan colonies. To
repeople Samnium was, as we have said, no part of the
regent's design. A great part of these assignations took
place after the Gracchan mode, so that the settlers were
attached to an already- existing urban community. The
comprehensiveness of this settlement is shown by the
number of land -allotments distributed, which is stated
at 120,000 ; while yet some portions of land withal were
otherwise applied, as in the case of the lands bestowed
on the temple of Diana at Mount Tifata ; others, such as
the Volatcrran domain and a part of the Arretine, remained

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 109

undistributed ; others in fine, according to the old abuse
legally forbidden (iii. 374) but now reviving, were taken
possession of on the part of Sulla's favourites by the right
of occupation. The objects which Sulla aimed at in this
colonization were of a varied kind. In the first place,
he thereby redeemed the pledge given to his soldiers.
Secondly, he in so doing adopted the idea, in which the
reform -party and the moderate conservatives concurred,
and in accordance with which he had himself as early
as 666 arranged the establishment of a number of colonies 88.
— the idea namely of augmenting the number of the small
agricultural proprietors in Italy by a breaking up of the
larger possessions on the part of the government ; how
seriously he had this at heart is shown by the renewed
prohibition of the throwing together of allotments. Lastly
and especially, he saw in these settled soldiers as it were
standing garrisons, who would protect his new constitution
along with their own right of property. For this reason,
where the whole territory was not confiscated, as at Pompeii,
the colonists were not amalgamated with the urban -com-
munity, but the old burgesses and the colonists were
constituted as two bodies of burgesses associated within
the same enclosing wall. In other respects these colonial
foundations were based, doubtless, like the older ones, on
a decree of the people, but only indirectly, in so far as
the regent constituted them by virtue of the clause of the
Valerian law to that effect ; in reality they originated from
the ruler's plenitude of power, and so far recalled the
freedom with which the former regal authority disposed
of the state-property. But, in so far as the contrast between
the soldier and the burgess, which was in other instances
done away by the very sending out of the soldiers or
colonists, was intended to remain, and did remain, in force
in the Sullan colonies even after their establishment, and
these colonists formed, as it were, the standing army of

no

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

POOK IV

The

Cornelian
freedmen
in Rome.

Abolition
of the
Gracchan
institu-
tions.

88.

the senate, they are not incorrectly designated, in contra-
distinction to the older ones, as military colonies.

x\kin to this practical constituting of a standing army for
the senate was the measure by which the regent selected
from the slaves of the proscribed upwards of 10,000 of the
youngest and most vigorous men, and manumitted them in
a body. These new Cornelians, whose civil existence was
linked to the legal validity of the institutions of their patron,
were designed to be a sort of bodyguard for the oligarchy
and to help it to command the city populace, on which,
indeed, in the absence of a garrison everything in the capital
now primarily depended.

These extraordinary supports on which the regent made
the oligarchy primarily to rest, weak and ephemeral as they
doubtless might appear even to their author, were yet its
only possible buttresses, unless expedients were to be
resorted to — such as the formal institution of a standing
army in Rome and other similar measures — which would
have put an end to the oligarchy far sooner than the attacks
of demagogues. The permanent foundation of the ordinary
governing power of the oligarchy of course could not but
be the senate, with a power so increased and so concen-
trated that it presented a superiority to its non-organized
opponents at every single point of attack. The system
of compromises followed for forty years was at an end.
The Gracchan constitution, still spared in the first Sullan
reform of 666, was now utterly set aside. Since the time
of Gaius Gracchus the government had conceded, as it
were, the right of hneute to the proletariate of the capital,
and bought it off by regular distributions of corn to the
burgesses domiciled there ; Sulla abolished these largesses.
Gaius Gracchus had organized and consolidated the order
of capitalists by the letting of the tenths and customs of
the province of Asia in Rome ; Sulla abolished the system
of middlemen, and converted the former contributions

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION m

of the Asiatics into fixed taxes, which were assessed on
the several districts according to the valuation-rolls drawn
up for the purpose of gathering in the arrears.^ Gaius
Gracchus had by entrusting the posts of jurymen to men
of equestrian census procured for the capitalist class an
indirect share in administering and in governing, which
proved itself not seldom stronger than the official adminis-
tration and government; Sulla abolished the equestrian and
restored the senatorial courts. Gaius Gracchus or at any
rate the Gracchan period had conceded to the equites a
special place at the popular festivals, such as the senators
had for long possessed (iii. lo) ; Sulla abolished it and
relegated the equites to the plebeian benches. ^ The
equestrian order, created as such by Gaius Gracchus,
was deprived of its political existence by Sulla. The
senate was to exercise the supreme power in legislation,
administration, and jurisdiction, unconditionally, indivisibly,
and permanently, and was to be distinguished also by
outward tokens not merely as a privileged, but as the only
privileged, order.

For this purpose the governing board had, first of all, to Reorpan-
have its ranks filled up and to be itself placed on a footing 'f^"°" °'

* ^ ° the senate,

of independence. The numbers of the senators had been
fearfully reduced by the recent crises. Sulla no doubt now

^ That Sulla's assessment of the five years' arrears and of the war
exjjenses levied on the communities of Asia (Appian, Mithr. 62 et a/.)
formed a standard for the future, is shown by the facts, that the dis-
tribution of Asia into forty districts is referred to Sulla (Cassiodor. Chron.
670) and that the Sullan apportionment was assumed as a basis in the
case of subsequent imposts (Cic. fro Flacc. 14, 32), and by the further
circumstance, that on occasion of building a fleet in 672 the sums applied 82.
for that purpose were deducted from the payment of tribute (ex pecunia
vectigali fopulo Romano : Cic. yt-rr. I. i. 35, 89). Lastly, Cicero (ad
Q.fr. i. I, II, 33) directly says, that the Greeks " were not in a position
of themselves to pay the tax impnased on them by Sull.i without /■ublicani."

' iii. 351. Tradition has not indeed informed us by whom that law was
issued, which rendered it necess.-iry that the earlier privilege should be re-
newed by the Rosci.an theatre -law of 687 ( Becker -Friedliinder, iv, 531); 67.
but under the circumstances the author of that law was undoubtedly Sulla.

112

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

BOOK IV

Its comple-
ment filled
up by
extraordi-
nary
election.

Admission
to the
senate
through
the quaes-
torship.

gave to those who were exiled by the equestrian courts
liberty to return, for instance to the consular Publius Ruti-
lius Rufus (iii. 483), vi'ho however made no use of the per-
mission, and to Gaius Cotta the friend of Drusus (iii. 503) ;
but this made only slight amends for the gaps which the
revolutionary and reactionary reigns of terror had created in
the ranks of the senate. Accordingly by Sulla's directions
the senate had its complement extraordinarily made up by
about 300 new senators, whom the assembly of the tribes
had to nominate from among men of equestrian census,
and whom they selected, as may be conceived, chiefly
from the younger men of the senatorial houses on the one
hand, and from SuUan officers and others brought into
prominence by the last revolution on the other. For the
future also the mode of admission to the senate was re-
gulated anew and placed on an essentially different basis.
As the constitution had hitherto stood, men entered the
senate either through the summons of the censors, which
was the proper and ordinary way, or through the holding
of one of the three curule magistracies — the consulship,
the praetorship, or the aedileship — to which since the
passing of the Ovinian law a seat and vote in the senate
had been de jure attached (iii. 7). The holding of an
inferior magistracy, of the tribunate or the quaestorship,
gave doubtless a claim de facto to a place in the senate
— inasmuch as the censorial selection especially turned
towards the men who had held such offices — but by no
means a reversion de jure. Of these two modes of admis-
sion, Sulla abolished the former by setting aside — at
least practically — the censorship, and altered the latter
to the effect that the right of admission to the senate
was attached to the quaestorship instead of the aedile-
ship, and at the same time the number of quaestors to be
annually nominated was raised to twenty.^ The prero-

^ How many quaestors had been hitherto chosen annually, is not known

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 113

gative hitherto legally pertaining to the censors, although
practically no longer exercised in its oriL,'inal serious sense Abolition
— of deleting any senator from the roll, with a statement ^^.^s^^^ial
of the reasons for doing so, at the revisals which took supcrvi-
place every five years (iii, 11) — likewise fell into abeyance ^!^",°
for the future ; the irremoveable character which had
hitherto de facto belonged to the senators was thus finally
fixed by Sulla. The total number of senators, which
hitherto had presumably not much exceeded the old
normal number of 300 and often perhaps had not even
reached it, was by these means considerably augmented,
perhaps on an average doubled ^ — an augmentation which
was rendered necessary by the great increase of the duties
of the senate through the transference to it of the functions
of jurymen. As, moreover, both the extraordinarily admitted
senators and the quaestors were nominated by the comitia

In 487 the number stood at eight — two urban, two milit.ary, and four 267.
naval, quaestors (ii. 45. 58) ; to which there fell to be added the quaestors
employed in the provinces (ii. 209). For the naval quaestors at Ostia,
Calcs, and so forth were by no means discontinued, and the military
quaestors could not be employed elsewhere, since in that case the consul,
when he appeared as commander-in-chief, would have been without a
quaestor. Now, as down to Sulla's time there were nine provinces, and
moreover two quaestors were sent to Sicily, he may possibly have found
.as many as eighteen quaestors in existence. But as the numljcr of the
supreme magistrates of this perio<l was considerably less than that of their
functions (p. 120), and the difliciilty thus arising was constantly remedied
by extension of tlie term of oflice and other expedients, and as generally
the tendency of the Roman government was to limit as much as possible the
number of magistrates, there may have been more quaestorial functions
than quaestors, and it may be even that at this period no quaestor at all
was sent to small provinces such as Cilicia. Certainly however there were,
already before Sulla's time, niore than eight quaestors.

' We cannot strictly speak at all of a fixed number of senators. 'I hough
the censors liefore Sulla pn-pared on each occasion a list of 300 jx-rsons,
there always fell to be addetl to this list those non-senators who filled a
curulc office Ixrtween the time when the list w.is drawn up and the pre-
paration of the next one ; and after Sulla there were as many senators as
there were surviving quaestorians. But it may Ix: pr ' ' ' ^unKtl that
.Sulla meant to bring the senate up to 500 or 600 : ; and this

numlKT results, if we assume that 20 niw memlx-rs, ai an average age of
30, were admiued annually, and we otimate the aver.ige duratit'n of the
senatorial dignity at from 25 to 30 years. .At a numerously attendftl
sitting of the senate in Cicero's time 417 memlx>rs were present.

VOL. IV 108

114

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

BOOK IV

Regula-
tions [88.
as to the
burgesses.

iributa, the senate, hitherto resting indirectly on the election
of the people (i. 407), was now based throughout on direct
popular election ; and thus made as close an approach
to a representative government as was compatible with
the nature of the oligarchy and the notions of antiquity
generally. The senate had in course of time been con-
verted from a corporation intended merely to advise the
magistrates into a board commanding the magistrates
and self-governing ; it was only a consistent advance in the
same direction, when the right of nominating and cancelling
senators originally belonging to the magistrates was with-
drawn from them, and the senate was placed on the same
legal basis on which the magistrates' power itself rested.
The extravagant prerogative of the censors to revise the
list of the senate and to erase or add names at pleasure
was in reality incompatible with an organized oligarchic
constitution. As provision was now made for a sufficient
regular recruiting of its ranks by the election of the quaestors,
the censorial revisions became superfluous ; and by their
abeyance the essential principle at the bottom of every
oligarchy, the irremoveable character and life-tenure of the
members of the ruling order who obtained seat and vote,
was definitively consolidated.

In respect to legislation Sulla contented himself with re-
viving the regulations made in 666, and securing to the
senate the legislative initiative, which had long belonged to
it practically, by legal enactment at least as against the tri-
bunes. The burgess-body remained formally sovereign; but
so far as its primary assemblies were concerned, while it
seemed to the regent necessary carefully to preserve the
form, he was still more careful to prevent any real activity
on their part. Sulla dealt even with the franchise itself in
the most contemptuous manner ; he made no difficulty
either in conceding it to the new burgess-communities, or
in bestowing it on Spaniards and Celts en masse ; in fact,

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 1 1 '^

probably not without design, no steps were taken at all
for the adjustment of the burgcss-roll, which nevertheless
after so violent revolutions stood in urgent need of a
revision, if the government was still at all in earnest with
the legal privileges attaching to it. The legislative func-
tions of the comitia, however, were not directly restricted ;
there was no need in fact for doing so, for in consequence
of the better-secured initiative of the senate the people
could not readily against the will of the government
intermeddle with administration, finance, or criminal juris-
diction, and its legislative co-operation was once more
reduced in substance to the right of giving assent to altera-
tions of the constitution.

Of greater moment was the participation of the burgesses
in the elections — a participation, with which they seemed
not to be able to dispense without disturbing more than
Sulla's superficial restoration could or would disturb. The Co-
interferences of the movement party in the sacerdotal °P*^"°"

' ■' restored in

elections were set aside ; not only the Domitian law of the priestly
650, which transferred the election of the supreme priest- iq]*^^*^'
hoods generally to the people (iii. 463), but also the similar
older enactments as to the Poniifex Maximus and the Curio
Maximus (iii. 57) were cancelled by Sulla, and the colleges
of priests received back the right of self-completion in its
original absoluteness. In the case of elections to the offices
of state, the mode hitherto pursued was on the whole
retained ; except in so far as the new regulation of the
military command to be mentioned immediately certainly
involved as its consequence a material restriction of the
powers of the burgesses, and indeed in some measure
transferred the right of bestowing the appointment of
generals from the burgesses to the senate. It does not even
appear that Sulla now resumed the previously attempted
restoration of the Servian voting -arrangement (iii. 542) ;
whether it was that he regarded the particular composition

Ii6

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

BOOK IV

Regulating
of the
qualifica-
tions for
office.

342.

Weaken-
ing of the
tribunate
of the
people.

of the voting-divisions as altogether a matter of indifference,
or whetlier it was that this older arrangement seemed to
him to augment the dangerous influence of the capitalists.
Only the qualifications were restored and partially raised.
The limit of age requisite for the holding of each office was
enforced afresh ; as was also the enactment that every
candidate for the consulship should have previously held
the praetorship, and every candidate for the praetorship
should have previously held the quaestorship, whereas
the aedileship was allowed to be passed over. The
various attempts that had been recently made to establish
a tyrannis under the form of a consulship continued for
several successive years led to special rigour in dealing
with this abuse; and it was enacted that at least two
years should elapse between the holding of one magi-
stracy and the holding of another, and at least ten
years should elapse before the same office could be held a
second time. In this latter enactment the earlier ordinance
of 412 (i. 402) was revived, instead of the absolute pro-
hibition of all re-election to the consulship, which had been
the favourite idea of the most recent ultra -oligarchical
epoch (iii. 299). On the whole, however, Sulla left the
elections to take their course, and sought merely to fetter
the power of the magistrates in such a way that — let the
incalculable caprice of the comitia call to ofifice whomsoever
it might — the person elected should not be in a position to
rebel against the oligarchy.

The supreme magistrates of the state were at this period
practically the three colleges of the tribunes of the people,
the consuls and praetors, and the censors. They all
emerged from the Sullan restoration with materially dimin-
ished rights, more especially the tribunician ofifice, which
appeared to the regent an instrument indispensable doubt-
less for senatorial government, but yet — as generated by
revolution and having a constant tendency to generate

CHAI-. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 117

fresh revolutions in its turn — requiring to be rigorously
and permanently shackled. The tribunician authority had
arisen out of the right to annul the official acts of the
magistrates by veto, and, eventually, to fine any one who
should oppose that right and to take steps for his farther
punishment ; this was still left to the tribunes, excepting
that a heavy fine, destroying as a rule a man's civil exist-
ence, was imposed on the abuse of the right of intercession.
The further prerogative of the tribune to have dealings with
the people at pleasure, partly for the purpose of bringing
up accusations and especially of calling former magistrates
to account at the bar of the people, partly for the purpose
of submitting laws to the vote, had been the lever by which
the Gracchi, Saturninus, and Sulpicius had revolutionized
the state ; it was not abolished, but its exercise was prob-
ably made dependent on a permission to be previously
requested from the senate ' Lastly it was added that the
holding of the tribunate should in future disqualify for the
undertaking of a higher office — an enactment which, like
many other points in Sulla's restoration, once more reverted
to the old patrician maxims, and, just as in the times before
the admission of the plebeians to the civil magistracies,
declared the tribunate and the curule offices to be mutually
incompatible. In this way the legislator of the oligarchy

1 To this the words of Lcpidus in S.illust (Hist. i. 41. 11 Dietsch) refer :
populus Romaitus excitus . . . iure aptandi. to which T.icitus {Ann.
iii. 27) alludes : statim turbidis IjCpidi roi^aiionibus neque mulio fvst tnbunii
reddita licentia quoquo velUnt populum agitandi. That the tribunes did
not altogether lose the right of discussinR matters with the people is shown
by Cic. De Let;, iii. 4,10 and more clearly by the pUbiscitum de Thermensi-
bus, which however in the opening formula also designates itself as issued
dt sena/us scnUntia. That the consuls on the other hand could under the
SulLan arrangements submit propos.iis to the people without a previous
resolution of the senate, is shown not only by the silence of the authorities.
but also by the course of the revolutions of 667 and 676. whose leaders 87.
for this very reason were not tribunes but consuls. Accordingly we find
at this period consular laws upon secondary questions of administration,
such as the corn law of 681, for which at otlicr limes we should have 73.
c«:nainly found pUbiscita.

iiS

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

BOOK IV

Limitation
of the
supreme
magistracy.

Regulation
of the con-
sular and
praetorian
functions
before the
time of
Sulla.

hoped to check tribunician demagogism and to keep all
ambitious and aspiring men aloof from the tribunate, but
to retain it as an instrument of the senate both for mediating
between it and the burgesses, and, should circumstances
require, for keeping in check the magistrates ; and, as the
authority of the king and afterwards of the republican
magistrates over the burgesses scarcely anywhere comes to
light so clearly as in the principle that they exclusively had
the right of addressing the people, so the supremacy of the
senate, now first legally established, is most distinctly
apparent in this permission which the leader of the people
had to ask from the senate for every transaction with his
constituents.

The consulship and praetorship also, although viewed
by the aristocratic regenerator of Rome with a more
fovourable eye than the tribunate liable in itself to be
regarded with suspicion, by no means escaped that distrust
towards its own instruments which is throughout charac-
teristic of oligarchy. They were restricted with more,
tenderness in point of form, but in a way very sensibly felt.
Sulla here began with the partition of functions. At the
beginning of this period the arrangement in that respect
stood as follows. As formerly there had devolved on the
two consuls the collective functions of the supreme magi-
stracy, so there still devolved on them all those official
duties for which distinct functionaries had not been by law
established. This latter course had been adopted with the
administration of justice in the capital, in which the consuls,
according to a rule inviolably adhered to, might not interfere,
and with the transmarine provinces then existing — Sicily,
Sardinia, and the two Spain s — in which, while the consul
might no doubt exercise his imperium, he did so only
exceptionally. In the ordinary course of things, accordingly,
the six fields of special jurisdiction — the two judicial
appointments in the capital and the four transmarine

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 119

provinces — were apportioned among the six praetors, while
there devolved on the two consuls, by virtue of their general
powers, the management of the non-judicial business of the
capital and the military command in the continental posses-
sions. Now as this field of general powers was thus doubly
occupied, the one consul in reality remained at the disposal
of the government ; and in ordinary times accordingly those
eight supreme annual magistrates fully, and in fact amply,
sufficed. For extraordinary cases moreover power was
reserved on the one hand to conjoin the non-military
functions, and on the other hand to prolong the military
powers beyond the term of their expiry {prorogare). It was
not unusual to commit the two judicial offices to the
same praetor, and to have the business of the capital,
which in ordinary circumstances had to be transacted by
the consuls, managed by the praetor urbanus ; whereas, as
far as possible, the combination of several commands in
the same hand was judiciously avoided. For this case in
reality a remedy was provided by the rule that there
was no interregnum in the military imperiu/n, so that,
although it had its legal term, it yet continued after the
arrival of that term de Jure, until the successor appeared
and relieved his predecessor of the command ; or — which
is the same thing — the commanding consul or praetor after
the expiry of his term of office, if a successor did not appear,
might continue to act, and was bound to do so, in the
consul's or praetor's stead. The inlluence of the senate
on this apportionment of functions consisted in its having
by use and wont the power of either giving effect to the
ordinary rule — so that the six praetors allotted among them-
selves the six special departments and the consuls managed
the continental non-judicial business — or prescribing some
deviation from it ; it might assign to the consul a trans-
marine command of especial importance at the moment, or
include an extraordinary military or judicial mnimission —

I20 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

such as the command of the fleet or an important crhiiinal
inquiry — among the departments to be distributed, and
might arrange the further cumulations and extensions of
term thereby rendered necessary. In this case, however,
it was simply the demarcation of the respective consular
and praetorian functions on each occasion which belonged
to the senate, not the designation of the persons to assume
the particular office ; the latter uniformly took place by
agreement among the magistrates concerned or by lot.
The burgesses in the earlier period were doubtless resorted
to for the purpose of legitimising by special decree of the
community the practical prolongation of command that
was involved in the non-arrival of relief (i. 409) ; but this
was required rather by the spirit than by the letter of the
constitution, and soon the burgesses ceased from interven-
tion in the matter. In the course of the seventh century
there were gradually added to the six special departments
already existing six others, viz. the five new governor-
ships of Macedonia, Africa, Asia, Narbo, and Cilicia,
and the presidency of the standing commission respecting
exactions (iii. 300). With the daily extending sphere of
action of the Roman government, moreover, it was a case
of more and more frequent occurrence, that the supreme
magistrates were called to undertake extraordinary military
or judicial commissions. Nevertheless the number of the
ordinary supreme annual magistrates was not enlarged ; and
there thus devolved on eight magistrates to be annually
nominated — apart from all else — at least twelve special
departments to be annually occupied. Of course it was
no mere accident, that this deficiency was not covered once
for all by the creation of new praetorships. According to
the letter of the constitution all the supreme magistrates
were to be nominated annually by the burgesses ; according
to the new order or rather disorder — under which the
vacancies that arose were filled up mainly by prolonging

CHAi'. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 121

the term of oflfice, and a second year was as a rule added
by the senate to the magistrates legally serving for one
year, but might also at discretion be refused — the most
important and most lucrative places in the state were filled
up no longer by the burgesses, but by the senate out of a
list of competitors formed by the burgess-elections. Since
among these positions the transmarine commands were
especially sought after as being the most lucrative, it was
usual to entrust a transmarine command on the expiry of
their official year to those magistrates whom their office
confined either in law or at any rate in fact to the capital,
that is, to the two praetors administering justice in the
city and frequently also to the consuls ; a course which was
compatible with the nature of prorogation, since the official
authority of supreme magistrates acting in Rome and in
the provinces respectively, although differently entered on,
was not in strict state-law different in kind.

Such was the state of things which Sulla found existing, Rcgubtion
and which formed the basis of his new arrangement. Its ^^ '^'c"'

'^ functions

main principles were, a complete separation between the i.y suiia.
political authority which governed in the burgess -districts
aud the military authority which governed in the non-
burgess-districts, and an uniform extension of the duration
of the supreme magistracy from one year to two, the first
of which was devoted to civil, and the second to military
affairs. Locally the civil and the military authority had Seji-iration
certainly been long separated by the constitution, and the
former ended at the pomcrium, where the latter began ; and
but still the same man held the supreme political and the
supreme military power united in his hand. In future the
consul and praetor were to deal with the senate and
burgesses, the proconsul and propraetor were to command
the army ; but all military power was cut off by law from
the former, and all political action from the latter. This
primarily led to the political sej^aration of the region of

of the
(x>Iitical

militnrr
.tuthority.

122

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

BOOK IV

Cisalpine
Gaul
erected
into a
province.

Northern Italy from Italy proper. Hitherto they had stood
doubtless in a national antagonism, inasmuch as Northern
Italy was inhabited chiefly by Ligurians and Celts, Central
and Southern Italy by Italians ; but, in a political and
administrative point of view, the whole continental territory
of the Roman state from the Straits to the Alps includ-
ing the Illyrian possessions — burgess, Latin, and non-
Italian communities without exception — was in the ordi-
nary course of things under the administration of the
supreme magistrates who were acting in Rome, as in fact
her colonial foundations extended through all this territory.
According to Sulla's arrangement Italy proper, the northern
boundary of which was at the same time changed from
the Aesis to the Rubico, was — as a region now inhabited
without exception by Roman citizens — made subject to the
ordinary Roman authorities ; and it became one of the
fundamental principles of Roman state-law, that no troops
and no commandant should ordinarily be stationed in
this district. The Celtic country south of the Alps on the
other hand, in which a military command could not be
dispensed with on account of the continued incursions
of the Alpine tribes, was constituted a distinct governor-
ship after the model of the older transmarine commands.^

75.

^ For this hypothesis there is no other proof, except that the Italian
Celt-land was as decidedly not a province — in the sense in which the word
signifies a definite district administered by a governor annually changed —
in the earlier times, as it certainly was one in the time of Caesar (comp.
Licin. p. 39 ; dafa erat et Sullae piwincia Gallia Cisalpina).

The case is much the same with the advancement of the frontier ; we
know that formerly the Aesis, and in Caesar's time the Rubico, separated
the Celtic land from Italy, but we do not know when the boundary was
shifted. From the circumstance indeed, that Marcus Terentius Varro
Lucullus as propraetor undertook a regulation of the frontier in the district
between the Aesis and Rubico (Orelli, Inscr. 570), it has been inferred
that that must still have been provincial land at least in the year after
Lucullus' praetorship 679, since the propraetor had nothing to do on
Italian soil. But it was only within the pomerium that every prolonged
imperium ceased of itself ; in Italy, on the other hand, such a prolonged
imperiu7n was even under Sulla's arrangement — though not regularly
existing — at any rate allowable, and the office held by Lucullus was in any

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 123

Lastly, as the number of praetors to be nominated yearly
was raised from six to eight, the new arrangement of the
duties was such, that the ten chief magistrates to be
nominated yearly devoted themselves, during their first
year of office, as consuls or praetors to the business of the
capital — the two consuls to government and administration,
two of the praetors to the administration of civil law, the
remaining six to the reorganized administration of criminal
justice — and, during their second year of office, were as
proconsuls or propraetors invested with the command in
one of the ten governorships : Sicily, Sardinia, the two
Spains, Macedonia, Asia, Africa, Narbo, Cilicia, and Italian
Gaul. The already - mentioned augmentation of the
number of quaestors by Sulla to twenty was likewise
connected with this arrangement.^

By this plan, in the first instance, a clear and fixed rule Better
was substituted for the irregular mode of distributing offices ^'^'^"K'-''
hitherto adopted, a mode which invited all manner of vile business
manoeuvres and intrigues ; and, secondly, the excesses of
magisterial authority were as far as possible obviated and
the influence of the supreme governing board was materially
increased. According to the previous arrangement the

case an extraordinary one. But we are able moreover to show wlien and
how Lucullus held such an office in this quarter. He was already before
the Sullan reorganization in 672 active as commanding officer in this very 82.
district (p. 87), and was probably, just like Pompeius, furnished by
Sulla with propraetorian {xjwers ; in this character he must have regulated
the boundary in question in 672 or 673 (conip. Appian. i. 95). No 82. 81.
inference therefore may be drawn from this inscription as to the legal
position of North Italy, and least of all for the time after Sulla's dictator-
ship. On the other hand a remarkable hint is contained in the statement,
that Sulla advanced the Roman pomerium (Seneca, de brci'. vitae, 14 ;
Dio. xliii. 50) ; which distinction was by Roman state-law only accorded
to one who had advanced the bounds not of the empire, but of the city
— that is, the bounds of Italy (i. 128).

^ As two quaestors were sent to Sicily, ancl one to each of the other
provinces, and as moreover the two urban (juaestors, the two attached to
the consub in conducting war, and the four quaestors of the tlcet con-
tinued to subsist, nineteen magistrates were annually required for this
office. The department of the twentieth quaestor cannot be ascertained.

124 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

only legal distinction in the empire was that drawn between
the city which was surrounded by the ring- wall, and the
country beyond the pomeriinn ; the new arrangement
substituted for the city the new Italy henceforth, as in
perpetual peace, withdrawn from the regular imperiiun,^
and placed in contrast to it the continental and trans-
marine territories, which were, on the other hand, necessarily
placed under military commandants — the provinces as they
Increase of were henceforth called. According to the former arrange-
of^th"*^"^ ment the same man had very frequently remained two,
senate. and often more years in the same office. The new
arrangement restricted the magistracies of the capital as
well as the governorships throughout to one year ; and
the special enactment that every governor should without
fail leave his province within thirty days after his successor's
arrival there, shows very clearly — particularly if we take
along with it the formerly -mentioned prohibition of the
immediate re-election of the late magistrate to the same
or another public office — what the tendency of these
arrangements was. It was the time-honoured maxim by
which the senate had at one time made the monarchy
subject to it, that the limitation of the magistracy in point
of function was favourable to democracy, and its limitation
in point of time favourable to oligarchy. According to
the previous arrangement Gaius Marius had acted at once
as head of the senate and as commander-in-chief of the
state ; if he had his own unskilfulness alone to blame for
his failure to overthrow the oligarchy by means of this
double official power, care seemed now taken to prevent
some possibly wiser successor from making a better use
of the same lever. According to the previous arrange-
ment the magistrate immediately nominated by the people

^ The Italian confederacy was much older (ii. 59) ; but it was a
league of states, not, like the Sullan Italy, a state -domain marked off as
an unit within the Roman empire.

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 125

might have had a niihtary position ; the Sullan arrange-
ment, on the other hand, reserved such a position ex-
clusively for those magistrates whom the senate confirmed
in their official authority by prolonging their term of office.
No doubt this prolongation of office had now become a
standing usage ; but it still — so far as respects the
auspices and the name, and constitutional form in general
— continued to be treated as an extraordinary extension
of their term. This was no matter of indifference. The
burgesses alone could depose the consul or praetor from
his office ; the proconsul and propraetor were nominated
and dismissed by the senate, so that by this enactment
the whole military power, on which withal everything
ultimately depended, became formally at least dependent
on the senate.

Lastly we have already observed that the highest of all SheKing of
magistracies, the censorship, though not formally abolished, ^^^p
was shelved in the same way as the dictatorship had
previously been. Practically it might certainly be dis-
pensed with. Provision was otherwise made for filling up
the senate. From the time that Italy was practically tax-
free and the army was substantially formed by enlistment,
the register of those liable to taxation and service lost in
the main its significance ; and, if disorder prevailed in the
equestrian roll or the list of those entitled to the suffiagc,
that disorder was probably not altogether unwelcome.
There thus remained only the current financial functions
which the consuls had hitherto discharged when, as fre-
quently happened, no election of censors had taken place,
and which they now took as a part of their ordinary official
duties. Compared with the substantial gain that by the
shelving of the censorship the magistracy lost its crowning
dignity, it was a matter of little moment and was not at
all prejudicial to the sole dominion of the supreme govern-
ing corporation, that with a view to satisfy the ambition

126 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

of the senators now so much more numerous — the number
of the pontifices and that of the augurs was increased
from nine (i. 385), that of the custodiers of oracles from
ten (i. 380), to fifteen each, and that of the banquet-
masters from three (iii. no) to seven.
Regulation In financial matters even under the former constitution
finances ^^^ decisive voice lay with the senate; the only point to
be dealt with, accordingly, was the re-establishment of an
orderly administration. Sulla had found himself at first in
no small difficulty as to money; the sums brought with him
from Asia Minor were soon expended for the pay of his
numerous and constantly swelling army. Even after the
victory at the Colline gate the senate, seeing that the
state-chest had been carried off to Praeneste, had been
obliged to resort to urgent measures. Various building-
sites in the capital and several portions of the Campanian
domains were exposed to sale, the client kings, the freed
and allied communities, were laid under extraordinary
contribution, their landed property and their customs-
revenues were in some cases confiscated, and in others
new privileges were granted to them for money. But
the residue of nearly ;^6oo,ooo found in the public chest
on the surrender of Praeneste, the public auctions which
soon began, and other extraordinary resources, relieved
the embarrassment of the moment. Provision was made
for the future not so much by the reform in the Asiatic
revenues, under which the tax -payers were the principal
gainers, and the state chest was perhaps at most no loser,
as by the resumption of the Campanian domains, to which
Aenaria was now added (p. 107), and above all by the
abolition of the largesses of grain, which since the time of
Gains Gracchus had eaten like a canker into the Roman
finances.

The judicial system on the other hand was essentially
revolutionized, partly from political considerations, partly

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 127

with a view to introduce greater unity and usefulness into Rrorgan-
the previous very insufficient and unconnected legislation on o^'[|^"
the subject. According to the arrangements hitherto sub- judicial
sisting, processes fell to be decided partly by the burgesses, p/Jviouj
partly by jurymen. The judicial cases in which the whole arrange-
burgesses decided on appeal from the judgment of the
magistrate were, down to the time of Sulla, placed in the
hands primarily of the tribunes of the people, secondarily
of the aediles, inasmuch as all the processes, through
which a person entrusted with an office or commission by
the community was brought to answer for his conduct of
its affairs, whether they involved life and limb or money-
fines, had to be in the first instance dealt with by the
tribunes of the people, and all the other processes in which
ultimately the people decided, were in the first instance
adjudicated on, in the second presided over, by the curule
or plebeian aediles. Sulla, if he did not directly abolish
the tribunician process of calling to account, yet made it
dependent, just like the initiative of the tribunes in legisla-
tion, on the previous consent of the senate, and presumably
also limited in like manner the aedilician penal pro-
cedure. On the other hand he enlarged the jurisdiction
of the jury courts. There existed at that time two sorts
of procedure before jurymen. The ordinary procedure. Ordinary
which was applicable in all cases adapted according to our ^^'^^ ^^
view for a criminal or civil process with the exception of
crimes immediately directed against the state, consisted in
this, that one of the two praetors of the capital technically
adjusted the cause and a juryman {iud^x) nominated by
him decided it on the basis of this adjustment. The
extraordinary jury- procedure again was applicable in par-
ticular civil or criminal cases of importance, for which,
instead of the single jurjman, a special jury-court had been
appointed by special laws. Of this sort were the sjxjcial
tribunals constituted for individual cases {e.g. iii. 396, 439) ;

128

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

BOOK IV

Permanent the Standing commissional tribunals, such as had been

Hones.

Centum-
viral court

^uaey-^"^ appointed for exactions (iii. 300), for poisoning and murder
{iii. 348), perhaps also for bribery at elections and other
crimes, in the course of the seventh century ; and lastly,
the two courts of the " Ten-men " for processes affecting
freedom, and the " Hundred and five," or more briefly, the
" Hundred-men," for processes affecting inheritance, also
called, from the shaft of a spear employed in all disputes
as to property, the " spear-court " (Jiasta). The court of
Ten-men (decemviri litibus iudicandis) was a very ancient
institution for the protection of the plebeians against
their masters (i. 352). The period and circumstances in
which the spear-court originated are involved in obscurity ;
but they must, it may be presumed, have been nearly the
same as in the case of the essentially similar criminal
commissions mentioned above. As to the presidency of
these different tribunals there were different regulations in
the respective ordinances appointing them : thus there
presided over the tribunal as to exactions a praetor, over
the court for murder a president specially nominated from
those who had been aediles, over the spear-court several
directors taken from the former quaestors. The jurymen
at least for the ordinary as for the extraordinary procedure
were, in accordance with the Gracchan arrangement, taken
from the non-senatorial men of equestrian census ; the
selection belonged in general to the magistrates who had
the conducting of the courts, yet on such a footing that
they, in entering upon their office, had to set forth once
for all the list of jurymen, and then the jury for an
individual case was formed from these, not by free choice
of the magistrate, but by drawing lots, and by rejection on
behalf of the parties. From the choice of the people there
came only the "Ten-men " for procedure affecting freedom.

Sulian Sulla's leading reforms were of a threefold character.

Quaes- First, he very considerably increased the number of the

/tones. ' ■' •'

CHAP. X Tin-: SULLAN CONSTITUTION 129

jury-courls. There were henceforth separate judicial com-
missions for exactions ; for murder, including arson and
perjury ; for bribery at elections ; for high treason and
any dishonour done to the Roman name ; for the most
heinous cases of fraud — the forging of wills and of money ;
for adultery ; for the most heinous violations of honour,
particularly for injuries to the person and disturbance of
the domestic peace ; perhaps also for embezzlement of
public moneys, for usury and other crimes ; and at least
the greater number of these courts were either found in
existence or called into life by Sulla, and were provided by
him with special ordinances setting forth the crime and
form of criminal procedure. The government, moreover,
was not deprived of the right to appoint in case of
emergency special courts for particular groups of crimes.
As a result of these arrangements, the popular tribunals
were in substance done away with, processes of high treason
in particular were consigned to the new high treason
commission, and the ordinary jury procedure was con-
siderably restricted, for the more serious falsifications and
injuries were withdrawn from it. Secondly, as respects the
presidency of the courts, six praetors, as we have already
mentioned, were now available for the superintendence of
the different jury -courts, and to these were added a
number of other directors in the care of the commission
which was most frequently called into action — that for
dealing with murder. Thirdly, the senators were once
more installed in the office of jurymen in room of the
Gracchan equites.

The political aim of these enactments — to put an end
to the share which the equites had hitherto had in the
government — is clear as day ; but it as little admits of
doubt, that these were not mere measures of a political
teniiency, but that they formed the first attempt to amend
the Roman criminal procedure and criminal law, which had
VOL. IV 109

I30 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

since the struggle between the orders fallen more and more
into confusion. From this Sullan legislation dates the
distinction — substantially unknown to the earlier law —
between civil and criminal causes, in the sense which we
now attach to these expressions ; henceforth a criminal
cause appears as that which comes before the bench of
jurymen under the presidency of the praetor, a civil cause
as the procedure, in which the juryman or jurymen do not
discharge their duties under praetorian presidency. The
whole body of the Sullan ordinances as to the quaestiones
may be characterized at once as the first Roman code after
the Twelve Tables, and as the first criminal code ever
specially issued at all. But in the details also there
appears a laudable and liberal spirit. Singular as it may
sound regarding the author of the proscriptions, it remains
nevertheless true that he abolished the punishment of
death for political offences ; for, as according to the
Roman custom which even Sulla retained unchanged the
people only, and not the jury-commission, could sentence
to forfeiture of life or to imprisonment (iii. 348), the trans-
ference of processes of high treason from the burgesses to
a standing commission amounted to the abolition of capital
punishment for such offences. On the other hand, the
restriction of the pernicious special commissions for par-
ticular cases of high treason, of which the Varian com-
mission (iii. 503) in the Social war had been a specimen,
likewise involved an improvement. The whole reform was
of singular and lasting benefit, and a permanent monument
of the practical, moderate, statesmanly spirit, which made
its author well worthy, like the old decemvirs, to step
forward between the parties as sovereign mediator with his
code of law.
Police We may regard as an appendix to these criminal laws

the police ordinances, by which Sulla, putting the law in
place of the censor, again enforced good discipline and

laws,

CHAi'. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 131

Strict manners, and, by establishing new maximum rates
instead of the old ones which had long been antiquated
attempted to restrain luxury at banquets, funerals, and
otherwise.

Lastly, the development of an independent Roman Tiie
municipal system was the work, if not of Sulla, at any rate '*°'".^" ,

' ^ ' ■' municipal

of the SuUan epoch. The idea of organically incorpor- system,
ating the community as a subordinate political unit in the
higher unity of the state was originally foreign to antiquity;
the despotism of the east knew nothing of urban common-
wealths in the strict sense of the word, and city and state
were throughout the Helleno-Italic world necessarily co-
incident. In so far there was no proper municipal system
from the outset either in Greece or in Italy. The Roman
polity especially adhered to this view with its peculiar
tenacious consistency ; even in the sixth century the
dependent communities of Italy were either, in order to
their keeping their municipal constitution, constituted as
formally sovereign states of non- burgesses, or, if they
obtained the Roman franchise, were — although not
prevented from organizing themselves as collective bodies
— deprived of properly municipal rights, so that in all
burgess-colonies and huTgcss-munia'/i'a even the administra-
tion of justice and the charge of buildings devolved on the
Roman praetors and censors. The utmost to which Rome
consented was to allow at least the most urgent lawsuits to
be settled on the spot by a deputy {praefectus) of the
praetor nominated from Rome (ii. 49). The provinces
were similarly dealt with, except that the governor there
came in place of the authorities of the capital. In the free,
that is, formally sovereign towns the civil and criminal
jurisdiction was administered by the municipal magistrates
according to the local statutes ; only, unless altogether
special privileges stood in the way, every Roman might
either as defendant or as plaintiff request to have his cause

132 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

decided before Italian judges according to Italian law.
For the ordinary provincial communities the Roman
governor was the only regular judicial authority, on whom
devolved the direction of all processes. It was a great
matter when, as in Sicily, in the event of the defendant
being a Sicilian, the governor was bound by the provincial
statute to give a native juryman and to allow him to decide
according to local usage ; in most of the provinces this
seems to have depended on the pleasure of the directing
magistrate.

In the seventh century this absolute centralization of
the public life of the Roman community in the one focus
of Rome was given up, so far as Italy at least was
concerned. Now that Italy was a single civic community
and the civic territory reached from the Arnus and Rubico
down to the Sicilian Straits (p. 122), it was necessary to
consent to the formation of smaller civic communities
within that larger unit. So Italy was organized into
communities of full burgesses ; on which occasion also
the larger cantons that were dangerous from their size
were probably broken up, so far as this had not been done
already, into several smaller town -districts (iii. 499). The
position of these new communities of full burgesses was a
compromise between that which had belonged to them
hitherto as allied states, and that which by the earlier law
would have belonged to them as integral parts of the
Roman community. Their basis was in general the con-
stitution of the former formally sovereign Latin community,
or, so far as their constitution in its principles resembled
the Roman, that of the Roman old-patrician-consular com-
munity ; only care was taken to apply to the same institu-
tions in the nmnicipium names different from, and inferior
to, those used in the capital, or, in other words, in the
state. A burgess -assembly was placed at the head, with
the prerogative of issuing municipal statutes and nominating

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 133

the municipal magistrates. A municipal council of a
hundred members acted the part of the Roman senate.
The administration of justice was conducted by four
magistrates, two regular judges corresponding to the two
consuls, and two market-judges corresponding to the curule
aediles. The functions of the censorship, which recurred,
as in Rome, every five years and, to all appearance,
consisted chiefly in the superintendence of public buildings,
were also undertaken by the supreme magistrates of the
community, namely the ordinary duumviri, who in this
case assumed the distinctive title of duumviri " with
censorial or quinquennial power." The municipal funds
were managed by two quaestors. Religious functions
primarily devolved on the two colleges of men of priestly
lore alone known to the earliest Latin constitution, the
municipal pontifices and augurs.

With reference to the relation of this secondary political Rebtion o(

r , 1- • 1 'he muni-

organism to the prmiary organism of the state, political ^pi^m to
prerogatives in general belonged completely to the former i^c suic
as well as to the latter, and consequently the municipal
decree and the imperium of the municipal magistrates
bound the municipal burgess just as the decree of the
people and the consular imperium bound the Roman,
This led, on the whole, to a co-ordinate e.xercise of power
by the authorities of the state and of the town ; both had,
for instance, the right of valuation and taxation, so that
in the case of any municipal valuations and taxes those
prescribed by Rome were not taken into account, and
xice versa ; public buildings might be instituted both by
the Roman magistrates throughout Italy and by the
municipal authorities in their own district, and so in other
cases. In the event of collision, of course the community
yielded to the state and the decree of the people invalidated
the municipal decree. A formal division of functions
probably took place only in the administration of justice,

munict-
pium.

134 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

where the system of pure co-ordination would have led to
the greatest confusion. In criminal procedure presumably
all capital causes, and in civil procedure those more
difficult cases which presumed an independent action on
the part of the directing magistrate, were reserved for the
authorities and jurymen of the capital, and the Italian
municipal courts were restricted to the minor and less
complicated lawsuits, or to those which were very urgent.
Rise of the The Origin of this Italian municipal system has not
been recorded by tradition. It is probable that its germs
may be traced to exceptional regulations for the great
burgess -colonies, which were founded at the end of the
sixth century (iii. 26); at least several, in themselves
indifferent, formal differences between burgess -colonies
and hnrgtss- fnnnicipi a tend to show that the new burgess-
colony, which at that time practically took the place of
the Latin, had originally a better position in state-law than
the far older hMxge?,?,-7nunicipium, and the advantage doubt-
less can only have consisted in a municipal constitution
approximating to the Latin, such as afterwards belonged
to all burgess -colonies and hMrgQSS- municipia. The new
organization is first distinctly demonstrable for the revolu-
tionary colony of Capua (p. 70); and it admits of no
doubt that it was first fully applied, when all the hitherto
sovereign towns of Italy had to be organized, in con-
sequence of the Social war, as burgess-communities.
86. Whether it was the Julian law, or the censors of 668, or
Sulla, that first arranged the details, cannot be determined :
the entrusting of the censorial functions to the duumviri
seems indeed to have been introduced after the analogy
of the Sullan ordinance superseding the censorship, but
may be equally well referred to the oldest Latin constitu-
tion to which also the censorship was unknown. In any
case this municipal constitution — inserted in, and sub-
ordinate to, the state proper — is one of the most remarkable

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION IJS

and momentous products of the SuUan period, and of the
life of the Roman state generally. Anti(iuity was certainly
as little able to dovetail the city into the state as to develop
of itself representative government and other great principles
of our modern state-life ; but it carried its political develop-
ment u|) to those limits at which it outgrows and bursts
its assigned dimensions, and this was the case especially
with Rome, which in every respect stands on the line of
separation and connection between the old and the new
intellectual worlds. In the Sullan constitution the primary
assembly and the urban character of the commonwealth of
Rome, on the one hand, vanished almost into a meaningless
form ; the community subsisting within the state on the
other hand was already completely developed in the Italian
munidpium. Down to the name, which in such cases no
doubt is the half of the matter, this last constitution of
the free republic carried out the representative system
and the idea of the state built upon the basis of the
municipalities.

The municipal system in the provinces was not altered
by this movement ; the municipal authorities of the non-
free towns continued — special exceptions apart — to be
confined to administration and police, and to such jurisdic-
tion as the Roman authorities did not prefer to take into
their own hands.

Such was the constitution which Lucius Cornelius Sulla Impression
gave to the commonwealth of Rome. The senate and ^^ ^^^
equestrian order, the burgesses and proletariate, Italians SuiUn
and provincials, accepted it as it was dictated to them by [*^n^""*"
the regent, if not without grumbling, at any rate without
rebelling : not so the Sullan otlicers. Tiie Roman army Opposition
had totally changed its character. It had certainly been °^'^
rendered by the Marian reform more ready for action and
more militarily useful than when it did not fight before the
walls of Numantia ; but it hud at the same time been ron-

136 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

verted from a burgess- force into a set of mercenaries who
showed no fideUty to the state at all, and proved faithful
to the officer only if he had the skill personally to gain
their attachment. The civil war had given fearful evidence
of this total revolution in the spirit of the army : six
generals in command, Albinus (iii. 529), Cato (iii. 530),
Rufus (iii. 546), Flaccus (p. 47), Cinna (p. 74), and
Gaius Carbo (p. 91), had fallen during its course by the
hands of their soldiers : Sulla alone had hitherto been
able to retain the mastery of the dangerous crew, and
that only, in fact, by giving the rein to all their wild
desires as no Roman general before him had ever done.
If the blame of destroying the old military discipline is on
this account attached to him, the censure is not exactly
without ground, but yet without justice ; he was indeed
the first Roman magistrate who was only enabled to
discharge his military and political task by coming
forward as a cotidottiere. He had not however taken the
military dictatorship for the purpose of making the state
subject to the soldiery, but rather for the purpose of
compelling everything in the state, and especially the
army and the officers, to submit once more to the authority
of civil order. When this became evident, an opposition
arose against him among his own staff. The oligarchy
might play the tyrant as respected other citizens ; but that
the generals also, who with their good swords had replaced
the overthrown senators in their seats, should now be
summoned to yield implicit obedience to this very senate,
seemed intolerable. The very two officers in whom
Sulla had placed most confidence resisted the new order
of things. When Gnaeus Ponipeius, whom Sulla had
entrusted with the conquest of Sicily and Africa and had
selected for his son-in-law, after accomplishing his task
received orders from the senate to dismiss his army, he
omitted to comply and fell little short of open insurrection.

CHAK X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 137

Quintus Ofclla, to whose firm perseverance in front of
Praeneste the success of the last and most severe campaign
was essentially due, in equally open violation of the newly
issued ordinances became a candidate for the consulship
without having held the inferior magistracies. With
Pompeius there was effected, if not a cordial reconciliation,
at any rate a compromise. Sulla, who knew his man
sufficiently not to fear him, did not resent the impertinent
remark which Pompeius uttered to his face, that more
people concerned themselves with the rising than with the
setting sun ; and accorded to the vain youth the empty
marks of honour to which his heart clung (p. 94). If in
this instance he appeared lenient, he showed on the other
hand in the case of Ofella that he was not disposed to
allow his marshals to take advantage of him ; as soon as
the latter had appeared unconstitutionally as candidate,
Sulla had him cut down in the public market-place, and
then explained to the assembled citizens that the deed was
done by his orders and the reason for doing it. So this
significant opposition of the staff to the new order of things
was no doubt silenced for the present ; but it continued to
subsist and furnished the practical commentary on Sulla's
saying, that what he did on this occasion could not be
done a second time.

One thing still remained — perhaps the most difficult of Re-«t.ib-
all : to bring the exceptional state of things into accordance conlilm-
with the paths prescribed by the new or old laws. It was uonal
facilitated by the circumstance, that Sulla never lost sight
of this as his ultimate aim. Although the Valerian law
gave him absolute power and gave to each of his ordinances
the force of law, he had nevertheless availed himself of
this extraordinary prerogative only in the case of measures,
which were of transient iiii[)ortance, and to take part in
which would simply have uselessly compromised the senate
and burgesses, especially in the case of the proscriptions.

138 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book IV

Ordinarily he had himself observed those regulations, which
he prescribed for the future. That the people were con-
sulted, we read in the law as to the quaestors which is still
in part extant ; and the same is attested of other laws, e.g.
the sumptuary law and those regarding the confiscation of
domains. In like manner the senate was previously con-
sulted in the more important administrative acts, such as in
the sending forth and recall of the African army and in the
conferring of the charters of towns. In the same spirit

81. Sulla caused consuls to be elected even for 673, through
which at least the odious custom of dating officially by the
regency was avoided ; nevertheless the power still lay
exclusively with the regent, and the election was directed
so as to fall on secondary personages. But in the following

80. year (674) Sulla revived the ordinary constitution in full
efficiency, and administered the state as consul in concert
with his comrade in arms Quintus Metellus, retaining the
regency, but allowing it for the time to lie dormant. He
saw well how dangerous it was for his own very institutions
to perpetuate the military dictatorship. When the new
state of things seemed likely to hold its ground and the
largest and most important portion of the new arrangements
had been completed, although various matters, particularly
in colonization, still remained to be done, he allowed the

79. elections for 675 to have free course, declined re-election
to the consulship as incompatible with his own ordinances,

79. and at the beginning of 675 resigned the regency, soon

after the new consuls Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius

Sulla had entered on office. Even callous hearts were impressed,

resigns the •^yhen the man who had hitherto dealt at his pleasure with

regency.

the life and property of millions, at whose nod so many
heads had fallen, who had mortal enemies dwelling in every
street of Rome and in every town of Italy, and who with-
out an ally of equal standing and even, strictly speaking,
without the support of a fixed party had brought to an end

CHAF. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 139

his work of reorganizing the state, a work offending a
thousand interests and opinions — when this man appeared
in the market-place of the capital, voluntarily renounced
his plenitude of power, discharged his armed attendants,
dismissed his lictors, and summoned the dense throng of
burgesses to speak, if any one desired from him a reckoning.
All were silent : Sulla descended from the rostra, and on
foot, attended only by his friends, returned to his dwelling
through the midst of that very populace which eight years
before had razed his house to the ground.

Posterity has not justly appreciated either Sulla himself or Character
his work of reorganization, as indeed it is wont to judge
unfairly of persons who oppose themselves to the current
of the times. In fact Sulla is one of the most marvellous
characters — we may even say a unique phenomenon — in
histor)'. Physically and mentally of sanguine temperament,
blue-eyed, fair, of a complexion singularly white but blush-
ing with every passionate emotion — though otherwise a
handsome man with piercing eyes — he seemed hardly
destined to be of more moment to the state than his
ancestors, who since the days of his great-great-grandfather
Publius Cornelius Rufinus (consul in 464, 477), one of the 290. 277.
most distinguished generals and at the same time the
most ostentatious man of the times of Pyrrhus, had remained
in second-rate positions. He desired from life nothing but
serene enjoyment Reared in the refinement of such cul-
tivated luxury as was at that time naturalized even in the
less wealthy senatorial families of Rome, he speedily and
adroitly possessed himself of all the fulness of sensuous and
intellectual enjoyments which the combination of Hellenic
polish and Roman wealth could secure. He was equally
welcome as a pleasant companion in the aristocratic saloon
and as a good comrade in the tented field ; his acquaintances,
high and low, found in him a sympathizing friend and a
ready helper in time of need, who gave his gold with far

140 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

more pleasure to his embarrassed comrade than to his
wealthy creditor. Passionate was his homage to the wine-
cup, still more passionate to women ; even in his later years
he was no longer the regent, when after the business of the
day was finished he took his place at table. A vein of
irony — we might perhaps say of buffoonery — pervaded
his whole nature. Even when regent he gave orders,
while conducting the public sale of the property of the
proscribed, that a donation from the spoil should be
given to the author of a wretched panegyric which was
handed to him, on condition that the writer should promise
never to sing his praises again. When he justified before
the burgesses the execution of Ofella, he did so by re-
lating to the people the fable of the countryman and the
lice. He delighted to choose his companions among
actors, and was fond of sitting at wine not only with Quintus
Roscius — the Roman Talma — but also with far inferior
players ; indeed he was himself not a bad singer, and even
wrote farces for performance within his own circle. Yet
amidst these jovial Bacchanalia he lost neither bodily nor
mental vigour ; in the rural leisure of his last years he was
still zealously devoted to the chase, and the circumstance
that he brought the writings of Aristotle from conquered
Athens to Rome attests withal his interest in more serious
reading. The specific type of Roman character rather
repelled him. Sulla had nothing of the blunt hauteur
which the grandees of Rome were fond of displaying in
presence of the Greeks, or of the pomposity of narrow-
minded great men ; on the contrary he freely indulged his
humour, appeared, to the scandal doubtless of many of his
countrymen, in Greek towns in the Greek dress, or induced
his aristocratic companions to drive their chariots personally
at the games. He retained still less of those half-patriotic,
half-selfish hopes, which in countries of free constitution
allure every youth of talent into the political arena, and

CHAP X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 141

which he too like all others probably at one time felt. In
such a life as his was, oscillating between passionate intoxi-
cation and more than sober awaking, illusions are speedily
dissipated. Wishing and striving probably appeared to him
folly in a world which withal was absolutely governed by
chance, and in which, if men were to strive after anything
at all, this chance could be the only aim of their efforts.
He followed the general tendency of the age in addicting
himself at once to unbelief and to superstition. His
whimsical credulity was not the plebeian superstition of
Marius, who got a priest to prophesy to him for money and
determined his actions accordingly ; still less was it the
sullen belief of the fanatic in destiny ; it was that faith in
the absurd, which necessarily makes its appearance in every
man who has out and out ceased to believe in a connected
order of things — the superstition of the fortunate player,
who deems himself privileged by fate to throw on each and
every occasion the right number. In practical questions
Sulla understood very well how to satisfy ironically the
demands of religion. When he emptied the treasuries of
the Greek temples, he declared that the man could never
fail whose chest was replenished by the gods themselves.
When the Delphic priests reported to him that they were
afraid to send the treasures which he asked, because the
harp of the god emitted a clear sound when they touched
it, he returned the reply that they might now send them
all the more readily, as the god evidently approved his
design. Nevertheless he fondly flattered himself with the
idea that he was the chosen favourite of the gods, and in
an altogether special manner of that goddess, to whom
down to his latest years he assigned the pre-eminence,
Aphrodite. In his conversations as well as in his autobio-
graphy he often plumed himself on the intercourse which
the immortals held with him in dreams and omens. He
had more right than most mon to be proud of his achieve-

career.

142 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

ments ; he was not so, but he was proud of his uniquely
faithful fortune. He was wont to say that every improvised
enterprise turned out better with him than those which
were systematically planned ; and one of his strangest
whims — that of regularly stating the number of those who
had fallen on his side in battle as ;/// — was nothing but the
childishness of a child of fortune. It was but the utter-
ance of his natural disposition, when, having reached the
culminating point of his career and seeing all his contem-
poraries at a dizzy depth beneath him, he assumed the
designation of the Fortunate — Sulla Felix — as a formal
surname, and bestowed corresponding appellations on his
children.

Sulla's Nothing lay farther from Sulla than systematic ambition.

?™_'f^^ He had too much sense to regard, like the average aristo-
crats of his time, the inscription of his name in the roll
of the consuls as the aim of his life ; he was too indifferent
and too little of an ideologue to be disposed voluntarily to
engage in the reform of the rotten structure of the state.
He remained — where birth and culture placed him — in the
circle of genteel society, and passed through the usual
routine of offices ; he had no occasion to exert himself, and
left such exertion to the political working bees, of whom
107. there was in truth no lack. Thus in 647, on the allotment
of the quaestorial places, accident brought him to Africa to
the headquarters of Gains Marius. The untried man-of-
fashion from the capital was not very well received by the
rough boorish general and his experienced staff. Provoked
by this reception Sulla, fearless and skilful as he was,
rapidly made himself master of the profession of arms, and
in his daring expedition to Mauretania first displayed that
pecuHar combination of audacity and cunning with refer-
ence to which his contemporaries said of him that he was
half lion half fox, and that the fox in him was more danger-
ous than the lion. To the young, highborn, brilliant officer,

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 143

who was confessedly the real means of ending,' the vexatious
Numidian war, the most splendid career now lay open ;
he took part also in the Cimbrian war, and manifested
his singular talent for organization in the management of
the difficult task of providing supplies ; yet even now the
pleasures of life in the capital had far more attraction
for him than war or even politics. During his praetor-
ship, which office he held in 661 after having failed in 98.
a previous candidature, it once more chanced that in
his province, the least important of all, the first victory
over king Mithradates and the first treaty with the mighty
Arsacids, as well as their first humiliation, occurred. The
Civil war followed. It was Sulla mainly, who decided
the first act of it — the Italian insurrection — in favour of
Rome, and thus won for himself the consulship by his
sword ; it was he, moreover, who when consul suppressed
with energetic rapidity the Sulpician revolt. Fortune
seemed to make it her business to eclipse the old hero
Marius by means of this younger officer. The oipture
of Jugurtha, the vanquishing of Mithradates, both of
which Marius had striven for in vain, were accomplished
in subordinate positions by Sulla : in the Social war, in
which Marius lost his renown as a general and was
deposed, Sulla established his military repute and rose
to the consulship ; the revolution of 666, which was at 88.
the same time and above all a personal conflict between
the two generals, ended with the outlawry and flight of
Marius. Almost without desiring it, Sulla had become
the most famous general of his time and the shield of the
oligarchy. New and more formidable crises ensued — the
Mithradatic war, the Cinnan revolution ; the star of Sulla
continued always in the ascendant. Like the captain who
seeks not to quench the flames of his burning ship but
continues to fire on the enemy, Sulla, while the revolution
was raging in Italy, persevered unshaken in Asia till the

144 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

public foe was subdued. So soon as he had done with
that foe, he crushed anarchy and saved the capital from
the firebrands of the desperate Samnites and revolutionists.
The moment of his return home was for Sulla an over-
powering one in joy and in pain : he himself relates in his
memoirs that during his first night in Rome he had not
been able to close an eye, and we may well believe it.
But still his task was not at an end ; his star was destined
to rise still higher. Absolute autocrat as was ever any
king, and yet constantly abiding on the ground of formal
right, he bridled the ultra- reactionary party, annihilated
the Gracchan constitution which had for forty years limited
the oligarchy, and compelled first the powers of the capital-
ists and of the urban proletariate which had entered into
rivalry with the oligarchy, and ultimately the arrogance
of the sword which had grown up in the bosom of his
own staff, to yield once more to the law which he strength-
ened afresh. He established the oligarchy on a more
independent footing than ever, placed the magisterial
power as a ministering instrument in its hands, com-
mitted to it the legislation, the courts, the supreme
military and financial power, and furnished it with a
sort of bodyguard in the liberated slaves and with a
sort of army in the settled military colonists. Lastly,
when the work was finished, the creator gave way to his
own creation ; the absolute autocrat became of his own
accord once more a simple senator. In all this long
military and political career Sulla never lost a battle,
was never compelled to retrace a single step, and, led
astray neither by friends nor by foes, brought his work
to the goal which he had himself proposed. He had
reason, indeed, to thank his star. The capricious goddess
of fortune seemed in his case for once to have exchanged
caprice for steadfastness, and to have taken a pleasure
in loading her favourite with successes and honours —

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 145

whether he desired them or not. But history must be
more just towards him than he was towards himself, and
must place him in a higher rank than that of the mere
favourites of fortune. —

We do not mean that the Sullan constitution was a work Sulla and
of political genius, such as those of Gracchus and Caesar. *''* ^°'^
There does not occur in it — as is, indeed, implied in its
very nature as a restoration — a single new idea in states-
manship. All its most essential features — admission to
the senate by the holding of the quaestorship, the abolition
of the censorial right to eject a senator from the senate,
the initiative of the senate in legislation, the conversion
of the tribunician office into an instrument of the senate
for fettering the impcrium, the prolonging of the duration
of the supreme oflice to two years, the transference of
the command from the popularly- elected magistrate to
the senatorial proconsul or propraetor, and even the new
criminal and municipal arrangements — were not created
by Sulla, but were institutions which had previously
grown out of the oligarchic government, and which he
merely regulated and fixed. And even as to the horrors
attaching to his restoration, the proscriptions and con-
fiscations— arc they, compared with the doings of Nasica,
Popillius, Opimius, Caepio and so on, anything else than
the legal embodiment of the customary oligarchic mode
of getting rid of opponents ? On the Roman oligarchy
of this period no judgment can be passed save one of
inexorable and remorseless condemnation ; and, like every-
thing else connected with it, the Sullan constitution is
completely involved in that condemnation. To accord
praise which the genius of a bad man bribes us into
bestowing is to sin against the sacred character of his-
tory ; but we may be allowed to bear in mind that Sulla
was far less answerable for the Sullan restoration than
the body of the Roman aristocracy, which had ruled as
vol.. IV no

146 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

a clique for centuries and had every year become more
enervated and embittered by age, and that all that was
hollow and all that was nefarious therein is ultimately
traceable to that aristocracy. Sulla reorganized the state
— not, however, as the master of the house who puts his
shattered estate and household in order according to his
own discretion, but as the temporary business-manager
who faithfully complies with his instructions ; it is super-
ficial and false in such a case to devolve the final and
essential responsibility from the master upon the manager.
We estimate the importance of Sulla much too highly, or
rather we dispose of those terrible proscriptions, ejections,
and restorations — for which there never could be and
never was any reparation — on far too easy terms, when
we regard them as the work of a bloodthirsty tyrant
whom accident had placed at the head of the state.
These and the terrorism of the restoration were the
deeds of the aristocracy, and Sulla was nothing more in
the matter than, to use the poet's expression, the execu-
tioner's axe following the conscious thought as its uncon-
scious instrument. Sulla carried out that part with rare,
in fact superhuman, perfection ; but within the limits
which it laid down for him, his working was not only
grand but even useful. Never has any aristocracy deeply
decayed and decaying still farther from day to day, such
as was the Roman aristocracy of that time, found a
guardian so willing and able as Sulla to wield for it the
sword of the general and the pen of the legislator with-
out any regard to the gain of power for himself. There
is no doubt a difference between the case of an officer who
refuses the sceptre from public spirit and that of one who
throws it away from a cloyed appetite ; but, so far as concerns
the total absence of political selfishness — although, it is true,
in this one respect only — Sulla deserves to be named side by
side with Washington.

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 14?

But the whole country — and not the aristocracy merely Value
— was more indebted to him than posterity was willing Julian ron-
to confess. Sulla definitely terminated the Italian revolu- siituiion.
tion, in so far as it was based on the disabilities of in-
dividual less privileged districts as compared with others
of better rights, and, by compelling himself and his party
to recognize the equality of the rights of all Italians in
presence of the law, he became the real and final author
of the full political unity of Italy — a gain which was not
too dearly purchased by ever so many troubles and
streams of blood. Sulla however did more. For more
than half a century the power of Rome had been declining,
and anarchy had been her permanent condition : for the
government of the senate with the Gracchan constitution
was anarchy, and the government of Cinna and Carbo
was a yet far worse illustration of the absence of a
master-hand (the sad image of which is most clearly
reflected in that equally confused and unnatural league
with the Samnites), the most uncertain, most intolerable,
and most mischievous of all conceivable political condi-
tions— in fact the beginning of the end. We do not go
too far when we assert that the long-undermined Roman
commonwealth must have necessarily fallen to pieces,
had not Sulla by his intervention in Asia and Italy saved
its existence. It is true that the constitution of Sulla
had as little endurance as that of Cromwell, and it was
not difficult to see that his structure was no solid one ;
but it is arrant thoughtlessness to overlook the fact that
without Sulla most probably the very site of the building
would have been swei>t away by the waves ; and even
the blame of its want of stability does not fall primarily
on Sulla. The statesman builds only so much as in the
sphere assigned to him he can build. What a man of
conser\\ntive views could do to save the old constitution,
Sulla did ; and he himself had a foreboding that, while

148

THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION

BOOK IV

Immoral
and

superficial
nature of
the Sullan
restoration,

he might doubtless erect a fortress, he would be unable
to create a garrison, and that the utter worthlessness of
the oligarchs would render any attempt to save the oligarchy
vain. His constitution resembled a temporary dike thrown
into the raging breakers; it was no reproach to the builder,
if some ten years afterwards the waves swallowed up a
structure at variance with nature and not defended even
by those whom it sheltered. The statesman has no need
to be referred to highly commendable isolated reforms,
such as those of the Asiatic revenue-system and of criminal
justice, that he may not summarily dismiss Sulla's ephe-
meral restoration : he will admire it as a reorganization
of the Roman commonwealth judiciously planned and on
the whole consistently carried out under infinite difficulties,
and he will place the deliverer of Rome and the accom-
plisher of Italian unity below, but yet by the side of,
Cromwell.

It is not, however, the statesman alone who has a voice
in judging the dead ; and with justice outraged human
feeling will never reconcile itself to what Sulla did or suffered
others to do. Sulla not only established his despotic power
by unscrupulous violence, but in doing so called things by
their right name with a certain cynical frankness, through
which he has irreparably offended the great mass of the
weakhearted who are more revolted at the name than at
the thing, but through which, from the cool and dispas-
sionate character of his crimes, he certainly appears to the
moral judgment more revolting than the criminal acting
from passion. Outlawries, rewards to executioners, con-
fiscations of goods, summary procedure with insubordinate
officers had occurred a hundred times, and the obtuse
political morality of ancient civilization had for such things
only lukewarm censure ; but it was unexampled that the
names of the outlaws should be publicly posted up and
their heads publicly exposed, that a set sum should be fixed

CHAP. X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 149

for the bandits who slew them and that it should be duly
entered in the public account-books, that the confiscated
property should be brought to the hammer like the spoil of an
enemy in the public market, that the general should order
a refractory officer to be at once cut down and acknowledge
the deed before all the people. This public mockery of
humanity was also a political error ; it contributed not a
little to envenom later revolutionar)' crises beforehand, and
on that account even now a dark shadow deservedly rests
on the memory of the author of the proscriptions.

Sulla may moreover be justly blamed that, while in all
important matters he acted with remorseless vigour, in
subordinate and more especially in personal questions he
very frequently yielded to his sanguine temperament and
dealt according to his likings or dislikings. Wherever he
really felt hatred, as for instance against the Marians, he
allowed it to take its course without restraint even against
the innocent, and boasted of himself that no one had better
requited friends and foes.^ He did not disdain on occasion
of his plenitude of power to accumulate a colossal fortune.
The first absolute monarch of the Roman state, he verified
the maxim of absolutism — that the laws do not bind the
prince — forthwith in the case of thdse laws which he him-
self issued as to adultery and extravagance. But his lenity
towards his own party and his own circle was more per-
nicious for the state than his indulgence towards himself.
The laxity of his military discipline, although it was partly
enjoined by his political exigencies, may be reckoned as
coming under this category ; but far more pernicious was
his indulgence towards his political adherents. The extent
of his occasional forbearance is hardly credible : for instance
Lucius Murena was not only released from punishment for

' Euripides, Medea, 807 : —
Mt;3«/i y.( <pai\T)v KaaQivr) fOfu^iru
iiij5' TjiTi'Xoiaf, dWa daripov Tft6wov,

150 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

defeats which he sustained through arrant perversity and
insubordination (p. 95), but was even allowed a triumph ;
Gnaeus Pompeius, who had behaved still worse, was still
more extravagantly honoured by Sulla (pp. 94, 137). The
extensive range and the worst enormities of the proscriptions
and confiscations probably arose not so much from Sulla's
own wish as from this spirit of indifference, which in his
position indeed was hardly more pardonable. That Sulla
with his intrinsically energetic and yet withal indifferent
temperament should conduct himself very variously, some-
times with incredible indulgence, sometimes with inexorable
severity, may readily be conceived. The saying repeated
a thousand times, that he was before his regency a good-
natured, mild man, but when regent a bloodthirsty tyrant,
carries in it its own refutation ; if he as regent displayed
the reverse of his earlier gentleness, it must rather be
said that he punished with the same careless nonchalance
with which he pardoned. This half- ironical frivolity
pervades his whole political action. It is always as if
the victor, just as it pleased him to call his merit in gain-
ing victory good fortune, esteemed the victory itself of
no value ; as if he had a partial presentiment of the vanity
and perishableness of his own work ; as if after the manner
ot a steward he preferred making repairs to pulling down
and rebuilding, and allowed himself in the end to be content
with a sorry plastering to conceal the flaws.
Sulla after But, such as he was, this Don Juan of politics was a

his retire- ^^^ of One mould. His whole life attests the internal
equilibrium of his nature ; in the most diverse situations
Sulla remained unchangeably the same. It was the same
temper, which after the brilliant successes in Africa made
him seek once more the idleness of the capital, and after
the full possession of absolute power made him find rest
and refreshment in his Cuman villa. In his mouth the
saying, that public affairs were a burden which he threw

ment.

Sulla.

CHAi". X THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION 151

oft' SO soon as he might and could, was no mere phrase.
After his resignation he remained entirely like himself,
without peevishness and without affectation, glad to be rid
of public affiiirs and yet interfering now and then when
opportunity offered. Hunting and fishing and the com-
position of his memoirs occupied his leisure hours ; by way
of interlude he arranged, at the request of the discordant
citizens, the internal affairs of the neighbouring colony of
Puteoli as confidently and speedily as he had formerly
arranged those of the capital. His last action on his sick-
bed had reference to the collection of a contribution for
the rebuilding of the Capitoline temple, of which he was
not allowed to witness the completion.

Little more than a year after his retirement, in the six- Death of
^ieth year of his life, while yet vigorous in body and mind,
he was overtaken by death ; after a brief confinement to a
sick-bed — he was writing at his autobiography two days
even before his death — the rupture of a blood-vesseP carried
him off (676). His faithful fortune did not desert him 78.
even in death. He could have no wish to be drawn once
more into the disagreeable vortex of party struggles, and
to be obliged to lead his old warriors once more against a
new revolution ; yet such was the state of matters at his
death in Spain and in Italy, that he could hardly have
been spared this task had his life been prolonged. Even
now when it was suggested that he should have a public
funeral in the capital, numerous voices there, which had
been silent in his lifetime, were raised against the last honour
which it was proposed to show to the tyrant. But his
memory was still too fresh and the dread of his old soldiers
too vivid : it was resolved that the body should be conveyed
to the capital and that the obsequies should be celebrated
there.

' Not pthiri.nsis, as another account states ; for tlie simple reason that
such a disease is entirely imaginary.

152 THE SULLAN CONSTITUTION book iv

His Italy never witnessed a grander funeral solemnity. In

""^"^ • every place through which the deceased was borne in regal
attire, with his well-known standards and fasces before him,
the inhabitants and above all his old soldiers joined the
mourning train : it seemed as if the whole army would once
more meet round the hero in death, who had in life led it
so often and never except to victory. So the endless
funeral procession reached the capital, where the courts
kept holiday and all business was suspended, and two
thousand golden chaplets awaited the dead — the last
honorary gifts of the faithful legions, of the cities, and of
his more intimate friends. Sulla, faithful to the usage of
the Cornelian house, had ordered that his body should be
buried without being burnt ; but others were more mindful
than he was of what past days had done and future days
might do : by command of the senate the corpse of the
man who had disturbed the bones of Marius from their
rest in the grave was committed to the flames. Headed
by all the magistrates and the whole senate, by the priests
and priestesses in their official robes and the band of noble
youths in equestrian armour, the procession arrived at the
great market-place ; at this spot, filled by his achievements
and almost by the sound as yet of his dreaded words, the
funeral oration was delivered over the deceased ; and
thence the bier was borne on the shoulders of senators to
the Campus Martins, where the funeral pile was erected.
While the flames were blazing, the equites and the soldiers
held their race of honour round the corpse ; the ashes of the
regent were deposited in the Campus Martius beside the
tombs of the old kings, and the Roman women mourned
him for a year.

CJIAP. XI THE COMMONWEALTH i5J

CHAPTER XI

THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS ECONOMY

We have traversed a period of ninety years — forty years of External

. , -^ ^ , 1 • T ^"'l inter-

profound peace, fifty of an almost constant revolution. It nai bank-
is the most inglorious epoch known in Roman history. It rupicy of

, , , . , , the Roman

is true that the Alps were crossed both in an easterly and state,
westerly direction(iii. 4i6,42 8),and the Roman arms reached
in the Spanish peninsula as far as the Atlantic Ocean (iii.
232) and in the Macedono-Grecian peninsula as far as the
Danube (iii. 429) ; but the laurels thus gained were as cheap
as they were barren. The circle of the " extraneous peoples
under the will, sway, dominion, or friendship of the Roman
burgesses,"^ was not materially extended j men were content
to realize the gains of a better age and to bring the com-
munities, annexed to Rome in laxer forms of dependence,
more and more into full subjection. Behind the brilliant
screen of provincial reunions was concealed a very sensible
decline of Roman power. While the whole ancient civiliza-
tion was daily more and more distinctly embraced in the
Roman state, and embodied there in forms of more general
validity, the nations excluded from it began simultaneously
beyond the Alps and beyond the Euphrates to pass from
defence to aggression. On the battle-fields of Aquae

' ExUrae naliones in arbitratu dicione foleslate amicitiavt populi
Romani {lex rtpet. v. i), the oflici.-il designation of the non-Italian
subjects and clients as contrasted with the ItaUan " aUies and kinsmen"
[socii Hominisve Latini).

154 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

Sextiae and Vercellae, of Chaeronea and Orchomenus, were
heard the first peals of that thunderstorm, which the
Germanic tribes and the Asiatic hordes were destined to
bring upon the Italo-Grecian world, and the last dull roll-
ing of which has reached almost to our own times. But in
internal development also this epoch bears the same
character. The old organization collapses irretrievably.
The Roman commonwealth was planned as an urban com-
munity, which through its free burgess- body gave to itself
rulers and laws ; which was governed by these well-advised
rulers within these legal limits with kingly freedom ; and
around which the Italian confederacy, as an aggregate of
free urban communities essentially homogeneous and cog-
nate with the Roman, and the body of extra-Italian aUies, as
an aggregate of Greek free cities and barbaric peoples and
principalities — both more superintended, than domineered
over, by the community of Rome — formed a double circle. It
was the final result of the revolution — and both parties, the
nominally conservative as well as the democratic party, had
co-operated towards it and concurred in it — that of this
venerable structure, which at the beginning of the present
epoch, though full of chinks and tottering, still stood erect,
not one stone was at its close left upon another. The
holder of sovereign power was now either a single man,
or a close oligarchy — now of rank, now of riches. The
burgesses had lost all legitimate share in the government.
The magistrates were instruments without independence in
the hands of the holder of power for the time being. The
urban community of Rome had broken down by its un-
natural enlargement. The Italian confederacy had been
merged in the urban community. The body of extra-
Italian allies was in full course of being converted into a
body of subjects. The whole organic classification of the
Roman commonwealth had gone to wreck, and nothing was
left but a crude mass of more or less disparate elements.

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 155

The state of matters threatened to end in utter anarchy The
and in the inward and outward dissolution of the state. The l'"^**^!^*^
poHtical movement tended thoroughly towards the goal of
despotism ; the only point still in dispute was whether the
close circle of the families of rank, or the senate of capital-
ists, or a monarch was to be the despot. The political
movement followed thoroughly the paths that led to des-
potisnx; the fundamental principle of a free commonwealth
— that the contending powers should reciprocally confine
themselves to indirect coercion — had become effete in the
eyes of all parties alike, and on both sides the fight for
power began to be carried on first by the bludgeon, and soon
by the sword. The revolution, at an end in so far as the
old constitution was recognized by both sides as finally set
aside and the aim and method of the new political develoi>
ment were clearly settled, had yet up to this time dis-
covered nothing but provisional solutions for this problem
of the reorganization of the state ; neither the Gracchan
nor the SuUan constitution of the community bore the
stamp of finality. But the bitterest feature of this bitter
time was that even hope and effort failed the clear-seeing
patriot. The sun of freedom with all its endless store of
blessings was constantly drawing nearer to its setting, and
the twilight was settling over the very world that was still
so brilliant. It was no accidental catastrophe which patriot-
ism and genius might have warded off; it was ancient
social evils — at the bottom of all, the ruin of the middle
class by the slave proletariate — that brought destruction on
the Roman commonwealth. The most sagacious states-
man was in the plight of the physician to whom it is equally
painful to prolong or to abridge the agony of his patient
Beyond doubt it was the better for the interests of Rome,
the more quickly and thoroughly a despot set aside all
remnants of the ancient free constitution, and invented new-
forms and expressions for the moderate measure of human

156

THE COMMONWEALTH

BOOK IV

Finances
of the
state.

Italian
revenues.

prosperity for which in absolutism there is room : the
intrinsic advantage, which belonged to monarchy under the
given circumstances as compared with any oligarchy, lay
mainly in the very circumstance that such a despotism,
energetic in pulling down and energetic in building up,
could never be exercised by a collegiate board. But such
calm considerations do not mould history ; it is not reason,
it is passion alone, that builds for the future. The Romans
had just to wait and to see how long their commonwealth
would continue unable to live and unable to die, and
whether it would ultimately find its master and, so far as
might be possible, its regenerator, in a man of mighty
gifts, or would collapse in misery and weakness.

It remains that we should notice the economic and
social relations of the period before us, so far as we have
not already done so.

The finances of the state were from the commencement
of this epoch substantially dependent on the revenues from
the provinces. In Italy the land-tax, which had always
occurred there merely as an extraordinary impost by the
side of the ordinary domanial and other revenues, had not
been levied since the battle of Pydna, so that absolute
freedom from land-tax began to be regarded as a constitu-
tional privilege of the Roman landowner. The royalties of
the state, such as the salt monopoly (iii. 20) and the right
of coinage, were not now at least, if ever at all, treated as
sources of income. The new tax on inheritance (iii. 89)
was allowed to fall into abeyance or was perhaps directly
abolished. Accordingly the Roman exchequer drew from
Italy including Cisalpine Gaul nothing but the produce of
the domains, particularly of the Campanian territory and of
the gold mines in the land of the Celts, and the revenue
from manumissions and from goods imported by sea into
the Roman civic territory not for the personal consumption
of the importer. Both of these may be regarded essen-

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 157

tially as taxes on luxury, and they certainly must have been
considerably augmented by the extensicjn of the field of
Roman citizenship and at the same time of Roman customs-
dues to all Italy, probably including Cisalpine Claul.

In the provinces the Roman state claimed directly as its Proxincial
private property, on the one hand, in the states annulled by
martial law the whole domain, on the other hand in those
states, where the Roman government came in room of the
former rulers, the landed property possessed by the latter.
By virtue of this right the territories of Leontini, Carthage,
and Corinth, the domanial property of the kings of Mace-
donia, Pcrgamus, and Cyrene, the mines in Spain and
Macedonia were regarded as Roman domains ; and, in like
manner with the territory of Capua, were leased by the
Roman censors to private contractors in return for the
delivery of a proportion of the produce or a fixed sum
of money. We have already explained that Gaius Gracchus
went still farther, claimed the whole land of the provinces
as domain, and in the case of the province of Asia practi-
cally carried out this principle ; inasmuch as he legally
justified the decumae, scripiura, and vectii^alia levied there on
the ground of the Roman state's right of property in the land,
pasture, and coasts of the province, whether these had pre-
viously belonged to the king or private persons (iii. 35 2, 359).

There do not appear to have been at this period any
royalties from which the state derived profit, as respected
the provinces ; the prohibition of the culture of the vine
and olive in Transalpine Gaul did not benefit the state-
chest as such. On the other hand direct and indirect
taxes were levied to a great extent. The client states
recognized as fully sovereign — such as the kingdoms of
Numidia and Cappadocia, the allied states {civitates foide-
ralae) of Rhodes, Messana, Tauromenium, Massilia, Gadcs
— were legally exempt from taxation, and merely bound by
their treaties to support the Roman republic in times of

158 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

war by regularly furnishing a fixed number of ships or
men at their own expense, and, as a matter of course
in case of need, by rendering extraordinary aid of any kind.
Taxes. The rest of the provincial territory on the other hand,

even including the free cities, was throughout liable to
taxation ; the only exceptions were the cities invested with
the Roman franchise, such as Narbo, and the communities
on which immunity from taxation was specially conferred
{civitates inwitaics), such as Centuripa in Sicily. The
direct taxes consisted partly — as in Sicily and Sardinia — of
a title to the tenth ^ of the sheaves and other field produce
as of grapes and olives, or, if the land lay in pasture, to a
corresponding scriptura ; partly — as in Macedonia, Achaia,
Cyrene, the greater part of Africa, the two Spains, and by
Sulla's arrangements also in Asia — of a fixed sum of money
to be paid annually by each community to Rome {stipen-
diuni, tributuni). This amounted, e.g. for all Macedonia,
to 600,000 denarii (;^24,ooo), for the small island of
Gyaros near Andres to 150 denarii (^6: loi-.), and was
apparently on the whole low and less than the tax paid
before the Roman rule. Those ground-tenths and pasture-
moneys the state farmed out to private contractors on
condition of their paying fixed quantities of grain or fixed
sums of money ; with respect to the latter money-payments
the state drew upon the respective communities, and left it
to these to assess the amount, according to the general
principles laid down by the Roman government, on the
persons liable, and to collect it from them.^

1 This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed property, is
to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's tenth, which it imposed
on the domain-land. The former was let in Sicily, and was fixed once
for all ; the latter — especially that of the territory of Leontini — was let by
the censors in Rome, and the proportion of produce payable and other
conditions were regulated at their discretion (Cic. I'crr. iii. 6, 13; v. 21,
53; dc leg. agr. i. 2, 4; ii. 18, 48). Comp. my Staatsrccht, iii. 730.

2 The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows. The Roman
government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of the tax.
Thus in Asia, for instance, according to the arrangement of vSulla and

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 159

The indirect taxes consisted — apart from the subordinate Customs
moneys levied from roads, bridges, and canals — mainly of
customs-duties. The customs-duties of anticjuity were, if
not exclusively, at any rate principally port- dues, less
frequently frontier- dues, on imports and exports destined
for sale, and were levied by each community in its ports
and its territory at discretion. The Romans recognized
this principle generally, in so far as their original customs-
domain did not extend farther than the range of the Roman
franchise and the limit of the customs was by no means
coincident with the limits of the empire, so that a general
imperial tariff was unknown : it was only by means of
state-treaty that a total exemption from customs-dues in the
client communities was secured for the Roman state, and
in various cases at least favourable terms for the Roman
burgess. But in those districts, which had not been
admitted to alliance with Rome but were in the condition

Caesar the tenth slie.of was levied (Appian. B.C. v. 4); thus the Jews by
Caesar's edict contributed every second year a fourth of the seed (Joseph,
iv. 10, 6 ; comp. ii. 5); thus in Cilicia and Syria subsequently there was
paid 5 per cent from estate (Appian. Syr. 50). and in .Africa also an
apparently similar t.a.x was paid — in which case, we may add, the estate
seems to have been valued according to certain presumptive indications,
e.g. the size of the land occupied, the number of doorways, the number of
head of children and slaves (exactio capitum atque ostiorum, Cicero, Ad
Film. iii. 8, 5, with reference to Cilicia; <pbpo% iirX r^ 75 koX rai^
aJjuadiv, Appian. Fun. 135, with reference to Africa). In accordance
with this regulation the magistrates of each community under the suf)cr-
intendence of the Roman governor (Cic. ad Q. Fr. i. i, 8; SC. de Asclep.
32, 23) settled who were liable to the tax, and what was to be paid by
each tributary {imperata iiriKf<pd\ia, Cic. ad Alt. v. 16); if any one did
not pay this in proper time, his tax-debt w.is sold just as in Rome, i.e. it
was handed over to a contractor with an adjudication to collect it {i-enditia
tributorum, Cic. Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5 ; lij'ij omnium venditas, Cic. ad Att.
V. 16). The produce of these ta.xes flowed into the coffers of the leading
communities — the Jews, for instance, had to send their com to Sidon —
and from these coffers the fixed amount in money was then conveyed to
Rome. These taxes also were consequently raised indirectly, and the
intermediate agent either retained, according to circumstances, a part of
the produce of the taxes for himself, or advanced it from his own
substance ; the distinction l)etween this mode of raising and the other by
means of Uie publicani lay merely in the circumstance, that in the former
the public authorities of the contriljutors, in the latter Roman private
contractors, constituted the intermediate agency.

i6o

THE COMMONWEALTH

POOK IV

Costs of
collection.

Requisi-
tions.

of subjects proper and had not acquired immunity, the
customs fell as a matter of course to the proper sovereign,
that is, to the Roman community ; and in consequence of
this several larger regions within the empire were con-
stituted as separate Roman customs- districts, in which the
several communities allied or privileged with immunity
were marked off as exempt from Roman customs. Thus
Sicily even from the Carthaginian period formed a closed
customs-district, on the frontier of which a tax of 5 per
cent on the value was levied from all imports or exports ;
thus on the frontiers of Asia there was levied in con-
sequence of the Sempronian law (iii. 352) a similar tax of
2| per cent; in like manner the province of Narbo,
exclusively the domain of the Roman colony, was organized
as a Roman customs -district. This arrangement, besides
its fiscal objects, may have been partly due to the
commendable purpose of checking the confusion inevitably
arising out of a variety of communal tolls by a uniform
regulation of frontier- dues. The levying of the customs,
like that of the tenths, was without exception leased to
middlemen.

The ordinary burdens of Roman taxpayers were limited
to these imposts ; but we may not overlook the fact, that
the expenses of collection were very considerable, and the
contributors paid an amount disproportionately great as
compared with what the Roman government received.
For, while the system of collecting taxes by middlemen,
and especially by general lessees, is in itself the most
expensive of all, in Rome effective competition was
rendered extremely difficult in consequence of the slight
extent to which the lettings were subdivided and the
immense association of capital.

To these ordinary burdens, however, fell to be added in
the first place the requisitions which were made. The
costs of military administration were in law defrayed by the

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY i6i

Roman community. It provided the commandants of
every province with the means of transport and all other
requisites ; it paid and provisioned the Roman soldiers in
the province. The provincial communities had to furnish
merely shelter, wood, hay, and similar articles free of cost
to the magistrates and soldiers ; in fact the free towns were
even ordinarily exempted from the winter quartering of the
troops — permanent camj)s were not yet known. If the
governor therefore needed grain, ships, slaves to man them,
linen, leather, money, or aught else, he was no doubt
absolutely at liberty in time of war — nor was it far other-
wise in time of peace — to demand such supplies according
to his discretion and exigencies from the subject-com-
munities or the sovereign protected states ; but these
supplies were, like the Roman land-tax, treated legally as
purchases or advances, and the value was immediately or
afterwards made good by the Roman exchequer. Never-
theless these requisitions became, if not in the theory of
state-law, at any rate practically, one of the most oppressive
burdens of the provincials ; and the more so, that the
amount of compensation was ordinarily settled by the
government or even by the governor after a one-sided
fashion. We meet indeed with several legislative restric-
tions on this dangerous right of requibition of the Roman
superior magistrates : for instance, the rule already men-
tioned, that in Spain there should not be taken from the
country people by requisitions for grain more than the
twentieth sheaf, and that the price even of this should be
equitably ascertained (ii. 393); the fixing of a maximum
quantity of grain to be demanded by the governor for the
wants of himself and his retinue ; the previous adjustment
of a definite and high rate of compensation for the grain
which was frequently demanded, at least from Sicily, for
the wants of the capital. But, while by fixing such rules
the pressure of those requisitions on the economy of the

VOL. IV III

i62 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

communities and of individuals in the province was doubt-
less mitigated here and there, it was by no means removed.
In extraordinary crises this pressure unavoidably increased
and often went beyond all bounds, for then in fact the
requisitions not unfrequently assumed the form of a
punishment imposed or that of voluntary contributions
enforced, and compensation was thus wholly withheld.
84-83. Thus Sulla in 670-671 compelled the provincials of Asia
Minor, who certainly had very gravely offended against
Rome, to furnish to every common soldier quartered among
them forty-fold pay (per day 16 denarii = i\s.), to every
centurion seventy-five-fold pay, in addition to clothing and
meals along with the right to invite guests at pleasure ; thus
the same Sulla soon afterwards imposed a general contribu-
tion on the client and subject communities (p. 126), in
which case nothing, of course, was said of repayment.
Local Further the local public burdens are not to be left out

burdens. ^^ view. They must have been, comparatively, very con-
siderable ;^ for the costs of administration, the keeping of
the public buildings in repair, and generally all civil ex-
penses were borne by the local budget, and the Roman
government simply undertook to defray the military ex-
penses from their coffers. But even of this military
budget considerable items were devolved on the com-
munities— such as the expense of making and maintaining
the non- Italian military roads, the costs of the fleets in
the non-Italian seas, nay even in great part the outlays for
the army, inasmuch as the forces of the client-states as well
as those of the subjects were regularly liable to serve at
the expense of their communities within their province,
and began to be employed with increasing frequency even

1 For example, in Judaea the town of Joppa paid 26,075 ^nodii of
corn, the other Jews the tenth sheaf, to the native princes ; to which fell
to be added the temple-tribute and the Sidonian payment destined for
the Romans. In Sicily too, in addition to the Roman tenth, a very con-
siderable local taxation was raised from property.

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 163

beyond it — Thracians in Africa, Africans in Italy, and so
on — at the discretion of the Romans (iii. 458). If the
provinces only and not Italy paid direct taxes to the
government, this was equitable in a financial, if not in a
political, aspect so long as Italy alone bore the burdens
and expense of the military system ; but from the time
that this system was abandoned, the provincials were, in
a financial point of view, decidedly overburdened.

Lastly we must not forget the great chapter of injustice Extortions,
by which in manifold ways the Roman magistrates and
farmers of the revenue augmented the burden of taxation
on the provinces. Although every present which the
governor took might be treated legally as an exaction, and
even his right of purchase might be restricted by law, yet
the exercise of his public functions offered to him, if he
was disposed to do wrong, pretexts more than enough for
doing so. The quartering of the troops ; the free lodging
of the magistrates and of the host of adjutants of senatorial
or equestrian rank, of clerks, lictors, heralds, physicians,
and priests ; the right which the messengers of the state
had to be forwarded free of cost ; the approval of, and
providing transport for, the contributions payable in kind;
above all the forced sales and the requisitions — gave all
magistrates opportunity to bring home princely fortunes
from the provinces. And the plundering became daily
more general, the more that the control of the government
appeared to be worthless and that of the capitalist -courts
to be in reality dangerous to the upright magistrate alone.
The institution of a standing commission regarding the
exactions of magistrates in the provinces, occasioned by the
frequency of complaints as to such cases, in 605 (iii. 300), 149.
and the laws as to extortion following each other so
rapidly and constantly augmenting its penalties, show the
daily increasing height of the evil, as the Kilometer shows
the rise of the flood.

1 64

THE COMMONWEALTH

BOOK IV

Aggregate

financial

result.

63.

Under all these circumstances even a taxation moderate
in theory might become extremely oppressive in its actual
operation ; and that it was so is beyond doubt, although
the financial oppression, which the Italian merchants and
bankers exercised over the provinces, was probably felt as
a far heavier burden than the taxation with all the abuses
that attached to it.

If we sum up, the income which Rome drew from the
provinces was not properly a taxation of the subjects in the
sense which we now attach to that expression, but rather
in the main a revenue that may be compared with the
Attic tributes, by means of which the leading state defrayed
the expense of tre military system which it maintained.
This explains the surprisingly small amount of the gross as
well as of the net proceeds. There exists a statement,
according to which the income of Rome, exclusive, it may
be presumed, of the Italian revenues and of the grain
delivered in kind to Italy by the decuviani, up to 691
amounted to not more than 200 millions of sesterces
(;!^2, 000,000) ; that is, but two-thirds of the sum which
the king of Egypt drew from his country annually. The
proportion can only seem strange at the first glance. The
Ptolemies turned to account the valley of the Nile as
great plantation -owners, and drew immense sums from
their monopoly of the commercial intercourse with the
east ; the Roman treasury was not much more than the
joint military chest of the communities united under
Rome's protection. The net produce was probably still
less in proportion. The only provinces yielding a con-
siderable surplus were perhaps Sicily, where the Cartha-
ginian system of taxation prevailed, and more especially
Asia from the time that Gaius Gracchus, in order to
provide for his largesses of corn, had carried out the
confiscation of the soil and a general domanial taxation
there. According to manifold testimonies the finances of

ciiAr. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 165

the Roman state were essentially dependent on the
revenues of Asia. The assertion sounds quite credible
that the other provinces on an average cost nearly as much
as they brought in ; in fact those which required a con-
siderable garrison, such as the two Spains, 'rransal[jine
Gaul, and Macedonia, probably often cost more than they
yielded. On the whole certainly the Roman treasury in
ordinary times possessed a surplus, which enabled them
amply to defray the expense of the buildings of the state
and city, and to accumulate a reserve-fund ; but even the
figures appearing for these objects, when compared with
the wide domain of the Roman rule, attest the small
amount of the net proceeds of the Roman taxes. In a
certain sense therefore the old principle equally honourable
and judicious — that the political hegemony should not
be treated as a privilege yielding profit — still governed
the financial administration of the provinces as it had
governed that of Rome in Italy. What the Roman
community levied from its transmarine subjects was, as
a rule, re-expended for the military security of the trans-
marine possessions ; and if these Roman imposts fell more
heavily on those who paid them than the earlier taxation,
in so far as they were in great part expended abroad, the
substitution, on the other hand, of a single ruler and a
centralized military administration for the many petty rulers
and armies involved a very considerable financial saving.
It is true, however, that this principle of a previous better
age came from the very first to be infringed and mutilated
by the numerous exceptions which were allowed to prevail.
The ground -tenth levied by Hiero and Carthage in Sicily
went far beyond the amount of an annual war-contribution.
With justice moreover Scipio Acmilianus says in Cicero,
that it was unbecoming for the Roman burgess-body to be
at the same time the ruler and the tax-gatherer of the
nations. The appropriation of the customs -dues was not

i66 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

compatible with the principle of disinterested hegemony,
and the high rates of the customs as well as the vexatious
mode of levying them were not fitted to allay the sense of
the injustice thereby inflicted. Even as early probably
as this period the name of publican became synonymous
among the eastern peoples with that of rogue and robber :
no burden contributed so much as this to make the Roman
name oifensive and odious especially in the east But
when Gaius Gracchus and those who called themselves the
** popular party " in Rome came to the helm, political
sovereignty was declared in plain terms to be a right which
entitled every one who shared in it to a number of bushels
of corn, the hegemony was converted into a direct owner-
ship of the soil, and the most complete system of making
the most of that ownership was not only introduced but
with shameless candour legally justified and proclaimed.
It was certainly not a mere accident, that the hardest lot
in this respect fell precisely to the two least warlike
provinces, Sicily and Asia.
The An approximate measure of the condition of Roman

^"j"*^^tr finance at this period is furnished, in the absence of

and public '^ '

buildings, definite statements, first of all by the public buildings.
In the first decades of this epoch these were prosecuted
on the greatest scale, and the construction of roads in
particular had at no time been so energetically pursued.
In Italy the great southern highway of presumably earlier
origin, which as a prolongation of the Appian road ran
from Rome by way of Capua, Beneventum, and Venusia
to the ports of Tarentum and Brundisium, had attached
to it a branch -road from Capua to the Sicilian straits, a
132. work of Publius Popillius, consul in 622. On the east
coast, where hitherto only the section from Fanum to
Ariminum had been constructed as part of the Flaminian
highway (ii. 229), the coast road was prolonged southward
as far as Brundisium, northward by way of Atria on the

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 167

Po as far as Aquileia, and the portion at least from
Ariminum to Atria was formed by the Popillius just
mentioned in the same year. The two great Etruscan
highways — the coast or Aurehan road from Rome to Pisa
and Luna, which was in course of formation in 631, and 123.
the Cassian road leading by way of Sutrium and Clusium
to Arretium and Florentia, which seems not to have been
constructed before 583 — may as Roman public highways 171.
belong only to this age. About Rome itself new projects
were not required ; but the Mulvian bridge (Ponte Molle),
by which the Flaminian road crossed the Tiber not far
from Rome, was in 645 reconstructed of stone. Lastly 109.
in Northern Italy, which hitherto had possessed no other
artificial road than the Flaminio-Aemilian terminating at
Placentia, the great Postumian road was constructed in
606, which led from Genua by way of Dertona, where 148.
probably a colony was founded at the same time, and
onward by way of Placentia, where it joined the Flaminio-
Aemilian road, and of Cremona and Verona to Aquileia,
and thus connected the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas ; to
which was added the communication established in 645 109.
by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus between Luna and Genua,
which connected the Postumian road directly with Rome.
Gaius Gracchus exerted himself in another way for the
improvement of the Italian roads. He secured the due
repair of the great rural roads by assigning, on occasion
of his distribution of lands, pieces of ground alongside of
the roads, to which was attached the obligation of keeping
them in repair as an heritable burden. To him, moreover,
or at any rate to the allotment -commission, the custom of
erecting milestones appears to be traceable, as well as that
of marking the limits of fields by regular boundary-stones.
Lastly he provided for good viae licinaics, with the view
of thereby promoting agriculture. But of still greater
moment was the construction of the imperial highways in

i68 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

the provinces, which beyond doubt began in this epoch.
The Domitian highway after long preparations (ii. 375)
furnished a secure land -route from Italy to Spain, and was
closely connected with the founding of Aquae Sextiae and
Narbo (iii. 419); the Gabinian (iii. 427) and the Egnatian
(iii. 263) led from the principal places on the east coast of
the Adriatic sea — the former from Salona, the latter from
ApoUonia and Dyrrhachium — into the interior; the net
work of roads laid out by Manius Aquillius immediately

129. after the erection of the Asiatic province in 625 led from
the capital Ephesus in different directions towards the
frontier. Of the origin of these works no mention is to
be found in the fragmentary tradition of this epoch, but
they were nevertheless undoubtedly connected with the
consolidation of the Roman rule in Gaul, Dalmatia,
Macedonia, and Asia Minor, and came to be of the
greatest importance for the centralization of the state and.
the civilizing of the subjugated barbarian districts.

In Italy at least great works of drainage were prosecuted

160. as well as the formation of roads. In 594 the drying of
the Pomptine marshes — a vital matter for Central Italy —
was set about with great energy and at least temporary

109. success; in 645 the draining of the low-lying lands between
Parma and Placentia was effected in connection with the
construction of the north Italian highway. Moreover, the
government did much for the Roman aqueducts, as indis-
pensable for the health and comfort of the capital as they
were costly. Not only were the two that had been in
312. 262. existence since the years 442 and 492 — the Appian and the

144. Anio aqueducts — thoroughly repaired in 610, but two new
ones were formed; the Marcian in 610, which remained
afterwards unsurpassed for the excellence and abundance
of the water, and the Tepula as it was called, nineteen years
later. The power of the Roman exchequer to execute great
operations by means of payments in pure cash without

CHAi'. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 169

making use of the system of credit, is very clearly shown
by the way in which the Marcian aqueduct was created :
the sum required for it of 180,000,000 sesterces (in gold
nearly ;^2, 000,000) was raised and applied within three
years. This leads us to infer a very considerable reserve
in the treasury : in fact at the very beginning of this period
it amounted to almost ;i^86o,ooo (iii. 23, 88), and was
doubtless constantly on the increase.

All these facts taken together certainly lead to the
inference that the position of the Roman finances at this
epoch was on the whole favourable. Only we may not in
a financial point of view overlook the fact that, while the
government during the two earlier thirds of this period
executed splendid and magnificent buildings, it neglected
to make other outlays at least as necessar)*. We have
already indicated how unsatisfactory were its military
provisions ; the frontier countries and even the valley of
the Po (iii. 424) were pillaged by barbarians, and bands of
robbers made havoc in the interior even of Asia Minor,
Sicily, and Italy. The fleet even was totally neglected ;
there was hardly any longer a Roman vessel of war ; and
the war-vessels, which the subject cities were required to
build and maintain, were not sufficient, so that Rome was
not only absolutely unable to carry on a naval war, but
was not even in a position to check the trade of piracy.
In Rome itself a number of the most necessary improve-
ments were left untouched, and the river- buildings in
particular were singularly neglected. The capital still
possessed no other bridge over the Tiber than the primitive
wooden gangway, which led over the Tiber island to the
Janiculum ; the Tiber was still allowed to lay the streets
every year under water, and to demolish houses and in fact
not unfrequently whole districts, without anything being
done to strengthen the banks ; mighty as was the growth
of transmarine commerce, the roadstead of Ostia — already

170

THE COMMONWEALTH

BOOK IV

The
finances
in the
revolution.

by nature bad — was allowed to become more and more
sanded up. A government, which under the most favour-
able circumstances and in an epoch of forty years of peace
abroad and at home neglected such duties, might easily
allow taxes to fall into abeyance and yet obtain an annual
surplus of income over expenditure and a considerable
reserve ; but such a financial administration by no means
deserves commendation for its mere semblance of brilliant
results, but rather merits the same censure — in respect of
laxity, want of unity in management, mistaken flattery of
the people — as falls to be brought in every other sphere
of political life against the senatorial government of this
epoch.

The financial condition of Rome of course assumed a
far worse aspect, when the storms of revolution set in.
The new and, even in a mere financial point of view,
extremely oppressive burden imposed upon the state by
the obligation under which Gains Gracchus placed it to
furnish corn at nominal rates to the burgesses of the
capital, was certainly counterbalanced at first by the newly-
opened sources of income in the province of Asia. Never-
theless the public buildings seem from that time to have
almost come to a standstill. While the public works which
can be shown to have been constructed from the battle of
Pydna down to the time of Gaius Gracchus were numerous,

122. from the period after 632 there is scarcely mention of any
other than the projects of bridges, roads, and drainage
which Marcus Aemilius Scaurus organized as censor in

109. 645. It must remain a moot point whether this was the
effect of the largesses of grain or, as is perhaps more
probable, the consequence of the system of increased
savings, such as befitted a government which became daily
more and more a rigid oligarchy, and such as is indicated
by the statement that the Roman reserve reached its
91. highest point in 663. The terrible storm of insurrection

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 171

and revolution, in combination with the five years' deficit
of the revenues of Asia Minor, was the first serious trial
to which the Roman finances were subjected after the
Hannibalic war : tliey failed to sustain it. Nothing
perhaps so clearly marks the difference of the times as the
circumstance that in the Hannibalic war it was not till the
tenth year of the struggle, when the burgesses were almost
sinking under taxation, that the reserve was touched
(ii, 344) ; whereas the Social war was from the first
supported by the balance in hand, and when this was
expended after two campaigns to the last penny, they
preferred to sell by auction the public sites in the capital
(iii. 525) and to seize the treasures of the temples (p. 82)
rather than levy a tax on the burgesses. The storm how-
ever, severe as it was, passed over ; Sulla, at the expense
doubtless of enormous economic sacrifices imposed on the
subjects and Italian revolutionists in particular, restored
order to the finances and, by abolishing the largesses
of corn and retaining although in a reduced form the
Asiatic revenues, secured for the commonwealth a satis-
factory economic condition, at least in the sense of the
ordinary expenditure remaining far below the ordinary
income.

In the private economics of this period hardly any Private
new feature emerges ; the advantages and disadvantages ^*^°"°""'^
formerly set forth as incident to the social circumstances of
Italy (iii. 64-103) were not altered, but merely farther and
more distinctly developed. In agriculture we have already Agricui-
seen that the growing power of Roman capital was gradually
absorbing the intermediate and small landed estates in
Italy as well as in t!ie provinces, as the sun sucks up the
drops of rain. The government not only looked on without
preventing, but even promoted this injurious division of the
soil by particular measures, especially by prohibiting the
production of wine and oil beyond the Alps with a view

172 THE COMMONWEALTH Book iv

to favour the great Italian landlords and merchants.^ It
is true that both the opposition and the section of the
conservatives that entered into ideas of reform worked
energetically to counteract the evil ; the two Gracchi, by
carrying out the distribution of almost the whole domain
land, gave to the state 80,000 new Italian farmers; Sulla,
by settling 120,000 colonists in Italy, filled up at least in
part the gaps which the revolution and he himself had
made in the ranks of the Italian yeomen. But, when a
vessel is emptying itself by constant efflux, the evil is to be
remedied not by pouring in even considerable quantities,
but only by the establishment of a constant influx — a
remedy which was on various occasions attempted, but not
with success. In the provinces, not even the smallest
effort was made to save the farmer class there from being
bought out by the Roman speculators ; the provincials,
. forsooth, were merely men, and not a party. The conse-
quence was, that even the rents of the soil beyond Italy
flowed more and more to Rome. Moreover the plantation-
system, which about the middle of this epoch had already
gained the ascendant even in particular districts of Italy,
such as Etruria, had, through the co-operation of an
energetic and methodical management and abundant
pecuniary resources, attained to a state of high prosperity
after its kind. The production of Italian wine in particular,
which was artificially promoted partly by the opening of
forced markets in a portion of the provinces, partly by
the prohibition of foreign wines in Italy as expressed for
161. instance in the sumptuary law of 593, attained very con-
siderable results : the Aminean and Falernian wine began
to be named by the side of the Thasian and Chian, and

^ iii. 415. Willi this may be connected the remarlc of the Roman
agriculturist, Saserna, who lived alter Cato and before Varro [ap. Colum.
i. I, 5), that the culture of the vine and olive was constantly moving
farther to the north. — The decree of the senate as to the translation of the
treatise of Mago (iii. 312) belongs also to this class of measures.

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMV 173

the " Opimian wine " of 633, the Roman vintage " Eleven," 121.
was long remembered after the last jar was exhausted.

Of trades and manufactures there is nothing to be said, Trades,
except that the Italian nation in this respect persevered in
an inaction bordering on barbarism. They destroyed the
Corinthian factories, the depositories of so many valuable
industrial traditions — not however that they might establish
similar factories for themselves, but that they might buy up
at extravagant prices such Corinthian vases of earthenware
or copper and similar " antique works " as were preser\'ed
in Greek houses. The trades that were still somewhat
prosperous, such as those connected with building, were
productive of hardly any benefit for the commonwealth,
because here too the system of employing slaves in every
more considerable undertaking intervened : in the construc-
tion of the Marcian aqueduct, for instance, the government
concluded contracts for building and materials simul-
taneously with 3000 master-tradesmen, each of whom then
performed the work contracted for with his band of slaves.

The most brilliant, or rather the only brilliant, side of Money-
Roman private economics was money- dealing and com- ^^jj'"^
merce. First of all stood the leasing of the domains and commerce
of the taxes, through which a large, perhaps the larger,
part of the income of the Roman state flowed into the
pockets of the Roman capitalists. The money-dealings,
moreover, throughout the range of the Roman state were
monopolized by the Romans ; every penny circulated
in Gaul, it is said in a writing issued soon after the end
of this period, passes through the books of the Roman
merchants, and so it was doubtless everywhere. The
co-operation of rude economic conditions and of the
unscrupulous employment of Rome's political ascend-
ency for the benefit of the private interests of every
wealthy Roman rendered a usurious system of interest
universal, as is shown for example by the treatment of

174 THE COMMONWEALTH POOK iv

the war-tax imposed by Sulla on the province of Asia
84. in 670, which the Roman capitalists advanced; it swelled
with paid and unpaid interest within fourteen years to six-
fold its original amount. The communities had to sell
their public buildings, their works of art and jewels,
parents had to sell their grown-up children, in order to
meet the claims of the Roman creditor : it was no rare
occurrence for the debtor to be not merely subjected to
moral torture, but directly placed upon the rack. To
these sources of gain fell to be added the wholesale
traffic. The exports and imports of Italy were very
considerable. The former consisted chiefly of wine and
oil, with which Italy and Greece almost exclusively —
for the production of wine in the Massiliot and Turde-
tanian territories can at that time have been but small
— supplied the whole region of the Mediterranean; Italian
wine was sent in considerable quantities to the Balearic
islands and Celtiberia, to Africa, which was merely a
corn and pasture country, to Narbo and into the interior
of Gaul. Still more considerable was the import to Italy,
where at that time all luxury was concentrated, and whither
most articles of luxury for food, drink, or clothing, orna-
ments, books, household furniture, works of art were
imported by sea. The traffic in slaves, above all, received
through the ever -increasing demand of the Roman mer-
chants an impetus to which no parallel had been known in
the region of the Mediterranean, and which stood in the
closest connection with the flourishing of piracy. All lands
and all nations were laid under contribution for slaves, but
the places where they were chiefly captured were Syria and
the interior of Asia Minor (iii. 306).
Osiia, In Italy the transmarine imports were chiefly concen-

"'^° '■ trated in the two great emporia on the Tyrrhene sea,
Ostia and Puteoli. The grain destined for the capital
was brought to Ostia, which was far from having a good

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 175

roadstead, but, as being the nearest port to Rome, was
the most appropriate mart for less vaUiable wares ; whereas
the traffic in Uixuries with the east was directed mainly to
Puteoli, which recommended itself by its good harbour
for ships with valuable cargoes, and presented to mer-
chants a market in its immediate neighbourhood little
inferior to that of the capital — the district of Baiae,
which came to be more and more filled with villas.
For a long time this latter traffic was conducted through
Corinth and after its destruction through Delos, and in this
sense accordingly Puteoli is called by Lucilius the Italian
" Little Delos " ; but after the catastrophe which befel
Delos in the Mithradatic war (p. 34), and from which it
never recovered, the Puteolans entered into direct com-
mercial connections with Syria and Alexandria, and their
city became more and more decidedly the first seat of
transmarine commerce in Italy. But it was not merely
the gain which was made by the Italian exports and
mports, that fell mainly to the Italians ; at Narbo they
competed in the Celtic trade with the Massiliots, and in
general it admits of no doubt that the Roman merchants
to be met with everywhere, floating or settled, took to
themselves the best share of all speculations.

Putting together these phenomena, we recognize as the Capitalist
most prominent feature in the private economy of this ° '^"'^'^ ^
epoch the financial oligarchy of Roman capitalists standing
alongside of, and on a par with, the political oligarchy.
In their hands wore united the rents of the soil of almost
all Italy and of the best portions of the provincial territory,
the proceeds at usury of the capital monopolized by them,
the commercial gain from the whole empire, and lastly,
a very considerable part of the Roman state- revenue in
the form of profits accruing from the lease of that revenue.
The daily-increasing accumulation of capital is evident
in the rise of the average rate of wealth: 3,000,000 ses

176 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

terces (^30,000) was now a moderate senatorial, 2,000,000
(;^2o,ooo) was a decent equestrian fortune ; tlie property
of the wealthiest man of the Gracchan age, Publius Crassus
131. consul in 623 was estimated at 100,000,000 sesterces
(p^ 1, 000, 000). It is no wonder, that this capitalist order
exercised a preponderant influence on external policy ;
that it destroyed out of commercial rivalry Carthage and
Corinth (iii. 257, 272) as the Etruscans had formerly
destroyed Alalia and the Syracusans Caere ; that it in spite
of the senate upheld the colony of Narbo (iii. 420). It is
likewise no wonder, that this capitalist oligarchy engaged in
earnest and often victorious competition with the oligarchy
of the nobles in internal politics. But it is also no wonder,
that ruined men of wealth put themselves at the head of bands
of revolted slaves (iii. 381), and rudely reminded the public
that the transition is easy from the haunts of fashionable
debauchery to the robber's cave. It is no wonder, that
that financial tower of Babel, with its foundation not
purely economic but borrowed from the political ascend-
ency of Rome, tottered at every serious political crisis
nearly in the same way as our very similar fabric of a
paper currency. The great financial crisis, which in con-
90. sequence of the Italo-Asiatic commotions of 664 f. set in
upon the Roman capitalist -class, the bankruptcy of the
state and of private persons, the general depreciation of
landed property and of partnership-shares, can no longer
be traced out in detail ; but their general nature and
their importance are placed beyond doubt by their results
— the murder of the praetor by a band of creditors
(iii. 530), the attempt to eject from the senate all the
senators not free of debt (iii. 531), the renewal of the
maximum of interest by Sulla (iii. 541), the cancelling of
75 per cent of all debts by the revolutionary party (p. 70),
Mixture The consequence of this system was naturally general

° impoverishment and depopulation in the provinces, whereas

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 177

the parasitic population of migratory or tcmi)orarily settled
Italians was everywhere on the increase. In Asia Minor Itali.ins
80,000 men of Italian origin are said to have perished *^''°*'^-
in one day (p. 32). How numerous they were in Delos,
is evident from the tombstones still extant on the island
and from the statement that 20,000 foreigners, mostly
Italian merchants, were put to death there by command
of Mithradates (p. 34). In Africa the Italians were so
many, that even the Numidian town of Cirta could be
defended mainly by them against Jugurtha (iii. 392). Gaul
too, it is said, was filled with Roman merchants ; in the
case of Spain alone — perhaps not accidentally — no state-
ments of this sort are found. In Italy itself, on the other
hand, the condition of the free population at this epoch
had on the whole beyond doubt retrograded. To this
result certainly the civil wars essentially contributed, which,
according to statements of a general kind and but little
trustworthy, are alleged to have swept away from 100,000
to 150,000 of the Roman burgesses and 300,000 of the
Italian population generally ; but still worse was the effect
of the economic ruin of the middle class, and of the bound
less extent of the mercantile emigration which induced a
great portion of the Italian youth to spend their most
vigorous years abroad.

A compensation of verj' dubious value was afforded Forfipfiera
by the free parasitic Helleno- Oriental population, which '" ''*''^'
sojourned in the capital as diplomatic agents for kings
or communities, as physicians, schoolmasters, priests, ser-
vants, parasites, and in the myriad employments of sharpers
and swindlers, or, as traders and mariners, frequented
especially Ostia, Putcoli, and Brundisium. Still more
hazardous was the disproportionate increase of the multi-
tude of slaves in the peninsula. The Italian burgesses Italian
by the census of 684 numbered 910,000 men capable *'-^^"- i'^-
of bearing arms, to which number, in order to obtain
VOU IV II.'

178 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

the amount of the free population in the peninsula, those
accidentally passed over in the census, the Latins in the
district between the Alps and the Po, and the foreigners
domiciled in Italy, have to be added, while the Roman
burgesses domiciled abroad are to be deducted. It will
therefore be scarcely possible to estimate the free popu-
lation of the peninsula at more than from 6 to 7 millions.
If its whole population at this time was equal to that of
the present day, we should have to assume accordingly
a mass of slaves amounting to 13 or 14 millions. It
needs however no such fallacious calculations to render
the dangerous tension of this state of things apparent ;
this is loudly enough attested by the partial servile in-
surrections, and by the appeal which from the beginning
of the revolutions was at the close of every outbreak
addressed to the slaves to take up arms against their
masters and to fight out their liberty. If we conceive of
England with its lords, its squires, and above all its City,
but with its freeholders and lessees converted into prole-
tarians, and its labourers and sailors converted into slaves,
we shall gain an approximate image of the population of
the Italian peninsula in those days.
Monetary The economic relations of this epoch are clearly

system. mirrored to us even now in the Roman monetary system.
Its treatment shows throughout the sagacious merchant.
Gold and For long gold and silver stood side by side as general
silver. means of payment on such a footing that, while for the

purpose of general cash-balances a fixed ratio of value was
legally laid down between the two metals (iii. 88), the
giving one metal for the other was not, as a rule, optional,
but payment was to be in gold or silver according to the
tenor of the bond. In this way the great evils were
avoided, that are otherwise inevitably associated with the
setting up of two precious metals ; the severe gold crises —
]50. as about 600, for instance, when in consequence of the

CHAP, xi AND ITS ECONOMY 179

discovery of the Tauriscan gold-scams (iii. 424) gold as
compared with silver fell at once in Italy about 33^ per
cent — exercised at least no direct influence on the silver
money and retail transactions. The nature of the case
implied that, the more transmarine traffic extended, gold
the more decidedly rose from the second place to the
first ; and that it did so, is confirmed by the statements as
to the balances in the treasury and as to its transactions ;
but the government was not thereby induced to introduce
gold into the coinage. The coining of gold attempted in
the exigency of the Hannibalic war (ii. 343) had been long
allowed to fall into abeyance ; the few gold pieces which
Sulla struck as regent were scarcely more than pieces
coined for the occasion of his triumphal presents. Silver
still as before circulated exclusively as actual money ; gold,
whether it, as was usual, circulated in bars or bore the
stamp of a foreign or possibly even of an inland mint, was
taken solely by weight. Nevertheless gold and silver were
on a par as means of exchange, and the fraudulent alloying
of gold was treated in law, like the issuing of spurious
silver money, as a monetary offence. They thus obtained
the immense advantage of precluding, in the case of the
most important medium of payment, even the possibility of
monetary fraud and monetary adulteration. Otherwise
the coinage was as copious as it was of exemplary purity.
After the silver piece had been reduced in the Hannibalic
war from -Vt (ii. 87) to ^^ of a pound (ii. 343), it retained
for more than three centuries quite the same weight and
the same quality ; no alloying took place. The copper
money became about the beginning of this period quite
restricted to small change, and ceased to be employed as
formerly in large transactions ; for this reason the as was
no longer coined after i)erhaps the beginning of the
seventh century, and the copper coinage was confined to
the smaller values of a sefnis (J</.) and under, which could

i8o THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

not well be represented in silver. The sorts of coins were
arranged according to a simple principle, and in the then
smallest coin of the ordinary issue — the quadrans (^d.) —
carried down to the limit of appreciable value. It was a
monetary system, which, for the judicious principles on
which it was based and for the iron rigour with which
they were applied, stands alone in antiquity and has been
but rarely paralleled even in modern times.
Token- Yet it had also its weak point. According to a custom,

' °"^^' common in all antiquity, but which reached its highest
development at Carthage (ii. 153), the Roman government
issued along with the good silver denarii also denarii of
copper plated with silver, which had to be accepted like
the former and were just a token-money analogous to our
paper currency, with compulsory circulation and recourse
on the public chest, inasmuch as it also was not entitled to
reject the plated pieces. This was no more an official
adulteration of the coinage than our manufacture of paper-
money, for they practised the thing quite openly ; Marcus
91. Drusus proposed in 663, with the view of gaining the
means for his largesses of grain, the sending forth of one
plated denarius for every seven silver ones issuing fresh
from the mint ; nevertheless this measure not only offered
a dangerous handle to private forgery, but designedly left
the public uncertain whether it was receiving silver or
token money, and to what total amount the latter was in
circulation. In the embarrassed period of the civil war
and of the great financial crisis they seem to have so
unduly availed themselves of plating, that a monetary
crisis accompanied the financial one, and the quantity of
spurious and really worthless pieces rendered dealings
extremely insecure. Accordingly during the Cinnan govern-
ment an enactment was passed by the praetors and tribunes,
primarily by Marcus Marius Gratidianus (p. 103), for
redeeming all the token-money by silver, and for that

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY igt

purpose an assay -office was established. How lar the
calling-in was accomplished, tradition has not told us;
the coining of token-money itself continued to subsist.

As to the provinces, in accordance with the setting Provincial
aside of gold money on principle, the coining of gold was '"°"'^-
nowhere permitted, not even in the client-states ; so that
a gold coinage at this period occurs only where Rome had
nothing at all to say, especially among the Celts to the
north of the Cevennes and among the states in revolt
against Rome ; the Italians, for instance, as well as
Mithradates Eupator struck gold coins. The government
seems to have made efforts to bring the coinage of silver
also more and more into its hands, particularly in the
west. In Africa and Sardinia the Carthaginian gold and Cun-cncy
silver money may have remained in circulation even after '^'^
the fall of the Carthaginian state ; but no coinage of
precious metals took place there after either the Cartha-
ginian or the Roman standard, and certainly very soon
after the Romans took possession, the denarius introduced
from Italy acquired the predominance in the transactions
of the two countries. In Spain and Sicily, which came
earlier to the Romans and experienced altogether a milder
treatment, silver was no doubt coined under the Roman
rule, and indeed in the former country the silver coinage
was first called into existence by the Romans and based
on the Roman standard (ii. 211, 3S6, iii. 87); but there
exist good grounds for the supposition, that even in these
two countries, at least from the beginning of the seventh
century, the provincial and urban mints were obliged to
restrict their issues to copper small money. Only in
Narbonese Gaul the right of coining silver could nut be
withdrawn from the old -allied and considerable free city
of Massilia ; and the same was presumably true of the
Greek cities in lllyria, Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. Hut
the privilege of these communities to coin money was

i82 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

restricted indirectly by the fact, that the three-quarter
denarius, which by ordinance of the Roman government
was coined both at Massilia and in Illyria, and which
had been under the name of victoriatus received into the
Roman monetary system (iii. 87), was about the middle
of the seventh century set aside in the latter ; the effect
of which necessarily was, that the Massiliot and Illyrian
currency was driven out of Upper Italy and only remained
in circulation, over and above its native field, perhaps in
the regions of the Alps and the Danube. Such progress
had thus been made already in this epoch, that the
standard of the denarius exclusively prevailed in the
whole western division of the Roman state; for Italy,
Sicily — of which it is as respects the beginning of the next
period expressly attested, that no other silver money circu-
lated there but the denarius — Sardinia, Africa, used
exclusively Roman silver money, and the provincial silver
still current in Spain as well as the silver money of the
Massiliots and Illyrians were at least struck after the
standard of the denarius.
Currency It was otherwise in the east. Here, where the number

of the states coining money from olden times and the
quantity of native coin in circulation were very consider-
able, the denarius did not make its way into wider accept-
ance, although it was perhaps declared a legal tender. On
the contrary either the previous monetary standard con-
tinued in use, as in Macedonia for instance, which still as
a province — although partially adding the names of the
Roman magistrates to that of the country — struck its
Attic tetradrachmae and certainly employed in substance
no other money ; or a peculiar money-standard correspond-
ing to the circumstances was introduced under Roman
authority, as on the institution of the province of Asia,
when a new stater, the cistophorus as it was called, was
prescribed by the Roman government and was thenceforth

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 183

Struck by the district-capitals there under Roman su{)er-
intendcnce. This essential diversity between the Occi-
dental and Oriental systems of currency came to be of the
greatest historical importance : the Romanizing of the
subject lands found one of its mightiest levers in the
adoption of Roman money, and it was not through mere
accident that what we have designated at this epoch as
the field of the denarius became afterwards the Latin,
while the field of the drachma became afterwards the
Greek, half of the empire. Still at the present day the
former field substantially represents the sum of Romanic
culture, whereas the latter has severed itself from European
civilization.

It is easy to form a general conception of the aspect Si.ite of
which under such economic conditions the social relations "'^"*^'
must have assumed ; but to follow out in detail the increase
of luxury, of prices, of fastidiousness and frivolity is neither
pleasant nor instructive. Extravagance and sensuous en- Increased
joyment formed the main object with all, among the " ^c*"
panenus as well as among the Licinii and Metelli ; not the
polished luxury which is the acme of civilization, but that
sort of luxury which had developed itself amidst the decay-
ing Hellenic civilization of Asia Minor and Alexandria,
which degraded everything beautiful and significant to the
purpose of decoration and studied enjoyment with a
laborious pedantry, a precise punctiliousness, rendering it
equally nauseous to the man of fresh feeling as to the man
of fresh intellect. As to the popular festivals, the importa- Popular
tion of transmarine wild beasts prohibited in the time of
Cato (iii, 126) was, apparently about the middle of this
century, formally permitted anew by a decree of the
burgesses proposed by Gnaeus Aufidius ; the effect of
which was, that animal-hunts came into enthusiastic favour
and formed a chief feature of tiie burgess-festivals. Several
lions first appeared in the Roman arena about 651, the 1<^3.

i84 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

99. first elephants about 655 ; Sulla when praetor exhibited a

93. hundred lions in 661. The same holds true of gladiatorial
games. If the forefathers had publicly exhibited repre-
sentations of great battles, their grandchildren began to do
the same with their gladiatorial games, and by means of
such leading or state performances of the age to make
themselves a laughing-stock to their descendants. What
sums were spent on these and on funeral solemnities
generally, may be inferred from the testament of Marcus
187. 175. Aemilius Lepidus (consul in 567, 579; t 602); he gave

^ ■ orders to his children, forasmuch as the true last honours

consisted not in empty pomp but in the remembrance of

personal and ancestral services, to expend on his funeral not

more than 1,000,000 asses (;^4ooo). Luxury was on the

Buildings, increase also as respected buildings and gardens ; the

91. splendid town house of the orator Crassus (f 663),
famous especially for the old trees of its garden, was
valued with the trees at 6,000,000 sesterces (;^6o,ooo),
without them at the half; while the value of an ordinary
dwelling-house in Rome may be estimated perhaps at
60,000 sesterces (;^6oo).^ How quickly the prices of
ornamental estates increased, is shown by the instance of
the Misenian villa, for which Cornelia, the mother of the
Gracchi, paid 75,000 sesterces (;^75o), and Lucius

74. LucuUus, consul in 680, thirty- three times that price.

The villas and the luxurious rural and sea-bathing life

rendered Baiae and generally the district around the Bay

Games. of Naples the El Dorado of noble idleness. Games of

hazard, in which the stake was no longer as in the Italian

115. dice-playing a trifle, became common, and as early as 639

1 In tiie house, which Sulla inhabited when a young man, he paid for
the ground-floor a rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of the upper
story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, SuII. i) ; which, capitalized at
two-thirds of the usual interest on capital, yields nearly the above amount.
This was a cheap dwelling. That a rent of 6000 sesterces (;^6o) in the
125. capital is called a high one in the case of the year 629 (Veil. ii. 10) must
have been due to special circumstances.

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 185

a censorial edict was issued against them. Gauze fabrics, Dress,
which displayed rather than concealed the figure, and
silken clothing began to displace the old woollen dresses
among women and even among men. Against the insane
extravagance in the employment of foreign perfumery the
sumptuary laws interfered in vain.

But the real focus in which the brilliance of this genteel The tabic,
life was concentrated was the table. Extravagant prices —
as much as 100,000 sesterces (;^iooo) — were paid for an
exquisite cook. Houses were constructed with special
reference to this object, and the villas in particular along
the coast were provided with salt-water tanks of their own,
in order that they might furnish marine fishes and oysters
at any time fresh to the table. A dinner was already
described as poor, at which the fowls were served up to the
guests entire and not merely the choice portions, and at
which the guests were expected to eat of the several dishes
and not simply to taste them. They procured at a great
expense foreign delicacies and Greek wine, which had to
be sent round at least once at every respectable repast.
At banquets above all the Romans displayed their hosts
of slaves ministering to luxury, their bands of musicians,
their dancing-girls, their elegant furniture, their car{)ets
glittering with gold or pictorially embroidered, their purple
hangings, their antique bronzes, their rich silver plate.
Against such displays the sumptuary laws were primarily
directed, which were issued more frequently (593, 639, 16I. 115
665, 673) and in greater detail than ever ; a number of 89. 81.
delicacies and wines were therein totally prohibited, for
others a maximum in weight and price was fixed ; the
quantity of silver plate was likewise restricted by law, and
lastly general maximum rates were prescribed for the
expenses of ordinary and festal meals ; these, for example,
were fixed in 593 at 10 and 100 sesterces {2s. and jCi) in I6I.
673 at 30 and 300 sesterces (6^. and jCs) respectively. 81.

1 86 THE COMMONWEALTH book iv

Unfortunately truth requires us to add that, of all the
Romans of rank, not more than three — and these not
including the legislators themselves — are said to have
complied with these imposing laws ; and in the case of
these three it was the law of the Stoa, and not that of the
state, that curtailed the bill of fare.
Silver It is worth while to dwell for a moment on the luxury

plate. j-j^^j. ^,gi^{- Qj^ increasing in defiance of these laws, as respects

silver plate. In the sixth century silver plate for the table
was, with the exception of the traditionary silver salt-dish,
a rarity ; the Carthaginian ambassadors jested over the cir-
cumstance, that at every house to which they were invited
they had encountered the same silver plate (ii. 153 /.).
Scipio Aemilianus possessed not more than 32 pounds
(;^i2o) in wrought silver; his nephew Quintus Fabius
121. (consul in 633) first brought his plate up to 1000 pounds
91. (;^4ooo), Marcus Drusus (tribune of the people in 663)
reached 10,000 pounds (;2^4o,ooo); in Sulla's time there were
already counted in the capital about 150 silver state-dishes
weighing 100 pounds each, several of which brought their
possessors into the lists of proscription. To judge of the
sums expended on these, we must recollect that the work-
manship also was paid for at enormous rates ; for instance
Gains Gracchus paid for choice articles of silver fifteen
95. times, and Lucius Crassus, consul in 659, eighteen times
the value of the metal, and the latter gave for a pair of
cups by a noted silversmith 100,000 sesterces (^1000).
So it was in proportion everywhere.
Marriage. How it fared with marriage and the rearing of children,

is shown by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed
a premium on these (iii. 320). Divorce, formerly in Rome
almost unheard of, was now an everyday occurrence; while in
the oldest Roman marriage the husband had purchased his
wife, it might have been proposed to the Romans of quality
in the present times that, with the view of bringing the name

CHAP. XI AND ITS ECONOMY 187

into accordance with the reality, they should introduce
marriacre for hire. Even a man like Metellus Macedonicus,
who for his honourable domestic life and his numerous
host of children was the admiration of his contemporaries,
when censor in 623 enforced the obligation of the burgesses 131.
to live in a state of matrimony by describing it as an
oppressive public burden, which patriots ought nevertheless
to undertake from a sense of duty.^

There were, certainly, exceptions. The circles of the Hellenism
rural towns, and particularly those ol the larger landholders, \^^^\^^
had preserved more faithfully the old honourable habits of
the Latin nation. In the capital, however, the Catonian
opposition had become a mere form of words ; the modern
tendency bore sovereign sway, and though individuals of
firm and refined organization, such as Scipio Aemilianus,
knew the art of combining Roman manners with Attic
culture, Hellenism was among the great multitude
synonymous with intellectual and moral corruption. W'e
must never lose sight of the reaction exercised by these
social evils on political life, if we would understand the
Roman revolution. It was no matter of indifference, that
of the two men of rank, who in 662 acted as supreme 92.
masters of morals to the community, the one publicly
reproached the other with having shed tears over the
death of a muraena the pride of his fishpond, and the
latter retaliated on the former that he had buried three
wives and had shed tears over none of them. It was no
matter of indifference, that in 593 an orator could make 1«>1-
sport in the open Forum with the following description of
a senatorial civil juryman, whom the time fixed for the cause
finds amidst the circle of his boon-companions. "They

' " If we could, citizens" — he s.iid in his speech — " we .siiould indeed
.ill keep cle:ir of this burden. But. as nature has so arranged it that we
cannot either live comfort.ibly with wives or live at all without them, it is
proper to have regard rather to the permanent weal than to our own brief
comfort."

i88 THE COMMONWEALTH AND ITS ECONOMY book iv

play at hazard, delicately perfumed, surrounded by their
mistresses. As the afternoon advances, they summon the
servant and bid him make enquiries on the Comitium, as to
what has occurred in the P'orum, who has spoken in favour
of or against the new project of law, what tribes have voted
for and what against it. At length they go themselves to
the judgment -seat, just early enough not to bring the
process down on their own neck. On the way there is no
opportunity in any retired alley which they do not avail
themselves of, for they have gorged themselves with wine.
Reluctantly they come to the tribunal and give audience to
the parties. Those who are concerned bring forward their
cause. The juryman orders the witnesses to come forward ;
he himself steps aside. When he returns, he declares that
he has heard everything, and asks for the documents. He
looks into the writings ; he can hardly keep his eyes open
for wine. When he thereupon withdraws to consider his
sentence, he says to his boon-companions, 'What concern
have I with these tiresome people? why should we not
rather go to drink a cup of mulse mixed with Greek wine,
and accompany it with a fat fieldfare and a good fish, a
veritable pike from the Tiber island ? ' " Those who heard
the orator laughed ; but was it not a very serious matter,
that such things were subjects for laughter ?

CHAP. XII NATIONALITY. RELIGION. AND EDUCATION iSg

CHAPTER XII

NATIONALITY, RELIGION, AND EDUCATION

In the great struggle of the nationalities within the wide Paramount
circuit of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem asce"J<^ncy

, . . J , . ofLatinism

at this period on the wane or disappearing. The most and
important of them all, the Phoenician, received through "^■"'-■"'s"»-
the destruction of Carthage a mortal wound from which it
slowly hied to death. The districts of Italy which had
hitherto preserved their old language and manners, Etruria
and Samnium, were not only visited by the heaviest blows
of the Sullan reaction, but were compelled also by the
political levelling of Italy to adopt the luitin language and
customs in public intercourse, so that the old native lan-
guages were reduced to popular dialects rapidly decaying.
There no longer appears throughout the bounds of the
Roman state any nationality entitled even to compete with
the Roman and the Greek.

On the other hand the Latin nationality was, as respected latinism.
both the extent of its diffusion and the depth of its hold,
in the most decided ascendant. As after the Social war
any portion of Italian soil might belong to any Italian in
full Roman ownership, and any god of an Italian temple
might receive Roman t;ifts ; as in all Italy, with the excep-
tion of the region beyond the Po, the Roman law thence-
forth had exclusive authority, superseding all other civic
and local laws ; so the Roman language at that time became

I90 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

the universal language of business, and soon likewise the
universal language of cultivated intercourse, in the whole
peninsula from the Alps to the Sicilian Straits. But it no
longer restricted itself to these natural limits. The mass
of capital accumulating in Italy, the riches of its products,
the intelligence of its agriculturists, the versatihty of its
merchants, found no adequate scope in the penmsula ;
these circumstances and the public service carried the
Italians in great numbers to the provinces (p. 174). Their
privileged position there rendered the Roman language
and the Roman law privileged also, even where Romans
were not merely transacting business with each other (p. 131).
Everywhere the Italians kept together as compact and
organized masses, the soldiers in their legions, the mer-
chants of every larger town as special corporations, the
Roman burgesses domiciled or sojourning in the particular
provincial court- district as " circuits " {conventus civium
Rot?ianorut?i) with their own list of jurymen and in some
measure with a communal constitution ; and, though these
provincial Romans ordinarily returned sooner or later to
Italy, they nevertheless gradually laid the foundations of a
fixed population in the provinces, partly Roman, partly
mixed, attaching itself to the Roman settlers. We have
already mentioned that it was in Spain, where the Roman
army first became a standing one, that distinct provincial
towns with Italian constitution were first organized — Carteia
17L 138. in 583 (iii. 214), Valentia in 616 (iii. 232), and at a later date
Palma and PoUentia (iii. 233). Although the interior was
still far from civilized, — the territory of the Vaccaeans, for
instance, being still mentioned long after this time as one
of the rudest and most repulsive places of abode for the
cultivated Italian — authors and inscriptions attest that as
early as the middle of the seventh century the Latin
language was in common use around New Carthage and else-
where along the coast. Gracchus first distinctly developed

CHAP, xii AND EDUCATION

roi

the idea of colonizing, or in other words of Romanizing,
the provinces of the Roman state by ItaUan emigration,
and endeavoured to carry it out ; and, although tlie con-
servative opposition resisted the bold jiroject, destroyed fur
the most part its attempted beginnings, and prevented its
continuation, yet the colony of Narbo was preserved,
important even of itself as extending the domain of the
Latin tongue, and far more important still as the landmark
of a great idea, the foundation-stone of a mighty structure
to come. The ancient Gallic, and in fact the modern
French, type of character, sprang out of that settlement,
and are in their ultimate origin creations of Gaius Gracchus.
But the Latin nationality not only filled the bounds of
Italy and began to pass beyond them ; it came also to
acquire intrinsically a deeper intellectual basis. We find
it in the course of creating a classical literature, and a
higher instruction of its own ; and, though in comparison
with the Hellenic classics and Hellenic culture we may feel
ourselves tempted to attach little value to the feeble hot-
house products of Italy, yet, so far as its historical develop-
ment was primarily concerned, the quality of the Latin
classical literature and the Latin culture was of far less
moment than the fact that they subsisted side by side
with the Greek ; and, sunken as were the contemporary
Hellenes in a literary point of view, one might well apply
in this case also the saying of the poet, that the living day-
labourer is better than the dead Achilles.

But, however rapidly and vigorously the I^itin language Hellenism
and nationality gain ground, they at the same time recog-
nize the Hellenic nationality as having an entirely equah
indeed an earlier and better title, and enter everj'where
into the closest alliance with it or become intermingled
with it in a joint development. The Italian revolution,
which otherwise levelled all the non-I.atin nationalities in
the peninsula, did not disturb the Greek cities of Tarentum,

192 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

Rhegium, Neapolis, Locri (iii. 519). In like manner Mas-
silia, although now enclosed by Roman territory, remained
continuously a Greek city and, just as such, firmly connected
with Rome. With the complete Latinizing of Italy the
growth of Hellenizing went hand in hand. In the higher
circles of Italian society Greek training became an integral

131. element of their native culture. The consul of 623, the
pofitifex maximus Publius Crassus, excited the astonishment
even of the native Greeks, when as governor of Asia he
delivered his judicial decisions, as the case required, some-
times in ordinary Greek, sometimes in one of the four
dialects which had become written languages. And if
the Italian literature and art for long looked steadily towards
the east, Hellenic literature and art now began to look
towards the west. Not only did the Greek cities in Italy
continue to maintain an active intellectual intercourse with
Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and confer on the Greek
poets and actors who had acquired celebrity there the like
recognition and the like honours among themselves ; in
Rome also, after the example set by the destroyer of Corinth

146. at his triumph in 608, the gymnastic and aesthetic recrea-
tions of the Greeks — competitions in wrestling as well as
in music, acting, reciting, and declaiming — came into
vogue.^ Greek men of letters even thus early struck root
in the noble society of Rome, especially in the Scipionic
circle, the most prominent Greek members of which — the
historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius — belong
rather to the history of Roman than of Greek development.
But even in other less illustrious circles similar relations
occur ; we may mention another contemporary of Scipio,
the philosopher Clitomachus, because his life at the same
time presents a vivid view of the great intermingling of

1 The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome before
146. 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists {TiyylTO-i) and
186. athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix. 22), and Greek fiute-plnyers,
167. tragedians, and pugilists in 587 (Pol. xxx. 13).

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION

'93

nations at this epoch. A native of Carthage, then a
disciple of Carneades at Athens, and afterwards his suc-
cessor in his professorship, Clitomaclius held intercourse
from Athens with the most cultivated men of Italy, the
historian Aulus Albinus and the poet Lucilius, and dedi-
cated on the one hand a scientific work to Lucius
Censorinus the Roman consul who opened the siege of
Carthage, and on the other hand a philosophic consolatory
treatise to his fellow-citizens who were conveyed to Italy
as slaves. While Greek literary men of note had hitherto
taken up their abode temporarily in Rome as ambassadors,
exiles, or otherwise, they now began to settle there ; for
instance, the already- mentioned Panaetius lived in the
house of Scipio, and the hexameter- maker Archias of
Antioch settled at Rome in 652 and supported himself 10«.
respectably by the art of improvising and by epic poems
on Roman consulars. Even Gaius Marius, who hardly
understood a line of his carmen and was altogether as ill
adapted as possible for a Maecenas, could not avoid
patronizing the artist in verse. While intellectual and
literary life thus brought the more genteel, if not the
purer, elements of the two nations into connection with
each other, on the other hand the arrival of troops of
slaves from Asia Minor and Syria and the mercantile immi-
gration from the Greek and half-Greek east brought the
coarsest strata of Hellenism — largely alloyed with Oriental
and generally barbaric ingredients — into contact with the
Italian proletariate, and gave to that also a Hellenic colour-
ing. The remark of Cicero, that new phrases and new
fashions first make their appearance in maritime towns,
probably had a primary reference to the semi-Hellenic
character of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium, where with
foreign wares foreign manners also first found admission
and became thence more widely diffused.

The immediate result of this complete revolution in the
vol.. IV 113

194 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

Mixture of relations of nationality was certainly far from pleasing.

peoples. Italy swarmed with Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews,
Egyptians, while the provinces swarmed with Romans ;
sharply defined national peculiarities everywhere came into
mutual contact, and were visibly worn off; it seemed as if
nothing was to be left behind but the general impress ot
utilitarianism. What the Latin character gained in diffusion
it lost in freshness ; especially in Rome itself, where the
middle class disappeared the soonest and most entirely,
and nothing was left but the grandees and the beggars,
both in like measure cosmopolitan. Cicero assures us that
90. about 660 the general culture in the Latin towns stood
higher than in Rome ; and this is confirmed by the litera-
ture of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest, and
most characteristic products, such as the national comedy
and the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described
as Latin, than as Roman. That the Italian Hellenism of
the lower orders was in reality nothing but a repulsive
cosmopolitanism tainted at once with all the extravagances
of culture and with a superficially whitewashed barbarism,
is self-evident ; but even in the case of the better society
the fine taste of the Scipionic circle did not remain the
permanent standard. The more the mass of society began
to take interest in Greek life, the more decidedly it resorted
not to the classical literature, but to the most modern and
frivolous productions of the Greek mind; instead of
moulding the Roman character in the Hellenic spirit, they
contented themselves with borrowing that sort of pastime
which set their own intellect to work as little as possible.
In this sense the Arpinate landlord Marcus Cicero, the
father of the orator, said that among the Romans, just as
among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth, the more he
understood Greek.

National This national decomposition is, like the whole age, far

decomposi- ^^^^ pleasing, but also like that age significant and

CHAP, xn AND EDUCATION 195

momentous. The circle of peoples, which we are ac-
customed to call the ancient world, advances from nn
outward union under the authority of Rome to an inward
union under the sway of the modern culture resting essen-
tially on Hellenic elements. Over the ruins of peoples of
the second rank the great historical compromise between
the two ruling nations is silently completed; the Greek
and Latin nationalities conclude mutual peace. The
Greeks renounce exclusive claims for their language in the
field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs in the field of
politics ; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand on a
footing of equality — restricted, it is true, and imperfect —
with Greek ; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign
ambassadors to speak Greek before the Roman senate
without an interpreter. The time heralds its approach,
when the Roman commonwealth will pass into a bilingual
state and the true heir of the throne and the ideas of
Alexander the Great will arise in the west, at once a
Roman and a Greek.

The suppression of the secondar)', and the mutual inter-
penetration of the two primary nationalities, which are
thus apparent on a general survey of national relations,
now fall to be more precisely exhibited in detail in the
several fields of religion, national education, literature, and
art.

The Roman religion was so intimately interwoven with Rdigioa
the Roman commonwealth and the Roman household — so
thoroughly in fact the pious reflection of the Roman bur-
gess-world— that the political and social revolution neces-
sarily overturned also the fabric of religion. The ancient
Italian popular faith fell to the ground ; over its ruins rose
— like the oligarchy and the tyrannis rising over the ruins
of the political commonwealth — on the one side unbelief,
state-religion, Hellenism, and on the other side superstition,
sectarianism, the religion of the Orientals. The germs

196 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

certainly of both, as indeed the germs of the poHtico-social
revohition also, may be traced back to the previous epoch
(iii. 1 09- 1 17). Even then the Hellenic culture of the
higher circles was secretly undermining their ancestral faith ;
Ennius introduced the allegorizing and historical versions
of the Hellenic religion into Italy ; the senate, which
subdued Hannibal, had to sanction the transference of the
worship of Cybele from Asia Minor to Rome, and to take
the most serious steps against other still worse superstitions,
particularly the Bacchanalian scandal. But, as during the
preceding period the revolution generally was rather pre-
paring its way in men's minds than assuming outward
shape, so the religious revolution was in substance, at any
rate, the work only of the Gracchan and SuUan age.
Greek Let US endeavour first to trace the tendency associating

philosophy, itself with Hellenism. The Hellenic nation, which bloomed
and faded far earlier than the Italian, had long ago passed
the epoch of faith and thenceforth moved exclusively in
the sphere of speculation and reflection ; for long there
had been no religion there — nothing but philosophy. But
even the philosophic activity of the Hellenic mind had,
when it began to exert influence on Rome, already left
the epoch of productive speculation far behind it, and had
arrived at the stage at which there is not only no origina-
tion of truly new systems, but even the power of appre-
hending the more perfect of the older systems begins to
wane and men restrict themselves to the repetition, soon
passing into the scholastic tradition, of the less complete
dogmas of their predecessors ; at that stage, accordingly,
when philosophy, instead of giving greater depth and
freedom to the mind, rather renders it shallow and imposes
on it the worst of all chains — chains of its own forging.
The enchanted draught of speculation, always dangerous,
is, when diluted and stale, certain poison. The contem-
porary Greeks presented it thus flat and diluted to the

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION 197

Romans, and these had not the judgment either to refuse
it or to go back from the living schoohiiasters to the dead
masters. Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of the sages
before Socrates, remained without material influence on
the Roman culture, although their illustrious names were
freely used, and their more easily understood writings were
probably read and translated. Accordingly the Romans be-
came in philosophy simply inferior scholars of bad teachers.

Besides the historico-rationalistic conception of religion, I>»ding
which resolved the myths into biographies of various
benefactors of the human race living in the grey dawn of
early times whom superstition had transformed into gods,
or Euhemerism as it was called (iii. 113), there were chiefly
three philosophical schools that came to be of importance
for Italy; viz. the two dogmatic schools of Epicurus (t 484) 270.
and Zeno ("f 491) and the sceptical school of Arcesilaus 263.
(t 513) and Carneades (541-625), or, to use the school- 241.
names, Epicureanism, the Stoa, and the newer Academy.
The last of these schools, which started from the impos- .Newer
sibility of assured knowledge and in its stead conceded as '^ ^'^^
possible only a provisional opinion sufficient for practical
needs, presented mainly a polemical aspect, seeing that it
caught every proposition of positive faith or of philosophic
dogmatism in the meshes of its dilemmas. So far it stands
nearly on a parallel with the older method of the sophists ;
except that, as may be conceived, the sophists made war
more against the popular faith, Carneades and his disciples
more against their philosophical colleagues. On the other
hand Epicurus and Zeno agreed both in their aim of ration- Epicurus
ally explaining the nature of things, and in their physiolo-
gical method, which set out from the conception of matter.
They diverged, in so far as Epicurus, following the atomic
theory of Democritus, conceived the first principle as rigid
matter, and evolved the manifoldness of things out of this
matter merely by mechanical variations; whereas Zeno,

igS NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, introduces
even into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and
a movement of fluctuation up and down. From this are
derived the further distinctions — that in the Epicurean
system the gods as it were did not exist or were at the most
a dream of dreams, while the Stoical gods formed the ever-
active soul of the world, and were as spirit, as sun, as God
powerful over the body, the earth, and nature ; that Epicurus
did not, while Zeno did, recognize a government of the world
and a personal immortality of the soul ; that the proper object
of human aspiration was according to Epicurus an absolute
equilibrium disturbed neither by bodily desire nor by mental
conflict, while it was according to Zeno a manly activity
always increased by the constant antagonistic efforts of the
mind and body, and striving after a harmony with nature
perpetually in conflict and perpetually at peace. But in
one point all these schools were agreed with reference to
religion, that faith as such was nothing, and had necessarily
to be supplemented by reflection — whether this reflection
might consciously despair of attaining any result, as did the
Academy ; or might reject the conceptions of the popular
faith, as did the school of Epicurus ; or might partly retain
them with explanation of the reasons for doing so, and
partly modify them, as did the Stoics.
Caraeades It was accordingly only a natural result, that the first
contact of Hellenic philosophy with the Roman nation
equally firm in faith and adverse to speculation should be
of a thoroughly hostile character. The Roman religion
was entirely right in disdaining alike the assaults and the
reasoned support of these philosophical systems, both of
which did away with its proper character. The Roman
state, which instinctively felt itself assailed when religion
was attacked, reasonably assumed towards the philosophers
the attitude which a fortress assumes towards the spies
of the army advancing to besiege it, and as early as

at Rome.

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION I99

593 dismissed the Greek philosophers along with the 161.
rhetoricians from Rome. In fact the very first dihut
of philosophy on a great scale in Rome was a formal
declaration of war against faith and morals. It was
occasioned by the occupation of Oropus by the Athenians,
a step which they commissioned three of the most esteemed
professors of philosophy, including Carneades the master of
the modern sophistical school, to justify before the senate
(599). The selection was so far appropriate, as the utterly 156.
scandalous transaction defied any justification in common
sense ; whereas it was quite in keeping with the circum-
stances of the case, when Carneades proved by thesis and
counter-thesis that exactly as many and as cogent reasons
might be adduced in praise of injustice as in praise of
justice, and when he showed in the best logical form that
with equal propriety the Athenians might be required to
surrender Oropus and the Romans to confine themselves
once more to their old straw huts on the Palatine. The
young men who were masters of the Greek language were
attracted in crowds by the scandal as well as by the rapid
and emphatic delivery of the celebrated man ; but on this
occasion at least Cato could not be found fault with, when
he not only bluntly enough compared the dialectic argu-
ments of the philosophers to the tedious dirges of the wail-
ing-women, but also insisted on the senate dismissing a
man who understood the art of making right wrong and
wrong right, and whose defence was in fact nothing but a
shameless and almost insulting confession of wrong. But
such dismissals had no great effect, more esi:>ecially as the
Roman youth could not be prevented from hearing philo-
sophic discourses at Rhodes and .Athens. Men became
accustomed first to tolerate philosophy at least as a
necessary evil, and ere long to seek for the Roman religion,
which in its simplicity was no longer tenable, a support in
foreign philosophy — a support which no doubt ruined it as

iod

NATIONALITY, RELIGION,

BOOK IV

Euhemer-
ism not an
adequate
support

faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture
decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms
of the popular creed. But this support could neither be
Euhemerism, nor the system of Carneades or of Epicurus.

The historical version of the myths came far too rudely
into collision with the popular faith, when it declared the
gods directly to be men ; Carneades called even their
existence in question, and Epicurus denied to them at
least any influence on the destinies of men. Between these
systems and the Roman religion no alliance was possible ;
they were proscribed and remained so. Even in the
writings of Cicero it is declared the duty of a citizen to
resist Euhemerism as prejudicial to religious worship ; and
if the Academic and the Epicurean appear in his dialogues,
the former has to plead the excuse that, while as a
philosopher he is a disciple of Carneades, as a citizen and
pontifex he is an orthodox confessor of the Capitoline
Jupiter, and the Epicurean has even ultimately to surrender
and be converted. No one of these three systems became
in any proper sense popular. The plain intelligible
character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain
power of attraction over the Romans, and in particular
produced only too deep an effect on the conventional
history of Rome with its at once childish and senile
conversion of fable into history ; but it remained without
material influence on the Roman religion, because the
latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable,
and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write
biographies of Zeus the first, second, and third. The
modern sophistry could only succeed where, as in Athens,
clever volubility was indigenous, and where, moreover, the
long series of philosophical systems that had come and
gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual rubbish.
Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything revolted
that was sound and honest in the Roman character so

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION

20 1

thoroughly addressing itself to action. Yet it found more
partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and
this was probably the reason why the police continued to
wage war against it longest and most seriously. But this
Roman Epicureanism was not so much a philosophic system
as a sort of philosophic mask, under which — very much
against the design of its strictly moral founder — thought-
less sensual enjoyment disguised itself for good society ;
one of the earliest adherents of this sect, for instance, Titus
Albucius, figures in the poems of Lucilius as the prototype
of a Roman Hellenizing to bad purpose.

Far different were the position and influence of the Roman
Stoic philosophy in Italy. In direct contrast to these °^
schools it attached itself to the religion of the land as
closely as science can at all accommodate itself to faith.
To the popular faith with its gods and oracles the Stoic
adhered on principle, in so far as he recognized in it an
instinctive knowledge, to which scientific knowledge was
bound to have regard and even in doubtful cases to
subordinate itself He believed in a different way from
the people rather than in different objects ; the essentially
true and supreme God was in his view doubtless the
world -soul, but every manifestation of the primitive God
was in its turn divine, the stars above all, but also the
earth, the vine, the soul of the illustrious mortal whom the
people honoured as a hero, and in fact every departed
spirit of a former man. This philosophy was really better
adapted for Rome than for the land where it first arose.
The objection of the pious believer, that the god of the
Stoic had neither sex nor age nor corporeality and was
converted from a person into a conception, had a meaning
in Greece, but not in Rome. The coarse allegorizing and
moral purification, which were characteristic of the Stoical
doctrine of the gods, destroyed the very marrow of the
Hellenic mythology ; but the plastic power of the Romans

202 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

scanty even in their epoch of simplicity, had produced no
more than a Hght veil enveloping the original intuition or
the original conception, out of which the divinity had
arisen — a veil that might be stripped off without special
damage. Pallas Athene might be indignant, when she
found herself suddenly transmuted into the conception of
memory : Minerva had hitherto been in reality not much
more. The supernatural Stoic, and the allegoric Roman,
theology coincided on the whole in their result. But, even
if the philosopher was obliged to designate individual
propositions of the priestly lore as doubtful or as erroneous
— as when the Stoics, for example, rejecting the doctrine of
apotheosis, saw in Hercules, Castor, and Pollux nothing
but the spirits of distinguished men, or as when they could
not allow the images of the gods to be regarded as
representations of divinity — it was at least not the habit of
the adherents of Zeno to make war on these erroneous
doctrines and to overthrow the false gods ; on the contrary,
they everywhere evinced respect and reverence for the
religion of the land even in its weaknesses. The incli-
nation also of the Stoa towards a casuistic morality and
towards a systematic treatment of the professional sciences
was quite to the mind of the Romans, especially of the
Romans of this period, who no longer like their fathers
practised in unsophisticated fashion self-government and
good morals, but resolved the simple morahty of their
ancestors into a catechism of allowable and non- allowable
actions ; whose grammar and jurisprudence, moreover,
urgently demanded a methodical treatment, without possess-
ing the ability to develop such a treatment of themselves.
Yv^itje So this philosophy thoroughly incorporated itself, as a

influence of plant borrowed no doubt from abroad but acclimatized on
Italian soil, with the Roman national economy, and we meet
its traces in the most diversified spheres of action. Its
earliest appearance beyond doubt goes further back ; but

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION 203

the Stoa was first raised to full influence in the higher
ranks of Roman society by means of the group which
gathered round Scipio Aemilianus. Panaetius of Rhodes, Panactius.
the instructor of Scipio and of all Scipio's intimate friends
in the Stoic philosophy, who was constantly in his train
and usually attended him even on journeys, knew how to
adapt the system to clever men of the world, to keep its
speculative side in the background, and to modify in some
measure the dryness of the terminology and the insipidity
of its moral catechism, more particularly by calling in the
aid of the earlier philosophers, among whom Scipio himself
had an especial predilection for the Socrates of Xenophon.
Thenceforth the most noted statesmen and scholars pro-
fessed the Stoic philosophy — among others Stilo and
Quintus Scaevola, the founders of scientific philology and
of scientific jurisprudence. The scholastic formality of
system, which thenceforth prevails at least externally in
these professional sciences and is especially associated with
a fanciful, charade-like, insipid method of etymologizing,
descends from the Stoa. But infinitely more important
was the new state- philosophy and state-religion, which
emanated from the blending of the Stoic philosophy and
the Roman religion. The speculative element, from the
first impressed with but little energy on the system of
Zeno, and still further weakened when that system found
admission to Rome — after the Greek schoolmasters had
already for a century been busied in driving this philosophy
into boys' heads and thereby driving the spirit out of it —
fell completely into the shade in Rome, where nobody
speculated but the money-changers ; little more was said
as to the ideal development of the God ruling in the soul
of man, or of the divine world-law. The Stoic philo-
sophers showed tiiemselves not insensible to the very
lucrative distinction of seeing their system raised into the
semi-official Roman state-philosophy, and proved altogether

204 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

more pliant than from their rigorous principles we should
have expected. Their doctrine as to the gods and the
state soon exhibited a singular family resemblance to the
actual institutions of those who gave them bread ; instead
of illustrating the cosmopolitan state of the philosopher,
they made their meditations turn on the wise arrangement
of the Roman magistracies ; and while the more refined
Stoics such as Panaetius had left the question of divine
revelation by wonders and signs open as a thing conceiv-
able but uncertain, and had decidedly rejected astrology,
his immediate successors contended for tliat doctrine of
revelation or, in other words, for the Roman augural
discipline as rigidly and firmly as for any other maxim of
the school, and made extremely unphilosophical concessions
even to astrology. The leading feature of the system came
more and more to be its casuistic doctrine of duties. It
suited itself to the hollow pride of virtue, in which the
Romans of this period sought their compensation amidst
the various humbling circumstances of their contact with
the Greeks ; and it put into formal shape a befitting dog-
matism of morality, which, like every well-bred system of
morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole
the most complaisant indulgence in the details.^ Its
practical results can hardly be estimated as much more
than that, as we have said, two or three families of rank ate
poor fare to please the Stoa.
State- Closely allied to this new state-philosophy — or, strictly

reigion. speaking, its other side^was the new state-religion ; the
essential characteristic of which was the conscious retention,
for reasons of outward convenience, of the principles of the
popular faith, which were recognized as irrational. One of
the most prominent men of the Scipionic circle, the Greek
Polybius, candidly declares that the strange and ponderous
ceremonial of Roman religion was invented solely on account

1 A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis, iii. 12, 13.

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION 205

of the multitude, which, as reason had no power over it,
required to be ruled by signs and wonders, while people of
intelligence had certainly no need of religion. Beyond
doubt the Roman friends of Tolybius substantially shared
these sentiments, although they did not oppose science and
religion to each other in so gross and downright a fashion.
Neither Laelius nor Scipio Aemilianus can have looked on
the augural discipline, which Polybius has primarily in view,
as anything else than a political institution ; yet the national
spirit in them was too strong and their sense of decorum too
delicate to have permitted their coming forward in public
with such hazardous explanations. But even in the fol-
lowing generation the poniifex tnaximus Quintus Scaevola
(consul in 659 ; iii. 481 , p. 84) set forth at least in his oral 9i
instructions in law without hesitation the propositions, that
there were two sorts of religion — one philosophic, adapted to
the intellect, and one traditional, not so adapted ; that the
former was not fitted for the religion of the state, as it con-
tained various things which it was useless or even injurious
for the people to know ; and that accordingly the traditional
religion of the state ought to remain as it stood. The
theology of Varro, in which the Roman religion is treated
throughout as a state institution, is merely a further deve-
lopment of the same principle. The state, according to his
teaching, was older than the gods of the state as the painter
is older than the picture ; if the question related to making
the gods anew, it would certainly be well to make and to
name them after a manner more befitting and more in
theoretic accordance with the parts of the world-soul, and
to lay aside the images of the gods which only excited
erroneous ideas,^ and the mistaken system of sacrifice; but,
since these institutions had been once established, every

* In Varro's satire, "The .Xborigines." he sarcastically set forth how
the primitive men had not bt-cn content with the God who alone is rcccj^-
nized by thought, but had longed after puppets and cfTigies.

2o6 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, hook iv

good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part,
that the "common man " might learn rather to set a higher
value on, than to contemn, the gods. That the common
man, for whose benefit the grandees thus surrendered their
judgment, now despised this faith and sought his remedy
elsewhere, was a matter of course and will be seen in the
sequel. Thus then the Roman " high church " was ready, a
sanctimonious body of priests and Levites, and an unbeliev-
ing people. The more openly the religion of the land was
declared a political institution, the more decidedly the poli-
tical parties regarded the field of the state-church as an
arena for attack and defence ; which was especially, in a
daily-increasing measure, the case with augural science and
with the elections to the priestly colleges. The old and
natural practice of dismissing the burgess-assembly, when a
thunderstorm came on, had in the hands of the Roman
augurs grown into a prolix system of various celestial omens
and rules of conduct associated therewith ; in the earlier
portion of this period it was even directly enacted by the
Aelian and Fufi^in law, that every popular assembly should
be compelled to disperse if it should occur to any of the
higher magistrates to look for signs of a thunderstorm in
the sky ; and the Roman oligarchy was proud of the cunning
device which enabled them thenceforth by a single pious
fraud to impress the stamp of invalidity on any decree of
the people.
Priestly Conversely, the Roman opposition rebelled against the

ancient practice under which the four principal colleges of
priests filled up their own ranks when vacancies arose, and
demanded the extension of popular election to the stalls
themselves, as it had been previously introduced with refer-
ence to the presidents, of these colleges (iii. 57). This was
certainly inconsistent with the spirit of these corporations ;
but they had no right to complain of it, after they had
become themselves untrue to their spirit, and had played

colleges.

CHAP. XII AND KDUCATION 207

into the hands of the government at its request by fur-
nishing reh'gious pretexts for the annulling of political
proceedings. This affair became an apple of contention
between the parties : the senate beat off the first attack in
609, on which occasion the Scipionic circle especially turned 145l
the scale for the rejection of the proposal ; on the other
hand the project passed in 650 with the proviso already 104.
made in reference to the election of the presidents for the
benefit of scrupulous consciences, that not the whole bur-
gesses but only the lesser half of the tribes should make
the election (iii. 463) ; finally Sulla restored the right of
co-optation in its full extent (p. 115).

With this care on the part of the conservatives for the Practical
pure national religion, it was of course quite compatible "^'■' "'^'**
that the circles of the highest rank should openly make a
jest of it. The practical side of the Roman priesthood was
the priestly cuisine; the augural and pontifical banquets
were as it were the official gala-days in the life of a Roman
epicure, and several of them formed epochs in the history
of gastronomy : the banquet on the accession of the augur
Quintus Hortensius for instance brought roast peacocks
into vogue. Religion was also found very useful in giving
greater zest to scandal. It was a favourite recreation of
the youth of quality to disfigure or mutilate the images of
the gods in the streets by night (iii. 480). Ordinary love
affairs had for long been common, and intrigues with
married women began to become so ; but an amour with a
Vestal virgin was as piquant as the intrigues with nuns and
the cloister- adventures in the world of the Decamerone.
The scandalous affair of 640 seq. is well known, in which HI
three Vestals, daughters of the noblest families, and their
paramours, young men likewise of the best houses, were
brought to trial for unchastity first before the pontifical
college, and then, when it sought to hush up the matter,
before an extraordinary court instituted by sjKcial decree

2o8 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

of the people, and were all condemned to death. Such
scandals, it is true, sedate people could not approve ; but
there was no objection to men finding positive religion to
be a folly in their familiar circle ; the augurs might, when
one saw another performing his functions, smile in each
other's face without detriment to their religious duties.
We learn to look favourably on the modest hypocrisy of
kindred tendencies, when we compare with it the coarse
shamelessness of the Roman priests and Levites. The
olScial religion was quite candidly treated as a hollow
framework, now serviceable only for political machinists ;
in this respect with its numerous recesses and trap-doors it
might and did serve either party, as it happened. Most of
all certainly the oligarchy recognized its palladium in the
state-religion, and particularly in the augural disciphne ;
but the opposite party also made no resistance in point of
principle to an institute, which had now merely a semblance
of life ; they rather regarded it, on the whole, as a bulwark
which might pass from the possession of the enemy into
their own.
Oriental In sharp contrast to this ghost of religion which we have

religions in j^g^ described stand the different foreign worships, which
this epoch cherished and fostered, and which were at least
undeniably possessed of a very decided vitality. They meet
us everywhere, among genteel ladies and lords as well as
among the circles of the slaves, in the general as in the
trooper, in Italy as in the provinces. It is incredible to
what a height this superstition already reached. When in
the Cimbrian war a Syrian prophetess, Martha, offered to
furnish the senate with ways and means for the vanquishing
of the Germans, the senate dismissed her with contempt ;
nevertheless the Roman matrons and Marius' own wife in
particular despatched her to his head-quarters, where the
general readily received her and carried her about with
him till the Teutones were defeated. The leaders of very

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION 209

different parties in the civil war, Marius, Octavius, Sulla,
coincided in believing omens and oracles. During its
course even the senate was under the necessity, in the
troubles of 667, of consenting to issue directions in accord- 87.
ance with the fancies of a crazy prophetess. It is significant
of the ossification of the Romano-Hellenic religion as well
as of the increased craving of the multitude after stronger
religious stimulants, that superstition no longer, as in the
Bacchic mysteries, associates itself with the national religion;
even the Etruscan mysticism is already left behind ; the
worships matured in the sultry regions of the east appear
throughout in the foremost rank. The copious introduction
of elements from Asia Minor and Syria into the population,
partly by the import of slaves, partly by the augmented
traffic of Italy with the east, contributed very greatly to
this result.

The power of these foreign religions is very distinctly
apparent in the revolts of the Sicilian slaves, who for the
most part were natives of Syria. Eunus vomited fire,
Athenion read the stars ; the plummets thrown by the
slaves in these wars bear in great part the names of gods,
those of Zeus and Artemis, and especially that of the
mysterious Mother who had migrated from Crete to Sicily
and was zealously worshipped there. A similar effect was
produced by commercial intercourse, particularly after the
wares of Berytus and Alexandria were conveyed directly
to the Italian ports ; Ostia and Puteoli became the great
marts not only for Syrian unguents and Egyptian linen, but
also for the faith of the east. Everywhere the mingling
of religions was constantly on the increase along with the
mingling of nations. Of all allowed worships the most
popular was that of the Pessinuntine .Mother of the Gods,
which made a deep impression on the multitude by its
eunuch-celibacy, its banquets, its music, its begging pro-
cessions, and all its sensuous pomp ; the collections from
VOL. IV 114

2IO NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

house to house were already felt as an economic burden.
In the most dangerous time of the Cimbrian war Battaces
the high-priest of Pessinus appeared in person at Rome, in
order to defend the interests of the temple of his goddess
there which was alleged to have been profaned, addressed
the Roman people by the special orders of the Mother of
the Gods, and performed also various miracles. Men of
sense were scandalized, but the women and the great
multitude were not to be debarred from escorting the
prophet at his departure in great crowds. Vows of
pilgrimage to the east were already no longer un-
common ; Marius himself, for instance, thus undertook a
pilgrimage to Pessinus ; in fact even thus early (first in
101. 653) Roman burgesses devoted themselves to the eunuch-
priesthood.
Secret But the unallowed and secret worships were naturally

worships. gj.jjj more popular. As early as Cato's time the Chaldean
horoscope-caster had begun to come into competition with
the 'Etruscan karuspex and the Marsian bird-seer (iii. 116);
star-gazing and astrology were soon as much at home in
139, Italy as in their dreamy native land. In 615 the Roman
praetor peregrinus directed all the Chaldeans to evacuate
Rome and Italy within ten days. The same fate at the
same time befel the Jews, who had admitted Italian prose-
lytes to their sabbath. In hke manner Scipio had to clear
the camp before Numantia from soothsayers and pious
97. impostors of every sort. Some forty years afterwards (657)
it was even found necessary to prohibit human sacrifices.
The wild worship of the Cappadocian Ma, or, as the
Romans called her, Bellona, to whom the priests in their
festal processions shed their own blood as a sacrifice,
and the gloomy Egyptian worships began to make their
appearance ; the former Cappadocian goddess appeared in
a dream to Sulla, and of the later Roman communities
of Isis and Osiris the oldest traced their origin to the

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION 211

Sullan period. Men had become perplexed not merely as
to the old faith, but as to their very selves ; the fearful
crises of a fifty years' revolution, the instinctive feeling that
the civil war was slill far from being at an end, increased
the anxious suspense, the gloomy perplexity of the multi-
tude. Restlessly the wandering imagination climbed every
height and fathomed every abyss, where it fancied that
it might discover new prospects or new light amidst the
fatalities impending, might gain fresh hopes in the desperate
struggle against destiny, or perhaps might find merely fresh
alarms. A portentous mysticism found in the general
distraction — political, economic, moral, religious — the
soil which was adapted for it, and grew with alarming
rapidity ; it was as if gigantic trees had grown by night
out of the earth, none knew whence or whither, and this
very marvellous rapidity of growth worked new wonders
and seized like an epidemic on all minds not thoroughly
fortified.'— -'^

Just as in the sphere of reljgion, the revolution begun in Education,
the previous epoch was now completed also in the sphere
qf ^Hiirntinn nnd rii|mrp We have already_shown how
the fundamental idea of the Roman system — f;ivil egunlity
— had already during the sixth century begun to bejjnder-
mined in this field also. jEven in the time of Pictor and
Cato Greek culture_\vas widely diffused in Rome, and there
was a native Roman culture ; but neither of them had then
got beyond the initial stage. Cato's encyclopaedia shows
tolerably what was understood at this period by a Romano-
Qreek model trainings (iii. 195); it was little more than an
embodiment of the knowledge of the old Roman house-
holder, and truly, when compared with the Hellenic culture
of the period, scanty enough. At how low a stage the
average instruction of youth in Rome still stood jit the
beginning of the seventh century, may be inferred from the
expressions of Polybius, who in this one respect prgipinently

struction.

212 NATIONALITY, REIJGION, book iv

censures the criminal indifference of the Romans as com-
pared with the intelligent private and public care of his
countrymen ; no Hellene, not even Polybius himself, could
rightly enter into the deeper idea of civil equality that lay
at the root of this indifference.

Now^hecase was altered. Just as the naive popular faith
was superseded by an enlightened Stoic supernaturalism, so
in^eBucatFon alongside of the simple popular instruction a
special training,^ an exclusive Tiiimanitas, developed itself
and eradicated the last remnants of the old social equality.
It will not be superfluous to cast a glance at the aspect
assumed by the new instruction of the_young, both the
Greek and the higher Latin.
GreeJiJn- It was a singular circumstance that the same man, who

in a political point of view definitively vanquished the
Hellenic nation, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was at the_same
time the first or one_of the first who fully recognized the
Hellenic civilization as — what it has tlienceforth continued
to be beyond dispute — the civilization of the ancient world.
He was himself indeed an old man before it was granted to
him, with the Homeric poems in his mind, to stand before
the Zeus of Phidias ; but his heart was young enough to
carry home the full sunshine of Hellenic beauty and the
unconquerable longing after the golden apples of the
Hesperides in his soul ; poets and artists had found in
the foreigner a more earnest and cordial devotee than was
any of the wise men of the Greece of those days. He
made no epigram on Homer or Phidias, but he had his
chilHren introduced Into the^realms of intellect. Without
neglecting their national education, so far as there was
such, he made provision like the Greeks for the physical
developmenToFfiTs boys, not indeed by gymnastic exercises
which were according to Roman notions inadmissible, but
by instruction in the chase, which was among the jGreeks
developed almost like an art ; and he-elevated their Greek

CHAP, xii AND EDUCATION 213

mstruction in such a way that the language was no longer
jnerely learned and jjractised for the sake of speaking,
but after the Greek fashion the whole subject-matter of
general liigherculturewas associated with the language
and dev'doped out of it — embracing, first of all, the
knowledge of Greek literature with the mythological and
historical information necessary for understanding it, and
then rhetoric and philosophy. The library of king Perseus
was the only portion of the Macedonian spoil that Paullus
took for himself, with the view of presenting it to his
sons. Even Greek painters and sculptors were found in his
train and completed the aesthetic training of his chjldren.
That the time was past when men could in this field pre-
serve a merely repellent attitude as regarded Hellenism, had
been felt even by Cato ; the better classes had probably
now a jpresentiment that^ the noble substance of Roman
character was less endangered by Hellenism as a whole,
than by Hellenism mutilated and rnijshapen : the mass of
the upper society of Rome and Italy went along with the
new mode. There had^ been for long no want of Gxeek
schoolmasters in Rome ; now they arrived in troops — and ^
as teachers not merely of the language but of literature and
culture in general — at tlie newly -opened lucrative market
for the sale of their wisdom, ^reektutors and teachers of
philosophy, who, even if they were not slaves, were as a
rule accounted as servants,^ were now permanent inmates
in the palaces of Rome ; people speculated in them, and
there is a statement that 200,000 sesterces (^2000) were
paid for a Greek literary slave of the first rank. As early
as593 there existed in the capital a number of special 1*^-
establishments for the practice of Greek declamation.

' Cicero says thai he treated his learned slavi- ' . ' ;s more respect-
fully than Scipio treated I'anaetius, and in the ,>c it is Mid in
I^ucilius —

Paenula, si quatrij, caiileriu , itri'u , ift^tstrt
Utilior mihi, quam sapieru.

214 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, book iv

Several distinguished names already occur among these
Roman teachers ; the philosopher Panaetius has been
already^ mentioned (p. 203) ; the esteemed_gramrnarian
Crates of Mallus in Cilicia, the conteinporary arid^ equal

169. rival of Aristarchus7found_about 585 at Rome an audience

for the recitation and illustration, language, and matter of

■ the_Homej;i^__poems. It is true that this new mode of

juvenile^instruction, reYOJutionary and antLnational as it

was, encountered partially the resistance of the government;

161. but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities in 593
fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained
(chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief
magistrates) like all similar commands without any result
worth mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there
were still _doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with
his views, but there was^lioTIrther action. [The higher <g^
instruction in Greek and in the sciences of Greek_cuiture
remained thenceforth recognized as an essential part of
Italian training]
iiaun-i»- But by its side there sprang up also a higher Latin

instructioa We have shown in_the_prey^usjepoch_how ^

Latin_elementary instruction raised jts character ; .how the
.place .Qfjth£.ILstelve, Tables was taken by the Latin Odyssey
as a sort ofimproved primer, and the Roman boy was
now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-
tongue by means of this translation, as the Greek by means
of^the original : how noted teachers of the Greek language
and literature, ^Andronicus, Ennjus, andT others, who already
probably taught not children jpropejjy so called, but boys
grojving up to maturity and young men, did not disdain to
give instruction in the mothgr^tongue along with the Greek.
These were the first steps towards a^jgher JLalin^nsjtruc-
tionT^BuITh^y'didriioFai^^er^f^ such an instruction itself.
Instruction in a language cannot go beyond the elementary
stage, so long as it lacks a literature. It was not until

struction.

1

CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION 21$

there _\vere not merely Latin schoolbooks but a I^tin
literature, and this literature already somewhat rounded-
off in the works of the classics of the sixth century, that
the mother- tongue and the native literature truly enjtered
into the circle of the elements of higher culture ; and the
ernancipation from the Greek schoolmasters was now not
slow to follow. Stirred up by the Homeric prelections of gyblic
Crates, cultivated J^omans began to read the recitative p^^j^^i "
works of their ^^n literature, the Punic War of Naevius, j5Hii5«-
the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems

^

of Lucilius first to a select circle, and then in public on —
set days and in presence of a great concourse, and oc-
casionally also to treat them critically after the precedent
of^the Homerjc grammarians. These literary prelections,
which cultivated ^^/^//a/?// {litterati') held gratuitously,
were not formally a part of juvepile^ instruction, but were
vet an essential means of introducing the youth to the
understanding_and the discussion of the classic Latin
litsraLure.

The formation of Latin oratory took place in a similar Rhctot^
w^. The Roman youth of rank, who were even at an *=-i£lH-
carly age incited to come forward in public with panegyrics
^pd for^nfsir spegnhes, can never have lacked exercises in
oratory ; but it was only at this epoch, and in consequence
of the new exclusive culture, that there arose a rhetoric
pro£erl^_so_called, Marcus Lepidus Porcina (consul in
6j7) is mentioned as Uie first Roman advocate who fechni- 137.
cally handled the language and subject-matter; thfi_two
famous_adyocates of the Marian age, the masculine and
vigorous Marcus Antonius_(6o^-r_66xLgnd the polished 143-87.
and chaste orajor Lucius Crassus (614-663) were already 140-91.
rnmplptp fht^toricians. The exercises of the young mqrL
in speaking increased naturally in extejit and^mporiance,
butstillremainedTlust like the exercises in Latin literature,
essentially limited to the personal attendance of the bc;

2l6

NATIONALITY, RELIGION,

BOOK IV

Course-of
literature
and
rhetoric.

pinner on the master of the art so astobe trained byjiis
example and his instructions.

Eprmal instruction both in Latin hterature and in Latin
100. rhetoric was given first about 650 by Lucius AeUus Prae-
coninus of Lanuvium, called the "penman" {Siilo), a dis-
tinguished .RonigJ> knight of strict conservative views, who
read Plautus and similar works with a select circle of
younger men — including Varro and Cicero — ^and some-
times also went over outlines of speeches with the authors,
or put similar outlInes~ihto tTTe hands of his friends. .This
was instruction, but Stilo was not a profesjional school-
master; he taught literature and rhetoric, just as juris-
prudence was taught at RomeT^in the character of a senior
friend of^spiring youngs men, not of a man hired and-
hojding himself at every one's conimand.

But about his time began also the scholastic higher
instruction in Latin, separated as well from elementary
Latin as from Greek instruction, and imparted in special
establishments by paid masters, ordinarily manumitted
slaves. That its spirit and method were throughout
borrowed from the exercises in the Greek literature and
language, was a matter of course ; and the scholars also
consisted, as at these exercises, ofjyouths, and not of boys.
This Latin instruction was soon divided like the Greek
into two courses ; in so far as jmp^ Latin literature was
first the subject of scientific lectures, and then a technical
introduction^was given to the preparation of panegyrics,
public, and forensic orations. The first ^Roman school of
literature was_opened about Stilo's time by Marcus Saevius
jtiicanor Posturnus, the first separate school for Latin
90. rhetoric about 660 by Lucius Plotius Gallus ; but ordin-
arily instructions in rhetoric__were_also given in the Latin
schools of literature. This new Latin school -instruction
wasofthe most comprehensive importance. The intro-
duction to the knowledge of Latin literature and Latin

CHAP, xii AND EDUCATION 217

oratory, such as had formerly been imparted by connois-
seurs and masters of high position, had preserved a certain.
independence^ relation to the Greeks. The judges of
Janguage_and_thejmasters qf^oratorj^were doubtless under
the influence of Hellenism, but not absolutely under that
of the Greek school -grammar and school-rhetoric; the
latter m particular was decidedly an object of dread. The
pride as well as the sound common sense of the, Romans
4£inurredto^e ^j;eek^ assertion that the ability to
sgeak_qf_things, which the orator understood and felt, in-
telligibly and attractively to his peers iii^the mother-tongue
could he learned in the school by school-rules. ^ the
solid practical advocate the procedure of the Greek rhetori-
cians, so totally estranged from-Iife, could not but appear
\yorse for the be.ii^inner than no preparation at all ; io^the
man of thorough culture and matured by. the experience
of life, the Greek rhetoric seemed shallow and repulsive ;
while the man of serious conservative views did not fail
to, observe, the close affinity between a professionally de-
.ye loped rhetoric and the trade of the demagogue. Accord-
ijigly the Scipionic circle hajLsliawn tIi£jnost bitter hosti-
lity tqjth^rhetoricians, and, if Greek declamations before
paid masters were tolerated doubtless primarily as exercises
in speaking Greek, Greek rhetpnc did not thereby find
its way either into Latin oratory or into Latin oratorical
instruction, ^iit in the new Latin rhetorical schools the
Roman youths were trained as meii and public orators by
discussing in pairs rhetorical theines ; they accused Ulysses.
who was round beside the corpse of Ajax with the latter's
bloody sword, of the murder of his comrade in arms, or
upheld his innocence ; they charged Orestes with the
murder of^his mother, or undertook Jo defend him; or
perhaps they helped Hannibal with a supplementary good
advice as to the question whether he would do better to
comply with the invitalion to Rome, or to remain in

2i8 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, AND EDUCATION book IV

Carthage, or to take flight. It was natural that the
Catonian opposition should once more bestir itself against
these offensive and pernicious conflicts of words. The
92, censors of 662 issued a warning to teachers and parents
n^t to allow the young^men to spend the whole day in
exercises, whereof theIF~ancestors~ had known nothing ;
and the man, from whom this warning came, was no less
than the first forensic orator of his age,_Lucius Licinius
Crassus. Of course the Cassandra ^dcejn_ vain ; de-
clamatory exercises in Latin on the current themes of the
Greek schools became a permanent ingredient in_^the
education of Roman youth, arid contributed their part to
educate the very boys as forensic and political players
and to stifle in the bud all earnest and true eloquence.

As the aggregate result of this modern Roman educa-
tion there sprang up the new idea of "humanity," as it
was called, which consisted partly of a more_or less super-
ficial appropriation of the aesthetic culture of the Hellenes,
partly of a privileged Latin^jculture as an imitation ^r
mutilated copy of the Greek. This new humanity, j,sjthe^
very name indicates, renounced the specific^haracteristics
of_Roman_]ife, nay even came forward in opposition to
them, and combined in itself, just like our closely kindred
" general culture," a nationally cosmopolitan and socially
exclusive character. Here too we trace the revolution,
which separated classes and blended nations.

( MAF. xiii LITERATURE AND ART ai9

CHAPTER XIII

LITERATURE AND ART

The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary Literary
point of view, a vigorous and great age. It is true that we '■^'^"°"-
do not find in the field of authorship any more than in
that of politics a man of the first rank ; Naevius, Ennius,
Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively authors of distinctly-marked
individuality, were not in the highest sense men of creative
talent ; nevertheless we perceive in the soaring, stirring,
bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and historic attempts,
that these rest on the gigantic struggles of the Punic wars.
Much IS only artificially transplanted, there are various
faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art and the
language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and
national elements are quaintly cpnjoined ; the whole per-
formance betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and
lacks independence and completeness ; yet there exists in
the poets and authors of that age, if not the full power to
reach their high aim, at any rate the courage to compete
with and the hope of rivalling the Greeks. It is othenvise
in the epoch before us. The morning mists fell ; what had
been begun in the fresh feeling of the national strength
hardened amidst war, with youthful want of insight into
the difficulty of the undertaking and into the measure of
their own talent, but also with youthful delight in and love
to the work, could not be carried farther now, when on the

220 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

one hand the dull sultriness of the approaching revolu-
tionary storm began to fill the air, and on the other hand
the eyes of the more intelligent were gradually opened to
the incomparable glory of Greek poetry and art and to the
very modest artistic endowments of their own nation. The
literature of the sixth century had arisen from the influence
of Greek art on half-cultivated, but excited and susceptible
minds. The increased Hellenic culture of the seventh
called forth a literary reaction, which destroyed the germs
of promise contained in those simple imitative attempts by
the winter-frost of reflection, and rooted up the wheat and
the tares of the older type of literature together.
Scipionic This reaction proceeded primarily and chiefly from the

circle • •

circle which assembled around Scipio Aemilianus, and
whose most prominent members among the Roman world
of quality were, in addition to Scipio himself, his elder

140. friend and counsellor Gaius Laelius (consul in 614) and
Scipio's younger companions, Lucius Furius Philus (consul

136. in 618) and Spurius Mummius, the brother of the destroyer
of Corinth, among the Roman and Greek literati the
comedian Terence, the satirist Lucilius, the historian
Polybius, and the philosopher Panaetius. Those who were
familiar with the Iliad, with Xenophon, and with Menander,
could not be greatly impressed by the Roman Homer, and
still less by the bad translations of the tragedies of
Euripides which Ennius had furnished and Pacuvius con-
tinued to furnish. While patriotic considerations might
set bounds to criticism in reference to the native chron-
icles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed shafts
against "the dismal figures from the complicated ex-
positions of Pacuvius " ; and similar severe, but not unjust
criticisms of Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius — all those poets
" who appeared to have a licence to talk pompously and to
reason illogically " — are found in the polished author of
the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written at the close

CHAP. XIII LITERATURE AND ART 221

of this period. People shrugged their shoulders at the
interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome
had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and
Diphilus. Half smiling, half envious, they turned away
from the inadequate attempts of a dull age, which that circle
probably regarded somewhat as a mature man regards the
poetical effusions of his youth ; despairing of the trans-
plantation of the marvellous tree, they allowed the higher
species of art in poetry and prose substantially to fall into
abeyance, and restricted themselves in these dei)artments
to an intelligent enjoyment of foreign masterpieces. The
productiveness of this epoch displayed itself chiefly in the
subordinate fields of the lighter comedy, the poetical
miscellany, the political pamphlet, and the professional
sciences. The literary cue was correctness, in the style of
art and especially in the language, which, as a more limited
circle of persons of culture became separated from the
body of the people, was in its turn divided into the classical
Latin of higher society and the vulgar Latin of the common
people. The prologues of Terence promise "pure Latin";
warfare against faults of language forms a chief element of
the Lucilian satire; and with this circumstance is connected
the fact, that composition in Greek among the Romans
now falls decidedly into the shade. In so far certainly
there is an improvement ; inadequate efforts occur in this
epoch far less frequently ; performances in their kind
complete and thoroughly pleasing occur far oftcner than
before or afterwards ; in a linguistic point of view Cicero
calls the age of Laclius and Scifno the golden age of pure
unadulterated Latin. Li like manner literary activity
gradually rises in public opinion from a trade to an art.
At the beginning of this period the preparation of theatrical
pieces at any rate, if not the publication of recitative poems,
was still regarded as not becoming for the Roman of
quality ; Pacuvius and Terence lived by their pieces ; the

222 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

writing of dramas was entirely a trade, and not one of
golden produce. About the time of Sulla the state of
matters had entirely changed. The remuneration given to
actors at this time proves that even the favourite dramatic
poet might then lay claim to a payment, the high amount
of which removed the stigma. By this means composing
for the stage was raised into a liberal art ; and we accord-
ingly find men of the highest aristocratic circles, such as
90. 87. Lucius Caesar (aedile in 664, t 667), engaged in writing
for the Roman stage and proud of sitting in the Roman
" poet's club " by the side of the ancestorless Accius. Art
gains in sympathy and honour ; but the enthusiasm has
departed in life and in literature. The fearless self-
confidence, which makes the poet a poet, and which is
very decidedly apparent in Plautus especially, is found in
none of those that follow; the Epigoni of the men that
fought with Hannibal are correct, but feeble.
Tragedy. Let US first glance at the Roman dramatic literature and

the stage itself. Tragedy has now for the first time her
specialists ; the tragic poets of this epoch do not, like those
of the preceding, cultivate comedy and epos side by side.
The appreciation of this branch of art among the writing
and reading circles was evidently on the increase, but tragic
poetry itself hardly improved. We now meet with the
national tragedy {praetexta), the creation of Naevius, only
in the hands of Pacuvius to be mentioned immediately —
an after-growth of the Ennian epoch. Among the probably
numerous poets who imitated Greek tragedies two alone
Pacuvius. acquired a considerable name. Marcus Pacuvius from
219-129. Brundisium (535 -<r. 625) who in his earlier years earned
his livelihood in Rome by painting and only composed
tragedies when advanced in life, belongs as respects both
his years and his style to the sixth rather than the seventh
century, although his poetical activity falls within the latter.
He composed on the whole after the manner of his country-

CHAF. xiii LITERATURE AND ART 223

man, uncle, and master Ennius. Polishing more carefully
and aspiring to a higher strain than his predecessor, he was
regarded by favourable critics of art afterwards as a mode)
of artistic poetry and of rich style : in the fragments, how-
ever, that have reached us proofs are not wanting to justify
the censure of the poet's language by Cicero and the
censure of his taste by Lucilius ; his language appears
more rugged than that of his predecessor, his style of
composition pompous and punctilious.^ There are traces
that he like Ennius attached more value to philosophy
than to religion ; but he did not at any rate, like the latter,
prefer dramas chiming in with neological views and preach-
ing sensuous passion or modern enlightenment, and drew
without distinction from Sophocles or from Euripides — of
that poetry with a decided special aim, which almost stamps
Ennius with genius, there can have been no vein in the
younger poet.

More readable and adroit imitations of Greek tragedy Accius.
were furnished by Pacuvius' younger contemporary, Lucius
Accius, son of a freedman of Pisaurura (584-after 651), 170-108
with the exception of Pacuvius the only notable tragic
poet of the seventh century. An active author also in the

' Thus in the Paulus, an original piece, the following line occurred,
probably in the description of the pass of Pythium (ii. 506) : —

Qua trix caprigeno gineri gradilis grissio est.
.\nd in another piece the hearers are expected to understand the following
description —

Quadrufes tardigrada agrestis humilis cufera,

Capile brevi, cervice anguina, (uptctu truci,

Eviicerata inanima cum animali sono.

To which they naturally reply —

Ita saeptuosa dictione abs te datur.
Quod conjectura sapiens aegre contuit ;
Non inlellegimus, nisi si aptrie dixeris.

Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to. Such
enigmas, moreover, were not wantmg even among the .\ttic tragedians,
who on that account were often and sharply taken to task by the Middle
Comfdv.

224 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

field of literary history and grammar, he doubtless laboured
to introduce instead of the crude manner of his predecessors
greater purity of language and style into Latin tragedy ; yet
even his inequality and incorrectness were emphatically
censured by men of strict observance like Lucilius.
Greek Far greater activity and far more important results are

come y. apparent in the field of comedy. At the very commence-
ment of this period a remarkable reaction set in against
Terence. the sort of comedy hitherto prevalent and popular. Its
196-159. representative Terentius (558—595) is one of the most
interesting phenomena, in a historical point of view, in
Roman literature. Born in Phoenician Africa, brought in
early youth as a slave to Rome and there introduced to
the Greek culture of the day, he seemed from the very first
destined for the vocation of giving back to the new Attic
comedy that cosmopolitan character, which in its adaptation
to the Roman public under the rough hands of Naevius,
Plautus, and their associates it had in some measure lost.
Even in the selection and employment of models the
contrast is apparent between him and that predecessor
whom alone we can now compare with him. Plautus
chooses his pieces from the whole range of the newer Attic
comedy, and by no means disdains the livelier and more
popular comedians, such as Philemon ; Terence keeps
almost exclusively to Menander, the most elegant, polished,
and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy. The
method of working up several Greek pieces into one Latin
is retained by Terence, because in fact from the state ot
the case it could not be avoided by the Roman editors ;
but it is handled with incomparably more skill and careful-
ness. The Plautine dialogue beyond doubt departed very
frequently from its models ; Terence boasts of the verbal
adherence of his imitations to the originals, by which
however we are not to understand a verbal translation
in our sense. The not unfrequently coarse, but always

CHAP. XIII LITERATURE AND ART 225

effective laying on of Roman local tints over the Greek
ground-work, which Plautus was fond of, is completely
and designedly banished from Terence ; not an allusion
puts one in mind of Rome, not a proverb, hardly a
reminiscence ; ^ even the Latin titles are replaced by
Greek. The same distinction shows itself in the artistic
treatment. First of all the players receive back their
appropriate masks, and greater care is observed as to the
scenic arrangements, so that it is no longer the case, as
with Plautus, that everything needs to take place on the
street, whether belonging to it or not. Plautus ties and
unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his
plot is droll and often striking ; Terence, far less effective,
keeps everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently
at the cost of suspense, and wages emjjhatic war against
the certainly somewhat fiat and insipid standing expedients
of his predecessors, e.g. against allegoric dreams.- Plautus
paints his characters with broad strokes, often after a stock-
model, always with a view to the gross effect from a
distance and on the whole ; Terence handles the psycho-
logical development with a careful and often excellent
miniature-painting, as in the Adelphi for instance, where the
two old men — the easy bachelor enjoying life in town, and

* Perhaps the only exception is in the Andria (iv. 5) the answer to the
question how matters go : —

' ' Sic
Ut quimus," aiunt, " quando ut volumus non licet,"

in allusion to the line of Caecilius, which is, indeed, also imitated from a
Greek proverb : —

Vivas ut possis, quando non quis ut velis.

The comedy is the oldest of Terence's, and was exhibited by the thratricnl
authorities on the recommendation of Caecilius. 'ITie gentle expression of
gratitude is characteristic.

' A counterpart to the hind chased by dogs and with tcnrs calling on 11
young man for help, which Terence ridicul' c

recognized in the far from ingenious Plautinc »

ape [Merc. ii. i). Such excrescences are ultimately imcrrable to the
rhetoric of FCuripidcs {e.g. Eurip. Hct . 90).

vol. IV ,,.

c

226 LITERATURE AND ART BOOK iv

the sadly harassed not at all refined country-landlord — form
a masterly contrast. The springs of action and the language
of Plautus are drawn from the tavern, those of Terence
from the household of the good citizen. The lazy Plautine
hostelry, the very unconstrained but very charming damsels
with the hosts duly corresponding, the sabre - rattling
troopers, the menial world painted with an altogether
peculiar humour, whose heaven is the cellar, and whose
fate is the lash, have disappeared in Terence or at any rate
undergone improvement. In Plautus we find ourselves,
on the whole, among incipient or thorough rogues, in
Terence again, as a rule, among none but honest men ; if
occasionally a leno is plundered or a young man taken to
the brothel, it is done with a moral intent, possibly out of
brotherly love or to deter the boy from frequenting im-
proper haunts. The Plautine pieces are pervaded by the
significant antagonism of the tavern to the house ; every-
where wives are visited with abuse, to the delight of all
husbands temporarily emancipated and not quite sure of an
amiable salutation at home. The comedies of Terence are
pervaded by a conception not more moral, but doubtless
more becoming, of the feminine nature and of married life.
As a rule, they end with a virtuous marriage, or, if possible,
with two — just as it was the glory of Menander that he
compensated for every seduction by a marriage. The
eulogies of a bachelor life, which are so frequent in
Menander, are repeated by his Roman remodeller only with
characteristic shyness,^ whereas the lover in his agony, the
tender husband at the accouchement^ the loving sister by the
death-bed in the Eunuchus and the Aiidria are very grace-
fully delineated ; in the Hecyra there even appears at the
close as a delivering angel a virtuous courtesan, likewise a

^ Micio in the Adelphi (i. i) praises his good fortune in life, more
particularly because he has never had a wife, "which those (the Greeks)
reckon a piece of good fortune."

CHAP. XIII LITERATURE AND ART 227

genuine Menandrian figure, which the Roman public, it is
true, very jiroperly hissed. In Plautus the fathers through-
out only exist for the purpose of being jeered and swindled
by their sons ; with 'I'erence in the Ileauton Timorumenos
the lost son is reformed by his father's wisdom, and, as in
general he is full of excellent instructions as to education,
so the point of the best of his pieces, the Adflphi, turns on
finding the right mean between the too liberal training of
the uncle and the too rigid training of the father. Plautus
writes for the great multitude and gives utterance to profane
and sarcastic speeches, so far as the censorship of the stage
at all allowed ; Terence on the contrary describes it as his
aim to please the good and, like Menander, to offend no-
body. Plautus is fond of vigorous, often noisy dialogue, and
his pieces require a lively play of gesture in the actors ;
Terence confines himself to " quiet conversation." The
language of Plautus abounds in burlesque turns and verbal
witticisms, in alliterations, in comic coinages of new terms,
Aristophanic combinations of words, pithy expressions of
the day jestingly borrowed from the Greek. Terence knows
nothing of such caprices ; his dialogue moves on with the
purest symmetry, and its points are elegant epigrammatic
and sententious turns. The comedy of Terence is not
to be called an improvement, as compared with that of
Plautus, either in a poetical or in a moral point of view.
Originality cannot be affirmed of either, but, if possible,
there is less of it in Terence ; and the dubious praise of
more correct copying is at least outweighed by the circum-
stance that, while the younger poet reproduced the agree-
ableness, he knew not how to reproduce the merriment of
Menander, so that the comedies of Plautus imitated from
Menander, such as the Stichus, the Cistdlaria, the BacchiJes,
probably preserve far more of the flowing charm of the
original than the comedies of the ^^ dimidiatus Afettander."
And, while the aesthetic critic cannot recognize an improve-

228 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

ment in the transition from the coarse to the dull, as little
can the moralist in the transition from the obscenity and
indifference of Plautus to the accommodating morality of
Terence. But in point of language an improvement
certainly took place. Elegance of language was the pride
of the poet, and it was owing above all to its inimitable
charm that the most refined judges of art in aftertimes,
such as Cicero, Caesar, and Quinctilian, assigned the palm
to him among all the Roman poets of the republican age.
In so far it is perhaps justifiable to date a new era in
Roman literature — the real essence of which lay not in the
development of Latin poetry, but in the development of the
Latin language — from the comedies of Terence as the first
artistically pure imitation of Hellenic works of art. The
modern comedy made its way amidst the most determined
literary warfare. The Plautine style of composing had
taken root among the Roman bourgeoisie ; the comedies
of Terence encountered the liveliest opposition from the
public, which found their "insipid language," their "feeble
style," intolerable. The, apparently, pretty sensitive poet
replied in his prologues — which properly were not intended
for any such purpose — with counter- criticisms full of de-
fensive and offensive polemics ; and appealed from the
multitude, which had twice run off from his Hecyra to
witness a band of gladiators and rope-dancers, to the culti-
vated circles of the genteel world. He declared that he
only aspired to the approval of the " good " ; in which
doubtless there was not wanting a hint, that it was not at
all seemly to undervalue works of art which had obtained
the approval of the " few." He acquiesced in or even
favoured the report, that persons of quality aided him
in composing with their counsel or even with their co-
operation.i In reality he carried his point; even in

^ In the prologue of the Heauton Timorumenos be puts the objection
into the mouth of his censors : —

CHAP. XIII LITERATURE AND ART 229

literature the oligarchy prevailed, and the artistic comedy
of the exclusives supplanted the comedy of the people :
we find that about 620 the pieces of Plautus disappeared 134.
from the set of stock plays. This is the more significant,
because after the early death of Terence no man of con-
spicuous talent at all further occupied this field. Respect-
ing the comedies of Turpilius (t 65 i at an advanced age) 103.
and other stop-gaps wholly or almost wholly forgotten, a
connoisseur already at the close of this period gave it as
his opinion, that the new comedies were even much worse
than the bad new pennies (p. 180).

We have formerly shown (iii. 164) that in all probability National
already in the course of the sixth century a national Roman *^°"'*=<^y-
comedy {togaia) was added to the Graeco- Roman {pa/Iiaia),
as a portraiture not of the distinctive life of the capital,

Repente ad studitim hunc se applicasse musicum
Amicum ingenio Jretum, haud natura sua.

And in the later prologue (594) to the Adelphi he says — 160.

Nam quod isti dicunl malevoli, homines nobiUs
Eutn adiutare, adsidueque una scribere ;
Quod illi vtaUdictum vehemens esse existimant
Earn laudein hie ducit maximam, quum iilis plcuft
Qui vobis universis et populo placenl ;
Quorum opera in bello, in olio, in negoiio,
Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia.

As early us the time of Cicero it was the genera! sii|)posilion that
I^elius and Scipio Aemilianus were here meant : the scenes were desig-
n.ited which were alleged to proceed from them ; stories were told of the
journeys of the poor poet with his genteel patrons to their estates near
Rome : and it was reckoned unpardonable that they should have done
nothing at all for the improvement of his financial circumstances. Hut
the power which creates legend is, as is well known, nowhere more potent
than in the history of literature. It is cUrar. and even judicious Roman
critics acknowledged, that these lines could not possibly apply to Scipio
who was then twenty-five years of age, and to liis friend I^ielius who was
not much older. Others with at least more judgment t' f the poets

of quality Quiiitus UiIkx) (consul in 571) and M;ircus i (consul in 183.

581 ), and of ihi- learned patron of art and mathematician, l-ucius Sulpicius 1":J.
Gallus (consul in 588) ; btit this too is evidently mere conjecture. Ihat 16(5.
Terence was in close relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however,
l>c doubted : it is a significant fact, that the first exhiliition of the Adelphi
and the second of the Hecyra took place at the funeral games of Lucius
I'auUus, which were provided by bis sun:> Scipio and Fabius.

90.

230 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

but of the ways and doings of the Latin land. Of course
the Terentian school rapidly took possession of this species
of comedy also ; it was quite in accordance with its spirit
to naturalise Greek comedy in Italy on the one hand by
faithful translation, and on the other hand by pure Roman
imitation. The chief representative of this school was
Afranius. Lucius Afranius (who flourished about 660). The fragments
of his comedies remaining give no distinct impression, but
they are not inconsistent with what the Roman critics of art
remark regarding him. His numerous national comedies
were in their construction thoroughly formed on the model
of the Greek intrigue-piece ; only, as was natural in imita-
tion, they were simpler and shorter. In the details also he
borrowed what pleased him partly from Menander, partly
from the older national literature. But of the Latin local
tints, which are so distinctly marked in Titinius the creator
of this species of art, we find not much in Afranius ; ^ his
subjects retain a very general character, and may well have
been throughout imitations of particular Greek comedies
with merely an alteration of costume. A polished eclecti-
cism and adroitness in composition — literary allusions not
unfrequently occur — are characteristic of him as of Terence :
the moral tendency too, in which his pieces approximated
to the drama, their inoffensive tenor in a police point of
view, their purity of language are common to him with the
latter. Afranius is sufficiently indicated as of a kindred
spirit with Menander and Terence by the judgment of
posterity that he wore the toga as Menander would have

1 External circumstances also, it may be presumed, co-operated in
bringing about this change. After all the Italian communities had
obtained the Roman franchise in consequence of the Social war, it was
no longer allowable to transfer the scene of a comedy to any such
community, and the poet had either to keep to general ground or to
choose places that had fallen into ruin or were situated abroad.
Certainly this circumstance, which was taken into account even in the
production of the older comedies, exercised an unfavourable effect on the
national comedy.

CHAP, xiii LITERATURE AND ART 231

worn it had he been an Italian, and by his own expression
that to his mind Terence surpassed all other poets.

The farce appeared afresh at this period in the field of Atdlanae.
Roman literature. It was in itself very old (i. 291): long
before Rome arose, the merry youths of Latium may have
improvised on festal occasions in the masks once for all estab-
lished for particular characters. These pastimes obtained
a fixed local background in the Latin "asylum of fools,"
for which they selected the formerly Oscan town of Atella,
which was destroyed in the Hannibalic war and was thereby
handed over to comic use ; thenceforth the name of " Oscan
plays " or " plays of Atella " was commonly used for these
exhibitions.^ But these pleasantries had nothing to do with

1 With these names there has been associated from ancient times a
scries of errors. The utter mistake of Greek reporters, that these farces
were played at Rome in the Oscan language, is now with justice universally
rejected ; but it is, on a closer consideration, little short of impossible to
bring these pieces, which are laid in the midst of I^tin town .ind country
life, into relation with the national Oscan character at all. The appella-
tion of " Atellan play" is to be explained in another way. The Latin
farce with its fixed characters and standing jests needed a permanent
scenery : the fool-world everywhere seeks for itself a local habitation. Of
course under the Roman stage- police none of the Roman communities,
or of the L.itin communities allied with Rome, could be taken for this
purpose, although it was allowable to transfer the togatae to these. But
Atella, which, although destroyed de jure along with Capua in 543 (ii. 2n.
340, 366), continued practically to subsist as a village inhabited by Roman
farmers, was adapted in every respect for the purpose. This conjecture is
changed into certainty by our observing that several of these farces are
laid in other communities within the domain of the I^lin tongue, which
existed no longer at all, or no longer at any rale in the eye of the law —
such as the Campani of Pomponius and perhaps also his Addphi and his
Quinqualria in Capua, and the Milites Fomdinenses of N'ovius in Suessa
I'ometia — while no existing community was subjected to similar mal-
treatment. The real home of these pieces was therefore I^iium, their
poetical stage was the I^ntinized Oscan land ; with the Oscan nation they
iiave no connection. The siaiement that a piece of Naevius (t after 550) 200.
was for want of proper actors performed by "Atellan players" and was
therefore called /Vr^wdAj (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view:
the appellation "Atellan players" comes to stand here prolcplically, and
we might even conjecture from this passage that they were formerly
termed "masked players" (personati).

An explanation quite similar may l)e given of the "lays of Fesccn-
nium," which likewise iK-long to the burlescjuc f)octry of the Romans
and were localized in the South Etruscan village of Fesccnnium ; it is
not necessar)' on that account to class them with Ftrtiscan poetry any

23i LITERATURE AND ART book iv

the stage ^ and with Hterature ; they were performed by
amateurs where and when they pleased, and the text was
not written or at any rate was not pubHshed. It was not
until the present period that the Atellan piece was handed
over to actors properly so called,^ and was employed, like
the Greek satyric drama, as an afterpiece particularly after
tragedies ; a change which naturally suggested the extension
of literary activity to that field. Whether this authorship
developed itself altogether independently, or whether possibly
the art-farce of Lower Italy, in various respects of kindred
character, gave the impulse to this Roman farce,^ can no

more than the Atellanae with Oscan. That Fescennium was in historical
times not a town but a village, cannot certainly be directly proved, but is
in the highest degree probable from the way in which authors mention the
place and from the silence of inscriptions.

^ The close and original connection, which Livy in particular represents
as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the satura with the drama
thence developed, is not at all tenable. The difference between the
histrio and the Atellan player was just about as great as is at present
the difference between a professional actor and a man who goes to a
masked ball ; between the dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time
had no masks, and the Atellan, which was essentially based on the
character -mask, there subsisted an original distinction in no way to be
effaced. The drama arose out of the flute -piece, which at first without
any recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a.
te.xt [satura), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto borrowed
from the Greek stage, in which the old flute -lays occupied nearly the
place of the Greek chorus. This course of development nowhere in its
earlier stages comes into contact with the farce, which was performed
by amateurs.

- In the time of the empire the Atellana was represented by professional
actors (Friedliinder in Becker's Handbuch, vi. 549). The time at which
these began to engage in it is not reported, but it can hardly have been
other than the time at which the Atellan was admitted among the regular
stage-plays, i.e. the epoch before Cicero (Cic. ad Fani. i,\. 16). This
view is not inconsistent with the circumstance that still in Livy's time (vii. 2)
the Atellan players retained their honorary rights as contrasted with other
actors ; for the statement that professional actors began to take part in
performing the Atellana for pay does not imply that the Atellana was no
longer performed, in the country towns for instance, by unpaid amateurs,
and the privilege therefore still remained applicable.

2 It deserves attention that the Greek farce was not only especially at
home in Lower Italy, but that several of its pieces [e.g. among those of
Sopater, the " Leniile- Porridge," the " Wooers of Bacchis," the " Valet of
Mystakos," the "Bookworms," the " Physiologist ") strikingly remind us of
the Atellanae. This composition of farces must have reached down to the
lime at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle enclosed

cnAi'. XIII LITKRATURE AND ART 233

longer be determined ; that the several pieces were uniformly
original works, is certain. The founder of this new species
of literature, Lucius Poinponius from the Latin colony of
Bononia, appeared in the first half of the seventh century ; ^
and along with his pieces those of another poet Novius soon
became favourites. So far as the few remains and the
reports of the old litteraiores allow us to form an opinion,
they were short farces, ordinarily perhaps of one act, the
charm of which depended less on the preposterous and
loosely constructed plot than on the drastic portraiture of
particular classes and situations. Festal days and public
acts were favourite subjects of comic delineation, such as the
"Marriage," the "First of March," "Harlequin Candidate";
so were also foreign nationalities — the Transalpine Gauls,
the Syrians ; above all, the various trades frequently appear
on the boards. The sacristan, the soothsayer, the bird-seer,
the physician, the publican, the painter, fisherman, baker,
pass across the stage ; the public criers were severely
assailed and still more the fullers, who seem to have played
in the Roman fool-world the part of our tailors. While the
varied life of the city thus received its due attention, the
farmer with his joys and sorrows was also represented in all
aspects. The copiousness of this rural repertory may be
guessed from the numerous titles of that nature, such as
"the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine,"
"the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countr)man,"
"Harlequin Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vine-
dresser," " the Fig-gatherer," " Woodcutting," " Pruning,"
" the Poultry-yard." In these pieces it was always the standing

within the Latin -speaking Camp.nni.a ; for one of tht-se writers of farces,
Blacsus I'f Caprcae, boarb even a koiiian name and wrolc a farce • 'Saturnus. "

' According to Eusebius, I'oniponius flourished atxtut 664 ; Velleius 9i\
calls him a contemporary of Lucius Crassus (614-663) and Marcus 140-i»l.
Antonius (611-667). ">"^ former statement is probably alxiut a genera- 143-87.
tion too late ; the reckoning by victoriati (p. i8a) which was discontinued
about 650 still occurs in his Pictores, and about the end of this period we 100.
already meet the mimes which displaced the Atcllanae from the stai;c.

234 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

figures of the stupid and the artful servant, the good old man,
the wise man, that delighted the public; the first in particular
might never be wanting — the Piilcinello of this farce — the
gluttonous filthy Maccus, hideously ugly and yet eternally in
love, always on the point of stumbling across his own path,
set upon by all with jeers and with blows and eventually at
the close the regular scapegoat. The titles " Maccus Miles"
"■ Macciis Cop" '■'• Maccus Virgo" '' Maccus Exul" '' Macci
Gemini" may furnish the good-humoured reader with some
conception of the variety of entertainment in the Roman
masquerade. Although these farces, at least after they
came to be written, accommodated themselves to the
general laws of literature, and in their metres for instance
followed the Greek stage, they yet naturally retained a far
more Latin and more popular stamp than even the national
comedy. The farce resorted to the Greek world only under
the form of travestied tragedy ; ^ and this style appears to
have been cultivated first by Novius, and not very frequently
in any case. The farce of this poet moreover ventured, if
not to trespass on Olympus, at least to touch the most
human of the gods, Hercules : he wrote a Hercules Auc-
tionator. The tone, as a matter of course, was not the
most refined ; very unambiguous ambiguities, coarse rustic
obscenities, ghosts frightening and occasionally devouring
children, formed part of the entertainment, and offensive
personalities, even with the mention of names, not unfre-
quently crept in. But there was no want also of vivid
delineation, of grotesque incidents, of telling jokes, and of
pithy sayings ; and the harlequinade rapidly won for itself
no inconsiderable position in the theatrical life of the capital
and even in literature.

^ It was probably merry enough in this form. In the Phoenissae of
Novius, for instance, there was the hne : —

Sume arma, iam ie occidatn clava scirpea,

just as Menander's 'ifevorjpaKXrjs makes his appearance.

CHAP, xiii LITERATURE AND ART 235

Lastly as regards the development of dramatic arrange- I'limaiic

/-111 L arrange-

ments we are not in a position to set forth m detail — what mcnis.

is clear on the whole — that the general interest in dramatic
performances was constantly on the increase, and that they
became more and more frequent and magnificent. Not
only was there hardly any ordinary or extraordinary popular
festival that was now celebrated without dramatic exhibi-
tions; even in the country-towns and in private houses repre-
sentations by companies of hired actors were common. It
is true that, while probably various municipal towns already
at this time possessed theatres built of stone, the capital
was still without one ; the building of a theatre, already
contracted for, had been again prohibited by the senate in
599 on the suggestion of Publius Scipio Nasica. It was 155.
quite in the spirit of the sanctimonious policy of this age,
that the building of a permanent theatre was prohibited out
of respect for the customs of their ancestors, but never-
theless theatrical entertainments were allowed rapidly to
increase, and enormous sums were expended annually in
erecting and decorating structures of boards for them.
The arrangements of the stage became visibly better. The
improved scenic arrangements and the reintroduction of
masks about the time of Terence are doubtless connected
with the fact, that the erection and maintenance of the
stage and stage-apparatus were charged in 580 on the l'^.
public chest.^ The plays which Lucius Mummius pro-
duced after the capture of Corinth (609) formed an epoch 145.
in the history of the theatre. It was probably then that
a theatre acoustically constructed after the Greek fashion

' Hillicrto the person providing il.e play had to lit up the

stage and scenic apparatus out of the round sui. Iiiin or at bis

own expcnso, and probably much money would not oitcn be expended on
these. But in 580 the censors made the erection of the siai;e for the 17-4
games of the praetors and acdiles a matter of special contract { IJv. xli.
27) ; the circumstance that the st.igc-apparatus was now no longer erected
merely for a single pcrfonnancc must have led to a perceptible impro%x-
mcni u( ti.

236 LITERATURE AND ART BOOK IV

and provided with seats was first erected, and more care
generally was expended on the exhibitions.^ Now also
there is frequent mention of the bestowal of a prize of
victory — which implies the competition of several pieces —
of the audience taking a lively part for or against the
leading actors, of cliques and claqueurs. The decorations
and machinery were improved ; moveable scenery artfully
painted and audible theatrical thunder made their appear-
ance under the aedileship of Gaius Claudius Pulcher in
99. 79. 655;^ and twenty years later (675) under the aedileship
of the brothers Lucius and Marcus LucuUus came the
changing of the decorations by shifting the scenes. To
the close of this epoch belongs the greatest of Roman
62. actors, the freedman Quintus Roscius (f about 692 at a
great age), throughout several generations the ornament
and pride of the Roman stage,^ the friend and welcome
boon-companion of Sulla — to whom we shall have to recur
in the sequel.
Epos. In recitative poetry the most surprising circumstance is

' The attention given to the acoustic arrangements of the Greeks may
be Inferred from Vitruv. v. 5, 8. Ritschl [Parerg. i. 227, x.\. ) has dis-
cussed the question of the seats ; but it is probable (according to Plautus,
Capt. prol. 11) that those only who were not capite censi had a claim to a
seat. It is probable, moreover, that the words of Horace that "captive
Greece led captive her conqueror " primarily refer to these epoch-making
theatrical games of Mummius (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21).

2 The scenery of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since the
birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin. H. N. x.\xv.
4, 23 ; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6). Hitherto the machinery for thunder had con-
sisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a copper kettle ; Pulcher first
produced a better thunder by rolling stones, which was thenceforth named
" Claudian thunder" (Festus, v. Claudiana, p. 57).

* Among the few minor poems preserved from this epoch there occurs
the following epigram on this illustrious actor : —

Cotistiteram, exorieiiteni Auroram forte saliilans.
Cum subito a laeva Roscius exoritur.
Pace mihi liceat, coelestes, dicere vesfra ;
Moiialis visust fulchrior esse deo.

The author of this epigram, Greek in its tone and inspired by Greek
enthusiasm for art, was no less a man than the conqueror of the Cimbri,
102. Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in 652.

CHAP, xili LITERATURE AND ART 237

the insignificance of the Epos, which during the sixth
century had occupied decidedly the first place in the
literature destined for reading ; it had numerous representa-
tives in the seventh, but not a single one who had even
temporary success. From the present epoch there is hardly
anything to be reported save a number of rude attempts to
translate Homer, and some continuations of the Ennian
Annals, such as the " Istrian War " of Hostius and the
" Annals (perhaps) of the Gallic War " by Aulus Furius
(about 650), which to all appearance took up the narrative 100.
at the very point where Ennius had broken off — the
description of the Istrian war of 576 and 577. In didactic 178, 177.
and elegiac poetry no prominent name appears. The only
successes which the recitative poetry of this period has to Satura.
show, belong to the domain of what was called Satura — a
species of art, which like the letter or the pamphlet allowed
of any form and admitted any sort of contents, and
accordingly in default of all proper generic characters
derived its individual shape wholly from the individuality
of each poet, and occupied a position not merely on the
boundary between poetry and prose, but even more than
half beyond the bounds of literature proper. The humorous
poetical epistles, which one of the younger men of the
Scipionic circle, Spurius Mummius, the brother of the
destroyer of Corinth, sent home from the camp of Corinth
to his friends, were still read with pleasure a century after-
wards ; and numerous poetical plea.santrics of that sort not
destined for publication probably proceeded at that time
from the rich social and intellectual life of the better circles
of Rome.

Its representative in literature is Gaius Lucilius (606— Ludlius.
651) sprung of a respectable family in the I^uin colony of '"*^''^*
Suessa, and likewise a member of the Scipionic circle.
His poems are, as it were, open letters to the public
Their contents, as a clever successor gracefully says, embrace

238 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

the whole life of a cultivated man of independence, who
looks upon the events passing on the political stage from
the pit and occasionally from the side-scenes ; who con-
verses with the best of his epoch as his equals ; who follows
literature and science with sympathy and intelligence with-
out wishing personally to pass for a poet or scholar ; and
who, in fine, makes his pocket-book the confidential
receptacle for everything good and bad that he meets with,
for his political experiences and expectations, for gramma-
tical remarks and criticisms on art, for incidents of his own
life, visits, dinners, journeys, as well as for anecdotes which
he has heard. Caustic, capricious, thoroughly individual,
the Lucilian poetry has yet the distinct stamp of an opposi-
tional and, so far, didactic aim in literature as well as in
morals and politics ; there is in it something of the revolt
of the country against the capital ; the Suessan's sense of
his own purity of speech and honesty of life asserts itself in
antagonism to the great Babel of mingled tongues and
corrupt morals. The aspiration of the Scipionic circle after
literary correctness, especially in point of language, finds
critically its most finished and most clever representative
in Lucilius. He dedicated his very first book to Lucius
Stilo, the founder of Roman philology (p. 216), and desig-
nated as the public for which he wrote not the cultivated
circles of pure and classical speech, but the Tarentines,
the Bruttians, the Siculi, or in other words the half-Greeks
of Italy, whose Latin certainly might well require a cor-
rective. Whole books of his poems are occupied with
the settlement of Latin orthography and prosody, with the
combating of Praenestine, Sabine, Etruscan provincialisms,
with the exposure of current solecisms ; along with which,
however, the poet by no means forgets to ridicule the
insipidly systematic Isocratean purism of words and phrases,^

^ Quam lepide \4^€is compostae ut tesserulae omnes
Arte pavimento atque emblemaie vermiculato !

CUAP. xill LITERATURE AND ART 239

and even to reproach his friend Scipio in right earnest jest
with the exclusive fineness of his language.^ But the poet
inculcates purity of morals in public and private life far
more earnestly than he preaches pure and simple I^itinity.
For this his position gave him peculiar advantages. Al-
though l)y descent, estate, and culture on a level with the
genteel Romans of his time and possessor of a handsome
house in the capital, he was yet not a Roman burgess, but
a I^tin ; even his position towards Scipio, under whom he
had served in his early youth during the Numantine war,
and in whose house he was a frequent visitor, may be
connected with the fact, that Scipio stood in varied relations
to the Latins and was their patron in the political feuds of
the time (iii. 337). He was thus precluded from a public
life, and he disdained the career of a speculator — he had no
desire, as he once said, to "cease to be Lucilius in order to
become an Asiatic revenue-farmer." So he lived in the
sultry age of the Gracchan reforms and the agitations pre-
ceding the Social war, frequenting the palaces and villas of
the Roman grandees and yet not exactly their client, at
once in the midst of the strife of political coteries and
parties and yet not directly taking part with one or another ;
in a way similar to Beranger, of whom there is much that
reminds us in the political and poetical position of Lucilius.
From this position he uttered his comments on public life
with a sound common sense that was not to be shaken,
with a good humour that was inexhaustible, and with a wit
perpetually gushing :

i\'unc vera a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto
Toto ilidtm pariterque die populutque pjt risque
lactart indu foro u omnes, decedere nusquam.

* The poet advises him —

Quo fatetior videart el scire plus quam re/en —
to say not periaeium hut pertisum.

240 LITERATURE AND ART ROOK iv

Uni se afque eidem studio omncs dedere et arti ;
Verba dare ut caute possiiil, pugnare dolose,
Dlanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se,
Insidias facere ul si hostes sint omnibus omiies.

The illustrations of this inexhaustible texi remorselessly,
without omitting his friends or even the poet himself, as-
sailed the evils of the age, the coterie-system, the endless
Spanish war-service, and the like ; the very commence-
ment of his Satires was a great debate in the senate of the
Olympian gods on the question, whether Rome deserved
to enjoy the continued protection of the celestials. Cor-
porations, classes, individuals, were everywhere severally
mentioned by name ; the poetry of political polemics, shut
out from the Roman stage, was the true element and life-
breath of the Lucilian poems, which by the power of the
most pungent wit illustrated with the richest imagery — a
power which still entrances us even in the remains that
survive — pierce and crush their adversary "as by a drawn
sword." In this — in the moral ascendency and the proud
sense of freedom of the poet of Suessa — lies the reason why
the refined Venusian, who in the Alexandrian age of Roman
poetry revived the Lucilian satire, in spite of all his superi-
ority in formal skill with true modesty yields to the earlier
poet as "his better." The language is that of a man of
thorough culture, Greek and Latin, who freely indulges his
humour ; a poet like Lucilius, who is alleged to have made
two hundred hexameters before dinner and as many after
it, is in far too great a hurry to be nice ; useless prolixity,
slovenly repetition of the same turn, culpable instances of
carelessness frequently occur : the first word, Latin or
Greek, is always the best. The metres are similarly treated,
particularly the very predominant hexameter : if we trans-
pose the words — his clever imitator says — no man would
observe that he had anything else before him than simple
prose ; in point of effect they can only be compared to our

CHAP, xiii LITEKATURK AND ART 241

doggerel verses.' The poems of Terence and those of
Lutilius stand on the same level of culture, and have the
same relation to each other as a carefully prepared and
polished literary work has to a letter written on the spur
of the moment. But the incomparably higher intellectual
gifts and the freer view of life, which mark the knight of
Suessa as compared with the African slave, rendered his
success as rapid and brilliant as that of Terence had been
laborious and doubtful ; Lucilius became immediately the
favourite of the nation, and he like Beranger could say of
his poems that " they alone of all were read by the people."
The uncommon popularity of the I.ucilian poem is, in a
historical point of view, a remarkable event ; we see from
it that literature was already a power, and beyond doubt
we should fall in with various traces of its influence, if a
thorough history of this period had been preserved.
Posterity has only confirmed the judgment of contempor-
aries ; the Roman judges of art who were opposed to the
Ale.xandrian school assigned to Lucilius the first rank
among all the Latin poets. So far as satire can be re-
garded as a distinct form of art at all, Lucilius created it ;
and in it created the only species of art which was peculiar
to the Romans and was bequeathed by them to posterity.

' The following longer fragment is a characteristic sj>ecimcn of the style
and metrical treatment, the loose structure of which cannot possibly be
reproduced in German hexameters : —

Virtus, Albine, est pretium ptrsolvere verum

Queis in versamur, queis vivimu rebu f-vifsse ;

yirtus est homini scire quo quaeque habeut res ;

Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sH honestum.

Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonesttim ;

Virtus quaerendae Jinem rei scire modumque ;

Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse ;

Virtus id dare quoil re ipsa debctur ho'iori,

Hostem esse alque inimuum hominuin morumque malorum.

Contra de/ensoiem hominum morumque bonorum,

Hos magni Jacere, his bene xelte, his tivere amicum ;

Commoda praeterea patriai prima putart,

Deinde parent;: m, lertia iam postremaque nostra

VOU IV 116

242 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

Of poetry attaching itself to the Alexandrian school
nothing occurs in Rome at this epoch except minor poems
translated from or modelled on Alexandrian epigrams,
which deserve notice not on their own account, but as the
first harbingers of the later epoch of Roman literature.
Leaving out of account some poets little known and whose
dates cannot be fixed with certainty, there belong to this
102. category Quintus Catulus, consul in 652 (p. 236 n.) and
97. Lucius Manlius, an esteemed senator, who wrote in 657.
The latter seems to have been the first to circulate among
the Romans various geographical tales current among the
Greeks, such as the Delian legend of Latona, the fables
of Europa and of the marvellous bird Phoenix ; as it was
likewise reserved for him on his travels to discover at
Dodona and to copy that remarkable tripod, on which
might be read the oracle imparted to the Pelasgians before
their migration into the land of the Siceli and Aborigines
— a discovery which the Roman annals did not neglect
devoutly to register.
Historical In historical composition this epoch is especially marked

composi- j^y ^j^g emergence of an author who did not belong to Italy
Poiybius. either by birth or in respect of his intellectual and literary
standpoint, but who first or rather alone brought literary
appreciation and description to bear on Rome's place in
the world, and to whom all subsequent generations, and
we too, owe the best part of our knowledge of the Roman
208-127. development, Poiybius [c. 546-<:. 627) of Megalopolis
in the Peloponnesus, son of the Achaean statesman
189. Lycortas, took part apparently as early as 565 in the
expedition of the Romans against the Celts of Asia Minor,
and was afterwards on various occasions, especially during
the third Macedonian war, employed by his countrymen
in military and diplomatic affairs. After the crisis oc-
casioned by that war in Hellas he was carried off along
with the other Achaean hostages to Italy (ii. 5 1 7), where

CHAr. XIII LITKRATURE AND ART 243

he lived in exile for seventeen years (5S7-604) and was 1C7 150
introduced by the sons of PauUus to the genteel circles of
the capital. By the sending back of the Achaean hostages
(iii. 264) he was restored to his home, where he thenceforth
acted as permanent mediator between his confederacy and
the Romans. He was present at the destruction of
Carthage and of Corinth (608). He seemed educated, as 146.
it were, by destiny to comprehend the historical position
of Rome more clearly than the Romans of that day could
themselves. From the place which he occupied, a Greek
statesman and a Roman prisoner, esteemed and occasion-
ally envied for his Hellenic culture by Scipio Aemilianus
and the first men of Rome generally, he saw the streams,
which had so long flowed separately, meet together in the
same channel and the history of the states of the Medi-
terranean resolve itself into the hegemony of Roman power
and Greek culture. Thus Polybius became the first Greek
of note, who embraced with serious conviction the compre-
hensive view of the Scipionic circle, and recognized the
superiority of Hellenism in the sphere of intellect and of
the Roman character in the sphere of politics as facts,
regarding which history had given her final decision, and
to which people on both sides were entitled and bound to
submit. In this spirit he acted as a practical statesman,
and wrote his history. If in his youth he had done homage
to the honourable but impracticable local patriotism of the
Acliaeans, during his later years, with a clear discernment
of inevitable necessity, he advocated in the community to
which he belonged the policy of the closest adherence to
Rome. It was a policy in the highest degree judicious
and beyond doubt well-intentioned, but it was far from
being high-spirited or proud. Nor was Polybius able
wholly to disengage himself from the vanity and i)altriness
of the Hellenic statesmanship of the time. He was hardly
released from exile, when he proposed to the senate that

244 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

it should formally secure to the released their former rank
in their several homes ; whereupon Cato aptly remarked,
that this looked to him as if Ulysses were to return to the
cave of Polyphemus to request from the giant his hat and
girdle. He often made use of his relations with the great
men in Rome to benefit his countrymen ; but the way in
which he submitted to, and boasted of, the illustrious pro-
tection somewhat approaches fawning servility. His literary
activity breathes throughout the same spirit as his practical
action. It was the task of his life to write the history of
the union of the Mediterranean states under the hegemony
of Rome. From the first Punic war down to the destruction
of Carthage and Corinth his work embraces the fortunes of
all the civilized states — namely Greece, Macedonia, Asia
Minor, Syria, Egypt, Carthage, and Italy — and exhibits in
causal connection the mode in which they came under the
Roman protectorate ; in so far he describes it as his object
to demonstrate the fitness and reasonableness of the Roman
hegemony. In design as in execution, this history stands in
clear and distinct contrast with the contemporary Roman as
well as with the contemporary Greek historiography. In
Rome history still remained wholly at the stage of chronicle;
there existed doubtless important historical materials, but
what was called historical composition was restricted — with
the exception of the very respectable but purely individual
writings of Cato, which at any rate did not reach beyond
the rudiments of research and narration — partly to nursery
tales, partly to collections of notices. The Greeks had
certainly exhibited historical research and had written
history; but the conceptions of nation and state had
been so completely lost amidst the distracted times of the
Diadochi, that none of the numerous historians succeeded
in following the steps of the great Attic masters in spirit and
in truth, or in treating from a general point of view the
matter of world-wide interest in the history of the times.

CHAP. XIII LITERATURE AND ART 245

Their histories were either purely outward records, or they
were pervaded by the verbiage and sophistries of Attic
rhetoric and only too often by the venality and vulgarity,
the sycophancy and the bitterness of the age. Among
the Romans as among the Greeks there was nothing but
histories of cities or of tribes. Polybius, a Peloponnesian,
as has been justly remarked, and holding intellectually a
position at least as far aloof from the Attics as from the
Romans, first stepped beyond these miserable limits, treated
the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism, and
furnished a history, which was not indeed universal, but
which was at any rate dissociated from the mere local states
and laid hold of the Romano-Greek state in the course of
formation. Never perhaps has any historian united within
himself all the advantages of an author drawing from original
sources so completely as Polybius. The compass of his
task is completely clear and present to him at every
moment ; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real
historical connection of events. The legend, the anecdote,
the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the
description of countries and peoples, the representation of
political and mercantile relations — all the facts of so infinite
importance, which escape the annalist because they do not
admit of being nailed to a particular year — are put into
possession of their long-suspended rights. In the procuring
of historic materials Polybius shows a caution and per-
severance such as are not perhaps paralleled in antiquity ;
he avails himself of documents, gives comprehensive atten-
tion to the literature of diflerent nations, makes the most
e.\tensive use of his favourable position for collecting the
accounts of actors and eye-witnesses, and, in fine, method-
ically travels over the whole domain of the Mediterranean
states and part of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. ^ Truth-

• Such scientific travels were, however, nothing uncommon among the

246 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

fulness is his nature. In all great matters he has no interest
for one state or against another, for this man or against
that, but is singly and solely interested in the essential
connection of events, to present which in their true relation
of causes and effects seems to him not merely the first but
the sole task of the historian. Lastly, the narrative is a
model of completeness, simplicity, and clearness. Still all
these uncommon advantages by no means constitute a
historian of the first rank. Polybius grasps his literary task,
as he grasped his practical, with great understanding, but
with the understanding alone. History, the struggle of
necessity and liberty, is a moral problem ; Polybius treats
it as if it were a mechanical one. The whole alone has
value for him, in nature as in the state ; the particular
event, the individual man, however wonderful they may
appear, are yet properly mere single elements, insignificant
wheels in the highly artificial mechanism which is named
the state. So far Polybius was certainly qualified as no
other was to narrate the history of the Roman people, which
actually solved the marvellous problem of raising itself
to unparalleled internal and external greatness without
producing a single statesman of genius in the highest sense,
and which resting on its simple foundations developed itself
with wonderful almost mathematical consistency. But the
element of moral freedom bears sway in the history of every
people, and it was not neglected by Polybius in the history
of Rome with impunity. His treatment of all questions,
in which right, honour, religion are involved, is not merely
shallow, but radically false. The same holds true wherever
a genetic construction is required ; the purely mechanical
attempts at explanation, which Polybius substitutes, are

Greeks of this period. Thus in Plautus (Men. 248, comp. 235) one who'
has navigated the whole Mediterranean asks —

Quirt nos hinc domum
Redimus, nisi si liistoriam scripturi sumus f

CHAP. XIII LITERATURE AND ART 247

sometimes altogether desperate ; there is hardly, for
instance, a more foolish political speculation than that
which derives the excellent constitution of Rome from a
judicious mixture of monarchical, aristocratic, and demo-
cratic elements, and deduces the successes of Rome from
the excellence of her constitution. His conception of
relations is everywhere dreadfully jejune and destitute of
imagination : his contemptuous and over-wise mode of
treating religious matters is altogether offensive. The
narrative, preserving throughout an intentional contrast to
the usual Greek historiography with its artistic style, is
doubtless correct and clear, but flat and languid, digressing
with undue frequency into polemical discussions or into
biographical, not seldom very self-sufficient, description of
his own experiences. A controversial vein pervades the
whole work ; the author destined his treatise primarily for
the Romans, and yet found among them only a very small
circle that understood him ; he felt that he remained in the
eyes of the Romans a foreigner, in the eyes of his country-
men a renegade, and that with his grand conception of his
subject he belonged more to the future than to the present
Accordingly he was not exempt from a certain ill- humour
and personal bitterness, which frequently appear after a
quarrelsome and paltry fashion in his attacks upon the
superficial or even venal Greek and the uncritical Roman
historians, so that he degenerates from the tone of the
historian to that of the reviewer. Polybius is not an
attractive author ; but as truth and truthfulness are of more
value than all ornament and elegance, no other author of
antiquity perhaps oin be named to whom we are indebted
for so much real instruction. His books are like the sun
in the field of Roman history ; at the point where they
begin the veil of mist which still envelops the Samnite and
Pyrrhic wars is raised, and at the point where they end
a new and, if possible, still more vexatious twilight begins.

248 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

Roman In singular contrast to this grand conception and

chroniclers, treatment of Roman history by a foreigner stands the

contemporary historical literature of native growth. At

the beginning of this period we still find some chronicles

written in Greek such as that already mentioned (iii. 204)

151. of Aulus Postumius (consul in 603), full of wretched
rationalizing, and that of Gaius Acilius (who closed it at an

142. advanced age about 612). Yet under the influence partly
of Catonian patriotism, partly of the more refined culture
of the Scipionic circle, the Latin language gained so decided
an ascendency in this field, that of the later historical works
not more than one or two occur written in Greek ; ^ and
not only so, but the older Greek chronicles were translated
into Latin and were probably read mainly in these transla-
tions. Unhappily beyond the employment of the mother-
tongue there is hardly anything else deserving of commenda-
tion in the chronicles of this epoch composed in Latin.
They were numerous and detailed enough — there are
mentioned, for example, those of Lucius Cassius Hemina
U6. 133. (about 608), of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul in 621), of

129. Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus (consul in 625), of Gaius

122. Fannius (consul in 632). To these falls to be added the
digest of the official annals of the city in eighty books, which

133. Publius Mucius Scaevola (consul in 621), a man esteemed
also as a jurist, prepared and published zspontifex maximus,
thereby closing the city-chronicle in so far as thenceforth the
pontifical records, although not exactly discontinued, were no
longer at any rate, amidst the increasing diligence of private
chroniclers, taken account of in literature. All these annals,
whether they gave themselves forth as private or as official
works, were substantially similar compilations of the extant

^ The only real exception, so far as we know, is the Greek history of

Gnaeus Aufidius, who flourished in Cicero's boyhood [Tusc. v. 38, 112),

90. that is, about 660. The Greek memoirs of Publius Kutilius Rufus (consul

105. in 649) are hardly to be regarded as an exception, since their author wrote

them in exile at Smyrna.

CIIAI-. XIII LlTliKATUKE AM) ART 249

historical and quasi-historical materials ; and the value of
their authorities as well as their formal value declined beyond
doubt in the same proportion as their amplitude increased.
Chronicle certainly nowhere presents truth without fiction,
and it would be very foolisli to quarrel with Naevius and
Fictor because they have not acted otherwise than
Hecataeus and Saxo Grammaticus; but the later attempts
to build houses out of such castles in the air put even
the most tried patience to a severe test No blank in
tradition presents so wide a chasm, but that this system of
smooth and downright invention will fill it up with playful
facility. The eclipses of the sun, the numbers of the census,
family-registers, triumphs, are without hesitation carried back
from the current year up to the year One ; it stands duly
recorded, in what year, month, and day king Romulus went
up to heaven, and how king Servius Tullius triumphed over
the Etruscans first on the 25th November 1S3, and again 571.
on the 25th May 1S7. In entire harmony with such 567.
details accordingly the vessel in which Aeneas had voyaged
from Ilion to Latium was shown in the Roman docks, and
even the identical sow, which had served as a guide to
Aeneas, was preserved well pickled in the Roman temple
of Vesta. With the lying disposition of a poet these
chroniclers of rank combine all the tiresome exactness of a
notary, and treat their great subject throughout with the
dulness which necessarily results from the elimination at
once of all poetical and all historical elements. When we
read, for instance, in Piso that Romulus avoided indulging
in his cups when he had a sitting of the senate next day ;
or that Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol to the Sabines out of
patriotism, with a view to deprive the enemy of their
shields ; we cannot be surprised at the judgment of intelli-
gent contemporaries as to all this sort of scribbling, " that
it was not writing history, but telling stories to children."
Of far greater excellence were isolated works on the

250 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

history of the recent past and of the present, particularly the
history of the Hannibalic war by Lucius Caelius Antipater
121. (about 633) and the history of his own time by Publius
Sempronius Asellio, who was a little younger. These ex-
hibited at least valuable materials and an earnest spirit of
truth, in the case of Antipater also a lively, although strongly
affected, style of narrative ; yet, judging from all testimonies
and fragments, none of these books came up either in pithy
form or in originality to the " Origines " of Cato, who
unhappily created as little of a school in the field of history
as in that of politics.
Memoirs The subordinate, more individual and ephemeral,

^^'^ , species of historical literature — memoirs, letters, and

speeches.

speeches — were strongly represented also, at least as

respects quantity. The first statesmen of Rome already
recorded in person their experiences : such as Marcus
115. 105. Scaurus (consul in 639), Publius Rufus (consul in 649),
102. Quintus Catulus (consul in 652), and even the regent
Sulla; but none of these productions seem to have been
of importance for literature otherwise than by the substance
of their contents. The collection of letters of Cornelia,
the mother of the Gracchi, was remarkable partly for the
classical purity of the language and the high spirit of the
writer, partly as the first correspondence published in
Rome, and as the first literary production of a Roman
lady. The literature of speeches preserved at this period
the stamp impressed on it by Cato ; advocates' pleadings
were not yet looked on as literary productions, and such
speeches as were published were political pamphlets.
During the revolutionary commotions this pamphlet -litera-
ture increased in extent and importance, and among the
mass of ephemeral productions there were some which,
like the Philippics of Demosthenes and the fugitive pieces
of Courier, acquired a permanent place in literature from
the important position of their authors or from their own

CHAP, xin LITERATURE AND ART 251

weight. Such were the political speeches of Gaius I melius
and of Scipio Aemilianus, masterpieces of excellent I^tin as
of the noblest patriotism ; such were the gushing speeches
of Gaius Titius, from whose pungent pictures of the place
and the time — his description of the senatorial juryman
has been given already (p. 188) — the national comedy
borrowed various points ; such above all were the numer-
ous orations of Gaius Gracchus, whose fiery words pre-
served in a faithful mirror the impassioned earnestness,
the aristocratic bearing, and the tragic destiny of that lofty
nature.

In scientific literature the collection of juristic opinions Sciencsi.
by Marcus Brutus, which was published about the year
600, presents a remarkable attempt to transplant to Rome 150.
the method usual among the Greeks of handling pro-
fessional subjects by means of dialogue, and to give to his
treatise an artistic semi-dramatic form by a machinery of
conversation in which the persons, time, and place were
distinctly specified. But the later men of science, such
as Stilo the philologist and Scaevola the jurist, laid aside
this method, more poetical than practical, both in the
sciences of general culture and in the special professional
sciences. The increasing value of science as such, and
the preponderance of a material interest in it at Rome,
are clearly reflected in this rapid rejection of the fetters of
artistic form. We have already spoken (p. 211 /) in detail
of the sciences of general liberal culture, grammar or rather
philology, rhetoric and philosophy, in so far as these now
became essential elements of the usual Roman training
and thereby first began to be dissociated from the pro-
fessional sciences properly so called.

In the field of letters l^itin philology flourished vigor- Philology,
ously, in close association with the philological treatment
— long ago placed on a sure basis — of Greek literature.
It was already mentioned that about the beginning of this

252 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

century the Latin epic poets found their diaskeuastae and
revisers of their text (p. 214) ; it was also noticed, that not
only did the Scipionic circle generally insist on correctness
above everything else, but several also of the most noted
poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with
the regulation of orthography and of grammar. At the
same period we find isolated attempts to develop archae-
ology from the historical side ; although the dissertations
of the unwieldy annalists of this age, such as those of
Hemina " on the Censors " and of Tuditanus " on the
Magistrates," can hardly have been better than their
chronicles. Of more interest were the treatise on the
Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius
Gracchus, as the first attempt to make archaeological
investigation serviceable for political objects,^ and the
metrically composed Didascaliae of the tragedian Accius,
an essay towards a literary history of the Latin drama.
But those early attempts at a scientific treatment of the
mother-tongue still bear very much a dilettante stamp, and
strikingly remind us of our orthographic literature in the
Bodmer-Klopstock period; and we may likewise without
injustice assign but a modest place to the antiquarian
researches of this epoch.
Stilo, The Roman, who established the investigation of the

Latin language and antiquities in the spirit of the Alex-
andrian masters on a scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius
100. Stilo about 650 (p. 216). He first went back to the oldest
monuments of the language, and commented on the Salian
Htanies and the Twelve Tables. He devoted his special
attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first
formed a list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion
were genuine. He sought, after the Greek fashion, to

^ The assertion, for instance, that the quaestors were nominated in the
regal period by the burgesses, not by the king, is as certainly erroneous
as it bears on its face the impress of a partisan character.

cum: XIII LITERATURE AND ART 253

determine historically the origin of every single pheno-
menon in the Roman life and dealings and to ascertain in
each case the "inventor," and at the same time brought
the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his
research. The success, which he had among his con-
temporaries, is attested by the dedication to him of the
most important poetical, and the most important historical,
work of his time, the Satires of Lucilius and the Annals
of Antipater ; and this first Roman philologist influenced
the studies of his nation for the future by transmitting his
spirit of investigation both into words and into things to
his disciple Varro.

The literary activity in the field of I^tin rhetoric was, Rhetoric
as might be expected, of a more subordinate kind. There
was nothing here to be done but to write manuals and
exercise -books after the model of the Greek compendia of
Hermagoras and others ; and these accordingly the school-
masters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the
need for them, partly on account of vanity and money.
Such a manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, com-
posed under Sulla's dictatorship by an unknown author,
who according to the fashion then prevailing (p. 216) taught
simultaneously Latin literature and I^tin rhetoric, and
wrote on both ; a treatise remarkable not merely for its
terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above
all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek
models. Although in method entirely dependent on the
Greeks, the Roman yet distinctly and even abruptly rejects
all " the useless matter which the Greeks had gathered
together, solely in order that the science might appear
more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is bestowed
on the hair-splitting dialectics — that " loquacious science of
inability to speak '" — whose finished master, for sheer fear
of expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer
ventures to pronounce his own name. The Greek school-

254

LITERATURE AND ART

BOOK IV

Philo-
sophy.

Profes-
sional
sciences.

Juris-
prudence.

terminology is throughout and intentionally avoided. Very
earnestly the author points out the danger of many teachers,
and inculcates the golden rule that the scholar ought above
all to be induced by the teacher to help himself; with
equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the school
is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in his
examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of
those forensic speeches which during the last decades had
excited notice in the Roman advocate-world. It deserves
attention, that the opposition to the extravagances of
Hellenism, which had formerly sought to prevent the rise
of a native Latin rhetoric (p. 217), continued to influence it
after it arose, and thereby secured to Roman eloquence, as
compared with the contemporary eloquence of the Greeks,
theoretically and practically a higher dignity and a greater
usefulness.

Philosophy, in fine, was not yet represented in literature,
since neither did an inward need develop a national Roman
philosophy nor did outward circumstances call forth a Latin
philosophical authorship. It cannot even be shown with
certainty that there were Latin translations of popular sum-
maries of philosophy belonging to this period ; those who
pursued philosophy read and disputed in Greek.

In the professional sciences there was but little activity.
Well as the Romans understood how to farm and how to
calculate, physical and mathematical research gained no
hold among them. The consequences of neglecting theory
appeared practically in the low state of medical knowledge
and of a portion of the military sciences. Of all the pro-
fessional sciences jurisprudence alone was flourishing. We
cannot trace its internal development with chronological
accuracy. On the whole ritual law fell more and more
into the shade, and at the end of this period stood nearly
in the same position as the canon law at the present day.
The finer and more profound conception of law, on the

CHAP. XIII LITERATURE AND ART 255

other hand, which substitutes for outward criteria the
motive springs of action within — such as the development
of the ideas of offences arising from intention and from
carelessness respectively, and of possession entitled to
temporary protection — was not yet in existence at the time
of the Twelve Tables, but was so in the age of Cicero, and
probably owed its elaboration substantially to the present
epoch. The reaction of political relations on the develop-
ment of law has been already indicated on several occasions;
it was not always advantageous. By the institution of the
tribunal of the Ceniumviri to deal with inheritance (p. 128),
for instance, there was introduced in the law of property a
college of jurymen, which, like the criminal authorities,
instead of simply applying the law placed itself above it and
with its so-called equity undermined the legal institutions ;
one consequence of which among others was the irrational
principle, that any one, whom a relative had passed over
in his testament, was at liberty to propose that the testa-
ment should be annulled by the court, and the court
decided according to its discretion.

The development of juristic literature admits of being
more distinctly recognized. It had hitherto been restricted
to collections of formularies and explanations of terms in
the laws ; at this period there was first formed a literature
of opinions {responsa), which answers nearly to our modern
collections of precedents. These opinions — which were
delivered no longer merely by members of the pontifical
college, but by every one who found persons to consult him,
at home or in the open market-place, and with which were
already associated rational and polemical illustrations and the
standing controversies peculiar to jurisprudence — began to
be noted down and to be promulgated in collections about
the beginning of the seventh century. This was done first
by the younger Cato (t about 600) and by Marcus Brutus 150.
(nearly contemporary) ; and these collections were, as it

256 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

would appear, arranged in the order of matters.^ A strictly
systematic treatment of the law of the land soon followed.
Its founder was i\\Q pojjfifex via.ximus Quintus Mucius Scae-
95 82. vola (consul in 659, f 672, (iii, 481, pp. 84, 205), in whose
family jurisprudence was, like the supreme priesthood,
hereditary. His eighteen books on the lus Civile, which
embraced the positive materials of jurisprudence — legisla-
tive enactments, judicial precedents, and authorities — partly
from the older collections, partly from oral tradition in as
great completeness as possible, formed the starting-point
and the model of the detailed systems of Roman law ; in
like manner his compendious treatise of " Definitions "
(opot) became the basis of juristic summaries and particu-
larly of the books of Rules. Although this development
of law proceeded of course in the main independently of
Hellenism, yet an acquaintance with the philosophico-
practical scheme-making of the Greeks beyond doubt gave
a general impulse to the more systematic treatment of juris-
prudence, as in fact the Greek influence is in the case of
the last-mentioned treatise apparent in the very title. We
have already remarked that in several more external
matters Roman jurisprudence was influenced by the Stoa
(p. 202/).
Art. Art exhibits still less pleasing results. In architecture,
sculpture, and painting there was, no doubt, a more and
more general diffusion of a dilettante interest, but the
exercise of native art retrograded rather than advanced.
It became more and more customary for those sojourning
in Grecian lands personally to inspect the works of art ;
for which in particular the winter-quarters of Sulla's army
84-83. in Asia Minor in 670-671 formed an epoch. Connoisseur-
ship developed itself also in Italy. They had commenced

^ Cato's book probably bore the title De iuris dlsciplina (Gell. xiii. 20),
that of Brutus the title De in re civili (Cic. pro Cluertt. 51, 141 ; De Orat.
II. 55, 223) ; that they were essentially collections of opinions, is shown Dy
Cicero {^De Orat. ii. 33, 142).

CHAP, xm i.itfraturf; and akt 257

with articles in silver and bronze ; about the commence-
ment of this epoch they began to esteem not merely Greek
statues, but also Greek pictures. The first picture publicly
exhibited in Rome was the Bacchus of Arislides, which
Lucius Mummius withdrew from the sale of the Corinthian
spoil, be< ause king Attalus offered as much as 6000 denarii
{J[,2(i6) for it. The buildings became more splendid ; and
in particular transmarine, especially Hymettian, marble
(Cipollino) came into use for that purpose — the Italian
marble quariies were not yet in operation. A magnificent
colonnade still admired in the time of the empire, which
Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the conqueror of Mace- 113.
donia constructed in the Campus Martius, enclosed the
first marble temple which the capital had seen ; it was
soon followed by similar structures built on the Capitol
by Scipio Nasica (consul in 616), and near to the Circus 138.
by Gnaeus Octavius (consul in 626). The first private 128.
house adorned with marble columns was that of the orator
Lucius Crassus (f 663) on the Palatine (p. 184). But 91.
where they could plunder or purchase, instead of creating
for themselves, they did so ; it was a wretched indication
of the poverty of Roman architecture, that it already began
to employ the columns of the old Greek temples ; the
Roman Capitol, for instance, was embellished by Sulla
with those of the temple of Zeus at Athens. The works,
that were produced in Rome, proceeded from the hands of
foreigners ; the few Roman artists of this period, who are
particularly mentioned, are without exception Italian or
transmarine Greeks who had migrated thither. Such was
the case with the architect Hermodorus from the Cyprian
Salamis, who among other works restored the Roman docks
and built for Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the temple H3.
of Jupiter Stator in the basilica constructed by him, and
for Decimus Brutus (consul in 616) the temple of Mars in 138.
the Flaminian circus ; with the sculptor Pasiieles (about
vol. IV 1,7

25S LITERATURE AND ART book iv

89. 665) from Magna Graecia, who furnished images of the
gods in ivory for Roman temples ; and with the painter
and philosopher Metrodorus of Athens, who was summoned
to paint the pictures for the triumph of Lucius Paullus

167. (587). It is significant that the coins of this epoch exhibit
in comparison with those of the previous period a greater
variety of types, but a retrogression rather than an improve-
ment in the cutting of the dies.

Finally, music and dancing passed over in like manner
from Hellas to Rome, solely in order to be there applied
to the enhancement of decorative luxury. Such foreign
arts were certainly not new in Rome ; the state had from
olden time allowed Etruscan flute-players and dancers to
appear at its festivals, and the freedmen and the lowest
class of the Roman people had previously followed this
trade. But it was a novelty that Greek dances and musical
performances should form the regular accompaniment of a
genteel banquet. Another novelty was a dancing-school,
such as Scipio Aemilianus full of indignation describes in
one of his speeches, in which upwards of five hundred
boys and girls — the dregs of the people and the children
of magistrates and of dignitaries mixed up together — re-
ceived instruction from a ballet-master in far from decorous
Castanet- dances, in corresponding songs, and in the use of
the proscribed Greek stringed instruments. It was a
novelty too — not so much that a consular and pontifex

133. maximus like Publius Scaevola (consul in 621) should
catch the balls in the circus as nimbly as he solved the
most complicated questions of law at home — as that young
Romans of rank should display their jockey-arts before all
the people at the festal games of Sulla. The government
occasionally attempted to check such practices ; as for

115. instance in 639, when all musical instruments, with the
exception of the simple flute indigenous in Latium, were
prohibited by the censors. But Rome was no Sparta ; the

CHAP, xiii LITERATURE AND ART 259

lax government by such prohibitions rather drew attention
to the evils than attempted to remedy them by a sharp and
consistent application of the laws.

If, in conclusion, we glance back at the picture as a
whole which the literature and art of Italy unfold to our
view from the deatli of Ennius to the beginning of the
Ciceronian age, we find in these respects as compared with
the preceding epoch a most decided decline of productive-
ness. The higher kinds of literature — such as epos,
tragedy, history — have died out or have been arrested in
their development. The subordinate kinds — the trans-
lation and imitation of the intrigue- piece, the farce, the
poetical and prose brochure — alone are successful ; in this
last field of literature swept by the full hurricane of revolu-
tion we meet with the two men of greatest literary talent in
this epoch, Gaius Gracclius and Gaius Lucilius, who stand
out amidst a number of more or less mediocre writers just
as in a similar epoch of French literature Courier and
B^ranger stand out amidst a multitude of pretentious
nullities. In the plastic and delineative arts likewise the
production, always weak, is now utterly null. On the
other hand the receptive enjoyment of art and literature
flourished ; as the Epigoni of this period in the political
field gathered in and used up the inheritance that fell to
their fathers, we find them in this field also as diligent
frequenters of plays, as patrons of literature, as connoisseurs
and still more as collectors in art. The most honourable
aspect of this activity was its learned research, which put
forth a native intellectual energy, more especially in juris-
prudence and in linguistic and antiquarian investigation.
The foundation of these sciences which properly falls within
the present epoch, and the first small beginnings of an
imitation of the Alexandrian hothouse poetry, already herald
the approaching epoch of Roman Alexandrinism. All the
productions of the present epoch are smoother, more free

260 LITERATURE AND ART book iv

from faults, more systematic than the creations of the sixth
century. The literati and the friends of literature of this
period not altogether unjustly looked down on their pre-
decessors as bungling novices : but while they ridiculed or
censured the defective labours of these novices, the very
men who were the most gifted among them may have
confessed to themselves that the season of the nation's
youth was past, and may have ever and anon perhaps felt
in the still depths of the heart a secret longing to stray
once more in the delightful paths of youthful error.

BOOK FIFTH

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE .NHLITARV
MONARCHY

Wie er sich sieht so um und um,
Kchrt es ihm fast den Kopf herum,
Wie er wollt' Worle zu allem finden ?
Wie er mocht' so viel Schwall vcrbindcn ?
Wie er mocht' ininicr niuthig blciben
So fort und weiter fort zu schreiben ?

Goethe.

CHAPTER 1

MARCUS LEPIDUS AND QUINTUS SERTCK'.'JS

When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he 78.] The
had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman Opposition,
stale ; but, as it had been established by force, it still
needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous
secret and open foes. It was opposed not by any single
party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders
distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious
elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general
name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the
Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various
grounds and with very different designs. There were the
men of positive law, who neither mingled in nor understood Jurists,
politics, but who detested the arbitrary procedure of Sulla
in dealing with the lives and property of the burgesses.
Even during Sulla's lifetime, when all other opposition was
silent, the strict jurists resisted the regent ; the Cornelian
laws, for example, which deprived various Italian com-
munities of the Roman franchise, were treated in judicial
decisions as null and void ; and in like manner ihc courts
held that, where a burgess had been made a prisoner of
war ami sold into slavery during the revolution, his franchise
was not forfeited. There was, further, the remnant of the Aristocrats
old liberal minoiiiy in the senate, which in former times refJJ-nJ
had laboured to effect a compromise with the reform party

264

MARCUS LEPIDUS AND

BOOK V

and the Italians, and was now in a similar spirit inclined
to modify the rigidly oligarchic constitution of Sulla by

Democrats, concessions to the Populares. There were, moreover, the
Populares strictly so called, the honestly credulous narrow-
minded radicals, who staked property and life for the
current watchwords of the party-programme, only to dis-
cover with painful surprise after the victory that they had
been fighting not for a reality, but for a phrase. Their
special aim was to re-establish the tribunician power, which
Sulla had not abolished but had divested of its most
essential prerogatives, and which exercised over the multi-
tude a charm all the more mysterious, because the institution
had no obvious practical use and was in fact an empty
phantom — the mere name of tribune of the people, more
than a thousand years later, revolutionized Rome.

There were, above all, the numerous and important
classes whom the SuUan restoration had left unsatisfied, or
whose political or private interests it had directly injured.
Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposi-
tion ranked the dense and prosperous population of the
region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally re-
garded the bestowal of Latin rights in 665 (iii. 517, 527) as
merely an instalment of the full Roman franchise, and so
afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category be-

Freedmen. longed also the freedmen, influential in numbers and wealth,
and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the
capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by
the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage.

Capitalists. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists,
who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before
preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal
tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which
recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise
discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among
the burgess-bodies affected by the SuUan confiscations —

Trans-
padanes.

89.

Proletari-
ans of the
capital.

CHAP. I QUINTUS SEKTOKIUS 36$

whether they, Uke those of Pompeii, lived on their property The dis-

curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall l'^***^^**^-

with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them ; or,

like the Arretines and Volaterrans, retained actual j^osses-

sion of their territory, but had the Damocles* sword of

confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people ;

or, as was the case in Etruria especially, were reduced to

be beggars in their former abodes, or robbers in the woods.

Finally, the agitation extended to the whole family con- The

nections and freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had P''°*'^"^^**^

and iheir

lost their lives in consequence of the restoration, or who adherents.
were wandering along the Mauretanian coasts, or sojourning
at the court and in the army of Mithradates, in all the
misery of emigrant exile ; for, according to the strict family-
associations that governed the political feeling of this age,
it was accounted a point of honour^ that those who were
left behind should endeavour to procure for exiled relatives
the privilege of returning to their native land, and, in the
case of the dead, at least a removal of the stigma attaching
to their memory and to their children, and a restitution to
the latter of their paternal estate. More especially the
immediate children of the proscribed, whom the regent had
reduced in point of law to political Pariahs (p. 102), had
thereby virtually received from the law itself a summons
to rise in rebellion against the existing order of things.

To all these sections of the opposition there was added Men of
the whole body of men of ruined fortunes. All the rabble ,"'"

■' fortunes

high and low, whose means and substance had been spent
in refined or in vulgar debauchery ; the aristocratic lords,
who had no f:irthcr mark of (juality than their debts ; the
Sullan troopers whom the regent's fiat could transform into
landholders but not into husbandmen, and who, after

' It is a significant trait, that a disiinj^uished teacher of htcr.ituro. the
frecdninn Staberius Kros, a.llowcd the children of the projtciibcd to attend
his course gratuitously.

266

MARCUS LEPIDUS AND

BOOK V

Men of
ambition

Power of
the opposi-
tion.

squandering the first inheritance of the proscribed, were
longing to succeed to a second — all these waited only the
unfolding of the banner which invited them to fight against
the existing order of things, whatever else might be inscribed
on it. From a like necessity all the aspiring men of talent,
in search of popularity, attached themselves to the opposi-
tion ; not only those to whom the strictly closed circle of
the Optimates denied admission or at least opportunities
for rapid promotion, and who therefore attempted to force
their way into the phalanx and to break through the laws
of oligarchic exclusiveness and seniority by means of
popular favour, but also the more dangerous men, whose
ambition aimed at something higher than helping to
determine the destinies of the world within the sphere of
collegiate intrigues. On the advocates' platform in par-
ticular— the only field of legal opposition left open by
Sulla — even in the regent's lifetime such aspirants waged
lively war against the restoration with the weapons of
formal jurisprudence and combative oratory : for instance,
the adroit speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero (born 3rd Janu-
106. ary 648), son of a landholder of Arpinum, speedily made
himself a name by the mingled caution and boldness of
his opposition to the dictator. Such efforts were not of
much importance, if the opponent desired nothing farther
than by their means to procure for himself a curule chair,
and then to sit in it in contentment for the rest of his life.
No doubt, if this chair should not satisfy a popular man
and Gaius Gracchus should find a successor, a struggle for
life or death was inevitable ; but for the present at least no
name could be mentioned, the bearer of which had pro-
posed to himself any such lofty aim.

Such was the sort of opposition with which the oligarchic
government instituted by Sulla had to contend, when it
had, earlier than Sulla himself probably expected, been
thrown by his death on its own resources. I'he task was

CHA1-. I QUINTUS SEkTORIUS 267

in itself far from easy, and it was rendered more ditTicult
by tlie other social and political evils of this age — especially
by the extraordinary double difficulty of keeping the military
chiefs in the provinces in subjection to the supreme civil
magistracy, and of dealing with the masses of the Italian
and extra-Italian populace accumulating in the capital, and
of the slaves living there to a great extent in de facto
freedom, without having troops at disposal. The senate
was placed, as it were, in a fortress exposed and threatened
on all sides, and serious conflicts could not fail to ensue.
But the means of resistance organized by Sulla were con-
siderable and lasting ; and, although the majority of the
nation was manifestly disinclined to the government which
Sulla had installed, and even animated by hostile feelings
towards it, that government might very well maintain itself
for a long time in its stronghold against the distracted and
confused mass of an opposition which was not agreed either
as to end or means, and, having no head, was broken up
into a hundred fragments. Only it was necessary that it
should be determined to maintain its position, and should
bring at least a spark of that energy, which had built the
fortress, to its defence ; for in the case of a garrison which
will not defend itself, the greatest master of fortification
constructs his walls and moats in vain.

The more everything ultimately depended on the Want of
personality of the leading men on both sides, it was the ^ "^
more unfortunate that both, strictly speaking, lacked
leaders. The i)olitics of this period were thoroughly under Cotcrie-
the sway of the coterie-system in its worst form. This, ^**"^'"*
indccil, was nothing new ; close unions of families and
clubs were inseparable from an aristocratic organization of
the state, and had for centuries prevailed in Rome. But
it was not till this epoch that they became all-powerful, for
it was only now (first in 690) that their influence was 64.
attested rather than checked by legal measures of repression.

268 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

All persons of quality, those of popular leanings no less
than the oligarchy proper, met in Hetaeriae ; the mass of
the burgesses likewise, so far as they took any regular part
in political events at all, formed according to their voting-
districts close unions with an almost military organization,
which found their natural captains and agents in the
presidents of the districts, "tribe -distributors" {divisores
trihuuvi). With these political clubs everything was bought
and sold ; the vote of the elector especially, but also the
votes of the senator and the judge, the fists too which pro-
duced the street riot, and the ringleaders who directed it —
the associations of the upper and of the lower ranks were
distinguished merely in the matter of tariff. The Hetaeria
decided the elections, the Hetaeria decreed the impeach-
ments, the Hetaeria conducted the defence ; it secured the
distinguished advocate, and in case of need it contracted
for an acquittal with one of the speculators who pursued
on a great scale lucrative dealings in judges' votes. The
Hetaeria commanded by its compact bands the streets of
the capital, and with the capital but too often the state.
All these things were done in accordance with a certain
rule, and, so to speak, publicly ; the system of Hetaeriae
was better organized and managed than any branch of
state administration ; although there was, as is usual among
civilized swindlers, a tacit understanding that there should
be no direct mention of the nefarious proceedings, nobody
made a secret of them, and advocates of repute were not
ashamed to give open and intelligible hints of their relation
to the Hetaeriae of their clients. If an individual was to
be found here or there who kept aloof from such doings
and yet did not forgo public life, he was assuredly, like
Marcus Cato, a political Don Quixote. Parties and party-
strife were superseded by the clubs and their rivalry ;
government was superseded by intrigue. A more than
equivocal character, Publius Cethegus, formerly one of the

CHAP. I QUINTUS SERTORIUS 269

most zealous Marians, afterwards as a deserter received
into favour by Sulla (p. 78), acted a most influential part in
the political doings of this period — unrivalled as a cunning
tale-bearer and mediator between the sections of the senate,
and as having a statesman's acquaintance with the secrets
of all cabals : at times the appointment to the most im-
portant posts of command was decided by a word from his
mistress Praecia. Such a plight was only possible where
none of the men taking part in politics rose above medio-
crity : any man of more than ordinary talent would have
swept away this system of factions like cobwebs ; but there
was in reality the saddest lack of men of political or military
capacity.

Of the older generation the civil wars had left not a Philippus.
single man of repute except the old shrewd and eloquent
Lucius Philippus (consul in 663), who, formerly of popular 91.
leanings (iii. 380), thereafter leader of the capitalist party
against the senate (iii. 484), and closely associated with
the Marians (p. 70), and lastly passing over to the
victorious oligarchy in sufficient time to earn thanks and
commendation (p. 78), had managed to escape between
the parties. Among the men of the following generation Mcieiius

the most notable chiefs of the pure aristocracy were Ouintus 9'*'"'"^'

' ' ^ ihe

Metellus Pius (consul in 6 74\ Sulla's comrade in dangers LucuUL
and victories ; Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in the ^^'
year of Sulla's death, 676, the son of the victor of Ver- 73.
cellae ; and two younger officers, the brothers Lucius and
Marcus Lucullus, of whom the former had fought with
distinction under Sulla in Asia, the latter in Italy ; not to
mention Optimates like Quintus Ilortensius (640-704), lH-50
who had importance only as a pleader, or men like Decimus
Junius Brutus (consul in 677), Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus 77
Livianus (consul in 677), and other such nullities, whose 77.
best quality was a euphonious aristocratic name. But even
those four men rose little above the average calibre of the

270 MARCUS LEriDUS AND book v

Optimates of this age. Catulus was like his father a man
of refined culture and an honest aristocrat, but of moderate
talents and, in particular, no soldier. Metellus was not
merely estimable in his personal character, but an able
and experienced officer ; and it was not so much on account
of his close relations as a kinsman and colleague with the
regent as because of his recognized ability that he was sent
79. in 675, after resigning the consulship, to Spain, where the
Lusitanians and the Roman emigrants under Quintus
Sertorius were bestirring themselves afresh. The two
LucuUi were also capable officers — particularly the elder,
who combined very respectable military talents with thorough
literary culture and leanings to authorship, and appeared
honourable also as a man. But, as statesmen, even these
better aristocrats were not much less remiss and shortsighted
than the average senators of the time. In presence of an
outward foe the more eminent among them, doubtless,
proved themselves useful and brave ; but no one of them
evinced the desire or the skill to solve the problems of
politics proper, and to guide the vessel of the state through
the stormy sea of intrigues and factions as a true pilot.
Their political wisdom was limited to a sincere belief in
the oligarchy as the sole means of salvation, and to a
cordial hatred and courageous execration of demagogism as
well as of every individual authority which sought to
emancipate itself. Their petty ambition was contented
with little. The stories told of Metellus in Spain — that he
not only allowed himself to be delighted with the far from
harmonious lyre of the Spanish occasional poets, but even
wherever he went had himself received like a god with
libations of wine and odours of incense, and at table had
his head crowned by descending Victories amidst theatrical
thunder with the golden laurel of the conqueror — are no
better attested than most historical anecdotes ; but even
such gossip reflects the degenerate ambition of the genera-

CHAP. 1 QUINTUS SERTORIUS 271

tions of Epigoni. Even the better men were content when
they had gained not power and influence, but the consul
ship and a triumph and a place of honour in the senate ;
and at the very time when with right ambition they would
have just begun to be truly useful to their country and
their party, they retired from the political stage to be lost
in princely luxury. Men like Metellus and Lucius Lucullus
were, even as generals, not more attentive to the enlarge-
ment of the Roman dominion by fresh conquests of kings
and peoples than to the enlargement of the endless game,
poultry, and dessert lists of Roman gastronomy by new
delicacies from Africa and Asia Minor, and they wasted
the best part of their lives in more or less ingenious idle-
ness. The traditional aptitude and the individual self-
denial, on which all oligarchic government is based, were
lost in the decayed and artificially restored Roman aristo-
cracy of this age ; in its judgment universally the spirit of
clique was accounted as patriotism, vanity as ambition, and
narrow-mindedness as consistency. Had the Sullan con-
stitution passed into the guardianship of men such as have
sat in the Roman College of Cardinals or the Venetian
Council of Ten, we cannot tell whether the opposition
would have been able to shake it so soon ; with such de-
fenders every attack involved, at all events, a serious peril.

Of the men, who were neither unconditional adherents romivius
nor open opponents of the Sullan constitution, no one
attracted more the eyes of the multitude than the young
Gnaeus Pompeius, who was at the time of Sulla's death
twenty -eight years of age (born 29th September 648). lOtj.
The fact was a misfortune for the admired as well as for
the admirers j but it was natural. Sound in body! »»*1
mkitiv ftr<:apable--atlilcle,'whe=<*¥en whcR*-6Uf)erior ofHcer
vied with his soldiers in leaping, running, and lifting, a
vigorous and skilled rider and fencer, a bold leader of
volunteer bands, the youth had become imperator and

272 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

triumphator at an age which excluded him from every
magistracy and from the senate, and had acquired the
first place next to Sulla in public opinion ; nay, had ob-
tained from the indulgent regent himself — half in recogni-
tion, half in irony — the surname of the Great. Unhappily,
his mental endowments by no means corresponded with
these unprecedented successes. He was neither a bad nor
an incapable man, but a man thoroughly ordinary, created
by nature to be a good sergeant, called by circumstances
to he a general and a statesman. An intelligent, brave
and experienced, thoroughly excellent soldier, he was
still, even in his military capacity, without trace of any
higher gifts, y It was characteristic of him as a general,
as well as in other respects, to set to work with a caution
bordering on timidity, and, if possible, to give the decisive
blow only when he had established an immense superiority
over his opponent. His culture was the average culture of
the time ; although entirely a soldier, he did not neglect,
when he went to Rhodes, dutifully to admire, and to make
presents to, the rhetoricians there. His integrity was that
of a rich man who manages with discretion his considerable
property inherited and acquired. He did not disdain to
make money in the usual senatorial way, but he was too
cold and too rich to incur special risks, or draw down on
himself conspicuous disgrace, on that account. The vice
so much in vogue among his contemporaries, rather than
any virtue of his own, procured for him the reputation —
comparatively, no doubt, well warranted — of integrity and
disinterestedness. His " honest countenance " became
almost proverbial, and even after his death he was esteemed
as a worthy and moral man ; he was in fact a good neigh-
bour, who did not join in the revolting schemes by which
the grandees of that age extended the bounds of their
domains through forced sales or measures still worse at
the expense of their humbler neighbours, and in domestic

CHAP. I QUINTUS SERTORIUS 273

life he displayed attachment to his wife and children : it
redounds moreover to his credit that he was the first to
depart from the barbarous custom of putting to death the
captive kings and generals of the enemy, after they had
been exhibited in triumph. liut this did not prevent him
from separating from his beloved wife at the command of
his lord and master Sulla, because she belonged to an
outlawed family, nor from ordering with great composure
that men who had stood by him and helped him in times
of difficulty should be executed before his eyes at the nod
of the same master (p. 93) : he was not cruel, though he
was reproached with being so, but — what perhaps was
worse — he was cold and, in good as in evil, unimpassioned.
In the tumult of battle he faced the enemy fearlessly; in
civil life he was a shy man, whose cheek flushed on the
slightest occasion ; he spoke in public not without embar-
rassment, and generally was angular, stiff, and awkward
in intercourse. With ail his haughty obstinacy he was — as
indeed persons ordinarily are, who make a display of their
independence — a pliant tool in the hands of men who
knew how to manage him, especially of his freedmen and
clients, by whom he had no fear of being controlled. For
nothing was he less qualified than for a statesman. Uncer-
tain as to his aims, unskilful in the choice of his means, alike
in little and great matters shortsighted and helpless, he was
wont to conceal his irresolution and indecision under a
solemn silence, and, when he thought to play a subtle
game, simply to deceive himself with the belief that he
was deceiving others. By his military position and his
territorial connections he acquired almost without any
action of his own a considerable party personally devoted
to him, with which the greatest things might have been
accomplished ; but I'ompeius was in every respect incap-
able of leading and keeping together a party, and, if it still
kept together, it did so — in like manner without his action
vol.. IV 118

274 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

— through the sheer force of circumstances. In this, as in
other things, he reminds us of Marius ; but Marius, with
his nature of boorish roughness and sensuous passion, was
still less intolerable than this most tiresome and most
starched of all artificial great men. His political position
was utterly perverse. He was a Sullan officer and under
obligation to stand up for the restored constitution, and yet
again in opposition to Sulla personally as well as to the
whole senatorial government. The gens of the Pompeii,
which had only been named for some sixty years in the
consular lists, had by no means acquired full standing in
the eyes of the aristocracy; even the father of this Pompeius
had occupied a very invidious equivocal position towards
the senate (iii. 546, p. 61), and he himself had once been
in the ranks of the Cinnans (p. 85) — recollections which
were suppressed perhaps, but not forgotten. The promi-
nent position which Pompeius acquired for himself under
Sulla set him at inward variance with the aristocracy,
quite as much as it brought him into outward connection
with it. Weak-headed as he was, Pompeius was seized
with giddiness on the height of glory which he had chmbed
with such dangerous rapidity and ease. Just as if he
would himself ridicule his dry prosaic nature by the parallel
with the most poetical of all heroic iigures, he began to
compare himself with Alexander the Great, and to account
himself a man of unique standing, whom it did not beseem
to be merely one of the five hundred senators of Rome.
In reality, no one was more fitted to take his place as a
member of an aristocratic government than Pompeius.
His dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality,
his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want of
all initiative might have gained for him, had he been born
two hundred years earlier, an honourable place by the side
of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius : this mediocrity,
so characteristic of the genuine Optimate and the genuine

CHAP. I QUINTUS SERTORIUS 275

Roman, contributed not a little to the elective affinity which
subsisted at all times between Fompeius and the mass of
the burgesses and the senate. Even in his own age he
would have had a clearly defined and respectalile position,
had he contented himself with being the general of the
senate, for which he was from the outset destined. With
this he was not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight
of wishing to be something else than he could be. He
was constantly aspiring to a special position in the state,
and, when it offered itself, he could not make up his mind
to occupy it ; he was deeply indignant when persons and
laws did not bend unconditionally before him, and yet he
everywhere bore himself with no mere affectation of
modesty as one of many peers, and trembled at the mere
thought of undertaking anything unconstitutional. Thus
constantly at fundamental variance with, and yet at the
same time the obedient servant of, the oligarchy, constantly
tormented by an ambition which was frightened at its own
aims, his much agitated life passed joylessly away in a per-
petual inward contradiction.

Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be Crassus.
reckoned among the unconditional adherents of the oli-
garchy. He is a personage highly characteristic of this epoch.
Like Pompeius, whose senior he was by a few years, he
belonged to the circle of the high Roman aristocracy, had
obtained the usual education befitting his rank, and had
like Pompeius fought with distinction under Sulla in the
Italian war. Far inferior to many of his peers in mental
gifts, literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped
them by his boundless activity, and by the perseverance
with which he strove to possess everything and to become
all-important. Above all, he threw himself into specula-
tion. Purchases of estates during the revolution formed
the foundation of his wealth ; but he disdained no branch
of gain ; he carried on the business of building in the

276 MARCUS LEriDUS AND book v

capital on a great scale and with prudence ; he entered
into partnership with his freedmen in the most varied
undertakings ; he acted as banker both in and out of
Rome, in person or by his agents ; he advanced money to
his colleagues in the senate, and undertook — as it might
happen — to execute works or to bribe the tribunals on their
account. He was far from nice in the matter of making
profit. On occasion of the SuUan proscriptions a forgery
in the lists had been proved against him, for which reason
Sulla made no more use of him thenceforward in the affairs
of state : he did not refuse to accept an inheritance,
because the testamentary document which contained his
name was notoriously forged ; he made no objection, when
his bailiffs by force or by fraud dislodged the petty holders
from lands which adjoined his own. He avoided open
collisions, however, with criminal justice, and lived himself
like a genuine moneyed man in homely and simple style.
In this way Crassus rose in the course of a few years from
a man of ordinary senatorial fortune to be the master of
wealth which not long before his death, after defraying
enormous extraordinary expenses, still amounted to
170,000,000 sesterces (;^i, 700,000). He had become the
richest of Romans and thereby, at the same time, a great
political power. If, according to his expression, no one
might call himself rich who could not maintain an army
from his revenues, one who could do this was hardly any
longer a mere citizen. In reality the views of Crassus
aimed at a higher object than the possession of the best-
filled money-chest in Rome. He grudged no pains to
extend his connections. He knew how to salute by name
every burgess of the capital He refused to no suppliant
his assistance in court. Nature, indeed, had not done
much for him as an orator : his speaking was dry, his
delivery monotonous, he had difficulty of hearing ; but his
tenacity of purpose, which no wearisomeness deterred and

CJIAP. I QUINTUS SERTOKIUS 277

no enjoyment distracted, overcame such obstacles. He
never appeared unprepared, he never extenipuri/cd, and so
he became a pleader at all times in request and at all
times ready ; to whom it was no derogation that a cause
was rarely too bad for him, and that he knew how to
influence the judges not merely by his oratory, but also by
his connections and, on occasion, by his gold. Half the
senate was in debt to him ; his habit of advancing to
" friends " money without interest revocable at pleasure
rendered a number of influential men dependent on him,
and the more so that, like a genuine man of business, he
made no distinction among the parties, maintained connec-
tions on all hands, and readily lent to every one who was
able to pay or otherwise useful. The most daring party-
leaders, who made their attacks recklessly in all directions,
were careful not to ciuarrel with Crassus ; he was compared
to the bull of the herd, whom it was advisable for none to
provoke. That such a man, so disposed and so situated,
could not strive after humble aims is clear ; and, in a very
different way from Pompeius, Crassus knew exactly like a
banker the objects and the means of political speculation.
From the origin of Rome capital was a political power
there ; the age was of such a sort, that everything seemed
accessible to gold as to iron. If in the time of revolution
a capitalist aristocracy might have thought of overthrowing
the oligarchy of the gcntes, a man like Crassus might raise
his eyes higher than to the fasces and embroidered mantle
of the triumphators. For the moment he was a Sullan
and adherent of the senate ; but he was too much of a
financier to devote himself to a definite political party, or
to pursue aught else than his personal advantage. \Vhy
should Crassus, the wealthiest and most intriguing man in
Rome, and no penurious miser but a sj^Kiculator on the
greatest scale, not speculate also on the crown? Alone,
perhaps, he could not attain this object ; but he had

278

MARCUS LEPIDUS AND

BOOK V

Leaders
of the
democrats.

124-73.
91.

Caesar.

102.

100.

44.

82.

65.

62. 59.

100.
102. 82.

already carried out vaiious great transactions in partner-
ship ; it was not impossible that for this also a suitable
partner might present himself. It is a trait characteristic
of the time, that a mediocre orator and officer, a politician
who took his activity for energy and his covetousness for
ambition, one who at bottom had nothing but a colossal
fortune and the mercantile talent of forming connections —
that such a man, relying on the omnipotence of coteries
and intrigues, could deem himself on a level with the first
generals and statesmen of his day, and could contend
with them for the highest prize which allures political
ambition.

In the opposition proper, both among the liberal con-
servatives and among the Populares, the storms of revolu-
tion had made fearful havoc. Among the former, the only
surviving man of note was Gains Cotta (630—^. 681), the
friend and ally of Drusus, and as such banished in 663
(iii. 503), and then by Sulla's victory brought back to his
native land (p. 112) ; he was a shrewd man and a capable
advocate, but not called, either by the weight of his party
or by that of his personal standing, to act more than a
respectable secondary part. In the democratic party,
among the rising youth. Gains Julius Caesar, who was
twenty-four years of age (born 12 July 652?^), drew

^ It is usual to set down the year 654 as that of Caesar's birth, because
according to Suetonius (Caes. 88), Plutarch {Caes. 69), and Appian {B.C.
ii. 149) he was at his death (15 March 710) in his 56th year ; with which
also the statement that he was 18 years old at the time of the Sullan
proscription (672 ; Veil. ii. 41) nearly accords. But this view is utterly
inconsistent with the facts that Caesar filled the aedileship in 689, the
praetorship in 692, and the consulship in 695, and that these offices could,
according to the leges annales, be held at the very earliest in the 37th-38th,
40th-4ist, and 43rd-44th years of a man's life respectively. We cannot
conceive why Caesar should have filled all the curule offices two years
before the legal time, and still less why there should be no mention any-
where of his having done so. These facts rather suggest the conjecture
that, as his birthday fell undoubtedly on July 12, he was born not in 654,
but in 652 ; so that in 672 he was in his 2oth-2ist year, and he died not in
his 56th year, but at the age of 57 years 8 months. In favour of this
latter view we may moreover adduce the circumstance, which has been

CHAP. I QUINTUS SERTOKIUS 279

towards him the eyes of friend and foe. His relationship
with Marius and Cinna (his father's sister had been the
wife of Marius, he himself had married Cinna's daughter) ;
the courageous refusal of the youth who had scarce out-
grown the age of boyhood to send a divorce to his young
wife Cornelia at the bidding of the dictator, as Pompeius
had in tlie like case done ; his bold persistence in the
priesthood conferred upon him by Marius, but revoked by
Sulla ; his wanderings during the proscription with which
he was threatened, and which was with diftkulty averted
by the intercession of his relatives ; his bravery in the
conflicts before Mytilene and in Cilicia, a bravery which
no one had expected from the tenderly reared and almost
effeminately foppish boy ; even the warnings of Sulla
regarding the " boy in the petticoat " in whom more than a

strangely brought forward in opposition to it, that Caesar " paene puer"
was appointed by Marius and Cinna as Fianicn of Jupiter (Veil. ii. 43) ;
for Marius died in January 668, when Caesar was, according to the usual 86.
view, 13 years 6 moiulis old, and therefore not "almost," as Velleius
says, but actually still a boy, and most probably for this very reason not
at all capable of holding such a priesthood. If, again, he was born in
July 652, he was at the death of Marius in his sixteenth year ; and with 102.
this the expression in Velleius agrees, as well as the general rule that
civil positions were not assumed before the expiry of the age of boyhood.
Further, with this latter view alone accords the fact that the denarii
struck by Caesar about the outbreak of the civil war are marked with the
numljer LII., probably the year of his life ; for when it began, Caesar's
age was according to this view somewhat over 52 years. Nor is it so
rash as it appears to us who are accustomed to regular and official lists of
births, to ch.irge our authorities with an error in this respect. Those four
statements may very well be all traceable to a common source ; nor can
they at all lay claim to any very high credibility, seeing that for the
earlier period before the commencement of the acta diurna the statements
as to the natal years of even the best known and most prominent Romans,
e.g. as to that of Pompeius, vary in the most surprising manner. (Comp.
Shiiitsnc/it, I.' p. 570.)

In the Life of Caes;ir by Napoleon III. (M. 2, th. 1) it is objected to
this view, first, that the lex annalis would [xjiiit for Caesar's birth-year
not to 652, but to 651 ; secondly and especially, that other cases are 102. 103.
known where it was not attended to. But the first assertion rests on a
mistake ; for, as the example of Cicero shows, the Ux annalis required
only that at the entering on office the 43rd year should be Ijogun, not that
it should be completed. None of the alleged exceptions to the rule, more-
over, are pertinent. When Tacitus {Ann. xi. 22) says that formerly in
conferring magistracies no regard was bad to age, and that the consulate

28o MARCUS LEPIUUS AND book v

Marius lay concealed — all these were precisely so many
recommendations in the eyes of the democratic party.
But Caesar could only be the object of hopes for the
future ; and the men who from their age and their public
position would have been called now to seize the reins of
the party and the state, were all dead or in exile.
Lepidus. Thus the leadership of the democracy, in the absence

of a man with a true vocation for it, was to be had by any
one who might please to give himself forth as the champion
of oppressed popular freedom ; and in this way it came to
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a Sullan, who from motives
more than ambiguous deserted to the camp of the demo-
cracy. Once a zealous Optimate, and a large purchaser
at the auctions of the proscribed estates, he had, as
governor of Sicily, so scandalously plundered the province

and dictatorship were entrusted to quite young men, he has in view, of
course, as all commentators acknowledge, the earlier period before the
issuing of the leges annales — the consulship of M. Valerius Corvus at
twenty-three, and similar cases. The assertion that LucuUus received the
supreme magistracy before the legal age is erroneous ; it is only stated
(Cicero, Acad. pr. i. i) that on the ground of an exceptional clause not
more particularly known to us, in reward for some sort of act performed
by him, he had a dispensation from the legal two years' interval between
the aedileship and praetorship — in reality he was aedile in 675, probably
praetor in 677, consul in 680. That the case of Pompeius was a totally
different one is obvious ; but even as to Pompeius, it is on several
occasions expressly stated (Cicero, de Imp. Pomp. 21, 62 ; Appian, iii. 88)
that the senate released him from the laws as to age. That this should
have been done with Pompeius, who had solicited the consulship as a
commander-in-chief crowned with victory and a triumphator, at the head
of an army and after his coalition with Crassus also of a powerful party,
we can readily conceive. But it would be in the highest degree surprising,
if the same thing should have been done with Caesar on his candidature for
the minor magistracies, when he was of little more importance than other
political beginners ; and it would be, if possible, more surprising still,
that, while there is mention of that — in itself readily understood — excep-
tion, there should be no notice of this more than strange deviation, how-
ever naturally such notices would have suggested themselves, especially
with reference to Octavianus consul at 21 (comp., e.g., Appian, iii. 88).
When from these irrelevant examples the inference is drawn, " that the
law was little observed in Rome, where distinguished men were concerned,"
anything more erroneous than this sentence was never uttered regarding
Rome and the Romans. The greatness of the Roman commonwealth,
and not less that of its great generals and statesmen, depends above all
things on the fact that the law held good in their case also.

CHAP. I QUINTUS SEKTOKIUS 2S1

that he was threatened with impeachment, and, to evade
it, threw himself into opposition. It was a gain of doubtful
value. No doubt the opposition thus acquired a well-
known name, a man of quality, a vehement orator in the
Forum ; but Lepidus was an insignificant and indiscreet
personage, who did not deserve to stand at the head either
in council or in the field. Nevertheless the opposition
welcomed him, and the new leader of the democrats
succeeded not only in deterring his accusers from prose-
cuting the attack on him which they had begun, but also
in carrying his election to the consulship for 676 ; in which, "3.
we may add, he was helped not only by the treasures
exacted in Sicily, but also by the foolish endeavour of
Pompeius to show Sulla and the pure Sullans on this
occasion what he could do. Now that the opposition had,
on the death of Sulla, found a head once more in Lepidus,
and now that this their leader had become the supreme
magistrate of the state, the speedy outbreak of a new
revolution in the capital might with certainty be foreseen.

But even before the democrats moved in the capital. The

the democratic emigrants had again bestirred themselves in p™'p'"'s
^ ° in Spain.

Spain. The soul of this movement was Quintus Sertorius. Senorius.
This excellent man, a native of Nursia in the Sabine land,
was from the first of a tender and even soft organization —
as his almost enthusiastic love for his mother, Raia, shows
— and at the same time of the most chivalrous bravery, as
was proved by the honourable scars which he brought
home from the Cimbrian, Spanish, and Italian wars.
Although wholly untrained as an orator, he excited the
admiration of learned advocates by the natural flow and
the striking self-possession of his address. His remarkable
military and statesmanly talent had found opportunity of
shining by contrast, more particularly in the revolutionary
war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly mis-
managed ; he was confessedly the only democratic officer

282

MARCUS LEPIDUS AND

BOOK V

who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the
only democratic statesman who opposed the insensate and
furious doings of his party with statesmanhke energy.
His Spanish soldiers called him the new Hannibal, and
not merely because he had, like that hero, lost an eye in
war. He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician by
his equally cunning and courageous strategy, by his rare
talent of organizing war by means of war, by his adroitness
in attracting foreign nations to his interest and making
them serviceable to his ends, by his prudence in success
and misfortune, by the quickness of his ingenuity in turning
to good account his victories and averting the consequences
of his defeats. It may be doubted whether any Roman
statesman of the earlier period, or of the present, can be
compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius. After
Sulla's generals had compelled him to quit Spain (p. 93),
he had led a restless life of adventure along the Spanish
and African coasts, sometimes in league, sometimes at war,
with the Cilician pirates who haunted these seas, and with
the chieftains of the roving tribes of Libya. The victorious
Roman restoration had pursued him even thither : when
he was besieging Tingis (Tangiers), a corps under Pac-
ciaecus from Roman Africa had come to the help of the
prince of the town ; but Pacciaecus was totally defeated,
and Tingis was taken by Sertorius. On the report of such
achievements by the Roman refugee spreading abroad, the
Lusitanians, who, notwithstanding their pretended sub-
mission to the Roman supremacy, practically maintained
their independence, and annually fought with the governors
of Further Spain, sent envoys to Sertorius in Africa, to
invite him ' to join them, and to commit to him the com-
mand of their militia.

Sertorius, who twenty years before had served under
Titus Didius in Spain and knew the resources of the land,
Spanish in- resolved to Comply with the invitation, and, leaving behind

surrection.

Renewed
outbreak
of the

CHAf. 1 QUINTUS SERTORIUS 283

a small detachment on the Maurctaniun coast, embarked for
Spain (about 674). The straits separating Spain and Africa 80.
were occupied by a Roman squadron commanded by Cotta ;
to steal through it was impossible ; so Sertorius fought
his way through and succeeded in reaching the Lusitanians.
There were not more than twenty Lusitanian communities
that placed themselves under his orders ; and even of
"Romans" he mustered only 2600 men, a considerable
part of whom were deserters from the army of Pacciaecus
or Africans armed after the Roman style. Sertorius saw
that everything depended on his associating with the loose
guerilla-bands a strong nucleus of troops possessing Roman
organization and discipline : for this end he reinforced the
band which he had brought with him by levying 4000
infantry and 700 cavalry, and with this one legion and the
swarms of Spanish volunteers advanced against the Romans.
The command in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius,
who through his absolute devotion to Sulla — well tried
amidst the proscriptions — had risen from a subaltern to be
propraetor; he was totally defeated on the Baetis; 2000
Romans covered the field of battle. Messengers in all
haste summoned the governor of the adjoining province of
the Ebro, Marcus Domitius Calvinus, to check the farther
advance of the Sertorians; and there soon appeared (675) 79.
also the experienced general Quintus Metellus, sent by Mcidius
Sulla to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain, g " j^"
But they did not succeed in mastering the revolt. In the
Ebro province not only was the army of Calvinus destroyed
and he himself slain by the lieutenant of Sertorius, the
quaestor Lucius Hirtuleius, but Lucius Manlius, the governor
of Transalpine Gaul, who had crossed the Pyrenees with
three legions to the help of his colleague, was totally
defeated by the same brave leader. With difficulty Manlius
escaped with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence to
his province, losing on the march his whole baggage through

2S4 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

a sudden attack of the x'\quitanian tribes. In Further Spain
MeteUus penetrated into the Lusitanian territory ; but
Sertorius succeeded during the siege of Longobriga (not far
from the mouth of the Tagus) in alluring a division under
Aquinus into an ambush, and thereby compelling Metellus
himself to raise the siege and to evacuate the Lusitanian
territory. Sertorius followed him, defeated on the Anas
(Guadiana) the corps of Thorius, and inflicted vast damage
by guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in-chief
himself. Metellus, a methodical and somewhat clumsy
tactician, was in despair as to this opponent, who obstinately
declined a decisive battle, but cut off his supplies and com-
munications and constantly hovered round him on all sides.
Or.fifaniza- These extraordinary successes obtained by Sertorius in

^ons o j.j^g j.^^.Q Spanish provinces were the more significant, that
they were not achieved merely by arms and were not of a
mere military nature. The emigrants as such were not
formidable ; nor were isolated successes of the Lusitanians
under this or that foreign leader of much moment. But with
the most decided political and patriotic tact Sertorius acted,
whenever he could do so, not as condottiere of the Lusitanians
in revolt against Rome, but as Roman general and governor
of Spain, in which capacity he had in fact been sent thither
by the former rulers. He began ^ to form the heads of the
emigration into a senate, which was to increase to 300
members and to conduct affairs and to nominate magistrates
in Roman form. He regarded his army as a Roman one,
and filled the officers' posts, without exception, with Romans.
When facing the Spaniards, he was the governor, who by
virtue of his office levied troops and other support from
them ; but he was a governor who, instead of exercising
the usual despotic sway, endeavoured to attach the pro-

' At least the outline of these organizations must be assigned to the
80, 79, 78. years 674, 675, 676, although the execution of them doubtless belonged,
in great part, only to the subsequent years.

CHAP. I QUINTUS SERTORIUS 285

vincials to Rome and to himself personally. His chivalrous
character rendered it easy for him to enter into Spanish
habits, and excited in the Spanish nobility the most ardent
enthusiasm for the wonderful foreigner who had a spirit so
kindred with their own. According to the warlike custom
of personal following which subsisted in Spain as among
the Celts and the Germans, thousands of the noblest
Spaniards swore to stand faithfully by their Roman general
unto death ; and in them Sertorius found more trustworthy
comrades than in his countrymen and party-associates. He
did not disdain to turn to account the superstition of the
ruder Spanish tribes, and to have his plans of war brought
to him as commands of Diana by the white fawn of the
goddess. Throughout he exercised a just and gentle rule.
His troops, at least so far as his eye and his arm reached,
had to maintain the strictest discipline. Gentle as he
generally was in punishing, he showed himself inexorable
when any outrage was perpetrated by his soldiers on friendly
soil. Nor was he inattentive to the permanent alleviation of
the contlition of the provincials ; he reduced the tribute,
and directed the soldiers to construct winter barracks for
themselves, so that the oppressive burden of quartering the
troops was done away and thus a source of unspeakable
mischief and annoyance was stopped. For the children of
Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca
(Huesca), in which they received the higher instruction
usual in Rome, learning to speak Latin and Greek, and to
wear the toga — a remarkable measure, which was by no
means designed merely to take from the allies in as gentle a
form as possible the hostages that in Spain were inevitable,
but was above all an emanation from, and an advance on,
the great project of Gaius Gracchus and the democratic
party for gradually Romanizing the provinces. It was the
first attempt to accomplish their Romanization not by
extirpating the old inhabitants and filling their places with

286 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

Italian emigrants, but by Romanizing the provincials them-
selves. The Optimates in Rome sneered at the wretched
emigrant, the runaway from the Italian army, the last of the
robber-band of Carbo ; the sorry taunt recoiled upon its
authors. The masses that had been brought into the field
against Sertorius were reckoned, including the Spanish
general levy, at 120,000 infantry, 2000 archers and slingers,
and 6000 cavalry. Against this enormous superiority of
force Sertorius had not only held his ground in a series of
successful conflicts and victories, but had also reduced the
greater part of Spain under his power. In the Further
province Metellus found himself confined to the districts
immediately occupied by his troops ; here all the tribes,
who could, had taken the side of Sertorius. In the Hither
province, after the victories of Hirtuleius, there no longer
existed a Roman army! Emissaries of Sertorius roamed
through the whole territory of Gaul ; there, too, the tribes
began to stir, and bands gathering together began to make
the Alpine passes insecure. Lastly the sea too belonged
quite as much to the insurgents as to the legitimate govern-
ment, since the allies of the former — the pirates — were
almost as powerful in the Spanish waters as the Roman
ships of war. At the promontory of Diana (now Denia,
between Valencia and Alicante) Sertorius established for
the corsairs a fixed station, where they partly lay in wait for
such Roman ships as were conveying supplies to the Roman
maritime towns and the army, partly carried away or
delivered goods for the insurgents, and partly formed their
medium of intercourse with Italy and Asia Minor. The
constant readiness of these men moving to and fro to carry
everywhere sparks from the scene of conflagration tended
in a high degree to excite apprehension, especially at a
time when so much combustible matter was everywhere
accumulated in the Roman empire.

Amidst this state of matters the sudden death of Sulla

CHAP. 1 QUINTUS SERTORIUS 287

took place (676). So long as the man lived, at whose n«»th [78
voice a trained and trustworthy army of veterans was ready °„dl}s
any moment to rise, the oligarchy might tolerate the consc-
almost (as it seemed) definite abandonment of the Spanish 'J"^""^-
provinces to the emigrants, and the election of the leader
of the opposition at home to be supreme magistrate, at all
events as transient misfortunes ; and in their shortsighted
way, yet not wholly without reason, might cherish con-
fidence either that the opposition would not venture to
proceed to open conflict, or that, if it did venture, he who
had twice saved the oligarchy would set it up a third time.
Now the state of things was changed. The democratic
Hotspurs in the capital, long impatient of the endless
delay and inflamed by the brilliant news from Spain, urged
that a blow should be struck ; and Lepidus, with whom
the decision for the moment lay, entered into the proposal
with all the zeal of a renegade and with his own character-
istic frivolity. For a moment it seemed as if the torch
whicli kindled the funeral pile of the regent would also
kindle civil war ; but the influence of Pompeius and the
temper of the Sullan veterans induced the opposition to
let the obsequies of the regent pass over in peace.

Yet all the more openly were arrangements thenceforth insurrec-
made to introduce a fresh revolution. Daily the Forum V^"^^
resounded with accusations against the " mock Romulus "
and his executioners. Even before the great potentate
had closed his eyes, the overthrow of the Sullan constitu-
tion, the re-establishment of the distributions of grain, the
reinstating of the tribunes of the people in their former
position, the recall of those who were banished contrary to
law, the restoration of the confiscated lands, were openly
indicated by Lepidus and his adherents as the objects at
which they aimed. Now communications were entered
into with the proscribed ; Marcus Perpenna, governor of
Sicily in the days of Cinna (p. 92), arrived in the capital.

2S8 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

The sons of those whom Sulla had declared guilty of
treason — on whom the laws of the restoration bore with
intolerable severity — and generally the more noted men
of Marian views were invited to give their accession. Not
a few, such as the young Lucius Cinna, joined the move-
ment ; others, however, followed the example of Gaius
Caesar, who had returned home from Asia on receiving
the accounts of the death of Sulla and of the plans of
Lepidus, but after becoming more accurately acquainted
with the character of the leader and of the movement
prudently withdrew. Carousing and recruiting went on in
behalf of Lepidus in the taverns and brothels of the capital.
At length a conspiracy against the new order of things was
concocted among the Etruscan malcontents.^

All this took place under the eyes of the government.
The consul Catulus as well as the more judicious Opti-
mates urged an immediate decisive interference and
suppression of the revolt in the bud ; the indolent majority,
however, could not make up their minds to begin the
struggle, but tried to deceive themselves as long as possible
by a system of compromises and concessions. Lepidus
also on his part at first entered into it. The suggestion,
which proposed a restoration of the prerogatives taken
away from the tribunes of the people, he as well as his col-
league Catulus repelled. On the other hand, the Gracchan
distribution of grain was to a limited extent re-established.
According to it not all (as according to the Sempronian
law) but only a definite number — presumably 40,000 —
of the poorer burgesses appear to have received the earlier
largesses, as Gracchus had fixed them, of five f?iodii
monthly at the price of 6-;^ asses (3d.) — a regulation which
occasioned to the treasury an annual net loss of at least

1 The following narrative rests substantially on the account of Licini-
anus, which, fragmentary as it is at this very point, still gives important
information as to the insurrection of Lepidus.

CHAP. I QUINTUS SEKTORIUS 289

^40,000.' The opposition, naturally as little satisfied as
it was decidedly emboldened by this partial concession,
displayed all the more rudeness and violence in the
capital ; and in Etruria, the true centre of all insurrections
of the Italian proletariate, civil war already broke out,
the dispossessed Faesulans resumed possession of their
lost estates by force of arms, and several of the veterans
settled there by Sulla perished in the tumult. The senate
on learning what had occurred resolved to send the two
consuls thither, in order to raise troops and suppress the
insurrection.^ It was impossible to adopt a more irra-

> Under the year 676 Licinianus states (p. 23, Pertz ; p. 4a. Bonn) ; 78.
{Lepidusf) [le^em frumentari\am\ nulla resistente l[ar^]/uj est, ut
annon[ae'\ quinque modi popu[lo da]rentur. According to this account,
therefore, the law of the consuls of 681 Marcus Tcrentius Lucullus ami 73.
Gaius Cassius Varus, which Cicero mentions (in I'err. iii. 70, 136; v. 21,
52), and to which also Sallust refers (Hist. iii. 61, 19 Dietsch), did not first
re-establish the five modii, but only secured the largesses of grain by regu-
lating the purchases of .Sicilian corn, and perhaps made various alterations of
detail. That the Sempronian law (iii. 344) allowed every burgess domiciled
in Rome to share in the largesses of grain, is certain. But the later distri-
bution of grain was not so extensive as this, for, seeing tliat the monthly
corn of the Roman burgesses amounted to little more than 33,0c V

= 198,000 modii (Cic. I'err. iii. 30, 72), only some 40,000 bi: u

that time received grain, whereas the number of burgesses domiciletl in the
capital was certainly far more considerable. This arrangement probably
proceeded from the Octavian law, which introduced instead of the ex-
travagant Sempronian amount "a moderate largess, tolerable for the
state and necessary for the common people" (Cic. de Off. ii. 21, 7a, Brut.
62, 222) ; and to all appearance it is this very law that is the Ux /rumen -
taria mentioned by Licinianus. That I.cpidus should have entered into
such a proposal of compromise, accords with his attitude as regards the
restoration of the tribunate. It is likewise in keeping with the circum-
stances that the democracy should find itself not at all satisfied bv tlje
regulation, brought al)Out in this way, of the distribution oi
I.e.). The amount of loss is calculated on the Ixisis of t;
worth at le.nst double (iii. 344) ; when piracy or other causes drove up
the price of grain, a far more considerable loss must have resulted.

- From the fragments of the account of Licinianus (p. 44. Bonn) it is
plain that the decree of the senate, uti Lefidus et Cc. reiis txer-

citibus maturrime projiciscerentur (Siillust, Hist. i. 44 is to »<

understood not of a dcsjMtch of the consuls \y
consulship to their procf)nsular provinces, for w

Ix-en no reason, but of their being sent to Llruria ngamst the rrvoliol
Faesulans, just as in the Catilinarian war the consul Gaius Anionius »:^^
despatched to the same quarter. The statement of Fhilippus in S.ilaist
(Hut. i. 48, 4) that I^pidusi^ seditiontm pravinciam cum fxrrdtu adrptui
vol.. IV , , ^

290 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

tional course. The senate, in presence of the insurrec-
tion, evinced its pusillanimity and its fears by the re-
establishment of the corn-law ; in order to be relieved
from a street-riot, it furnished the notorious head of the
insurrection with an army ; and, when the two consuls
were bound by the most solemn oath which could be
contrived not to turn the arms entrusted to them against
each other, it must have required the superhuman obduracy
of oligarchic consciences to think of erecting such a bulwark
against the impending insurrection. Of course Lepidus
armed in Etruria not for the senate, but for the insurrec-
tion— sarcastically declaring that the oath which he had
taken bound him only for the current year. The senate
put the oracular machinery in motion to induce him to
return, and committed to him the conduct of the impend-
ing consular elections ; but Lepidus evaded compliance,
and, while messengers passed to and fro and the official
year drew to an end amidst proposals of accommodation,
his force swelled to an army. When at length, in the
77. beginning of the following year (677), the definite order
of the senate was issued to Lepidus to return without
delay, the proconsul haughtily refused obedience, and de-
manded in his turn the renewal of the former tribunician
power, the reinstatement of those who had been forcibly
ejected from their civic rights and their property, and,
besides this, his own re-election as consul for the current
year or, in other words, the tyrannis in legal form.
Outbreak Thus war was declared. The senatorial party could

^ ^ ■ reckon, in addition to the SuUan veterans whose civil exist-
ence was threatened by Lepidus, upon the army assembled
by the proconsul Catulus ; and so, in compliance with the
urgent warnings of the more sagacious, particularly of

ed, is entirely in harmony with this view ; for the extraordinary consular
command in Etruria was just as much a provincia as the ordinary pro-
consular command in Narbonese Gaul.

CHAP. I QUINTUS SERTORIUS 201

Philippus, Catulus was entrusted by the senate with the
defence of the capital and the repelling of the main force
of the democratic party stationed in Elriiria, At the same
time (Jnaeus Pompcius was desi)atchcd with another corps
to wrest from his former protege the valley of the Po,
which was held by Lepidus' lieutenant, Marcus Brutus.
While Pompeius speedily accomplished his commission
and shut up the enemy's general closely in Mutina,
Lepidus appeared before the capital in order to conquer it
for the revolution as Marius had formerly done by storm.
The right bank of the Tiber fell wholly into his power,
and he was able even to cross the river. The decisive
battle was fought on the Campus Martius, close under the
walls of the city. But Catulus conquered ; and Lepidus Lepidus
was compelled to retreat to Etruria, while another division, ^ ^'"^
under his son Scipio, threw itself into the fortress of Alba.
Thereupon the rising was substantially at an end. Mutina
surrendered to Pompeius ; and Brutus was, notwithstand-
ing the safe -conduct promised to him, subsequently put
to death by order of that general. Alba too was, after a
long siege, reduced by famine, and the leader there was
likewise executed. Lepidus, pressed on two sides by
Catulus and Pompeius, fought another engagement on the -.
coast of Etruria in order merely to procure the means of
retreat, and then embarked at the port of Cosa for Sardinia,
from which point he hoped to cut off the supplies of the
capital, and to obtain communication with the Spanish
insurgents. But the governor of the island opposed to
him a vigorous resistance ; and he himself died, not long Death of
after his landing, of consumption (677), whereupon the 'f'P'^"^
war in Sardinia came to an end. A part of his soldiers
dispersed ; with the flower of the insurrectionary army
and with a well- filled chest the late praetor, Marcus
Perpenna, proceeded to Liguria, and thence to Spain to
join the Sertorians.

292

MARCUS LEPIDUS AND

BOOK V

Pompeius
extorts
the

command
in Spain.

The oligarchy was thus victorious over Lepidus ; but it
found itself compelled by the dangerous turn of the Ser-
torian war to concessions, which violated the letter as well
as the spirit of the Sullan constitution. It was absolutely
necessary to send a strong army and an able general to
Spain ; and Pompeius indicated, very plainly, that he
desired, or rather demanded, this commission. The pre-
tension was bold. It was already bad enough that they
had allowed this secret opponent again to attain an extra-
ordinary command in the pressure of the Lepidian revolu-
tion ; but it was far more hazardous, in disregard of all the
rules instituted by Sulla for the magisterial hierarchy, to
invest a man who had hitherto filled no civil office with
one of the most important ordinary provincial governorships,
under circumstances in which the observance of the legal
term of a year was not to be thought of. The oligarchy
had thus, even apart from the respect due to their general
Metellus, good reason to oppose with all earnestness this
new attempt of the ambitious youth to perpetuate his
exceptional position. But this was not easy. In the first
place, they had not a single man fitted for the difficult post
of general in Spain. Neither of the consuls of the year
showed any desire to measure himself against Sertorius ;
and what Lucius Philippus said in a full meeting of the
senate had to be admitted as too true — that, among all the
senators of note, not one was able and willing to command
in a serious war. Yet they might, perhaps, have got over
this, and after the manner of oligarchs, when they had no
capable candidate, have filled the place with some sort of
makeshift, if Pompeius had merely desired the command
and had not demanded it at the head of an army. He
had already lent a deaf ear to the injunctions of Catulus
that he should dismiss the army ; it was at least doubtful
whether those of the senate would find a better reception,
and the consequences of a breach no one could calculate

CHAP. I QUINTUS SEKTOklUS 29J

— the scale of aristocracy miylu very easily mount up, if
the sword of a well-known general were thrown into the
opposite scale. So the majority resolved on concession.
Not from the people, which constitutionally ought to have
been consulted in a case where a private man was to be
invested with the supreme magisterial power, but from the
senate, Pompeius received proconsular authority and the
chief command in Hither Spain ; and, forty days after he
had received it, crossed the Alps in the summer of 677. 77.

First of all the new general found employment in Gaul, Pompcius
where no formal insurrection had broken out, but serious '" ^*"'-
disturbances of the peace had occurred at several places ;
in consequence of which Pompeius deprived the cantons of
the Volcae-Arecomici and the Helvii of their independence,
and placed them under Massilia. He also laid out a new
road over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genl-vre, ii. 2 5 8), and
so established a shorter communication between the valley
of the Po and Gaul, Amidst this work the best season of
the year passed away ; it was not till late in autumn that
Pompeius crossed the Pyrenees.

Sertorius had meanwhile not been idle. He had de- —
spatched Hirtuleius into the Further province to keep
Metellus in check, and had himself endeavoured to follow
up his complete victory in the Hither province, and to
prepare for the reception of Pompeius. The isolated
Celtiberian towns there, which still adhered to Rome, were
attacked and reduced one after another; at last, in the
very middle of winter, the strong Contrebia (south-east of
Saragossa) had fallen. In vain the hard-pressed towns had
sent message after message to Pompeius; he would not be
induced by any entreaties to depart from his wonted rut
of slowly advancing. With the exception of the maritime Appear-
towns, which were defended by the Roman fleet, and the ?"" °^

' I'ompcius

districts of the Indigetes and l>aletani in the north-east in Spain,
corner of Spain, where Pompeius established himself after

294 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

he had at length crossed the Pyrenees, and made his raw
troops bivouac throughout the winter to inure them to
hardships, the whole of Hither Spain had at the end of

77. 677 become by treaty or force dependent on Sertorius, and
the district on the upper and middle Ebro thenceforth
continued the main stay of his power. Even the appre-
hension, which the fresh Roman force and the celebrated
name of the general excited in the army of the insurgents,
had a salutary effect on it. Marcus Perpenna, who hitherto
as the equal of Sertorius in rank had claimed an inde-
pendent command over the force which he had brought
with him from Liguria, was, on the news of the arrival of
Pompeius in Spain, compelled by his soldiers to place
himself under the orders of his abler colleague.

76. For the campaign of 678 Sertorius again employed the
corps of Hirtuleius against Metellus, while Perpenna with
a strong army took up his position along the lower course
of the Ebro to prevent Pompeius from crossing the river,
if he should march, as was to be expected, in a southerly
direction with the view of effecting a junction with Metellus,
and along the coast for the sake of procuring supplies for
his troops. The corps of Gains Herennius was destined to
the immediate support of Perpenna ; farther inland on the
upper Ebro, Sertorius in person prosecuted meanwhile the
subjugation of several districts friendly to Rome, and held
himself at the same time ready to hasten according to
circumstances to the aid of Perpenna or Hirtuleius. It
was still his intention to avoid any pitched battle, and to
annoy the enemy by petty conflicts and cutting off supplies.
Pompeius Pompeius, however, forced the passage of the Ebro

^ '^^ ^ ■ against Perpenna and took up a position on the river
Pallantias, near Saguntum, whence, as we have already
said, the Sertorians maintained their communications with
Italy and the east. It was time that Sertorius should
appear in person, and throw the superiority of his numbers

CHAP. I QULN'TUS SERTOKIUS ' 295

and of his genius into the scale against the greater excellence
of the soldiers of his opponent. For a considerable time
the struggle was concentrated around the town of Lauro (on
the Xucar, south of Valencia), which had declared for
Pompeius and was on that account besieged by Sertorius.
Pompeius exerted himself to the utmost to relieve it ; but,
after several of his divisions had already been assailed
separately and cut to pieces, the great warrior found himself
— just when he thought that he had surrounded the Ser-
torians, and when he had already invited the besieged to
be spectators of the capture of the besieging army — ail of a
sudden completely outmanoeuvred; and in order that he might
not be himself surrounded, he had to look on from his camp
at the capture and reduction to ashes of the allied town and
at the carrying off of its inhabitants to Lusitania — an event
which induced a number of towns that had been wavering
in middle and eastern Spain to adhere anew to Sertorius.

Meanwhile Metellus fought with better fortune. In a Victories of
sharp engagement at Italica (not far from Seville), which ^'^'^^'"^
Hirtuleius had imprudently risked, and in which both
generals fought hand to hand and Hirtuleius was wounded,
Metellus defeated him and compelled him to evacuate the
Roman territory proper, and to throw himself into Lusitania.
This victory permitted Metellus to unite with Pompeius.
The two generals took up their winter-quarters in 678-79 at 76-75.
the Pyrenees, and in the next campaign in 679 they resolved 75.
to make a joint attack on the enemy in his position near
Valentia. But while Metellus was advancing, Pompeius
offered battle beforehand to the main army of the enemy,
with a view to wipe out the stain of Lauro and to gain the
expected laurels, if possible, alone. With joy Sertorius
embraced the opportunity of fighting with Pompeius before
Metellus arrived.

The armies met on the river Sucro (Xucar) : after a Battle on
sharp conflict Pompeius was beaten on the right wing, ^ "'■'''°"

±96 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

and was himself carried from the field severely wounded.
Afranius no doubt conquered with the left and took the
camp of the Sertorians, but during its pillage he was
suddenly assailed by Sertorius and compelled also to give
way. Had Sertorius been able to renew the battle on the
following day, the army of Pompeius would perhaps have been
annihilated. But meanwhile Metellus had come up, had over-
thrown the corps of Perpenna ranged against him, and taken
his camp : it was not possible to resume the battle against
the two armies united. The successes of Metellus, the
junction of the hostile forces, the sudden stagnation after
the victory, diffused terror among the Sertorians ; and, as
not unfrequently happened with Spanish armies, in con-
sequence of this turn of things the greater portion of the
Sertorian soldiers dispersed. But the despondency passed
away as quickly as it had come ; the white fawn, which
represented in the eyes of the multitude the military plans
of the general, was soon more popular than ever; in a
short time Sertorius appeared with a new army confronting
the Romans in the level country to the south of Saguntum
(Murviedro), which firmly adhered to Rome, while the
Sertorian privateers impeded the Roman supplies by sea, and
scarcity was already making itself felt in the Roman camp.
Another battle took place in the plains of the river Turia
(Guadalaviar), and the struggle was long undecided.
Pompeius with the cavalry was defeated by Sertorius, and
his brother-in-law and quaestor, the brave Lucius Memmius,
was slain; on the other hand Metellus vanquished Perpenna,
and victoriously repelled the attack of the enemy's main
army directed against him, receiving himself a wound in the
conflict. Once more the Sertorian army dispersed.
Valentia, which Gains Herennius held for Sertorius, was
taken and razed to the ground. The Romans, probably
for a moment, cherished a hope that they were done with
their tough antagonist. The Sertorian army had dis-

CHAF. I QUIXTUS SKkTOKIUS 297

appeared ; the Roman troops, penetrating far into the
interior, besieged the general himself in the fortress Clunia
on the upper Douro. But while they vainly invested this
rocky stronghold, the contingents of the insurgent com-
munities assembled elsewhere ; Sertorius stole out of the
fortress and even before the expiry of the year stood once
more as general at the head of an army.

Again the Roman generals had to take up their winter
quarters with the cheerless prospect of an inevitable renewal
of their Sisyphean war-toils. It was not even possible to
choose quarters in the region of Valentia, so important on
account of the communication with Italy and the east, but
fearfully devastated by friend and foe ; Pompeius led his
troops first into the territory of the Vascones ^ (Biscay) and
then spent the winter in the territory of the Vaccaei (about
Valladolid), and Metellus even in Gaul.

For five years the Sertorian war thus continued, and indefinite
still there seemed no prospect of its termination. The state ^"'^,

' ' fx-nlous

suffered from it beyond description. The flower of the ch.-iractcr
Italian youth perished amid tlie exhausting fatigues of these ^^^*-
campaigns. The public treasury was not only deprived of war.
the Spanish revenues, but had annually to send to Spain
for the pay and maintenance of the Spanish armies very
considerable sums, which the government hardly knew how
to raise. Spain was devastated and impoverished, and the
Roman civilization, which unfolded so fair a promise there,
received a severe shock ; as was naturally to be expected
in the case of an insurrectionary war waged with so much
bitterness, and but too often occasioning the destruction of
whole communities. Even the towns which adhered to
the dominant party in Rome had countless hardships to

' In the recently found fragments of Sallust, which appear to belong

to the campaign uf 6yt). the following words relate to this incident : 75.
A't'manus [exfrfifus {of l'om\yvhis) /ru men ti ^rit[fi\i r' -ti

«... {itymque Sertorius mon . . . e, luim mult^ t €i

periniU Atiae [:/er cl Italiat inUr^luJenctur\

298 MARCUS LEPIDUS AND Book v

endure ; those situated on the coast had to be provided
with necessaries by the Roman fleet, and the situation of
the faithful communities in the interior was almost desperate.
Gaul suffered hardly less, partly from the requisitions for
contingents of infantry and cavalry, for grain and money,
partly from the oppressive burden of the winter-quarters,
which rose to an intolerable degree in consequence of the

74. bad harvest of 6So ; almost all the local treasuries were
compelled to betake themselves to the Roman bankers,
and to burden themselves with a crushing load of debt.
Generals and soldiers carried on the war with reluctance.
The generals had encountered an opponent far superior in
talent, a tough and protracted resistance, a warfare of very
serious perils and of successes difficult to be attained
and far from brilliant ; it was asserted that Pompeius was
scheming to get himself recalled from Spain and entrusted
with a more desirable command somewhere else. The
soldiers, too, found little satisfaction in a campaign in which
not only was there nothing to be got save hard blows and
worthless booty, but their very pay was doled out to them
with extreme irregularity. Pompeius reported to the senate,

75. at the end of 679, that the pay was two years in arrear, and
that the army was threatening to break up. The Roman
government might certainly have obviated a considerable
portion of these evils, if they could have prevailed on them-
selves to carry on the Spanish war with less remissness, to
say nothing of better will. In the main, however, it was
neither their fault nor the fault of their generals that a genius
so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on this
petty warfare year after year, despite of all numerical and
military superiority, on ground so thoroughly favourable to
insurrectionary and piratical warfare. So little could its end
be foreseen, that the Sertorian insurrection seemed rather as
if it would become intermingled with other contemporary
revolts and thereby add to its dangerous character. Just

ciiAiv I QUINTUS SERTORIUS 299

at that time tlic Romans were contending on every sea with
piratical fleets, in Italy with the revolted slaves, in Mace-
donia with the tribes on the lower Danube; and in the east
Mithradates, partly induced by the successes of the Spanish
insurrection, resolved once more to tr)- the fortune of arms.
That Serlorius had formed connections with the Italian and
Macedonian enemies of Rome, cannot be distinctly affirmed,
although he certainly was in constant intercourse with the
Marians in Italy. With the pirates, on the other hand, he
had previously formed an avowed league, and with the
Pontic king — with whom he had long maintained relations
through the medium of the Roman emigrants staying at his
court — he now concluded a formal treaty of alliance, in
which Scrtorius ceded to the king tlie client-states of Asia
Minor, but not the Roman province of Asia, and [)romised,
moreover, to send him an officer qualified to lead his troops,
and a number of soldiers, while the king, in turn, bound
himself to transmit to Sertorius forty ships and 3000 talents
(^720,000). The wise politicians in the capital were
already recalling the time when Italy found itself threatened
by Philip from the east and by Hannibal from the west ;
they conceived that the new Hannibal, just like his pre-
decessor, after having by himself subdued Spain, could
easily arrive with the forces of Spain in Italy sooner than
Pompeius, in order that, like the Phoenician formerly, he
might summon the Etruscans and Samnites to arms against
Rome.

Kut this comparison was more ingenious than accurate. CoUapb*
Sertorius was far from beimr strong enough to renew the °' ^'^ ,

° ° power of

gigantic enterprise of Hannibal. He was lost if he left Spain, Scnorius
where all his successes were bound up with the peculiarities
of the country and the people ; and even there he was more
and more compelled to renounce the ofTensive. His
admirable skill as a leader could not change the nature of
his troops. The Spanish militia retained its character,

30O MARCUS LEPIDUS AND book v

untrustworthy as the wave or the wind ; now collected in
masses to the number of 150,000, now melting away again
to a mere handful. The Roman emigrants, likewise,
continued insubordinate, arrogant, and stubborn. Those
kinds of armed force which require that a corps should keep
together for a considerable time, such as cavalry especially,
were of course very inadequately represented in his army.
The war gradually swept off his ablest officers and the
flower of his veterans ; and even the most trustworthy
communities, weary of being harassed by the Romans
and maltreated by the Sertorian officers, began to show
signs of impatience and wavering allegiance. It is re-
markable that Sertorius, in this respect also like Hannibal,
never deceived himself as to the hopelessness of his position;
he allowed no opportunity for bringing about a compromise
to pass, and would have been ready at any moment to lay
down his staff of command on the assurance of being allowed
to live peacefully in his native land. But political ortho-
doxy knows nothing of compromise and conciliation.
Sertorius might not recede or step aside ; he was compelled
inevitably to move on along the path which he had once
entered, however narrow and giddy it might become.

The representations which Pompeius addressed to Rome,
and which derived emphasis from the behaviour of Mithra-
dates in the east, were successful. He had the necessary
supplies of money sent to him by the senate and was
reinforced by two fresh legions. Thus the two generals went
74. to work again in the spring of 680 and once more crossed
the Ebro. Eastern Spain was wrested from the Sertorians
in consequence of the battles on the Xucar and Guadalaviar;
the struggle thenceforth became concentrated on the upper
and middle Ebro around the chief strongholds of the Sertor-
ians— Calagurris, Osca, Ilerda. As Metellus had done best
in the earlier campaigns, so too on this occasion he gained
the most important successes. His old opponent Hirtuleius,

CHAP. I QUINTUS SliRTORIUS 301

who again confronted him, was completely defcaied and
fell himself along with his brother — an irreparable loss
for the Sertorians. Scrtorius, whom the unfortunate
news reached just as he was on the point of assailing
the enemy opposed to him, cut down the messenger,
that the tidings might not discourage his troops ; but
the news could not be long concealed. One town after
another surrendered, Metellus occupied the Ccltibcrian
towns of Segobriga (between Toledo and Cuenca) and
Bilbilis (near Calatayud). Pompeius besieged Pallantia
(Palencia above Valladolid), but Sertorius relieved it, and
compelled Pompeius to fall back upon Metellus ; in front
of Calagurris (Calahorra, on the upper Ebro), into which
Sertorius had thrown himself, they both suffered severe
losses. Nevertheless, when they went into winter-quarters
— Pompeius to Gaul, Metellus to his own province — they
were able to look back on considerable results ; a great
portion of the insurgents had submitted or had been
subdued by arms.

In a similar way the campaign of the following year (681) 73.
ran its course ; in this case it was especially Pompeius who
slowly but steadily restricted the field of the insurrection.

The discomfiture sustained by the arms of the insurgents
failed not to react on the tone of feeling in their camp.
The military successes of Sertorius became like those of
Hannibal, of necessity less and less considerable ; people
began to call in question his military talent : he was no
longer, it was alleged, what he had been ; he spent the day
in feasting or over his cups, and squandered money as well
as time. The number of the deserters, and of communities internal
falling away, increased. Soon projects formed by the f'^"!'f"
Roman emigrants against the life of the general were Sertonans
reported to him ; they sounded credible enough, especially
as various officers of the insurgent army, and Perpenna in
particular, had submittal with reluctance to the supremacy

302

MARCUS LEPIDUS AND

BOOK V

Assassina
tion of
Sertorius.

of Sertorius, and the Roman governors had for long promised
amnesty and a high reward to any one who should kill him,
Sertorius, on hearing such allegations, withdrew the charge
of guarding his person from the Roman soldiers and
entrusted it to select Spaniards. Against the suspected
themselves he proceeded with fearful but necessary severity,
and condemned various of the accused to death without
resorting, as in other cases, to the advice of his council ; he
was now nnore dangerous — it was thereupon affirmed in the
circles of the malcontents — to his friends than to his foes.

A second conspiracy was soon discovered, which had its
seat in his own staff; whoever was denounced had to take
flight or die ; but all were not betrayed, and the remaining
conspirators, including especially Perpenna, found in the
circumstances only a new incentive to make haste. They
were in the headquarters at Osca. There, on the instiga-
tion of Perpenna, a brilliant victory was reported to the
general as having been achieved by his troops ; and at the
festal banquet arranged by Perpenna to celebrate this
victory Sertorius accordingly appeared, attended, as was his
wont, by his Spanish retinue. Contrary to former custom
in the Sertorian headquarters, the feast soon became a
revel ; wild words passed at table, and it seemed as if
some of the guests sought opportunity to begin an altercation,
Sertorius threw himself back on his couch, and seemed
desirous not to hear the disturbance. Then a wine-cup
was dashed on the floor ; Perpenna had given the concerted
sign. Marcus Antonius, Sertorius' neighbour at table, dealt
the first blow against him, and when Sertorius turned
round and attempted to rise, the assassin flung himself upon
him and held him down till the other guests at table, all of
them implicated in the conspiracy, threw themselves on the
struggling pair, and stabbed the defenceless general while
72. his arms were pinioned (682). With him died his faithful
attendants. So ended one of the greatest men, if not the

riiAr. I QUINTUS SERTORIUS 303

very greatest man, that Rome had hitherto produced — a
man who under more fortunate circumstances would perhaps
have become the regenerator of his country — by the treason
of the wretched band of emigrants whom he was condemned
to lead against his native land. History loves not the
Coriolani ; nor has she made any exception even in the case
of this the most magnanimous, most gifted, most deser\ing
to be regretted of them all.

The murderers thought to succeed to the heritage of the Pcrpenna
murdered. After the death of Sertorius, Perpenna, as the ^"'^^'^.'^^

' ' ' Scrtonus.

highest among the Roman officers of the Spanish army, laid
claim to the chief command. The army submitted, but with
mistrust and reluctance. However men had murmured
against Sertorius in his lifetime, death reinstated the hero in
his rights, and vehement was th^ indignation of the soldiers
when, on the publication of his testament, the name of
Perpenna was read forth among the heirs. A part of the
soldiers, especially the Lusitanians, dispersed ; the remainder
had a presentiment that with the death of Sertorius their
spirit and their fortune had departed.

Accordingly, at the first encounter with Pompcius, the Pompeius
wretchedly led and despondent ranks of the insurgents P"? ^" .
were utterly broken, and Perpenna, among other officers, insurrcc- \
was taken prisoner. The wretch sought to purchase his "°"' '
life by delivering up the correspondence of Sertorius, which ,

would have compromised numerous men of standing in
Italy ; but Pompeius ordered the papers to be burnt
unread, and handed him, as well as the other chiefs of the
insurgents, over to the executioner. The emigrants who
had escaped dispersed ; and most of them went into the
Mauretanian deserts or joined the pirates. Soon afterwards
the Plotian law, which was zealously supported by the
young Caesar in particular, opened up to a portion of
them the opportunity of returning home ; but all those
who had taken part in the murder of Sertorius, with but

304 MARCUS LEPIDUS & QUINTUS SERTORIUS book v

a single exception, died a violent death. Osca, and most
of the towns which had still adliered to Sertorius in Hither
Spain, now voluntarily opened their gates to Pompeius ;
Uxama (Osma), Clunia, and Calagurris alone had to be
reduced by force. The two provinces were regulated
anew ; in the Further province, Metellus raised the annual
tribute of the most guilty communities ; in the Hither,
Pompeius dispensed reward and punishment : Calagurris,
for example, lost its independence and was placed under
Osca. A band of Sertorian soldiers, which had collected
in the Pyrenees, was induced by Pompeius to surrender,
and was settled by him to the north of the Pyrenees near
Lugudunum (St. Bertrand, in the department Haute-
Garonne), as the community of the "congregated"
{convenae). The Roman emblems of victory were erected
at the summit of the pass of the Pyrenees ; at the close
71. of 683, Metellus and Pompeius marched with their armies
through the streets of the capital, to present the thanks of
the nation to Father Jovis at the Capitol for the conquest
of the Spaniards. The good fortune of Sulla seemed still
to be with his creation after he had been laid in the grave,
and to protect it better than the incapable and negligent
watchmen appointed to guard it. The opposition in Italy
had broken down from the incapacity and precipitation of
its leader, and that of the emigrants from dissension within
their own ranks. These defeats, although far more the
result of their own perverseness and discordance than of
the exertions of their opponents, were yet so many victories
for the oligarchy. The curule chairs were rendered once
more secure.

CHAP. 11 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 305

CHAPTER II

RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION

When the suppression of the Cinnan revolution, which External
threatened the very existence of the senate, rendered it ''^'=1"°"^
possible for the restored senatorial government to devote
once more the requisite attention to the internal and
external security of the empire, there emerged affairs
enough, the settlement of which could not be postponed
without injuring the most important interests and allowing
present inconveniences to grow into future dangers. Apart
from the very serious complications in Spain, it was
absolutely necessary effectually to check the barbarians in
Thrace and the regions of the Danube, whom Sulla on his
march through Macedonia had only been able superficially
to chastise (p. 50), and to regulate, by military intervention,
the disorderly state of things along the northern frontier
of the Greek peninsula ; thoroughly to suppress the bands
of pirates infesting the seas everywhere, but especially the
eastern waters ; and lastly to introduce better order into the
unsettled relations of Asia Minor. The peace which Sulla
had concluded in 670 with Mithradates, king of Pontus 84.
(p. 49, 52), and of which the treaty with Murena in 673 81.
(p. 95) was essentially a repetition, bore throughout the stamp
of a provisional arrangement to meet the exigencies of the
moment ; and the relations of the Romans with Tigranes,
king of Armenia, with whom they had df facto waged war,

VOL. IV \20

3o6 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION pook v

remained wholly untouched in this peace. Tigranes had
with right regarded this as a tacit permission to bring the
Roman possessions in Asia under his power. If these
were not to be abandoned, it was necessary to come to
terms amicably or by force with the new great-king of
Asia.

In the preceding chapter we have described the move-
ments in Italy and Spain connected with the proceedings
of the democracy, and their subjugation by the senatorial
government. In the present chapter we shall review the
external government, as the authorities installed by Sulla
conducted or failed to conduct it.
Dalmato- We Still recognize the vigorous hand of Sulla in the

Macedon- gj^gj-getic measures which, in the last period of his regency,
peditions. the senate adopted almost simultaneously against the
Sertorians, the Dalmatians and Thracians, and the Cilician
pirates.

The expedition to the Graeco-Illyrian peninsula was
designed partly to reduce to subjection or at least to tame
the barbarous tribes who ranged over the whole interior
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and of whom the Bessi
(in the great Balkan) especially were, as it was then said,
notorious as robbers even among a race of robbers ; partly
to destroy the corsairs in their haunts, especially along
the Dalmatian coast. As usual, the attack took place
simultaneously from Dalmatia and from Macedonia, in
which province an army of five legions was assembled for
the purpose. In Dalmatia the former praetor Gaius
Cosconius held the command, marched through the country
in all directions, and took by storm the fortress of Salona
after a two years' siege. In Macedonia the proconsul
78-76. Appius Claudius (676-678) first attempted along the
Macedono-Thracian frontier to make himself master of the
mountain districts on the left bank of the Karasu. On
both sides the war was conducted with savage ferocity ;

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 307

the Thracians destroyed the townships which they took
and massacred their captives, and the Romans returned
like for like. Hut no results of importance were attained;
the toilsome marches and the constant conflicts with the
numerous and brave inhabitants of the mountains deci-
mated the army to no purpose ; the general himself
sickened and died. Ilis successor, Gaius Scribonius Curio
(679-681), was induced by various obstacles, and par- 75-73.
ticularly by a not inconsiderable military revolt, to desist
from the difficult expedition against the Thracians, and to
turn himself instead to the northern frontier of Macedonia,
where he subdued the weaker Dardani (in Servia) and
reached as far as the Danube. The brave and able
Marcus Lucullus (682, 683) was the first who again 72, 71.
advanced eastward, defeated the Bessi in their mountains
took their capital Uscudama (Adrianople), and compelled Thrace
them to submit to the Roman supremacy. Sadalas king ^"'^""^
of the Odrysians, and the Greek towns on the east coast
to the north and south of the P.alkan chain — Istropolis,
Tomi, Callatis, Odessus (near Varna), Mesembria, and
others — became dependent on the Romans. Thrace, of
which the Romans had hitherto held little more than the
Attalic possessions on the Chersonese, now became a
portion — though far from obedient — of the province of
Macedonia.

But the predatory raids of the Thracians and Dardani, Piracy,
confined as they were to a small part of the empire, were
far less injurious to the state and to individuals than the
evil of piracy, which was continually spreading farther and
acquiring more solid organization. The commerce of the
whole Mediterranean was in its power. Italy could neither
export its products nor import grain from the provinces ; in
the former the people were starving, in the latter the culti-
vation of the corn-fields ceased for want of a vent for
the produce. No consignment of money, no traveller was

3o8 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION POOK V

longer safe : the public treasury suffered most serious
losses ; a great many Romans of standing were captured by
the corsairs, and compelled to pay heavy sums for their
ransom, if it was not even the pleasure of the pirates to
execute on individuals the sentence of death, which in that
case was seasoned with a savage humour. The merchants,
and even the divisions of Roman troops destined for the
east, began to postpone their voyages chiefly to the un-
favourable season of the year, and to be less afraid of the
winter storms than of the piratical vessels, which indeed
even at this season did not wholly disappear from the sea.
But severely as the closing of the sea was felt, it was
more tolerable than the raids made on the islands and
coasts of Greece and Asia Minor. Just as afterwards
in the time of the Normans, piratical squadrons ran up
to the maritime towns, and either compelled them to
buy themselves off with large sums, or besieged and
took them by storm. When Samothrace, Clazomenae,
84. Samos, lassus were pillaged by the pirates (670) under
the eyes of Sulla after peace was concluded with Mithra-
dates, we may conceive how matters went where neither
a Roman army nor a Roman fleet was at hand. All
the old rich temples along the coasts of Greece and
Asia Minor were plundered one after another ; from Samo-
thrace alone a treasure of 1000 talents (;^ 240,000) is
said to have been carried off. Apollo, according to a
Roman poet of this period, was so impoverished by the
pirates that, when the swallow paid him a visit, he could
no longer produce to it out of all his treasures even a
drachm of gold. More than four hundred townships were
enumerated as having been taken or laid under contribu-
tion by the pirates, including cities like Cnidus, Samos,
Colophon ; from not a few places on islands or the coast,
which were previously flourishing, the whole population
migrated, that they might not be carried off by the pirates.

CHAi'. II RULE OF THK SULLAN RKSTOUATION 309

Even inland districts were no longer safe from their attacks;
there were instances of their assailing townships distant one
or two days' march from the coast. The fearful debt,
under which subsequently all the communities of the Greek
east succumbed, proceeded in great part from these fatal
times.

Piracy had totally changed its character. The pirates Organiza
were no longer bold freebooters, who levied their tribute p^^ °
from the large ItaloOriental traffic in slaves and luxuries,
as it passed through the Cretan waters between Cyrcne and
the Peloponnesus — in the language of the pirates the
" golden sea " ; no longer even armed slave-catchers, who
prosecuted " war, trade, and piracy " equally side by side ;
they formed now a piratical state, with a peculiar esprit
de corps, with a solid and very respectable organization,
with a home of their own and the germs of a symmachy,
and doubtless also with definite political designs. The
pirates called themselves Cilicians ; in fact their vessels
were the rendezvous of desperadoes and adventurers from
all countries — discharged mercenaries from the recruiting-
grounds of Crete, burgesses from the destroyed townships of
Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers and officers from the armies
of Fimbria and Sertorius, in a word the ruined men of all
nations, the hunted refugees of all vanquished parties,
every one that was wretched and daring — and where was
there not misery and outrage in this unhappy age ? It was
no longer a gang of robbers who had flocked together, but
a compact soldier-state, in which the freemasonry of exile
and crime took the place of nationality, and within which
crime redeemed itself, as it so often does in its own eyes,
by displaying the most generous public spirit In an
abandoned age, when cowardice and insubordination had
relaxed all the bonds of social order, the legitimate common-
wealths might have taken a pattern from this state — the
mongrel on"spring of distress and violence — within which

3IO RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

alone the inviolable determination to stand side by side, the
sense of comradeship, respect for the pledged word and the
self-chosen chiefs, valour and adroitness seemed to have
taken refuge. If the banner of this state was inscribed with
vengeance against the civil society which, rightly or wrongly,
had ejected its members, it might be a question whether
this device was much worse than those of the Italian
oligarchy and the Oriental sultanship which seemed in the
fair way of dividing the world between them. The corsairs
at least felt themselves on a level with any legitimate state ;
their robber- pride, their robber-pomp, and their robber-
humour are attested by many a genuine pirate's tale of mad
merriment and chivalrous bandittism : they professed, and
made it their boast, to live at righteous war with all the
world : what they gained in that warfare was designated not
as plunder, but as military spoil ; and, while the captured
corsair was sure of the cross in every Roman seaport, they
too claimed the right of executing any of their captives.
Its Their military-political organization, especially since the

military- Mithradatic war, was compact. Their ships, for the most
power. part myoparones, that is, small open swift-sailing barks, with
a smaller proportion of biremes and triremes, now regularly
sailed associated in squadrons and under admirals, whose
barges were wont to glitter in gold and purple. To a
comrade in peril, though he might be totally unknown, no
pirate captain refused the requested aid; an agreement
concluded with any one of them was absolutely recognized
by the whole society, and any injury inflicted on one was
avenged by all. Their true home was the sea from the
pillars of Hercules to the Syrian and Egyptian waters ; the
refuges which they needed for themselves and their floating
houses on the mainland were readily furnished to them by
the Mauretanian and Dalmatian coasts, by the island of
Crete, and, above all, by the southern coast of Asia Minor,
which abounded in headlands and lurking-places, com-

ciiAi'. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 31 1

manded the chief thorouglifare of the maritime commerce
of that age, and was virtually without a master. The league
of Lycian cities there, and the Pamphylian communities,
were of little importance ; the Roman station, which had
existed in Cilicia since 652, was far from adequate to 102.
command the extensive coast ; the Syrian dominion over
Cilicia had always been but nominal, and had recently been
superseded by the Armenian, the holder of which, as a true
great-king, gave himself no concern at all about the sea and
readily abandoned it to the pillage of the Cilicians. It was
nothing wonderful, therefore, that the corsairs flourished
there as they had never done anywhere else. Not only
did they possess everywhere along the coast signal-places
and stations, but further inland — in the most remote
recesses of the impassable and mountainous interior of
Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia — they had built their rock-
castles, in which they concealed their wives, children, and
treasures during their own absence at sea, and, doubtless,
in times of danger found an asylum themselves. Great
numbers of such corsair-castles existed especially in the
Rough Cilicia, the forests of which at the same time
furnished the pirates with the most excellent timber for
shipbuilding ; and there, accordingly, their principal dock-
yards and arsenals were situated. It was not to be wondered
at that this ori;anized military state gained a firm body of
clients among the Greek maritime cities, which were more
or less left to themselves and managed their own affairs :
these cities entered into traffic wiih the pirates as with a
friendly power on the basis of definite treaties, and did not
com[)ly with the summons of the Roman governors to furnish
vessels against them. The not inconsiderable town of Side
in Pamphylia, for instance, allowed the pirates to build
ships on its quays, and to sell the free men whom they had
captured in its market

Such a society of pirates was a political power ; and as

312 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

a political power it gave itself out and was accepted from
the time when the Syrian king Tryphon first employed it as
such and rested his throne on its support (iii. 292), We find
the pirates as allies of king Mithradates of Pontus as well as
of the Roman democratic emigrants ; we find them giving
battle to the fleets of Sulla in the eastern and in the western
waters ; we find individual pirate princes ruling over a
series of considerable coast towns. We cannot tell how far
the internal pohtical development of this floating state had
already advanced ; but its arrangements undeniably con-
tained the germ of a sea-kingdom, which was already
beginning to establish itself, and out of which, under
favourable circumstances, a permanent state might have
been developed.
Nullity of This state of matters clearly shows, as we have partly

marine™^" indicated already (iii. 290), how the Romans kept — or rather
police. did not keep — order on " their sea," The protectorate of
Rome over the provinces consisted essentially in military
guardianship; the provincials paid tax or tribute to the
Romans for their defence by sea and land, which was con-
centrated in Roman hands. But never, perhaps, did a
guardian more shamelessly defraud his ward than the
Roman oligarchy defrauded the subject communities. In-
stead of Rome equipping a general fleet for the empire and
centralizing her marine police, the senate permitted the
unity of her maritime superintendence — without which in this
matter nothing could at all be done — to fall into abeyance,
and left it to each governor and each client state to defend
themselves against the pirates as each chose and was able.
Instead of Rome providing for the fleet, as she had bound
herself to do, exclusively with her own blood and treasure
and with those of the client states which had remained
formally sovereign, the senate allowed the Italian war-marine
to fall into decay, and learned to make shift with the vessels
which the several mercantile towns were required to furnish,

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 313

or still more frefjucntly with the coast-guards everywhere
organized — all the cost and burden falling, in either case,
on the subjects. The provincials might deem themselves
fortunate, if their Roman governor applied the requisitions
which he raised for the defence of the coast in reality solely
to that object, and did not intercept them for- himself; or if
they were not, as very frequently happened, called on to pay
ransom for some Roman of rank captured by the buccaneers.
Measures undertaken perhaps with judgment, such as the
occupation of Cilicia in 652, were sure to be spoilt in the 102.
execution. Any Roman of this period, who was not wholly
carried away by the current into.xicating idea of the national
greatrtess, must have wished that the ships' beaks might be
torn down from the orator's platform in the Forum, that at
least he might not be constantly reminded by them of the
naval victories achieved in better times.

Nevertheless Sulla, who in the war against Mithradates ilxpedition
had the opportunity of acquiring an adequate conviction of '° ^^^
the dangers which the neglect of the fleet involved, took of Asia
various steps seriously to check the evil. It is true that ^''"°''-
the instructions which he had left to the governors whom
he appointed in Asia, to equip in the maritime towns a fleet
against the pirates, had borne little fruit, for Murena ])re-
ferred to begin war with Mithradates, and Gnaeus Dola-
bella, the governor of Cilicia, proved wholly incapable.
Accordingly the senate resolved in 675 to send one of the 79.
consuls to Cilicia ; the lot fell on the capable Publius I'ublius
Servilius. He defeated the piratical fleet in a bloodv "^'"^'''^^

* - Isauricus.

engagement, and then applied himself to destroy those towns
on the south coast of Asia Minor which ser\ed them as
anchorages and trading stations. The fortresses of the
powerful maritime prince Zenicetes — Olympus, Corycus, Zcnicetca
I'haselis in eastern Lycia, Attalia in Pamphylia — were ^■^"" .
reduced, and the prince himself met his death in the flames
of his stronghold Olympus. A movement was next made

314

RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

The

Isaurians

subdued.

75.

Asiatic
relations.

Tigranes
and the
new great-
kingdom of
Armenia.

against the Isaurians, who in the north-west corner of the
Rough CiUcia, on the northern slope of Mount Taurus,
inhabited a labyrinth of steep mountain ridges, jagged
rocks, and deeply-cut valleys, covered with magnificent oak
forests — a region which is even at the present day filled
with reminiscences of the old robber times. To reduce
these Isaurian fastnesses, the last and most secure retreats
of the freebooters, IServilius led the first Roman army over
the Taurus, and broke up the strongholds of the enemy,
Oroanda, and above all Isaura itself — the ideal of a robber-
town, situated on the summit of a scarcely accessible moun-
tain-ridge, and completely overlooking and commanding
the wide plain of Iconium. The war, not ended till 679,
from which Publius Servilius acquired for himself and his
descendants the surname of Isauricus, was not without
fruit ; a great number of pirates and piratical vessels fell in
consequence of it into the power of the Romans ; Lycia,
Pamphylia, West Cilicia were severely devastated, the
territories of the destroyed towns were confiscated, and the
province of Cilicia was enlarged by their addition to it. \
But, in the nature of the case, piracy was far from being
suppressed by these measures ; on the contrary, it simply
betook itself for the time to other regions, and particularly
to Crete, the oldest harbour for the corsairs of the Medi-
terranean (iii. 291). Nothing but repressive measures carried
out on a large scale and with unity of purpose — nothing,
in fact, but the establishment of a standing maritime police
— could in such a case afford thorough relief.

The affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor were con-
nected by various relations with this maritime war. The
variance which existed between Rome and the kings of
Pontus and Armenia did not abate, but increased more
and more. On the one hand Tigranes, king of Armenia,
pursued his aggressive conquests in the most reckless
manner. The Parthians, whose state was at this period

CHAP, u RULE OP' THE SULLAN RESTORATION 315

torn by internal dissensions and enfeebled, were by constant
hostilities driven farther and farther back into the interior
of Asia. Of the countries between Armenia, Mesopotamia,
and Iran, the kingdoms of Corduene (northern Kurdistan),
and Media Atropatene (Azerbijan), were converted from
Parthian into Armenian fiefs, and the kingdom of Nineveh
(Mosul), or Adiabene, was likewise compelled, at least
temporarily, to become a dependency of Armenia. In
Mesopotamia, too, particularly in and around Nisibis, the
Armenian rule was established ; but the southern half,
which was in great part desert, seems not to have passed
into the firm possession of the new great-king, and Seleucia,
on the Tigris, in particular, appears not to have become
subject to him. The kingdom of Edcssa or Osrhoene he
handed over to a tribe of wandering Arabs, which he
transplanted from southern Mesopotamia and settled in
this region, with the view of commanding by its means
the passage of the Euphrates and the great route of
traffic. 1

But Tigranes by no means confined his conquests to Cappa-
the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Cappadocia especially ^^enijm,
was the object of his attacks, and, defenceless as it was,
suffered destructive blows from its too potent neighbour.
Tigranes wrested the eastern province Melitene from

' The foundation of the kingdom of Edessa is pl.iccd by native chronicles
in 620 (iii. 287), but it was not till some time after its rise that it passed 134.
into the hands of the .-Xrabic dynasty bearing the names of Abgarus and
Mannus, which we afterwards find there. This dynasty is obviously con-
nected with the settlement of many Arabs by Tigr.ines the Great in the
region of Edcssa, Callirrhoe, Carrhae (Plin. H. A', v. 20, 85; 21, 86;
vi. 28, 142) ; respecting which Plutarch also {^Luc. 21) states that
Tigranes, changing the habits of the tent -Arabs, settled them nearer to
his kingdom in ortier by their means to possess himself of the trade. We
may presumably take this to mean that the Bedouins, who were accustomed
to open routes for traflTic through their territor)' and to levy on thes<' routes
fixed transit-dues (Strabo, xvi. 748). were to serve the great-king as a
son of toll-supervisors, and lo levy tolls for hiuj and tlicmsclvcs at the
passage of the Euphrates. These " Osrhoenian Arabs" {Orti Ariib<i\,
as Pliny calls them, must also be the Arabs on Mount Amanus, whom
Afraiiius sutxiued (Plut. Pomp. 39).

Tisrranes.

316 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION hook v

Cappadocia, and united it with the opposite Armenian
province Sophene, by which means he obtained command
of the passage of the Euphrates with the great thoroughfare
of traffic between Asia Minor and Armenia. After the
death of Sulla the Armenians even advanced into Cappa-
docia proper, and carried off to Armenia the inhabitants
of the capital Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea) and eleven
other towns of Greek organization.
Syria under Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in
full course of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the
new great-king. Here the south from the Egyptian frontier
to Straton's Tower (Caesarea) was under the rule of the
Jewish prince Alexander Jannaeus, who extended and
strengthened his dominion step by step in conflict with
his Syrian, Egyptian, and Arabic neighbours and with the
imperial cities. The larger towns of Syria — Gaza, Straton's
Tower, Ptolemais, Beroea — attempted to maintain them-
selves on their own footing, sometimes as free communities,
sometimes under so-called tyrants ; the capital, Antioch,
in particular, was virtually independent. Damascus and
the valleys of Lebanon had submitted to the Nabataean
prince, Aretas of Petra. Lastly, in Cilicia the pirates or
the Romans bore sway. And for this crown breaking into
a thousand fragments the Seleucid princes continued per-
severingly to quarrel with each other, as though it were
their object to make royalty a jest and an offence to all;
nay more, while this family, doomed like the house of
Laius to perpetual discord, had its own subjects all in
revolt, it even raised claims to the throne of Eg}'pt vacant
by the decease of king Alexander IL without heirs.
Accordingly king Tigranes set to work there without
ceremony. Eastern Cilicia was easily subdued by him,
and the citizens of Soli and other towns were carried off,
just like the Cappadocians, to Armenia. In like manner
the province of Upper Syria, with the exception of the

CHAr. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 317

bravely -defended town of Seleucia at the mouth of the
Orontcs, and the greater part of Phoenicia were reduced
by force ; Ptoleinais was occupied by the Armenians about
680, and the Jewish state was already seriously threatened 74.
by them. Antioch, the old capital of the Seleucids,
became one of the residences of the great -king. Already
from 671, the year following the peace between Sulla and 83.
Mithradates, Tigranes is designated in the Syrian annals
as the sovereign of the country, and Cilicia and Syria
appear as an Armenian satrapy under Magadates, the
lieutenant of the great-king. The age of the kings of
Nineveh, of the Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to
be renewed ; again oriental despotism pressed heavily on
the trading population of the Syrian coast, as it did formerly
on Tyre and Sidon ; again great states of the interior threw
themselves on the provinces along the Mediterranean ;
again Asiatic hosts, said to number half a million com-
batants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts. As
Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the
Jews to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces
of the new kingdom — from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria,
Cilicia, Cappadocia — the inhabitants, especially the Greek
or half-Greek citizens of the towns, were compelled to settle
with their whole goods and chattels (under penalty of the
confiscation of everything that they left behind) in the new
capital, one of those gigantic cities proclaiming rather the
nothingness of the people than the greatness of the rulers,
which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates on
every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the
new grand sultan. The new "city of Tigranes," Tigrano- ,
certa, founded on the borders of Armenia and Mesopo-
tamia, and destined as the capital of the territories newly
acquired for Armenia, became a city like Nineveh and
Babylon, with walls fifty yards high, and the appendages of
palace, garden, and [lark that were appropriate to sultanism.

3i8

RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

Mithra-
dates.

Demean-
our of the
Romans in
the east.

Egypt not
annexed.

81,

In other respects, too, the new great-king proved faithful
to his part. As amidst the perpetual childhood of the
east the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns on
their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he
showed himself in public, appeared in the state and the
costume of a successor of Darius and Xerxes, with the
purple caftan, the half- white half- purple tunic, the long
plaited trousers, the high turban, and the royal diadem —
attended moreover and served in slavish fashion, wherever
he went or stood, by four " kings."

King Mithradates acted with greater moderation. He
refrained from aggressions in Asia Minor, and contented
himself with — what no treaty forbade — placing his dominion
along the Black Sea on a firmer basis, and gradually bring-
ing into more definite dependence the regions which sepa-
rated the Bosporan kingdom, now ruled under his supremacy
by his son Machares, from that of Pontus. But he too
applied every effort to render his fleet and army efficient,
and especially to arm and organize the latter after the Roman
model ; in which the Roman emigrants, who sojourned
in great numbers at his court, rendered essential service.

The Romans had no desire to become further involved
in Oriental affairs than they were already. This appears
with striking clearness in the fact, that the opportunity,
which at this time presented itself, of peacefully bringing
the kingdom of Egypt under the immediate dominion of
Rome was spurned by the senate. The legitimate de-
scendants of Ptolemaeus son of Lagus had come to an end,
when the king installed by Sulla after the death of Ptolemaeus
Soter II. Lathyrus — Alexander TL, a son of Alexander I.
— was killed, a few days after he had ascended the throne,
on occasion of a tumult in the capital (673). This Alex-
ander had in his testament^ appointed the Roman com-

88.

^ The disputed question, whether this alleged or real testament pro-
81. ceeded from Alexander I. (t 666) or Alexander II. (t 673), is usually

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 319

munity his heir. The genuineness of this document was
no doubt disputed ; but the senate acknowledged it by
assuming in virtue of it the sums deposited in Tyre on
account of the deceased kin.;. Nevertheless it allowed two
notoriously illegitimate sons of king I^athyrus, Ptolemaeus
XI., who was styled the new Dionysos or the I'lute-blower
(Auletes), and Ptolemaeus the Cyprian, to take practical
possession of Egyi)t and Cyprus respectively. They were
not indeed expressly recognized by the senate, but no
distinct summons to surrender their kingdoms was ad-
dressed to them. The reason why the senate allowed
this state of uncertainty to continue, and did not commit
itself to a definite renunciation of Egypt and Cyprus, was
undoubtedly the considerable rent which these king.s, ruling
as it were on sufferance, regularly paid for the continuance
of the uncertainty to the heads of the Roman coteries.
But the motive for waiving that attractive acquisition alto-
gether was different. Egypt, by its peculiar position and
its financial organization, placed in the hands of any
governor commanding it a pecuniary and naval power and
generally an independent authority, which were absolutely

decided in favour of the former alternative. But the reasons are in-
adequate ; for Cicero (</«r L. Agr. i. 4, 12; 15, 38 ; 16, 41) docs not
say that Egypt fell to Rome in 666. but that it did so in or after this year ; 88.
and while the circumstance that Alexander I. died abroad, and Alexander
1 1, in .Alexandria, h.as led some to infer that the treasures mentioned in the
testament in question as lying in Tyre must have belonged to the former,
they have overlooked that Alexander II. was killed nineteen days after his
arrival in Egypt (I^tronne. Inscr. de Cr.s:ypte, ii. 20), when his treasure
might still very well be in Tyre. On the other hand the circumstance that
the second Alexander was the hist genuine I^ngid is decisive, for in the
similar acquisitions of I'ergamus, Cyrene, and Hithynia it was always by
the last scion of the legitimate ruling family that Rome was appointed heir.
'ITic ancient constitutional law, as it applied at least to the Roman client-
states, seems to have given to the rrigning prince the right of ultimate
disposal of his kingdom not absolutely, but only in the absence of agriiili
entitled to succeed. Comp. Gutschmiil's remark in the German translation
of S. Sharpe's History of E^ pi, ii. 17.

Whether the testament was genuine or spurious, cannot be ascertained,
and is of no great moment ; there arc no special reasons for assuming a
forgery.

320 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION nooK v

incompatible with the suspicious and feeble government of

the oligarchy : in this point of view it was judicious to

forgo the direct possession of the country of the Nile.

Non-intcr- Less justifiable was the failure of the senate to interfere

vention 111 directly in the affairs of Asia Minor and Syria. The Roman

Asia Minor ■' ■'

and Syria, government did not indeed recognize the Armenian con-
queror as king of Cappadocia and Syria ; but it did nothing
to drive him back, although the war, which under pressure
78. of necessity it began in 676 against the pirates in Cilicia,
naturally suggested its interference more especially in Syria.
In fact, by tolerating the loss of Cappadocia and Syria with-
out declaring war, the government abandoned not merely
those committed to its protection, but the most important
foundations of its own powerful position. It adopted
already a hazardous course, when it sacrificed the outworks
of its dominion in the Greek settlements and kingdoms on
the Euphrates and Tigris ; but, when it allowed the Asiatics
to establish themselves on the Mediterranean which was the
political basis of its empire, this was not a proof of love of
peace, but a confession that the oligarchy had been rendered
by the Sullan restoration more oligarchical doubtless, but
neither wiser nor more energetic, and it was for Rome's place
as a power in the world the beginning of the end.

On the other side, too, there was no desire for war.
Tigranes had no reason to wish it, when Rome even without
war abandoned to him all its allies. Mithradates, who was
no mere sultan and had enjoyed opportunity enough,
amidst good and bad fortune, of gaining experience re-
garding friends and foes, knew very well that in a second
Roman war he would very probably stand quite as much
alone as in the first, and that he could follow no more
prudent course than to keep quiet and to strengthen his
kingdom in the interior. That he was in earnest with his
peaceful declarations, he had suificiently proved in the
conference with Murena (p, 95). He continued to avoid

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 321

everything which would compel the Roman government to
abandon its passive attitude.

But as the first .Milhradatic war had arisen without any Apprehcn-
of the parties properly desiring it, so now there grew out |{°n^g°
of the opposition of interests mutual suspicion, and out of
this suspicion mutual preparations for defence ; and these,
by their very gravity, ultimately led to an open breach.
That distrust of her own readiness to fight and preparatior^
for fighting, which had for long governed the policy of Rome_,
— a distrust, which the want of standing armies and the far
from exemplary character of the collegiate rule render
sufficiently intelligible — made it, as it were, an axiom of her
policy to pursue every war not merely to the vanquishing,
but to the annihilation of her opponent ; in this point of
view the Romans were from the outset as little content with
the peace of Sulla, as they had formerly been with the
terms which Scipio Africanus had granted to the Cartha-
ginians. The apprehension often expressed that a second
attack by the Pontic king was imminent, was in some
measure justified by the singular resemblance between the
present circumstances and those which existed twelve years
before. Once more a dangerous civil war coincided with
serious armaments of Mithradates ; once more the Thracians
overran Macedonia, and piratical fleets covered the Mediter-
ranean ; emissaries were coming and going — as formerly
between Mithradates and the Italians — so now between the
Roman emigrants in Spain and those at the court of
Sinope. As early as the beginning of 677 it was declared 77.
in the senate that the king was only waiting for the
opportunity of falling upon Roman Asia during the Italian
civil war; the Roman armies in Asia and Cilicia were
reinforced to meet possible emergencies.

Mithradates on his part followed with growing apprehcn- .Apprehen-
sion the development of the Roman policy. He could not !',°"^ °^
but feel that a war between the Romans and Tigranes, how- dates.
VOL. IV i^i

322 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION hook v

ever much the feeble senate might dread it, was in the long
run almost inevitable, and that he would not be able to
avoid taking part in it. His attempt to obtain from the
Roman senate the documentary record of the terms of peace,
which was still wanting, had fallen amidst the disturbances
attending the revolution of Lepidus and remained without
result ; Mithradates found in this an indication of the im-
pending renewal of the conflict. The expedition against
the pirates, which indirectly concerned also the kings of the
east whose allies they were, seemed the preliminary to such
a war. Still more suspicious were the claims which Rome
held in suspense over Egypt and Cyprus : it is significant
that the king of Pontus betrothed his two daughters
Mithradatis and Nyssa to the two Ptolemies, to whom the
senate continued to refuse recognition. The emigrants,
urged_MniJa_stnkej^jhe_positionj)f Sertoriu^^^
to which Mithradates despatched envoys under convenient

pretexts' to tHeheadquarters of Ponipeius to obtain in- __
formation, and which was about this very time really im-
posing, opened up to the king the prospect of fighting not,
as in the first Roman war, against both the Roman parties,
but in concert with the one against the other. A more
favourable moment could hardly be hoped for, and after all
it was always better to declare war than to let it be declared
75. against him. In 679 Nicomedes III. Philopator king of
Bithynia Bithynia, died, and as the last of his race — for a son borne
Oman. ^^ Nysa was, or was said to be, illegitimate — left his
kingdom by testament to the Romans, who delayed not to
take possession of this region bordering on the Roman
province and long ago filled with Roman officials and
Cyrene a merchants. At the same time Cyrene, which had been
province already bequeathed to the Romans in 658 (p. 4), was at
96. length constituted a province, and a Roman governor was
75. sent thither (679). These measures, in connection with the
attacks carried out about the same time against the pirates

CHAi-. 11 RULE OF TlIK SULLAN RESTORATION 323

on the south coast of Asia Minor, must have excited appre-
hensions in the king ; the annexation of Bithynia in
particular made ihe Romans immediate neighbours of the Outbreak
Pontic kingdom ; and this, it may be presumed, turned ^jjj|^^.
the scale. The king took the decisive step and declared daiic war.
war against the Romans in the winter of 679-680. 75-74.

Gladly would Mithradates have avoided undertaking so Prepara-
arduous a work singlehanded. His nearest and natural ally j^'°j"hra.
was the great -king Tigranes ; but that shortsighted man dates,
declined the proposal of his father-in-law. So there re-
mained only the insurgents and the pirates. Mithradates
was careful to place himself in communication with both,
by despatching strong squadrons 10 Spain and to Crete. A
formal treaty was concluded with Sertorius (p. 299), by which
Rome ceded to the king Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia,
and Cappadocia — all of them, it is true, acquisitions which
needed to be ratified on the field of battle. More important
was the support which the Spanish general gave to the king,
by sending Roman officers to lead his armies and fleets.
The most active of the emigrants in the east, Lucius
Magius and Lucius Fannius, were appointed by Sertorius
as his representatives at the court of Sinope. From the
pirates also came help ; they flocked largely to the kingdom
of Pontus, and by their means especially the king seems to *
have succeeded in forming a naval force imposing by the
number as well as by the quality of the ships. His main
support still lay in his own forces, with which the king
hoped, before the Romans should arrive in Asia, to make
himself master of their possessions there ; especially as the
financial distress produced in the province of Asia by the
Sullan war-tribute, the aversion of Bithynia towards the new
Roman government, and the elements of combustion left
behind by the desolating war recently brought to a close in
Cilicia and Pamphylia, opened up favourable prospects to a
Pontic invasion. There was no lack of stores ; 2,000,000

324 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

medwifti of grain lay in the royal granaries. The fleet and
the men were numerous and well exercised, particularly the
Bastarnian mercenaries, a select corps which was a match
even for Italian legionaries. On this occasion also it was
the king who took the offensive. A corps under Diophantus
advanced into Cappadocia, to occupy the fortresses there
and to close the way to the kingdom of Pontus against the
Romans ; the leader sent by Sertorius, the propraetor Marcus
Marius, went in company with the Pontic officer Eumachus
to Phrygia, with a view to rouse the Roman province and
the Taurus mountains to revolt ; the main army, above
100,000 men with 16,000 cavalry and 100 scythe-chariots,
led by Taxiles and Hermocrates under the personal super-
intendence of the king, and the war-fleet of 400 sail com-
manded by Aristonicus, moved along the north coast of
Asia Minor to occupy Paphlagonia and Bithynia.
Roman On the Roman side there was selected for the conduct

prepara- ^^ ^.^^ ^^^^ -^^ ^.j^^ ^^^^ ^.^j^j^ ^j^^ Consul of 680, LuciuS

74. Lucullus, who as governor of Asia and Cilicia was placed
at the head of the four legions stationed in Asia Minor
and of a fifth brought by him from Italy, and was directed
to penetrate with this army, amounting to 30,000 infantry
and 1600 cavalry, through Phrygia into the kingdom of
Pontus. His colleague Marcus Cotta proceeded with the
fleet and another Roman corps to the Propontis, to cover
Asia and Bithynia. Lastly, a general arming of the coasts
and particularly of the Thracian coast more immediately
threatened by the Pontic fleet, was enjoined ; and the task
of clearing all the seas and coasts from the pirates and
their Pontic allies was, by extraordinary decree, entrusted
to a single magistrate, the choice falling on the praetor
Marcus Antonius, the son of the man who thirty years
before had first chastised the Cilician corsairs (iii. 381).
Moreover, the senate placed at the disposal of Lucullus a
sum of 72,000,000 sesterces (^700,000), in order to build

tions.

of the war.
74.

CHAT. II RULE UF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 325

a fleet ; which, however, LucuUus decHned. Fruin all
this we see that the Roman government recognized the
root of the evil in the neglect of their marine, and showed
earnestness in the matter at least so far as their decrees
reached.

Thus the war began in 680 at all points. It was a Beginning
misfortune for Mithradates, that at the very moment of his
declaring war the Sertorian struggle reached its crisis, by
which one of his principal hopes was from the outset
destroyed, and the Roman government was enabled to
apply its whole power to the maritime and Asiatic contest.
In Asia Minor on the other hand Mithradates reaped the
advantages of the offensive, and of the grert distance of
the Romans from the immediate seat of wat A consider-
able number of cities in Asia Minor opened their gates to
the Sertorian propraetor who was placed at the head of
the Roman province, and they massacred, as in 666, the 88,
Roman families settled among them : the Pisidians, Isaur-
ians, and Cilicians took up arms against Rome. The
Romans for the moment had no troops at the points
threatened. Individual energetic men attempted no doubt
at their own hand to check this mutiny of the provincials ;
thus on receiving accounts of these events the young Gaius
Caesar left Rhodes where he was staying on account of
his studies, and with a hastily-collected band opposed him-
self to the insurgents ; but not much could be effected by
such volunteer corps. Had not Deiotarus, the brave
tetrarch of the Tolistobogii — a Celtic tribe settled around
Pessinus — embraced the side of the Romans and fouiiht
with success against the Pontic generals, LucuUus would
have had to begin with recapturing the interior of the
Roman province from the enemy. But even as it was, he
lost in pacifying the province and driving back the enemy
precious time, for which the slight successes achieved by
his cavalry were far from alTording compensation. Still

326 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

more unfavourable than in Phrygia was the aspect of things
for the Romans on the north coast of Asia Minor. Here
the great Pontic army and the fleet had completely
mastered Bithynia, and compelled the Roman consul
Cotta to take shelter with his far from numerous force
and his ships within the walls and port of Chalcedon,
where Mithradates kept them blockaded.
The This blockade, however, was so far a favourable event

defeated at ^'^^ ^^^ Romans, as, if Cotta detained the Pontic army
Chalcedon. before Chalcedon and Lucullus proceeded also thither, the
whole Roman forces might unite at Chalcedon and compel
the decision of arms there rather than in the distant and
impassable region of Pontus. Lucullus did take the route
for Chalcedon ; but Cotta, with the view of executing a
great feat at his own hand before the arrival of his
colleague, ordered his admiral Publius Rutilius Nudus to
make a sally, which not only ended in a bloody defeat of
the Romans, but also enabled the Pontic force to attack
the harbour, to break the chain which closed it, and to
burn all the Roman vessels of war which were there,
nearly seventy in number. On the news of these mis-
fortunes reaching Lucullus at the river Sangarius, he ac-
celerated his march to the great discontent of his soldiers,
in whose opinion Cotta was of no moment, and who would
far rather have plundered an undefended country than
have taught their comrades to conquer. His arrival made
up in part for the misfortunes sustained : the king raised
the siege of Chalcedon, but did not retreat to Pontus ; he
went southward into the old Roman province, where he
spread his army along the Propontis and the Hellespont,
occupied Lampsacus, and began to besiege the large and
wealthy town of Cyzicus. He thus entangled himself more
and more deeply in the blind alley which he had chosen to
enter, instead of — which alone promised success for liim —
bringing the wide distances into play against the Romans.

CHAi. II RULE OF THE SULLAN KESTOKATiUN 327

In few places had the old Hellenic adroitness and Mithra-
aptitude preserved themselves so pure as in Cyzicus ; its ^^*
citizens, although they had sufTered great loss of ships and Cyzicus.
men in the unfortunate double battle of Chalccdon, made
the most resolute resistance. Cyzicus lay on an island
directly opposite the mainland and connected with it by
a bridge. The besiegers possessed themselves not only
of the line of heights on the mainland terminating at the
bridge and of the suburb situated there, but also of the
celebrated Dindymene heights on the island itself; and
alike on the mainland and on the island the Greek en-
gineers put forth all their art to pave the way for an assault.
But the breach which they at length made was closed
again during the night by the besieged, and the exertions
of ihe royal army remained as fruitless as did the barbarous
threat of the king to put to death the captured Cyzicenes
before the walls, if the citizens still refused to surrender.
The Cyzicenes continued the defence with courage and
success ; they fell little short of capturing the king himself
in the course of the siege.

Meanwhile Lucullus had possessed himself of a very Desinic-
strong position in rear of the Pontic army, which, although p°" °
not permitting him directly to relieve the hard-pressed city, army,
gave him the means of cutting off all supplies by land from
the enemy. Thus the enormous army of Mithradates,
estimated with the camp-followers at 300,000 persons, was
not in a position cither to fight or to march, firmly wedged
in between the impregnable city and the immoveable Roman
army, and dependent for all its supplies solely on the sea,
which fortunately for the Pontic troops was exclusively
commanded by their fleet. But the bad season set in ;
a storm destroyed a great part of the siege-works ; the
scarcity of provisions and above all of fodder for the horses
began to become intolerable. The beasts of burden and
the baggage were sent off under convoy of the greater

328 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

portion of the Pontic cavalry, with orders to steal away
or break through at any cost ; but at the river Rhyndacus,
to the east of Cyzicus, Lucullus overtook them and cut to
pieces the whole body. Another division of cavalry under
Metrophanes and Lucius Fannius was obliged, after wander-
ing long in the west of Asia Minor, to return to the camp
before Cyzicus. Famine and disease made fearful ravages
73. in the Pontic ranks. When spring came on (68 1), the
besieged redoubled their exertions and took the trenches
constructed on Dindymon : nothing remained for the king
but to raise the siege and with the aid of his fleet to
save what he could. He went in person with the fleet
to the Hellespont, but suffered considerable loss partly
at its departure, partly through storms on the voyage.
The land army under Hermaeus and Marius likewise set
out thither, with the view of embarking at Lampsacus
under the protection of its walls. They left behind their
baggage as well as the sick and wounded, who were all
put to death by the exasperated Cyzicenes. Lucullus in-
flicted on them very considerable loss by the way at the
passage of the rivers Aesepus and Granicus ; but they
attained their object. The Pontic ships carried off the
remains of the great army and the citizens of Lampsacus
themselves beyond the reach of the Romans.
Maritime The consistent and discreet conduct of the war by

'^^^' Lucullus had not only repaired the errors of his colleague,

but had also destroyed without a pitched battle the flower
of the enemy's army — it was said 200,000 soldiers. Had
he still possessed the fleet which was burnt in the harbour
of Chalcedon, he would have annihilated the whole army of
his opponent. As it was, the work of destruction continued
incomplete; and while he was obliged to remain passive,
the Pontic fleet notwithstanding the disaster of Cyzicus
took its station in the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium
were blockaded by it on the European coast and Priapus

CHAi'. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 329

pillaged on the Asiatic, and the headquarters of the king
were established in the Bithynian port of Nicomcdia. in
fact a select squadron of fifty sail, which carried 10,000
select troops including Marcus Marius and the flower of the
Roman emigrants, sailed forth even into the Aegean ; the
report went that it was destined to effect a landing in Italy
and there rekindle the civil war. But the ships, which
Lucullus after the disaster off Chalcedon had demanded
from the Asiatic communities, began to appear, and a
squadron ran forth in pursuit of the enemy's fleet which had
gone into the Aegean. Lucullus himself, experienced as an
admiral (p. 46), took the command. Thirteen quinque-
remes of the enemy on their voyage to Lemnos, under
Isidorus, were assailed and sunk off the Achaean harbour
in the waters between the Trojan coast and the island of
Tenedos. At the small island of Neae, between Lemnos
and Scyros, at which little-frequented point the Pontic
flotilla of thirty-two sail lay drawn up on the shore, Lucullus
found it, immediately attacked the ships and the crews
scattered over the island, and possessed himself of the
whole squadron. Here Marcus Marius and the ablest of
the Roman emigrants met their death, either in conflict or
subsequently by the axe of the executioner. The whole
Aegean fleet of the enemy was annihilated by Lucullus.
The war in Bithynia was meanwhile continued by Cotta
and by the legates of Lucullus, Voconius, Gaius Valerius
Triarius, and Barba, with the land army reinforced by fresh
arrivals from Italy, and a squadron collected in Asia.
Barba captured in the interior Prusias on Olympus and
Nicaea, while Triarius along the coast captured Apamea
(formerly Myrlea) and Prusias on the sea (formerly Cius).
They then united for a joint attack on Mithradates himself
in Nicomedia ; but the king without even attempting battle
escaped to his ships and sailed homeward, and in this he
was successful only because the Roman admiral Voconius,

330 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

who was entrusted with the blockade of the port of Nico-
Mithra- media, arrived too late. On the voyage the important
driven Heraclea was indeed betrayed to the king and occupied by
back to him ; but a storm in these waters sank more than sixty of
his ships and dispersed the rest ; the king arrived almost
alone at Sinope. The offensive on the part of Mithradates
ended in a complete defeat — not at all honourable, least of all
for the supreme leader — of the Pontic forces by land and sea.
Invasion of LucuUus now in turn proceeded to the aggressive.
Lucuiius.^ Triarius received the command of the fleet, with orders first
of all to blockade the Hellespont and lie in wait for the
Pontic ships returning from Crete and Spain ; Cotta was
charged with the siege of Heraclea ; the difficult task of
providing supplies was entrusted to the faithful and active
princes of the Galatians and to Ariobarzanes king of Cappa-
73. docia; LucuUus himself advanced in the autumn of 68 1
into the favoured land of Pontus, which had long been
untrodden by an enemy. Mithradates, now resolved to
maintain the strictest defensive, retired without giving battle
from Sinope to Amisus, and from Amisus to Cabira (after-
wards Neocaesarea, now Niksar) on the Lycus, a tributary
of the Iris ; he contented himself with drawing the enemy
after him farther and farther into the interior, and obstruct-
ing their supplies and communications. LucuUus rapidly
followed ; Sinope was passed by ; the Halys, the old
boundary of the Roman dominion, was crossed and the
considerable towns of Amisus, Eupatoria (on the Iris), and
Themiscyra (on the Thermodon) were invested, till at length
winter put an end to the onward march, though not to the
investments of the towns. The soldiers of LucuUus
murmured at the constant advance which did not allow them
to reap the fruits of their exertions, and at the tedious
and — amidst the severity of that season — burdensome
blockades, ijut it was not the habit of LucuUus to listen
72. to such complaints : in the spring of 682 he immediately

CHAP. II RULE OF TlIK SULLAN RESTORATION 331

advanced against Cabira, leaving behind two legions
before Amisus under Lucius Murena. The king had made
fresh attempts during the winter to induce the great-king of
Armenia to take part in the struggle ; they remained like
the former ones fruitless, or led only to empty promises.
Still less did the Parthians show any desire to interfere in
the forlorn cause. Nevertheless a considerable army, chiefly
raised by enlistments in Scythia, had again assembled under
Diophantus and Taxiles at Cabira. The Roman army,
which still numbered only throe legions and was decidedly
inferior to the Pontic in cavalry, found itself compelled to
avoid as far as possible the plains, and arrived, not without
toil and loss, by difficult bypaths in the vicinity of Cabira.
At this town the two armies lay for a considerable period
confronting each other. The chief struggle was for supplies,
which were on both sides scarce : for this purpose Mithra-
dates formed the flower of his cavalry and a division of
select infantry under Diophantus and Taxiles into a flying
corps, which was intended to scour the country between the
Lycus and the Halys and to seize the Roman convoys of
provisions coming from Cappadocia. But the lieutenant of
Lucullus, Marcus Fabius Hadrianus, who escorted such a
train, not only completely defeated the band which lay in
wait for him in the defile where it expected to surprise him,
but after being reinforced from the camp defeated also the
army of Diophantus and Taxiles itself, so that it totally
broke up. It was an irreparable loss for the king, when his
cavalry, on which alone he relied, was thus overthrown.

As soon as he received through the first fugitives that Victory ol
arrived at Cabira from the field of battle — significantly *^*^'™-
enough, the beaten generals themselves — the fatal news,
earlier even than Lucullus got tidings of the victor)', he
resolved on an immediate farther retreat. But the resolu-
tion taken by the king spread with the rapidity of lightning
among those immediately around him ; and, when the

332 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

soldiers saw the confidants of the king packing in all
haste, they too were seized with a panic. No one was
willing to be the hindmost in decamping; all, high
and low, ran pell-mell like startled deer ; no authority,
not even that of the king, was longer heeded ; and the
king himself was carried away amidst the wild tumult.
Lucullus, perceiving the confusion, made his attack, and
the Pontic troops allowed themselves to be massacred
almost without offering resistance. Had the legions been
able to maintain discipline and to restrain their eagerness
for spoil, hardly a man would have escaped them, and the
king himself would doubtless have been taken. With
difficulty Mithradates escaped along with a few attendants
through the mountains to Comana (not far from Tocat and
the source of the Iris) ; from which, however, a Roman
corps under Marcus Pompeius soon scared him off and
pursued him, till, attended by not more than 2000 cavalry,
he crossed the frontier of his kingdom at Talaura in Lesser
Armenia. In the empire of the great-king he found a
72. refuge, but nothing more (end of 682). Tigranes, it is true,
ordered royal honours to be shown to his fugitive father-in-
law; but he did not even invite him to his court, and
detained him in the remote border-province to which he
had come in a sort of decorous captivity.
Pontus The Roman troops overran all Pontus and Lesser

Ro^nmn^ Armenia, and as far as Trapezus the flat country submitted
without resistance to the conqueror. The commanders of
the royal treasure-houses also surrendered after more or less
delay, and delivered up their stores of money. The king
ordered that the women of the royal harem — his sisters,
his numerous wives and concubines — as it was not
possible to secure their flight, should all be put to death by
Sieges of one of his eunuchs at Pharnacea (Kerasunt). The towns
cities °" "^ alone offered obstinate resistance. It is true that the few
in the interior — Cabira, Amasia, Eupaloria — were soon in

CHAP. 11 RULE OV TlIK SULLAN RESTORATION 333

the power of the Romans ; but the larger maritime towns,
Amisus and Sinope in Pontus, Amastris in Pajjhlagonia,
Tius and the Pontic Heraclea in }5ithynia, defended them-
selves with desperation, partly animated by attachment to
the king and to their free Hellenic constitution which he
had protected, partly overawed by the bands of corsairs
whom the king had called to his aid. Sinope and Heraclea
even sent forth vessels against the Romans ; and the
squadron of Sinope seized a Roman flotilla which was
bringing corn from the Tauric peninsula for the army of
Lucullus. Heraclea did not succumb till after a two years'
siege, when the Roman fleet had cut off ihe city from
intercourse with the Greek towns on the Tauric peninsula
and treason had broken out in the ranks of the garrison.
When Amisus was reduced to extremities, the garrison set
fire to the town, and under cover of the flames took to
their ships. In Sinope, where the daring pirate-captain
Seleucus and the royal eunuch Bacchides conducted the
defence, the garrison plundered the houses before it with-
drew, and set on fire the ships which it could not take
along with it ; it is said that, although the greater portion
of the defenders were enabled to embark, 8000 corsairs
were there put to death by Lucullus. These sieges of
towns lasted for two whole years and more after the battle
of Cabira (682-684) ; Lucullus i)rosecuted them in great 72-70.
part by means of his lieutenants, while he himself reL,'ulated
the affairs of the province of Asia, which demanded and
obtained a thorough reform.

Remarkable, in an historical point of view, as was that
obstinate resistance of the Pontic mercantile towns to the
victorious Romans, it was of little immediate use ; the
cause of Mithradates was none the less lost. The great-
king had evidently, for the present at least, no intention at
all of restoring him to his kingdom. The Roman emigrants
in Asia had lost their best men by the destruction of the

334 RULE OF THE SULEAN RESTORATION book v

Aegean fleet ; of the survivors not a few, such as the
active leaders Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, had
made their peace with Lucullus ; and with the death of
Sertorius, who perished in the year of the battle of Cabira,
the last hope of the emigrants vanished. Mithradates' own
power was totally shattered, and one after another his
remaining supports gave way; his squadrons returning
from Crete and Spain, to the number of seventy sail, were
attacked and destroyed by Triarius at the island of
Tenedos ; even the governor of the Bosporan kingdom,
the king's own son Machares, deserted him, and as in-
dependent prince of the Tauric Chersonese concluded on
his own behalf peace and friendship with the Romans
70. (684). The king himself, after a not too glorious resist-
ance, was confined in a remote Armenian mountain-strong-
hold, a fugitive from his kingdom and almost a prisoner
of his son-in-law. Although the bands of corsairs might
still hold out in Crete, and such as had escaped from
Amisus and Sinope might make their way along the
hardly-accessible east coast of the Black Sea to the Sanigae
and Lazi, the skilful conduct of the war by Lucullus and
his judicious moderation, which did not disdain to remedy
the just grievances of the provincials and to employ the
repentant emigrants as officers in his army, had at a
moderate sacrifice delivered Asia Minor from the enemy
and annihilated the Pontic kingdom, so that it might be
converted from a Roman client- state into a Roman
province. A commission of the senate was expected, to
settle in concert with the commander-in-chief the new
provincial organization.
Beginning But the relations with Armenia were not yet settled.
Armenian '^^at a declaration of war by the Romans against Tigranes
war. was in itself justified and even demanded, we have already

shown. Lucullus, who looked at the state of affairs from
a nearer point of view and with a higher spirit than the

CHAP, n RULK OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 335

senatorial college in Rome, perceived clearly the necessity
of confining Armenia to the other side of the Tigris and
of re-establishing the lost dominion of Rome over the
Mediterranean. He showed himself in the conduct of
Asiatic aftairs no unworthy successor of his instructor and
friend Sulla. A Philhellene above most Romans of his
time, he was not insensible to the obligation which Rome
had come under when taking up the heritage of Alexander
— the obligation to be the shield and sword of the Greeks
in the east. Personal motives — the wish to earn laurels
also beyond the Euphrates, irritation at the fact that the
great -king in a letter to him had omitted the title of
Imperator — may doubtless have partly influenced LucuUus ;
but it is unjust to assume paltry and selfish motives for
actions, which motives of duty quite suffice to explain.
The Roman governing college at any rate — timid, indolent,
ill informed, and above all beset by perpetual financial
embarrassments — could never be expected, without direct
compulsion, to take the initiative in an expedition so vast
and costly. About the year 682 the legitimate representa- 7i
tives of the Seleucid dynasty, Antiochus called the Asiatic
and his brother, moved by the favourable turn of the
Pontic war, had gone to Rome to procure a Roman inter-
vention in Syria, and at the same time a recognition of
their hereditary claims on Egypt. If the latter demand
might not be granted, there could not, at any rate, be
found a more favourable moment or occasion for beginning
the war which had long been necessary against Tigranes.
Hut the senate, while it recognized the princes doubtless as
the legitimate kings of Syria, could not make up its mind
to decree the armed interventioa If the favourable
opportunity was to be employed, and Armenia was to be
dealt with in earnest, LucuUus had to begin the war.
without any proper orders from the senate, at his own
hand and his own risk ; he found himself, just like Sull.i,

336 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION hook v

placed under the necessity of executing what he did in the
most manifest interest of the existing government, not with
its sanction, but in spite of it. His resohation was facili-
tated by the relations of Rome towards Armenia, for long
wavering in uncertainty between peace and war, which
screened in some measure the arbitrariness of his proceed-
ings, and failed not to suggest formal grounds for war.
The state of matters in Cappadocia and Syria afforded
pretexts enough ; and already in the pursuit of the king of
Pontus Roman troops had violated the territory of the
great-king. As, however, the commission of Lucullus
related to the conduct of the war against Mithradates and
he wished to connect what he did with that commission, he
preferred to send one of his officers, Appius Claudius,
to the great-king at Antioch to demand the surrender of
Mithradates, which in fact could not but lead to war.
Difficulties The resolution was a grave one, especially considering
the condition of the Roman army. It was indispensable
during the campaign in Armenia to keep the extensive
territory of Pontus strongly occupied, for otherwise the
army stationed in Armenia might lose its communications
with home ; and besides it might be easily foreseen that
Mithradates would attempt an inroad into his former
kingdom. The army, at the head of which Lucullus had
ended the Mithradatic war, amounting to about 30,000
men, was obviously inadequate for this double task.
Under ordinary circumstances the general would have
asked and obtained from his government the despatch of
a second army ; but as Lucullus wished, and was in some
measure compelled, to take up the war over the head of
the government, he found himself necessitated to renounce
that plan and — although he himself incorporated the
captured Thracian mercenaries of the Pontic king with his
troops — to carry the war over the Euphrates with not
more than two legions, or at most 15,000 men. This was

to be en-
countered

cuAi-. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 337

in itself hazardous ; but the smallness of the number might
be in some degree compensated by the tried valour of the
army consisting throughout of veterans. A far worse
feature was the temper of the soldiers, to which LucuUus,
in his high aristocratic fashion, had given far tog little
heed. Lucullus was an able general, and— ^^ecorningTo
the aristocratic aiaudaLdjz::^an upright iind kind1y-disj)osed
man^ but^very far from_Jbcku:;..a^vourite with hissol d i c rs.
He was unpopular, as a decided adherent of the oligarchy;
unpopular, because he had vigorously checked the
monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor;
unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he
inflicted on his troops ; unpopular, because he demanded
strict discipline in his soldiers and prevented as far as
possible the pillage of the Creek towns by his men, but
withal caused many a waggon and many a camel to be
laden with the treasures of the east for himself; unpopular
too on account of his manner, which was polished, haughty,
Hellenizing, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever it
was possible, to ease and pleasure. There was no trace
in him of the charm which weaves a personal bond
between the general and the soldier. Moreover, a large
portion of his ablest soldiers had every reason to complain
of the unmeasured prolongation of their term of ser\-ice.
His two best legions were the same which Flaccus and
Fimbria had led in 668 to the east (p. 47); noiwithstand- 86.
ing that shortly after the battle of Cabira they had been
promised their discharge well earned by thirteen campaigns,
Lucullus now led them beyond the Euphrates to face a
new incalculable war — it seemed as though the victors of
Cabira were to be treated worse than the vanquished of
Cannae (ii. 298, 353). It was in fact more than rash that,
with troops so weak and so much out of humour, a general
should at his own hand and, strictly speaking, at variance
with the constitution, undertake an expedition to a distant

VOL. IV I

t ■>

338 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION isooK v

and unknown land, full of rapid streams and snow -clad
mountains — a land which from the very vastness of its
extent rendered any lightly-undertaken attack fraught with
danger. The conduct of Lucullus was therefore much
and not unreasonably censured in Rome ; only, amidst the
censure the fact should not have been concealed, that the
perversity of the government was the prime occasion of
this venturesome project of the general, and, if it did not
justify it, rendered it at least excusable.
Lucullus The mission of Appius Claudius was designed not only

Euphrates. ^^ fumish a diplomatic pretext for the war, but also to
induce the princes and cities of Syria especially to take
69. arms against the great-king : in the spring of 685 the
formal attack began. During the winter the king of
Cappadocia had silently provided vessels for transport ;
with these the Euphrates was crossed at Melitene, and the
further march was directed by way of the Taurus-passes to
the Tigris. This too Lucullus crossed in the region of
Amida (Diarbekr), and advanced towards the road which
connected the second capital Tigranocerta,^ recently founded
on the south frontier of Armenia, with the old metropolis
Artaxata. At the former was stationed the great- king,
who had shortly before returned from Syria, after having
temporarily deferred the prosecution of his plans of con-
quest on the Mediterranean on account of the embroilment
with the Romans. He was just projecting an inroad into
Roman Asia from Cilicia and Lycaonia, and was consider-
ing whether the Romans would at once evacuate Asia or
would previously give him battle, possibly at Ephesus,

^ That Tigranocerta was situated in the region of Mardin some two
days' march to the west of Nisibis, has been proved by the investigation
instituted on the spot by Sachau (" Ueber die Lage von Tigranokerta,"
Aik. der Berliner Akademie, 1880), although the more exact fixing of the
locality proposed by Sachau is not beyond doubt. On the other hand,
his attempt to clear up the campaign of Lucullus encounters the difficulty
that, on the route assumed in it, a crossing of the Tigris is in reality out pi
the auestion.

riiAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 339

when the news was brought to him of the advance of
Lucullus, which threatened to cut o(T his communications
with Artaxata. He ordered the messenger to be hanged,
but the disagreeable reality remained unaltered ; so he left
the new capital and resorted to the interior of Armenia,
in order there to raise a force — which had not yet been
done — against the Romans. Meanwhile Mithrobarzanes
with the troops actually at his disposal and in concert with
the neighbouring Bedouin tribes, who were called out in all
haste, was to give employment to the Romans. But the
corps of Mithrobarzanes was dispersed by the Roman van-
guard, and the Arabs by a detachment under Sextilius ;
Lucullus gained the road leading from Tigranocerta to
Artaxata, and, while on the right bank of the Tigris a
Roman detachment pursued the great-king retreating
northwards, Lucullus himself crossed to the left and
marched forward to Tigranocerta.

The exhaustless showers of arrows which the garrison siege and
poured upon the Roman army, and the setting fire to the ^^"'^ °^
besieging machines by means of naphtha, initiated the cena.
Romans into the new dangers of Iranian warfare ; and the
brave commandant Nfancaeus maintained the city, till at
length the great royal army of relief had assembled from
all i)arts of the vast empire and the adjoining countries
that were open to Armenian recruiting officers, and had
advanced through the north-eastern passes to the relief of
the capital. The leader Taxiles, experienced in the wars
of Mithradates, advised Tigranes to avoid a battle, and to
surround and starve out the small Roman army by means
of his cavalry. But when the king saw the Roman general,
who had determined to give battle without raising the
siege, move out with not much more than 10,000 men
against a force twenty times superior, and boldly cross the
river which separated the two armies ; when he surveyed
on the one side this little band, "too many for an embassy.

340 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

too few for an army," and on the other side his own
immense host, in which the peoples from the Black Sea
and the Caspian met with those of the Mediterranean and
of the Persian Gulf, in which the dreaded iron-clad lancers
alone were more numerous than the whole army of LucuUus,
and in which even infantry armed after the Roman fashion
were not wanting; he resolved promptly to accept the
battle desired by the enemy. But while the Armenians
were still forming their array, the quick eye of Lucullus
perceived that they had neglected to occupy a height which
commanded the whole position of their cavalry. He
hastened to occupy it with two cohorts, while at the same
time his weak cavalry by a flank attack diverted the at-
tention of the enemy from this movement ; and as soon as
he had reached the height, he led his little band against
the rear of the enemy's cavalry. They were totally broken
and threw themselves on the not yet fully formed infantry,
which fled without even striking a blow. The bulletin
of the victor — that 100,000 Armenians and five Romans
had fallen and that the king, throwing away his turban and
diadem, had galloped off unrecognized with a few horse-
men— is composed in the style of his master Sulla.
69. Nevertheless the victory achieved on the 6th October 685
before Tigranocerta remains one of the most brilliant stars
in the glorious history of Roman warfare ; and it was not
less momentous than brilliant.
All the All the provinces wrested from the Parthians or Syrians

coMueMs *° ^^^ south of the Tigris were by this means strategically
pass into lost to the Armenians, and passed, for the most part, with-
oHhe" ^ °^* delay into the possession of the victor. The newly-
Romans. built second capital itself set the example. The Greeks,
who had been forced in large numbers to settle there, rose
against the garrison and opened to the Roman army the
gates of the city, which was abandoned to the pillage of the
soldiers. It had been created for the new great-kingdom,

CHAP. II RULE OF THK SULLAX RESTORATION 341

and, like tliis, was effaced by tlie victor. From Cilicia
and Syria all the troops had already been withdrawn by the
Armenian satrap Magadates to reinforce the relieving army
before Tigranocerta. Lucullus advanced into Commagene,
the most northern province of Syria, and stormed Samosata,
the capital ; he did not reach Syria proper, but envoys
arrived from the dynasts and communities as far as the
Red Sea — from Hellenes, Syrians, Jews, Arabs — to do
homage to the Romans as their sovereigns. Even the
prince of Corduene, the province situated to the east of
Tigranocerta, submitted ; while, on the other hand, Guras
the brother of the great-king maintained himself in Nisibis,
and thereby in Mesopotamia. Lucullus came forward
throughout as the protector of the Hellenic princes and
municipalities : in Commagene he placed Antiochus, a
prince of the Seleucid house, on the throne ; he recognized
Antiochus Asiaticus, who after the withdrawal of the
Armenians had returned to Antioch, as king of Syria ; he
sent the forced settlers of Tigranocerta once more away to
their homes. The immense stores and treasures of the
great-king — the grain amounted to 30,000,000 medimni,
the money in Tigranocerta alone to 8000 talents (nearly
;;^2, 000,000) — enabled Lucullus to defray the expenses of
the war without making any demand on the state -treasury,
and to bestow on each of his soldiers, besides the amplest
maintenance, a present of 800 denarii {jQzz)-

The great- king was deeply humbled. He was of a Tigrancs
feeble character, arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted in ^"If''^^'
adversity. Probably an agreement would have been come
to between him and Lucullus — an agreement which there
was every reason that the great-king should purchase by
considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should
grant under tolerable conditions — had not the old Mithra-
dates been in existence. The latter had taken no part in
the conflicts around Tigranocerta. Liberated after twenty

342 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

months' captivity about the middle of 684 in consequence
of the variance that had occurred between the great-king
and the Romans, he had been despatched with 1 0,00c
Armenian cavalry to his former kingdom, to threaten the
communications of the enemy. Recalled even before he
could accomplish anything there, when the great-king sum-
moned his whole force to relieve the capital which he had
built, Mithradates was met on his arrival before Tigrano-
certa by the multitudes just fleeing from the field of battle.
To every one, from the great -king down to the common
soldier, all seemed lost. But if Tigranes should now make
peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last chance of
being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would
be beyond doubt the first condition of peace ; and cer-
tainly Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards
him than Bocchus had formerly acted towards Jugurtha.
The king accordingly staked his whole personal weight to
prevent things from taking this turn, and to induce the
Armenian court to continue the war, in which he had
nothing to lose and everything to gain ; and, fugitive and
dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court
was not slight. He was still a stately and powerful man,
who, although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted
on horseback in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict
stood his ground like the best. Years and vicissitudes
seemed to have steeled his spirit : while in earlier times he
sent forth generals to lead his armies and took no direct
part in war himself, we find him henceforth as an old man
commanding in person and fighting in person on the field
of battle. To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had
witnessed so many unexampled changes of fortune, the
cause of the great-king appeared by no means lost through
the defeat of Tigranocerta ; whereas the position of LucuUus
was very difficult, and, if peace should not now take
place and the war should be judiciously continued, even in
a high degree precarious.

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN KKSTOKATION 343

The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the F^enewai

great-king almost as a father, and was now able to exercise
a personal influence over him, overpowered by his energy
that weak man, and induced him not only to resolve on the
continuance of the war, but also to entrust Mithradates
wiih its political and military management. The war was
now to be changed from a cabinet contest into a national
Asiatic struggle ; the kings and peoples of Asia were to
unite for this purpose against the domineering and hauyhty
Occidentals. The greatest exertions were made to recon-
cile the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to
induce them to make common cause against Rome. At
the suggestion of Mithradates, Tigranes offered to give
back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who had reigned
since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians — 70.
Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the "great valleys" — and to enter
into friendship and alliance with him. But, after all that
had previously taken place, this offer could scarcely reckon
on a favourable reception ; Phraates jireferred to secure
the boundary of the Euphrates by a treaty not with the
Armenians, but with the Romans, and to look on, while the
hated neighbour and the inconvenient foreigner fought out
their strife. Greater success attended the application of
Mithradates to the peoples of the east than to the kings.
It was not difficult to represent the war as a national one
of the east against the west, for such it was ; it might very
well be made a religious war also, and the report might be
spread that the object aimed at by the army of LucuUus
was the temple of the Persian Nanaea or .-Xnaiiis in Elymais
or the modern Luristan, the most celebrated and the richest
shrine in the whole region of the Euphrates.^ From far

* Cicero (De Imp. Pomp. 9, 23) hardly means any other than one of the
rich temples of the province Klymais, wliither the predatory expeilitions of
the Syrian and Parthian kings were regularly directed (Strabo, xvi. 744 ;
Folyb. K.\.\i. II ; I Maccah. 6. etc.), and probably this as the best known;

of the war.

344 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

and near the Asiatics flocked in crowds to the banner of
the kings, who summoned them to protect the east and its
gods from the impious foreigners. But facts had shown
not only that the mere assemblage of enormous hosts was
of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching
and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a
mass rendered useless and involved in the general ruin.
Mithradates sought above all to develop the arm which was
at once weakest among the Occidentals and strongest
among the Asiatics, the cavalry ; in the army newly formed
by him half of the force was mounted. For the ranks of
the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass of
recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service,
and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic officers. The
considerable army, however, which soon assembled under
the banner of the great-king was destined not to measure
its strength with the Roman veterans on the first chance
field of battle, but to confine itself to defence and petty
warfare. Mithradates had conducted the last war in his
empire on the system of constantly retreating and avoiding
battle ; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion, and
Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war — the
hereditary land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the
enemy, and excellently adapted for this sort of warfare
both by its physical character and by the patriotism of its
inhabitants.
68. The year 686 found Lucullus in a position of difficulty,
faction ' which daily assumed a more dangerous aspect. In spite of
with his brilliant victories, people in Rome were not at all satis-

the capital ^^^ "^^^^ ^™- '^^^ senate felt the arbitrary nature of his
and in the conduct ; the capitalist party, sorely offended by him, set
all means of intrigue and corruption at work to effect his
recall. Daily the Forum echoed with just and unjust com-

on no account can the allusion be to the temple of Coniana or any shrine
at all in the kingdom of Pontus.

i

CHAi'. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 345

plaints regarding the foolhardy, the covetous, the un-
Roman, the traitorous general. The senate so far yielded
to the complaints regarding the union of such unlimited
power — two ordinary governorships and an important extra-
ordinary command — in the hands of such a man, as to
assign the province of Asia to one of the praetors, and the
province of Cilicia along with three newly-raised legions to
the consul Quintus Marcius Rex, and to restrict the general
to the command against Mithradates and Tigranes.

These accusations springing up against the general in
Rome found a dangerous echo in the soldiers' quarters on
the Iris and on the Tigris ; and the more so that several
officers including the general's own brother-in-law, Publius
Clodius, worked upon the soldiers with this view. The
report beyond doubt designedly circulated by these, that
LucuUus now thought of combining with the Pontic-
Armenian war an expedition against the Parthians, fed the
exasperation of the troops.

But while the troublesome temper of the government Lucuiius

and of the soldiers thus threatened the victorious general f^vances

° into

with recall and mutiny, he himself continued like a desper- Armenia
ate gambler to increase his stake and his risk. He did
not indeed march against the Parthians ; but when Tigranes
showed himself neither ready to make peace nor disposed,
as LucuUus wished, to risk a second pitched battle, LucuUus
resolved to advance from Tigranocerta, through the difficult
mountain -country along the eastern shore of the lake of
Van, into the valley of the eastern Euphrates (or the
Arsanias, now Myrad-Chai), and thence into that of the
Araxes, where, on the northern slope of Ararat, lay
Artaxata the capital of Armenia proper, with the hereditary
castle and the harem of the king. He hoped, by threaten-
ing the king's hereditary residence, to compel him to fight
either on the way or at any rate before Artaxata. It was
inevitably necessary to leave behind a division at Tigrano-

346 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

certa ; and, as the marching army could not possibly be
further reduced, no course was left but to weaken the
position in Pontus and to summon troops thence to
Tigranocerta. The main difficulty, however, was the short-
ness of the Armenian summer, so inconvenient for military
enterprises. On the tableland of Armenia, which hes
5000 feet and more above the level of the sea, the corn
at Erzeroum only germinates in the beginning of June,
and the winter sets in with the harvest in September \
Artaxata had to be reached and the campaign had to be
ended in four months at the utmost.
68. At midsummer, 686, Lucullus set out from Tigrano-
certa, and, marching doubtless through the pass of Bitlis
and farther to the westward along the lake of Van —
arrived on the plateau of Musch and at the Euphrates.
The march went on — amidst constant and very trouble-
some skirmishing with the enemy's cavalry, and especially
with the mounted archers — slowly, but without material
hindrance ; and the passage of the Euphrates, which was
seriously defended by the Armenian cavalry, was secured
by a successful engagement ; the Armenian infantry showed
itself, but the attempt to involve it in the conflict did not
succeed. Thus the army reached the tableland, properly
so called, of Armenia, and continued its march into the
unknown country. They had suffered no actual misfor-
tune ; but the mere inevitable delaying of the march by
the difficulties of the ground and the horsemen of the
enemy was itself a very serious disadvantage. Long before
they had reached Artaxata, winter set in ; and when the
Italian soldiers saw snow and ice around them, the bow
of miUtary discipline that had been far too tightly stretched
gave way.
Lucullus A formal mutiny compelled the general to order a re-

retreats to j^ J. which he effected with his usual skill. "When he

Mesopo- '

tamia. had safely reached Mesopotamia where the season still

certa.

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 347

permitted farther operations, Lucullus crossed the Tigris,

and threw himself with the mass of his army on Nisibis,

the last city that here remained to the Armenians. The Capture of

great-king, rendered wiser by the experience acquired

before Tigranocerta, left the city to itself: notwithstanding

its brave defence it was stormed in a dark, rainy night by

the besiegers, and the army of Lucullus found there booty

not less rich and winter-quarters not less comfortable than

the year before in Tigranocerta.

But, meanwhile, the whole weight of the enemy's offen- Conflicts
sive fell on the weak Roman divisions left behind in !,"jj'^('"^
Pontus and in Armenia. Tigranes compelled the Roman Tigrano-
commander of the latter corps, Lucius Fannius — the same
who had formerly been the medium of communication
between Sertorius and Mithradates (p. 323, 328, 334) — to
throw himself into a fortress, and kept him beleaguered there.
Mithradates advanced into Pontus with 4000 Armenian
horsemen and 4000 of his own, and as liberator and
avenger summoned the nation to rise against the common
foe. All joined him ; the scattered Roman soldiers were
everywhere seized and put to death : when Hadrianus, the
Roman commandant in Pontus (p. 331), led his troops
against him, the former mercenaries of the king and the
numerous natives of Pontus following the army as slaves
made common cause with the enemy. For two successive
days the unequal conflict lasted ; it was only the circum-
stance that the king after receiving two wounds had to be
carried off from the field of battle, which gave the Roman
commander the opportunity of breaking off the virtually
lost battle, and throwing himself with the small remnant
of his troops into Cabira. Another of Lucullus' lieuten-
ants who accidentally came into this region, the resolute
Triarius, again gathered round him a body of troops and
fought a successful engagement with the king ; but he was
much too weak to expel him afresh from Pontic soil,

348

RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

67.

Farther
retreat to
Pontus.

Defeat of
the

Romans in
Pontus
at Ziela.

and had to acquiesce while the king took up winter-
quarters in Coniana.

So the spring of 687 came on. The reunion of the
army in Nisibis, the idleness of winter-quarters, the frequent
absence of the general, had meanwhile increased the in-
subordination of the troops ; not only did they vehemently
demand to be led back, but it was already tolerably evident
that, if the general refused to lead them home, they would
break up of themselves. The supplies were scanty ;
Fannius and Triarius, in their distress, sent the most
urgent entreaties to the general to furnish aid. With a
heavy heart Lucullus resolved to yield to necessity, to give
up Nisibis and Tigranocerta, and, renouncing all the
brilliant hopes of his Armenian expedition, to return to the
right bank of the Euphrates. Fannius was relieved ; but
in Pontus the help was too late. Triarius, not strong
enough to fight with Mithradates, had taken up a strong
position at Gaziura (Turksal on the Iris, to the west of
Tokat), while the baggage was left behind at Dadasa. But
when Mithradates laid siege to the latter place, the
Roman soldiers, apprehensive for their property, compelled
their leader to leave his secure position, and to give battle
to the king between Gaziura and Ziela (Zilleh) on the
Scotian heights.

What Triarius had foreseen, occurred. In spite of the
stoutest resistance the wing which the king commanded in
person broke the Roman line and huddled the infantry
together into a clayey ravine, where it could make neither
a forward nor a lateral movement and was cut to pieces
without pity. The king indeed was dangerously wounded
by a Roman centurion, who sacrificed his life for it ; but
the defeat was not the less complete. The Roman camp
was taken ; the flower of the infantry, and almost all the
staff and subaltern officers, strewed the ground ; the dead
were left lying unburied on the field of battle, and, when

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 349

I.ucullus arrived on the right bank of the Euphrates, he
learned the defeat not from his own soldiers, but through
the reports of the natives.

Alone with this defeat came the outbreak of the military Mutiny
conspiracy. At this very time news arrived from Rome ^iji^„
that the people had resolved to grant a discharge to the
soldiers whose legal term of service had expired, to wit, to
the Fimbrians, and to entrust the chief command in
Pontus and Bithynia to one of the consuls of the current
year : the successor of Lucullus, the consul Manius Acilius
Glabrio, had already landed in Asia Minor. The disband-
ing of the bravest and most turbulent legions and the
recall of the commander-in-chief, in connection with the
impression produced by the defeat of Ziela, dissolved all
the bonds of authority in the army just when the general
had most urgent need of their aid. Near Talaura in
Lesser Armenia he confronted the Pontic troops, at whose
head Tigranes' son-in-law, Mithradates of Media, had
already engaged the Romans successfully in a cavalry
conflict ; the main force of the great-king was advancing
to the same point from Armenia. Lucullus sent to
Quintus Marcius the new governor of Cilicia, who had
just arrived on the way to his province with three legions
in Lycaonia, to obtain help from him ; ^L^rcius declared
that his soldiers refused to march to Armenia. He sent
to Glabrio with the request that he would take up the
supreme command committed to him by the people ;
Glabrio showed still less inclination to undertake this task,
which had now become so difficult and hazardous,
Lucullus, compelled to retain the command, with the view
of not being obliged to fight at Talaura against the
Armenian and the Pontic armies conjoined, ordered a
movement against the advancing Armenians.

The soldiers obeyed the order to march ; but, when
they reached the point where the routes to Armenia and

350

RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

Farther
retreat to
Asia
Minor.

Cappadocia diverged, the bulk of the army took the latter,
and proceeded to the province of Asia. There the
Fimbrians demanded their immediate discharge ; and al-
though they desisted from this at the urgent entreaty of
the commander-in-chief and the other corps, they yet
persevered in their purpose of disbanding if the winter
should come on without an enemy confronting them;
which accordingly was the case. Mithradates not only
occupied once more almost his whole kingdom, but his
cavalry ranged over all Cappadocia and as far as Bithynia ;
king Ariobarzanes sought help equally in vain from Quintus
Marcius, from LucuUus, and from Glabrio. It was a
strange, almost incredible issue for a war conducted in a
manner so glorious. If we look merely to military achieve-
ments, hardly any other Roman general accomplished so
much with so trifling means as LucuUus ; the talent and
the fortune of Sulla seemed to have devolved on this his
disciple. That under the circumstances the Roman army
should have returned from Armenia to Asia Minor un-
injured, is a military miracle which, so far as we can judge,
far excels the retreat of Xenophon ; and, although mainly
doubtless to be explained by the solidity of the Roman,
and the inefficiency of the Oriental, system of war, it at
all events secures to the leader of this expedition an
honourable name in the foremost rank of men of military
capacity. If the name of LucuUus is not usually included
among these, it is to all appearance simply owing to the
fact that no narrative of his campaigns which is in a military
point of view even tolerable has come down to us, and to
the circumstance that in everything, and particularly in
war, nothing is taken into account but the final result ;
and this, in reality, was equivalent to a complete defeat.
Through the last unfortunate turn of things, and principally
through the mutiny of the soldiers, all the results of an
67-66. eight years' war had been lost ; in the winter of 687-688

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 351

the Romans again stood exactly at the same spot as in the
winter of 679-680. 75 74.

The maritime war against the pirates, which began at War with
the same time with the continental war and was all along ^^^ P"^"^
most closely connected with it, yielded no better results.
It has been already mentioned (p. 324) that the senate in
680 adopted the judicious resolution to entrust the task of 74.
clearing the seas from the corsairs to a single admiral in
supreme command, the praetor Marcus Antonius. But at
the very outset they had made an utter mistake in the
choice of the leader ; or rather those, who had carried
this measure so appropriate in itself, had not taken into
account that in the senate all personal questions were
decided by the intlucnce of Cethegus (p. 268) and similar
coterie -considerations. They had moreover neglected to
furnish the admiral of their choice with money and ships
in a manner befitting his comprehensive task, so that with
his enormous requisitions he was almost as burdensome to
the provincials whom he befriended as were the corsairs.

The resultswere corresponding. In the Campanian waters Defeat of
the fleet of Antonius captured a number of piratical vessels. A"'°"""
But an engagement took place with the Cretans, who had donia.
entered into friendship and alliance with the pirates and
abruptly rejected his demand that they should desist from
such fellowshij) ; and the chains, with which the foresight
of Antonius had provided his vessels for the purpose of
placing the captive buccaneers in irons, served to fasten
the quaestor and the other Roman prisoners to the masts
of the captured Roman ships, when the Cretan generals
Lasthenes and Panares steered back in triumph to Cydonia
from the naval combat in wiiich they had engaged the
Romans off their island. Antonius, after having squan-
dered immense sums and accomplished not the slightest
result by his inconsiderate mode of warfare, died in 6S3 71.
at Crete. The ill success of his exj)edition, the costliness

war,

352 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

of building a fleet, and the repugnance of the oligarchy to
confer any powers of a more comprehensive kind on the
magistrates, led them, after the practical termination of
this enterprise by Antonius' death, to make no farther
nomination of an admiral-in-chief, and to revert to the old
system of leaving each governor to look after the suppres-
sion of piracy in his own province : the fleet equipped by
LucuUus for instance (p. 329) was actively employed for this
purpose in the Aegean sea.
Cretan So far however as the Cretans were concerned, a disgrace

like that endured off Cydonia seemed even to the degene-
rate Romans of this age as if it could be answered only by
a declaration of war. Yet the Cretan envoys, who in the

70. year 684 appeared in Rome with the request that the
prisoners might be taken back and the old alliance re-
established, had almost obtained a favourable decree of the
senate ; what the whole corporation termed a disgrace, the
individual senator was ready to sell for a substantial price.
It was not till a formal resolution of the senate rendered
the loans of the Cretan envoys among the Roman bankers
non-actionable — that is, not until the senate had incapa-
citated itself for undergoing bribery — that a decree passed
to the effect that the Cretan communities, if they wished to
avoid war, should hand over not only the Roman deserters
but the authors of the outrage perpetrated off Cydonia —
the leaders Lasthenes and Panares — to the Romans for
befitting punishment, should deliver up all ships and boats
of four or more oars, should furnish 400 hostages, and
should pay a fine of 4000 talents (^975,000). When the
envoys declared that they were not empowered to enter
into such terms, one of the consuls of the next year was
appointed to depart on the expiry of his official term for
Crete, in order either to receive there what was demanded
or to begin the war.

69. Accordingly in 685 the proconsul Quintus Metellus

CHAP. II KULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION -y,

appeared in the Cretan waters. The communiues ol' ihe Mticio*

utxlu<
"retc

island, with the larger towns Gortyna, Cnossus, Cydonia at *|**^"*^

their head, were resolved rather to defend themselves in
arms than to submit to those excessive demands. The
Cretans were a nefarious and degenerate people (iii. 291),
with whose public and private existence piracy was as
intimately associated as robbery with the commonwealth of
the Aetolians ; but they resembled the Aetolians in valour
as in many other respects, and accordingly these two were
the only Greek communities that waged a courageous and
honourable struggle for independence. At Cydonia, where
Metellus landed his three legions, a Cretan army of 24,000
men under Lasthenes and Panares was ready to receive
him ; a battle took place in the open field, in which the
victory after a hard struggle remained with the Romans.
Nevertheless the towns bade defiance from behind their
walls to the Roman general ; Metellus had to make up
his mind to besiege them in succession. First Cydonia, in
which the remains of the beaten army had taken refuge,
was after a long siege surrendered by Panares in return
for the promise of a free departure for himself Lasthenes,
who had escaped from the town, had to be besieged a
second time in Cnossus ; and, when this fortress also
was on the point of falling, he destroyed its treasures
and escaped once more to places which still continued
their defence, such as Lyctus, Eleuthera, and others.
Two years (6S6, 687) elapsed, before Metellus became 6S, 67
master of the whole island and the last spot of free Greek
soil thereby passed under the control of the dominant
Romans ; the Cretan communities, as they were the first of
all Greek commonwealths to develop the free urban con-'
stitution and the dominion of the sea, were also to be the *)
last of all those Greek maritime states that formerly filled
the Mediterranean to succumb to the Roman continental
power.

vol, IV 123

354 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION nooK v

The All the legal conditions were fulfilled for celebrating

the Medi- another of the usual pompous triumphs ; the g'ens of the
terranean. Metelli could add to its Macedonian, Numidian, Dalmatian,
Balearic titles with equal right the new title of Creticus, and
Rome possessed another name of pride. Nevertheless the
power of the Romans in the Mediterranean was never
lower, that of the corsairs never higher, than in those
years. Well might the Cilicians and Cretans of the seas,
who are said to have numbered at this time looo ships,
mock the Isauricus and the Creticus, and their empty
victories. With what effect the pirates interfered in the
Mithradatic war, and how the obstinate resistance of the
Pontic maritime towns derived its best resources from the
corsair- state, has been already related. But that state
transacted business on a hardly less grand scale on its
own behoof. Almost under the eyes of the fleet of Lucul-
69. lus, the pirate Athenodorus surprised in 685 the island
of Delos, destroyed its far-famed shrines and temples, and
carried off the whole population into slavery. The island
Lipara near Sicily paid to the pirates a fixed tribute
annually, to remain exempt from like attacks. Another
72. pirate chief Heracleon destroyed in 682 the squadron
equipped in Sicily against him, and ventured with no
more than four open boats to sail into the harbour of
Syracuse. Two years later his colleague Pyrganion even
landed at the same port, established himself there and sent
forth flying parties into the island, till the Roman governor
at last compelled him to re-embark. People grew at length
quite accustomed to the fact that all the provinces equipped
squadrons and raised coastguards, or were at any rate
taxed for both ; and yet the pirates appeared to plunder
the provinces with as much regularity as the Roman
governors. But even the sacred soil of Italy was now
no longer respected by the shameless transgressors : from
Croton they carried off with them the temple -treasures

CHAP. 11 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 355

of the Lacinian Hera; they landed in P.rundisium, Misenum,
Caieta, in the Etruscan ports, even in Ostia itself ; they
seized the most eminent Roman officers as captives, anion;^
others the admiral of the Cilician army and two praetors
with their whole retinue, with the dreaded //j^w themselves
and all the insignia of their dignity ; they carried away
from a villa at Misenum the very sister of the Roman
admiral-in-chief Antonius, who was sent forth to annihilate
the pirates ; they destroyed in the port of Ostia the Roman
war fleet equipped against them and commanded by a
consul. The Latin husbandman, the traveller on the
Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terres-
trial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their pro-
perty or their life for a single moment ; all traffic and all
intercourse were suspended ; the most dreadful scarcity
prevailed in Italy, and especially in the capital, which
subsisted on transmarine corn. The contemporary world
and history indulge freely in complaints of insupportable
distress ; in this case the epithet may have been appro-
priate.

We have already described how the senate restored by Serviie
Sulla carried out its guardianship of the frontier in Mace- ^^^^^^^
donia, Its disciphne over the client kmgs of Asia Mmor,
and lastly its marine police ; the results were nowhere
satisfactory. Nor did better success attend the government
in another and perhaps even more urgent matter, the
supervision of the provincial, and above all of the Italian,
proletariate. The gangrene of a slave-proletariate gnawed
at the vitals of all the states of antiquity, and the more so,
the more vigorously they had risen and prospered ; for the
power and riches of the state regularly led, under the
existing circumstances, to a disproportionate increase of
the body of slaves. Rome naturally suffered more severely
from this cause than any other state of antiquity. Even
the government of the sixth century had been under the

102-100.

356 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

necessity of sending troops against the gangs of runaway
herdsmen and rural slaves. The plantation-system, spreading
more and more among the Italian speculators, had infinitely
increased the dangerous evil : in the time of the Gracchan
and Marian crises and in close connection with them servile
revolts had taken place at numerous points of the Roman
empire, and in Sicily had even grown into two bloody wars
135-132. (619-622 and 652-654 ; iii. 309-311, 382-386). But the ten
years of the rule of the restoration after Sulla's death formed
the golden age both for the buccaneers at sea and for bands
of a similar character on land, above all in the Italian penin-
sula, which had hitherto been comparatively well regulated.
The land could hardly be said any longer to enjoy peace.
In the capital and the less populous districts of Italy
robberies were of everyday occurrence, murders were
frequent. A special decree of the people was issued —
perhaps at this epoch — against kidnapping of foreign slaves
and of free men ; a special summary action was about this
time introduced against violent deprivation of landed
property. These crimes could not but appear specially
dangerous, because, while they were usually perpetrated by
the proletariate, the upper class were to a great extent also
concerned in them as moral originators and partakers in
the gain. The abduction of men and of estates was very
frequently suggested by the overseers of the large estates
and carried out by the gangs of slaves, frequently armed,
that were collected there : and many a man even of high
respectability did not disdain what one of his officious
slave-overseers thus acquired for him, as Mephistopheles
acquired for Faust the lime trees of Philemon. The
state of things is shown by the aggravated punish-
ment for outrages on property committed by armed
bands, which was introduced by one of the better
Optimates, Marcus LucuUus, as presiding over the
administration of justice in the capital about the year

CHAI-. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 357

676,^ with the express object of inducing the pro- 78.
prietors of large bands of slaves to exercise a more strict
superintendence over them and thereby avoid the penalty
of seeing them judicially condemned. Where pillage and
murder were thus carried on by order of the world of
quality, it was natural for these masses of slaves and pro-
letarians to prosecute the same business on their own
account ; a spark was sufficient to set fire to so inflammable
materials, and to convert the proletariate into an insurrec-
tionary army. An occasion was soon found.

The gladiatorial games, which now held the first rank Outbreak
among the popular amusements in Italy, had led to the dia^orial*
institution of numerous establishments, more especially in war in
and around Capua, designed partly for the custody, partly ^'
for the training of those slaves who were destined to kill or
be killed for the amusement of the sovereign multitude.
These were naturally in great part brave men captured in
war, who had not forgotten that they had once faced the Tft<l^S

Romans in the field. A number of these desperadoes >^^
broke out of one of the Capuan gladiatorial schools (681), 73.
and sought refuge on Mount Vesuvius. At their head
were two Celts, who were designated by their slave-names
Crixus and Oenomaus, and the Thracian Spartacus. The Spariacus.
latter, perhaps a scion of the noble family of the Spartocids
which attained even to royal honours in its Thracian home
and in Panticapaeum, had served among the Thracian
auxiliaries in the Roman army, had deserted and gone as
a brigand to the mountains, and had been there recaptured
and destined for the gladiatorial games.

The inroads of this little band, numbering at first only Thf
seventy-four persons, but rapidly swelling by concourse from J^n'^^.j
the surrounding country, soon became so troublesome to shape,
the inhabitants of the rich region of Campania, that these,

' These enactments gave rise to the conception of robbery as a
separate crime, while tlie older law comprehended robbery under theft.

358 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

after having vainly attempted themselves to repel them,
sought help against them from Rome. A division of
3000 men hurriedly collected appeared under the leadership
of Clodius Glaber, and occupied the approaches to Vesuvius
with the view of starving out the slaves. But the brigands
in spite of their small number and their defective armament
had the boldness to scramble down steep declivities and to
fall upon the Roman posts ; and when the wretched militia
saw the little band of desperadoes unexpectedly assail them,
they took to their heels and fled on all sides. This first
success procured for the robbers arms and increased acces-
sions to their ranks. Although even now a great portion
of them carried nothing but pointed clubs, the new and
stronger division of the militia — two legions under the
praetor Publius Varinius — which advanced from Rome into
Campania, found them encamped almost like a regular
army in the plain. Varinius had a difficult position. His
militia, compelled to bivouac opposite the enemy, were
severely weakened by the damp autumn weather and the
diseases which it engendered; and, worse than the epidemics,
cowardice and insubordination thinned the ranks. At the
very outset one of his divisions broke up entirely, so that
the fugitives did not fall back on the main corps, but went
straight home. Thereupon, when the order was given to
advance against the enemy's entrenchments and attack
them, the greater portion of the troops refused to comply
with it. Nevertheless Varinius set out with those who kept
their ground against the robber-band ; but it was no longer
to be found where he sought it. It had broken up in the
deepest silence and had turned to the south towards
Picentia (Vicenza near Amalfi), where Varinius overtook it
indeed, but could not prevent it from retiring over the
Silarus into the interior of Lucania, the chosen land of
shepherds and robbers. Varinius followed thither, and
there at length the despised enemy arrayed themselves for

CHAP. II RULK OF Tin: SULLAN KKSTUKATIUN 159

battle. All the circumstances under which the combat took
place were to the disadvantage of the Romans: the soldiers,
vehemently as they had demanded battle a little before,
fought ill ; Varinius was completely vanquished ; his horse
and the insignia of his oflicial dignity fell with the Roman
camp itself into the enemy's hand. The south -Italian
slaves, especially the brave half-savage hertlsmcn, flocked
in crowils to the banner of the deliverers who had so
unexpectedly appeared ; according to the most moderate
estimates the number of armed insurgents rose to 40,000
men. Campania, just evacuated, was speedily reoccupied,
and the Roman corps which was left behind there under
Gaius Thoranius, the quaestor of Varinius, was broken and
destroyed. In the whole south and south-west of Italy the
open country was in the hands of the victorious bandit-
chiefs ; even considerable towns, such as Consentia in the
Bruttian country, Thurii and Metapontum in Lucania, Nola
and Nuceria in Campania, were stormed by them, and
suflered all the atrocities which victorious barbarians could
inflict on defenceless civilized men, and unshackled slaves
on their former masters. That a conflict like this should
be altogether abnormal and more a massacre than a war,
was unhappily a matter of course : the masters duly crucified
every captured slave; the slaves naturally killed their
prisoners also, or with still more sarcastic retaliation even
compelled their Roman captives to slaughter each other in
gladiatorial sport ; as was subsequently done with three
hundred of them at the obsequies of a robber-captain who
had fallen in combat.

In Rome people were with reason apprehensive as to
the destructive conflagration which was daily spreading.
It was resolved next year (6S2) to send both consuls 72.
against the formidable leaders of the gang. The praetor Great
Quintus Arrius, a lieutenant of the consul Lucius Gellius, *"^*°"" °'

^- ' ' ^p.^ Ulcus.

actually succeeded in seizing and destroying at Mount

36o kULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

Garganus in Apulia the Celtic band, which under Crixus
had separated from the mass of the robber-army and was
levying contributions at its own hand. But Spartacus
achieved all the more brilliant victories in the Apennines
and in northern Italy, where first the consul Gnaeus
Lentulus who had thought to surround and capture the
robbers, then his colleague Gellius and the so recently
victorious praetor Arrius, and lastly at Mutina the governor
73. of Cisalpine Gaul Gains Cassius (consul 68 1) and the
praetor Gnaeus Manlius, one after another succumbed to
his blows. The scarcely -armed gangs of slaves were the
terror of the legions ; the series of defeats recalled the first
years of the Hannibalic war.
Internal What might have come of it, had the national kings

dissensions . , . ^ , ^ . -r, ,,

amon<^the ""o^ the mountams of Auvergne or of the Balkan, and not
insurgents, runaway gladiatorial slaves, been at the head of the
victorious bands, it is impossible to say ; as it was, the
movement remained notwithstanding its brilliant victories a
rising of robbers, and succumbed less to the superior force
of its opponents than to internal discord and the want of
definite plan. The unity in confronting the common foe,
which was so remarkably conspicuous in the earlier servile
wars of Sicily, was wanting in this Italian war — a difference
probably due to the fact that, while the Sicilian slaves
found a quasi-national point of union in the common
Syrohellenism, the Italian slaves were separated into the two
bodies of Helleno-Barbarians and Celto-Germans. The
rupture between the Celtic Crixus and the Thracian
Spartacus — Oenomaus had fallen in one of the earliest
conflicts — and other similar quarrels crippled them in
turning to account the successes achieved, and procured
for the Romans several important victories. But the want
of a definite plan and aim produced far more injurious
effects on the enterprise than the insubordination of the
Celto-Germans. Spartacus doubtless — to judge by the

CHAP. II RULE OK THE SULLAN RESTORATION 361

little which we learn regarding that remarkable man — stood
in this respect above his party. Along with his strategic
ability he displayed no ordinary talent for organization, as
indeed from the very outset the uprightness, with which he
presided over his band and distributed the spoil, had
directed the eyes of the multitude to him quite as much at
least as his valour. To remedy the severely felt want of
cavalry and of arms, he tried with the help of the herds of
horses seized in Lower Italy to train and discipline a
cavalry, and, so soon as he got the port of Thurii into his
hands, to procure from that quarter iron and copper,
doubtless through the medium of the pirates. But in the
main matters he was unable to induce the wild hordes
whom he led to pursue any fixed ulterior aims. Gladly would
he have checked the frantic orgies of cruelty, in which the
robbers indulged on the capture of towns, and which formed
the chief reason why no Italian city voluntarily made
common cause with the insurgents ; but the obedience
which the bandit-chief found in the conflict ceased with the
victory, and his representations and entreaties were in vain.
After the victories obtained in the Apennines in 682 the 72.
slave army was free to move in any directioa Spartacus
himself is said to have intended to cross the Alps, with a
view to open to himself and his followers the means of
return to their Celtic or Thracian home : if the statement
is well founded, it shows how little the conqueror overrated
his successes and his power. When his men refused so
speedily to turn their backs on the riches of Italy, Spartacus
took the route for Rome, and is said to have meditated
blockading the capital. The troops, however, showed
themselves also averse to this desperate but yet methodical
enterprise ; they compelled their leader, when he was
desirous to be a general, to remain a mere captain of
banditti and aimlessly to wander about Italy in search of
[)lunder. Rome might think herself foi lunate that the

362 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

matter took this turn ; but even as it was, the perplexity
was great. There was a want of trained soldiers as of
experienced generals ; Quintus Metellus and Gnaeus
Pompeius were employed in Spain, Marcus Lucullus in
Thrace, Lucius Lucullus in Asia Minor ; and none but raw
militia and, at best, mediocre officers were available. The
extraordinary supreme command in Italy was given to the
praetor Marcus Crassus, who was not a general of much
reputation, but had fought with honour under Sulla and had
at least character; and an army of eight legions, imposing if
not by its quality, at any rate by its numbers, was placed at
his disposal. The new commander-in-chief began by treating
the first division, which again threw away its arms and fled
before the banditti, with all the severity of martial law, and
causing every tenth man in it to be executed ; whereupon
the legions in reality grew somewhat more manly. Spar-
tacus, vanquished in the next engagement, retreated and
sought to reach Rhegium through Lucania.
Conflicts Just at that time the pirates commanded not merely

Bruttian the Sicilian waters, but even the port of Syracuse (p. 354);
country. ^yith the help of their boats Spartacus proposed to throw a
corps into Sicily, where the slaves only waited an impulse
to break out a third time. The march to Rhegium was
accomplished ; but the corsairs, perhaps terrified by the
coastguards established in Sicily by the praetor Gains
Verres, perhaps also bribed by the Romans, took from
Spartacus the stipulated hire without performing the service
for which it was given. Crassus meanwhile had followed
the robber-army nearly as far as the mouth of the Crathis,
and, like Scipio before Numantia, ordered his soldiers,
seeing that they did not fight as they ought, to construct an
entrenched wall of the length of thirty-five miles, which
shut off the Bruttian peninsula from the rest of Italy,^ inter-

^ As the line was thirty-five miles long (Sallust, Hist, iv, 19, Dietsch ;
Plutarch, Crass. 10), it probably passed not from Squillace to Pizzo, but

CHAP, n RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTOKATION 363

cepted tlie insurgent army on the return from Rhegium, and
cut ofi" its supplies. But in a dark winter night Sjjartacus
broke through the lines of the enemy, and in the spring of
683 * was once more in Lucania. The laborious work had 71.
thus been in vain. Crassus began to despair of accom-
pHshing his task and demanded that the senate should for
his support recall to Italy the armies stationed in Mace-
donia under Marcus Lucullus and in Hither Spain under

Gnaeus Pompeius.

This extreme step however was not needed ; the dis- Disruption

union and the arrogance of the robber-bands sufficed again ^^^j^ ^^^
to frustrate their successes. Once more the Celts and their sub-
Germans broke off from the league of which the Thracian ^"^'' '°
was the head and soul, in order that, under leaders of their
own nation Gannicus and Castus, they might separately
fall victims to the sword of the Romans. Once, at the
Lucanian lake, the opportune appearance of Spartacus
saved them, and thereupon they pitched their camp near
to his ; nevertheless Crassus succeeded in giving employ-
ment to Spartacus by means of the cavalry, and meanwhile
surrounded the Celtic bands and compelled them to a
separate engagement, in which the whole body — numbering
it is said 1 2,300 combatants — fell fighting bravely all on
the spot and with their wounds in front Spartacus then
attempted to throw himself with his division into the
mountains round Petelia (near Strongoli in Calabria), and
signally defeated the Roman vanguard, which followed his
retreat But this victory proved more injurious to the
victor than to the vanquished. Intoxicated by success,
the robbers refused to retreat farther, and compelled their

more to the north, somewhere near Castrovillari and Cassano. ox'ct the
peninsula which is here in a straight hne about twenty-seven miles broad.

' That Crassus wxs invested with the supreme command in 6H,. 71.
follows from the setting aside of the consuls ^I'lut.-irch, Crass. 10); t! n
the winter of 682-683 was Fpcnt by the two armies at the Druttian wall,
follows from the "snowy night ' (I'lui. /. c).

364 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

general to lead them through Lucania towards Apulia to
face the last decisive struggle. Before the battle Spartacus
stabbed his horse : as in prosperity and adversity he had
faithfully kept by his men, he now by that act showed them
that the issue for him and for all was victory or death. In
the battle also he fought with the courage of a lion ; two
centurions fell by his hand ; wounded and on his knees he
still wielded his spear against the advancing foes. Thus
the great robber-captain and with him the best of his
comrades died the death of free men and of honourable
71. soldiers (683). After the dearly-bought victory the troops
who had achieved it, and those of Pompeius that had
meanwhile after conquering the Sertorians arrived from
Spain, instituted throughout Apulia and Lucania a man-
hunt, such as there had never been before, to crush out the
last sparks of the mighty conflagration. Although in the
southern districts, where for instance the little town of
71. Tempsa was seized in 683 by a gang of robbers, and in ,
Etruria, which was severely affected by Sulla's evictions,'
there was by no means as yet a real public tranquillity, peace ,
was officially considered as re-established in Italy. At least '
the disgracefully lost eagles were recovered — after the
victory over the Celts alone five of them were brought in ;
and along the road from Capua to Rome the six thousand
crosses bearing captured slaves testified to the re-
establishment of order, and to the renewed victory of
acknowledged law over its living property that had
rebelled.
The Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten

govern- years of the Sullan restoration. No one of the movements,

ment of the •' '

restoration external or internal, which occurred during this period —
neither the insurrection of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of
the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars in Thrace and Mace-
donia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings of the pirates and
the slaves — constituted of itself a mighty danger necessarily

as a whole.

CHAP. II RULE Ol- THE SULLAN RESTORATION 365

affecting the vital sinews of the nation ; and yet the state
had in all these struggles well-nigh fought for its very
existence. The reason was that the tasks were everjwhcrc
left unperformed, so long as they might still have been
[ierformed with ease ; the neglect of the simplest precau-
tionary measures produced the most dreadful mischiefs and
misfortunes, and transformed dependent classes and im-
potent kings into antagonists on a footing of equality. The
democracy and the servile insurrection were doubtless
subdued ; but such as the victories were, the victor was
neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by
them. It was no credit to Rome, that the two most
celebrated generals of tHe government party had during
a struggle of eight years marked by more defeats
than victories failed to master the insurgent chief
Sertorius and his Spanish guerillas, and that it was
only the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian
war in favour of the legitimate government. As to
the slaves, it was far less an honour to have con-
quered them than a disgrace to have confronted them
in equal strife for years. Little more than a century had
elapsed since the Hannibalic war ; it must have brought a
blush to the cheek of the honourable Roman, when he
reflected on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since
that great age. Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall
against the veterans of Hannibal ; now the Italian militia
were scattered like chaff before the bludgeons of their
runaway serfs. Then every plain captain acted in case of
need as general, and fought often without success, but
always with honour ; now it was difficult to find among all
the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency.
Tlien the government preferred to take the last farmer from
the plough rather than forgo the actjuisition of Spain and
Greece ; now they were on the eve of again akandoning
both regions long since acquired, merely that they might be

366 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

able to defend themselves against the insurgent slaves at
home. Spartacus too as well as Hannibal had traversed
Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian straits,
beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with blockade ;
the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of
antiquity to conduct it against the Rome of former days
could be undertaken against the Rome of the present by a
daring captain of banditti. Was there any wonder that no
fresh life sprang out of such victories over insurgents and
robber-chiefs ?

The external wars, however, had produced a result still
less gratifying. It is true that the Thraco- Macedonian
war had yielded a result not directly unfavourable, although
far from corresponding to the considerable expenditure of
men and money. In the wars in Asia Minor and with the
pirates on the other hand, the government had exhibited
utter failure. The former ended with the loss of the whole
conquests made in eight bloody campaigns, the latter with
the total driving of the Romans from " their own sea."
Once Rome, fully conscious of the irresistibleness of her
power by land, had transferred her superiority also to the
other element ; now the mighty state was powerless at sea
and, as it seemed, on the point of also losing its dominion
at least over the Asiatic continent. The material benefits
which a state exists to confer — security of frontier, undis-
turbed peaceful intercourse, legal protection, and regulated
administration — began all of them to vanish for the whole
of the nations united in the Roman state ; the gods of
blessing seemed all to have mounted up to Olympus and to
have left the miserable earth at the mercy of the ofificially
called or volunteer plunderers and tormentors. Nor was
this decay of the state felt as a public misfortune merely
perhaps by such as had political rights and public spirit ;
the insurrection of the proletariate, and the brigandage
and piracy which remind us of the times of the Neapolitan

CHAP. II RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION 367

Ferdinands, carried the sense of this decay into the
remotest valley and the humblest hut of Italy, and made
every one who pursued trade and commerce, or who
bought even a bushel of wheat, feel it as a personal
calamity.

If inquiry was made as to the authors of this dreadful
and unexampled misery, it was not difficult to lay the
blame of it with good reason on many. The slaveholders
whose heart was in their money-bags, the insubordinate
soldiers, the generals cowardly, incapable, or foolhardy, the
demagogues of the market-place mostly pursuing a mistaken
aim, bore their share of the blame ; or, to speak more truly,
who was there that did not share in it? It was instinct-
ively felt that this misery, this disgrace, this disorder were
too colossal to be the work of any one man. As the
greatness of the Roman commonwealth was the work not
of prominent individuals, but rather of a soundly-organized
burgess-body, so the decay of this mighty structure was the
result not of the destructive genius of individuals, but of a
general disorganization. The great majority of the bur-
gesses were good for nothing, and every rotten stone in the
building helped to bring about the ruin of the whole ; the
whole nation suffered for what was the whole nation's
fault. It was unjust to hold the government, as the ultimate
tangible organ of the state, responsible for all its curable
and incurable diseases ; but it certainly was true that the
government contributed after a very grave fashion to the
general culpability. In the Asiatic war, for example, where
no individual of the ruling lords conspicuously failed, and
Lucullus, in a military point of view at least, behaved with
ability and even glory, it was all the more clear that the
blame of failure lay in the system and in the government
as such — primarily, so far as that war was concerned, in
the remissness with which Cappadocia and Syria were at
first abandoned, and in the awkward position of the able

368 RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION book v

general with reference to a governing college incapable of
any energetic resolution. In maritime police likewise the
true idea which the senate had taken up as to a general
hunting out of the pirates was first spoilt by it in the
execution and then totally dropped, in order to revert to
the old foolish system of sending legions against the coursers
of the sea. The expeditions of Servilius and Marcius to
Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete, were undertaken on this
system ; and in accordance with it Triarius had the island
of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against the
pirates. Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas
remind us of that Persian great-king, who ordered the sea
to be scourged with rods to make it subject to him.
Doubtless therefore the nation had good reason for laying
the blame of its failure primarily on the government of the
restoration. A similar misrule had indeed always come
along with the re-establishment of the oligarchy, after the
fall of the Gracchi as after that of Marius and Saturninus ;
yet never before had it shown such violence and at the same
time such laxity, never had it previously emerged so
corrupt and pernicious. But, when a government cannot
govern, it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the
power has also the right to overthrow it. It is, no doubt,
unhappily true that an incapable and flagitious government
may for a long period trample under foot the welfare and
honour of the land, before the men are found who are able
and willing to wield against that government the formidable
weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of the moral
revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolu-
tion which is in such a case legitimate. But if the game
attempted with the fortunes of nations may be a merry one
and may be played perhaps for a long time without
molestation, it is a treacherous game, which in its own time
entraps the players ; and no one then blames the axe, if it
is laid to the root of the tree that bears such fruits. For

CHAP. 11 kULE OK THK SULLAN KESTUKATION 369

the Roman oligarchy this time had now come. The
Poniic-Armenian war and the aflair of the pirates became
tlie proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan con-
stitution and of the establishment of a revolutionary military
dictatorship.

VOL. IV

194

370 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

CHAPTER III

THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY AND THE RULE OF

POMPEIUS

Continued The Sullan Constitution still stood unshaken. The assault,

SllDSlStcnCG • •

of the which Lepidus and Sertonus had ventured to make on it,

Sullan con- had been repulsed with little loss. The government had
neglected, it is true, to finish the half-completed building
in the energetic spirit of its author. It is characteristic of
the government, that it neither distributed the lands which
Sulla had destined for allotment but had not yet parcelled
out, nor directly abandoned the claim to them, but
tolerated the former owners in provisional possession with-
out regulating their title, and indeed even allowed various
still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be arbi-
trarily taken possession of by individuals according to the
old system of occupation, which was de jure and de facto
set aside by the Gracchan reforms (p. 109). Whatever
in the Sullan enactments was indifferent or inconvenient
for the Optimates, was without scruple ignored or can-
celled ; for instance, the sentences under which whole
communities were deprived of the right of citizenship, the
prohibition against conjoining the new farms, and several
of the privileges conferred by Sulla on particular com-
munities— of course, without giving back to the com-
munities the sums paid for these exemptions. But though
these violations of the ordinances of Sulla by the govern-

ciiAP. Ill THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY 371

ment itself contributed to shake the foundations of his
structure, the Sempronian laws were substantially abolished
and remained so.

There was no lack, indeed, of men who had in view Attack* of
the re-establishment of the (Jracchan constitution, or of '^* ***'

mocracy.

projects to attain piecemeal in the way of constitutional
reform what Lepidus and Sertorius had attempted by the
path of revolution. The government had already under Com laws,
the pressure of the agitation of Lepidus immediately after
the death of Sulla consented to a limited revival of the
largesses of grain (676); and it did, moreover, what it 78.
could to satisfy the proletariate of the capital in regard to
this vital question. When, notwithstanding those distribu-
tions, the high price of grain occasioned chiefly by piracy
produced so oppressive a dearth in Rome as to lead to a
violent tumult in the streets in 679, extraordinary purchases 75,
of Sicilian grain on account of the government relieved for
the time the most severe distress ; and a corn-law brought
in by the consuls of 681 regulated for the future the 73.
purchases of Sicilian grain and furnished the government,
although at the expense of the provincials, with better
means of obviating similar evils. But the less material Aitcmpti
points of difference also — the restoration of the trihunician '° ""cstore

' _ _ _ the tnbun*

power in its old compass, and the setting aside of the icum
senatorial tribunals — ceased not to form subjects of popular P*^"'-
agitation ; and in their case the government offered more
decided resistance. The dispute regarding the tribunician
magistracy was opened as early as 6 78, immediately after 76.
the defeat of Lepidus, by the tribune of the people Lucius
Sicinius, perhai)s a descendant of the man of the same
name who had first filled this office more than four
hundred years before ; but it failed before the resistance
offered to it by the active consul Gaius Curio. In 6S0 74.
Lucius Ouinctius resumed the agitation, but was induced
by the authority of the consul Lucius LucuUus to desist

372

THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY

BOOK V

Attacks
on the
senatorial
tribunals.

74,

from his purpose. The matter was taken up in the
following year with greater zeal by Gaius Licinius Macer,
who — in a way characteristic of the period — carried his
literary studies into public life, and, just as he had read in
the Annals, counselled the burgesses to refuse the con-
scription.

Complaints also, only too well founded, prevailed re-
specting the bad administration of justice by the senatorial
jurymen. The condemnation of a man of any influence
could hardly be obtained. Not only did colleague feel
reasonable compassion for colleague, those who had been
or were likely to be accused "for the poor sinner under
accusation at the moment ; the sale also of the votes of
jurymen was hardly any longer exceptional. Several
senators had been judicially convicted of this crime : men
pointed with the finger at others equally guilty ; the most
respected Optimates, such as Quintus Catulus, granted in
an open sitting of the senate that the complaints were
quite well founded ; individual specially striking cases
compelled the senate on several occasions, e.g. in 680, to
deliberate on measures to check the venality of juries, but
only of course till the first outcry had subsided and the
matter could be allowed to slip out of sight. The con-
sequences of this wretched administration of justice ap-
peared especially in a system of plundering and torturing
the provincials, compared with which even previous out-
rages seemed tolerable and moderate. Stealing and
robbing had been in some measure legitimized by custom ;
the commission on extortions might be regarded as an
institution for taxing the senators returning from the
provinces for the benefit of their colleagues that remained
at home. But when an esteemed Siceliot, because he had
not been ready to help the governor in a crime, was by
the latter condemned to death in his absence and unheard ;
when even Roman burgesses, if they were not equites or

CHAP. Ill tup: fall of tiik oligakchy 373

senators, were in the provinces nu lungcr safe from tin,-
rods and axes of the Roman magistrate, and the oldest
acquisition of tlie Roman democracy — security of life and
person — began to be trodden under foot by the ruling
oligarchy ; then even the public in the Forum at Rome
had an ear for the complaints regarding its magistrates in
the provinces, and regarding the unjust judges who
morally shared the responsibility of such misdeeds. The
opposition of course did not omit to assail its opponents
in — what was almost the only ground left to it — the

tribunals. 1 The young GaiiiS-Cacsar^vho also. so_Jai: as

his age allowed, ~T6ok zealous part in the agitation for the
re-establishment of the tribunician power, brought to trial
in 677 one of the most respected partisans of Sulla the 77.
consular Gnaeus Dolabella, and in the following year
another Sullan officer Gaius Antonius ; and Marcus Cicero
in 684 called to account Gaius Verres, one of the most 70.
wretched of the creatures of Sulla, and one of the worst
scourges of the provincials. Again and again were the pic-
tures of that dark period of the proscriptions, the fearful
sufferings of the provincials, the disgraceful state of Roman
criminal justice, unfolded before the assembled multitude
with all the pomp of Italian rhetoric, and with all the
bitterness of Italian sarcasm, and the mighty dead as
well as his living instruments were unrelentingly exposed
to their wrath and scorn. The re-establishment of the full
tribunician power, with the continuance of which the
freedom, might, and prosperity of the republic seemed
bound up as by a charm of primeval sacredness, the rein-
troduction of the " stern " equestrian tribunals, the renewal
of the censorship, which Sulla had set aside, for the purify-
ing of the supreme governing board from its corrupt and
pernicious elements, were daily demanded with a loud
voice by the orators of the popular party.

But with all this no progress was made. There was

374 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

Want of scandal and outcry enough, but no real result was attained
f""'the '^y ^'^'^ exposure of the government according to and
democratic beyond its deserts. The material power still lay, so long
agitation. ^^ there was no military interference, in the hands of the
burgesses of the capital; and the "people" that thronged
the streets of Rome and made magistrates and laws in the
Forum, was in fact nowise better than the governing senate.
The government no doubt had to come to terms with the
multitude, where its own immediate interest was at stake ;
this was the reason for the renewal of the Sempronian corn-
law. But it was not to be imagined that this populace would
have displayed earnestness on behalf of an idea or even of a
judicious reform. What Demosthenes said of his Athenians
was justly applied to the Romans of this period — the
people were very zealous for action, so long as they stood
round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms ;
but when they went home, no one thought further of what
he had heard in the market-place. However those
democratic agitators might stir the fire, it was to no
purpose, for the inflammable material was wanting. The
government knew this, and allowed no sort of concession
to be wrung from it on important questions of principle ;
72. at the utmost it consented (about 682) to grant amnesty
to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus.
Any concessions that did take place, came not so much
from the pressure of the democracy as from the attempts
at mediation of the moderate aristocracy. But of the two
laws which the single still surviving leader of this section
75. Gaius Cotta carried in his consulate of 679, that which
concerned the tribunals was again set aside in the very
next year ; and the second, which abolished the Sullan
enactment that those who had held the tribunate should
be disqualified for undertaking other magistracies, but
allowed the other limitations to continue, merely — like
every half-measure — excited the displeasure of both parties.

CHAP. Ill Tin; FALL OF TlIK OLIGARCHV 375

The party of conservatives friendly to reform which lost its
most notable heatl by the early death of Cotta occurring
soon after (about 681) dwindled away more and more — 7J.
crushed between the extremes, which were becoming daily
more marked. But of these the party of the government,
wretched and remiss as it was, necessarily retained the
advantage in presence of the equally wretched and equally
remiss opposition.

But this stale of matters so favourable to the govern- (^/uarrel
ment was altered, when the differences became more dis- ,heKo%cm.
tinctly developed which subsisted between it and those of nirnt .-md
its partisans, whose hopes aspired to higher objects than the ^^nct:i\
seat of honour in the senate and the aristocratic villx In I'ompou*.
the first rank of these stood Gnaeus Pompeius. He was doubt-
less a Sullan ; but we have already shown (p. 274) how little
he was at home among his own party, how his lineage, his
past history, his hopes separated him withal from the nobility
as whose protector and champion he was officially regarded.
The breach already apparent had been widened irreparably
during the Spanish campaigns of the general (677-683). 77-71.
With reluctance and semi-compulsion the government had
associated him as colleague with their true representative
Quintus Metellus ; and in turn he accused the senate,
probably not without ground, of having by its careless or
malicious neglect of the Spanish armies brought about their
defeats and placed the fortunes of the e.xpedition in jeojurdy.
Now he returned as victor over his open and his secret
foes, at the head of an army inured to war and wholly
devoted to him, desiring assignments of land for his soldiers,
a triumph and the consulship for himself. The bttcr
demands came into collision with the law. Pom|)eius,
although several times invested in an e.xtraordinary way with
supreme official authority, had not yet administered any
ordinary magistracy, not even the (juaestorship, and was
still n(.)t a member of the senate ; and none but one who

376 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book V

had passed through the round of lesser ordinary magistracies
could become consul, none but one who had been invested
with the ordinary supreme power could triumph. The
senate was legally entitled, if he became a candidate for the
consulship, to bid him begin with the quaestorship ; if he
requested a triumph, to remind him of the great Scipio,
who under like circumstances had renounced his triumph
over conquered Spain. Nor was Pompeius less dependent
constitutionally on the g6og~~will of the senate as re-
spected_the lands promised_tohis soldiers. But, although
the senate — as with its feebleness even in animosity was
very conceivable — should yield those points and concede to
the victorious general, in return for his executioner's service
against the democratic chiefs, the triumph, the consulate,
and the assignations of land, an honourable annihilation in
senatorial indolence among the long series of peaceful
senatorial Imperators was the most favourable lot which the
oligarchy was able to hold in readiness for the general of
thirty- six. That which his heart really longed for — the
command in the Mithradatic war — he could never expect
to obtain from the voluntary bestowal of the senate : in
their own well-understood interest the oligarchy could not
permit him to add to his African and European trophies
those of a third continent ; the laurels which were to be
plucked copiously and easily in the east were reserved at
all events for the pure aristocracy. But if the celebrated
general did not find his account in the ruling oligarchy, there
remained — for neither was the time ripe, nor was the
temperament of Pompeius at all fitted, for a purely personal
outspoken dynastic policy — no alternative save to make
common cause with the democratic party. No interest of
his own bound him to the Sullan constitution ; he could
pursue his personal objects quite as well, if not better, with
one more democratic. On the other hand he found all that
he needed in the democratic party. Its active and adroit

CHAP. Ill Tin: FALL OF THE OLIGAKCHV 377

leaders were ready and able to relieve the resourcclcbS and
somewhat wooden hero of the trouble of j>olitical leadership,
and yet much too insignificant to be able or even wishful
to disjmte with the celebrated general the first place and
especially the supreme military control. Even Gaius
Caesar, by far the most important of them, was simply a
young man whose daring exploits and fashionable debts far
more than his fiery democratic elocjuence had gained him a
name, and who could not but feel himself greatly honoured
when the world-renowned Imperator allowed him to l-)e his
political adjutant. That popularity, to which men like
Pompeius, with pretensions greater than their abilities,
usually attach more value than they are willing to confess
to themselves, could not but fall in the highest measure to
the lot of the young general whose accession gave victory
to the almost forlorn cause of the democracy. The reward
of victory claimed by him for himself and his soldiers would
then follow of itself. In general it seemed, if the oligarchy
were overthrown, that amidst the total want of other con-
siderable chiefs of the opposition it would depend solely on
Pompeius himself to determine his future position. And
of this much tliere could hardly be a doubt, that the
accession of the general of the army, which had just
returned victorious from Spain and still stood compact anil
unbroken in Italy, to the parly of opposition must have as
its consequence the fall of the existing order of things.
Government and opposition were equally powerless ; so
soon as the latter no longer fought merely with the weapons
of declamation, but had the sword of a victorious general
ready to back its demands, the government would be in
any case overcome, perhaps even without a struggle.

Pompeius and the democrats thus found themselves
urged into coalition. Personal dislikings were probably
not wanting on cither .side : it was not possible that the
victorious general could love the street orators, nor could

the (Icmo-
crmcy.

378 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

these hail with pleasure as their chief the executioner of
Carbo and Brutus ; but political necessity outweighed at
least for the moment all moral scruples.

The democrats and Pompeius, however, were not the
sole parties to the league. Marcus Crassus was in a similar
situation with Pompeius. Although a Sullan like the latter,
his poHtics were quite as in the case of Pompeius pre-
eminently of a personal kind, and by no means those of
the ruling oligarchy ; and he too was now in Italy at the
head of a large and victorious army, with which he had
just suppressed the rising of the slaves. He had to choose
whether he would ally himself with the oligarchy against the
coalition, or enter that coalition : he chose the latter, which
was doubtless the safer course. With his colossal wealth
and his influence on the clubs of the capital he was in any
case a valuable ally ; but under the prevailing circumstances
it was an incalculable gain, when the only army, with which
the senate could have met the troops of Pompeius, joined
the attacking force. The democrats moreover, who were
probably somewhat uneasy at their alliance with that too
powerful general, were not displeased to see a counterpoise
and perhaps a future rival associated with him in the person
of Marcus Crassus.
71. Thus in the summer of 683 the first coalition took place
between the democracy on the one hand, and the two
Sullan generals Gnaeus Pompeius and Marcus Crassus on
the other. The generals adopted the party-programme of
the democracy ; and they were promised immediately in
return the consulship for the coming year, while Pompeius
was to have also a triumph and the desired allotments of
land for his soldiers, and Crassus as the conqueror of
Spartacus at least the honour of a solemn entrance into
the capital.

To the two Italian armies, the great capitalists, and the
democracy, which thus came forward in league for the

CHAP. Ill THK FALL OF TUK OLIGAkCHV 379

overthrow of tlie SuUan constitution, the senate had nothing
to oppose save perhaps the second Spanish army under
Quintus Metellus Pius. But Sulla had truly predicted that
what he did would not be done a second time ; Nfetellus,
by no means inclined to involve himself in a civil war, had
discharged his soldiers immediately after crossing the Alps.
So nothing was left for the oligarchy but to submit to what
was inevitable. The senate granted the dispensations
requisite for the consulship and triumph ; Pompeius and
Crassus were, without opposition, elected consuls for 684, 70.
while their armies, on pretext of awaiting their triumph,
encamped before the city. Pompeius thereupon, even
before entering on office, gave his public and formal
adherence to the democratic programme in an assembly of
the people held by the tribune Marcus Lollius Palicanus.
The change of the constitution was thus in principle
decided.

They now went to work in all earnest to set aside the Reaui>-
SuUan institutions. First of all the tribunician magistracy ^f ,'^/
regained its earlier authority. Pompeius himself as consul triburuciaa
introduced the law which gave back to the tribunes of the P°*'^'^"
people their time-honoured prerogatives, and in particular
the initiative of legislation — a singular gift indeed from the
hand of a man who had done more than any one living to
wrest from the community its ancient i)rivik-ges.

With respect to the position of jurymen, the regulation New
of Sulla, that the roll of the senators was to serve as the J^J^',o
list of jurymen, was no doubt abolished ; but this by no jurymen,
means led to a simple restoration of the Gracchan equestrian
courts. In future — so it was enacted by the new Aurclian
law — the colleges of jurymen were to consist one-third of
senators and two-lhirds of men of equestrian census, and
of tiie latter the half must have filled the office of district-
presidents, or so called tribuni aerani. This last innovation
was a farther concession made to the democrats inasmuch

38o

THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY

BOOK V

Restora-
tion of the
Asiatic
revenue-
farming.

Renewal

of the
censorship.

72.

7L

70.

as according to it at least a third part of the criminal jury-
men were indirectly derived from the elections of the tribes.
The reason, again, why the senate was not totally excluded
from the courts is probably to be sought partly in the
relations of Crassus to the senate, partly in the accession
of the senatorial middle party to the coalition ; with which
is doubtless connected the circumstance that this law was
brought in by the praetor Lucius Cotta, the brother of their
lately deceased leader.

Not less important was the abolition of the arrangements
as to taxation established for Asia by Sulla (p. 1 1 1), which
presumably likewise fell to this year. The governor of
Asia at that time, Lucius Lucullus, was directed to re-
establish the system of farming the revenue introduced by
Gaius Gracchus ; and thus this important source of money
and power was restored to the great capitalists.

Lastly, the censorship was revived. The elections for
it, which the new consuls fixed shortly after entering on
their office, fell, in evident mockery of the senate, on the
two consuls of 682, Gnaeus Lentulus Clodianus and
Lucius Gellius, who had been removed by the senate from
their commands on account of their wretched management
of the war against Spartacus (p. 359). It may readily be
conceived that these men put in motion all the means
which their important and grave office placed at their
command, for the purpose of doing homage to the new
holders of power and of annoying the senate. At least an
eighth part of the senate, sixty-four senators, a number
hitherto unparalleled, were deleted from the roll, including
Gaius Antonius, formerly impeached without success by
Gaius Caesar (p. 373), and Publius Lentulus Sura, the consul
of 683, and presumably also not a few of the most obnoxious
creatures of Sulla.

Thus in 684 they had reverted in the main to the
arrangements that subsisted before the Sullan restoration.

contliiu-
lion.

ciiAP. Ill THE FALL OF TIIF OLIGARCHY 381

Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state- The n«w
chest, in other words by the provinces (p. 288) ; again the
tribunician authority gave to every demagogue a legal
license to overturn the arrangements of the state ; again
the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue and
possessed of the judicial control over the governors, raised
their heads alongside of the government as powerfully as
ever; again the senate trembled before the verdict of jury-
men of the equestrian order and before the censorial
censure. The system of Sulla, which had based the
monopoly of power by the nobility on the political annihila-
tion of the mercantile aristocracy and of demagogism, was
thus completely overthrown. Leaving out of view some
subordinate enactments, the abolition of which was not
overtaken till afterwards, such as the restoration of the right
of self-completion to the priestly colleges (p. i 15), nothing
of the general ordinances of Sulla survived except, on the
one hand, the concessions which he himself found it
necessary to make to the opposition, such as the recognition
of the Roman franchise of all the Italians, and, on the
other hand enactments without any marked partisan
tendency, and with which therefore even judicious
democrats found no fault — such as, among others, the
restriction of the freedmen, the regulation of the functional
spheres of the magistrates, and the material alterations in
criminal law.

The coalition was more agreed regarding these questions
of i)rinciple than with respect to the personal questions
which such a political revolution raised. As might l)C
expected, the democrats were not content with the general
recognition of their programme ; but they too now
demanded a restoration in their sense — revival of the
commemoration of their dead, punishment of the murderers,
recall of the proscribed from exile, removal of the jwlilical
disqualification that lay on their children, restoration of

382 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

the estates confiscated by Sulla, indemnification at the
expense of the heirs and assistants of the dictator. These
were certainly the logical consequences which ensued from
a pure victory of the democracy ; but the victory of the
71. coalition of 683 was very far from being such. The
democracy gave to it their name and their programme, but
it was the officers who had joined the movement, and
above all Pompeius, that gave to it power and completion ;
and these could never yield their consent to a reaction
which would not only have shaken the existing state of
things to its foundations, but would have ultimately turned
against themselves — men still had a lively recollection who
the men were whose blood Pompeius had shed, and how
Crassus had laid the foundation of his enormous fortune.
It was natural therefore, but at the same time significant of
71. the weakness of the democracy, that the coalition of 683
took not the slightest step towards procuring for the
democrats revenge or even rehabilitation. The supple-
mentary collection of all the purchase money still outstand-
ing for confiscated estates bought by auction, or even
remitted to the purchasers by Sulla — for which the censor
Lentulus provided in a special law — can hardly be regarded
as an exception ; for though not a few Sullans were thereby
severely affected in their personal interests, yet the measure
itself was essentially a confirmation of the confiscations
undertaken by Sulla.
Impending The work of Sulla was thus destroyed ; but what the
dicta^OT- future order of things was to be, was a question raised
ship of rather than decided by that destruction. The coalition,
ompeius. j^^p^ together solely by the common object of setting aside
the work of restoration, dissolved of itself, if not formally,
at any rate in reality, when that object was attained ; while
the question, to what quarter the preponderance of power
was in the first instance to fall, seemed approaching an
equally speedy and violent solution. The armies of

CHAP. Ill THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCIIV 383

Pompeius and Crassus still lay before the gates of the city.
The former had indeed promised to disband his soldiers
after his triumph (last day of Dec, 683) ; but he had at 7L
first omitted to do so, in order to let the revolution in the
state be completed without hindrance under the pressure
which the Spanish army in front of the capital exercised
over the city and the senate — a course, which in like
manner applied to the army of Crassus. This reason now
existed no longer ; but still the dissolution of the armies
was postponed. In the turn taken by matters it looked as
if one of the two generals allied with the democracy would
seize the military dictatorship and place oligarchs and
democrats in the same chains. And this one could only
be Pompeius. From the first Crassus had played a sul>
ordinate part in the coalition ; he had been obliged to
propose himself, and owed even his election to the consul-
ship mainly to the proud intercession of Pompeius. Far
the stronger, Pom!)eius was evidently master of the situation ;
if he availed himself of it, it seemed as if he could not but
become what the instinct of the multitude even now
designated him — the absolute ruler of the mightiest state
in the civilized world. Already the whole mass of the
servile crowded around the future monarch. Already his
weaker opponents were seeking their last resource in a
new coalition ; Crassus, full of old and recent jealousy
towards the younger rival who so thoroughly outstripped
him, made approaches to the senate and attempted by
unprecedented largesses to attach to himself the multitude
of the capital — as if the oligarchy which Crassus himself
had helped to break down, and the ever ungrateful multi-
tude, would have been able to afford any protection what-
ever against the veterans of the Spanish army. For a
moment it seemed as if the armies of PomjK-ius and
Crassus would come to blows before the gates of the
capital.

3S4 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

Retirement But the democrats averted this catastrophe by their
Pompeius sagacity and their pliancy. For their party too, as well
as for the senate and Crassus, it was all -important that
Pompeius should not seize the dictatorship ; but with a
truer discernment of their own weakness and of the char-
acter of their powerful opponent their leaders tried the
method of conciliation. Pompeius lacked no condition
for grasping at the crown except the first of all — proper
kingly courage. We have already described the man —
with his effort to be at once loyal republican and master
of Rome, with his vacillation and indecision, with his
pliancy that concealed itself under the boasting of inde-
pendent resolution. This was the first great trial to which
destiny subjected him ; and he failed to stand it. The
pretext under which Pompeius refused to dismiss the army
was, that he distrusted Crassus and therefore could not
take the initiative in disbanding the soldiers. The
democrats induced Crassus to make gracious advances in
the matter, and to offer the hand of peace to his colleague
before the eyes of all ; in public and in private they be-
sought the latter that to the double merit of having van-
quished the enemy and reconciled the parties he would
add the third and yet greater service of preserving internal
peace to his country, and banishing the fearful spectre of
civil war with which they were threatened. Whatever
could tell on a vain, unskilful, vacillating man — all the
flattering arts of diplomacy, all the theatrical apparatus of
patriotic enthusiasm — was put in motion to obtain the
desired result; and — which was the main point — things
had by the well-timed compliance of Crassus assumed such
a shape, that Pompeius had no alternative but either to
come forward openly as tyrant of Rome or to retire. So
he at length yielded and consented to disband the troops.
The command in the Mithradatic war, which he doubtless
hoped to obtain when he had allowed himself to be chosen

CHAP. Ill THE FALL OF TIIF OLIGARrnV 385

consul for 684, he could not now desire, since Lucullus 70.
seemed to have practically ended that war with the
campaign of 683, He deemed it beneath his dignity to 71.
accept the consular province assigned to him by the senate
in accordance with the Sempronian law, and Crassus in
this followed his example. Accordingly when Pompeius
after discharging his soldiers resigned his consulship on
the last day of 684, he retired for the time wholly from 70,
public affairs, and declared that he wished thenceforth to
live a life of quiet leisure as a simple citizen. He had
taken up such a position that he was obliged to grasp at
the crown ; and, seeing that he was not willing to do so,
no part was left to him but the empty one of a candidate
for a throne resigning his pretensions to it.

The retirement of the man, to whom as things stood .senate.
the first place belonged, from the political stage reproduced Kq»"««'

, r • ■ . and

m the tirst mstance nearly the same position of parties, Populares.
which we found in the Gracchan and Marian epochs.
Sulla had merely strengthened the senatorial government,
not created it ; so, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla had
fallen, the government nevertheless remained primarily
with the senate, although, no doubt, the constitution with
which it governed — in the main the restored Gracchan
constitution — was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the
oligarchy. The democracy had effected the re-establish-
ment of the Gracchan constitution ; but without a new
Gracchus it was a body without a head, and that neither
Pompeius nor Crassus could be permanently such a head,
was in itself clear and had been made still clearer by the
recent events. So the democratic opposition, for want of
a leader who could have directly taken the helm, had to
content itself for the time being with hampering and
annoying the government at every step. Between the
oligarchy, however, and the democracy there rose into new
consideration the capitalist party, which in the recent crisis
VOL. IV 125

386

THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY

BOOK V

The events
in the
east, and
their re-
action on
Rome.

had made common cause with the latter, but which the
oligarchs now zealously endeavoured to draw over to their
side, so as to acquire in it a counterpoise to the democracy.
Thus courted on both sides the moneyed lords did not
neglect to turn their advantageous position to profit, and
to have the only one of their former privileges which they
had not yet regained — the fourteen benches reserved for

67. the equestrian order in the theatre — now (687) restored
to them by decree of the people. On the whole, without
abruptly breaking with the democracy, they again drew
closer to the government. The very relations of the senate
to Crassus and his clients point in this direction ; but a
better understanding between the senate and the moneyed
aristocracy seems to have been chiefly brought about by

68. the fact, that in 686 the senate withdrew from Lucius
LucuUus the ablest of the senatorial officers, at the instance
of the capitalists whom he had sorely annoyed, the ad-
ministration of the province of Asia so important for their
purposes (p. 349).

But while the factions of the capital were indulging in
their wonted mutual quarrels, which they were never able
to bring to any proper decision, events in the east followed
their fatal course, as we have already described ; and it
was these events that brought the dilatory course of the
politics of the capital to a crisis. The war both by land
and by sea had there taken a most unfavourable turn.
67. In the beginning of 687 the Pontic army of the Romans
was destroyed, and their Armenian army was utterly break-
ing up on its retreat ; all their conquests were lost, the sea
was exclusively in the power of the pirates, and the price
of grain in Italy was thereby so raised that they were
afraid of an actual famine. No doubt, as we saw, the
faults of the generals, especially the utter incapacity of the
admiral Marcus Antonius and the temerity of the otherwise
able Lucius Lucullus, were in part the occasion of these

CHAP. Ill THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY 387

calamities ; no doubt also the democracy had by its revolu-
tionary agitations materially contributed to the breaking
up of the Armenian army. But of course the government
was now held cumulatively responsible for all the mischief
which itself and others had occasioned, and the indignant
hungry multitude desired only an opportunity to settle
accounts with the senate.

It was a decisive crisis. The oligarchy, though degraded Reappear-
and disarmed, was not yet overthrown, for the management p"*^ .
of public affairs was still in the hands of the senate ; but it
would fall, if its opponents should appropriate to themselves
that management, and more especially the superintendence
of military affairs ; and now this was possible. If proposals
for another and better management of the war by land and
sea were now submitted to the comitia, the senate was
obviously — looking to the temper of the burgesses — not in
a position to prevent their passing ; and an interference of
the burgesses in these supreme questions of administration
was practically the deposition of the senate and the
transference of the conduct of the state to the leaders of
opposition. Once more the concatenation of events
brought the decision into the hands of Pompeius. For
more than two years the famous general had lived as a
private citizen in the capital. His voice was seldom heard
in the senate-house or in the Forum ; in the former he was
unwelcome and without decisive influence, in the latter he
was afraid of the stormy proceedings of the parties. But
when he did show himself, it was with the full retinue of
his clients high and low, and the ver>' solemnity of his
reserve imposed on the multitude. If he, who was still
surrounded with the full lustre of his extraordinary
successes, should now ofTer to go to the east, he would
beyond doubt be readily invested by the burgesses with all
the plenitude of military and political ix)wer which he
might himself asL For the oligarchy, which saw in the

388 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

political -military dictatorship their certain ruin, and in
71. Pompeius himself since the coalition of 683 their most
hated foe, this was an overwhelming blow ; but the
democratic party also could have little comfort in the
prospect. However desirable the putting an end to the
government of the senate could not but be in itself, it was,
if it took place in this way, far less a victory for their party
than a personal victory for their over-powerful ally. In
the latter there might easily arise a far more dangerous
opponent to the democratic party than the senate had
been. The danger fortunately avoided a few years before
by the disbanding of the Spanish army and the retirement
of Pompeius would recur in increased measure, if Pompeius
should now be placed at the head of the armies of the east.
Overthrow ^" ^^^^ occasion, howevei", Pompeius acted or at least
of the [67. allowed others to act in his behalf. In 687 two projects
rule, and of 1^^^ were introduced, one of which, besides decreeing
new power j-f^g discharge — long since demanded by the democracy —
peius. of the soldiers of the Asiatic army who had served their

term, decreed the recall of its commander-in-chief Lucius
Lucullus and the supplying of his place by one of the
consuls of the current year, Gaius Piso or Manius Glabrio ;
while the second revived and extended the plan proposed
seven years before by the senate itself for clearing the seas
from the pirates. A single general to be named by the
senate from the consulars was to be appointed, to hold by
sea exclusive command over the whole Mediterranean from
the Pillars of Hercules to the coasts of Pontus and Syria,
and to exercise by land, concurrently with the respective
Roman governors, supreme command over the whole
coasts for fifty miles inland. The office was secured to
him for three years. He was surrounded by a staff, such
as Rome had never seen, of five-and-twenty lieutenants of
senatorial rank, all invested with praetorian insignia and
praetorian powers, and of two under -treasurers with

I

CHAI-. Ill THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY 389

quaestorian |)rerogatives, all of them selected by the ex-
clusive will of the general conimanding-in-chief. He was
allowctl to raise as many as 120,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry,
500 ships of war, and for this purpose to dispose absolutely
of the means of the provinces and client-states ; moreover,
the existing vessels of war and a considerable number of
troops were at once handed over to him. The treasures of
the state in the capital and in the provinces as well as those
of the dependent communities were to be placed absolutely
at his command, and in spite of the severe financial distress
a sum of ;^i, 400,000 (144,000,000 sesterces) was at once
to be paid to him from the state-chest.

It is clear that by these projects of law, especially by Effect of
that which related to the expedition against the pirates, the of'u'vir''**^
government of the senate was set aside. Doubtless the
ordinary supreme magistrates nominated by the burgesses
were of themselves the proper generals of the common-
wealth, and the extraordinary magistrates needed, at least
according to strict law, confirmation by the burgesses in
order to act as generals ; but in the appointment to par-
ticular commands no influence constitutionally belonged to
the community, and it was only on the proposition of the
senate, or at any rate on that of a magistrate entitled in
himself to hold the office of general, that the comiiia had
hitherto now and again interfered in this matter and
conferred such special functions. In this field, ever since
there had existetl a Roman free state, the practically
decisive voice pertained to the senate, and this its prerogative
had in the course of time obtained full recognition. No
doubt the democracy had already assailed it ; but even in
the most doubtful of the cases which had hitherto occurred
— the transference of the African command to Gaius Marius
in 647 (iii. 404) — it was only a magistrate constitution- 107.
ally entitled to hold the office of general that was entrusted
by the resolution of the burgesses with a definite expedition.

390 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

But now the burgesses were to invest any private man at
their pleasure not merely with the extraordinary authority
of the supreme magistracy, but also with a sphere of office
definitely settled by them. That the senate had to choose
this man from the ranks of the consulars, was a mitigation
only in form ; for the selection was left to it simply because
there was really no choice, and in presence of the
vehemently excited multitude the senate could entrust the
chief command of the seas and coasts to no other save
Pompeius alone. But more dangerous still than this
negation in principle of the senatorial control was its
practical abolition by the institution of an office of almost
unlimited military and financial powers. While the office
of general was formerly restricted to a term of one year, to
a definite province, and to military and financial resources
strictly measured out, the new extraordinary office had
from the outset a duration of three years secured to it —
which of course did not exclude a farther prolongation ;
had the greater portion of all the provinces, and even Italy
itself which was formerly free from military jurisdiction,
subordinated to it ; had the soldiers, ships, treasures of
the state placed almost without restriction at its disposal.
Even the primitive fundamental principle in the state-law
of the Roman republic, which we have just mentioned —
that the highest military and civil authority could not be
conferred without the co-operation of the burgesses —
was infringed in favour of the new commander-in-chief
Inasmuch as the law conferred beforehand on the twenty-
five adjutants whom he was to nominate praetorian rank
and praetorian prerogatives,^ the highest office of republican

^ The extraordinary magisterial power {pro consule, pro praetore, pro
quaestore) might according to Roman state-law originate in three ways.
Either it arose out of the principle which held good for the non-urban
magistracy, that the office continued up to the appointed legal term, but
the official authority up to the arrival of the successor, which was the
oldest, simplest, and most frequent case. Or it arose in the way of the

(jj.L..n.an

CHAP. Ill THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY 391

Rome became subordinate to a newly created office, for
which it was left to the future to find the fitting name, but
which in reality even now involved in it tlie monarchy. It
was a total revolution in the existing order of things, for
which the foundation was laid in this project of law.

These measures of a man who had just given so
striking proofs of his vacillation and weakness surprise us
by their decisive energy. Nevertheless the fact that Uwi.
Pompeius acted on this occasion more resolutely than
during his consulate is very capable of explanation. The
point at issue was not that he should come forward at
once as monarch, but only that he should prepare the way
for the monarchy by a military exceptional measure, which,
revolutionary as it was in its nature, could still be accom-
plished under the forms of the existing constitution, and
which in the first instance carried Pompeius so far on the

appropriate organs — especially the comitia, and in later tiroes also perhaps
the senate — nominating a chief magistrate not contemplated in the con-
stitution, who was otherwise on a pjarity with the ordinary m.igistrate. but
in token of the extraordinary nature of his office designated himself merely
" instead of a praetor" or " of a consul." To this class belong also the
magistrates nominated in the ordinary way as quaestors, and then extra-
ordinarily furnished with praetorian or even i '.ty
(quaestorti pro fradore or fro consult) ; in wh. .le,
Publius Lentulus Marcellinus went in 679 to Cyrcne (Saliust, Hut. 11. 39 75.
Dietsch), Gnaeus Piso in 689 to Hither Spain (Sallust, Cat. 19), and Cato 65.
in 696 to Cyprus (Veil. ii. 45). Or, lastly, the extraordinary magisterial 68.
authority was Ixised on the right of delegation vested in t' nie
magistrate. If he left the bounds of hi.s province or oil .va*
hindered from .ndmin; ■ s office, he w of
those alx)ut him as h ::e, who was i. :jrt
(Sallust, fug. 36, 37, 38), or, if the choice fell on the quaestor, quofttor
pro f-rae tore (Sallust, lug. 103). In like manner he wa' -<^' ''~l, if he
had no quaestor, to cause the quaestorial duties to be cI ; by one
of his train, who was then c.illcd la^atus pro qu.: ' . to
be met with, pxrhaps for tho tir'-t time, "n the " m»
of Sura, lieutenant of tin- ' ■■ *i- >>'.'' '
contrary to the nature of 1; ..'■'''■ •'"'
state-law inadmissible, that the supreme inngistrate ^liuuld. without
having met with any hmdrance in the discharge of his functions,
immediately upon his cntcrmg on office invest one or more of his 5u)x>r-
dinates with supreme offici.il .luihunty ; ' ' ' *rattifrt
of the proconsul Pompeius were an 1:. mlar in
kind to those who played so great a part in the tiiuca u( Uic Linptre.

392 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

way towards the old object of his wishes, the command
against Mithradates and Tigranes. Important reasons of
expediency also might be urged for the emancipation of the
military power from the senate. Pompeius could not have
forgotten that a plan designed on exactly similar principles
for the suppression of piracy had a few years before failed
through the mismanagement of the senate, and that the
issue of the Spanish war had been placed in extreme
jeopardy by the neglect of the armies on the part of the
senate and its injudicious conduct of the finances ; he
could not fail to see what were the feelings with which the
great majority of the aristocracy regarded him as a renegade
SuUan, and what fate was in store for him, if he allowed
himself to be sent as general of the government with the
usual powers to the east. It was natural therefore that he
should indicate a position independent of the senate as
the first condition of his undertaking the command, and
that the burgesses should readily agree to it. It is more-
over in a high degree probable that Pompeius was on this
occasion urged to more rapid action by those around
him, who were, it may be presumed, not a little indignant
at his retirement two years before. The projects of law
regarding the recall of Lucullus and the expedition against
the pirates were introduced by the tribune of the people
Aulus Gabinius, a man ruined in finances and morals, but
a dexterous negotiator, a bold orator, and a brave soldier.
Little as the assurances of Pompeius, that he had no wish
at all for the chief command in the war with the pirates
and only longed for domestic repose, were meant in earnest,
there was probably this much of truth in them, that the
bold and active client, who was in confidential intercourse
with Pompeius and his more immediate circle and who
completely saw through the situation and the men, took
the decision to a considerable extent out of the hands of
his shortsighted and resourceless patron.

CHAP. Ill THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY

393

The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in The p«rtie*
secret, could not well come publicly forward against the J" [J^^"**"
project of law. It would, to all api)earance, have been in tiabinun
no case able to hinder the carrying of the law ; but it **
would by opposition have openly broken with Pomi>eius
and thereby compelled him either to make approaches to
the oligarcliy or regardlessly to pursue his personal jxjlicy
in the face of both parties. No course was left to the
democrats but still even now to adhere to their alliance
with Pompeius, hollow as it was, and to embrace the present
opportunity of at least definitely overthrowing the senate
and passing over from opposition into government, leaving
the ulterior issue to the future and to the well-known
weakness of Pompeius' character. Accordingly their leaders
— the praetor Lucius Quinctius, the same who seven years
before had exerted himself for the restoration of the
tribunician power (p. 371), and the former quaestor Gaius
Caesar — supported the Gabinian proposals.

The privileged classes were furious — not merely the
nobility, but also the mercantile aristocracy, which felt its
exclusive rights endangered by so thorough a state revolu-
tion and once more recognized its true patron in the senate.
When the tribune (iabinius after the introduction of his
proposals appeared in the senate-house, the fathers of the
city were almost on the point of strangling him with their
own hands, without considering in their zeal how extremely
disadvantageous for them this method of arguing must have
ultimately proved. The tribune escai)ed to the Forum
and summoned the multitude to storm the senate-house,
when just at the right time the sitting terminated. The
consul Piso, the champion of the oligarchy, who accidentally
fell into the hands of the multitude, would have certainly
become a victim to popular fury, had not Gabinius come
up and, in order that his certain success might not be
cndanj^ered by unseasonable acts of violence, liberated the

394 The fall of the oligarchy booic v

consul. Meanwhile the exasperation of the multitude
remained undiminished and constantly found fresh nourish-
ment in the high prices of grain and the numerous rumours
more or less absurd which were in circulation — such as
that Lucius Lucullus had invested the money entrusted to
him for carrying on the war at interest in Rome, or had
attempted with its aid to make the praetor Quinctius with-
draw from the. cause of the people ; that the senate intended
to prepare for the "second Romulus," as they called
Pompeius, the fate of the first,^ and other reports of a like
character.
The vote. Thereupon the day of voting arrived. The multitude

stood densely packed in the Forum ; all the buildings,
whence the rostra could be seen, were covered up to the
roofs with men. All the colleagues of Gabinius had
promised their veto to the senate ; but in presence of the
surging masses all were silent except the single Lucius
Trebellius, who had sworn to himself and the senate rather
to die than yield. When the latter exercised his veto,
Gabinius immediately interrupted the voting on his projects
of law and proposed to the assembled people to deal with
his refractory colleague, as Octavius had formerly been
dealt with on the proposition of Tiberius Gracchus (iii. 323),
namely, to depose him immediately from office. The vote
was taken and the reading out of the voting tablets began ;
when the first seventeen tribes, which came to be read out,
had declared for the proposal and the next affirmative vote
would give to it the majority, Trebellius, forgetting his oath,
pusillanimously withdrew his veto. In vain the tribune
Otho then endeavoured to procure that at least the
collegiate principle might be preserved, and two generals
elected instead of one ; in vain the aged Quintus Catulus,
the most respected man in the senate, exerted his last

^ According to the legend king Romulus was torn in pieces by the
senators.

CHAP. Ill AND THE RULE OF POMPEIUS 395

energies to secure that the lieutenant-generals should not
be nominated by the commander-in-chief, but chosen by
the people. Otho could not even procure a hearing
amidst the noise of the multitude ; the well-calculated
complaisance of Gabinius procured a hearing for Catulus,
and in respectful silence the multitude listened to the old
man's words ; but they were none the less thrown away.
The proposals were not merely converted into law with
all the clauses unaltered, but the supplementary requests
in detail made by Pompeius were instantaneously and
completely agreed to.

With high-strung hopes men saw the two generals Succesio
Pompeius and Glabrio depart for their places of destination. °f ^°'^'
The price of grain had fallen immediately after the passing ihe easi.
of the Gabinian laws to the ordinary rates — an evidence of
the hopes attached to the grand expedition and its glorious
leader. These hopes were, as we shall have afterwards to
relate, not merely fulfilled, but surpassed : in three months
the clearing of the seas was completed. Since the Hanni-
balic war the Roman government had displayed no such
energy in external action ; as compared with the lax and
incapable administration of the oligarchy, the democratic-
military opposition had most brilliantly made good its title
to grasp and wield the reins of the state. The equally
unpatriotic and unskilful attempts of the consul Piso to
put paltry obstacles in the way of the arrangements of
Pompeius for the suppression of piracy in Narbonese Gaul
only increased the exasperation of the burgesses against the
oligarchy and their enthusiasm ft)r Pompeius ; it was
nothing but the personal intervention of the latter, that
prevented the assembly of the people from summarily
removing the consul from his office.

Meanwhile the confusion on the Abiaiic continent had
become still worse. Glabrio, who was to take up in the
stead of Lucullus the chief command against Mithradatcs

396 THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY book v

and Tigranes, had remained stationary in the west of Asia
Minor and, while instigating the soldiers by various
proclamations against LucuUus, had not entered on the
supreme command, so that Lucullus was forced to retain
it. Against Mithradates, of course, nothing was done ; the
Pontic cavalry plundered fearlessly and with impunity in
Bithynia and Cappadocia. Pompeius had been led by the
piratical war to proceed with his army to Asia Minor ;
nothing seemed more natural than to invest him with the
supreme command in the Pontic-Armenian war, to which
he himself had long aspired. But the democratic party
did not, as may be readily conceived, share the wishes of
its general, and carefully avoided taking the initiative in
the matter. It is very probable that it had induced
Gabinius not to entrust both the war with Mithradates and
that with the pirates from the outset to Pompeius, but to
entrust the former to Glabrio ; upon no account could it
now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional
position of the already too-powerful general. Pompeius
himself retained according to his custom a passive attitude ;
and perhaps he would in reality have returned home after
fulfilling the commission which he had received, but for
the occurrence of an incident unexpected by all parties.
The One Gains Manilius, an utterly worthless and insignifi-

cant man, had when tribune of the people by his unskilful
projects of legislation lost favour both with the aristocracy
and with the democracy. In the hope of sheltering himself
under the wing of the powerful general, if he should
procure for the latter what every one knew that he eagerly
desired but had not the boldness to ask, Manilius proposed
to the burgesses to recall the governors Glabrio from
Bithynia and Pontus and Marcius Rex from Cilicia, and to
entrust their offices as well as the conduct of the war in
the east, apparently without any fixed limit as to time and
at any rate with the freest authority to conclude peace and

Manilian
law,

CHAP. Ill AND THE RULE OF TOMPEIUS 397

alliance, to the proconsul of the seas and coasts in addition
to his previous office (beg. of 688). This occurrence very M.
clearly showed how disorganized was the machinery of the
Roman constitution, when the power of legislation was
placed as respected the initiative in the hands of any
demagogue however insignificant, and as respected the
final determination in the hands of the incapable multitude,
while it at the same time was extended to the most
important questions of administration. The Manilian
proposal was acceptable to none of the political parties ;
yet it scarcely anywhere encountered serious resistance.
The democratic leaders, for the same reasons which had
forced them to acquiesce in the (iabinian law, could not
venture earnestly to oppose the Manilian ; they kept their
displeasure and their fears to themselves and spoke in
public for the general of the democracy. The moderate
Optimates declared themselves for the Manilian proposal,
because after the Gabinian law resistance in any case was
vain, and far-seeing men already perceived that the true
policy for the senate was to make approaches as far as
possible to Pompeius and to draw him over to their side
on occasion of the breach which might be foreseen between
him and the democrats. Lastly the trimmers blessed the
day when they too seemed to have an opinion and could
come forward decidedly without losing favour with either
of the parties — it is significant that Marcus Cicero first
appeared as an orator on the political platform in defence
of the Manilian proposal. The strict Optimates alone,
with Quintus Catulus at their head, showed at least their
colours and spoke against the proposition. Of course it
was converted into law by a majority bordering on
unanimity. Pompeius thus obtained, in addition to his
earlier extensive powers, the administration of the most
important provinces of .Asia Minor — so that there scarcely
remained a spot of land within the wide Roman lx>unds

39S

THE FALL OF THE OLIGARCHY

BOOK V

The de-
mocratic-
military
revolutioa

that had not to obey him — and the conduct of a war as to
which, Hke the expedition of Alexander, men could tell
where and when it began, but not where and when it
might end. Never since Rome stood had such power
been united in the hands of a single man.

The Gabinio-Manilian proposals terminated the struggle
between the senate and the popular party, which the
Sempronian laws had begun sixty-seven years before. As
the Sempronian laws first constituted the revolutionary
party into a political opposition, the Gabinio-Manilian
first converted it from an opposition into the government ;
and as it had been a great moment when the first breach
in the existing constitution was made by disregarding the
veto of Octavius, it was a moment no less full of significance
when the last bulwark of the senatorial rule fell with the
withdrawal of Trebellius. This was felt on both sides
and even the indolent souls of the senators were con-
vulsively roused by this death-struggle ; but yet the war
as to the constitution terminated in a very different and
far more pitiful fashion than it had begun. A youth in
every sense noble had commenced the revolution ; it was
concluded by pert intriguers and demagogues of the
lowest type. On the other hand, while the Optimates had
begun the struggle with a measured resistance and with a
defence which earnestly held out even at the forlorn posts,
they ended with taking the initiative in club-law, with
grandiloquent weakness, and with pitiful perjury. What
had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained ; the
senate had ceased to govern. But when the few old men
who had seen the first storms of revolution and heard the
words of the Gracchi, compared that time with the present
they found that everything had in the interval changed —
countrymen and citizens, state-law and military discipline,
life and manners ; and well might those painfully smile,
who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period with their

CHAP. MI AND THE RULE OF POMPKIUS 399

realization. Such reflections however belonged to the past.
For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall of
the aristocracy was an accomplished fact The oligarchs
resembled an army utterly broken up, whose scattered
bands might serve to reinforce another body of troops, but
could no longer themselves keep the field or risk a combat
on their own account But as the old struggle came to an
end, a new one was simultaneously beginning — the struggle
between the two powers hitherto leagued for the overthrow
of the aristocratic constitution, the civil-democratic opposi-
tion and the military power daily aspiring to greater
ascendency. The exceptional position of Pompeius even
under the Gabinian, and much more under the Maniiian,
law was incompatible with a republican organization. He
had been, as even then his opponents urged with good
reason, appointed by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but
as regent of the empire; not unjustly was he designated by
a Greek familiar with eastern aftairs "king of kings." If
he should hereafter, on returning from the east once more
victorious and with increased glory, with well-filled chests,
and with troops ready for battle and devoted to his cause,
stretch forth his hand to seize the crown — who would then
arrest his arm ? Was the consular Quintus Catulus,
forsooth, to summon forth the senators against the first
general of his time and his e.xperienced legions? or was
the designated aedile Gaius Caesar to call forth the civic
multitude, whose eyes he had just feasted on his three
hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators with their silver
equipments? Soon, exclaimed Catulus, it would be
necessary once more to flee to the rocks of the Capitol, in
order to save liberty. It was not the fault of the prophet,
that the storm came not, as he ex|)ected, from the east,
but that on the contrary fate, fulfilling his words more
literally than he himself antiripated, brought on the
destroying tempest a few years later frou) CiauL

400 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

CHAPTER IV

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

Pompeius We have already seen how wretched was the state of the
pi'racy?^^^ affairs of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the
67. commencement of 687 Pompeius, with an almost unlimited
plenitude of power, undertook the conduct of the war
against the pirates. He began by dividing the immense
field committed to him into thirteen districts and assigning
each of these districts to one of his lieutenants, for the
purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching the
coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them
into the meshes of a colleague. He himself went with the
best part of the ships of war that were available — among
which on this occasion also those of Rhodes were dis-
tinguished— early in the year to sea, and swept in the first
place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian waters, with a
view especially to re-establish the supply of grain from
these provinces to Italy. His lieutenants meanwhile
addressed themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and
Gallic coasts. It was on this occasion that the consul
Gains Piso attempted from Rome to prevent the levies
which Marcus Pomponius, the legate of Pompeius,
instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province of
Narbo — an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at
the same time to keep the just indignation of the multitude
against the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius tempor-

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 401

arily reappeared in Rome (p. 385). Wlien at the end of
forty days the navigation had been everywhere set free in
the western basin of the Mediterranean, Pompcius pro-
ceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern seas,
and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy, the
Lycian and Cilician waters. On the news of the approach
of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere dis-
appeared from the open sea ; and not only so, but even
the strong Lycian fortresses of Anlicragus and Cragus
surrendered without ofTering serious resistance. The well-
calculated moderation of Pompeius helped even more than
fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible marine
strongholds. His predecessors had ordered every captured
freebooter to be nailed to the cross ; without hesitation he
gave quarter to all, and treated in particular the common
rowers found in the captured piratical vessels with unusual
indulgence. The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured
on an attempt to maintain at least their own waters by
arms against the Romans ; after having placed their
children and wives and their rich treasures for security in
the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited the
Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the oflfing
of Coracesium. But here the ships of Pompeius, well
manned and well provided with all implements of war,
achieved a complete victory. ^Vithout farther hindrance
he landed and began to storm and break up the mountain-
castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer to
themselves freedom and life as the price of submission.
Soon the great multitude desisted from the continuance of
a hopeless war in their strongholds and mountains, and
consented to surrender. Forty-nine days after Pompcius
had appeared in the eastern seas, Cilicia was subduetl and
the war at an end.

The rapid suppression of piracy was a great relief, but
not a grand achievement ; with the resources of the Roman
voi^ IV 126

402 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

state, which had been called forth in lavish measure, the
corsairs could as little cope as the combined gangs of
thieves in a great city can cope with a well-organized
police. It was a naive proceeding to celebrate such a
razzia as a victory. | But when compared with the pro-
longed continuance and the vast and daily increasing
extent of the evil, it was natural that the surprisingly rapid
subjugation of the dreaded pirates should make a most
powerful impression on the public ; and the more so, that
this was the first trial of rule centralized in a single hand,
and the parties were eagerly waiting to see whether that
hand would understand the art of ruling better than the
collegiate body had done. Nearly 400 ships and boats,
including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either
taken by Pompeius or surrendered to him ; in all about
1300 piratical vessels are said to have been destroyed;
besides which the richly-filled arsenals and magazines of
the buccaneers were burnt. Of the pirates about 10,000
perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive into the hands of
the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral of the
Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other
individuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long
believed at home to be dead, obtained once more their
67. freedom through Pompeius. In the summer of 687, three
months after the beginning of the campaign, commerce
resumed its wonted course and instead of the former
famine abundance prevailed in Italy.
Dissen- A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however,

sionsbe- disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the

tweenPom-

peius and Roman arms. There Quintus Metellus was stationed in
Meteiius as ^-^q second year of his command, and was employed in

to Crete. •' .

finishing the subjugation — already substantially effected —
of the island (p. 353), when Pompeius appeared in the eastern
waters. A collision was natural, for according to the
Qabinian law the command of Pompeius extended con-

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE KAST

403

currently with that of Mctellus over the whole island,
which stretched to a ^ireat length but was nowhere more
than ninety miles broad ; ^ but Pompeius was considerate
enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants. The
still resisting Cretan communities, however, who had seen
their subdued countrymen taken to task by Metellus with
the most cruel severity and had learned on the other hand
the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit of im-
posing on the townships which surrendered to him in the
south of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint
surrender to Pompeius. He accepted it in Pamphylia,
where he was just at the moment, from their envoys, and
sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius to
announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions
and to take over the towns. This proceeding was, no^
doubt, not like that of a colleague ; but formal right was
wholly on the side of Pompeius, and Metellus was most
evidently in the wrong when, utterly ignoring the conven-
tion of the cities with Pompeius, he continued to treat
them as hostile. In vain Octavius protested ; in vain, as
he had himself come without troops, he summoned from
Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pom{)eius
stationed there ; Metellus, not troubling himself about
either Octavius or Sisenna, besieged Eleuthema and took
I^appa by storm, where Octavius in person was taken
prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans
who were taken with him were consigned to the execu-
tioner. Accordingly formal conflicts took place between
the troops of Sisenna, at whose head Octavius placed
himself after that leader's death, and those of Metellus ;
even when the former had been commanded to return to
Achaia, Octavius continued the war in concert with the
Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna, where both made a

' [Literally " twenty Germ.'in miles" : but the breadth of the isUnd
does not seem in reality half so much. — Tr. j

404

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Pompeius

takes the

supreme

command

against

Mithra-

dates.

Stand, was only subdued by Metellus after the most
obstinate resistance.

In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus
begun formal civil war at his own hand against the general-
issimo of the democracy. It shows the indescribable
disorganization in the Roman state, that these incidents
led to nothing farther than a bitter correspondence between
the two generals, who a couple of years afterwards were
sitting once more peacefully and even " amicably " side by
side in the senate.

Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia ;
preparing for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign
against the Cretans or rather against Metellus, in reality
waiting for the signal which should call him to interfere in
the utterly confused affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor.
The portion of the Lucullan army that was still left after
the losses which it had suffered and the departure of the
Fimbrian legions remained inactive on the upper Halys in
the country of the Trocmi bordering on the Pontic territory.
Lucullus still held provisionally the chief command, as his
nominated successor Glabrio continued to linger in the
west of Asia Minor. The three legions commanded by
Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive in Cilicia. The
Pontic territory was again wholly in the power of king
Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities
that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria,
pay for their revolt with cruel severity. The kings of the
east did not proceed to any serious offensive movement
against the Romans, either because it formed no part of
their plan, or — as was asserted — because the landing of
Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates and Tigranes to
desist from advancing farther. The Manilian law realized
the secretly - cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly
than he probably himself anticipated ; Glabrio and Rex
were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THK KAST 405

and Cilicia with the troops stationed there, as well as the
management of tlie Pontic-Armenian war along with
authority to make war, peace, and alliance with the dynasts
of the east at his own discretion, were transferred to
Pompeius. Amidst the prospect of honours and spoils
so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising of an
ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty
laurels ; he abandoned the expedition against Crete and
the farther pursuit of the corsairs, and destined his fleet
also to support the attack which he projected on the kings
of Pontus and Armenix Yet amidst this land-war he by
no means wholly lost sight of piracy, which was perpetually
raising its head afresh. Before he left Asia (691) he M.
caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against
the corsairs ; on his proposal in the following year a
similar measyre was resolved on for Italy, and the sum
needed for the purpose was granted by the senate. They
continued to protect the coasts with guards of cavalry and
small squadrons, and though, as the exiieditions to be
mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696 and Egypt M.
in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet Si.
after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes
and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its
head and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as
it had done under the government of the mouldering
oligarchy.

The few months which still remained before the com- War pn-
mencement of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed ^^^tora^
by tiie new commander-in-chief with strenuous activity in pauj.
diplomatic and military preparations. Envoys were sent
to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre than to attempt a
serious mediation. There was a hope at the Pontic court Alliance
that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by ^[^^{j'lJ]!^,
the recent considerable successes which the allies had
achieved over Rome to enter into the Pontic-.'Xrmcnian

4o6

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Variance
between
Mithra-
dates and
Tigranes.

alliance. To counteract this, Roman envoys proceeded to
the court of Ctesiphon ; and the internal troubles, which
distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their
aid. A son of the great-king Tigranes, bearing the same
name, had rebelled against his father, either because he
was unwilling to wait for the death of the old man, or
because his father's suspicion, which had already cost
several of his brothers their lives, led him to discern his
only chance of safety in open insurrection. Vanquished
by his father, he had taken refuge with a number of
Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid, and in-
trigued against his father there. It was partly due to his
exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward which
was offered to him by both sides for his accession — the
secured possession of Mesopotamia — from the hand of the
Romans, renewed with Pompeius the agreement concluded
with LucuUus respecting the boundary of the Euphrates
(p. 343), and even consented to operate in concert with the
Romans against Armenia. But the younger Tigranes
occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out
of his promoting the alliance between the Romans and the
Parthians, for his insurrection produced a variance between
the kings Tigranes and Mithradates themselves. The
great-king cherished in secret the suspicion that Mithradates
might have had a hand in the insurrection of his grandson
— Cleopatra the mother of the younger Tigranes was the
daughter of Mithradates — and, though no open rupture
took place, the good understanding between the two
monarchs was disturbed at the very moment when it was
most urgently needed.

At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike
preparations with energy. The Asiatic aUied and client
communities were warned to furnish the stipulated con-

tmgents.

Public notices summoned the discharged veterans

of the legions of Fimbria to return to the standards as

CHAP. IV POMI'LIUS AM) THE EAST 407

volunteers, and by great promises and the name of PomiKrius
a considerable portion of them were induced in reality to
obey the call. The whole force united under the orders
of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries,
to between 40,000 and 50,000 men.*

In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, ««.
to take the chief conmiand of the troops of Lucullus and Jl^^^*"
to advance with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Loculhi*.
Cilician legions were directed to follow. At Danala, a
place belonging to the Trocmi, the two generals met ; but
the reconciliation, which mutual friends had hoped to effect,
was not accomplished. The preliminary courtesies soon
passed into bitter discussions, and these into violent alterca-
tion : they parted in worse mood than they had meL As
Lucullus continued to make honorary gifis and to distribute
lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared
all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to his
own arrival null and void. Formally he was in the right ;
customary tact in the treatment of a meritorious and more
than sufficiently mortified opponent was not to be looked
for from him.

So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops in»
crossed the frontier of Ponius. There they were opposed
by king Mithradates with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalr)*.
Left in the lurch by his allies and attacked by Rome with
reinforced power and energ)-, he made an attempt to procure
peace ; but he would hear nothing of ti>e unconditional
submission which Pompeius demanded — what worse could
the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him ? That
he might not expose his army, mostly archers and : en,

to the formidable shock of the Roman infantry vi me unc,

* Pompeius distributed ai: o prescnu

384,cx>o.oc>o scitt-rccs ( = 10 :*>>: a^ th*

officers recci%'ed 100,000.000 (i'iin. //'. A. xxxvn. a, ic
common soldiers 6000 sesterces (Plin., App.), ibc un. . .: .

at its triumph about 40,000 men.

4o8

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Retreat of

Mithra-

dates.

he slowly retired before the enemy, and compelled the
Romans to follow him in his various cross-marches ; making
a stand at the same time, wherever there was opportunity,
with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy, and
occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding
their supplies. At length Pompeius in his impatience
desisted from following the Pontic army, and, letting the
king alone, proceeded to subdue the land ; he marched to
the upper Euphrates, crossed it, and entered the eastern
provinces of the Pontic empire. But Mithradates followed
along the left bank of the Euphrates, and when he had
arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province, he intercepted
the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira, which
was strong and well provided with water, and from which
with his light troops he commanded the plain. Pompeius,
still wanting the Cilician legions -and not strong enough to
maintain himself in this position without them,) had to retire
over the Euphrates and to seek protection from the cavalry
and archers of the king in the wooded ground of Pontic
Armenia extensively intersected by rocky ravines and deep
valleys. It was not till the troops from Cilicia arrived and
rendered it possible to resume the offensive with a superior-
ity of force, that Pompeius again advanced,l invested the
camp of the king with a chain of posts of almost eighteen
miles in length, and kept him formally blockaded there,
while the Roman detachments scoured the country far and
wide. The distress in the Pontic camp was great ; the
draught animals even had to be killed ; at length after
remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick and
wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to
leave in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death by
his own troops, and departed during the night with the
utmost secrecy towards the cast. Cautiously Pompeius
followed through the unknown land : the march was now
approaching the boundary which separated the dominions

CHAi". IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 409

of Mithradates and Tigranes. When the Roman general
perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest
to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the
enemy away after him into the far distant regions of the
east, he determined not to permit this.

The two armies lay close to each other. During the i'-it> u
rest at noon the Roman army set out without the enemy " '""'""*•
observing the movement, made a circuit, and occupied the
heights, which lay in front and commanded a defile to be
passed by the enemy, on the southern bank of the river
Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Endercs,
at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built. The
following morning the Pontic troops broke up in their
usual manner, and, supposing that the enemy was as
hitlierto behind them, after accomplishing the day's march
they pitched their camp in the very valley whose encircling
heights the Romans had occupied. Suddenly in the
silence of the night there sounded all around them the
dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides
poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp-
followers, chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other ;
and amidst the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness,
not a missile failed to take effect. When the Romans had
expended their darts, they charged down from the heights
on the masses which had now become visible by the light
of the newly-risen moon, and which were abandoned to
them almost defenceless ; those that did not fall by the steel
of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful i)ressurc
under the hoofs and wheels. It was the last battle-field
on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans.
With three attendants — two of his horsemen, and a con-
cubine who was accustomed to follow him in male attire
and to fight bravely by his side — he made his cscaj)e
thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither a portion of his
trusty followers found their way to him. He divided

4IO

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Tigranes
breaks
with Mith-
radates.

among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents
of gold (;^i,40o,ooo) ; furnished them and himself with
poison ; and hastened with the band that was left to him
up the Euphrates to unite with his ally, the great-king of
Armenia.

This hope likewise was vain ; the alliance, on the faith
of which Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already
by that time existed no longer. During the conflicts
between Mithradates and Pompeius just narrated, the king
of the Parthians, yielding to the urgency of the Romans
and above all of the exiled Armenian prince, had invaded
the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had com-
pelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains.
The invading army began even the siege of the capital
Artaxata ; but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates
took his departure with the greater portion of his troops ;
whereupon Tigranes overpowered the Parthian corps left
behind and the Armenian emigrants led by his son, and
re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom.
Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances
little inclined to fight with the freshly -victorious Romans,
and least of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates ; whom
he trusted less than ever, since information had reached
him that his rebellious son intended to betake himself to
his grandfather. So he entered into negotiations with the
Romans for a separate peace ; but he did not wait for the
conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance which
linked him to Mithradates. The latter, when he had
arrived at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn
that the great-king Tigranes had set a price of 100 talents
(;^2 4,000) on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had
delivered them to the Romans. King Mithradates saw
his kingdom in the hands of the enemy, and his allies on
the point of coming to an agreement with them ; it was
not possible to continue the war; he might deem himself

CHAP. IV POMTEIUS AND THE EAST 411

fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along the
eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in ix.>rhap8
dislodging his son Machares — who had revolted and entered
into connection with the Romans (p. 334) — once more from
the Bosporan kingdom, and in finding on the Maeotis a
fresh soil for fresh projects. So he turned northward.
When the king in his flight had crossed the I'hasis, the Mithx».
ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time c^ojjei the
discontinued his pursuit ; but instead of returning to the P^asU.
region of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into
the region of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.

Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the Pompeius
region of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his ;vrtax*u.
camp thirteen miles from the city. There he was met by
the son of the great-king, who hoped after the fall of his
father to receive the Armenian diadem from the hand of
the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every way
to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father
and the Romans. The great-king was only the more Peace wiih
resolved to purchase peace at any price. On horseback
and without his purple robe, but adorned with the royal
diadem and the royal turban, he appeared at the gate of
the Roman camp and desired to be conducted to the
presence of the Roman general. After having given up at
the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman
camp required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself
in barbarian fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in
token of unconditional surrender placed the diadem and
tiara in his hands. Pompeius. highly delighted at a victory
which cost nothing, raised up the humbled king of kings,
invested him again with the insignia of his dignity, and
dictated the peace. Besides a payment ofX'.40o,ooo
(6000 talents) to the war chest and a present to the soldiers,
out of which each of them received 50 denani (£2 : as.),
the king ceded all the conquests which he had made, not

412

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

66.

merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian
possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right
bank of the Euphrates ; he was again restricted to Armenia
proper, and his position of great-king was, of course, at an
end. In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued
the two mighty kings of Pontus and Armenia. At the
beginning of 688 there was not a Roman soldier beyond
the frontier of the old Roman possessions ; at its close
king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without
an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes
sat on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but
as a vassal of Rome. The whole domain of Asia Minor
to the west of the Euphrates unconditionally obeyed the
Romans ; the victorious army took up its winter-quarters
to the east of that stream on Armenian soil, in the country
from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur, from which
the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.

But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot,
raised up for them new conflicts. The brave peoples of the
middle and eastern Caucasus saw with indignation the
remote Occidentals encamping on their territory. There
— in the fertile and well-watered tableland of the modern
Georgia — dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well -organized,
agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs
cultivated the soil according to the system of common
possession, without any separate ownership of the individual
cultivators. Army and people were one ; the people were
headed partly by the ruler-clans — out of which the eldest
always presided over the whole Iberian nation as king, and
the next eldest as judge and leader of the army — partly by
special families of priests, on whom chiefly devolved the
duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties concluded
with other peoples and of watching over their observance.
The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the
Albanians, king. Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans,

The

tribes of
the Cau-
casus.

Iberians.

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 4I'.

who were settled on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian
Sea, were in a far lower stage of culture. Chiefly a pastoral
people they tended, on foot or on horseback, their numerous
herds in the luxuriant meadows of the modern Shirvan ;
their few tilled fields were still cultivated with the old
wooden plough without iron share. Coined money was
unknown, and they did not count beytJiid a hundrcil.
Each of their tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief
and spoke its distinct dialect. Far superior in numlicr to
the Iberians, the Albanians could not at all cope with them
in bravery. The mode of fighting was on the whole the
same with both nations ; they fought chiefly with arrows
and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian
fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods
behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops
of trees on the foe ; the Albanians had also numerous
horsemen partly mailed after the Medo-Armenian manner
with heavy cuirasses and greaves. Both nations lived on
their lands and pastures in a complete independence
preserved from time immemorial. Nature itself, as it were,
seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and
Asia as a rampart against the tide of national movements ;
there the arms of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly
found their limit ; now the brave garrison of this partition-
wall set themselves to defend it also against the Romans,

Alarmed by the information that the Roman commander- .\ibutnM
in-chief intended next spring to cross the mountains and to JJ"JJ^
pursue the Pontic king beyond the Caucasus — for Mithra- pduv
dates, they heard, was passing the winter in Dioscurias
(Iskuria between Suchum Kale and Anaklia) on the Rlack
Sea — the Albanians under their prince Oroizes first crossed
the Kur in the middle «>f the winter of 6S8-6S9 and threw «*-«5
themselves on the army, which was divided for the sake of
its supplies into three larger corps under Quintus MctcUus
Celer, Lucius Flaccus, and Pompcius in person. But Celcr,

414 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

on whom the chief attack fell, made a brave stand, and
Pompeius, after having delivered himself from the division
sent to attack him, pursued the barbarians beaten at all
Iberians points as far as the Kur. Artoces the king of the Iberians
conquered. ]j.gpf qujet and promised peace and friendship ; but
Pompeius, informed that he was secretly arming so as to
fall upon the Romans on their march in the passes of the
65. Caucasus, advanced in the spring of 689, before resuming
the pursuit of Mithradates, to the two fortresses just two
miles distant from each other, Harmozica (Horum Ziche or
Armazi) and Seusamora (Tsumar) which a little above the
modern Tiflis command the two valleys of the river Kur
and its tributary the Aragua, and with these the only passes
leading from Armenia to Iberia. Artoces, surprised by the
enemy before he was aware of it, hastily burnt the bridge
over the Kur and retreated negotiating into the interior.
Pompeius occupied the fortresses and followed the Iberians
to the other bank of the Kur ; by which he hoped to induce
them to immediate submission. But Artoces retired farther
and farther into the interior, and, when at length he
halted on the river Pelorus, he did so not to surrender
but to fight. The Iberian archers however withstood not
for a moment the onset of the Roman legions, and, when
Artoces saw the Pelorus also crossed by the Romans, he
submitted at length to the conditions which the victor pro-
posed, and sent his children as hostages.
Pompeius Pompeius now, agreeably to the plan which he had

proceeds to formerly projected, marched through the Sarapana pass from
the region of the Kur to that of the Phasis and thence down
that river to the Black Sea, where on the Colchian coast
the fleet under Servilius already awaited him. But it was
for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost unsubstantial, that
the army and fleet were thus brought to the richly fabled
shores of Colchis. The laborious march just completed
through unknown and mostly hostile nations was nothing

I

CHAP. IV rOMPEIUS AND THE EAST 415

when compared with what still awaited them ; and if they
should really succeed in conducting the force from the mouth
of the Phasis to the Crimea, through warlike and poor
barbarian tribes, on inhospitable and unknown waters, along
a coast where at certain places the mountains sink per-
pendicularly into the sea and it would have been absolutely
necessary to embark in the ships — if such a march should
be successfully accomplished, which was perhaps more
difficult than the campaigns of Alexantler and Hannibal —
what was gained by it even at the best, corresponding at all
to its toils and dangers ? The war doubtless was not ended,
so long as the old king was still among the living ; but who
could guarantee that they would really succeed in catching
the royal game for the sake of which this unparalleled chase
was to be instituted ? Was it not better, even at the risk
of Mithradates once more throwing the torch of war into
Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised so
little gain and so many dangers? Doubtless numerous
voices in the army, and still more numerous voices in the
capital, urged the general to continue the pursuit incessantly
and at any price ; but they were the voices partly of
foolhardy Hotspurs, partly of those perfidious friends, who
would gladly at any price have kept the too-powerful Im-
perator aloof from the capital and entangled him amidst
interminable undertakings in the east. Pompeius was too
exj^erienced and too discreet an officer to stake his fame
and his army in obstinate adherence to so injudicious an
expedition ; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the
army furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit
of the king and arranging its return. The fleet received
instructions to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the
northern coast of Asia Minor against any hostile invasion,
and strictly to blockade the Cimmerian Bosporus untlcr the
threat of death to any trader who should break the blockade,
Pompeius conducted the land troops not without great

4i6

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Fresh con-
flicts with
the Alban-
ians.

hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory to
the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the
stream, into the Albanian plain.

For several days the Roman army had to march in the
glowing heat through this almost waterless flat country, with-
out encountering the enemy ; it was only on the left bank
of the Abas (probably the river elsewhere named Alazonius,
now Alasan) that the force of the Albanians under the
leadership of Coses, brother of the king Oroizes, was drawn
up against the Romans ; they are said to have amounted,
including the contingent which had arrived from the
inhabitants of the Transcaucasian steppes, to 60,000 infantry
and 12,000 cavalry. Yet they would hardly have risked
the battle, unless they had supposed that they had merely
to fight with the Roman cavalry ; but the cavalry had only
been placed in front, and, on its retiring, the masses of
Roman infantry showed themselves from their concealment
behind. After a short conflict the army of the barbarians
was driven into the woods, which Pompeius gave orders to
invest and set on fire. The Albanians thereupon consented
to make peace ; and, following the example of the more
powerful peoples, all the tribes settled between the Kur and
the Caspian concluded a treaty with the Roman general.
The Albanians, Iberians, and generally the peoples settled
to the south along, and at the foot of, the Caucasus, thus
entered at least for the moment into a relation of depend-
ence on Rome. When, on the other hand, the peoples
between the Phasis and the Maeotis — Colchians, Soani,
Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae —
were inscribed in the long list of the nations subdued by
Pompeius, the notion of subjugation was evidently employed
in a manner very far from exact. The Caucasus once more
verified its significance in the history of the world ; the
Roman conquest, like the Persian and the Hellenic, found
its limit there.

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 417

Accordingly king Mithradates was left to himself and to M.thra.
destiny. As formerly his ancestor, the founder of the Pontic '^*\'^ **"
state, had first entered his future kingdom as a fugitixc
from the executioners of Antigonus and attended only by
six horsemen, so had the grandson now been compelled
once more to cross the bounds of his kingdom and to turn
his back on his own and his fathers' conquests. Hut for no
one had the dice of fate turned up the highest gains and
the greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously
than fof the old sultan of Sinope ; and the fortunes of men
change rapidly and incalculably in the east Well might
Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new
vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn
paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only
thing constant was the perpetual change of fortune. Inas-
much as the Roman rule was intolerable for the Orientals
at the very core of their nature, and Mithradates himself
was in good and in evil a true prince of the east, amidst the
laxity of the rule exercised by the Roman senate over the
provinces, and amidst the dissensions of the political parties
in Rome fermenting and ripening into civil war, Mithradates
might, if he was fortunate enough to bide his time, doubt-
less re-establish his dominion yet a third time. For this
very reason — because he hoped and |)lanned while still
there was life in him — he remained dangerous to the
Romans so long as he lived, as an aged refugee no less than
when he had marched forth with his hundred thousands to
wrest Hellas and Macedonia from the Romans. The rest-
less old man made his way in the year 689 from Dioscurias as.
amidst unspeakable hardshii)s partly by land partly by sea
to the kingdom of Panticapaeum, where by his reputation
and his numerous retainers he drove his rene:;ade son
Machares from the throne and compelled him to put him
self to death. From this point he attempted once more to
negotiate with the Romans ; he besought that his paternal

voi^ IV 127

4i8 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

kingdom might be restored to him, and declared himself
ready to recognize the supremacy of Rome and to pay
tribute as a vassal. But Pompeius refused to grant the
king a position in which he would have begun the old
game afresh, and insisted on his personal submission.
His last Mithradates, however, had no thought of delivering

donT"^'^ himself into the hands of the enemy, but was projecting
against new and still more extravagant plans. Straining all the
resources with which the treasures that he had saved and
the remnant of his states supplied him, he equipped a new
army of 36,000 men consisting partly of slaves which he
armed and exercised after the Roman fashion, and a war-
fleet ; according to rumour he designed to march west-
ward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Pannonia, to carry
along with him the Scythians in the Sarmatian steppes
and the Celts on the Danube as allies, and with this
avalanche of peoples to throw himself on Italy. This
has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war of
the Pontic king has been compared with the military
march of Hannibal ; but the same project, which in a
gifted man is a stroke of genius, becomes folly in one
who is wrong-headed. This intended invasion of Italy
by the Orientals was simply ridiculous, and nothing but
a product of the impotent imagination of despair. Through
the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans were pre-
vented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist
and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it
were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been
soon enough met at the foot of the Alps.
Revolt In fact, while Pompeius, without troubling himself

Mkhra- further as to the threats of the impotent giant, was em-
dates, ployed in organizing the territory which he had gained,
the destinies of the aged king drew on to their fulfilment
without Roman aid in the remote north. His extravagant
preparations had produced the most violent excitement

CHAP. IV POMl'EIUS AND THE EAST 419

among the Bosporans, whose houses were torn down, and
whose oxen were taken from the plough and put to death,
in order to procure beams and sinews for constructing
engines of war. The soldiers too were disinclined to
enter on the hopeless Italian expedition. Mithradatcs
had constantly been surrounded by suspicion and treason ;
he had not the gift of calling forth affection and fidelity
among those around him. As in earlier years he had
compelled his distinguished general Archclaus to seek pro-
tection in the Roman camp ; as during the campaigns
of Lucullus his most trusted officers Diodes, Phoenix,
and even the most notable of the Roman emigrants had
passed over to the enemy; so now, when his star grew pale
and the old, infirm, embittered sultan was accessible to
no one else save his eunuchs, desertion followed still more
rapidly on desertion. Castor, the commandant of the
fortress Phanagoria (on the Asiatic coast opposite Kcrtch),
first raised the standard of revolt ; he proclaimed the free-
dom of the town and delivered the sons of Mithradates
that were in the fortress into the hands of the Romans.
While the insurrection spread among the Bosporan towns,
and Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), Theudosia
(Kafla), and others joined the Phanagorites, the king
allowed his suspicion and his cruelty to have free course.
On the information of despicable eunuchs his most con-
fidential adherents were nailed to the cross ; the king's
own sons were the least sure of their lives. The son
who was his father's favourite and was probably destined
by him as his successor, Pharnaces, took his resolution and
headed the insurgents. The servants whom Mithradates
sent to arrest him, and the troops despatched against him,
passed over to his siile ; the corps of Italian deserters,
perhaps the most efficient among the divisions of Mithra-
dates' army, and for that very reason the least inclined
to share in the romantic — and for the deserters peculiarly

420 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

hazardous — expedition against Italy, declared itself en masse
for the prince ; the other divisions of the army and the fleet
followed the example thus set.
Death of After the country and the army had abandoned the king,

dates^'^' the capital Panticapaeum at length opened its gates to the
insurgents and delivered over to them the old king enclosed
in his palace. From the high wall of his castle the latter
besought his son at least to grant him life and not imbrue
his hands in his father's blood ; but the request came ill
from the lips of a man whose own hands were stained with
the blood of his mother and with the recently-shed blood
of his innocent son Xiphares ; and in heartless severity and
inhumanity Pharnaces even outstripped his father. Seeing
therefore he had now to die, the sultan resolved at least to
die as he had lived ; his wives, his concubines and his
daughters, including the youthful brides of the kings of
Egypt and Cyprus, had all to suffer the bitterness of death
and drain the poisoned cup, before he too took it, and then,
when the draught did not take effect quickly enough, pre-
sented his neck for the fatal stroke to a Celtic mercenary
63. Betuitus. So died in 691 Mithradates Eupator, in the
sixty-eighth year of his life and the fifty-seventh of his reign,
twenty-six years after he had for the first time taken the
field against the Romans. The dead body, which king
Pharnaces sent as a voucher of his merits and of his loyalty
to Pompeius, was by order of the latter laid in the royal
sepulchre of Sinope.

The death of Mithradates was looked on by the Romans
as equivalent to a victory : the messengers who reported to
the general the catastrophe appeared crowned with laurel,
as if they had a victory to announce, in the Roman camp
before Jericho. In him a great enemy was borne to the
tomb, a greater than had ever yet withstood the Romans in
the indolent east. Instinctively the multitude felt this : as
formerly Scipio had triumphed even more over Hannibal

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 4^1

than over Carthage, so the conquest of the numerous tribes
of the east and of the great king himself was almost forgotten
in the death of Mithradates ; and at the solemn entry of
Pompeius nothing attracted more the eyes of the multitude
than the pictures, in which they saw king Mithradates as a
fugitive leading his horse by the rein and thereafter sinking
down in death between the dead bodies of his daughters.
Whatever judgment may be formed as to the idiosyncrasy
of the king, he is a figure of great significance — in the
full sense of the expression — for the history of the world.
He was not a personage of genius, probably not even of
rich endowments ; but he possessed the very respectable
gift of hating, and out of this hatred he sustained an
unequal conflict against superior foes throughout half a
century, without success doubtless, but with honour. He
became still more significant through the position in
which history had placed him than through his individual
character. As the forerunner of the national reaction of
the Orientals against the Occidentals, he opened the new
conflict of the east against the west ; and the feeling
remained with the vanquished as with the victors, that his
death was not so much the end as the beginning.

Meanwhile Pompeius, after his warfare in 689 with the Pom- («.
peoples of the Caucasus, had returned to the kingdom of ^*I^ J*^
Pontus, and there reduced the last castles still offering Sjma.
resistance ; these were razed in order to check the evils of
brigandage, and the castle wells were rendered unscr\-iceablc
by rolling blocks of rock into them. Thence he set out in
the summer of 690 for Syria, to regulate its affairs. 64.

It is difficult to present a clear view of the state of suieof
disorganization which then prevailed in the Syrian provinces. ^^"*"
It is true that in consequence of the attacks of Lucullus the
Armenian governor Magadates had evacuated these provinces
in 685 (p. 34 1), and that the Ptolemies, gladly as they would 6\t.
have renewed the attempts of their predecessors t" ;\!' h

422 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book V

the Syrian coast to their kingdom, were yet afraid to provoke
the Roman government by the occupation of Syria ; the
more so, as that government had not yet regulated their
more than doubtful legal title even in the case of Egypt,
and had been several times solicited by the Syrian princes
to recognize them as the legitimate heirs of the extinct
house of the Lagids. But, though the greater powers all at
the moment refrained from interference in the affairs of
Syria, the land suffered far more than it would have suffered
amidst a great war, through the endless and aimless feuds
of the princes, knights, and cities.
Arabian The actual masters in the Seleucid kingdom were at this

princes. time the Bedouins, the Jews, and the Nabataeans. The
inhospitable sandy steppe destitute of springs and trees,
which, stretching from the Arabian peninsula up to and
beyond the Euphrates, reaches towards the west as far as
the Syrian mountain-chain and its narrow belt of coast,
toward the east as far as the rich lowlands of the Tigris and
lower Euphrates — this Asiatic Sahara — was the primitive
home of the sons of Ishmael ; from the commencement of
tradition we find the "Bedawi," the "son of the desert,"
pitching his tents there and pasturing his camels, or
mounting his swift horse in pursuit now of the foe of his
tribe, now of the travelling merchant. Favoured formerly
by king Tigranes, who made use of them for his plans half
commercial half political (p. 317), and subsequently by the
total absence of any master in the Syrian land, these
children of the desert spread themselves over northern Syria.
Wellnigh the leading part in a political point of view was
enacted by those tribes, which had appropriated the first
rudiments of a settled existence from the vicinity of the
civiUzed Syrians. The most noted of these emirs were
Abgarus, chief of the Arab tribe of the Mardani, whom
Tigranes had settled about Edessa and Carrhae in upper
Mesopotamia (p. 317); then to the west of the Euphrates

CJIAP. IV POMTKIUS AND THK FAST 423

Sampsiceramus, emir of the Arabs of Hemesa (Horns)
between Damascus and Antioch, and master of the strong
fortress Arethusa ; Azizus the head of another horde roam-
ing in the same region ; Alchaudonius, the prince of tlie
Rhambaeans, who had already put himself into communica-
tion with Lucullus ; and several others.

Alongside of these Bedouin princes there had everywhere Robber-
appeared bold cavaliers, who equalled or excelled the ^ " *'
children of the desert in the noble trade of waylaying.
Such was Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus, perhaps the most
powerful among these Syrian robber-chiefs and one of the
richest men of this period, who ruled over the territory of
the Ityraeans — the modern Druses — in the valleys of the
Libanus as well as on the coast and over the plain of
Massyas to the northward with the cities of Heliopolis
(Baalbec) and Chalcis, and maintained 8000 horsemen at
his own expense ; such were Dionysius and Cinyras, the
masters of the maritime cities Tripolis (Tarablus) and
Byblus (between Tarablus and Beyrout) ; such was the Jew
Silas in Lysias, a fortress not far from Apamea on the
Orontes.

In the south of Syria, on the other hand, the race of the Jews.
Jews seemed as though it would about this time consolidate
itself into a political power. Through the devout and bold
defence of the primitive Jewish national worship, which was
imperilled by the levelling Hellenism of the Syrian kings,
the family of the Hasmonaeans or the Makkabi had not
only attained to their hereditary principality and gradually
to kingly honours (iii. 286) ; but these princely high-priests
had also spread their conquests to the north, east, and south.
When the brave Jannacus Alexander died (675), the Jewish 79.
kingdom stretched towards the south over the whole Philis-
tian territory as far as the frontier of Egypt, towards the
south-east as far as that of the Nabataean kingdom of Petra,
from which Jannaeus had wrested considerable tracts on

424

rOMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

the right bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, towards
the north over Samaria and DecapoHs up to the lake of
Gennesareth ; here he was already making arrangements to
occupy Ptolemais (Acco) and victoriously to repel the aggres-
sions of the Ityraeans. The coast obeyed the Jews from
Mount Carmel as far as Rhinocorura, including the import-
ant Gaza — Ascalon alone was still free ; so that the territory
of the Jews, once almost cut off from the sea, could now
be enumerated among the asylums of piracy. Now that
the Armenian invasion, just as it approached the borders
of Judaea, was averted from that land by the intervention
of Lucullus (p. 339), the gifted rulers of the Hasmonaean
house would probably have carried their arms still farther,
had not the development of the power of that remarkable
conquering priestly state been nipped in the bud by internal
divisions.

Pharisees. The spirit of religious independence, and the spirit of

national independence — the energetic union of which had
called the Maccabee state into life — speedily became once
more dissociated and even antagonistic. The Jewish
orthodoxy or Pharisaism, as it was called, was content with
the free exercise of religion, as it had been asserted in
defiance of the Syrian rulers ; its practical aim was a com-
munity of Jews, composed of the orthodox in the lands of
all rulers, essentially irrespective of the secular government
— a community which found its visible points of union in
the tribute for the temple at Jerusalem, which was obligatory
on every conscientious Jew, and in the schools of religion

Sadducees. and spiritual courts. Overagainst this orthodoxy, which
turned away from political life and became more and more
stiffened into theological formalism and painful ceremonial
service, were arrayed the defenders of the national inde-
pendence, invigorated amidst successful struggles against
foreign rule, and advancing towards the ideal of a restoration
of the Jewish state, the representatives of the old great

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 425

families — the so-called Sadducees — partly on dogmatic
grounds, in so far as they acknowledged only the sacred
books themselves and conceded authority merely, not
canonicity, to the " bequests of the scribes," that is, to
canonical tradition ; ^ partly and especially on political
grounds, in so far as, instead of a fatalistic waiting for the
strong arm of the Lord of Zebaoth, they taught that the
salvation of the nation was to be expected from the weapons
of this world, and from the inward and outward strengthening
of the kingdom of David as re-established in the glorious
times of the Maccabees. Those partisans of orthodoxy
found their support in the priesthood and the multitude ;
they contested with the Hasmonaeans the legitimacy of their
high-priesthood, and fought against the noxious heretics
with all the reckless implacability, with which the pious are
often found to contend for the possession of earthly goods.
The state-party on the other hand relied for support on
intelligence brought into contact with the influences of
Hellenism, on the army, in which numerous Pisidian and
Cilician mercenaries served, and on the abler kings, who
here strove with the ecclesiastical power much as a thousand
years later the Hohenstaufen strove with the Papacy.
Jannaeus had kept down the priesthood with a strong hand ;
under his two sons there arose (685 et seq.) a civil and 69.
fraternal war, since the Pharisees opposed the vigorous
.\ristobulus and attempted to obtain their objects under the
nominal rule of his brother, the good-natured and in-
dolent Hyrcanus. This dissension not merely put a stop
to the Jewish conquests, but gave also foreign nations

' Thus the Sadducees rejected the doctrine of angels and spiriu and
the resurrection of the dead. Most of the traditional points of difference
between Pharisees and Sadducees relate to subordin.ac questions of ritual,
jurisprudence, and the calendar. It is a characteristic fact, that the
victorious Pharisees have introduced those d.iys, on which they definitively
obtained the superiority in particular controversies or ejected heretical
members from the supreme coiuistory, into Ihe list of ihc metuoriat and
festival days of the nation.

426

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Nabatae-
ans.

Syrian

cities.

opportunity to interfere and thereby obtain a commanding
position in southern Syria.

This was the case first of all with the Nabataeans. This
remarkable nation has often been confounded with its
eastern neighbours, the wandering Arabs, but it is more
closely related to the Aramaean branch than to the proper
children of Ishmael. This Aramaean or, according to the
designation of the Occidentals, Syrian stock must have in
very early times sent forth from its most ancient settlements
about Babylon a colony, probably for the sake of trade, to
the northern end of the Arabian gulf; these were the
Nabataeans on the Sinaitic peninsula, between the gulf of
Suez and Aila, and in the region of Petra (Wadi Mousa).
In their ports the wares of the Mediterranean were
exchanged for those of India ; the great southern caravan-
route, which ran from Gaza to the mouth of the Euphrates
and the Persian gulf, passed through the capital of the
Nabataeans — Petra — whose still magnificent rock-palaces
and rock-tombs furnish clearer evidence of the Nabataean
civilization than does an almost extinct tradition. The
leaders of the Pharisees, to whom after the manner of
priests the victory of their faction seemed not too dearly
bought at the price of the independence and integrity of
their country, solicited Aretas the king of the Nabataeans
for aid against Aristobulus, in return for which they
promised to give back to him all the conquests wrested
from him by Jannaeus. Thereupon Aretas had advanced
with, it was said, 50,000 men into Judaea and, reinforced
by the adherents of the Pharisees, he kept king Aristobulus
besieged in his capital.

Amidst the system of violence and feud which thus
prevailed from one end of Syria to another, the larger cities
were of course the principal sufferers ; such as Antioch,
Seleucia, Damascus, whose citizens found themselves
paralysed in their husbandry as well as in their maritime

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 427

and caravan trade. The citizens of Byblus and Berytus
(Beyrout) were unable to protect their fields and their
ships from the Ityraeans, who issuing from their mountain
and maritime strongholds rendered land and sea equally
insecure. Those of Damascus sought to ward off the
attacks of the Ityraeans and Ptolemaeus by handing them-
selves over to the more remote kings of the Nabataeans or
of the Jews. In Antioch Sampsiceramus and Azizus
mingled in the internal feuds of the citizens, and the
Hellenic great city had wellnigh become even now the seat
of an Arab emir. The state of things reminds us of the king-
less times of the German middle ages, when Nuremberg and
Augsburg found their protection not in the king's law and
the king's courts, but in their own walls alone ; impatiently
the merchant-citizens of Syria awaited the strong arm, which
should restore to them peace and security of intercourse.

There was no want, however, of a legitimate king in The List
Syria ; there were even two or three of them. A prince Seieucids.
Antiochus from the house of the Seleucids had been
appointed by Lucullus as ruler of the most northerly
province in Syria, Commagene (p. 341). Antiochus
Asiaticus, wiiose claims on the Syrian throne had met with
recognition both from the senate and from Lucullus
(P- 335> 34 0' ^^^ been received in Antioch after the retreat
of the Armenians and there acknowledged as king. A
third Seleucid prince Philippus had immediately confronted
him there as a rival ; and the great population of Antioch,
excitable and delighting in opposition almost like that of
Alexandria, as well as one or two of the neighbouring Arab
emirs had interfered in the family strife which now seemed
inseparable from the rule of the Seleucids. Was there any
wonder that legitimacy became ridiculous and loathsome
to its subjects, and that the so-called rightful kings were of
even somewhat less importance in the land than the petty
princes and robber-chiefs ?

428 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

Annexa- To Create order amidst this chaos did not require either

Syri^ brilHance of conception or a mighty display of force, but it

required a clear insight into the interests of Rome and of
her subjects, and vigour and consistency in estabUshing
and maintaining the institutions recognized as necessary.
The poUcy of the senate in support of legitimacy had
sufficiently degraded itself; the general, whom the opposi-
tion had brought into power, was not to be guided by
dynastic considerations, but had only to see that the
Syrian kingdom should not be withdrawn from the client-
ship of Rome in future either by the quarrels of pretenders
or by the covetousness of neighbours. But to secure this
end there was only one course ; that the Roman community
should send a satrap to grasp with a vigorous hand the
reins of government, which had long since practically
slipped from the hands of the kings of the ruling house
more even through their own fault than through outward
misfortunes. This course Pompeius took. Antiochus the
Asiatic, on requesting to be acknowledged as the hereditary
ruler of Syria, received the answer that Pompeius would
not give back the sovereignty to a king who knew neither
how to maintain nor how to govern his kingdom, even at
the request of his subjects, much less against their distinctly
expressed wishes. With this letter of the Roman proconsul
the house of Seleucus was ejected from the throne which it
had occupied for two hundred and fifty years. Antiochus
soon after lost his life through the artifice of the emir
Sampsiceramus, as whose client he played the ruler in
Antioch ; thenceforth there is no further mention of these
mock-kings and their pretensions.
Military But, to establish the new Roman government and

pacifica- introduce any tolerable order into the confusion of affairs,
tion of •' '

Syria. it was further necessary to advance into Syria with a

military force and to terrify or subdue all the disturbers of
the peace, who had sprung up during the many years of

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 429

anarchy, by means of the Roman legions. Already during
the campaigns in the kingdom of I'ontus and on the
Caucasus Pompeius had turned his attention to the affairs
of Syria and directed detached commissioners and corps to
interfere, where there was need. Aulus Gabinius — the
same who as tribune of the people had sent Pompeius to
the east — had in 689 marched along the Tigris and then 65.
across Mesopotamia to Syria, to adjust the complicated
affairs of Judaea. In like manner the severely pressed
Damascus had already been occupied by Lollius and
Metellus. Soon afterwards another adjutant of Pompeius,
Marcus Scaurus, arrived in Judaea, to allay the feuds ever
breaking out afresh there. Lucius Afranius also, who
during the expedition of Pompeius to the Caucasus held
the command of the Roman troops in Armenia, had
proceeded from Corduene (the northern Kurdistan) to
upper Mesopotamia, and, after he had successfully accom-
plished the perilous march through the desert with the
sympathizing help of the Hellenes settled in Carrhae,
brought the Arabs in Osrhoene to submission. Towards
the end of 690 Pompeius in person arrived in Syria,^ and 64.
remained there till the summer of the following year,
resolutely interfering and regulating matters for the present
and the future. He sought to restore the kingdom to its
state in the better times of the Seleucid rule ; all usurped
powers were set aside, the robber-chiefs were summoned to
give up their castles, the Arab sheiks were again restricted

' Pompt-ius spent the winter of 689690 still in the neiRhbourhood of 05-64.
the Caspian Sea (Die. xxxvii. 7). In 690 he tirst reduced the last
strongholds still offering resistance in the kingdom of Pontus, and then
moved slowly, regulating matters everywhere, towards the south. ll>ai
the organir-ition of Syria began in 690 is confirmed by the fact that the 54.
Svri.in provincial era begins with this year, and by Cicero's statement
re>{>ccting Commagenc {A J Q. fr. ii. la, a ; comp. Dio, xxwii. 7).
During the winter of 690-691 Pompeius seems to have had his head- 64-63.
qu.-irters in Antioch (Joseph, xiv. 3. 1,3. where the confusion h.is been
rectified by .N'iesc in the Hermes, xi. p. 471).

430

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

The
robber-
chiefs
chastised.

Negotia-
tions and
conflicts
with the
Jews.

161.

to their desert domains, the affairs of the several commu-
nities were definitely regulated.

The legions stood ready to procure obedience to these
stern orders, and their interference proved especially
necessary against the audacious _ robber-chiefs. Silas the
ruler of Lysias, Dionysius the ruler of Tripolis, Cinyras the
ruler of Byblus were taken prisoners in their fortresses and
executed, the mountain and maritime strongholds of the
Ityraeans were broken up, Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus
in Chalcis was forced to purchase his freedom and his
lordship with a ransom of looo talents (;^24o,ooo). Else-
where the commands of the new master met for the most
part with unresisting obedience.

The Jews alone hesitated. The mediators formerly
sent by Pompeius, Gabinius and Scaurus, had — both, as
it was said, bribed with considerable sums — in the dispute
between the brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus decided
in favour of the latter, and had also induced king Aretas
to raise the siege of Jerusalem and to proceed homeward,
in doing which he sustained a defeat at the hands of
Aristobulus. But, when Pompeius arrived in Syria, he
cancelled the orders of his subordinates and directed the
Jews to resume their old constitution under high-priests,
as the senate had recognized it about 593 (ii. 285/), and to
renounce along with the hereditary principality itself all
the conquests made by the Hasmonaean princes. It was
the Pharisees, who had sent an embassy of two hundred
of their most respected men to the Roman general and
procured from him the overthrow of the kingdom ; not to
the advantage of their own nation, but doubtless to that
of the Romans, who from the nature of the case could not
but here revert to the old rights of the Seleucids, and
could not tolerate a conquering power like that of Jannaeus
within the limits of their empire. Aristobulus was un-
certain whether it was better patiently to acquiesce in his

CHAi". IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 431

inevitable doom or to meet his fate with arms in hand ;
at one time he seemed on the point of submitting to
Pompeius, at another he seemed as though he would
summon tiie national party among the Jews to a struggle
with the Romans. When at length, with the legions
already at the gates, he yielded to the enemy, the more
resolute or more fanatical portion of his army refused to
comply with the orders of a king who was not free. The
capital submitted ; the steep temple-rock was defended by
that fanatical band for three months with an obstinacy
ready to brave death, till at last the besiegers effected an
entrance while the besieged were resting on the Sabbath,
possessed themselves of the sanctuary, and handed over
the authors of that desperate resistance, so far as they had
not fallen under the sword of the Romans, to the axes of
the lictors. Thus ended the last resistance of the terri-
tories newly annexed to the Roman state.

The work begun by Lucullus had been completed by The new
Pompeius ; the hitherto formally independent states of '■^'*"°"*
Bithynia, Pontus, and Syria were united with the Roman Romans in
state; the exchange — which had been recognized for more ^'^^®*^-
than a hundred years as necessary — of the feeble system of
a protectorate for that of direct sovereignty over the more
important dependent territories (ii. 2 34/), had at length been
realized, as soon as the senate had been overthrown and
the Gracchan party had come to the helm. Rome had
obtained in the east new frontiers, new neighbours, new
friendly and hostile relations. There were now added to
the indirect territories of Rome the kingdom of Armenia
and the principalities of the Caucasus, and also the king-
dom on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the small remnant of
the extensive conquests of Mithradates Eupator, now a
client-state of Rome under the government of his son and
murderer Pharnaces ; the town of Phanagoria alone, whose
commandant Castor had given the signal for the revolt,

432

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Conflicts
with the
Nabatae-
ans.

was on that account recognized by the Romans as free and
independent.

No Uke successes could be boasted of against the
Nabataeans. King Aretas had indeed, yielding to the
desire of the Romans, evacuated Judaea ; but Damascus
was still in his hands, and the Nabataean land had not yet
been trodden by any Roman soldier. To subdue that
region or at least to show to their new neighbours in
Arabia that the Roman eagles were now dominant on the
Orontes and on the Jordan, and that the time had gone
by when any one was free to levy contributions in the
Syrian lands as a domain without a master, Pompeius
63. began in 6gi an expedition against Petra ; but detained
by the revolt of the Jews, which broke out during this
expedition, he was not reluctant to leave to his successor
Marcus Scaurus the carrying out of the difficult enterprise
against the Nabataean city situated far ofif amidst the
desert.^ In reality Scaurus also soon found himself com-
pelled to return without having accomplished his object.
He had to content himself with making war on the
Nabataeans in the deserts on the left bank of the Jordan,
where he could lean for support on the Jews, but yet bore
off only very trifling successes. Ultimately the adroit
Jewish minister Antipater from Idumaea persuaded Aretas
to purchase a guarantee for all his possessions, Damascus
included, from the Roman governor for a sum of money;
and this is the peace celebrated on the coins of Scaurus,
where king Aretas appears — leading his camel — as a
suppliant offering the olive branch to the Roman.

1 Orosius indeed (vi. 6) and Dio (xxxvii. 15), both of them doubtless
following Livy, make Pompeius get to Petra and occupy the city or even
reach the Red Sea ; but that he, on the contrary, soon after receiving the
news of the death of Mithradates, which came to him on his march towards
Jerusalem, returned from Syria to Pontus, is stated by Plutarch {Pomp. 41,
42) and is confirmed by Florus (i. 39) and Josephus (xiv. 3, 3, 4). If
king Aretas figures in the bulletins among those conquered by Pompeius,
this is sufficiently accounted for by his withdrawal from Jerusalem
at the instigation of Pompeius.

CHAP. IV FOMPEIUS AND THE EAST 433

Far more fraught with momentous cficcts than these DiRiculiy
new relations of the Romans to the Armenians, Iberians, pj^ihians^
Bosporans, and Nabataeans was the proximity into which
through the occupation of Syria they were brought with
tlie Parthian state. Comphiisant as had been the de-
meanour of Roman diplomacy towards Phraates while the
Pontic and Armenian states still subsisted, willingly as
both Lucullus and Pompeius had then conceded to him
the possession of the regions beyond the Euphrates (p. 343,
406), the new neighbour now sternly took up his position
by the side of the Arsacids ; and Phraates, if the royal art
of forgetting his own faults allowed him, might well recall
now the warning words of Mithradates that the Parthian
by his alliance with the Occidentals against the kingdoms
of kindred race paved the way first for their destruction
and then for his own. Romans and Parthians in league
had brought Armenia to ruin ; when it was overthrown,
Rome true to her old policy now reversed the parts and
favoured the humbled foe at the expense of the powerful
ally. The singular preference, which the father Tigranes
experienced from Pompeius as contrasted with his son the
ally and son-in-law of the Parthian king, was already part
of this policy ; it was a direct offence, when soon after-
wards by the orders of Pompeius the younger Tigranes
and his family were arrested and were not released even
on Phraates interceding with the friendly general for his
daughter and his son-in-law. But Pompeius paused not
here. The province of Corduene, to which both Phraates
and Tigranes laid claim, was at the command of Pompeius
occupied by Roman troops for the latter, and the Parthians
who were found in possession were driven beyond the
frontier and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene,
without the government of Ctesiphon having even been
previously heard (689). Far the most suspicious circum- 65.
stance however was, that the Romans seemed not at all
VOL. IV 12S

434 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

inclined to respect the boundary of the Euphrates fixed by
treaty. On several occasions Roman divisions destined
from Armenia for Syria marched across Mesopotamia ; the
Arab emir Abgarus of Osrhoene was received under
singularly favourable conditions into Roman protection ;
nay, Oruros, situated in Upper Mesopotamia somewhere
between Nisibis and the Tigris 220 miles eastward from
the Commagenian passage of the Euphrates, was designated
as the eastern limit of the Roman dominion — presumably
their indirect dominion, inasmuch as the larger and more
fertile northern half of Mesopotamia had been assigned
by the Romans in like manner with Corduene to the
Armenian empire. The boundary between Romans and
Parthians thus became the great Syro-Mesopotamian desert
instead of the Euphrates ; and this too seemed only provi-
sional. To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist on
the maintenance of the agreements — which certainly, as
it would seem, were only concluded orally — respecting
the Euphrates boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous
reply that the territory of Rome extended as far as her
rights. The remarkable intercourse between the Roman
commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps of the region
of Media and even of the distant province Elymais
(between Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern
Luristan) seemed a commentary on this speech.^ The
viceroys of this latter mountainous, warlike, and remote
land had always exerted themselves to acquire a position

1 This view rests on the narrative of P\utaTc):^(Pomp. 36) which is sup-
ported by Strabo's (xvi. 744) description of the position of the satrap of
Elymais. It is an embellishment of the matter, when in the lists of the
countries and kings conquered by Pompeius Media and its king Darius
are enumerated (Diodorus, Fr. Vat. p. 140; Appian, Mithr. 117); and
from this there has been further concocted the war of Pompeius with the
Medes (Veil. ii. 40 ; Appian, Mithr. 106, 114) and then even his ex-
pedition to Ecbatana (Oros. vi. 5). A confusion with the fabulous town
of the same name on Carmel has hardly taken place here ; it is simply
that intolerable exaggeration — apparently originating in the grandiloquent
and designedly ambiguous bulletins of Pompeius — which has converted his

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 435

independent of the great-king ; it was the more offensive
and menacing to the Parthian government, when Pompeius
accepted the proffered homage of this dynast. Not less
significant was the fact that the title of "king of kings,"
which had been hitherto conceded to the Parthian king by
the Romans in official intercourse, was now all at once
exchanged by them for the simple title of king. This was
even more a threat than a violation of etiquette. Since
Rome had entered on the heritage of the Seleucids, it
seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert at
a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran
and Turan were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet
no Parthian empire but merely a Parthian satrapy. The
court of Ctesiphon would thus have had reason enough for
going to war with Rome ; it seemed the prelude to its
doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia on 64.
account of the question of the frontier. But Phraates had
not the courage to come to an open rupture with the
Romans at a time when the dreaded general with his
strong army was on the borders of the Parthian empire.
When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle amicably the
dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded to
the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in
their award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene
and northern Mesopotamia. Soon afterwards his daughter
with her son and her husband adorned the triumph of the
Roman general. Even the Parthians trembled before the
superior power of Rome ; and, if they had not, like the
inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the
Roman arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had
not ventured to stand the conflict.

razzia ap.iinst the Gactulians (p. 94) into a march to the west coast of

Africa (Plut. Pomp. 38). his abortive expedition against the Nn' • s

into a conquest of the city of Peira, and his award as to the I ■

of .Armenia into a fixing of the boundary of the Roman empire Lcyoiid

Nisibis.

436

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Organiza-
tion of the
provinces.

Feudatory
kings.
Cappa-
docia.

There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating
the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and
of removing as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years'
desolating war. The work of organization begun in Asia
Minor by Lucullus and the commission associated with
him, and in Crete by Metellus, received its final conclusion
from Pompeius. The former province of Asia, which
embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was con-
verted from a frontier province into a central one. The
newly-erected provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus,
which was formed out of the whole former kingdom of
Nicomedes and the western half of the former Pontic state
as far as and beyond the Halys ; that of Cilicia, which
indeed was older, but was now for the first time enlarged
and organized in a manner befitting its name, and compre-
hended also Pamphylia and Isauria ; that of Syria, and
that of Crete. Much was no doubt wanting to render
that mass of countries capable of being regarded as the
territorial possession of Rome in the modern sense of the
term. The form and order of the government remained
substantially as they were ; only the Roman community
came in place of the former monarchs. Those Asiatic
provinces consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of
domanial possessions, urban territories de facto or de Jure
autonomous, lordships pertaining to princes and priests,
and kingdoms, all of which were as regards internal
administration more or less left to themselves, and in other
respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes
in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its pro-
consuls very much as formerly on the great-king and his
satraps.

The first place, in rank at least, among the dependent
dynasts was held by the king of Cappadocia, whose terri-
tory Lucullus had already enlarged by investing him with
the province of Melitene (about Malatia) as far as the

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 437

Euphrates, and to whom Pompeius farther granted on the
western frontier some districts taken off Cilicia from Casta-
bala as far as Derbe near Iconium, and on the eastern
frontier the province of Sophene situated on the left bank
of the Euphrates opposite Melitene and at first destined
for the Armenian prince Tigranes ; so that the most im-
portant passage of the Euphrates thus came wholly into the
power of the Cappadocian prince. The small province of
Commagene between Syria and Cappadocia with its capital Comma-
Samosata (Samsat) remained a dependent kingdom in the ^"^°*^
hands of the already-named Seleucid Antiochus ; ^ to him
too were assigned the important fortress of Seleucia (near
Biradjik) commanding the more southern passage of the
Euphrates, and the adjoining tracts on the left bank of
that river; and thus care was taken that the two chief
passages of the Euphrates with a corresponding territory
on the eastern bank were left in the hands of two dynasts
wholly dependent on Rome. Alongside of the kings of
Caj)padocia and Commagene, and in real power far superior
to them, the new king Deiotarus ruled in Asia Minor.
One of the tetrarchs of the Celtic stock of the Tolistoboiiii Gaiaiia.
settled round Pessinus, and summoned by Lucullus and
Pompeius to render military service with the other small
Roman clients, Deiotarus had in these campaigns so
brilliantly proved his trustworthiness and his energy as
contrasted with all the indolent Orientals that the Roman
generals conferred upon him, in addition to his Galatian
heritage and his possessions in the rich country between
Amisus and the mouth of the Halys, the eastern half of
the former Pontic empire with the maritime towns of

' The war which this Aniiochus is alleged lo have waprti with Pompeius
(.Appian. Mtthr. 106. 117) is not very con^l^tl•nt with the treaty which he
concluded with Lucullus (Uio, xxxvi. 4). and his undisturbed continuance
in his soverci^jnty ; presumably it has been concocted simply from the
circumstance, that Antiochus of Commagene figured among the kings
subdued by Pompeius.

438

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

Princes
and chiefs.

Priestly
princes.

Pharnacia and Trapezus and the Pontic Armenia as far as
the frontier of Colchis and the Greater Armenia, to form
the kingdom of Lesser Armenia. Soon afterwards he
increased his already considerable territory by the country
of the Celtic Trocmi, whose tetrarch he dispossessed.
Thus the petty feudatory became one of the most powerful
dynasts of Asia Minor, to whom might be entrusted the
guardianship of an important part of the frontier of the
empire.

Vassals of lesser importance were, the other numerous
Galatian tetrarchs, one of whom, Bogodiatarus prince of
the Trocmi, was on account of his tried valour in the
Mithradatic war presented by Pompeius with the formerly
Pontic frontier-town of Mithradatium ; Attalus prince of
Paphlagonia, who traced back his lineage to the old ruling
house of the Pylaemenids ; Aristarchus and other petty
lords in the Colchian territory ; Tarcondimotus who ruled
in eastern Cilicia in the mountain- valleys of the Amanus ;
Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus who continued to rule in
Chalcis on the Libanus ; Aretas king of the Nabataeans as
lord of Damascus ; lastly, the Arabic emirs in the countries
on either side of the Euphrates, Abgarus in Osrhoene,
whom the Romans endeavoured in every way to draw
over to their interest with the view of using him as an
advanced post against the Parthians, Sampsiceramus in
Hemesa, Alchaudonius the Rhambaean, and another emir
in Bostra.

To these fell to be added the spiritual lords who in the
east frequently ruled over land and people like secular
dynasts, and whose authority firmly established in that
native home of fanaticism the Romans prudently refrained
from disturbing, as they refrained from even robbing the
temples of their treasures : the high-priest of the Goddess
Mother in Pessinus ; the two high-priests of the goddess
Ma in the Cappadocian Comana (on the upper Sarus) and

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 439

in the Pontic city of the same name (Gumenek near Tocat),
both lords who were in their countries inferior only to the
king in power, and each of whom even at a much later
period possessed extensive estates with special jurisdiction
and about six thousand temple-slaves — Archelaus, son of
the general of that name who passed over from Mithradates
to the Romans, was invested by Pompeius with the Pontic
high -priesthood — the high-priest of the Venasian Zeus
in the Cappadocian district of Morimene, whose revenues
amounted annually to ;i^36oo (15 talents); the "arch-
priest and lord " of that territory in Cilicia Trachea, where
Teucer the son of Ajax had founded a temple to Zeus,
over which his descendants presided by virtue of hereditary
right; the "arch-priest and lord of the people " of the
Jews, to whom Pompeius, after having razed the walls of
the capital and the royal treasuries and strongholds in the
land, gave back the presidency of the nation with a serious
admonition to keep the peace and no longer to aim at
conquests.

Alongside of these secular and spiritual potentates stood Urban
the urban communities. These were partly associated into ^-^^
larger unions which rejoiced in a comparative independence,
such as in particular the league of the twenty-three Lycian
cities, which was well organized and constantly, for instance,
kept aloof from participation in the disorders of piracy ;
whereas the numerous detached communities, even if they
had self-government secured by charter, were in practice
wholly dependent on the Roman governors.

The Romans failed not to see that with the task of Elevation
representing Hellenism and protecting and extending the °jjj."|jj
domain of Alexander in the east there devolved on them Asia,
the primary duty of elevating the urban system ; for, while
cities are everywhere the pillars of civilization, the antagon-
ism between Orientals and Occidentals was especially and
most sharply embodied in the contrast between the Oriental,

440 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

military -despotic, feudal hierarchy and the Helleno- Italic
urban commonwealth prosecuting trade and commerce.
Lucullus and Pompeius, however little they in other
respects aimed at the reduction of things to one level
in the east, and however much the latter was disposed
in questions of detail to censure and alter the arrange-
ments of his predecessor, were yet completely agreed in
the principle of promoting as far as they could an urban
life in Asia Minor and Syria. Cyzicus, on whose vigorous
resistance the first violence of the last war had spent itself,
received from Lucullus a considerable extension of its
domain. The Pontic Heraclea, energetically as it had
resisted the Romans, yet recovered its territory and its
harbours ; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against the
unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate.
Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had
refused him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus
from devastation by the Pontic soldiery and his own : he
did at least what he could to restore them, extended con-
siderably their territories, peopled them afresh — partly with
the old inhabitants, who at his invitation returned in troops
to their beloved homes, partly with new settlers of Hellenic
descent — and provided for the reconstruction of the build-
ings destroyed. Pompeius acted in the same spirit and on
a greater scale. Already after the subjugation of the
pirates he had, instead of following the example of his
predecessors and crucifying his prisoners, whose number
exceeded 20,000, settled them partly in the desolated
cities of the Plain Cilicia, such as Mallus, Adana, Epi-
phaneia, and especially in Soli, which thenceforth bore
the name of Pompeius' city (Pompeiupolis), partly at
Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum. This colonizing
by means of pirates met with manifold censure,^ as it

^ To this Cicero's reproach presumably points [De Off. iii. 12, 49) :
piraias immunes habemus, socios vectlgales ; in so far, namely, as those

CHAP. IV I'UMri:iUS AM) TIIK EAST 441

seemed in some measure to set a premium on crime ;
in reality it was, politically and morally, well justified,
fur, as things then stood, piracy was something different
from robbery and the prisoners might fairly be treated
according to martial law.

But Pompeius made it his business above all to promote New towns
urban life in the new Roman provinces. We have already ^^h
observed how poorly provided with towns the Pontic empire
was (p. 12): most districts of Cappadocia even a century
after this had no towns, but merely mountain fortresses as a
refuge for the agricultural population in war ; the whole
east of Asia Minor, apart from the sparse Greek colonies
on the coasts, must have been at this time in a similar
plight. The number of towns newly established by Pom-
l)eius in these provinces is, including the Cilician settle-
ments, stated at thirty-nine, several of which attained great
prosperity. The most notable of these townships in the
former kingdom of Pontus were Nicopolis, the " city of
victory," founded on the spot where Mithradates sustained
the last decisive defeat (p. 409) — the fairest memorial of a
general rich in similar trophies ; Megalopolis, named from
Pompeius' surname, on the frontier of Cappadocia and
Lesser Armenia, the subsequent Sebasteia (now Siwas) ;
Ziela, where the Romans fought the unfortunate battle
(p. 348), a township which had arisen round the temple of
Anaitis there and hitherto had belonged to its high-priest,
and to which Pompeius now gave the form and privileges
of a city; Diopolis, formerly Cabira, afterwards Neocaesarea
(Niksar), likewise one of the battle-fields of the late war ;
Magnopolis or Pompeiupolis, the restored Eupatoria at
the confluence of the Lycus and the Iris, originally built
by Mithradates, but again destroyed by him on account of

pirate-colonies probaljly luid the privilege of immunity conferred on them
by Pomix-iiis, while, as is well known, the provincial communiiics de-
pendent on Rome were, as a rule, liable to taxation.

442 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST BOOK V

the defection of the city to the Romans (p. 404) ; Neapolis,
formerly Phazemon, between Amasia and the Halys. Most
of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing
colonists from a distance, but by the suppression of villages
and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring-
wall ; only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and
veterans of his army, who preferred to establish a home
for themselves there at once rather than afterwards in
Italy. But at other places also there arose on the sugges-
tion of the regent new centres of Hellenic civilization. In
Paphlagonia a third Pompeiupolis marked the spot where the
88. army of Mithradates in 666 achieved the great victory over
the Bithynians (p. 29 /). In Cappadocia, which perhaps
had suffered more than any other province by the war, the
royal residence Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea, now Kaisarieh)
and seven other townships were re-established by Pompeius
and received urban institutions. In Cilicia and Coelesyria
there were enumerated twenty towns laid out by Pompeius.
In the districts ceded by the Jews, Gadara in the Decapolis
rose from its ruins at the command of Pompeius, and the
city of Seleucis was founded. By far the greatest portion
of the domain-land at his disposal on the Asiatic continent
must have been applied by Pompeius for his new settle-
ments ; whereas in Crete, about which Pompeius troubled
himself little or not at all, the Roman domanial possessions
seem to have continued tolerably extensive.

Pompeius was no less intent on regulating and elevating
the existing communities than on founding new townships.
The abuses and usurpations which prevailed were done
away with as far as lay in his power ; detailed ordinances
drawn up carefully for the different provinces regulated the
particulars of the municipal system. A number of the
most considerable cities had fresh privileges conferred on
them. Autonomy was bestowed on Antioch on the
Orontes, the most important city of Roman Asia and but

CHAP. IV POMPEIUS AND THE EAST 443

little inferior to the Egyptian Alexandria and to the Bagdad
of antiquity, the city of Seleucia in the Parthian empire ;
as also on the neighbour of Antioch, the Pierian Seleucia,
which was thus rewarded for its courageous resistance to
Tigranes; on Gaza and generally on all the towns liberated
from the Jewish rule; on Mytilcne in the west of Asia
Minor; and on Phanagoria on the Black Sea.

Thus was completed the structure of the Roman state in Agpregnte
Asia, which with its feudatory kings and vassals, its priests ^^^ "'
made into princes, and its series of free and half-free cities
puts us vividly in mind of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German nation. It was no miraculous work, either as
respects the difficulties overcome or as respects the consum-
mation attained; nor was it made so by all the high-sounding
words, which the Roman world of quality lavished in favour
of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise of Pompeius.
Pompeius in particular consented to be praised, and praised
himself, in such a fashion that people might almost have
reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was.
If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their
deliverer and founder, as the man who had as well by land
as by sea terminated the wars with which the world was
filled, such a homage might not seem too extravagant for
the vanquisher of the pirates and of the empires of the east
But the Romans this time surpassed the Greeks. The
triumphal inscriptions of Pompeius himself enumerated
12 millions of people as subjugated and 1538 cities and
strongholds as conquered — it seemed as if (juantity was to
make up for quality — and made the circle of his victories
extend from the Maeotic Sea to the Caspian and from the
latter to the Red Sea, when his eyes had never seen any
one of the three ; nay farther, if he did not exactly say so,
he at any rate induced the public to suppose that the
annexation of Syria, which in truth was no heroic deed, had
added the whole east as far as Bactria and India to the

444 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

Roman empire — so dim was the mist of distance, amidst
which according to his statements the boundary-Hne of bis
eastern conquests was lost. The democratic servility, which
has at all times rivalled that of courts, readily entered into
these insipid extravagances. It was not satisfied by the
pompous triumphal procession, which moved through the
61. streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept 693 — the
forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great — adorned, to say
nothing of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of
Mithradates and by the children of the three mightiest kings
of Asia, Mithradates, Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its
general, who had conquered twenty-two kings, with regal
honours and bestowed on him the golden chaplet and the
insignia of the magistracy for life. The coins struck in his
honour exhibit the globe itself placed amidst the triple
laurels brought home from the three continents, and sur-
mounted by the golden chaplet conferred by the burgesses
on the man who had triumphed over Africa, Spain, and
Asia. It need excite no surprise, if in presence of such
childish acts of homage voices were heard of an opposite
import. Among the Roman world of quality it was
currently affirmed that the true merit of having subdued
the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only
gone thither to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around
his own brow the laurels which another hand had plucked.
Both statements were totally erroneous : it was not Pompeius
but Glabrio that was sent to Asia to relieve Lucullus, and,
bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was a fact that, when
Pompeius took the supreme command, the Romans had
forfeited all their earlier successes and had not a foot's
breadth of Pontic soil in their possession. More pointed
and effective was the ridicule of the inhabitants of the
capital, who failed not to nickname the mighty conqueror
of the globe after the great powers which he had con-
quered, and saluted him now as "conqueror of Salem,"

CHAP. IV rOMPEIUS AND THE EAST 445

now as " emir " {Arabarc/ies), now as the Roman Sampsi-
ceramus.

The unprejudiced judge will not agree cither with those Lucullus
exaggerations or with these disparagements. Lucullus and pon^p^jy,
Pompeius, in subduing and regulating Asia, showed them- as admini-

, , ^ . strators.

selves to be, not heroes and state-creators, but sagacious
and energetic army -leaders and governors. As general
Lucullus displayed no common talents and a self-confidence
bordering on rashness, while Pompeius displayed military
judgment and a rare self-restraint; for hardly has any
general with such forces and a position so wholly free ever
acted so cautiously as Pompeius in the east. The most
brilliant undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him
on all sides ; he was free to start for the Cimmerian
Bosporus and for the Red Sea ; he had opportunity of de-
claring war against the Parthians ; the revolted provinces of
Egypt invited him to dethrone king Ptolemaeus who was not
recognized by the Romans, and to carry out the testament
of Alexander ; but Pompeius marched neither to Pantica-
paeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria ;
throughout he gathered only those fruits which of them-
selves fell to his hand. In like manner he fought all his
battles by sea and land with a crushing superiority of force.
Had this moderation proceeded from the strict observance
of the instructions given to him, as Pompeius was wont to
profess, or even from a perception that the conquests of
Rome must somewhere find a limit and that fresh acces-
sions of territory were not advantageous to the state, it
would deserve a higher praise than history confers on the
most talented officer; but constituted as Pompeius was,
his self-restraint was beyond doubt solely the result of his
peculiar want of decision and of initiative — defects, indeed,
which were in his case far more useful to the state than the
opposite excellences of his predecessor. Certainly very
grave errors were perpetrated boih by Lucullus and by

446 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

Pompeius. Lucullus reaped their fruits himself, when his
imprudent conduct wrested from him all the results of his
victories ;,* Pompeius left it to his successors to bear the
consequences of his false policy towards the Parthians.
He might either have made war on the Parthians, if he had
had the courage to do so, or have maintained peace with
them and recognized, as he had promised, the Euphrates
as boundary ; he was too timid for the former course, too
vain for the latter; and so he resorted to the silly perfidy
of rendering the good neighbourhood, which the court of
Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised, impossible
through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet (allowing
the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and
retaliation. As administrator of Asia Lucullus acquired
a more than princely wealth ; and Pompeius also received
as reward for its organization large sums in cash and still
more considerable promissory notes from the king of
Cappadocia, from the rich city of Antioch, and from other
lords and communities. But such exactions had become
almost a customary tax ; and both generals showed them-
selves at any rate to be not altogether venal in questions
of greater importance, and, if possible, got themselves paid
by the party whose interests coincided with those of Rome.
Looking to the state of the times, this does not prevent us
from characterizing the administration of both as compara-
tively commendable and conducted primarily in the interest
of Rome, secondarily in that of the provincials.

The conversion of the clients into subjects, the better
regulation of the eastern frontier, the establishment of a
single and strong government, were full of blessing for the
rulers as well as for the ruled. The financial gain acquired
by Rome was immense ; the new property tax, which with
the exception of some specially exempted communities all
those princes, priests, and cities had to pay to Rome, raised
the Roman state-revenues almost by a half above their

CHAP. IV rOMl'KIUS AND TllK KAST 447

former amount. Asia indeed suffered severely. Pompeius
brought in money and jewels an amount of ;i{^2, 000,000
(200,000,000 sesterces) into the state-chest and distributed
;^3, 900,000 ( 1 6,000 talents) among his officers and soldiers ;
if we add to this the considerable sums brought home by
Lucullus, the non-official exactions of the Roman army, and
the amount of the damage done by the war, the financial
exhaustion of the land may be readily conceived. The
Roman taxation of Asia was perhaps in itself not worse
than that of its earlier rulers, but it formed a heavier burden
on the land, in so far as the taxes thenceforth went out of
the country and only tiie lesser portion of the proceeds was
again expended in Asia ; and at any rate it was, in the old
as well as the newly-acquired provinces, based on a system-
atic plundering of the provinces for the benefit of Rome.
But the responsibility for this rests far less on the generals
personally than on the parties at home, whom these had to
consider ; Lucullus had even exerted himself energetically
to set limits to the usurious dealings of the Roman capital-
ists in Asia, and this essentially contributed to bring about
his fall. How much both men earnestly sought to revive
the prosperity of the reduced provinces, is shown by their
action in cases where no considerations of party policy tied
their hands, and especially in their care for the cities of
Asia Minor. Although for centuries afterwards many an
Asiatic village lying in ruins recalled the times of the great
war, Sinope might well begin a new era with the date of its
re-establishment by Lucullus, and almost all the more con-
siderable inland towns of the Pontic kingdom might grate-
fully honour Pompeius as their founder. The organization
of Roman Asia by Lucullus and Pompeius may with all its
undeniable defects be described as on the whole judicious
and praiseworthy ; serious as were the evils that might still
adhere to it, it could not but be welcome to the sorely
tormented Asiatics for the very reason that it came attended

448

POMPEIUS AND THE EAST

BOOK V

The east
after the
departure
of
Pompeius.

57-54.

by the inward and outward peace, the absence of which had
been so long and so painfully felt.

Peace continued substantially in the east, till the idea —
merely indicated by Pompeius with his characteristic timidity
— of joining the regions eastward of the Euphrates to the
Roman empire was taken up again energetically but unsuc-
cessfully by the new triumvirate of Roman regents, and soon
thereafter the civil war drew the eastern provinces as well as all
the rest into its fatal vortex. In the interval the governors
of Cilicia had to fight constantly with the mountain-
tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes of
the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins
especially many Roman troops were destroyed ; but these
movements had no farther significance. More remarkable
was the obstinate resistance, which the tough Jewish nation
opposed to the conquerors. Alexander son of the deposed
king Aristobulus, and Aristobulus himself who after some
time succeeded in escaping from captivity, excited during
the governorship of AulusGabinius (697—700) three different
revolts against the new rulers, to each of which the govern-
ment of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome
impotently succumbed. It was not political conviction, but
the invincible repugnance of the Oriental towards the
unnatural yoke, which compelled them to kick against the
pricks ; as indeed the last and most dangerous of these
revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army of occu-
pation in consequence of the Egyptian crisis furnished the
immediate impulse, began with the murder of the Romans
settled in Palestine. It was not without difficulty that the
able governor succeeded in rescuing the few Romans, who
had escaped this fate and found a temporary refuge on
Mount Gerizim, from the insurgents who kept them block-
aded there, and in overpowering the revolt after several
severely contested battles and tedious sieges. In consequence
of this the monarchy of the high-priests was abolished and

CHAP. IV rOMPEIUS AND THE KAST 449

the Jewish land was broken up, as Macedonia had formerly
been, into five independent districts administered by
governing colleges with an Optimatc organization ; Samaria
and other townships razed by the Jews were re-establibhed,
to form a counterpoise to Jerusalem ; and lastly a heavier
tribute was imposed on the Jews than on the other Syrian
subjects of Rome.

It still remains that we should glance at the kingdom of The
Egypt along with the last dependency that remained to it of ^["k^""!
the extensive acquisitions of the Lagids, the fair island of
Cyprus. Egypt was now the only state of the Hellenic east
that was still at least nominally independent ; just as
formerly, when the Persians established themselves along
the eastern half of the Mediterranean, Egypt was their last
conquest, so now the mighty conquerors from the west long
delayed the annexation of that opulent and peculiar country.
The reason lay, as was already indicated, neither in any
fear of the resistance of Egypt nor in the want of a fitting
occasion. Egypt was just about as powerless as Syria, and
had already in 673 fallen in all due form of law to the 81.
Roman community (p. 318). The control exercised over
the court of Alexandria by the royal guard — which appointed
and deposed ministers and occasionally kings, took for
itself what it pleased, and, if it was refused a rise of pay,
besieged the king in his palace — was by no means liked
in the country or rather in the capital (for the country with
its population of agricultural slaves was hardly taken into
account) ; and at least a party there wished for the annexa-
tion of Egypt by Rome, and even took steps to procure it.
But the less the kings of Egypt could think of contending
in arms against Rome, the more energetically Egyptian gold
set itself to resist the Roman plans of union ; and in con-
sequence of the peculiar despotico-communistic centralization
of the Egyptian finances the revenues of the court of
Alexandria were still nearly equal to the public income of
VOL IV 129

450 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

Rome even after its augmentation by Pompeius. The
suspicious jealousy of the oligarchy, which was chary of
allowing any individual either to conquer or to administer
Egypt, operated in the same direction. So the de facto
rulers of Egypt and Cyprus were enabled by bribing the
leading men in the senate not merely to respite their totter-
ing crowns, but even to fortify them afresh and to purchase
from the senate the confirmation of their royal title. But
with this they had not yet obtained their object. Formal
state-law required a decree of the Roman burgesses ; until
this was issued, the Ptolemies were dependent on the
caprice of every democratic holder of power, and they had
thus to commence the warfare of bribery also against the
other Roman party, which as the more powerful stipulated
for far higher prices.
Cyprus The result in the two cases was different. The annexa-

annexe ^^ ^.j^^ ^^ Cyprus was decreed in 696 by the people, that is,
by the leaders of the democracy, the support given to
piracy by the Cypriots being alleged as the official reason
why that course should now be adopted. Marcus Cato,
entrusted by his opponents with the execution of this
measure, came to the island without an army ; but he had
no need of one. The king took poison ; the inhabitants
submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate,
and were placed under the governor of Cilicia. The ample
treasure of nearly 7000 talents (;;^i, 700,000), which the
equally covetous and miserly king could not prevail on
himself to apply for the bribes requisite to save his crown,
fell along with the latter to the Romans, and filled after a
desirable fashion the empty vaults of their treasury.
Ptolemaeus On the Other hand the brother who reigned in Egypt
in Egypt succeeded in purchasing; his lecognition by decree of the

recognized, r o o j

but [59. people from the new masters of Rome in 695 3 the purchase-
expelled i^-ioney is said to have amounted to 6000 talents
subjects, (;!^i, 460,000). The citizens indeed, long exasperated

CHAP. IV POMPFIUS AND TIIK KAST 4$!

against their good flute-player and bad ruler, and now-
reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus and
the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable
degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans
(696), chased him on that account out of the country. 58.
When the king thereupon applied, as if on account of his
eviction from the estate which he had purchased, to those
who sold it, these were reasonable enough to see that it
was their duty as honest men of business to get back his
kingdom for Ptolemaeus ; only the parties could not agree
as to the person to whom the important charge of occupying
Egypt by force along with the perquisites thence to be
expected should be assigned. It was only when the
triumvirate was confirmed anew at the conference of Luca,
that this affair was also arranged, after Ptolemaeus had
agreed to a further payment of 10,000 talents (;^2, 400,000) ;
the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, now obtained orders
from those in power to take the necessary steps immediately
for bringing back the king. The citizens of Alexandria had
meanwhile placed the crown on the head of Berenice the
eldest daughter of the ejected king, and given to her a
husband in the person of one of the spiritual princes of
Roman Asia, Archelaus the high-priest of Comana (p. 439),
who possessed ambition enough to hazard his secure and
respectable position in the hope of mounting the throne of
the Lagids. His attempts to gain the Roman regents to
his interests remained without success ; but he did not
recoil before the idea of being obliged to maintain his new
kingdom with arms in hand even against the Romans.

Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war and
against Egypt but directed to do so by the regents, made a ^^X^l^,\
pretext out of the alleged furtherance of piracy by the Uabim^
Egyptians and the building of a fleet by Archelaus, and
started without delay for the Egyptian frontier (699). 55,
The march through the sandy desert between Gaza and

452 POMPEIUS AND THE EAST book v

Pelusium, in which so many invasions, previously directed
against Egypt had broken down, was on this occasion
successfully accomplished — a result especially due to the
quick and skilful leader of the cavalry Marcus Antonius.
The frontier fortress of Pelusium also was surrendered
without resistance by the Jewish garrison stationed there.
In front of this city the Romans met the Egyptians, defeated
them — on which occasion Antonius again distinguished
himself — and arrived, as the first Roman army, at the Nile.
Here the fleet and army of the Egyptians were drawn up
for the last decisive struggle ; but the Romans once more
conquered, and Archelaus himself with many of his followers
perished in the combat. Immediately after this battle the
capital surrendered, and therewith all resistance was at an
end. The unhappy land was handed over to its legitimate
oppressor ; the hanging and beheading, with which, but for
the intervention of the chivalrous Antonius, Ptolemaeus
would have already in Pelusium begun to celebrate the
restoration of the legitimate government, now took its course
unhindered, and first of all the innocent daughter was sent
by her father to the scaffold. The payment of the reward
agreed upon with the regents broke down through the
absolute impossibility of exacting from the exhausted land
the enormous sums required, although they took from the
A Roman poor people the last penny ; but care was taken that the
^emaJns in country should at least be kept quiet by the garrison of
Alexandria. Roman infantry and Celtic and German cavalry left in the
capital, which took the place of the native praetorians and
otherwise emulated them not unsuccessfully. The previous
hegemony of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a
direct military occupation, and the nominal continuance of
the native monarchy was not so much a privilege granted
to the land as a double burden imposed on it.

CHAP. V PARTIES DURING ABSENCE OK POMI'EIUS 453

CHAPTER V

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES DURING THE ABSENCE
OF POMPEIUS.

With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the The
capital changed positions. From the time that the elected ^^!^^^
general of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his
party, or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance
in the capital. The nobility doubtless still stood in compact
array, and still as before there issued from the comitial
machinery none but consuls, who according to the ex-
pression of the democrats were already designated to the
consulate in their cradles ; to command the elections and
break down the influence of the old families over them was
beyond the power even of the holders of power. But
unfortunately the consulate, at the very moment when they
had got the length of virtually excluding the " new men "
from it, began itself to grow pale before the newly-risen
star of the exceptional military power. The aristocracy
felt this, though they did not exactly confess it ; they gave
themselves up as lost. Except Quintus Catulus, who with
honourable firmness persevered at his far from pleasant
post as champion of a vantjuished party down to his death
(694), no Optimatc could be named from the highest ranks 60
of the nobility, who would have sustained the interests of
the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness. Their very
men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus

454 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book V

Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired,
so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas,
in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the
senate-house amidst their gardens and libraries, their
aviaries and fish-ponds. Still more, of course, was this the
case with the younger generation of the aristocracy, which
was either wholly absorbed in luxury and literature or
turning towards the rising sun.
Cato. There was among the younger men a single exception ; it

95. was Marcus Porcius Cato (born in 659), a man of the best
intentions and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most
Quixotic and one of the most cheerless phenomena in this
age so abounding in political caricatures. Honourable and
steadfast, earnest in purpose and in action, full of attach-
ment to his country and to its hereditary constitution, but
dull in intellect and sensuously as well as morally destitute
of passion, he might certainly have made a tolerable state-
accountant. But unfortunately he fell early under the
power of formalism, and swayed partly by the phrases of the
Stoa, which in their abstract baldness and spiritless isolation
were current among the genteel world of that day, partly
by the example of his great-grandfather whom he deemed
it his especial task to reproduce, he began to walk about
in the sinful capital as a model burgess and mirror of
virtue, to scold at the times like the old Cato, to travel on
foot instead of riding, to take no interest, to decline badges
of distinction as a soldier, and to introduce the restoration
of the good old days by going after the precedent of king
Romulus without a shirt. A strange caricature of his
ancestor — the gray-haired farmer whom hatred and anger
made an orator, who wielded in masterly style the plough
as well as the sword, who with his narrow, but original and
sound common sense ordinarily hit the nail on the head —
was this young unimpassioned pedant from whose lips
dropped scholastic wisdom and who was everywhere seen

CHAP. V DURING TIIK ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 455

sitting book in hand, this philosopher who understood
neither the art of war nor any other art whatever, this
cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals. Yet he
attained to moral and thereby even to political importance.
In an utterly wretched and cowardly age his courage and
his negative virtues told powerfully on the multitude ; he
even formed a school, and there were individuals — it is
true they were but few — who in their turn copied and
caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher. On
the same cause depended also his political influence. As
he was the only conservative of note who possessed if not
talent and insight, at any rate integrity and courage, and
was always ready to throw himself into the breach whether
it was necessary to do so or not, he soon became the
recognized champion of the Optimate party, although
neither his age nor his rank nor his intellect entitled him
to be so. Where the perseverance of a single resolute man
could decide, he no doubt sometimes achieved a success,
and in questions of detail, more particularly of a financial
character, he often judiciously interfered, as indeed he was
absent from no meeting of the senate ; his quaestorship in
fact formed an epoch, and as long as he lived he checked the
details of the public budget, regarding which he maintained
of course a constant warfare with the farmers of the taxes.
For the rest, he lacked simply every ingredient of a states-
man. He was incapable of even comprehending a political
aim and of surveying political relations ; his whole tactics
consisted in setting his face against every one who deviated
or seemed to him to deviate from the traditionary moral and
political catechism of the aristocracy, and tiius of course he
worked as often into the hands of his opponents as into those
of his own party. The Don Quixote of the aristocracy, he
proved by his character and his actions that at this time,
while there was certainly still an aristocracy in existence,
the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.

456 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES BOOK V

Democra- To continue the conflict with this aristocracy brought

tic itticks

Httle honour. Of course the attacks of the democracy on
the vanquished foe did not on that account cease. The
pack of the Populares threw themselves on the broken
ranks of the nobihty Uke the sutlers on a conquered camp,
and the surface at least of politics was by this agitation
ruffled into high waves of foam. The multitude entered
into the matter the more readily, as Gaius Caesar especially
kept them in good humour by the extravagant magnificence

65. of his games (689) — in which all the equipments, even the
cages of the wild beasts, appeared of massive silver — and
generally by a liberality which was all the more princely
that it was based solely on the contraction of debt. The
attacks on the nobility were of the most varied kind. The
abuses of aristocratic rule afforded copious materials ;
magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed a
liberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, Marcus
Cicero, continued systematically to unveil the most offensive
and scandalous aspects of the Optimate doings and to
propose laws against them. The senate was directed to
give access to foreign envoys on set days, with the view
of preventing the usual postponement of audiences. Loans
raised by foreign ambassadors in Rome were declared non-
actionable, as this was the only means of seriously checking
the corruptions which formed the order of the day in the

67. senate (687). The right of the senate to give dispensation

67. in particular cases from the laws was restricted (687); as
was also the abuse whereby every Roman of rank, who
had private business to attend to in the provinces, got
himself invested by the senate with the character of a

63. Roman envoy thither (691). They heightened the penalties

against the purchase of votes and electioneering intrigues

67, 63. (687, 691) ; which latter were especially increased in a

scandalous fashion by the attempts of the individuals ejected

from the senate (p. 380) to get back to it through re-election-

CHAP. V DURING Tin: AUSENCE OF POMPEIUS 457

What had hitherto been simply understood as matter of
course was now expressly laid down as a law, that the
praetors were bound to administer justice in conformity
with the rules set forth by them, after the Roman fashion,
at their entering on office (687). 67.

But, above all, efforts were made to complete the
democratic restoration and to realize the leading ideas of
the Gracchan period in a form suitable to the times. The
election of the priests by the comitia, which Gnaeus
Domitius had introduced (iii. 463) and Sulla had again done
away (p. 1 15), was established by a law of the tribune of the
people Titus Labienus in 691. The democrats were fond 63.
of pointing out how much was still wanting towards the
restoration of the Sempronian corn-laws in their full extent,
and at the same time passed over in silence the fact that
under the altered circumstances — with the straitened
condition of the public finances and the great increase in
the number of fully-privileged Roman citizens — that restora-
tion was absolutely impracticable. In the country between Trans-
the Po and the Alps they zealously fostered the agitation ^ ^"^
for political equality with the Italians. As early as 686 68.
Gaius Caesar travelled from place to place there for this
purpose ; in 689 Marcus Crassus as censor made arrange- 65.
ments to enrol the inhabitants directly in the burgess-roll
— which was only frustrated by the resistance of his
colleague ; in the following censorships this attempt seems
regularly to have been repeated. As formerly Gracchus
and Flaccus had been the patrons of the latins, so the
present leaders of the democracy gave themselves forth as
protectors of the Transpadanes, and Gaius Piso (consul in
68 7) had bitterly to regret that he had ventured to outrage 67.
one of these clients of Caesar and Crassus. On the other Freedmcn.
hand the same leaders appeared by no means disjMDsed to
advocate the political equalization of the freedmen ; the
tribune of the people Gaius Manilius, who in a thinly

458

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES

BOOK V

Process
against
Rabirius.

67. attended assembly had procured the renewal (31 Dec. 687)
of the Sulpician law as to the suffrage of freedmen (iii. 531),
was immediately disavowed by the leading men of the
democracy, and with their consent the law was cancelled
by the senate on the very day after its passing. In the
same spirit all the strangers, who possessed neither Roman
nor Latin burgess-rights, were ejected from the capital by

65. decree of the people in 689. It is obvious that the
intrinsic inconsistency of the Gracchan policy — in abetting
at once the effort of the excluded to obtain admission into
the circle of the privileged, and the effort of the privileged
to maintain their distinctive rights — had passed over to
their successors ; while Caesar and his friends on the one
hand held forth to the Transpadanes the prospect of the
franchise, they on the other hand gave their assent to the
continuance of the disabilities of the freedmen, and to the
barbarous setting aside of the rivalry which the industry
and trading skill of the Hellenes and Orientals maintained
with the Italians in Italy itself.

The mode in which the democracy dealt with the ancient
criminal jurisdiction of the comitia was characteristic. It
had not been properly abolished by Sulla, but practically
the jury-commissions on high treason and murder had
superseded it {p. 128), and no rational man could think of
seriously re-establishing the old procedure which long
before Sulla had been thoroughly unpractical. But as the
idea of the sovereignty of the people appeared to require
a recognition at least in principle of the penal jurisdiction
of the burgesses, the tribune of the people Titus Labienus

63. in 691 brought the old man, who thirty-eight years before
had slain or was alleged to have slain the tribune of the
people Lucius Saturninus (iii. 476), before the same high
court of criminal jurisdiction, by virtue of which, if the
annals reported truly, king TuUus had procured the
acquittal of the Horatius who had killed his sister. The

CHAP V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 459

accused was one Gaius Rabirius, who, if he had not killed
Saturninus, had at least paraded with his cut-ofif head at
the tables of men of rank, and who moreover was notorious
among the Apulian landholders for his kidnapping and his
bloody deeds. The object, if not of the accuser himself, at
any rate of the more sagacious men who backed him, was
not at all to make this pitiful wretch die the death of the
cross ; they were not unwilling to acquiesce, when first the
form of the impeachment was materially modified by the
senate, and then the assembly of the people called to
pronounce sentence on the guilty was dissolved under some
sort of pretext by the opposite party — so that the whole
procedure was set aside. At all events by this process
the two palladia of Roman freedom, the right of the citizens
to appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes of the people,
were once more established as practical rights, and the legal
basis on which the democracy rested was adjusted afresh.

The democratic reaction manifested still greater vehc- Personal
mence in all personal questions, wherever it could and dared.
Prudence indeed enjoined it not to urge the restoration of
the estates confiscated by Sulla to their former owners, that
it might not quarrel with its own allies and at the same
time fall into a conflict with material interests, for which a
policy with a set purpose is rarely a match ; the recall of
the emigrants was too closely connected with this question
of property not to appear quite as unadvisable. On the
other hand great exertions were made to restore to the
children of the proscribed the political rights withdrawn
from them (691), and the heads of the senatorial party were 63.
incessantly subjected to personal attacks. Thus Gaius
Memmius set on foot a process aimed at Marcus Lucullus
in 688. Thus they allowed his more famous brother to 66.
wait for three years before the gates of the capital for his
well-deserved triumph (688-691). Quintus Rex and the 66-63.
conqueror of Crete Quintus Melellus were similarly insulted.

46o THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

It produced a still greater sensation, when the young leader

63. of the democracy Gaius Caesar in 691 not merely presumed
to compete with the two most distinguished men of the
nobility, Quintus Catulus and Publius Servilius the victor
of Isaura, in the candidature for the supreme pontificate,
but even carried the day among the burgesses. The heirs
of Sulla, especially his son Faustus, found themselves
constantly threatened with an action for the refunding of
the public moneys which, it was alleged, had been embezzled
by the regent. They talked even of resuming the demo-

90. cratic impeachments suspended in 664 on the basis of the
Varian law (iii. 516). The individuals who had taken part
in the Sullan executions were, as may readily be conceived,
judicially prosecuted with the utmost zeal. When the
quaestor Marcus Cato, in his pedantic integrity, himself
made a beginning by demanding back from them the
rewards which they had received for murder as property

65. illegally alienated from the state (689), it can excite no

64. surprise that in the following year (690) Gaius Caesar, as
president of the commission regarding murder, summarily
treated the clause in the Sullan ordinance, which declared
that a proscribed person might be killed with impunity, as
null and void, and caused the most noted of Sulla's
executioners, Lucius Catilina, Lucius Bellienus, Lucius
Luscius to be brought before his jurymen and, partially, to
be condemned.

Rehabiiita- Lastly, they did not hesitate now to name once more in
Saturninus P^bHc the long-proscribcd names of the heroes and martyrs
and of the democracy, and to celebrate their memory. We

have already mentioned how Saturninus was rehabilitated
by the process directed against his murderer. But a differ-
ent sound withal had the name of Gaius Marius, at the
mention of which all hearts once had throbbed ; and it
happened that the man, to whom Italy owed her deliverance
from the northern barbarians, was at the same time the

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 461

uncle of the present leader of the democracy. Loudly had
the multitude rejoiced, when in 686 Gaius Caesar ventured 13.
in spite of the i)rohibitions publicly to show the honoured
features of the hero in the Forum at the interment of the
widow of Marius. But when, three years afterwards (689), 65.
the emblems of victory, which Marius had caused to be
erected in the Capitol and Sulla had ordered to be thrown
down, one morning unexpectedly glittered afresh in gold
and marble at the old spot, the veterans from the African
and Cimbrian wars crowded, with tears in their eyes, around
the statue of their beloved general ; and in presence of the
rejoicing masses the senate did not venture to seize the
trophies which the same bold hand had renewed in defiance
of the laws.

But all these doings and disputes, however much noise Wonhiess-
they made, were, politically considered, of but very subor- democratic
dinate importance. The oligarchy was vanquished ; the successes,
democracy had attained the helm. That underlings of
various grades should hasten to inflict an additional kick
on the prostrate foe ; that the democrats also should have
their basis in law and their worship of principles ; that their
doctrinaires should not rest till the whole privileges of the
community were in all particulars restored, and should in
that respect occasionally make themselves ridiculous, as
legitimists are wont to do — all this was just as much to be
expected as it was matter of indifTerence. Taken as a
whole, the agitation was aimless ; and we discern in it the
perplexity of its authors to find an object for their activity,
for it turned almost wholly on things already essentially
settled or on subordinate matters.

It could not be otherwise. In the struggle with the Impending
aristocracy the democrats had remained victors ; but they ^,^*^n
had not conquered alone, and the fiery trial still awaited ihedemo-
them — the reckoning not with their former foe, but with i™^{^"us,
their too powerful ally, to whom in the struggle with the

462 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

aristocracy they were substantially indebted for victory, and
to whose hands they had now entrusted an unexampled
military and political power, because they dared not refuse
it to him. The general of the east and of the seas was
still employed in appointing and deposing kings- How
long time he would take for that work, or when he would
declare the business of the war to be ended, no one could
tell but himself; since like everything else the time of his
return to Italy, or in other words the day of decision, was
left in his own hands. The parties in Rome meanwhile
sat and waited. The Optimates indeed looked forward to
the arrival of the dreaded general with comparative calm-
ness ; by the rupture between Pompeius and the democracy,
which they saw to be approaching, they could not lose, but
could only gain. The democrats on the contrary waited
with painful anxiety, and sought, during the interval still
allowed to them by the absence of Pompeius, to lay a
countermine against the impending explosion.
Schemes In this policy they again coincided with Crassus, to

.^P' whom no course was left for encountering his envied and

pointing a °

democratic hated rival but that of allying himself afresh, and more
dictator- closely than before, with the democracy. Already in the
ship. first coalition a special approximation had taken place

between Caesar and Crassus as the two weaker parties ; a
common interest and a common danger tightened yet more
the bond which joined the richest and the most insolvent
of Romans in closest alliance. While in public the demo-
crats described the absent general as the head and pride
of their party and seemed to direct all their arrows against
the aristocracy, preparations were secretly made against
Pompeius ; and these attempts of the democracy to escape
from the impending military dictatorship have historically
a far higher significance than the noisy agitation, for the
most part employed only as a mask, against the nobility.
It is true that they were carried on amidst a darkness, upon

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 463

which our tradition allows only some stray gleams of light
to fall ; for not the present alone, but the succeeding age
also had its reasons for throwing a veil over the matter.
But in general both the course and the object of these
efforts are completely clear. The military power could only
be effectually checkmated by another military power. The
design of the democrats was to possess themselves of the
reins of government after the example of Marius and Cinna,
then to entrust one of their leaders either with the conquest
of Egypt or with the governorship of Spain or some similar
ordinary or extraordinary office, and thus to find in him and
his military force a counterpoise to Pompeius and his array.
For this they required a revolution, which was directed
immediately against the nominal government, but in reality
against Pompeius as the designated monarch ; ^ and, to
effect this revolution, there was from the passing of the
Gabinio-Manilian laws down to the return of Pompeius
(688-692) perpetual conspiracy in Rome. The capital 66-62.
was in anxious suspense ; the depressed temper of the
capitalists, the suspensions of payment, the frequent bank-
ruptcies were heralds of the fermenting revolution, which
seemed as though it must at the same time produce a totally
new position of parties. The project of the democracy,
which pointed beyond the senate at Pompeius, suggested
an approximation between that general and the senate.
But the democracy in attempting to oppose to the dictator-
ship of Pompeius that of a man more agreeable to it, recog-
nized, strictly speaking, on its part also the military govern-

* Any one who surveys the whole state of the political relations of this
period will need no special proofs to help him to sec that the ultimate
object of the democratic machinations in 688 tt se^. w.as not the overthrow 64.
of the senate, but that of Pompeius, Yet such proofs are not waniintj.
Sallust states that the Gabinio-NIanili.m laws inflictcti a n.

democracy {Cat. 39) ; that the consj iracy of 688-689 .1 'Jo 05.

rogation were specially directed against Pompeius, is likewise attested
(Sallust Cat. 19 ; Val. Max. vi. a. 4 ; Cic. dt Lcgt Agr. ii. 17. 46).
Besides the attitude of Crassus towards the conspiracy alone shows
sufficiently that it was directed against Pompeius.

464

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES

BOOK V

League
of the
democrats
and the
anarchists.

ment, and in reality drove out Satan by Beelzebub ; the ques-
tion of principles became in its hands a question of persons.
The first step towards the revolution projected by the
leaders of the democracy was thus to be the overthrow of
the existing government by means of an insurrection
primarily instigated in Rome by democratic conspirators.
The moral condition of the lowest as of the highest ranks
of society in the capital presented the materials for this
purpose in lamentable abundance. We need not here
repeat what was the character of the free and the servile
proletariate of the capital. The significant saying was
already heard, that only the poor man was qualified to
represent the poor ; the idea was thus suggested, that the
mass of the poor might constitute itself an independent
power as well as the oligarchy of the rich, and instead of
allowing itself to be tyrannized over, might perhaps in its
own turn play the tyrant. But even in the circles of the
young men of rank similar ideas found an echo. The
fashionable life of the capital shattered not merely the
fortunes of men, but also their vigour of body and mind.
That elegant world of fragrant ringlets, of fashionable
mustachios and ruffles — merry as were its doings in the
dance and with the harp, and early and late at the wine-
cup — yet concealed in its bosom an alarming abyss of
moral and economic ruin, of well or ill concealed despair,
and frantic or knavish resolves. These circles sighed
without disguise for a return of the time of Cinna with its
proscriptions and confiscations and its annihilation of
account-books for debt ; there were people enough, includ-
ing not a few of no mean descent and unusual abilities,
who only waited the signal to fall like a gang of robbers
on civil society and to recruit by pillage the fortune which
they had squandered. Where a band gathers, leaders are
not wanting ; and in this case the men were soon found
who were fitted to be captains of banditti.

CHAP. V DURING Tilt: ABSENCE OF I'OMPEIUS 465

The late praetor Lucius Catilina, and the quaestor Caiiiina.
Gnaeus Piso, were distinguislicd among their fellows not
merely by their genteel birth and their superior rank. They
had broken down the bridge completely behind them, and
impressed their accomplices by their dissoluteness quite as
much as by their talents. Catilina especially was one of
the most wicked men in that wicked age. His villanies
belong to the records of crime, not to history ; but his
very outward appearance — the pale countenance, the wild
glance, the gait by turns sluggish and hurried — betrayed
his dismal past. He possessed in a high degree the
qualities which are required in the leader of such a band —
the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of bearing all
privations, courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the
energy of a felon, and that horrible mastery of vice, which
knows how to bring the weak to fall and how to train the
fallen to crime.

To form out of such elements a conspiracy for the
overthrow of the existing order of things could not be
difficult to men who possessed money and political influ-
ence. Catilina, Piso, and their fellows entered readily
into any plan which gave the prospect of proscriptions
and cancelling of debtor-books ; the former had moreover
special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed
the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for
the consulship. As he had formerly in the character of
an executioner of Sulla hunted the proscribed at the head
of a band of Celts and had killed among others his own
aged father-in-law with his own hand, he now readily con-
sented to promise similar services to the opposite party.
A secret league was formed. The number of individuals
received into it is said to have exceeded 400 ; it included
associates in all the districts and urban communities of
Italy ; besides which, as a matter of course, numerous
recruits would flock unbidden from the ranks of the dis-

VOI- IV I xo

466 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

solute youth to an insurrection, which inscribed on its
banner the seasonable programme of wiping out debts.
66. In December 688 — so we are told — the leaders of the
the first league thought that they had found the fitting occasion
plans [65. for striking a blow. The two consuls chosen for 689,
conspiracy. Publius Cornclius SuUa and Publius Autronius Paetus, had
recently been judicially convicted of electoral bribery, and
therefore had according to legal rule forfeited their expect-
ancy of the highest office. Both thereupon joined the
league. The conspirators resolved to procure the consul-
ship for them by force, and thereby to put themselves in
possession of the supreme power in the state. On the
day when the new consuls should enter on their office —
65, the ist Jan. 689 — the senate-house was to be assailed by
armed men, the new consuls and the victims otherwise
designated were to be put to death, and Sulla and Paetus
were to be proclaimed as consuls after the cancelling of
the judicial sentence which excluded them. Crassus was
then to be invested with the dictatorship and Caesar with
the mastership of the horse, doubtless with a view to raise
an imposing military force, while Pompeius was employed
afar off at the Caucasus. Captains and common soldiers
were hired and instructed ; Catilina waited on the appointed
day in the neighbourhood of the senate-house for the con-
certed signal, which was to be given him by Caesar on a
hint from Crassus. But he waited in vain ; Crassus was
absent from the decisive sitting of the senate, and for this
time the projected insurrection failed. A similar still more
comprehensive plan of murder was then concerted for the
5th Feb. ; but this too was frustrated, because Catilina
gave the signal too early, before the bandits who were
bespoken had all arrived. Thereupon the secret was
divulged. The government did not venture openly to
proceed against the conspiracy, but it assigned a guard to
the consuls who were primarily threatened, and it opposed

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 467

to the band of the conspirators a band paid by the govern-
ment. To remove Piso, the proposal was made that he
should he sent as quaestor with praetorian powers to Hither
Spain ; to which Crassus consented, in the hope of secur-
ing through him the resources of that important province
for the insurrection. Proposals going farther were pre-
vented by the tribunes.

So runs the account that has come down to us, which
evidently gives the version current in the government circles,
and the credibility of which in detail must, in the absence
of any means of checking it, be left an open question. As
to the main matter — the participation of Caesar and Crassus
— the testimony of their political opponents certainly cannot
be regarded as sufficient evidence of it But their notorious
action at this epoch corresponds with striking exactness to
the secret action which this report ascribes to them. The
attempt of Crassus, who in this year was censor, officially to
enrol the Transpadanes in the burgess-list (p. 457) was of
itself directly a revolutionary enterprise. It is still more
remarkable, that Crassus on the same occasion made
preparations to enrol Egypt and Cyprus in the list of Roman
domains,^ and that Caesar about the same time (689 or 65.
690) got a proposal submitted by some tribunes to the 64.
burgesses to send him to Egypt, in order to reinstate king
Ptolemaeus whom the Alexandrians had expelled. These
machinations suspiciously coincide with the charges raised

* Plutarch. Crass. 13 ; Cicero, de Lege agr. ii. 17, 44. To this year
(689) belongs Cicero's or.ition de rege AUxandrino, which has been in- 65.
correctly assigned to the year 698. In it Cicero refutes, as the fragments 56.
clearly show, the assertion of Crassus, that iigypt had been rendered
Roman property by the testament of king Alexander. This question of
law might and must have been discussed in 689 ; but in 698 it had been 65, 56.
deprived of its sipiiificancc through the Julian law of 695. In 698 more- 59, 56.
o%-cr the il 1 related not to the question to whoni I'.gypt Ix-longt-d,

but to the : in of the king driven out by a revolt, and in this trans-

action which IS wfll known to us Crassus played no p.irt. Lastly, Cicero
after the conference of Luca was not at all in a position seriously to oppose
one of the triumvirs.

46S

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES

BOOK V

65

Resump-
tion of [64
the con-
spiracy.

by their antagonists. Certainty cannot be attained on the
point ; but there is a great probabihty that Crassus and
Caesar had projected a plan to possess themselves of the
military dictatorship during the absence of Pompeius ; that
Egypt was selected as the basis of this democratic military
power ; and that, in fine, the insurrectionary attempt of
689 had been contrived to realize these projects, and
Catilina and Piso had thus been tools in the hands of
Crassus and Caesar.

For a moment the conspiracy came to a standstill. The
elections for 690 took place without Crassus and Caesar
renewing their attempt to get possession of the consulate ;
which may have been partly owing to the fact that a relative
of the leader of the democracy, Lucius Caesar, a weak man
who was not unfrequently employed by his kinsman as a
tool, was on this occasion a candidate for the consulship.
But the reports from Asia urged them to make haste. The
affairs of Asia Minor and Armenia were already completely
arranged. However clearly democratic strategists showed
that the Mithradatic war could only be regarded as ter-
minated by the capture of the king, and that it was there-
fore necessary to undertake the pursuit round the Black Sea,
and above all things to keep aloof from Syria (p. 415) —
Pompeius, not concerning himself about such talk, had set
64. out in the spring of 690 from Armenia and marched towards
Syria. If Egypt was really selected as the headquarters
of the democracy, there was no time to be lost ; otherwise
Pompeius might easily arrive in Egypt sooner than Caesar.
The conspiracy of 688, far from being broken up by the
lax and timid measures of repression, was again astir when
the consular elections for 691 approached. The persons
were, it may be presumed, substantially the same, and the
plan was but little altered. The leaders of the movement
again kept in the background. On this occasion they had
set up as candidates for the consulship Catilina himself and

66

63

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPKIUS 469

Gaius Antonius, the younger son of the orator and a
brother of the general who had an ill repute from Crete.
They were sure of Catilina ; Antonius, originally a Sullan
like Catilina and like the latter brought to trial on that
account some years before by the democratic party and
ejected from the senate (p. 373, 380) — otherwise an indo-
lent, insignificant man, in no respect called to be a leader,
and utterly bankrupt — willingly lent himself as a tool to the
democrats for the prize of the consulship and the atlvantages
attached to it Through these consuls the heads of the
conspiracy intended to seize the government, to arrest the
children of Pompeius, who remained behind in the capital,
as hostages, and to take up arms in Italy and the provinces
against Pompeius. On the first news of the blow struck
in the capital, the governor Gnaeus Piso was to raise the
banner of insurrection in Hither Spain. Communication
could not be held with him by way of the sea, since
Pompeius commanded the seas. For this purpose they
reckoned on the Transpadanes the old clients of the
democracy — among whom there was great agitation, and
who would of course have at once received the franchise —
and, further, on different Celtic tribes.^ The threads of
this combination reached as far as Mauretania. One of
the conspirators, the Roman speculator Publius Sittius
from Nuceria, compelled by financial embarrassments to
keep aloof from Italy, had armed a troop of desperadoes
there and in Spain, and with these wandered about as a
leader of free-lances in western Africa, where he had old
commercial connections.

The party put forth all its energies for the struggle of ConsuLir
the election. Crassus and Caesar staked their money — c'ccuons.
whether their own or borrowed — and their connections to

• The Ambrani (Suct. CaeJ. 9) are probably not the Ambroncs named
along with the Cimbri (Plutarch, Mar. 19), but a slip of the pen for
Anxrni.

470

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES

BOOK V

Cicero
elected
instead of
Catilina.

64.

procure the consulship for Catilina and Antonius ; the
comrades of Catilina strained every nerve to bring to the
helm the man who promised them the magistracies and
priesthoods, the palaces and country -estates of their
opponents, and above all deliverance from their debts, and
who, they knew, would keep his word. The aristocracy
was in great perplexity, chiefly because it was not able even
to start counter-candidates. That such a candidate risked
his head, was obvious ; and the times were past when the
post of danger allured the burgess — now even ambition was
hushed in presence of fear. Accordingly the nobility con-
tented themselves with making a feeble attempt to check
electioneering intrigues by issuing a new law respecting the
purchase of votes — which, however, was thwarted by the
veto of a tribune of the people — and with turning over
their votes to a candidate who, although not acceptable to
them, was at least inoffensive. This was Marcus Cicero,
notoriously a political trimmer,^ accustomed to flirt at times
with the democrats, at times with Pompeius, at times from
a somewhat greater distance with the aristocracy, and to
lend his services as an advocate to every influential man
under impeachment without distinction of person or party
(he numbered even Catilina among his clients) ; belonging
properly to no party or — which was much the same — to the
party of material interests, which was dominant in the courts
and was pleased with the eloquent pleader and the courtly
and witty companion. He had connections enough in the
capital and the country towns to have a chance alongside
of the candidates proposed by the democracy ; and as the
nobility, although with reluctance, and the Pompeians voted

^ This cannot well be expressed more naively than is done in the
memorial ascribed to his brother {depet. cons, i, 5 ; 13, 51, 53 ; in 690) ;
the brother himself would hardly have expressed his mind publicly with so
much frankness. In proof of this unprejudiced persons will read not with-
out interest the second oration against Rullus, where the ' ' first democratic
consul," gulling the friendly public in a very delectable fashion, unfolds to
it the ' ' true democracy. ' '

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 471

for him, he was elected by a great majority. The two
candidates of the democracy obtained almost the same
number of votes ; but a few more fell to Antonius, whose
family was of more consideration than that of his fellow-
candidate. This accident frustrated the election of Catilina
and saved Rome from a second Cinna. A little before this
Piso had — it was said at the instigation of his political and
personal enemy Pom|)eius — been put to death in Spain by
his native escort.^ With the consul Antonius alone nothing
could be done ; Cicero broke the loose bond which attached
him to the conspiracy, even before they entered on their
offices, inasmuch as he renounced his legal privilege of
having the consular provinces determined by lot, and
handed over to his deeply- embarrassed colleague the
lucrative governorship of Macedonia. The essential pre-
liminary conditions of this project also had therefore mis-
carried.

Meanwhile the development of Oriental affairs grew daily New
more perilous for the democracy. The settlement of Syria fhe^^^.^
rapidly advanced j already invitations had been addressed spirators.
to Pompeius from Egypt to march thither and occupy the
country for Rome ; they could not but be afraid that they
would next hear of Pompeius in person having taken
possession 01 the valley of the Nile. It was by this very
apprehension probably that the attempt of Caesar to get
himself sent by the people to Egypt for the purpose of aiding
the king against his rebellious subjects (p. 467) was called
forth ; it failed, apparently, through the disinclination of
great and small to undertake anything whatever against the
interest of Pompeius. His return home, and the probable
catastrophe which it involved, were always drawing the
nearer ; often as the string of the bow had been broken,
it was necessary that there should be a fresh attempt to bend

' His epitaph still ext.int runs : Cn. Calfumius Cm. /. Piso quaestor
pro pr. ex s. c. pruvinciam Hispatiiam citariorcm oftinml.

472 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

it. The city was in sullen ferment ; frequent conferences
of the heads of the movement indicated that some step was
again contemplated.
The Ser- What they wished became manifest when the new

T-T-^ian tribunes of the people entered on their office (lo Dec.
law. [64, 690), and one of them, Publius Servilius Rullus, immedi-
ately proposed an agrarian law, which was designed to
procure for the leaders of the democrats a position similar
to that which Pompeius occupied in consequence of the
Gabinio-Manilian proposals. The nominal object was the
founding of colonies in Italy. The ground for these,
however, was not to be gained by dispossession ; on the
contrary all existing private rights were guaranteed, and even
the illegal occupations of the most recent times (p. 370)
were converted into full property. The leased Campanian
domain alone was to be parcelled out and colonized ; in
other cases the government was to acquire the land
destined for assignation by ordinary purchase. To procure
the sums necessary for this purpose, the remaining Italian,
and more especially all the extra-Italian, domain -land was
successively to be brought to sale ; which was understood
to include the former royal hunting domains in Macedonia,
the Thracian Chersonese, Bithynia, Pontus, Cyrene, and
also the territories of the cities acquired in full property by
right of war in Spain, Africa, Sicily, Hellas, and Cilicia.
Everything was likewise to be sold which the state had
acquired in moveable and immoveable property since the
88. year 666, and of which it had not previously disposed;
this was aimed chiefly at Egypt and Cyprus. For the
same purpose all subject communities, with the exception
of the towns with Latin rights and the other free cities,
were burdened with very high rates of taxes and tithes.
Lastly there was likewise destined for those purchases the
produce of the new provincial revenues, to be reckoned
62. from 692, and the proceeds of the whole booty not yet

CHA1-. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 473

legally applied ; which regulations had reference to the
new sources of taxation opened up by Ponipeius in the
east and to the public moneys that might be found in the
hands of Pompeius and the heirs of Sulla. For the exe-
cution of this measure decemvirs with a special jurisdiction
and special iinperium were to be nominated, who were to
remain five years in office and to surround themselves with
200 subalterns from the equestrian order; but in the
election of the decemvirs only those candidates who should
personally announce themselves were to be taken into
account, and, as in the elections of priests (p. 206), only
seventeen tribes to be fixed by lot out of the thirty-five
were to make the election. It needed no great acuteness
to discern that in this decemviral college it was intended
to create a power after the model of that of Pompeius,
only with somewhat less of a military and more of a demo-
cratic hue. The jurisdiction was especially needed for
the sake of deciding the Egyptian question, the military
power for the sake of arming against Pompeius ; the
clause, which forbade the choice of an absent person,
excluded Pompeius; and the diminution .of the tribes
entitled to vote as well as the manipulation of the balloting
were designed to facilitate the management of the election
in accordance with the views of the democracy.

But this attempt totally missed its aim. The multitude,
finding it more agreeable to have their corn measured out
to them under the shade of Roman porticoes from the
public magazines than to cultivate it for themselves in the
sweat of their brow, received even the proposal in itself
with complete indifference. They soon came also to feel
that Pompeius would never acquiesce in such a resolution
offensive to him in every respect, and that matters could
not stand well with a party which in its painful alarm con-
descended to offers so extravagant. Under such circum-
stances it was not difficult for the government to frustrate

474 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

the proposal ; the new consul Cicero perceived the oppor-
tunity of exhibiting here too his talent for giving a finishing
stroke to the beaten party ; even before the tribunes who
stood ready exercised their veto, the author himself with-
63. drew his proposal (i Jan. 691). The democracy had
gained nothing but the unpleasant lesson, that the great
multitude out of love or fear still continued to adhere to
Pompeius, and that every proposal was certain to fail
which the public perceived to be directed against him.
Prepara- Wearied by all this vain agitation and scheming with-

"narchfsts^ out result, Catilina determined to push the matter to a
in Etruria. decision and make an end of it once for all. He took his
measures in the course of the summer to open the civil
war. Faesulae (Fiesole), a very strong town situated in
Etruria — which swarmed with the impoverished and con-
spirators— and fifteen years before the centre of the rising
of Lepidus, was again selected as the headquarters of the
insurrection. Thither were despatched the consignments
of money, for which especially the ladies of quality in the
capital implicated in the conspiracy furnished the means ;
there arms and soldiers were collected ; and there an old
SuUan captain, Gaius Manlius, as brave and as free from
scruples of conscience as was ever any soldier of fortune,
took temporarily the chief command. Similar though less
extensive warlike preparations were made at other points
of Italy. The Transpadanes were so excited that they
seemed only waiting for the signal to strike. In the
Bruttian country, on the east coast of Italy, in Capua —
wherever great bodies of slaves were accumulated — a
second slave insurrection like that of Spartacus seemed on
the eve of arising. Even in the capital there was some-
thing brewing; those who saw the haughty bearing with
which the summoned debtors appeared before the urban
praetor, could not but remember the scenes which had
preceded the murder of Asellio (iii. 530). The capitalists

CHAP. V DURIN(i TlIK ABSENCK OF POMPKIUS 475

were in unutterable anxiety ; it seemed needful to enforce
the prohibition of the export of gold and silver, and to set
a watch over the principal ports. The plan of the con-
spirators was — on occasion of the consular election for 692, 6Z
for which Catilina had again announced himself — summarily
to put to death the consul conducting the election as well
as the inconvenient rival candidates, and to carry the
election of Catilina at any price ; in case of necessity, even
to bring armed bands from Faesulae and the other rallying
points against the capital, and with their help to crush
resistance.

Cicero, who was always quickly and completely informed Election
by his agents male and female of the transactions of the ^ consu""
conspirators, on the day fixed for the election (20 Oct.) again
denounced the conspiracy in the full senate and in presence
of its principal leaders. Catilina did not condescend to
deny it; he answered haughtily that, if the election for
consul should fall on him, the great headless party would
certainly no longer want a leader against the small party
led by wretched heads. But as palpable evidences of the
plot were not before them, nothing farther was to be got
from the timid senate, except that it gave its previous
sanction in the usual way to the exceptional measures
which the magistrates might deem suitable (21 Oct.).
Thus the election battle approached — on this occasion
more a battle than an election ; for Cicero too had formed
for himself an armed bodyguard out of the younger men,
more especially of the mercantile order ; and it was his
armed force that covered and dominated the Campus
Martius on the 28th October, the day to which the election
had been postponed by the serute. The conspirators were
not successful either in killing the consul conducting the
election, or in deciding the elections according to their
mind.

But meanwhile the civil war had begun. On the

476

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES

BOOK V

Outbreak
of the
insurrec-
tion in
Etruria.

Repressive
measures
of the
govern-
ment.

The con-
spirators
in Rome

27th Oct. Gaius Manlius had planted at Faesulae the eagle
round which the army of the insurrection was to flock — it
was one of the Marian eagles from the Cimbrian war — and
he had summoned the robbers from the mountains as well
as the country people to join him. His proclamations,
following the old traditions of the popular party, demanded
liberation from the oppressive load of debt and a modifi-
cation of the procedure in insolvency, which, if the amount
of the debt actually exceeded the estate, certainly stiU
involved in law the forfeiture of the debtor's freedom. It
seemed as though the rabble of the capital, in coming
forward as if it were the legitimate successor of the old
plebeian farmers and fighting its battles under the glorious
eagles of the Cimbrian war, wished to cast a stain not only
on the present but on the past of Rome. This rising,
however, remained isolated ; at the other places of rendez-
vous the conspiracy did not go beyond the collection of
arms and the institution of secret conferences, as resolute
leaders were everywhere wanting. This was fortunate for
the government ; for, although the impending civil war
had been for a considerable time openly announced, its
own irresolution and the clumsiness of the rusty machinery
of administration had not allowed it to make any military
preparations whatever. It was only now that the general
levy was called out, and superior officers were ordered to
the several regions of Italy that each might suppress the
insurrection in his own district ; while at the same time
the gladiatorial slaves were ejected from the capital, and
patrols were ordered on account of the apprehension of
incendiarism.

Catihna was in a painful position. According to his
design there should have been a simultaneous rising in the
capital and in Etruria on occasion of the consular elections ;
the failure of the former and the outbreak of the latter
movement endangered his person as well as the whole

I

CHAP. V DURINr, THE AP.FIKN'CE OF POMPEIUS 477

success of his undertaking. Now that his partisans at
Facsulae had once risen in arms against the government, he
could no longer remain in the capital ; and yet not only did
everything depend on his inducing the conspirators of the
capital now at least to strike quickly, but this had to be
done even before he left Rome — for he knew his helpmates
too well to rely on them for that matter. The more
considerable of the conspirators — Publius Lentulus Sura
consul in 683, afterwards expelled from the senate and 7:.
now, in order to get back into the senate, praetor for the
second time, and the two former praetors Publius Autronius
and Lucius Cassius — were incapable men ; Lentulus an
ordinary aristocrat of big words and great pretensions, but
slow in conception and irresolute in action ; Aulronius
distinguished for nothing but his powerful screaming voice;
while as to Lucius Cassius no one comprehended how a
man so corpulent and so simple had fallen among the con-
spirators. But Catilina could not venture to place his
abler partisans, such as the young senator Gaius Cethegus
and the equites Lucius Statilius and Publius Gabinius
Capito, at the head of the movement ; for even among the
conspirators the traditional hierarchy of rank held its
ground, and the very anarchists thought that they should
be unable to carry the day unless a consular or at least a
praetorian were at their head. Therefore, however urgently
the army of the insurrection might long for its general, and
however perilous it was for the latter to remain longer at
the seat of government after the outbreak of the revolt,
Catilina nevertheless resolved still to remain for a time in
Rome. Accustomed to impose on his cowardly opponents
by his audacious insolence, he showed himself publicly in
the Forum and in the senate-house and replied to the
threats which were there addressed to him, that they should
beware of pushing him to extremities ; that, if they should
set the house on fire, he would be comi>ellcd to extinguish

478 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

the conflagration in ruins. In reality neither private
persons nor officials ventured to lay hands on the dangerous
man ; it was almost a matter of indifference when a young
nobleman brought him to trial on account of violence, for
long before the process could come to an end, the question
could not but be decided elsewhere. But the projects of
Catilina failed ; chiefly because the agents of the govern-
ment had made their way into the circle of the conspirators
and kept it accurately informed of every detail of the plot.
When, for instance, the conspirators appeared before the
strong Praeneste (i Nov.), which they had hoped to surprise
by a coup de tfiain, they found the inhabitants warned
and armed ; and in a similar way everything miscarried.
Catilina with all his temerity now found it advisable to fix
his departure for one of the ensuing days ; but previously
on his urgent exhortation, at a last conference of the
conspirators in the night between the 6th and yth Nov. it
was resolved to assassinate the consul Cicero, who was the
principal director of the countermine, before the departure
of their leader, and, in order to obviate any treachery,
to carry the resolve at once into execution. Early on
the morning of the 7th Nov., accordingly, the selected
murderers knocked at the house of the consul ; but they
found the guard reinforced and themselves repulsed — on this
occasion too the spies of the government had outdone the
conspirators.
Catilina On the following day (8 Nov.) Cicero convoked the

Etrurfa ^ '° senate. Even now Catilina ventured to appear and to
attempt a defence against the indignant attacks of the
consul, who unveiled before his face the events of the last
few days ; but men no longer listened to him, and in the
neighbourhood of the place where he sat the benches
became empty. He left the sitting, and proceeded, as he
would doubtless have done even apart from this incident
in accordance with the agreement, to Etruria. Here he

■

I

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 479

proclaimed himself consul, and assumed an attitude of
waiting, in order to put his troops in motion against the
capital on the first announcement of the outbreak of the
insurrection there. The government declared the two
leaders Catilina and Manlius, as well as those ot their
comrades who should not have laid down their arms by a
certain day, to be outlaws, and called out new levies ; but
at the head of the army destined against Catilina was placed
the consul Gaius Antonius, who was notoriously implicated
in the conspiracy, and with whose character it was wholly
a matter of accident whether he would lead his troops
against Catilina or over to his side. They seemed to have
directly laid their plans towards converting this Antonius
into a second Lepidus. As little were steps taken against
the leaders of the conspiracy who had remained behind in
the capital, although every one pointed the finger at them
and the insurrection in the capital was far from being
abandoned by the conspirators — on the contrary the
plan of it had been settled by Catilina himself before his
departure from Rome. A tribune was to give the signal
by calling an assembly of the people ; in the following night
Cethegus was to despatch the consul Cicero ; Gabinius and
Statilius were to set the city simultaneously on fire at twelve
places ; and a communication was to be established as
speedily as possible with the army of Catilina, which should
have meanwhile advanced. Had the urgent representa-
tions of Cethegus borne fruit and had Lentulus, who
after Catilina's departure was placed at the head of the
conspirators, resolved on rapidly striking a blow, the con-
spiracy might even now have been successful. But the
conspirators were just as incapable and as cowardly as their
opponents ; weeks elapsed and the matter came to no
decisive issue.

At length the countermine brought about a decision.
Lentulus in his tedious fashion, which sought to cover

dSo THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

Conviction negligence in regard to what was immediate and necessary
of the'con- ^^ ^^^ projection of large and distant plans, had entered
spirators into relations with the deputies of a Celtic canton, the
capital. AUobroges, now present in Rome ; had attempted to
implicate these — the representatives of a thoroughly dis-
organized commonwealth and themselves deeply involved
in debt — in the conspiracy ; and had given them on their
departure messages and letters to his confidants. The
AUobroges left Rome, but were arrested in the night
between 2nd and 3rd Dec. close to the gates by the
Roman authorities, and their papers were taken from
them. It was obvious that the Allobrogian deputies had
lent themselves as spies to the Roman government, and
had carried on the negotiations only with a view to convey
into the hands of the latter the desired proofs implicating
the ringleaders of the conspiracy. On the following morn-
ing orders were issued with the utmost secrecy by Cicero
for the arrest of the most dangerous leaders of the plot,
and executed in regard to Lentulus, Cethegus, Gabinius,
and Statilius, while some others escaped from seizure by
flight. The guilt of those arrested as well as of the
fugitives was completely evident. Immediately after the
arrest the letters seized, the seals and handwriting of which
the prisoners could not avoid acknowledging, were laid
before the senate, and the captives and witnesses were
heard ; further confirmatory facts, deposits of arms in the
houses of the conspirators, threatening expressions which
they had employed, were presently forthcoming ; the actual
subsistence of the conspiracy was fully and validly estab-
lished, and the most important documents were immediately
on the suggestion of Cicero published as news-sheets.

The indignation against the anarchist conspiracy was
general. Gladly would the oligarchic party have made use
of the revelations to settle accounts with the democracy
generally and Caesar in particular, but it was far too

CHAP. V DURING THE ARSENCE OF TOMPEIUS 481

thoroughly broken to be able to accomj^lish iliis, and to
prepare for him the fate which it had formerly prepared for
the two Ciracchi and Saturninus ; in this respect the matter
went no farther than good will. The multitude of the
capital was especially shocked by the incendiary schemes
of the conspirators. The merchants and the whole party
of material interests naturally perceived in this war of the
debtors against the creditors a struggle for their very exist-
ence ; in tumultuous excitement their youth crowded, with
swords in their hands, round the senate- house and bran-
dished them against the open and secret partisans of
Catilina. In fact, the conspiracy was for the moment
paralyzed ; though its ultimate authors perhaps were still
at liberty, the whole staff entrusted with its execution were
either captured or had fled; the band assembled at Faesulae
could not possibly accomplish much, unless supported by an
insurrection in the capital.

In a tolerably well-ordered commonwealth the matter Discus-
would now have been politically at an end, and the military ^'°"^ '"
and the tribunals would have undertaken the rest. But in as to the
Rome matters had come to such a pitch, that the govern- of Oiose"
ment was not even in a position to keep a couple of noble- an-csted.
men of note in safe custody. The slaves and frcedmen of
Lentulus and of the others arrested were stirring ; plans, it
was alleged, were contrived to liberate them by force from
the private houses in which they were detained ; there was
no lack — thanks to the anarchist doings of recent years —
of ringleaders in Rome who contracted at a certain rate for
riots and deeds of violence; Catilina, in fine, was informed of
what had occurred, and was near enough to attempt a coup
de main with his bands. How much of these rumours
was true, we cannot tell ; but there was ground for ai)pre-
hension, because, agreeably to the constitution, neither troops
nor even a respectable police force were at the command
of the government in the capital, and it was in reality left

vol- IV I', I

482 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

at the mercy of every gang of banditti. The idea was
suggested of precluding all possible attempts at liberation
by the immediate execution of the prisoners. Constitu-
tionally, this was not possible. According to the ancient
and sacred right of appeal, a sentence of death could only
be pronounced against the Roman burgess by the whole
body of burgesses, and not by any other authority ; and,
as the courts formed by the body of burgesses had them-
selves become antiquated, a capital sentence was no longer
pronounced at all. Cicero would gladly have rejected the
hazardous suggestion ; indifferent as in itself the legal ques-
tion might be to the advocate, he knew well how very
useful it is to an advocate to be called liberal, and he
showed little desire to separate himself for ever from the
democratic party by shedding this blood. But those
around him, and particularly his genteel wife, urged him
to crown his services to his country by this bold step ; the
consul like all cowards anxiously endeavouring to avoid A

the appearance of cowardice, and yet trembling before
the formidable responsibility, in his distress convoked the
senate, and left it to that body to decide as to the life
or death of the four prisoners. This indeed had no mean-
ing; for as the senate was constitutionally even less entitled
to act than the consul, all the responsibility still devolved
rightfully on the latter : but when was cowardice ever con-
sistent ? Caesar made every exertion to save the prisoners,
and his speech, full of covert threats as to the future
inevitable vengeance of the democracy, made the deepest
impression. Although all the consulars and the great
majority of the senate had already declared for the execu-
tion, most of them, with Cicero at their head, seemed now
once more inclined to keep within the limits of the law.
But when Cato in pettifogging fashion brought the
champions of the milder view into suspicion of being
accomplices of the plot, and pointed to the preparations

CHAP. V DURINC, THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 483

for liberating the prisoners by a street-riot, he succeeded in

throwing the waverers into a fresh alarm, and in securing

a majority for the immediate execution of the transgressors.

The execution of the decree naturally devolved on the Exccmion

consul, who had called it forth. I^te on the evening of °,.' ^. *'
' ° tilinanans

the 5th of December the prisoners were brought from their
previous quarters, and conducted across the market-place
still densely crowded by men to the prison in which
criminals condemned to death were wont to be kept.
It was a subterranean vault, twelve feet deep, at the foot
of the Capitol, which formerly had served as a well-
house. The consul himself conducted Lentulus, and
praetors the others, all attended by strong guards ; but
the attempt at rescue, which had been expected, did not
take place. No one knew whether the prisoners were being
conveyed to a secure place of custody or to the scene of
execution. At the door of the prison they were handed
over to the tresviri who conducted the executions, and
were strangled in the subterranean vault by torchlight.
The consul had waited before the door till the execu-
tions were accomplished, and then with his loud well-
known voice proclaimed over the Forum to the multi-
tude waiting in silence, " They are dead." Till far on in
the night the crowds moved through the streets and exult-
ingly saluted the consul, to whom they believed that they
owed the security of their houses and their property. The
senate ordered public festivals of gratitude, and the first men
of the nobility, Marcus Cato and Quintus Catulus, saluted
the author of the sentence of death with the name — now
heard for the first time — of a "father of his fatherland."

But it was a dreadful deed, and all the more dreadful
that it appeared to a whole people great and praiseworthy.
Never perhaps has a commonwealth more lamentably
declared itself bankrupt, than did Rome through this
resolution — adopted in cold blood Ijy the majority of the

THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

government and approved by public opinion — to put to
death in all haste a few political prisoners, who were no
doubt culpable according to the laws, but had not forfeited
life ; because, forsooth, the security of the prisons was not
to be trusted, and there was no sufficient police. It was
the humorous trait seldom wanting to a historical tragedy,
that this act of the most brutal tyranny had to be carried
out by the most unstable and timid of all Roman statesmen,
and that the " first democratic consul " was selected to
destroy the palladium of the ancient freedom of the Roman
commonwealth, the right oi provocatio.
Suppres- After the conspiracy had been thus stifled in the capital

sion of the ... 1,1 • , ,

Etruscan even before it came to an outbreak, there remamed the
insuirec- ^^^ q{ putting an end to the insurrection in Etruria. The
army amounting to about 2000 men, which Catilina found
on his arrival, had increased nearly fivefold by the numerous
recruits who flocked in, and already formed two tolerably
full legions, in which however only about a fourth part of
the men were sufficiently armed. Catilina had thrown
himself with his force into the mountains and avoided a
battle with the troops of Antonius, with the view of com-
pleting the organization of his bands and awaiting the out-
break of the insurrection in Rome. But the news of its
failure broke up the army of the insurgents ; the mass of
the less compromised thereupon returned home. The
remnant of resolute, or rather desperate, men that were
left made an attempt to cut their way through the Apennine
passes into Gaul ; but when the little band arrived at the
foot of the mountains near Pistoria (Pistoja), it found itself
here caught between two armies. In front of it was the
corps of Quintus Metellus, which had come up from
Ravenna and Ariminum to occupy the northern slope of
the Apennines ; behind it was the army of Antonius, who
had at length yielded to the urgency of his officers and
agreed to a winter campaign. Catilina was wedged in on

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE Ui iu.Mi hlUS 485

both sides, and his supplies came to an end ; nothing was
left but to throw himself on the nearest foe, which was
Antonius. In a narrow valley enclosed by rocky mountains
the conflict took place between the insurgents and the
troops of Antonius, which the latter, in order not to be
under the necessity of at least personally performing
execution on his former allies, had under a pretext entrusted
for this day to a brave ofticer who had grown gray under
arms, Marcus Petreius. The superior strength of the
government army was of little account, owing to the nature
of the field of battle. Both Catilina and Petreius placed
their most trusty men in the foremost ranks ; quarter was
neither given nor received. The conflict lastetl long, and
many brave men fell on both sides ; Catilina, who before
the beginning of the battle had sent back his horse and
those of all his officers, showed on this day that nature had
destined him for no ordinary things, and that he knew at
once how to command as a general and how to fight as a
soldier. At length Petreius with his guard broke the
centre of the enemy, and, after having overthrown this,
attacked the two wings from within. This decided the
victory. The corpses of the Catilinarians — there were
counted 3000 of them — covered, as it were in rank and
file, the ground where they had fought ; the officers and
the general himself had, when all was lost, thrown them-
selves headlong on the enemy and thus sought and found
death (beginning of 692). Antonius was on account of 62.
this victory stamped by the senate with the title of Im-
l^erator, and new thanksgiving-festivals showed that the
government and the governed were beginning to become
accustomed to civil war.

The anarchist plot had thus been suppressed in the Atiiniaeo*
capital as in Italy with bloody violence ; people were still ' ^^

reminded of it merely by the criminal processes which in io>»Ardst»>e
the Etruscan country towns and in the capital thinned the '•"*^-^""

486 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

ranks of those affiliated to the beaten party, and by the
large accessions to the robber-bands of Italy — one of which,
for instance, formed out of the remains of the armies of
Spartacus and Catilina, was destroyed by a military force

60. in 694 in the territory of Thurii. But it is important to
keep in view that the blow fell by no means merely on the
anarchists proper, who had conspired to set the capital
on fire and had fought at Pistoria, but on the whole demo-
cratic party. That this party, and in particular Crassus
and Caesar, had a hand in the game on the present occasion

66. as well as in the plot of 688, may be regarded — not in a
juristic, but in a historical, point of view — as an ascertained
fact. The circumstance, indeed, that Catulus and the
other heads of the senatorial party accused the leader of
the democrats of complicity in the anarchist plot, and
that the latter as senator spoke and voted against the brutal
judicial murder contemplated by the oligarchy, could only
be urged by partisan sophistry as any valid proof of his
participation in the plans of Catilina. But a series of
other facts is of more weight. According to express and
irrefragable testimonies it was especially Crassus and Caesar
that supported the candidature of Catilina for the consul-

64. ship. When Caesar in 690 brought the executioners of
Sulla before the commission for murder (p. 460) he allowed
the rest to be condemned, but the most guilty and infamous
of all, Catilina, to be acquitted. In the revelations of the
3rd of December, it is true, Cicero did not include among
the names of the conspirators of whom he had information
those of the two influential men ; but it is notorious that
the informers denounced not merely those against whom
subsequently investigation was directed, but "many inno-
cent " persons besides, whom the consul Cicero thought
proper to erase from the list ; and in later years, when he
had no reason to disguise the truth, he expressly named
Caesar among the accomplices. An indirect but very

CHAK V DUKIN(i Till-: ABSKNCE OF POMPEIUS 4S7

intelligible inculpation is implied also in the circumstance,
that of the four persons arrested on the 3rd of December
the two least danL;erous, Statilius and Gabinius, were handed
over to be guarded by the senators Caesar and Crassus ;
it was manifestly intended that these should either, if they
allowed them to escape, be compromised in the view of
public opinion as accessories, or. if they really detained
them, be compromised in the view of their fellow-con-
spirators as renegades.

The following scene which occurred in the senate shows
significantly how matters stood. Immediately after the
arrest of Lentulus and his comrades, a messenger despatched
by the conspirators in the capital to Catilina was seized
by the agents of the government, and, after having been
assured of impunity, was induced to make a comprehensive
confession in a full meeting of the senate. But when he
came to the critical portions of his confession and in parti-
cular named Crassus as having commissioned him, he was
interrupted by the senators, and on the suggestion of Cicero
it was resolved to cancel the whole statement without
farther inquiry, but to imprison its author notwithstanding
the amnesty assured to him, until such time as he should
have not merely retracted the statement, but should have
also confessed who had instigated him to give such false
testimony ! Here it is abundantly clear, not merely that
that man had a very accurate knowledge of the state of
matters who, when summoned to make an attack upon
Crassus, replied that he had no desire to provoke the bull
of the herd, but also that the majority of the senate with
Cicero at their head were agreed in not permitting the
revelations to go beyond a certain limit. The public was
not so nice ; the young men, who had taken up arms to
ward off the incendiaries, were exasperated against no one
so nmch as against Caesar ; on the 5th of December, when
he left the senate, they pointed iheir swords at his breast.

488 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

and even now he narrowly escaped with his hfe on the
same spot where the fatal blow fell on him seventeen years
afterwards ; he did not again for a considerable time enter
the senate-house. Any one who impartially considers the
course of the conspiracy will not be able to resist the
suspicion that during all this time Catilina was backed
by more powerful men, who — relying on the want of a
legally complete chain of evidence and on the lukewarmness
and cowardice of the majority of the senate, which was but
half-initiated and greedily caught at any pretext for inaction
— knew how to hinder any serious interference with the
conspiracy on the part of the authorities, to procure free
departure for the chief of the insurgents, and even so to
manage the declaration of war and the sending of troops
against the insurrection that it was almost equivalent to
the sending of an auxiliary army. While the course of
the events themselves thus testifies that the threads of the
Catilinarian plot reached far higher than Lentulus and
Catilina, it deserves also to be noticed, that at a much
later period, when Caesar had got to the head of the state,
he was in the closest alliance with the only Catilinarian
still surviving, Publius Sittius the leader of the Mauretanian
free bands, and that he modified the law of debt quite in
the sense that the proclamations of Manlius demanded.

All these pieces of evidence speak clearly enough ; but,
even were it not so, the desperate position of the democracy
in presence of the military power — which since the Gabinio-
Manilian laws assumed by its side an attitude more threaten-
ing than ever — renders it almost a certainty that, as usually
happens in such cases, it sought a last resource in secret
plots and in alliance with anarchy. The circumstances were
very similar to those of the Cinnan times. While in the
east Pompeius occupied a position nearly such as Sulla
then did, Crassus and Caesar sought to raise over against
him a power in Italy like that which Marius and Cinna had

CHAP. V DURING Till-: AliSLNCK OK rOMl'LIUS 489

possessed, with the view of employing it if possible better
than they had done. The way to this result lay once
more through terrorism and anarchy, and to pave that way
Catilina was certainly the fitting man. Naturally the more
reputable leaders of the democracy kept themselves as far
as possible in the background, and left to their unclean
associates the execution of the unclean work, the political
results of which they hoped afterwards to appropriate.
Still more naturally, when the enterprise had failed, the
partners of higher position applied every effort to conceal
their participation in it. And at a later period, when the
former conspirator had himself become the target of political
plots, the veil was for that very reason drawn only the more
closely over those darker years in the life of the great man,
and even special apologies for him were written with that
very object.^

For five years Pompeius stood at the head of his armies Total
and fleets in the east ; for five years the democracy at home ju ^ °
conspired to overthrow him. The result was discouraging, cratic
With unspeakable e.xertions they had not merely attained ^^^^'
nothing, but had suffered morally as well as materially
enormous loss. Even the coahtion of 683 could not but 71.
be for democrats of pure water a scandal, although the
democracy at that time only coalesced with two distinguished
men of the opposite party and bound these to its programme.

* Such an apolopy is the Catilina of Sallust, which was published by
the author, a notorious Caesarian, after the year 708, cither under the 46.
monarchy of Caesar or more probably under the triumvirate of his heirs ;
evidently as a treatise with a political drift, which endeavours to bring into
credit the democratic party— on which in fact the Roman monarchy was
based — and to clear Caesar's memory from the blackest stain that rcstetlon
it ; and with the col'ateral object of whitew.^ ' . . .. ■

of the triumvir .\l;ircus Antouuis (comp. <

The Jugurtha of the s 11 t is in I

partly to expose ilie \ of the ■ .

glorify the Coryphaeus of the democracy. Gams Marius. i lie circi:mstance
that the adroit author keeps the a|K>logctic and incul|uiiory character uf
these writings of his in the Ixickground. proves, not that they .ire noi
partisan treatises, but tliat they are good uncx

490 THE STRUGGLE OF PARTIES book v

But now the democratic party had made common cause
with a band of murderers and bankrupts, who were almost
all likewise deserters from the camp of the aristocracy ; and
had at least for the time being accepted their programme,
that is to say, the terrorism of Cinna. The party of
material interests, one of the chief elements of the coalition

71. of 683, was thereby estranged from the democracy, and
driven into the arms of the Optimates in the first instance,
or of any power at all which would and could give protec-
tion against anarchy. Even the multitude of the capital,
who, although having no objection to a street-riot, found it
inconvenient to have their houses set on fire over their
heads, became in some measure alarmed. It is re-

63. markable that in this very year (691) the full re-establishment
of the Sempronian corn -largesses took place, and was
effected by the senate on the proposal of Cato. The league
of the democratic leaders with anarchy had obviously
created a breach between the former and the burgesses of
the city ] and the oligarchy sought, not without at least
momentary success, to enlarge this chasm and to draw over
the masses to their side. Lastly, Gnaeus Pompeius had
been partly warned, partly exasperated, by all these cabals ;
after all that had occurred, and after the democracy had
itself virtually torn asunder the ties which connected 4t with
Pompeius, it could no longer with propriety make the request

70. — which in 684 had had a certain amount of reason on its
side — that he should not himself destroy with the sword the
democratic power which he had raised, and which had raised
him.

Thus the democracy was disgraced and weakened ; but
above all it had become ridiculous through the merciless
exposure of its perplexity and weakness. Where the
humiliation of the overthrown government and similar
matters of little moment were concerned, it was great and
potent ; but every one of its attempts to attain a real political

CHAP. V DURING THE ABSENCE OF POMPEIUS 491

success had proved a downright failure. Its relation to
Pompeius was as false as pitiful. While it was loading him
with panegyrics and demonstrations of homage, it was con-
cocting against him one intrigue after another ; and one
after another, like soap-bubbles, they burst of themselves.
The general of the east and of the seas, far from standing
on his defence against them, appeared not even to observe
all the busy agitation, and to obtain his victories over the
democracy as Herakles gained his over the Pygmies, with-
out being himself aware of it. The attempt to kindle civil
war had miserably failed ; if the anarchist section had at
least displayed some energy, the pure democracy, while
knowing doubtless how to hire conspirators, had not known
how to lead them or to save them or to die with them.
Even the old languid oligarchy, strengthened by the masses
passing over to it from the ranks of the democracy and
above all by the — in this affair unmistakeable — identity of
its interests and those of Pompeius, had been enabled to
suppress this attempt at revolution and thereby to achieve
yet a last victory over the democracy. Meanwhile king
Mithradates was dead, Asia Minor and Syria were regulated,
and the return of Pompeius to Italy might be every moment
expected. The decision was not far off; but was there in
fact still room to speak of a decision between the general
who returned more famous and mightier than ever, and the
democracy humbled beyond parallel and utterly powerless ?
Crassus prepared to embark his family and his gold and
to seek an asylum somewhere in the east ; and even so
elastic and so energetic a nature as that of Caesar seemed
on the point of giving up the game as lost. In this year
(691) occurred his candidature for the place of pout if ex 6S»
viaximus (p. 460) ; when he left his dwelling on the morning
of the election, he declared that, if he should fail in this
also, he would never again cross the threshold of his house.

492

RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

CHAPTER VI

RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND COALITION OF THE

PRETENDERS

Pompeius When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs com-
mitted to his charge, again turned his eyes homeward, he
found for the second time the diadem at his feet. For long
the development of the Roman commonwealth had been
tending towards such a catastrophe ; it was evident to every
unbiassed observer, and had been remarked a thousand
times, that, if the rule of the aristocracy should be brought
to an end, monarchy was inevitable. The senate had now
been overthrown at once by the civic liberal opposition and
by the power of the soldiery ; the only question remaining
was to settle the persons, names, and forms for the new
order of things ; and these were already clearly enough
indicated in the partly democratic, partly military elements
of the revolution. The events of the last five years had
set, as it were, the final seal on this impending transforma-
tion of the commonwealth. In the newly-erected Asiatic
provinces, which gave regal honours to their organizer as
the successor of Alexander the Great, and already re-
ceived his favoured freedmen like princes, Pompeius had
laid the foundations of his dominion, and found at once
the treasures, the army, and the halo of glory which the
future prince of the Roman state required. The anarchist
conspiracy, moreover, in the capital, and the civil war con

CHAP. VI COALITION OF THE PRETKNDERS 493

nected with it, had made it palpably clear to every one who
studied political or even merely material interests, that a
government without authority and without military power,
such as that of the senate, exposed the state to the equally
ludicrous and formidable tyranny of political sharpers, and
that a change of constitution, which should connect the
military power more closely with the government, was an
indispensable necessity if social order was to be maintained.
So the ruler had arisen in tlie east, the throne had been
erected in Italy ; to all appearance the year 692 was the 62.
last of the republic, the first of monarchy.

This goal, it is true, was not to be reached without a The oppo
struggle. The constitution, which had endured for five "Z^"'/ °^

°° ' the future

hundred years, and under which the insignificant town on monarchy,
the Tiber had risen to unprecedented greatness and glory,
had sunk its roots into the soil to a depth beyond human
ken, and no one could at all calculate to what extent the
attempt to overthrow it would penetrate and convulse civil
society. Several rivals had been outrun by Pompeius in
the race towards the great goal, but had not been wholly
set aside. It was not at all beyond reach of calculation that
all these elements might combine to overthrow the new
holder of power, and that Pompeius might find Quintus
Catulus and Marcus Cato united in opposition to him with
Marcus Crassus, Gaius Caesar, and Titus Labienus. But
the inevitable and undoubtedly serious struggle could not
well be undertaken under circumstances more favourable.
It was in a high degree probable that, under the fresh
impression of the Catilinarian revolt, a rule which promised
order and security, although at the price of freedom, would
receive the submission of the whole middle party — embrac-
ing especially the merchants who concerned themselves only
about their material interests, but including also a great
part of the aristocracy, which, disorganized in itself and
politically hopeless, had to rest content with securing for

494 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

itself riches, rank, and influence by a timely compromise
with the prince ; perhaps even a portion of the democracy,
so sorely smitten by the recent blows, might submit to hope
for the realization of a portion of its demands from a
military chief raised to power by itself. But, whatever
might be the position of party-relations, of what importance,
in the first instance at least, were the parties in Italy at all
in presence of Pompeius and his victorious army ? Twenty
years previously Sulla, after having concluded a temporary
peace with Mithradates, had with his five legions been able
to carry a restoration running counter to the natural
development of things in the face of the whole liberal party,
which had been arming en masse for years, from the
moderate aristocrats and the liberal mercantile class down
to the anarchists. The task of Pompeius was far less
difficult. He returned, after having fully and conscien-
tiously performed his different functions by sea and land.
He might expect to encounter no other serious opposition
save that of the various extreme parties, each of which by
itself could do nothing, and which even when leagued
together were no more than a coalition of factions still
vehemently hostile to each other and inwardly at thorough
variance. Completely unarmed, they were without a
military force and without a head, without organization
in Italy, without support in the provinces, above all, without
a general ; there was in their ranks hardly a soldier of note
— to say nothing of an officer — who could have ventured
to call forth the burgesses to a conflict with Pompeius.
The circumstance might further be taken into account, that
the volcano of revolution, which had been now incessantly
blazing for seventy years and feeding on its own flame, was
visibly burning out and verging of itself to extinction. It
was very doubtful whether the attempt to arm the Italians
for party interests would now succeed, as it had succeeded
with Cinna and Carbo. If Pompeius exerted himself, how

CHAP. VI COALITION OF THE PRETF.NDERS

495

could he fail to efTect a revolution of the state, which was
chalked out by a certain necessity of nature in the organic
development of the Roman commonwealth ?

Pompeius had seized the right moment, when he under- Mission of
took his mission to the east : he seemed desirous to co ^'^p^'^ '°

r 1 T 1 Rome.

forward. In the autumn of 691, Quintus Metellus Nepos 63
arrived from the camp of Pompeius in the capital, and
came forward as a candidate for the tribuneship, with the
express design of employing that position to procure for
Pompeius the consulship for the year 693 and more 61.
immediately, by special decree of the people, the conduct
of the war against Catilina. The excitement in Rome was
great. It was not to be doubted that Nepos was acting
under the direct or indirect commission of Pompeius ; the
desire of Pompeius to appear in Italy as general at the head
of his Asiatic legions, and to administer simultaneously the
supreme military and the supreme civil power there, was
conceived to be a farther step on the way to the throne,
and the mission of Nepos a semi-official proclamation of
the monarchy.

Everything turned on the attitude which the two great Pompeius
political parties should assume towards these overtures ; '" '■|^'^"°°
their future position and the future of the nation depended parties.
on this. But the reception which Nepos met with was it-
self in its turn determined by the then existing relation of
the parties to Pompeius, which was of a very peculiar kind-
Pompeius had gone to the east as general of the democracy.
He had reason enough to be discontented with Caesar and
his adherents, but no open rupture had taken place. It is
probable that Pompeius, who was at a great distance and
occupied with other things, and who besides was wholly
destitute of the gift of calculating his political bearings, by
no means saw through, at least at that time, the extent and
mutual connection of the democratic intrigues contrived
against him ; perhaps even in his haughty and shortsighted

496 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

manner he had a certain pride in ignoring these underground
proceedings. Then there came the fact, which with a
character of the type of Pompeius had much weight, that
the democracy never lost sight of outward respect for the
68. great man, and even now (691) unsolicited (as he preferred
it so) had granted to him by a special decree of the people
unprecedented honours and decorations (p. 444). But,
even if all this had not been the case, it lay in Pompeius'
own well-understood interest to continue his adherence, at
least outwardly, to the popular party ; democracy and mon-
archy stand so closely related that Pompeius, in aspiring to
the crown, could scarcely do otherwise than call himself, as
hitherto, the champion of popular rights. While personal
and political reasons, therefore, co-operated to keep
Pompeius and the leaders of the democracy, despite of all
that had taken place, in their previous connection, nothing
was done on the opposite side to fill up the chasm which
separated him since his desertion to the camp of the demo-
cracy from his SuUan partisans. His personal quarrel Avith
Metellus and Lucullus transferred itself to their extensive
and influential coteries. A paltry opposition of the senate n,
— but, to a character of so paltry a mould, all the more "S
exasperating by reason of its very paltriness — had attended
him through his whole career as a general. He felt it
keenly, that the senate had not taken the smallest step to
honour the extraordinary man according to his desert, that
is, by extraordinary means. Lastly, it is not to be forgotten,
that the aristocracy was just then intoxicated by its recent
victory and the democracy deeply humbled, and that the
aristocracy was led by the pedantically stiff and half-witless
Cato, and the democracy by the supple master of intrigue,
Caesar.

Such was the state of parties amidst which the emissary
sent by Pompeius appeared. The aristocracy not only
regarded the proposals which he announced in favour of

CHAP. VI COALITION OF TlIK PRKTIINDERS 497

Pompeius as a declaration of war against the existing con- Ru
stitution, but treated them openly as such, and took not !^
the slightest pains to conceal their alarm and their indigna- an,: ;..
tion. With the express design of combating these pro[)Osals, »''***='»<T-
Marcus Cato had himself elected as tribune of the people
along with Nepos, and abruptly reixilled the repeated
attempts of Pompeius to approach him personally. Nepos
naturally after this found himself under no inducement to
spare the aristocracy, but attached himself the more readily
to the democrats, when these, pliant as ever, submitted to
what was inevitable and chose freely to concede the office
of general in Italy as well as the consulate rather than let
the concession be wrung from them by force of arms. The
cordial understanding soon showed itself. Nepos publicly
accepted (Dec. 691) the democratic view of the executions 6i
recently decreed by the majority of the .senate, as unconsti-
tutional judicial murders; and that his lord and master
looked on them in no other light, was shown by his signifi-
cant silence respecting the voluminous vindication of them
which Cicero had sent to him. On the other hand, the
first act with which Caesar began his praetorship was to call
Quintus Catulus to account for the moneys alleged to have
been embezzled by him at the rebuilding of the Capitoline
temple, and to transfer the completion of the temple to
Pompeius. This was a masterstroke. Catulus had already
been building at the temple for fifteen years, and seemed
very much disposed to die as he had lived superintendent
of the Capitoline buildings ; an attack on this abuse of a
public commission — an abuse covered only by the reputation
of the noble commissioner — was in reality entirely justified
and in a high degree popular. But when the prospect was
simultaneously opened up to Pompeius of being allowed to
delete the name of Catulus and engrave his own on this
proudest spot of the first city of the globe, there was offered
to him the very thing which most of all delighted him and
vou IV «3^

49^ RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

did no harm to the democracy — abundant but empty
honour ; while at the same time the aristocracy, which could
not possibly allow its best man to fall, was brought into the
most disagreeable collision with Pompeius.

Meanwhile Nepos had brought his proposals concerning
Pompeius before the burgesses. On the day of voting Cato
and his friend and colleague, Quintus Minucius, interposed
their veto. When Nepos did not regard this and continued
the reading out, a formal conflict took place; Cato and
Minucius threw themselves on their colleague and forced
him to stop ; an armed band liberated him, and drove the
aristocratic section from the Forum ; but Cato and Minucius
returned, now supported likewise by armed bands, and ulti-
mately maintained the field of battle for the government.
Encouraged by this victory of their bands over those of
their antagonist, the senate suspended the tribune Nepos
as well as the praetor Caesar, who had vigorously supported
him in the bringing in of the law, from their offices ; their
deposition, which was proposed in the senate, was prevented
by Cato, more, doubtless, because it was unconstitutional
than because it was injudicious. Caesar did not regard
the decree, and continued his official functions till the
senate used violence against him. As soon as this was
known, the multitude appeared before his house and placed
itself at his disposal ; it was to depend solely on him
whether the struggle in the streets should begin, or whether
at least the proposals made by Metellus should now be
resumed and the military command in Italy desired by
Pompeius should be procured for him ; but this was not
in Caesar's interest, and so he induced the crowds to dis-
perse, whereupon the senate recalled the penalty decreed
against him. Nepos himself had, immediately after his
suspension, left the city and embarked for Asia, in order to
report to Pompeius the result of his mission.

Pompeius had every reason to be content with the turn

riCAP. VI COALITION OF TIIF rRFTENDF.RS 499

which things had taken. The way to the throne now lay k'-tirc-
necessarily through civil war ; anci he owed it to Cato's |'.'omp«u»
incorrigible perversity that he could hegin this war with
good reason. After the illegal condemnation of the ad-
herents of Catilina, after the unparalleled acts of violence
against the tribune of the people Metellus, Pompeius might
wage war at once as defender of the two palladia of Roman
public freedom — the right of appeal and the inviolability of
the tribunate of the people — against the aristocracy, and as
champion of the party of order against the Catilinarian
band. It seemed almost impossible that Pompeius should
neglect this opportunity and with his eyes open put himself
a second time into the painful position, in which the dis-
missal of his army in 684 had placed him, and from which 70.
only the Gabinian law had released him. But near as
seemed the opportunity of placing the white chaplet around
his brow, and much as his own soul longed after it, when
the question of action presented itself, his heart and his
hand once more failed him. This man, altogether ordinary
in every respect excepting only his pretensions, would
doubtless gladly have placed himself beyond the law, if
only he could have done so without forsaking legal ground.
His very lingering in Asia betrayed a misgiving of this sort.
He might, had he wished, have very well arrived in January
692 with his fleet and army at the port of Brundisium, and 62.
have received Nepos there. His tarrying the whole winter
of 691-692 in Asia had proximately the injurious conse- 63-62.
quence, that the aristocracy, which of course accelerated
the campaign against Catilina as it best could, had mean-
while got rid of his bands, and had thus set aside the most
feasible pretext for keeping together the Asiatic legions in
Italy. For a man of the type of Pom{)eius, who for want
of faith in himself and in his star timidly clung in public
life to formal right, and with whom the pretext was nearly
of as much imjiortance as the motive, this circumstance was

500 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

of serious weight. He probably said to himself, moreover,
that, even if he dismissed his army, he did not let it wholly
out of his hand, and could in case of need still raise a force
ready for battle sooner at any rate than any other party-
chief; that the democracy was waiting in submissive attitude
for his signal, and that he could deal with the refractory
senate even without soldiers ; and such further considera-
tions as suggested themselves, in which there was exactly
enough of truth to make them appear plausible to one who
wished to deceive himself. Once more the very peculiar
temperament of Pompeius naturally turned the scale. He
was one of those men who are capable it may be of a crime,
but not of insubordination ; in a good as in a bad sense,
he was thoroughly a soldier. Men of mark respect the law
as a moral necessity, ordinary men as a traditional everyday
rule ; for this very reason military discipline, in which more
than anywhere else law takes the form of habit, fetters every
man not entirely self-reliant as with a magic spell. It has
often been observed that the soldier, even where he has
determined to refuse obedience to those set over him, invol-
untarily when that obedience is demanded resumes his
place in the ranks. It was this feeling that made Lafayette
and Dumouriez hesitate at the last moment before the
breach of faith and break down ; and to this too Pompeius
succumbed.
62 In the autumn of 692 Pompeius embarked for Italy.
While in the capital all was being prepared for receiving
the new monarch, news came that Pompeius, when barely
landed at Brundisium, had broken up his legions and with
a small escort had entered on his journey to the capital.
If it is a piece of good fortune to gain a crown without
trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did for
Pompeius ; but on those who lack courage the gods lavish
every favour and every gift in vain.

The parties breathed freely. For the second time

CHAi'. VI COALITION OF THP] PRETKNDERS 501

Pompeius had abdicated ; his already - vanquished com- Pompcius

without
intlucnOL-.

petitors might once more begin the race — in which doubt ^" °"'

less the strangest thing was, that Pompeius was again a
rival runner. In January 693 he came to Rome. His posi- 61.
tion was an awkward one and vacillated with so much
uncertainty between the parties, that people gave him the
nickname of Gnaeus Cicero. He had in fact lost favour
with all. The anarchists saw in him an adversary, the
democrats an inconvenient friend, Marcus Crassus a rival,
the wealthy class an untrustworthy protector, the aristocracy
a declared foe.^ He was still indeed the most powerful
man in the state ; his military adherents scattered through
all Italy, his influence in the provinces, particularly those
of the east, his military fame, his enormous riches gave
him a weight such as no other possessed ; but instead of
the enthusiastic reception on which he had counted, the
reception which he met with was more than cool, and still
cooler was the treatment given to the demands which he
presented. He requested for himself, as he had already
caused to be announced by Nepos, a second consulship;
demanding also, of course, a confirmation of the arrange-
ments made by him in the east and a fulfilment of the
promise which he had given to his soldiers to furnish them
with lands. Against these demands a systematic opposi-
tion arose in the senate, the chief elements of which were
furnished by the personal exasperation of Lucullus and
Metellus Creticus, the old resentment of Crassus, and the
conscientious folly of Cato. The desired second consulship
was at once and bluntly refused. The very first request
which the returning general addressed to the senate, that
the election of the consuls for 693 might be put off till 6L

* The impression of the first address, which Pompeius made to the
InirRcsses after his return, is thus described by Cicero (aJ Att. i. 14) :
frima contio Poinpei non iucunJa miseris (the rabble), inanis im/Toiis
(the democrats), beatis (the wealthy) non grata, bonis (the aristocrats) nam

gni vis ; itaq ue frigcba t.

502 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

after his entry into the capital, had been rejected ; much
less was there any UkeUhood of obtaining from the senate
the necessary dispensation from the law of Sulla as to
re-election (p. ii6). As to the arrangements which he had
made in the eastern provinces, Pompeius naturally asked
their confirmation as a whole; LucuUus carried a proposal
that every ordinance should be separately discussed and
voted upon, which opened the door for endless annoyances
and a multitude of defeats in detail. The promise of a
grant of land to the soldiers of the Asiatic army was ratified
indeed in general by the senate, but was at the same time
extended to the Cretan legions of Metellus ; and — what
was worse — it was not executed, because the public chest
was empty and the senate was not disposed to meddle with
the domains for this purpose. Pompeius, in despair of
mastering the persistent and spiteful opposition of the
senate, turned to the burgesses. But he understood still
less how to conduct his movements on this field. The
democratic leaders, although they did not openly oppose
him, had no cause at all to make his interests their own,
and so kept aloof Pompeius' own instruments — such as
the consuls elected by his influence and partly by his

61. money, Marcus Pupius Piso for 693 and Lucius Afranius

CO. for 694 — showed themselves unskilful and useless. When
at length the assignation of land for the veterans of
Pompeius was submitted to the burgesses by the tribune
of the people Lucius Flavius in the form of a general
agrarian law, the proposal, not supported by the democrats,
openly combated by the aristocrats, was left in a minority

60. (beg. of 694). The exalted general now sued almost
humbly for the favour of the masses, for it was on his
instigation that the Italian toils were abohshed by a law

60. introduced by the praetor Metellus Nepos (694). But he
played the demagogue without skill and without success ;
his reputation suffered from it, and he did not obtain what

CHAP. VI COALITION OF THE PRKTKNDERS 503

he desired. He had completely run himself into a noose
One of his opponents summed up his political position at
that time by saying that he had endeavoured " to conserve
by silence his embroidered triumphal mantle." In fact
nothing was left for him but to fret.

Then a new combination oficred itself. The leader of ^- - "^
the democratic party had actively employed in his own ''"^'
interest the political calm which had immediately followed
on the retirement of the previous holder of power. When
Pompcius returned from Asia, Caesar had been little more
than what Catilina was — the chief of a political party
which had dwindled almost into a club of conspirators,
and a bankrupt. But since that event he had, after ad-
ministering the praetorship (692), been invested with the 62.
governorship of Further Spain, and thereby had found
means partly to rid himself of his debts, partly to lay the
foundation for his military repute. His old friend and
ally Crassus had been induced by the hope of finding the
support against Pompeius, which he had lost in Piso (p.
471), once more in Caesar, to relieve him even before his
departure to the province from the most oppressive portion
of his load of debt. He himself had energetically employed
his brief sojourn there. Returning from Spain in the year
694 with filled chests and as Imperator with well-founded sa
claims to a triumph, he came forward for the following
year as a candidate for the consulship ; for the sake of
which, as the senate refused him permission to announce
himself as a candidate for the consular election in absence,
he without hesitation abandoned the honour of the
triumph. For years the democracy had striven to raise
one of its partisans to the possession of the supreme magis-
tracy, that by way of this bridge it might attain a military
power of its own. It had long been clear to discerning
men of all shades that the strife of parties could not be
settled by civil conflict, but only by military power ; but

504 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

the course of the coaHtion between the democracy and the
powerful military chiefs, through which the rule of the
senate had been terminated, showed with inexorable clear-
ness that every such alliance ultimately issued in a subor-
dination of the civil under the military elements, and that
the popular party, if it would really rule, must not ally
itself with generals properly foreign and even hostile to it,
but must make generals of its own leaders themselves.
The attempts made with this view to carry the election of
Catilina as consul, and to gain a military support in Spain
or Egypt, had failed ; now a possibility presented itself of
procuring for their most important man the consulship and
the consular province in the usual constitutional way, and
of rendering themselves independent of their dubious and
dangerous ally Pompeius by the establishment, if we may
so speak, of a home power in their own democratic house
hold.
Second But the more the democracy could not but desire to

Pompeius Open up for itself this path, which offered not so much the
Crassus, most favourable as the only prospect of real successes, the
Caesar. more certainly it might reckon on the resolute resistance
of its political opponents. Everything depended on whom
it found opposed to it in this matter. The aristocracy
isolated was not formidable ; but it had just been rendered
evident in the Catilinarian affair that it could certainly still
exert some influence, where it was more or less openly
supported by the men of material interests and by the
adherents of Pompeius. It had several times frustrated
Catilina's candidature for the consulship, and that it would
attempt the like against Caesar was sufficiently certain.
But, even though Caesar should perhaps be chosen in
spite of it, his election alone did not suffice. He needed
at least some years of undisturbed working out of Italy,
in order to gain a firm military position ; and the nobility
assuredly would leave no means untried to thwart his plans

CHAi'. VI COALlilON Ol" TllL I'KETKNDKKS 505

during this lime of preparation. The idea naturally oc-
curreti, whether the aristocracy niiyht not be again success-
fully isolated as in 683—684, and an alliance firmly based 71-70
on mutual advantage might nut be established between the
democrats with their ally Crassus on the one side and
Tompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For
Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide.
His weight hitherto in the state rested on the fact, that he
was the only party-leader who at the same time disposed
of legions — which, though now dissolved, were still in a
certain sense at his disposal. The plan of the democracy
was directed to the very object of depriving him of this
preponderance, and of placing by his side in their own
chief a military rival. Never could he consent to this,
and least of all personally help to a post of supreme com-
mand a man like Caesar, who already as a mere political
agitator had given him trouble enough and had just
furnished the most brilliant proofs also of military capacity
in Spain. But on the other hand, in consequence of the
cavilling opposition of the senate and the indifference of
the multitude to Pompeius and Pompeius' wishes, his
position, particularly with reference to his old soldiers, had
become so painful and so humiliating, that people might
well expect from his character to gain him for such a
coalition at the price of releasing him from that disagreeable
situation. And as to the so-called equestrian party, it was
to be found on whatever side the power lay ; and as a
matter of course it would not let itself be long waited for,
if it saw Pompeius and the democracy combining anew in
earnest. It happened moreover, that on account of Cato's
severity — otherwise very laudable — towards the lessees of
the ta.xes, the great capitalists were just at this time once
more at vehement variance with the senate.

So the second coalition was concluded in the summer
of 694. Caesar was assured of the consulship for the 60.

5o6 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

C:hange following year and a governorship in due course : to
'" r of Po™peius was promised the ratification of his arrange-
Caesar. ments made in the east, and an assignation of lands for
the soldiers of the Asiatic army ; to the equites Caesar
likewise promised to procure for them by means of the
burgesses what the senate had refused ; Crassus in fine
— the inevitable — was allowed at least to join the league,
although without obtaining definite promises for an acces-
sion which he could not refuse. It was exactly the same
elements, and indeed the same persons, who concluded
71. the league with one another in the autumn of 683 and
60. in the summer of 694 ; but how entirely different was
the position of the parties then and now ! Then the
democracy was nothing but a political party, while its allies
were victorious generals at the head of their armies ; now
the leader of the democracy was himself an Imperator
crowned with victory and full of magnificent military
schemes, while his allies were retired generals without
any army. Then the democracy conquered in questions
of principle, and in return for that victory conceded
the highest offices of state to its two confederates ; now
it had become more practical and grasped the supreme
civil and military power for itself, while concessions were
made to its allies only in subordinate points and, signifi-
cantly enough, not even the old demand of Pompeius
for a second consulship was attended to. Then the
democracy sacrificed itself to its allies ; now these had
to entrust themselves to it. All the circumstances were
completely changed, most of all, however, the character
of the democracy itself. No doubt it had, ever since it
existed at all, contained at its very core a monarchic
element ; but the ideal of a constitution, which floated
in more or less clear outline before its best intellects,
was always that of a civil commonwealth, a Periclean
organization of the state, in which the power of the prince

ciiAi>. VI COALITION OF TIIK I'KKTKNDKRS 507

rested on the fact that he represented the burgesses in the
noblest and most accomplished manner, and the most
accomplished and noblest part of the burgesses recognized
him as the man in whom they thoroughly confided. Caesar
too set out with such views ; but they were simply ideals,
which might have some influence on realities, but could
not be directly realized. Neither the simple civil power,
as Gaius Gracchus possessed it, nor the arming of the
democratic party, such as Cinna thou'^h in a very inade-
quate fashion had attempted, was able to maintain a
permanent superiority in the Roman commonwealth ; the
military machine fighting not for a party but for a general,
the rude force of the condottieri — after having first appeared
on the stage in the service of the restoration — soon showed
itself absolutely superior to all political parties. Caesar
could not but acquire a conviction of this amidst the
practical workings of party, and accordingly he matured
the momentous resolution of making this military machine
itself serviceable to his ideals, and of erecting such a
commonwealth, as he had in his view, by the power of
condottieri. With this design he concluded in 683 the 71-
league with the generals of the opposite party, which,
notwithstanding that they had accepted the democratic
programme, yet brought the democracy and Caesar him-
self to the brink of destruction. With the same design
he himself came forward eleven years afterwards as a
condottierf. It was done in both cases with a certain
naivete — with good faith in the possibility of his being
able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords
of others, at any rate by his own. We perceive without
difficulty that this faith was fallacious, and that no one
takes an evil spirit into his service without becoming
liimselt enslaved to it ; but the greatest men are not
those who err the least. If we still after so many cen-
turies bow in reverence before what Caesar willed and

So8 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND BOOK V

did, it is not because he desired and gained a crown (to
do which is, abstractly, as httle of a great tiling as the
crown itself) but because his mighty ideal — of a free
commonwealth under one ruler — never forsook him, and
preserved him even when monarch from sinking into
vulgar royalty.
Caesar [59. The election of Caesar as consul for 695 was carried
consu. without difficulty by the united parties. The aristocracy
had to rest content with giving to him- — by means of a
bribery, for which the whole order of lords contributed
the funds, and which excited surprise even in that period
of deepest corruption — a colleague in the person of
Marcus Bibulus, whose narrow - minded obstinacy was
regarded in their circles as conservative energy, and
whose good intentions at least were not at fault if the
genteel lords did not get a fit return for their patriotic
expenditure.
Caesar's As consul Caesar first submitted to discussion the

law. requests of his confederates, among which the assigna-

tion of land to the veterans of the Asiatic army was by
far the most important. The agrarian law projected for
this purpose by Caesar adhered in general to the principles
set forth in the project of law, which was introduced
in the previous year at the suggestion of Pompeius but
not carried (p. 502). There was destined for distribution
only the Italian domain-land, that is to say, substantially,
the territory of Capua, and, if this should not suffice,
other Italian estates were to be purchased out of the
revenue of the new eastern provinces at the taxable value
recorded in the censorial rolls ; all existing rights of
property and heritable possession thus remained unaffected.
The individual allotments were small. The receivers of
land were to be poor burgesses, fathers of at least three
children ; the dangerous principle, that the rendering of
military service gave a claim to landed estate, was not

CHAP. VI COALITION OF TIIF. rRF.TFN'nF.RS 509

laid down, but, as was reasonable and had been done
at all times, the old soldiers as well as the temporary
lessees to be eje( ted were simply rcrommcndcd to the
special consideration of the land -distributors. The exe-
cution of the measure was entrusted to a commission of
twenty men, into which Caesar distinctly declared that he
did not wish to be himself elected.

The opposition had a difficult task in resisting this pro- Opposition
posal. It could not rationally be denied, that the state- ^^,^cracY
finances ought after the erection of the provinces of Pontus
and Syria to be in a position to dispense with the moneys
from the Campanian leases ; that it was unwarrantable to
withhold one of the finest districts of Italy, and one pecu-
liarly fitted for small holdings, from private enterprise ;
and, lastly, that it was as unjust as it was ridiculous,
after the extension of the franchise to all Italy, still to
withhold municipal rights from the township of Capua.
The whole proposal bore the stamp of moderation, honesty,
and solidity, with which a democratic party -character was
very dexterously combined ; for in substance it amounted
to the re establishment of the Capuan colony founded in the
time of Marius and again done away by Sulla (p. 70, 107).
In form too Caesar observed all possible consideration. He
laid the project of the agrarian law, as well as the proposal
to ratify collectively the ordinances issued by Pompeius
in the east, and the petition of the farmers of the taxes for
remission of a third of the sums payable by them, in the
first instance before the senate for approval, and declared
himself ready to entertain and discuss proposals for alter-
ations. The corporation had now opportunity of convincing
itself how foolishly it hail acted in driving Pomi)eius and
the equites into the arms of the adversary by refusing these
requests. Perhaps it was the secret sense of this, that
drove the high-born lords to the most vehement opposition,
which contrasted ill with the calm demeanour of Caesar.

5JO

RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND

BOOK V

Proposals
before the
burgesses.

The agrarian law was rejected by them nakedly and even
without discussion. The decree as to the arrangements
of Pompeius in Asia found quite as little favour in their
eyes. Cato attempted, in accordance with the disreput-
able custom of Roman parliamentary debate, to kill the
proposal regarding the farmers of the taxes by speaking,
that is, to prolong his speech up to the legal hour for
closing the sitting ; when Caesar threatened to have the
stubborn man arrested, this proposal too was at length
rejected.

Of course all the proposals were now brought before the
burgesses. Without deviating far from the truth, Caesar
could tell the multitude that the senate had scornfully
rejected most rational and most necessary proposals sub-
mitted to it in the most respectful form, simply because
they came from the democratic consul. When he added
that the aristocrats had contrived a plot to procure the
rejection of the proposals, and summoned the burgesses,
and more especially Pompeius himself and his old soldiers,
to stand by him against fraud and force, this too was by
no means a mere invention. The aristocracy, with the
obstinate weak creature Bibulus and the unbending dog-
matical fool Cato at their head, in reality intended to push
the matter to open violence. Pompeius, instigated by
Caesar to proclaim his position with reference to the
pending question, declared bluntly, as was not his wont on
other occasions, that if any one should venture to draw the
sword, he too would grasp his, and in that case would not
leave the shield at home ; Crassus expressed himself to the
same effect. The old soldiers of Pompeius were directed
to appear on the day of the vote — which in fact primarily
concerned them — in great numbers, and with arms under
their dress, at the place of voting.

The nobility however left no means untried to frustrate
the proposals of Caesar. On each day when Caesar

CHAP. VI COAIJTION OF TIIK I'RKTKNDKRS <;ti

appeared befoie the people, his colleague Ribulus instituted
the well-known political observations of the weather whi< h
interrupted all public business (p. 208); Caesar did not
trouble himself about the skies, but continued to prosecute
his terrestrial occupation. The tribunician veto was inter-
posed ; Caesar contented himself with disregarding it.
Uibulus and Cato sprang to the rostra, harangued the
multitude, and instigated the usual riot ; Caesar ordered
that they should be led away by lictors from the Forum,
and took care that otherwise no harm should befall
them — it was for his interest that the political comedy
should remain such as it was.

Notwithstanding all the chicanery and all the blustering The
of the nobility, the agrarian law, the confirmation of the i*a^[^."'(^ri«d.
Asiatic arrangements, and the remission to the lessees of
taxes were adopted by the burgesses ; and the commission
of twenty was elected with Pompeius and Crassus at its
head, and installed in office. With all their exertions the
aristocracy had gained nothing, save that their blind and
spiteful antagonism had drawn the bonds of the coalition
still tighter, and their energy, which they were soon to need
for matters more important, had exhausted itself on these
affairs that were at bottom indifferent. They congratulated
each other on the heroic courage which they had displayed ;
the declaration of Bibulus that he would rather die than
yield, the peroration which Cato still continued to deliver
when in the hands of the lictors, were great patriotic feats ;
otherwise they resigned themselves to their fate. The Passive
consul Bibulus shut himself up for the remainder of the o^u""'*
year in his house, while he at the same time intimated by aristocracy,
public placard that he had the pious intention of
watching the signs of the sky on all the days appropriate
for public assemblies during that year. His colleagues
once more admired the great man who, as Ennius had said
of the old Kabius, " saved the state by wise delay,"' and

512 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

they followed his example ; most of them, Cato in-
cluded, no longer appeared in the senate, but within
their four walls helped their consul to fret over the fact
that the history of the world went on in spite of political
astronomy. To the public this passive attitude of the
consul as well as of the aristocracy in general appeared, as
it fairly might, a political abdication ; and the coalition
were naturally very well content that they were left to take
their farther steps almost undisturbed.
Caesar The most important of these steps was the regulating of

^f ith^t"^ the future position of Caesar. Constitutionally it devolved
Gauls. on the senate to fix the functions of the second consular
year of office before the election of the consuls took place ;
accordingly it had, in prospect of the election of Caesar,
58. selected with that view for 696 two provinces in which the
governor should find no other employment than the con-
struction of roads and other such works of utility. Of course
the matter could not so remain ; it was determined among
the confederates, that Caesar should obtain by decree of the
people an extraordinary command formed on the model of
the Gabinio-Manilian laws. Caesar however had publicly
declared that he would introduce no proposal in his own
favour ; the tribune of the people Publius Vatinius therefore
undertook to submit the proposal to the burgesses, who
naturally gave their unconditional assent. By this means
Caesar obtained the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul and the
supreme command of the three legions which were stationed
there and were already experienced in border warfare under
Lucius Afranius, along with the same rank of propraetor
for his adjutants which those of Pompeius had enjoyed ;
this office was secured to him for five years — a longer period
than had ever before been assigned to any general whose
appointment was limited to a definite time at all. The
Transpadanes, who for years had in hope of the franchise
been the clients of the democratic party in Rome and of

ciiAi. \i CDALITKJN OK TIIK rRCTHNDERS jij

Caesar in particular (p. 457), formcti the main |>ortion of
his province. His jurisdiction extended south as fnr an the
Arnus and the Rubico, and included \- • -- ' " -

Subsequently there was added to Caesar
province of Narbo with the one legion .1

resolution adopted by the senate on the proposal of Pom-
peius, that it might at least not see this command also pass
to Caesar by extraordinar)- decree of the burgesses. What
was wished was thus attained. As no troops could consti
tutionally be stationed in Italy pro|)cr (p. 122), the com-
mander of the legions of northern Italy and Caul dominated
at the same time Italy and Rome for the next five years ;
and he who was master for five years was master for
life. The consulship Of Caesar had attained its object A.s
a matter of course, the new holders of power did not neglect
withal to keep the multitude in good humour by games and
amusements of all sorts, and they embraced every opportunity
of filling their exchequer ; in the case of the king of E ■
for instance, the decree of the people, which recognized iim
as legitimate ruler (p. 450), was sojd to him by the coali-
tion at a high price, and in like manner other dynasts and
communities acquired charters and privileges on this
occasion.

The permanence of the arrangements made seemed also Mntora
sufficiently secured. The consulship was, at least for the JS^tf^to*^
next year, entrusted to safe hands. The public believed at for i*>«4f
first, that it was destined for Pompeius and Crassus them- ***^'"'''
selves ; the holders of power however preferred to procure
the election of two subordinate but trustworthy men <>f their
party — Aulus Gabinius, the best among Pompeius' adjutants,
and Lucius Piso, who was less important but was Caesar's
father-in-law —as consuls for 696. Pom|Krius j
undertook to watch over Italy, where at the head of the
commission of twenty he prosecuted the c^ ' n of the
agrarian law and furnished nearly ao,ooo ' • <.-, m great

VOI-. IV 1 33

514 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

part old soldiers from his army, with land in the territory of
Capua. Caesar's north-Italian legions served to back him
against the opposition in the capital. There existed no
prospect, immediately at least, of a rupture among the
holders of power themselves. The laws issued by Caesar
as consul, in the maintenance of which Pompeius was at
least as much interested as Caesar, formed a guarantee for
the continuance of the breach between Pompeius and the
aristocracy — whose heads, and Cato in particular, continued
to treat these laws as null — and thereby a guarantee for the
subsistence of the coalition. Moreover, the personal bonds
of connection between its chiefs were drawn closer. Caesar
had honestly and faithfully kept his word to his confederates
without curtailing or cheating them of what he had pro-
mised, and in particular had fought to secure the agrarian
law proposed in the interest of Pompeius, just as if the case
had been his own, with dexterity and energy ; Pompeius was
not insensible to upright dealing and good faith, and was
kindly disposed towards the man who had helped him to get
quit at a blow of the sorry part of a suppliant which he had
been playing for three years. Frequent and familiar inter-
course with a man of the irresistible amiableness of Caesar
did what was farther requisite to convert the alliance of
interests into an alliance of friendship. The result and the
pledge of this friendship — at the same time, doubtless, a
public announcement which could hardly be misunderstood
of the newly established conjoint rule — was the marriage of
Pompeius with Caesar's only daughter, three-and-twenty
years of age. Julia, who had inherited the charm of her
father, lived in the happiest domestic relations with her
husband, who was nearly twice as old ; and the burgesses
longing for rest and order after so many troubles and crises,
saw in this nuptial alliance the guarantee of a peaceful and
prosperous future.

The more firmly and closely the alliance was thus

CHAP. VI COALITION OF THE I'RETENDERS 515

cemented between Pompeius and Caesar, the more hopeless Situation
grew the cause of the aristocracy. They felt the sword aristwrracy
suspended over their head and knew Caesar sufficiently to
have no doubt that he would, if necessary, use it without
hesitation. " On all sides," wrote one of them, " we are
checkmated ; we have already through fear of death or of
banishment despaired of 'freedom'; every one sighs, no one
ventures to speak." More the confederates could not
desire. But though the majority of the aristocracy was in
this desirable frame of mind, there was, of course, no lack
of Hotspurs among this party. Hardly had Caesar laid
down the consulship, when some of the most violent
aristocrats, Lucius Domitius and Gaius Memmius, proposed
in a full senate the annulling of the Julian laws. This indeed
was simply a piece of folly, which redounded only to the
benefit of the coalition ; for, when Caesar now himself
insisted that the senate should investigate the validity of the
laws assailed, the latter could not but formally recognize
their legality. But, as may readily be conceived, the holders
of power found in this a new call to make an example of
some of the most notable and noisiest of their opponents,
and thereby to assure themselves that the remainder would
adhere to that fitting policy of sighing and silence. At first
there had been a hope that the clause of the agrarian law,
which as usual required all the senators to take an oath to
the new law on pain of forfeiting their political rights, would
induce its most vehement opponents to banish themselves,
after the example of Metellus Numidicus (iii. 471), by refus-
ing the oath. But these did not show themselves so com-
plaisant ; even the rigid Cato submitted to the oath, and
his Sanchos followed him. A second, far from honourable,
attempt to threaten the heads of the aristocracy with
criminal impeachments on account of an alleged plot for the
murder of Pompeius, and so to drive them into exile, was
frustrated by the incapacity of the instruments ; the in-

Si6 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS AND book v

former, one Vettius, exaggerated and contradicted himself
so grossly, and the tribune Vatinius, who directed the foul
scheme, showed his complicity with that Vettius so clearly,
that it was found advisable to strangle the latter in prison
and to let the whole matter drop. On this occasion how-
ever they had obtained sufficient evidence of the total
disorganization of the aristocracy and the boundless alarm
of the genteel lords : even a man like Lucius Lucullus had
thrown himself in person at Caesar's feet and publicly
declared that he found himself compelled by reason of his
great age to withdraw from public life.

Ultimately therefore they were content with a few isolated
victims. It was of primary importance to remove Cato, who
made no secret of his conviction as to the nullity of all the
Julian laws, and who was a man to act as he thought. Such
a man Marcus Cicero was certainly not, and they did not
give themselves the trouble to fear him. But the demo-
cratic party, which played the leading part in the coalition,
could not possibly after its victory leave unpunished the
63. judicial murder of the 5th December 691, which it had so
loudly and so justly censured. Had they wished to bring
to account the real authors of the fatal decree, they ought
to have seized not on the pusillanimous consul, but on the
section of the strict aristocracy which had urged the
timorous man to that execution. But in formal law it was
certainly not the advisers of the consul, but the consul him-
self, that was responsible for it, and it was above all the
gentler course to call the consul alone to account and to
leave the senatorial college wholly out of the case ; for which
reason in the grounds of the proposal directed against Cicero
the decree of the senate, in virtue of which he ordered the
execution, was directly described as supposititious. Even
against Cicero the holders of power would gladly have
avoided steps that attracted attention ; but he could not
prevail on himself either to give to those in power the

CHAP. VI COALITION OF THE PKLTliNDERS 517

guarantees which they required, or to banish himself from
Rome under one of the feasible pretexts on several occasions
offered to him, or even to keep silence. With the utmost
desire to avoid any offence and the most sincere alarm, he
yet had not self-control enough to be prudent ; the word
had to come out, when a petulant witticism stung him, or
when his self-conceit almost rendered crazy by the praise of
so many noble lords gave vent to the well-cadenced periods
of the plebeian advocate.

The execution of the measures resolved on against Cato Clodiui
and Cicero was committed to the loose and dissolute, but
clever and pre-eminently audacious Publius Clodius, who
had lived for years in the bitterest enmity with Cicero, and,
with the view of satisfying that enmity and playing a part
as demagogue, had got himself converted under the consul-
ship of Caesar by a hasty adoption from a patrician into a
plebeian, and then chosen as tribune of the people for the
year 696. To support Clodius, the proconsul Caesar 58.
remained in the immediate vicinity of the capital till the
blow was struck against the two victims. Agreeably to the
instructions which he had received, Clodius proposed to the
burgesses to entrust Cato with the regulation of the com-
plicated municipal affairs of the Byzantines and with the
annexation of the kingdom of Cyprus, which as well as
Egypt had fallen to the Romans by the testament of
Alexander II., but had not like Egypt bought off the
Roman annexation, and the king of which, moreover, had
formerly given personal offence to Clodius. As to Cicero,
Clodius brought in a project of law which characterized the
execution of a burgess without trial and sentence as a crime
to be punished with banishment. Cato was thus removed
by an honourable mission, while Cicero was visited at least
with the gentlest possible punishment and, besides, was
not designated by name in the proposal. But they did
not refuse themselves the pleasure, on the one hand, of

5i8 RETIREMENT OF POMPEIUS book v

punishing a man notoriously timid and belonging to the
class of political weathercocks for the conservative energy
which he displayed, and, on the other hand, of investing
the bitter opponent of all interferences of the burgesses in
administration and of all extraordinary commands with
such a command conferred by decree of the burgesses
themselves ; and with similar humour the proposal re-
specting Cato was based on the ground of the abnormal
virtue of the man, which made him appear pre-eminently
qualified to execute so delicate a commission, as was the
confiscation of the considerable crown treasure of Cyprus,
without embezzlement. Both proposals bear generally the
same character of respectful deference and cool irony, which
marks throughout the bearing of Caesar in reference to the
senate. They met with no resistance. It was naturally of
no avail, that the majority of the senate, with the view of
protesting in some way against the mockery and censure of
their decree in the matter of Catilina, publicly put on
mourning, and that Cicero himself, now when it was too
late, fell on his knees and besought mercy from Pompeius ;
he had to banish himself even before the passing of the
58. law which debarred him from his native land (April 696).
Cato likewise did not venture to provoke sharper measures
by declining the commission which he had received, but
accepted it and embarked for the east (p. 450), What was
most immediately necessary was done ; Caesar too might
leave Italy to devote himself to more serious tasks.

END OF VOL. IV

Printed by R. & R. Ci.akk, Limited, Edinburgh.

DG 209 .n7313 1913 v
Mommsen, Theodor,
The history of Rome
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