Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic/Chapter 2

by James Leigh Strachan-Davidson

Layout 2

CHAPTER II.

ROMAN PARTIES AND STATESMEN.

81-71 B.C.

HEN Cicero entered on public life the government was in the full possession of the "Optimates" or Notables, and of the Senate in which they reigned supreme. These Nobles inherited the splendid traditions of their ancestors who had made Rome great in the century of the Punic and Macedonian wars. At that epoch 250-150 B.C.a ring of great families, some patrician and some plebeian, had been set in a position of eminence, not by any invidious prerogative, but by the natural process of the working forces of the constitution. Every man was "noble" who could count curule magistrates among his ancestors, and he was most noble whose hall showed the greatest number of family portraits of consuls and censors. Power and influence accrued to the men who had led the Roman armies in their triumphal march over the civilised world, and this power and influence they handed on to their descendants. There was likewise among the Romans a strong public opinion in favour of a man's sitting in the seat of his fathers. There was no occasion for the Nobles to assert by law their exclusive right to the highest offices, for the electors would hardly look at any candidate who had not ancestral claims on their attention. It was perfectly legal indeed, for "the son of a Roman Knight"—in other words, for one who did not belong to the official caste—to contend for high office with a Noble; but he would find that the stars in their courses fought against the "new man." "Fato Romæ fiunt Metelli consules"—Providence always sends the great Noble, the Cæcilius Metellus, to the head of the poll. To dream of clearing in a single generation the space that lies between the Roman Knight and the consul is an insolence which is to be suppressed by the united force of the Nobility, and which is looked on with disfavour even amongst the ranks from which the candidate is struggling to emerge.

Thus the Roman Nobles became in fact though not in law an hereditary caste of office-holding families. In their best days they had all the great qualities of an oligarchy—high spirit, steadiness of purpose, persistence under difficulties, trained sagacity in war, and diplomacy. The Nobility represented Rome in a stronger and loftier spirit than any popular organisation could have done, and the Romans were proud to follow its lead and to accept as their own the majestic policy which the Senate announced by word and deed.

During the latter half of the second century 150-100 B.C.the Nobility shows in a less favourable light. It failed to deal with the complicated questions which presented themselves as the result of conquest, especially the agrarian question and the question of the Italian allies. Thus the statesmen who undertook to solve these problems naturally drifted into opposition, and from opposition into revolution. The Roman constitution gave fatal facilities for such a development. It had the theory of popular sovereignty without any machinery for realising that sovereignty in fact. The power of the people was nullified by the dangerous fiction that the whole nation could assemble in the Forum, and that an affirmative answer to the question put by a magistrate to such a casual gathering made the proposal into law, absolute and indefeasible. The machinery, like that of the French plébiscite, was fitted not to express the popular will, but to give opportunities for a despotism. Unlimited power would be lodged in the hands of any magistrate who could organise the city rabble, if only he were unchecked in his right of initiating proposals. To avoid this consequence, the Romans gave the legal power of initiative, not to one man or to any body of men collectively, but to each one of a number of annual magistrates, consuls, prætors, and tribunes, and they further gave to each of them singly an absolute right of veto over the action of any or of all his colleagues. The result was to throw the constitutional control into the hands of the permanent advising board, the Senate of Nobles. Constitutional usage obliged the magistrate to employ his power of initiative only in accordance with the advice of the Senate; if he declined to do so, his action was at once paralysed by the veto, and he must either submit^[1] or else incur the guilt and danger of an actual breach of the law. Thus, so long as a single tribune remained loyal, the Senate would govern Rome in peace.

The whole constitutional fabric rested on the absolute sanctity of the veto. In the controversies of the Gracchi and their successors with the Senate, this ultimate safeguard of the constitution was violated and so the Revolution began. But while they impaired the oligarchical constitution, the democrats failed in all efforts to set up a new one in its place. Notwithstanding its formally recognised sovereignty, the Assembly was too uncertain and too little representative of the whole people to be able either to check its leaders or to give them any effective support in the hour of danger. The demagogues were for the moment irresponsible despots in the midst of a dependent crowd, and for that very reason they had no reserve force of organised public opinion on which to fall back. The democracy in its impotence turned to a military chief, and attained by this evil alliance a brief supremacy under the leadership of Marius and of his successor Cinna. But the revolutionists proved themselves unworthy to rule; they resorted to bloodshed and plunder; they governed yet more despotically than their rivals had done, and without the softening effect of ancestral custom and historic dignity to relieve the naked harshness of their domination. This party fell ingloriously and without regret before the swords of Sulla's veterans when he returned from the East in 83 B.C.

An unlimited power for the reconstruction of the State was lodged in the hands of Sulla. Avowedly the partisan of a Restoration, he attempted little that was original in substance, though many of his regulations were new in form. He desired to revive, so far as possible, the Rome which had been before the Gracchi with such variations in detail and such safeguards against revolution as seemed to be suggested by the experience of the last half-century. The senators were henceforth to have exclusive possession of the jury-courts, the corn-distributions instituted by Gracchus were abolished, and the tribunate which had been used as an instrument of revolution was strictly curbed. The constitutional obligation which lay on the tribune to use his initiative power only with the approval of the Senate, was no longer left to be enforced by the uncertain and, as it had proved, insufficient sanction of the veto, but was raised to the level of positive law; the proposal of a bill to the Plebs was now null and void, unless it had received the previous assent of the Senate. Within the Senate itself precautions were taken to prevent any one man from aspiring to rise above the little circle of his peers; the offices of the State must be held at fixed intervals, and no man might hold the same office twice except after the lapse of ten years. Free popular election of the magistrates was still allowed. Long experience had shown that this was not really dangerous to the supremacy of the Nobles, and that the influence of the great families would secure them a practical monopoly of the highest offices.

Such was the constitution of the Republic when Cicero became a senator. His bold defence of Roscius had marked him out as a future leader of opposition. Indeed, from his position and circumstances he could not well be otherwise. His sympathies were naturally on the side of the equestrian order from which he had sprung, and that order was now in a state of discontent and hostility to the government. For an explanation we must look back a little in the history.

The Roman Nobility was, as we have seen, a Nobility of office; and public opinion as well as positive law prescribed that this official caste should confine itself to the business of war and government, and should hold aloof from trade and banking, and more especially from speculations connected with state-contracts. All these fell into the hands of another set of families, which constituted in its turn a sort of high mercantile caste. As the armies of Rome spread her power over the shores of the Mediterranean, her commerce increased likewise, and so did the complexity and magnitude of her financial arrangements: all this added to the importance of the second order in the State. Its members were necessarily men of wealth and substance, and necessarily likewise they were men who renounced the chances held out to ambition by the official career of magistracy. The new order borrowed a name from the centuries of Knights, which had originally formed the cavalry of the State, and for which a high property qualification was required. Every Roman who was in possession of the requisite property (about £4ooo),^[2] and who had never held a magistracy or sat in the Senate, now called himself a "Roman Knight." The phrase implies pretty much what we mean when we speak of a "private gentleman." The consolidation of the order is due to Caius Gracchus. He gave the Knights outward signs of distinction, the narrow hem of purple on the tunic, the gold ring, and the right to reserved seats, immediately behind the senatorial stalls, in the theatre; he multiplied their influence and their gains by ordering the collection of the taxes of Rome's new province of Asia to be farmed out to them; and above all he gave them a controlling power over the Nobles, by bestowing on them the exclusive right to sit as jurors in the criminal courts.

This new order occupied a position midway between ruling senatorial families and the mass of the people. It was strong enough to give a preponderating power to whichever of the extreme parties it might favour for the moment; and, as its interests were in many respects identical with those of the Commonwealth, it seemed as if this influence was likely to be used for good. To men of substance, engaged in commerce and banking at Rome and throughout the civilised world, public order and the maintenance of credit were matters of prime importance. Whenever 100 B.C.the democratic factions resorted, as under Saturninus, to riot and bloodshed in the streets, the Knights took sides with the Senate against the disturbers of the peace. When the slackness of the Senate allowed piracy to get the upper hand in the Mediterranean or when its leaders pocketed Jugurtha's bribes, while he was cutting the throats of Roman merchants in Africa, the Knights bestirred themselves and gave valuable support to the democratic opposition. Unhappily there were other considerations which touched them more nearly. In the first place the State-contracts were their monopoly, and the equestrian order was apt to be the humble servant of whichever party promised the best bargains. Scarcely less important were its interests in the provincial administration. The Roman Knights trafficked with and lent money to the subjects of the Republic; they had control of the lucrative slave-trade; they collected from the provincials the taxes which had been farmed from the Roman treasury, or which had been pledged to them as security for debt by the local exchequers of client kings and conquered civic communities. All controversies arising out of these matters fell under the cognisance of the Roman governor. If he were contemptuous of the traders and tax-collectors, these might find endless difficulties in exacting their dues; if he were subservient, they were able to reap a rich harvest from the subjects. In every commercial transaction with a provincial the Roman Knight considered himself a privileged person, who might stand on the strictest letter of his bond, if it suited his purpose, or again, if he found it convenient, might play fast and loose with the law. Atticus once asked Cicero's advice on behalf of a provincial who was unable to pay his way. "Good heavens," writes Cicero in reply, "has the man lost his wits? Does this Greek think that he is privileged to commit acts of fraudulent bankruptcy, just as if he were a Roman Knight?"^[3]

"Publicans," or farmers of the taxes, have always laboured under an evil reputation. It is related that to pass a wet day at a French country-house it was once agreed that each of the company should tell a story of robbers. Voltaire was of the party, and when it came to his turn he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, there was once a Farmer-General." "Well," said his hearers, "and what next?" "What next? What more do you want? We were to tell of robbers." The Roman tax-farmers had at least an equal claim to the title. Cicero is a very friendly witness when the Roman Knights are concerned, and we may be sure that he is within the truth when he tells us that a conscientious governor was often sorely perplexed by their demands. When his brother was governor of Asia, Cicero wrote to him: "If we set ourselves in opposition to the publicans we alienate both from ourselves and from the State an order, to which we are under obligations, and which by our efforts has been attached to the constitution. If on the other hand we give way to them in everything, we shall be parties to the utter ruin of those over whose safety and even whose interests it is our bounden duty to keep guard. This is (if we are to look the business in the face) the one great difficulty in your administration."^[4]

We now see why the control of the jury-courts was a matter of prime importance for the equestrian order. In the province they were at the mercy of the governor; they required that he should be at their mercy when he came to stand his trial at home. There was the closest understanding between the Roman Knights in the provinces and their fellows on the bench in the Forum. "In former days," says Cicero,^[5] "when the equestrian order sat on the juries, evil and extortionate magistrates in the provinces were always the humble servants of the tax-farmers; they were civil to the agents of the companies; whenever they saw a Roman Knight in their province, they followed him up with favours and compliments. These efforts did not after all do much to help those who had been guilty of malpractices; but on the other hand many a one found it fatal to him to have acted in any way against the wishes and interests of the order. There was observed among them a strict understanding that any one who had thought himself at liberty to treat with indignity a single Roman Knight should be treated as a malefactor by the whole order." These equestrian juries were naturally disliked and feared by the Nobles. It was against them that the famous appeal of the great orator Lucius Crassus was urged. 106 B.C."Snatch us away from this torture; tear us out of the jaws of those whose cruelty cannot be satiated with our blood; suffer us not to be in bondage to any, saving to yourselves as a nation, to bear whose yoke is within our endurance and within our duty."^[6]

To secure this control over the official class was the first object of equestrian policy; the second was as purely selfish and far more perverse. The Roman Knights claimed for themselves an immunity from all State-prosecutions. The senators, such was their contention, are the governing class, and against them alone should such prosecutions be directed. Cicero puts their pretension as plausibly as he can when pleading at the bar for an equestrian client.^[7] "There is a charm in the most exalted rank in the State, in the curule chair, the fasces, the commands, governments, priesthoods, triumphs, and, last of all, in the effigy which hands down your memory to posterity. Along with these come some anxieties, and a greater responsibility to laws and tribunals. We have never thought lightly of your prerogatives (so the Roman Knights argue), but we have chosen instead this life of quiet and leisure; as there is no glory to win in it, so let there be no trouble to molest it." This limitation was introduced not only in the case of the court which dealt with extortion in the provinces, but also into the trial of charges for judicial corruption. A senator, who gave false witness or conspired to bribe a jury or himself took money for the condemnation of an innocent man, might be put on his trial for the offence; any other citizen was irresponsible. This monstrous immunity was not only publicly defended by Cicero,^[8] the favourite champion of the equestrian order, but was acquiesced in even by its greatest enemy, Sulla, who "when he reconstituted the court for the trial of these offences, forasmuch as he had found the Commons of Rome free from such responsibility did not venture to entangle them in fresh liabilities."^[9] Any one who presumed to interfere with these cherished exemptions and prerogatives incurred the deadly enmity of the Roman Knights. Livius Drusus, the patriotic tribune of 91 B.C., had committed this unpardonable offence, and, in order to thwart him, the Knights turned against the Italian allies, whose cause Drusus defended, and thus involved Rome in the disaster of the Social War.^[10] On this occasion, as on many others, those who might have controlled both the extreme parties and enforced moderation on both, preferred to sell their support to whichever of the combatants best served their private interests and class privileges.

When the contest with the allies developed in the years 88 and 87 into the first Civil War, the equestrian order patched up its differences with the Italians; but the alarm which Drusus had spread in its ranks was still the governing principle of its policy. In fear and hatred of the Nobility the Knights espoused the democratic cause. They saw with satisfaction their haughty rivals fall beneath the daggers of Marius, and pressed forward to buy up the confiscated properties. A terrible day of reckoning was in store for them. The full brunt of Sulla's savage retaliation fell on the equestrian order, twenty-six hundred of whose members found their names in the Proscription Lists.^[11] Sulla reduced the survivors to political insignificance by expelling them from the jury-courts, and at the same time he deprived them of dignity and precedence by withdrawing their valued privilege of special seats in the theatre.

The equestrian order was naturally the enemy of the constitution established by Sulla; and, decimated though it had been by the Proscriptions, its influence was still considerable. The enfranchisement 90-81 B.C.of the Italians had filled its ranks with worthy recruits. In each new municipal town and district were to be found substantial and

SLING MISSILES FOUND AT ASCULUM.

SOME OF THESE DATE FROM THE SOCIAL WAR.

(Duruy.)

honourable families, whose members were now Romans, but Romans without ancestral nobility; not belonging by birth to the official caste, these naturally found their place in the second order of the State.

The Roman Knights, not being personally engaged in politics, sought their spokesmen and representatives among those members of the senatorial order who were most in sympathy with their feelings and interests. At this time their most prominent champion was Marcus Licinius Crassus, 74 B.C.a man of high nobility and now in the prime of life. He had fought on the side of Sulla in the Civil War, but he had no loyalty to his caste; as the richest man in Rome and the foremost in all lucrative speculations, he was the natural representative of the capitalists and bankers. Cicero himself was fast rising into the position of a second leader of the party. He had fully resolved to win his way by his own talents and energy to the highest grade in the State. For the last three generations only one "new man" had succeeded in attaining the consulship, and this one was his fellow-townsman, Caius Marius. In aspiring to reach the same goal Cicero must necessarily offend all the proprieties of good society, and must be sure that the ruling families would exert themselves to exclude him. He describes the struggle as he looks back on it in the inaugural speech of his consulship.^[12] "I am the first 'new man' whom you have raised to the consulship after an interval which reaches back almost beyond our recollection and the present generation; I have shown you the way into that stronghold which the Nobility has held with its garrison and fortified with every device; you have breached the defences of that stronghold, and have willed that they should lie open to merit in the future."

The professional rivalry between Cicero and Hortensius at the bar was sharpened by the circumstance that the one represented the "new men" and the other the ruling Nobility. The one naturally led the assault and the other defended the barriers of political and social exclusiveness which Cicero had resolved to pass. We may catch a glimpse of the situation in a passage^[13] where the younger advocate challenges the behaviour of the high society of Rome, tolerant to the mis-doings of those within the charmed circle, cold and rigid towards all outsiders-"Is it not intolerable, Hortensius, to see that your friendship and that of the rest of the great and noble allows an easier approach to the wickedness and effrontery of Verres, than to the virtue and incorruptibility of any one of us. You detest the industry of 'new men,' you look down on their frugal life, you think scorn of their purity, and for their genius and their manliness you wish it stifled and crushed out. Verres is your favourite."

The survivors of the Marian party were of course bitterly opposed to the constitution set up by the conqueror; but they had exhausted themselves 78 B.C.in an abortive attempt at revolution under the conduct of Lepidus immediately after Sulla's death. They gathered around Crassus, so far as he showed himself in opposition; but much their ablest man and the one already marked out for their future chief was the young Caius Julius Cæsar. Wild and profligate and immersed in debt though he was, his native genius, his manly beauty and the charm of his manners and conversation already won the hearts of men and women and made him the most popular man in Rome. Though a patrician of the very bluest blood, claiming descent from Æneas and the kings of Alba, he was closely connected by family ties with the democratic party. Julia, Cæsar's aunt, was married to Marius, and he himself had taken to wife Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna. Cæsar, like Cicero, and under circumstances of greater danger, first showed his mettle by daring to oppose the will of Sulla; the threats of the Dictator failed to terrify the young man into divorcing Cornelia, and he was obliged to fly for his life. His powerful friends and relations afterwards extorted a reluctant pardon from Sulla, who warned them that "in that young dandy there lay hidden many Mariuses."

Young as he was, being four^[14] years junior to Cicero, Cæsar from the first judged and acted for himself. He saw that the movement of Lepidus in 78 B.C. was premature and destined to fail, and he refused to throw in his lot with it. He urged that the various provisions of the complicated constitution of Sulla should be assailed one by one, and that the rehabilitation of the tribunate was the first point to aim at. The personal disqualifications which Sulla had attached to all who had ever held this office were removed by a law of the orator Cotta in his consulship 75 B.C.; and another ordinance of the Dictator was repealed by the renewal of the distributions of corn to the people.

In estimating the forces with which the government had to reckon, we must not forget the newly found power of a professional soldiery. During the three generations which elapsed between the first consulship of Marius and the battle of Actium the Roman armies were organised on a principle intermediate between the militia system of the earlier Republic and the permanent standing armies of the Empire. The soldier, during this period of transition, is a volunteer and not a conscript. He is no longer a citizen serving his time in the ranks, but a professional. On the other hand he is under no permanent contract with the State, and hardly feels himself to be its servant. He has enlisted under a particular general for a particular war, which now often extends over many campaigns, and to his general alone he looks for promotion and for reward.^[15] There now comes into prominence the personal "sacramentum "or oath of military obedience which the soldier swears to his own commander. The "sacramentum" and not loyalty to the State is his point of honour, and the circumstances under which this allegiance may be lent or recalled or transferred are points to be argued with the lawyer-like precision which the Romans carried into all their transactions whether with men or gods.

The power of this mercenary soldiery had been abundantly shown by Sulla, who revealed the fatal secret that with a victorious proconsul and a veteran army lay the last word in political contests. When Sulla had completed his work of restoration, it was from the same quarter that danger to his oligarchical constitution was most to be apprehended. Yet Sulla did nothing or little to guard against the peril. The best safeguard would have been a strong central executive in Rome, wielding the whole military force of the empire and strictly responsible to the Senate. But this seemed too hazardous an experiment. Sulla weakened the magistrates at the seat of government, lest they should be too strong for the Senate, and shut his eyes to the fact that he thus renounced control over the far more dangerous magistrates on the frontiers.

As yet the mercenary soldiery was only half conscious of its powers; nevertheless the fact that a new military force had grown up was one of the main elements in the political situation. The blind hopes and wishes of the soldiers needed a representative, and this representative was found in the person of the young commander Cnæus Pompeius Magnus. Born in the same year as Cicero, and son of the consul under whom Cicero had served in the Social War (p. 11), Pompey was twenty-three years of age when Sulla returned from the East in 83 B.C. By his own influence and reputation with the soldiers, Pompey raised three legions in Picthum, out-manœuvred the superior forces opposed to him, and affected a junction with Sulla's troops in Southern Italy. The Dictator treated the young soldier with marked distinction; he employed him in independent commands, he yielded in spite of all constitutional objections to his demand for a triumph, and saluted him with the title of "the Great," which Pompey bore henceforth as a surname. After Sulla's death Pompey in turn lent his sword to defend the constitution against the attacks of Lepidus. Nevertheless the union between the general and the government was never hearty or sincere; and this was mainly because the oligarchs would not take the trouble to bind Pompey to their cause. It was intolerable to them that any man should claim the exceptional position which Pompey had occupied from the outset, and which he had no intention of relinquishing. It was contrary to all rules that a young man, not yet of senatorial age, who had filled none even of the minor magistracies of the State, should be invested with one extraordinary command after another, that he should be general-in-chief of armies, and triumph like a legitimate consul. Pompey was not really a dangerous man: he had no designs against the State, and no love of the hazards and dislocations of revolution; he asked for nothing better than to be the armed protector of a Republican government; but he considered himself a privileged person, for whom every-day rules were not made, and he was fully resolved not to reduce himself to the rank of an ordinary noble as the principles of oligarchy required. The difference was one which might have been easily settled with a little tact on both sides; but this was wanting, and the influence of Pompey must be considered as potentially at least on the side of the opposition.

These then were the forces which threatened the established order of things when Cicero became a senator. We have yet to consider what was the character of the government itself, and who were its chief supporters. An oligarchy, governing by a permanent and practically hereditary chamber, such as was the Roman Senate, is exposed to many risks and dangers. [t is apt to injure itself by over-exclusiveness, cutting off the supply of able recruits from below, and thus impairing the efficiency in administration which is the chief title of such a government to rule. The great prizes which are to be distributed among its members give occasion to cliques and cabals within the privileged ranks. Self-conceit shuts the eyes of the Nobles to dangers, and leads them to disregard public opinion outside their own ranks as the mere babble of the multitude; lack of sympathy and intelligence makes them slow to read the necessities of the time, and they are apt to be affected by a certain lordly apathy which prevents their seriously exerting themselves to frame a policy or to adapt themselves to changing social conditions. These are all natural and inherent defects which every oligarchy has to dread. These dangers may be aggravated by habits of luxury and by the absence of political responsibility. Never, perhaps, was an oligarchy set in the midst of such dangers and temptations as those with which Sulla had surrounded the ruling families of Rome. He had carefully stopped all the channels through which public opinion could legitimately find utterance, and had freed the Nobles from all responsibility except to their own order. The fear of equestrian juries and of tribunician license had at least brought it home to the governing class that they were not the whole State. Now there was nothing to disturb their repose. Sulla's constitution staked all on the hope that within this ring of families there should be a constant succession of vigorous administrators and able officers capable of guiding the State in peace and war. But the system was little calculated to produce the men required to work it. The Roman Noble was encouraged to spend his youth in luxury and extravagance. If he were easy-going and careless, he sank into the class of elegant triflers of whom Cicero says—"they are so stupid that they seem to think that though the Commonwealth may go to ruin, their fish-ponds will be safe." If he had ambition, then the wilder his expenditure on shows and largesses, the more surely he might look forward to his election as prætor and as consul. Here was the opportunity to restore his shattered fortune. The world was divided into provinces, each of which was destined to be prey of one member after another of the official caste at Rome. The short period of eleven years between the dictatorship of Sulla and the first consulship of Pompey has for its typical administrators the three men whose names Juvenal selects out of all past history when he wishes to gibbet the most shameless and notorious plunderers of the provinces—Dolabella, Antonius, and Verres.^[16] We must turn again to Cicero for a summing up of the condition of the subjects of Rome under this dreadful yoke. "All the provinces are mourning, all the free states are complaining, every principality utters its protest against our greed and our insolence; within the bounds set by the Ocean there is no spot so distant or so retired that the lewdness and evil dealing of our nation have not found the way thither. The tribes of the earth overpower the Roman People beyond its endurance, not with force, not with arms, not with war, but with their sorrow, their tears, their lamentation."^[17]

One more cause of demoralisation must not be forgotten. The Roman oligarchy owed its present position to the sword of Sulla, and had founded its domination on the slaughter and robbery of all its principal opponents. Such a past is enough to sap the rigour of any body of politicians; it leads them to look to mere brute force to clear a way for them out of their perplexities; it seems to absolve them from the necessity for wisdom and prescience and statesman-like capacity, and teaches them to evade the task of finding a solution for political problems.

Rome still possessed in her ruling order some men of respectable ability, who in easy and quiet times might perhaps have conducted the business of the State creditably, though they were unequal to deal with the tremendous issues of their own day. Such was Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, whom we have already seen as a leader of the bar; Servilius Isauricus who did good service in Cilicia in the years 78-76; Metellus Pius who at the head of an army in Spain displayed a moderate soldier-like capacity, though he was overshadowed by his younger and more vigorous colleague Pompey; Servius Sulpicius Rufus, a young man of amiable character and blameless life, who was already becoming famous as the most learned lawyer in Rome; Quintus Lutatius Catulus, a distinguished and respected nobleman already past middle age, and lastly one man of more brilliant parts, Lucius Licinius Lucullus. Lucullus after his consulship in 74 B.C. was entrusted with the command against Mithridates of Pontus, who had again resolved to try the fortune of war with the Roman People, and who was now supported by the powerful king of Armenia. In this war Lucullus showed a boldness and skill which we may almost call military genius, but this was marred by a carelessness of disposition and an incapacity for dealing with men, which effectually prevented his becoming a great statesman.

A more interesting personality than all these was just rising into notice. Marcus Porcius Cato, a descendant of the famous censor, was the youngest of the four great men whose fortunes were involved in the fall of the Roman Republic; he was born in the year 96 B.C.,^[18] ten years after Cicero and Pompey, and six years after Cæsar. Plutarch tells us a story of his childhood, which seems like a foreshadowing of his whole life. He was nephew of the great Livius Drusus, and happened to be with other children at his uncle's house, when the question of the enfranchisement of the allies was beginning to be mooted. Pompædius Silo, 91 B.C.an eminent Italian who was present, laughingly canvassed the children for their vote and interest in his cause; and all readily consented except Cato. He had somehow got it into his obstinate little head that to yield to the demands of her allies would be unworthy of Rome. When coaxing failed, Pompædius held him out of the window and threatened to drop him; but no, "he would not, and he would not." If the fate of Italy had rested with this urchin of five years old, he would have died sooner than allow her to be saved from the Social War.

The same unbending temper, inaccessible to reason, to fear, or to favour, characterised Cato throughout. He always did that which his conscience told him was right, irrespective of consequences, and his very narrowness made him a power. He was the only Roman whom Cæsar condescended to fear and to hate. He might unconsciously do Cæsar's work for him; in fact, his shortsightedness caused him repeatedly to throw the game into Cæsar's hands; but he could neither be bought, nor conciliated, nor coerced; and such a man was highly provoking to Cæsar. In aims, in character, and in conduct, alike in their qualities and in their defects, the two men were hopelessly antagonistic. Cato's whole life was a tacit condemnation of Cæsar, and his voluntary martyrdom was a keenly felt reprobation of the Dictator and all his works. Cæsar pursued him even in his grave with a lampoon.

Cato's obstinacy, his narrowness, and his irapracticability will find ample illustration in the following pages, and I need not dwell on them here. But we must not forget the other side of the picture. In an age of the most unbridled license of speech, an age which would have been inclined to leave, "not even Lancelot brave or Galahad pure," the character of Cato stood alike above censure and above eulogy.^[19] The common sense of the Romans recognised in him a man over whose actions corrupt or self-seeking motives had no power, and whose sole thought was of duty. He became to them a sort of embodiment of the public conscience; "to earn the approval of Cato," was a synonym for pure and righteous action. Rome was the better for having a living standard of integrity set before her eyes. An advocate, though he might quake at the thought of having him for a juror, hesitated to challenge Cato, for such a challenge seemed an acknowledgment that his case was a bad one. In the year 54 B.C. certain candidates for the tribuneship, who wished for once to have a pure election, agreed each of them to deposit a large sum with Cato, which the depositor was to forfeit if his proceedings seemed to Cato deserving of blame; "if," exclaims Cicero,^[20] "there is really no bribery this time (and people seem to think that this will be so), Cato singlehanded will have proved of more avail than all the laws and all the courts." He was likewise through life the champion of the helpless provincials,^[21] and in the last terrible struggle he lifted up his voice, though in vain, against the harshness and cruelty of his associates. Cato's want of tact and judgment often made him a sore trial and vexation to his friends; but these weaknesses were on the surface; at heart the man was sound, honest, and fearless. His faults have deserved to be forgotten by posterity, and his virtues have been claimed as a possession of the world or all time. It has proved true for him, that "The path of duty was the path of glory."

The fortunes of Rome were chequered during the years following the Restoration which was the work of Sulla. Lucullus, as we have seen, won some brilliant victories in the East. Spain was disturbed by a remnant of the Marians under Sertorius. By the aid of native allies Sertorius resisted for long years with varying success the efforts of Metellus and Pompey. His assassination by one of his Roman comrades caused the collapse of the Spanish insurrection, and the country was effectually subdued by Pompey. Meanwhile the government had on its hands two contests of a very dangerous and irritating nature. It was too timid or too supine to organise a powerful and centralised fleet, or to supply Italy with a proper garrison. The result of the first error was that pirates swarmed over the Mediterranean. A half-hearted attempt was made to create a High Admiral in the person of Antonius, but he proved both corrupt and incapable; he plundered the subjects of Rome remorselessly, and was defeated by the pirates. After this, the Senate desisted from its efforts. Still nearer home, a serious danger befell the Romans in the slave insurrection headed by Spartacus. The great plantations worked by slave-labour, which were so convenient and profitable to the wealthy Nobles, filled Italy with men whose extreme misery made them ready for any desperate attempt; and bold bandit chiefs were reared for them in the gladiatorial training-schools, which for the purposes of the game were obliged to cherish in their victims habits of endurance, contempt of pain and death, and a sense of honour to be kept bright in spite of social degradation. Cicero has described how "gladiators, barbarians or criminals though they be, stand to the stroke; how those who have perfected themselves in their calling will rather take the wound than avoid it by foul play; how manifest it is that their first object is to do their duty to their master and to the public. Even when sinking under his wounds the man sends a message to his master to know whether he has any further orders; if his master thinks he has done enough,^[22] he should be glad to be allowed to lie down and die." Spartacus, a gladiator of this type, escaped from his barrack and soon collected round him an army recruited from among the slaves of Southern Italy. After defeating over and over again the Roman magistrates and their hasty levies, the insurgents were at length crushed by Crassus, and their leader fell in battle. This was in the year 71 B.C.; at the same moment Pompey returned with his army from Spain, and extirpated the remnants of the rebel force.

COIN STRUCK BY ITALIANS IN SOCIAL WAR.

SABELLIAN BULL GORING THE ROMAN WOLF.

(Duruy.)

---

1. As for instance Scipio Africanus was obliged to do when he tried to override the Senate in his first consulship, 205 B.C.; see Livy, xxviii., 45.
2. Throughout this volume I count 100 sesterces as equal to £1 sterling, and an Attic talent as equal to £250. This is a rough compromise between the weight of gold and the weight of silver in the sums named. In the ancient world gold was worth only about twelve time its weight in silver.
3. Ad. Att., iv., 7, 1.
4. Ad Q. F., i., 1, 32.
5. In Verr., iii., 41, 94.
6. De Orat., i., 52, 225.
7. Pro Rab. Post., 7, 16.
8. See below, p. 185
9. Pro Clu., 55, 151.
10. See above, p. 12. We shall see later on how the equestrian order turned against Cato for the same reason.
11. Appian, Bell. Civ., i., 103.
12. Contra Rullum, ii., 1, 3.
13. In Verr., iii., 4, 7.
14. I adopt Mommsen's conclusion that Cæsar was really born in the year 102. Most authorities make him two years younger.
15. The mischief of the want of a regular system of retirement and pension is set forth by Mr. Fowler in his Life af Cæsar in this series (p. 107).
16. Juvenal, Sat., viii., 105.
17. In Verr., iii., 89, 207.
18. The date commonly given is 95, but we know that he was quæstor when Catulus was censor (Plutarch, Cato Minor, 16, 4), i.e., in 65 B.C., and he must therefore have passed thirty at the beginning of that year.
19. Cujus gloriæ neque profuit quisquam laudando, nec vituperando quisquam nocuit, quum utrumque summis præditi fecerint ingeniis.—Livy, Fragm., 44 (Madvig).
20. Ad Att., iv., 15, 8.
21. A quo uno omnium sociorum querellre audiuntur.—Ad fram., xv., 4, 15.
22. Reading "si" with Tischer. Tusc. Disp., ii., 17, 41.