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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A IITHOK: MERIVALE, CHARLES TITLE: THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES PLACE: LONDON DA TE: 1876 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Master Negative H • i Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record , r ..•' Li . I. J in ■ ■ v.- I. . n^. . . .. . i^t i , .^^-l...J ' « I ■liu. i lijj ■i i lH iii .pw ■■ -T- ■ • ■■ ■ ■ • i L874.05 . I , Merivale, Charles, 180&-1893. ... The Roman triumvirates; by Charles Merivale ... London, Longmans, Green, and co., 1876. xiii, 238 p. front, (fold, map) 16"°. (Half -title: Epochs of ancient ^ history, ed. by G. W. Cox and C. Sankey) :' D050i7 Copy in Hio 4rory-ft^ft4in g Roomr - .■ M5 42> D930,7 Copy in College Study. -ti54-2 l.Jome— Hist.— Republic, d. c. 265-30. [J ^ Library of Congress <- DG261.M4 J Restrictions on Use: ____„_„^___„ FILM SIZE: ?_€j^^_ REDUCTION RATIO: J_?2S IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA 5S> ^D IIU DAfE FILMED: y^JtL/H INITIALS th.L^S- FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUDLICATIONS, INC WOOD13R1DGE, CT XE Association for Information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 entimeter 12 3 4 lllllllllllllllllllllllillllllllll nil liLi llllllllllllHlllHll lllllll UU 8 9 10 11 luluuiuiiuuliii^ 12 13 14 iiliinliiiiliiiiliiiili 15 mm in TTT Inches Mill IT I 1 1.0 I.I 1.25 TTT !■■ 2.8 1 ^"^ !■■ 1^ 3.2 13.6 2.2 IjO ■ o 140 2.0 1.8 1.4 1.6 TTT TTT S' . MflNUFRCTURED TO fillM STfiNDRRDS BY fiPPLIED IMRGE, INC. 814-. 05 M54 CC^oUvmbUi SVulucvsltjj iu the City of ucca . . .87 57 An extraordmary commission assigned to Pompeius . . 87 56 Proposed restoration of the king of Eg>'pt . . .88 Disturbances in the city 88 56 Caesar again at Lucca. Impending crisis of the free- state 54 Caesar's command extended for a second term of five years Death of JuHa 54 Relative position of the triumvirs at this period 54 Crassus pro-consul in Syria ^3 Battle of Carrhae 53 Caesar's peril in Gaul : sixth year of the Gallic Ascendency of Pompeius in the senate 52 Milo slays Clodius .... 52 Pompeius appointed sole consul Trial of Milo ... . . 52 Seventh year of the Gallic war Gallant resistance of Vercingetorix 51 Final conquest of Gaul . Feeble measures of Pompeius Caesar's organisation of Gaul . Caesar organises his military resources in Gaul Caesar's levies in Gaul 8q war 90 91 91 92 92 93 94 95 95 97 98 99 100 100 loi 102 103 I 1 B.C. 51 50 50 49 Contents. CHAPTER VI. RUPTURE BETWEEN CiESAR AND THE SENATE. Caesar's position assailed by the senatorial party Cicero proconsul of Cilicia .... Caesar secures support by bribery . . , The senate strengthen their military resources Curio baffles the motion for Caesar's recall Pompeius falls sick at Naples .... Caesar's demands ...",,, Vacillation of the senate Curio urges Caesar to decisive action , , The tribunes flee to Caesar's camp . , . Caesar appeals to arms Lucan's estimate of the causes of the civil war Division of sovereignty among the three rulers Rivalry of Pompeius and Caesar Luxury and vices of the times Monarchy a consummation plainly inevitable Sentiments conveyed in 'Sallust's letters to Caesar' Caesar's pretensions regarded with favour by provincials, subjects, and foreigners Caesar on his return to Italy ....«, ix . los . 106 . 107 . 108 . no . Ill . 112 • 113 . 114 . 116 . 117 . nS . 118 . 119 . 120 . 120 . 122 . 123 , 124 CHAPTER VII. THE CIVIL WAR. — BATTLE OF PHARSALIA. — DEATH OF POM- PEIUS. — DEATH OF CATO. Preparations of Pompeius and the consuls , , .125 Caesar crosses the Rubicon 126 Pompeius retires from Rome . . . , , .127 The cities of Central Italy surrender to Caesar . . . 127 Pompeius makes his escape from Italy - , , . 128 Pompeius throws himself on his resources in the East . 1 29 Caesar repairs to Rome , . , , , , ,129 I. f X BC. Coni£?its, Caesar seizes the treasure in the temple of Saturn Curio is slain in Africa . Caesar conquers the Pompeian forces in Spa Caesar is created dictator m Importance of his fiscal measures Caesar establishes regular government and then abdicates 40 Caesar crosses the Adriatic Caesar checked before Petra Both armies manoeuvre in Thessaly 48 Battle of Pharsalia . The loss on both sides Pompeius seeks refuge in Egypt, and ^s there murdered .* Caesar establishes himself at Alexandria 47 Campaign against Pharnaces . Disturbances in Italy 47 Caesar dictator a second time . 46 Caesar at Rome and third time dictator Mutiny of the Tenth Legion suppressed . The republicans transfer their forces to Africa 46 Caesar's victory at Thapsus . . . . ' Death of Cato at Utica Character of Cato of Utica ' ' ' ' 45 CHAPTER VIII. TYRANNY AND DEATH OF CvESAR. Honours conferred upon Caesar at Rome The title of Imperator prefixed Cassar celebrates four triumphs .... Caesar's liberality to soldiers and citizens The Julian Forum War in Spain and battle of Munda The Roman Calendar requires correction The reformed or Julian Calendar . Measures for extending the franchise, increasing senate, &c Appointment to offices Caesar founds colonies . . the PAGE 131 132 133 133 134 137 ^37 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 144 145 147 148 149 151 152 154 15s 156 156 158 159 160 160 i6i ) . Co7t tents. XI B.C. 44 Further projects. Survey of the empire . . . . 162 Codification of the laws * '^- Cassar projects the extension of the walls, &c.* . * . * i6:> Abortive attempts to give Caesar the title of king . ' * 164 Conspiracy against Caesar ' i^^ Caesar assassinated. March 15 . .'.*.* ' 166 Remarks on the character of Julius Casar * . ' * 168 CHAPTER IX. CAIUS OCTAVIUS SUCCEEDS TO THE INHERITANCE OF JULIUS CiESAR. Antonius makes his escape Antonius seizes on Caesar's papers and effects Antonius as consul convenes the senate An amnesty decreed, March 17 . Antonius master of the situation Caesar's funeral Popular excitement against the liberators M. Antonius takes command in the city 'The tyranny still survives' . 44 C. Octavius arrives in Italy He assumes Caesar's inheritance . 44 Cicero declaims against Antonius 171 171 172 173 174 174 175 175 176 178 179 181 1 THE r 44 44 i ' "^^ 1 43 43 CHAPTER X. SECOND TRIUMVIRATE : OCTAVIUS. ANTONIUS. AND LEPIDUS. > Octavius ingratiates himself with the soldiers General preparations for war in the north of Italy Cicero's political activity The Second Philippic The consuls Hirtius and Pansa take the fiel'd . Both the consuls fall before Mutina Antonius unites with Lepidus and Plancus * . ' . Octavius demands the consulship Flight and death of Decimus Brutus . 182 • 183 . 185 . 185 . 186 . 187 . 188 . 189 . 190 xu Contents. Contents, XIl! B.C. PAGB 43 The Second Triumvirate 191 Division of the provinces among the triumvirs . .192 The proscriptions 194 43 Death of Cicero 194 Reflexions on the death of Cicero 195 42 Settlement of the triumvirs' government at Rome . . 197 CHAPTER XI. LAST EFFORT OF THE REPUBLICANS : THE BATTLE OF PHILIPPL 42 Independence of the Roman armies in the East Roman society at Athens .... The natural repulsion of the East from the West Meeting of Brutus and Cassius at Sardis The battle of Philippi . . 198 . 198 • • 199 . 2od . . 201 Death of Cassius ........ 202 Second battle, and death of Brutus 203 The end of the Roman republic 203 CHAPTER Xn. CONTEST BETWEEN OCTAVIUS AND ANTONIUS. — BATTLE ACTIUM. — OCTAVIUS BECOMES MASTER OF THE STATE. OF 43 Further division of the provinces .... Cleopatra's conquest of Antonius .... War of Perusia A third partition of the empire .... The triumvirs concert terms with Sextus and again resort to arms against him Battle of Naulochus . Renewal of the triumvirate ..... 36 Fall of Lepidus 36 Disastrous campaign of Antonius against the Parthians Impending rupture between the triumvirs 37 37 B.C, ' . ft PAGE 33 Antonms amuses himself at Alexandria . . . . 212 33 Preparations for a struggle * *. 21? 32 The triumvirate expires and is not renewed . . ! 214 31 Forces assembled on the coast of Epirus . . .21- 31 Battle of Actium * * ^ig Octavius secures the fruits of his victory . . * 217 Despair of Antonius and Cleopatra at Alexandria . .* 217 Antonius kills himself \ ^ Death of Cleopatra ' . ! 220 Concluding remarks 221 Chronological Table 22:1 Index 233 MAP, The Roman Empire at the close of the Republic To face Title-page 205 206 It j 1 207 \ 207 '■ 209 .[fi 209 ' 210 210 211 212 ' f > THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES •o» Working of the Roman re- publican constitu- tion. CHAPTER I. THE REACTION AGAINST SULLA'S LEGISLATION. — RISE OF POMPEIUS. The Roman republic maintained itself for a period of nearly five hundred years; and this has been commonly regarded as a striking instance of the vitality of free institutions. But such an idea can only be admitted with much abatement. The polity of the conquering city was in fact ill- fitted for duration, for it was essentially the government of the many by the few, of a commonalty by a nobility, of an unarmed multitude by an armed order, of subjects in many lands by their victors in one central position. It was only by the happy circumstances under which the lower classes were from time to time elevated, in spite of all resistance, into the ranks of the governors, that this inequality w'as not redressed by violence, and the commonwealth overthrown by revolution. It was only by the occasional suppression of the free state, and the creation of a temporary dictator, that the balance of power was at many a critical moment maintained. rf^ » ^ / • /^ D The Roman Triumvirates. CH. I. When the conquering race at Rome had made itself master of Italy, and a single state held sway over a Results of number of subject communities, the time 'nd Social ^^'^^ almost come for the appointment of a wars. permanent ruler. Probably the rivalry of Carthage and the invasion of Hannibal, by drawing all classes at Rome, and most of her allies and dependents, more closely together, postponed the inevitable event. After the fall of Hannibal and Carthage the ascendency of the Scipios, first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of their countrymen, seemed to point more clearly to such a solution. Once more the wars in the East, and the brilliant conquests of Greece and Asia, diverted men's thoughts to new aspirations, and the era of monarchy was not yet. Under the Gracchi the spirit of impending monarchy again loomed visibly; again the struggle of the Social War averted the consummation. From this time the Roman constitution was proved to be impracti- cable. It would not work. The sovereign power was disputed openly between the leaders of two rival armies, who barely deigned to avow themselves the heads of two domestic parties. When Sulla gained the ascendency, he made himself a king under the title of perpetual dictator. He resigned this power, indeed, but he had not the less cafpower" made it his own. It was his singular ambition of Sulla. ^o re-establish the free state by personal ca- price and open force, and to found a repubhcan consti- tution upon a monarchical revolution. He failed. The fabric he set up was a mere shadow, which hardly for a moment disguised the fact that the real government of Rome must henceforth rest in the hands of her strongest citizen. The history of the Roman Triumvirates is the history of the brief interval during which this shadow of a free state still hovered before men's eyes, while the CH. I. Abdication of Sulla, permanent establishment of imperial sovereignty was only delayed by the nearly equal forces of the chiefs who contended for it. Sixteen years after the death of Sulla the government was virtually shared between three mili- tary rulers, who formed what has been called the First Triumvirate. Seventeen years later a similar compact was renewed, and more definite powers were assumed, by a second Triumvirate. Thirteen years later the com- monwealth of Rome had fallen actually under the sway of a single despot, who styled himself emperor. The period of which the following chapters treat comprises forty-six years, from the death of Sulla to the crowning victory of Augustus. Sulla could have given no greater proof of confidence in the stability of his work than by abdicating his per- sonal power, and leaving the commonwealth to be guided by the political principles he had established. He believed that an oligarchy th" R^n of wealth and station could govern Rome, aristocracy, and maintain the position in which he had replaced it. It was sufficient in his view to launch the OptijnateSy the self-styled best or noblest, of the city freely on the career which he had opened for them, by suppressing the rival powers of the tribunate, and making them supreme in the comitia, unchecked in the administration of the provinces, and commanders of the national armies. He was not aware that in fact the authority which he had exercised had depended solely on his own personal ability, and that the aristocracy had no vital force of its own to make use of the high position he had regained for it. It had indeed no hold upon the nation, no confidence in itself; it was at the moment singularly deficient in men of commanding eminence. It had in fact survived its vital powers, and the forces which had grown up around it both in the city and the provinces had already passed B 2 The Roman Trittinvirates, CH. I. beyond its proper control. Sulla was himself a man of extraordinary genius. He had been backed by an irresist- ible military force, and he had encountered the popular party at a moment when it was demoralized by its own bloody excesses. But it was only under these exceptional circumstances that the aristocracy had gained a transient success. It was unable to maintain its vantage ground. The abdication of Sulla may have hastened its fall, but the fall was from the first inevitable. The great dictator had relied also upon the princi- ples of Roman polity, which he considered himself ta have re-established. Sulla was not the last, nor, perhaps^ s 11 ' 'd ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ Romans who imagined of his own that he could restore the commonwealth, ""^^ ' and replace it upon a lasting foundation, by arresting its natural course of development, and forcing- it back into the channel which had proved too narrow for it. He dreamt that the provinces, now widely ex- tended through three continents, peopled by numerous colonies of Roman extraction, teeming with the interests of a multitude of Roman citizens engaged in every branch of art and commerce, could be held in hand by an official oligarchy of public men, as in the old days when the do- minions of the republic were all comprised within a circle of a few days' journey from the city. His thoughts reverted to the period when the plebeians of Rome were really inferior in rank and power to the patri- cians, when they were regarded and treated as of lower origin, and their pretensions to equal privileges scouted with disdain. He would deny them the pro- tection of their tribunes now, when they had become substantially the ruling power in the state, and it was through the tribunes that their power was exercised. Sulla was a fanatic. He believed in his own good fortune ; he believed in the fortune of Rome. He ■CH. 1. Need of a Covunmidcr-in-Chicf. 5 was ready to pit Rome and himself against the -world. He entertained no doubt that Rome, restored to the political condition in which, in his view, she had been most prosperous, and restored under his own victorious auspices, was destined to control all the changes of circumstance around her, and rise trium- phant over every foreign or domestic enemy. The notion that Sulla resigned his power in petulance, or in ^, thus drawn from the dregs of the popu- lace, and quartered through the best years of his hfe in Greece and Asia, in Spain and Gaul, lived solely upon his pay, enhanced by extortion or plunder. His thirst of rapine grew upon him. He required his chiefs to indulge him with the spoil of cities and provinces ; and when a foreign enemy was not at hand, he was tempted to turn against the subjects of the state, or, if need be, against the state itself. The regular military chest was too quickly exhausted by the ordinary expenses of the mili- 10 The Roman Triumvirates, CK. L L.c. 78. Chiefs of the Scnatoi'ial Party, II tary establishment. Often the troops could not even be brought into the field except by the sacrifice of some helpless community, against which a quarrel was picked for no other purpose but to enable the Imperator to mo- bilize his legions. But no prey was so glittering as Italy and Rome itself; and towards their own native shores the eyes of the greedy legionaries were now too frequently directed, while their chiefs were themselves equally eager to strike at the centre of government for the highest prizes which the republic could bestow. Marius and Sulla, Cinna and Carbo had led the forces of Rome against Rome herself, in the predatory spirit of the Cimbri and the Teutones before, of the Goths and the Vandals some centuries afterwards. Rome, at the very height of her material power, in the full career of her foreign con- quests, lay as completely at the mercy of the true bar- barians of that age as when she was helpless to avert the inroads of an Alaric or an Attila. The problem which thus presented itself to the minds of patriots — how, namely, to avert the impending dis- Earlv ca- solution of their polity under the blows of their reerof own defenders — was indeed an anxious and Pompeius, .in i 1 t^ surnameci might wcU appear a hopeless one. It was to the Great. ^^ legions Only that they could trust, and the legions were notoriously devoted to their chiefs, to whom, indeed, they had sworn the military oath, rather than to the civil administration and principles of law, in which they could take no interest. The triumph of Sulla had been secured by the accession to his side of Pompeius Strabo, the commander of a large force quartered in Italy. These troops had transferred their obedience to a younger Pompeius, the son of their late leader. Under his auspices they had gained many victories ; they had put down the Marian faction, headed by Carbo, in Sicily, and had finally secured the ascendency of the senate on. the shores of Africa. Sulla had evinced some jealousy of their captain, who was young in years, and as yet had not risen above the rank of Eques ; but when Pompeius led his victorious legions back to Italy, the people rose in the greatest enthusiasm to welcome him, and the dictator, yielding to their impetuosity, had granted him a triumph and hailed him with the title of * Magnus.' Young as he was, he became at once, on the abdication of Sulla, the greatest power in the commonwealth. This he soon caused to be known and felt. The lead of the senatorial party had now fallen to O. Lutatius Catulus and M. yEmilius Lepidus, the heads of two '^i the oldest and noblest families of Rome. The election of these chiefs to the con- y.c. 676. sulship for the year 676 of the city (B.C. 78) ^•^- ^^• seemed to secure for a time the ascendency of the nobles, and the maintenance of Sulla's oligarchical constitution bequeathed to their care. The death of the retired dic- tator, which occurred in the course of the The consul- same year, was felt perhaps as a relief by the tuius°i?' party which he had oppressed with his protec- Lepidus. tion. But there were divisions within the party itself which seemed to seize the opportunity for breaking forth. Lepidus was inflamed with ambition to create a faction of his own, and imitate the career of the usurpers before him. He had served as an officer under Sulla, and had attached to himself a portion of the army. His marriage with a daughter of the tribune, Saturninus, had connected him with the party of Marius. He had formed relations with the young Pompeius, through whose influence he had acquired the consulship, but whose power he now affected to slight. On the death of Sulla he had spoken disparagingly of the dictators services, and threatened to tamper with his enactments. But he had miscal- culated his strength. Pompeius disavowed him, and i 2 The Roman Triutnviratcs. CH. I. lent the weight of his popularity and power to the sup- port of Catulus; and the senate hoped to avert an outbreak by engaging both the consuls by an oath to abstain from assailing each other. During the remain- der of his term of office Lepidus refrained from action ; but as soon as he reached his province, the Narbonensis in Gaul, he developed his plans, summoned to his stan- dard the Marians, who had taken refuge in great numbers in that region, and invoked the aid of the Italians, with the promise of restoring to them the lands of which they had been dispossessed by Sulla's veterans. With the aid of M. Junius Brutus, who commanded in the Cisalpine, he made an inroad into Etruria, and called upon the remnant of its people, who had been deci- mated by Sulla, to rise against the faction of their oppressors. The senate, now thoroughly alarmed, charged Catulus with its defence; the veterans, restless and dissatisfied with their fields and farms, crowded to the standard of Pompcius. Two Roman armies met near the Milvian bridge, a few miles to the north of the city, and Lepidus received a check, which was again and again repeated, till he was driven to flee into Sardinia, and there perished shortly afterwards of fever. Pompeius pursued Brutus into the Cisalpine; but the senate was satisfied with the defeat and death of the first movers of the revolt, and abstained from vindictive measures against their followers. The coun- sels of Catulus, one of the most honourable of the Roman leaders, were always moderate and magnani- mous. The temper of Lepidus, on the other hand, had been vain and selfish. He betrayed the party from which he Death of had sprung, and violated the oath he had taken Lepidus. j-Q jf^ j^-g ^jj.^j^ ^^^ station had inspired him with empty hopes, which he had neither talents nor B. c. 82-7 1 . Career of Sertoruis. 1 3 influence to realise. His enterprise was feeble and ill- concerted, and seems to have been precipitated by petu- lant vexation at the resistance of the senate. The wariest of the Marian faction refrained from entangling them- selves in it. Their cause lost nothing by his death. The remnant of his troops was carried over to Spain by Perperna, and there swelled the forces of an abler leader of the same party, O. Sertorius. This chief, by \\x\\\ a Sabine, had served under * Marius against the Cimbri, and in later campaigns in Spain had made himself popular with the na- Sertorius m tives of that province. He had kept himself ^p^*'"- free fiom the stain of the proscriptions, and this was now held as a merit by both the rival parties in the state. On the triumph of Sulla he had retired from Italy, and while he despaired of restoring the fortunes of the Marians at home, had sought to fortify an asylum for them among the yet untamed inhabitants of the western peninsula. The Iberians flocked around him with vague aspirations ; but Sulla sent his lieutenant, Annius, in pur- suit of him, and drove him across the sea into Maure- tania. As the brave but unsuccessful champion of a long depressed cause, Sertorius assumed a somewhat mythical character in the traditions of his party. It was currently reported thftt, despairing of the fortunes of the Marian faction, he had meditated a retreat to the * Islands of the Blest/ in the bosom of the Atlantic. But, in fact, he was driven to no such extremity. Making himself allies among the people of Africa, he defeated the Roman army under one of Sulla's lieutenants. The Lusitanians summoned him again to their aid; the western tribes of the peninsula rose and flocked to his standard. The SuUan party in Spain were commanded by Metellus, a weak and irresolute leader ; the dictator s abdication and death discouraged his followers. Mean- T.I The Roman Triumvirates, CH. I. B.C. 71. Assassination of Sertorius. J s while Sertorius acted with promptness and vigour. Again and again he routed his opponents. He proclaimed the independence of the Iberian people, and organized a free state among them, with an originality of conception to which Roman history offers no parallel. If our accounts are to be trusted, he conceived the bold idea of educating the youth of Spain in the manners of the Romans, and constituting a rival republic in the west, to balance the conquests of his countrymen beyond the Adriatic. But the spirit of Italy, if not of Rome, was still, it seems, too strongly rooted in his breast for so monstrous a treason. When Pompeius arrived, bringing with him a strong re- inforcement of exiles from Italy, his plans insensibly changed. He regarded himself once more as the head of a national party ; he placed the interests of his Marian followers in the foreground, and treated the natives of the land as allies or subjects. When Mithridates sought to concert with him a combined attack upon the centre of the Roman government from the east and from the west, proposing the alliance, as he said, of a new Pyrrhus with a new Hannibal, no child of a ruling race, no lord of human kind, could brook a union so shocking, and he declared that he would never suffer a barbarian to set foot on Roman soil. Such at least was the legend of Sertorius in the imagination of his Roman followers. The new chief of Death of the Marians stood in need of all the aid they and i[rcon- ^ould givc, of all thc glory with which they sequences. could cncirclc him. The senate took the full measure of his prowess, and sent their brave young general, Pompeius, to replace the worn-out veteran, Me- tellus. Yet Pompeius found the encounter both difficult and hazardous. He contended with Sertorius in many engagements, in one of which, on the banks of the Sucro, Jie would have suffered grave disaster but for the oppor- tune assistance of Metellus. Pompeius was reduced to act on the defensive, while he called upon the senate for ampler succours. In this strait he was relieved more by the defects of his opponent's policy than by any vigour or ability of his own. Sertorius, it seems, became inflated with the glory of his unexpected successes. He began to despise the simple people whom he had deceived by pretending to supernatural powers, training a milk- white hind to follow him, and affecting to consult it as a familiar spirit. When his Roman followers quarrelled with their Spanish auxiliaries, he sacrificed his new to his older adherents, and even permitted the massacre of the children of their chiefs, whom he had kept as hostages under pretence of educating them. From this time there was no union between the diverse elements of his power ; he enjoyed no security even from the intrigues of his Roman lieutenants. Perperna raised a mutiny in his •camp, and effected his assassination. But this upstart lacked ability to maintain the post he had seized. Pom- peius, with fresh forces, resumed the attack, speedily overcame his adversary, and put him to death. The chief of the senatorial party now filled the province with his ■ steadiest adherents, and organized the peninsula as a for- tress of the Roman oligarchy. Returning to the city through the south of Gaul, he confirmed the Narbonensis and the Provincia in their allegiance to the same domi- nant faction, and secured to its interests the 1 I - , u.c. 583. whole extent of the Roman dominions in the b.c. 71. west. The senate exulted in the solid conquest which it had thus effected, and accorded to its champion, yet young and unennobled, the honour of a triumph, in which Metellus was allowed to participate, as a tribute to his rank rather than as a reward for his services. Pompeius had thus recovered a great province for the ^republic at the moment when it seemed on the point of 1 'i'J' »-»'g^-~l'^A.«..»..^.j|.V...,,| ., , n .j ^ ^|)^,. Jv ■**w^wB»i»iiittwK£ i6 7//r Roman Triumvir ates. en. I. War of Spartacus. being lost through the inefficiency of one of the senatorial chiefs. Another leader of the dominant party was about The Servile ^° yield him another victory. A war was raging in the heart of Italy. A body of gladiators had broken away from their confinement at Capua under the lead of Spartacus, a Thracian captive, had seized a large quantity of arms, and had made them- selves a retreat or place of defence in the crater of Mount Vesuvius. There they had gathered around them the fugitive slaves and banditti of the district, and had as- sumed an attitude of open defiance to the government, u.c. 68i. ^^^ troops of the republic had been directed B-c. 73- against them ; they had defeated the prastor^ C. Clodius, and strengthened themselves with additional succours. The veterans of Sulla, quartered in central Italy, were restless, and threatened to quit the farms, of which they were wear}-, and rush to the plunder of the cities. In the course of three years the forces of Spar- tacus had increased to 40,000, or, according to some writers, even to 100,000 men. He had sacked some of the principal places in Campania, and rendered himself virtually master of the southern half of the peninsula. But the native races of Italy shrank from the contact of slaves and brigands ; and when he found that he could not raise a national revolt against Rome, he knew that his cause was desperate, and exhorted his followers to employ all their strength in bursting the barrier of the Alps, and dispersing themselves among the northern provinces, from which they had been for the most part drawn. Meanwhile his tumultuous bands were intoxi- cated with their successes and ravenous for further plun- der. They continued to ravage the country on all sides, u.c. 682. ^^^^ consuls were directed to lead the legions B.C. 72. against them, but were ignominiously defeated. In the absence of Pompeius in Spain and of Lucullus in B.C. 71. The Outbreak of Spartaeus, ly the East, M. Crassus was the most prominent amono- the chiefs of the party in power. This illustrious noble w^as a man of great mfluence, acquired more by his wealth for which he obtained the surname of Dives, than for any marked ability in the field or in the forum- but he had a large following of clients and dependents,' who helped to raise him to the first place in the city, and who now swelled the cry for placing a powerful force iinder his orders, and entrusting to his hands the de- liverance of Italy. The brigands themselves were be- coming demoralized by lack of discipline. Crassus drove them before him to the extremity of the peninsula. At Rhegium they bargained with a fleet of Cilician pirates for a passsage into Sicily, but they were betrayed and disappointed by these treacherous allies, and Spartacus could only save a remnant of them b.c: fu by furiously breaking through the lines of his assailants This brave gladiator was still formidable, and it was feared that Rome itself might be exposed to his des- perate attack. The senate sent importunate messages to recall both Pompeius and Lucullus to its defence Crassus, on his part, bitterly regretting the supineness' with which he had suffered the enemy to escape from his own hands to fall into the hands of his rivals, exerted • himself to anticipate their return. He confined Spar- tacus to the mountains, but was still unable to reduce him. The conqueror of Sertorius had completed the pacification of Spain ; he hastened back to Italy tra- versed the country with speed, and took from Crassus the forces with which he had failed to secure the victory. Spartacus had now become an easy prey, and the laurels were quickly won with which Pompeius was honoured by his partial countr>^men. Crassus was deeply mortified and the senate itself might feel some alarm at the re- •A, If, p i8 TJic Roman Triumvirates. CII. I. B.C. 74-63. S?icccsscs of Lziculhis, doubled triumphs of a champion of whose loyalty it was not secure. But the senatorial party had yet another leader, and a man of more ability than Crassus, at the head of The Mith- another army. The authority of Pompeius in ridatic war. ^^ wcstcm provinccs was balanced in the East by that of L. Licinius Lucullus, who commanded the forces of the republic in the struggle which she was still maintaining against Mithridates. The power of Rome both in Greece and Asia had been in jeopardy for many years under ihe attacks with which it had been assailed by the brave and politic king of Pontus. Stunned by the blows he had received from Sulla, this indomitable Asiatic had risen again and defied the valour and dis- cipline of the legions. But the existence of so formidable an enemy had furnished the senate with an excuse for maintaining an immense force in the eastern provinces, and putting it under the command of the ablest general it could select from its own ranks, to be a bulwark of his party as well of the commonwealth. Lucullus, who had been deputed to this important post, was held in high repute as an officer, at the same time that his wealth, birth, and talents gave him an eminent position in civil affairs. He had obtained the consulship in U.C. 600. , . , c ,■* B.C. 74. the year 74, durmg the progress of the war with Sertorius. He had quitted the city when the tri- bunes, with the support of the other consul, Cotta, were moving the abrogation of the Sullan (or Cornelian) laws, and had undertaken the command of the large army which Sulla had left in the East as an instrument for maintaining the ascendency of the oligarchical govern- ment. Lucullus was faithful to his party, but he was content to serve its interests at a distance from the centre of civil strife. He was well acquainted with the theatre of events in the East, having acted as an officer under t 19 Sulla in some previous campaigns, and havin- distin gu,shed h.mself for activity and m^ilitary prowess He iri V w ,h h *' proscriptions, so that his popu- sufS no H f ''"' '' '"•]" °^ "'^'^"^^ '^^'^^' ^Wch had camp. He professed a taste for letters, and cultivated last wet r""'' "'"'V '" '-^ '''" ^"P-- "-'--at east, were begmnmg to elevate the Roman character to ts h,ghest p,tch of combined gracefolness and vigour jLe in th^'n'" ^."™""\""' "°"'^y '° '-•— *e chief be expected that, by the command of the most powerful nanv°tL ^^ "''""'•'] =^™'"' "'^ ^-"''^ secure' to tha party the contmuance of its authority choS'orihf ■^" '"'''''" °^ ^"*^"""^ fully justified the Choice of the government. iMithridates had recovered from the check he had recentlj- received ; and thou'h h.s advances for aid to Tigranes, the powerf^il Wng ff Armenia, met with a cold receptionf he had Teen enabled to recruit his forces and carry his arms through beforf Chli: d ''^'"^ ^"'^ J^'-O-^-. -d had encXeS before Chalcedon, opposite to the coast of , , .ener'.TrV;'"" ^V"^ besieging the Roman MtfSLls. general Cotta ; and though his troops were, for the most part, commanded by Greek officers, he was i I-provTded ely task of o "'"^''- ^""'""^' relinquishing the easy task of overrunning the provinces which the in ^ rr1s^onfstiin?;''f '™' ^^'^""'-'^ '° -"^ *« garrisons still in his front, and succeeded, by skilful and cautious manoeuvres, in reducing the cumbrous host of etoTnCT "' '''^\ '^ '■^'"'"^' ^•'^"^ '- -f"-d tc> encounter it m open battle. Chalcedon was relieved • C2 ' 20 TJie Roman Triumvirates. CII. I. Mithridatcs withdrew from before it, but only to make another attack ui)on the stronghold of Cyzicus. Here U.C.681. again Lucullus adopted his previous tactics B.C. 73. and here, too, he compelled the enemy to abandon his position after suffering severe losses. The king of Pontus effected his own escape by sea, leaving his army to be harassed and finally routed. He was now driven to take refuge with the king of Armenia. Thither Lucullus followed him, but not till he had devoted himself to the restoration of the Roman power throughout the Lesser Asia, and had placed the inhabitants under a milder rule than that which they had lately endured at the hands of the Roman officials. He was animated by an honest sense of justice, and the check he put upon the fiscal tyranny of the government made him many enemies both in the province and in the city. The senate began to find that, however successful their general might be in the field, his civil administration was calculated to weaken rather than to confirm their ascendency. At the same time, the party of the knights and of the commons was steadily regaining its due weight in the counsels of the republic. The people, encouraged underhand by Pompeius, by Crassus, and by other chiefs in whom the senate had hitherto con- fided, were bent upon restoring the powers of the tri- bunate, and overthrowing the institutions of the late dictator. The support which the senate now gave to Lucullus was more lukewarm than at first ; but he had by this time established his authority throughout the province, and continued to carry out his plans for the slow but effectual suppression of all opposition both at home and abroad. The kingdom of Armenia under Tigranes III. was at the height of its power when Clodius, the brother-in- law of Lucullus, then serving under him, was despatched B.C. 69. Battle of Tigraiioeerta. 2I '^^^^SS^r ;^^--T-/^ ^--d the Imonarchv nf p .1 r ^^-^'^"^^ ^^'^^ ^^oken the rival Tthe^^L^^^^^ ^T' '''^'''^ '^' G^^^k dvnasty pellet S'TT '^^''" P^"^"^^"^^>^ ^- ^™- peiled. He had wrested from it the north ^^■''^^• .. ern districts of Mesopotamia, and had ^aken - '4^ vigorous measures for increasing the wealth of his people se'rvTc^T ""^'V''''"^'^^"^ ^^^^^- -^ Syrian TnTs hZrn\ ""''" '^'^ "^^'^ P°^'^^^"^ despot Of the Eas ' his court was attended by a crowd of vassal princes .'h' four kmgs, It was said, ran beside his char of R T^ assumed the title of kino- of i u ""^ ^""^ the desDots nf P ^"^^. of kmgs, borne of old by uic aespots of Persia, wh ch the P^rfh;^^ , pretended to inherit from them Ho ^.^/.^^'^^^ "monarch Por . It was thus that the Romans were enabLd n, Armenia was well defended by its position -.^"^u • n,ountai„s and the length an'd s.^^^^^ season. It was necessary to strike once for nil t n however fbrmWah^ cons.stmg of 17,000 mailed cavaln- resista^ce r Jf I't'^of TeT"' "^'^ ""' ^ ^-'^'^ sworri wru , '"^ Roman spear and b^oad- s«ord When the.r ranks were broken thev fell Wi with dastard!^• precipifuion am!, ^ ^'"P^ 22 The Roman Triumvirates. CH. I. while of tlie enemy iod,ocx>, we are told, were left dead on the field. In the following year Luciillus advanced his posts still further eastward. He intrigued with the king of Parthia to withdraw him from his alliance with the enemies of the republic, and when he hesitated, threat- ened to advance into his territories beyond the Tigris. But a spirit of discontent or lassitude had crept over his own soldiers. His lieutenants were dissatisfied with the share of plunder allotted to them ; the civil officials of the province were disgusted at the equity with which he had curtailed their unrighteous gains. He was con- strained to withdraw from the siege of Artaxata, the furthest stronghold of Tigrancs,on the banksof the Araxcs, and after crowning his victories with a successful assault upon Nisibis, he gave the signal for retreat, leaving the destruction of Mithridatcs still unaccomplished. Meanwhile the brave proconsul's enemies were making head against him at Rome. The faction of the knights, who demanded all the profits of the civil government in the provinces, had acquired fresh power under the patronage of Pompeius, and from the stain which had been recently cast on their opponents by the miscon- duct of Verres, praetor of Sicily. The command in the u.c. 687. eastern provinces was about to be taken B.C. 67. from the victorious I/npcrator, whose only demerit was the spirit with which he had repressed official tyranny, and revived the hopes and happiness of the provincials. CHAPTER II. ASCENDENCY OF POMPEIUS.-HIS SUBJUGATION OF THF CILICIAN PIRATES, AND CONQUESTS IN THE EAST. " POMPEIUS on his return from Spain, had accepted the flatteries of the senatorial party, but he had not formally engaged himself to serve it. He preferred to hold all parties in play, and wait upon o'??oInS'^ events. His success against Spartacus con- ^"^• firmed him in the conviction of his own transcendent abilities and persuaded him that he was necessajy " the state, and must one day be invoked as an umpire or dictator to control the administration of affairs. On the restoration of peace he was piqued at the spirit with wh.ch a rising public man, C. Julius C^sar, the nephevv Of Manus and heir to a portion of his influence wal attacking the chiefs of the oligarchy for malversatL in^ the provinces. The proceeding was popular, and Pom"^ peius determined to follow in the same track, and seeTn at least to take the lead in it. He encouraged a bold yotmg orator M. Tullius Cicero, to denounce the crimes o Verres. Notorious as he was, this culprit was power fuly supported The nobles, conscious of the importance oi the case, rallied strenuously around him. • His defence tneir part), the favourite of the judges, the ^kinp-' i<; h^ from th. n T" '"'"'"^' '^^y ""'S'" expect favour Sr al "^T ' t" """''^ '^""^ '° ''^''' *^ judges for the trial. Every effort was made to gain this point The prosecutor was young and inexperienced; he wa; Ihtle known, bemg a 'new man/ a citizen 0} the obscu e It 24 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. II, Volscian mujiicipiuin of Arpinum, of an equeslrian family indeed, but of no civic distinction at Rome. He had already pleaded with great ability on some former occa- sions, and had evinced much spirit in resisting the appli- cation of a law of Sulla, even during the dictator's life- time. As quaestor in Sicily, a few years before, he had gained credit for purity as well as for activity. The Sicilians themselves placed the conduct of their impeach- ment in his hands. He began by a display of judicious firmness in resisting the call for delay ; but at the same time he required on his own part some time to collect evidence, and it was only by the most strenuous efforts that he succeeded in furnishing himself with his proofs without allowing the defence the advantage which it demanded. Popular favour at Rome was strong in his behalf, and the consuls Pompeius and Crassus openly avowed their approval. As soon as he opened his case, ^^gg Hortensius discreetly counselled submission. B.c! 70. Verres declined to plead, and withdrew sul- lenly into exile. But Cicero was not thus satisfied. He published not only the speeches he had delivered, but the further pleadings he had prepared for the full estab- lishment of his charges ; and the series of the Verrine Orations still exists as an imperishable record of pro- consular misgovernment. They fell, no doubt, upon many willing cars. The consuls, nothing loth, restored to the knights theii' share in the jndicia, and thus broke down the great bulwark of oligarchical authority. To give ir- responsible decisions in the law courts had been originally the special privilege of the senate ; but this function, which had been grievously abused to party purposes, had been directly transferred by C. Gracchus to the knights, had been divided between both orders by the legislators of the next generation, and again confined exclusively to the first by the reactionary policy of Sulla. Catulus and B.C. 70. Predominance of Pompeins. 2 ? the most patriotic among the nobles assented cordially to the decorous reform of the Aurelian law, though the proudest and blindest of the party still scowled upon it with ill-suppressed indignation. The restoration of the tribunate had already WTested from the senate one-half of the pohtical ascendency which Sulla had extorted for them; the admission of the knights to a share in the jiidicia deprived them of what yet remained. But Pompeius was not yet satisfied. In his new-born zeal for the popular interests, he deter- mined to subject the nobles even to personal degradation. Since the time of Sulla no lustrum had been held. The consuls insisted on the appointment of censors. Purging of The citizens were duly numbered, their pro- fj^f ^^^"^'^ perty valued, the personal merits of the mem- censors. bers of the senate passed under review. The names of sixty-four of the order were now expunged from the roll ; and the whole body, august as it was, could not but feel that it was strictly the instrument of the state, and not its master. All the blood of Sulla's massacres had secured for his political work only eight years of existence. Pompeius was now at the height of his popularity. The people were delighted at the authority which he had acquired, having been exalted to the consulship while still only a knight, and Jiaving extorted from his colleague Crassus, the elect of the nobles, the deepest deference and even subservience. The nobles themselves, though exasperated at the superiority he asserted, and jealous of the interest he was making with the popular faction^ could not venture to break with him, and still tried every means to attach him to their own side. The consuls, it was said, regarded each other with coldness. A citizen came foi-ward and asserted that he had been ordered by Jupiter, in a dream, to tell them not to lay 26 The Roman Trmmviratcs, cH. ir. down their office without being reconciled. Pompcius maintained a haughty reserve, but Crassus deferentially took his hand, exclaiming, 'Romans, it is my part to give way to the great Pompeius, whom you have twice honoured with a triumph while he was still only a knight.* But Pompeius treated the commons with no less reserve and coldness. He withdrew from the popular business of an advocate ; he estranged himself from the Forum, and if he ever appeared in public, took care to surround himself with a retinue of clients and flatterers. He carried into the city the manners of the camp or even of a court. This affectation of royal demeanour was designedly adopted. Doubtless Pompeius, like other Roman generals before him, had conceived the idea of assuming sovereign authority; but his temperament was cold and sluggish, his ambition was of a passive cha- racter ; he hoped to have greatness thrust upon him, and he saw in the circumstances of the times many indications that the tyranny would surely devolve on the chief who had patience to wait for it. Meanwhile he was on the watch to seize on any opportunity that might present itself for maintaining or even increasing his acknowledged pre-eminence. Such an opportunity was offered by the alarms which were now excited at Rome by the prevalence of piracy Extent of in the Mediterranean waters. From east to the^Medi- ^^^^^ ^^^ great inland sea was traversed by the terranean. fleets of plunderers who had their strongholds and their arsenals in the bays of Cilicia, but who were probably recruited from bands of lawless wanderers on every coast. The civil wars of Rome had deprived many thousands, not only in Italy, but throughout the provinces, of their ordinary means of subsistence. They had engen- dered, moreover, a general spirit of licentiousness and a greed of plunder; and while the continent was kept under B.C. 68. The Ciliciaji Pirates, 27 some control by the armies of the republic, the sea was left without a police, and had become the common field of enterprise for buccaneers from all quarters. The Cilician pirates, as they came to be denominated, had assumed a certain pohtical consistency. They claimed to transact business with chiefs and potentates. Sertorius had ne-o. tiated with them, when he was seeking an asylum beyo'nd the reach of the Roman army, Spartacus had bargained with them for a passage across the straits of Messana. 1 hey might give way indeed to the armed flotillas which convoyed the transports of the republic to Greece or Asia; but they attacked single vessels or small squadrons with increasing audacity, murdering or carrying into cap- tivity Roman citizens and even high magistrates, descend- mg upon farms and villas on the coasts of Italy itself and sweeping off peaceful travellers from the crown of he Appian way. These injuries and indignities, gross as they were, continued to be long endured ; for the magnates of the city and of the provinces found their account in them from the abatement they caused in the price of slaves in the markets of Delos, and other centres of that nefarious traffic. But when, by their attacks upon the corn-vessels from Africa and Sicily, the pirates began to ^reaten the city with scarcity, the voice of the multitude made itself heard. It was determined to strike at the base of the hostile power. Servilius was charged to carry on a regular war against the public foe. His operations were prolonged through three campaigns, in which he be- sieged and reduced some maritime posts, and pursued his opponents into the mountains, obtaining for his exploits the title of Isauricus and the b.c 't honour of a triumph. M. Antonius, and after him Metellus, attacked the pirates in their strong- holds in Crete; and from this circumstance B.c.'eT Metellus acquired the surname of Creticus. With 28 The Roman Trutuivirates, CII. IT. much labour and by slow degrees the Roman power was established among these obscure fastnesses; but the vessels of the enemy, skilfully handled, for the most part escaped, and found for themselves other retreats still more inaccessible. The tribes continued to be threatened with famine as before, and they insisted at any price on the thorough subjugation of the importunate foe. For this object they were ready to sacrifice their political jealousies, and to create a power in the state which should be indepen- dent of their annual suffrages and of the vicissitudes TheGabi- ^^ party. In the year B.C. 67, the tribune nianlaw. Gabinius proposed that some veteran states- man — some one who had filled the highest office in the republic — should be invested for three years with absolute authority both by sea and land, as far as fifty miles into the interior, over a belt of soil within which lay all the greatest cities of the Roman dominion through- out the world. For the moment the crafty intriguer with- held the name of the individual whom he would thus raise to irresponsible power ; but both the nobles and the people readily understood that he pointed at the great Pompeius. The nobles would have had Gabinius slain; one of his own colleagues, retained in their interest, put his veto on the resolution. Catulus, who was himself popular with the citizens, pointed out the hazard of ex- posing a personage so precious to the perils of an un- tried warfiire. ^ Who could replace Pompeius, ' he exclaimed, Mf Pompeius were lost to you.' * Yourself!* cried the people, good-humouredly. Catulus desisted from further opposition ; the motion was carried ; 500 galleys and 120,000 soldiers wore voted, and the re- u.c. 687. sources of the state thrown open to the for- B.C. 67. tunate aspirant. This vote, it has been often said, was the actual commencement of the empire. It was B.C. 67. Ovcrthrozv of the Pirates, 29 ^varmly supported by another candidate for greatness, the heir eventually of more than the power of Pompeius, the future dictator and emperor, C. Julius Caesar. As soon as this decree was announced the pirates knew that they would be dealt with in earnest, and -withdrew promptly from the coasts of Italy. Stores of grain flov/ed in, and its price in the Roman market fell at once. The people believed that the mere name of their favourite had finished the war. But Pompeius knew that it was not so, and he had no wish Si-cess of that it should be so. He had obtained im- l^^ltlL perial powers, and he was determined to make Ciiician use of them. He chose for his lieutenants ^^^^Itj'. twenty-four senators, all men of distinction and experi- ence in command ; he divided the Mediterranean into thirteen regions, and appointed a squadron to each. In the space of forty days he had swept the whole western tract of the great inland sea, and driven the enemy into the opposite quarter. The pirates, finding his measures irresistible, made no head against them. Their leaders readily betrayed one another, and the politic commander employed the services of each in the general pursuit. The few that still held out were driven into the creeks and bays of the Cilician coast, where they were defended by their stockades and fortresses ; but these, 120 in number, were speedily surrounded and overthrown. Pompeius burnt as many as 1,300 of their vessels, and destroyed all the hostile magazines and arsenals. His captives he lodged at various spots along the shores Avhere they had previously carried desolation. Ninety days sufficed tti terminate the contest. The success was certainly complete for the time; but piracy was too easy and tempting a trade to be permanently eradicated. Whenever, during the civil troubles which succeeded, Rome allowed herself to neglect the police of the seas. 30 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. II. the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean again swarmed with maritime robbers ; and the Levant has continued to this day to be similarly infested under similar circum- stances. But the Roman people had no misgivings. They rejoiced in the plenty which seemed to be now assured to them ; they exulted in the success of their admired hero, and not only lavished upon him caresses and honours, bi'.t allowed him to insult the other chiefs of the state, and trample upon the officers who ventured to exercise the authority entrusted to them. He required the distinguished consular Q. IVIetcllus, who had obtained an independent command for the reduction of the Cretan brigands before his own extraordinary appointment, to desist from his operations, and when Metellus demurred to the order, actually sent one of his lieutenants to assist the enemy whom he was employed in subduing. The people pardoned the affront to their own majesty ; but history has not failed to record the vexation even of the great commander's friends at the jealousy he evinced, in this and many other instaiices, of all who seemed in any degree to trench upon his own exclusive pretensions. Meanwhile the opposition o{\\i^ public aniy the greedy collectors of the taxes in Asia, and of their supporters in Investment the city, had reduced Lucullus to enforced in- with°sli^*^'"^ activity. Some of his troops had been premecom- withdrawn from his standard, and trans- East, ferrcd to Glabrio in Bithynia ; another portion had been put under the command of Marcius Rex in Cihcia. Mithridates and Tigranes had seized the oppor- tunity for attack. Legions and detachments had suffered severe defeats, which Lucullus, with weakened forces, had with difficulty repaired. His own mutinous soldiers had refused to be led in pursuit of the enemy ; and once more the allied kings had invaded the Roman provinces, and driven the new commanders of the legions far back B.C. 6%. Command of Pov?pcius in tJie East, 31 towards the ^gean. But Pompeius was now at hand on the coast of Cilicia. The intrigues of his partizans at home had fully ripened. The tribune Manilius stepped forward and argued that the conqueror of the pirates should be at once charged with the conquest of the arch-enemy H Mithridates, who had baffled for twenty years the greatest captains of the republic. To accomplish so great a service he must; be invested with sovereign power over all the East. The authority he already wielded against the pirates must be extended and enlarged. Here was another step towards empire, but it seemed a small step. Necessity knew no law. Many forces from many quarters combined to support the proposition. The nobles were alarmed and reluctant; but the Marian party were all the more urgent for its adoption, and the Marians were now led by a strong and able chief in the person of Caesar. Crassus him- self was well inclined to encourage any motion which tended to establish a precedent for unlimited authority. Cicero was carried away partly by his genuine enthu- siasm in favour of abler and stronger men than him- self, partly, no doubt, by the flatteries lavished upon him by Pompeius, by Crassus, and by Caesar, who all felt that his eloquence might be of use to them, while the nobles continued to repel him as an upstart un- worthy of their favour or countenance. The lofty spirit of Catulus was of no avail against so many and such various forces. The bill of Manilius was ^ ^ ggg carried in the tribes with enthusiasm, and bc. 68. the sullen opposition of the senate was almost con- temptuously overruled. The Romans ascribed to Pompeius the character of a profound dissembler. They said that on this eleva- tion of fortune he pretended to be deeply troubled, and professed to regret the honours which were thrust 32 TJlc Roman Triumvbatcs, ClI. II. upon him. But his acts evinced no abatement of pride or resolution. He assumed at once all the powers that were entrusted to him, and chose his lieutenants and Effects of appointed them to their respective services Roman as- ^yjj.], alacritv- As soon as he had collected cendeney , , . , i i n- in the East, his troops around him, he summoned the allies and dependents of the republic in the East to attend upon him and take orders from his camp, while, at the same time, he seemed studiously to humiliate his prede- cessor in command, by traversing his orders and pohtical arrangements. The two generals met, the one advancing, the other retiring, in Galatia. Pompeius insulted Lu- cullus with pretended compliments and actual affronts ; but LucuUus took care to inform his countrymen that he had himself already broken the power of the enemy whom his rival was sent to crush, and that the final overthrow of Mithridates was already prepared to his successor's hands, as had been the overthrow of Spartacus and of Sertorius. Pompeius, however, did not intend to con- fine his views to the destruction of any single enemy. His commission extended to the complete settlement of the affairs of the East. The kingdoms of Armenia and Parthia were to be rendered subservient to the policy of Rome. The alliance between Tigrancs and Phraatcs was to be finally broken, and these princes were to be made mutually jealous of one another and severally depen- dent upon the support of the republic. The frontier of the Euphrates was to be secured by placing its bridges in the hands of lesser vassals, who could at any convenient moment be transformed into subjects. The eastern shores of the Mediterranean were to be reduced to the condition of Roman provinces. Pom- peius finally annexed the rich and populous realm of Syria, and found an opportunity to interfere in the dis- putes of the reigning family in Judxa, and establish a B.C. 63. End of the Mithridatic Wars. 33 dependent sovereign on the throne of Jerusalem. The mingled craft and violence with which he acted through- out these transactions are sufficiently disgusting ; but it must be confessed that no portion of human ^ ^ 60 annals is more odious than the history of the b.c' 63. ' tyrants of Judaea who had risen on the fall of the Syrian power in that country. Every step, however harsh and oppressive, that Rome took, in displacing the native rule and preparing the way for her own, served to miti- gate some of the sufferings of the people, and to pacify at least their internal discords. While engaged in these operations, and setting up or putting down at pleasure thrones and dynasties, Pom- peius regarded himself as the autocrat of the ^ , T-, ^ ^ ' ft. , Overthrow East, the kmg of kings, another Xerxes. He and death had wrested from Mithridates the kingdom dltes!'^"' of Pontus, and pursued him along the coast of ^•^- ^3- the Euxine beyond the Phasis ; but from thence he had turned to the east and to the south, and had allowed his baffled and dispirited adversary to maintain himself in the Cimmerian Chersonese, on the furthest confines of his possessions. He was content to foster intrigues against him in his own family, and it was by the defection of his favourite son Pharnaces that the king was prevented from executing an audacious plan of attacking Italy herself on the side of Thrace and Illyria. Pharnaces entered into relations with the Romans. Mithridates marched against him, but was at last abandoned by his own soldiers, and was reduced, it was said, in his ex- tremity to take poison. The popular account affirmed that his system had been so fortified by the habitual use of antidotes that the poison took no effect, but this is one of the marvellous stories of antiquity to which modern science will hardly allow us to give credit. At all events, the terrible Mithridates fell at last upon the sword of one of his own Gaulish captives. A.H. D ' ^'1 34 The Roman Triumvirates, ch. ii. CH. II. Rise of JiUiiis Cc^sar, 35 Pompeius was himself in Judx-a when the death of Extent of his chief adversary was announced to him. Roman sii- j^g ^^^ ^ow at Icisurc to advance northward KeS/'' and secure the fruits of this crowning success. At Amisus in Pontus he received from Pharnaces the dead body of Mithridates, to make him doubly sure of his triumph, and policy rather than generosity induced him to give it royal obsequies at Sinope, and thus render the fact of his death notorious throughout the regions in which the mere name of the great tyrant had sufficed to raise in- numerable armies. The success of Pompeius was now complete, but it had been gained from the first over ex- hausted or distracted enemies. He had obtained vast advantages for the republic, yet he could hardly be said to have reaped fresh laurels for himself. But his reputation as a captain was already well established, and Rome was content to ascribe the extension of her empire in the East to a military genius which, in fact, he had hardly exercised at all. She had embraced within her frontiers a number of dependent sovereigns. Deiotarus occupied th3 vassal throne of Galatia ; Attains affected to reign in Paphlagonia; Ariobarzanes in Cappadocia ; but Pontus, Cilicia, and Syria were definitively added to the list of provinces. Beyond the lines of her stations and garri- sons the republic supported the sovereignty of Pharnaces on the Bosporus, and of Herod in Palestine, and she completely detached the kingdom of Armenia from the influence of Parthia. In the course of time a great por- tion of these regions became absorbed in the empire ; but it was only occasionally, and but for a brief period, that the outposts of the Roman power were pushed be- yond the eastern limits at which Pompeius had placed them. The senate vaunted the patriotic services of the Imperator, to whom it still looked for the maintenance of its own ascendency. It trusted, though not without some misgiving, that the camps in Asia had given it a second Sulla to assert the prerogatives of the oligarchy. The dissensions in the city were threatening it with a revival of the claims of the Marians, but it still clung with fitful . hope to its powerful army and its victorious general. Y Pompeius had seemed indeed to break with the Optimates when he allowed the tribunes to raise the people in his interest, and thrust upon him q juims the vast and irregular powers of the Gabinian Caesar. and the T^Ianilian laws. But they could hardly deny that the first of these was a measure of pressing necessity, and that they had themselves given occasion to the second by the abandonment of their ill-used champion LucuUus. They now expected, doubtless, that the altered state of affairs at Rome would compel the chief of the army to make common cause with them for his own sake ; for the course of events had raised up a rival there of^ whom he could not fail to be jealous. The young C Julius Ca:sar had become a power in the state. De- scended from an ancient patrician race, which claimed as its eponym, Julus, the son of yEneas, the grandson of Anchiscs and the goddess Venus, he could point to (he images of many noble ancestors, though none of them had attained the highest distinction in the Roman annals. Caesar's birth and origin might thus have attached him to the party of the senate and the Optimates, which com prised the chief historical houses of the commonwealth, but ^larius, as it chanced, had married his aunt, and his .early predilections were thus engaged to the Marians; his first marriage, also, which he had contracted as a mere . boy, was with a daughter of Cinna. As a youth, however, he gave no special token of devotion to a cause or aptitude for public affairs. He plunged from the first into a career of dissipation, redeemed only by the elegance of his tastes and manners ; but he early embarrassed himself with a load D2 36 The Roman Triumvirates. CH. IT. of debt, while he made himself many personal enemies by the looseness of his amatory intrigues. No matron, it was said, could resist his beauty ; while his gracious man- ners exercised a wondrous fascination over the gravest statesman. Sulla, indeed, had divined his genius, and warned some who had spoken slightingly of him, that in the young Ceesar there was many a Marius. But Pom- peius, who had come in contact with him on his return from Spain, in the height of his own ascendency, had deemed him no more than a serviceable dependent ; and Cicero, when he looked around him for a party to serve and a patron to follow, had persuaded himself that the state had nothing to fear, and he had himself nothing to gain, from the elegant debauchee who trailed his gown so loosely in the Forum. Ca?sar, however, was conscious of his own powers ; nor did he place less reliance on his own fortune. It is related that in his youth he fell into the hands of the pirates on the coast of Asia, and when they offered to release him for a ransom of twenty talents, insisted on their taking no less than fifty, assuring them at the same time that he would have them all hanged at last— a threat which he soon found means of actually carrying into effect. He was still a private stu- dent at Rhodes, holding no military appointment, when hearing that Mithridates was attacking some allies of the republic, he collected troops on his own account, and levied successful wars against the most redoubtable of its enemies. During the years that followed, Ca:sar continued to watch the career of Pompeius, and meditated rivalling him in the favour of the citizens. But his fhftHbunl first care was to support the measures, such Cornelius. ^g those of Gabinius and Manilius, which were brought forward by the great man's creatures for enhanc- ing his personal ascendency. Such measures served B.C. 65. Revival of Party Struggles, i^y Caesar's designs in two ways; they rendered men's minds more and more familiar with the notion of autocratic government, to which all classes seemed to look as the inevitable issue of affairs, and at the same time they helped to increase the jealousy of the nobles towards the man who had once been their minister, but who was now makmg himself more and more independent of them. Caesar beheld with satisfaction the motions of the tribune Cornelius, for curbing the excessive usury which the nobles had allowed themselves to exact for the loans negotiated with them by the provinces. The tribune was encoun- tered by furious opposition, and opposition was over- come by violence in the comitia. When an impeachment was hurled against the obnoxious officer who, it seems, had not scrupled to disregard the veto of a colleague whose services had been purchased by the senate, a tumult ensued. Manihus ventured to defend the culprit, and tried to overawe his opponents with the name of Pompeius. The consuls, however, had the courage to exert military force, and the affair was subjected to legal process. Cicero, at the instigation of Pom- peius, or of his adherents, was retained to I'-clfs-' defend the accused, and ventured to plead the favour in which he was held by the redoubted champion of the republic, who was engaged far away in its defence and aggrandisement. The arguments of the orator proved successful. The charge was allowed to drop. The coun- tenance thus given to popular violence was of fatal signi- ficance. From that time it was again and again repeated with aggravated fury. The senate and the people were thus committed to a struggle which could not fail to demand the interference of a power paramount to both. It required little foresight to anticipate the effect of the conqueror's triumphant return from the East, unless mdeed his threatened supremacy should be counter- 38 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. II. balanced by the creation of a rival power supported by an overwhelming popular feeling at home. It was to the creation of ;-uch a power that Caesar was directing all his resources. In the year 65 C2esar obtained the aedileship in con- junction with Bibulus, the candidate of the nobles. This office was charged with providing amusements for the populace. It required an enormous outlay of money, Casar's ^^'^ ^^ opened the way, through the favour of ffidiieship. the people, to the highest public honours. Csesar played his game boldly. He charmed the popu- lace by the expenses he lavishly incurred, and espe- cially by the profusion of silver bullion with which he decorated the furniture and implements of the arena. Plunged already deep in debt, he continued to borrow on the credit of his genius and his rising fortunes. If the wealthy Bibulus equalled Caesar in munificence, the people gave him no credit for generosity; nor were the manners of the penniless adventurer less ingratiating than his reck- less prodigality. Bibulus was fain to liken himself to Pollux, who, though he possessed a temple in conjunc- tion with his twin brother, heard it always called by the name of Castor rather than by his own. Caesar could now rely on the clamorous support of the populace for the bold measures on which he ventured. He had already irritated the nobles by parading the proscribed bust of Marius in pubhc ; he now erected the statue of their fallen enemy among the ornaments of the Capitol, and surrounded it with the trophies of his victories. The people shouted with delight ; the nobles scowled in- dignantly. Catulus determined to bring him to punish- ment for a violation of the law of attainder. Catulus was not only the chief leader of the senate and the political heir of Sulla, he was the son of the noblest victim of the Marian massacres. He accused Caesajr of B.C. 65. Ccesar's Political Impeachments, 39 ulterior designs ; he declared that he was now assaulting the republic, not covertly with mines, but with the bat- tering-ram openly. Caesar defended himself in the senate house, and even there he succeeded in foihng his accuser ; but he extorted his acquittal from the fears of the assem- bly rather than from its justice or its favour. The nobles contented themselves with a prompt retaliation. When about to resign the asdileship Caesar demanded a public mission to take possession of Egypt, in virtue of the will of the king Ptolemasus Alexander. This country, through which the commerce of the East passed into Europe, was regarded as the wealthiest in the world. It offered a magnificent prey to the rapacious republic, and an ample harvest to the fortunate officer who should be appointed to annex it. Cra^sus and Caesar disputed this rich booty, but the senate evaded the demands of both equally. A tribune named Papius was engaged to demand that all foreigners, and especially Caesar's clients, the transpadane Gauls, should be removed from the city ; and when his most vehement partisans were thus dis- abled, Caesar probably himself assisted in preventing the success of his rival. The government allowed the be- quest of the Egyptian monarch, whether real .^ ^ ' U.C. 009. or pretended, to remain in abeyance, rather b.c. 65. than subject itself to the peril of flinging so splendid a prize into the hands of any one of the citizens. But Caesar obtained a seat on the tribunal which in- quired into cases of murder. This appointment had a political significance which he could turn to r^ T T • 1 Caesar im- account. Hitherto he had done no more than peaches protest by silent tokens against the dictator- ^^6^!' ship of Sulla ; he now resolved to brand it ^•^' ^^• with a legal stigma. He cited before him and condemned as political offenders two men who had acted as Sulla's instruments of blood. He went still further back in his 40 TJic Roman Triumvirates, cn. n. B.C. 6^ Caesar Chief Pontiff. iX . inquisition — he induced one of the tribunes to accuse an aged senator, Rabirius, of the slaughter of the traitor Satuminus. Both Cicero and Hortensius were engaged V by the nobles to defend the victim; but the people seemed to exult in the audacious injustice of the pro- cess ; for it was well known, first, that Rabirius had not done the deed; secondly, that the real slayer had been publicly justified at the time; and, lastly, that the transaction had occurred as much as thirty-six years before, and might well deserve to be buried in oblivion after so many political revolutions. The appeal of Rabirius would actually have been rejected but for the adroitness of the praetor, Metellus Celer, who suddenly struck the flag which waved from the Janiculum during the public assembly of the tribes. In ancient times the striking of this flag was the signal that the Etruscans were advancing to attack the city. Instantly all busi- ness was suspended, the comitia were dissolved, and the citizens rushed sword in hand to man the walls. The formality still held its ground among a people singularly tenacious of traditional usages; and now again the multi- tude, which had just clamoured for innocent blood, laughed at the trick by which its fury was baffled, and acquiesced in the suspension of the proceedings. Ca:sar had gained his point in alarming and mortifying the senate, and allowed the matter to drop, which he had never per- haps intended to push to extremity. Labienus, the tribune who had been Ccesar's agent in this matter, procured his patron a further gratification, in Csesarchief ^^^^^^^^"S the abrogation of the Cornelian law, pontiff. by which Sulla had withdrawn from the ^" people the nomination to the college of pontiffs. The chief place in that body was now vacant, ^nd the popular election promptly fell upon the new favourite, who was placed thereby in command of a great political engine, and whose person was ren- dered legally inviolable. Neither the notorious laxity of his moral principles, nor his avowed contempt for the religious traditions of the multitude, hindered Caesar's ad- vancement to the highest office of the national worship. It sufficed that he should perform the stated functions of his post, and maintain the prescriptive usages on which the state pretended to repose her safety and well-being. Caesar's triumph was the more complete as it was gained over Catulus, who had contemptuously offered to buy off" his opposition by a loan of money. But Caesar had declared that he would borrow more and more largely from any quarter, rather than forego a prize which had become indeed necessary for his personal security. He was menaced with an impeachment for treason against the state, and, whether he was conscious of guilt or not, his enemies, he knew, were not more scrupulous than himself When the hour of election arrived he said to his mother, on quitting his house, *This day your son will be either chief pontiff" or an exile.' A CHAPTER III. STATE OF PARTIES IN THE CITY. — CONSULSHIP OF CICERO, AND CONSPIRACY OF CATILINA. The nobles might begin already to feel insecure, and while they still clung to the hope that Pompeius would protect them against their adversaries at Leaders of home, they were anxious to provide for their '^^ nobles. own defence, without relying on his precarious assist- ance. On the whole, they were content, perhaps, that he should continue absent from the city, while he removed it 42 The Roman Trimnviratcs, CH. Ill* the legions with him to a distance, and left them to depend on the civil ami and the irregular support of their own clients and dependents. Africa had been wrested from the rival faction of the Marians ; Gaul and Spain had been placed under the government of their own partisans. The cohorts which watched over Italy and the city itself were for the most part officered by captains of their own choice, and the veterans of Sulla, scattered throughout the peninsula on lands assigned them by the dictator, secured them, it might be thought, an ample reserve both of influence and of military power. But the party of the optimates wanted leaders. The chief men among them, however eminent from birth, wealth, and personal dis- tinction, were uniformly deficient both in the power of attracting adherents and also of commanding them. Catulus, the most high-minded and honourable of all, wanted spirit, decision, and force of character, as he had too plainly shown in his contest with Lepidus. Lu- cullus, partly from indolence and self-indulgence, partly no doubt from mortification at the treatment he had re- ceived from his own party, no longer cared to mingle actively in state affairs. The policy of Crassus was simply selfish ; he was seeking, or rather, in accordance with his sluggish nature, was waiting for ascendency over all parties, and was justly distrusted by all. Silanus, Murena, and others were not incompetent indeed to dis- charge the high office which became their eminence in rank and civil experience, but were plainly unequal to the task of leading and controlling. Hortensius possessed much influence as an orator, but his position hardly en- titled him to command a political party ; and generally the possessors of the greatest wealth among a wealthy nobility were more addicted to the enjoyment of personal luxuries than to the conduct of public affairs. The most active and vigorous of their class was not one of the wealthiest or CH. iiL Position of M. Porciiis Cato. 43 the noblest. The authority which M. Porcius Cato even- tually exercised among them was gained by his own actual merits and exertions; but he, too, with all his zeal and energy, was lacking in discretion and judgment, and promised to offer only violent and intemperate coun- sels at a crisis which demanded the utmost moderation and circumspection. Cato inherited the name, the temper, and the prin- ciples of the illustrious censor his great-grandfather, and therewith enjoyed in no slight degree the re- ^^ yox6m% spect and confidence of the Roman people. Cato. He believed, as devoutly as his ancestor, in the mission of a superior caste of citizens to rule the state ; in the right of the Roman people, the lords of the human race, to hold the world in bondage ; in the absolute authority of the husband over the wife, the parent over the child, the master over his bondman. His temper, indeed, was more kindly than his principles, and the gleams of good humour which break occasionally through the cloud of prejudices in which he studiously involved himself, afford some relief to the general harshness of his character and conduct. Born in the year 95 B.C., he had witnessed the close of the Social war, and resented, as a child, the compromise in which that struggle resulted. Nevertheless, his feelings had revolted from the bloody measures with which Sulla had avenged it, and he alone of his party had sighed over their most signal victories, and lamented the cruel retaliation they had demanded. From early life he had trained himself in all the hardness of the ancient manners which had become now generally obsolete. Inured to frugality and of simple tastes, he had resisted all temptation to rapine and extortion. Enrolling himself in the priesthood of Apollo, he ac- knowledged perhaps a divine call to a higher life in the practice of bodily self-denial. He imbibed the doctrines 44 TJie Roman Triinnvirates. cn. III. CII. JII. Position of Cicero. 45 ^■ \J of the Stoic philosophy, the rigidity of which accorded well with his own temper, and he strove under their guidance to direct his public conduct by the strictest rules of pri- vate integrity. If he failed, it was through the infirmity of our common nature, not from personal vanity or caprice ; but it cannot be denied that the exigencies of public affairs drove him, as well as others, to many a sordid compromise with his noble principles. The strength to which he aspired became, indeed, the source of mani- fold weakness. It made him vain of his superior virtues, confident in his judgments, morose and ungenerous, a blind observer of forms, and impracticable in his prejudices. A party composed of such men as Cato would have been ill-matched with the ranks of pliant intriguers opposed to them on every side ; but when the selfish, indolent, and unprincipled chose themselves a champion of a character so alien from their own, there could be no hearty and, therefore, no fruitful alliance between the leader and his followers. As yet, however, the ascendency of Cato in the councils of the optimates was unconfirmed. The senate M Tullius hoped to secure in the rising orator, Cicero, Cicero. a supportcr whom they might first use for their own purposes, and then, if convenient, cast away. For M. Tullius Cicero, the son of a Volscian knight, with neither birth, nor connexion, nor wealth, might be easily induced, as they supposed, to serve them with his un- doubted talents for the sake of the distinctions to which they could introduce him, and might not be too exacting in the devotion he would expect from them in return. Cicero had sought at the commencement of his career to attach himself to Pompeius ; but Pompeius had always treated him, as he treated others, with coldness, and the great captain was, moreover, absent. Again, Cicero had admired Ccesar, and inchned to lean upon his support ; but the dangerous policy of Caesar had becomt lately developed, and it was plain that the aspirant's choice must now be made between the senate and the champion of the people. Public men, indeed, were now well aware that the state was in danger from the machinations of a revolu- tionary cabal which were swiftly ripening to an explosion. The real designs of the infamous Catilina and his asso- ciates must indeed always remain shroi|[Jed in mystery. The accounts we have received of theiTcome from the mouths of their opponents exclusively. The declama- tions of Cicero, supported in the main by the sententious history of Sallust, became the recognised text on which the later Roman writers relied, and beyond these there exist no contemporary materials for forming a judgment upon the facts. Doubtless, it was the interest of the nobles to blacken the character of the conspirators to the utmost. Nevertheless, it is impossible to deny, and on the whole it would be unreasonable to doubt, that such a conspiracy there really was, and that the very existence of the commonwealth was for a moment seriously im- perilled. The civil wars had left society at Rome in a state of general disturbance. The license of the times had en- gendered a reckless spirit of selfishness and ' r • ..:^i /- • • -i ... Conspiracy Violence. Criminal ambitions had been fos- ofCatiiina. tered by the spectacle of successful treacheries. The highest honours had fallen to the most worthless of men, who had had the audacity to strike for them. At the same time the plunder of the East had flooded Rome with wealth and luxuries. It had created a class of men who did not scruple to employ their riches in the pur- chase of venal votes, and the dignity of the common- wealth had been too commonly prostituted to vulgar arrogaace. Money had been easily made, but it had been no less easily lost. Even in the highest orders if 40 The Roman Triiunviratcs, CTJ. 111. many had become suddenly rich, more, no doubt, had found themselves no less suddenly impoverished. The state lay in danger from the intrigues of the one class, still more perhaps from the violence of the other. A cry rose more and more loud among the young repro- bates who hung on the skirts of the aristocracy for re- lief from their debts, for wiping out the accounts against them, if necessary, in blood. Such men were led by ac- complished bravoes, such as L. Sergius Catihna, notorious himself as a ruined spendthrift, and distinguished at the same time for his personal bravery as well as by his high connexions. The city was rife with stories of this man's wild and wicked deeds. He had cruelly murdered an enemy of the dictator; he had assassinated his own brother; he had sacrificed his youthful son with a view to a union with a rich but profligate woman. Yet with the stigma of a broken fortune and of all these crimes, upon him, we are required to believe that Catilina had ad- vanced far in the career of public favour and of civil honours, and had at last proposed himself as a candi- date for the consulship. Nay, more, the discreet and decorous Cicero had not hesitated to join with him in competition for the office, and had undertaken his defence against a charge of malversation in the province which he had been already allowed to administer. Even now he was commonly believed to be engaged in a plot against the state, and a vague rumour pointed even to men so distinguished as Crassus and Caesar as associated with him. The nobles had little confidence in any of their natural leaders, and when the ascendency of their party, if not the actual safety of the state, was threatened by a plot which they were perhaps i°c 691. unable to unmask, they were willing to con- B.c. 63. done Cicero's offence in the impeachment of Verres, and the court he had assiduously paid to the Cicero becomes ■ ■.•■.W«:SW.f'*s»«^i»^g^li^Sit|^ p.c. 6 Cicci'o becomes Consul. 47 people, while they lent their influence to raise him to the consulship. They managed at the same time to associate with him one of their own order, named Antonius, who, it seems, was but a faithless partisan after all. Cicero was naturally elated at the elevation he had attained, and easily believed himself necessary to the party which had thus sought his assistance. He now devoted himself to the interests of the senate, drew more and more away from the adherents of Pompeius, from Crassus, and from Caesar ; and when the leader of the people proposed an agrarian law through the tribune Rullus, he denounced and overruled the attempt. The public domain in Italy had been almost wholly alienated from the state. The veterans of Sulla had been recompensed with grants of all the land which was available for the enrichment of the poorer citizens ; but the conquests of the republic in Gaul and Spain had supplied a large reserve of terri- tory, and Rullus had proposed that by the sale of this reserved land funds should be raised for the endowment of the lower populace. It might be expected that the loss thence resulting to the revenue would be amply balanced by the tribute which was flowing more and more largely from the East. The motion seems to have been generally politic ; but it may be presumed that it was ^ with party views that Cassar had urged, and it was with such views undoubtedly that Cicero and the senate had opposed it. The contest served to bind the aspiring consul and his new friends more closely together. Meanwhile, the intrigues of Catilina were ripening, and Cicero was keenly watching them, and gathering into his hand the clues which should lead to their Prepara- exposure. It seems that the arch-conspi- tionsofthe rator, while selecting his associates and pre- tor"!^''^' paring his resources even for civil war, if necessary, was Still bent on obtaining the consulship for which he offered 48 TJic Roman Triumvirates, cir. in. himself a second time ; and while he still retained a hope of success in this critical undertaking, he studiously refrained from committing himself to open violence. Cicero, however, had decided that it was better for his party, better for the state, to meet Catilina as an , avowed traitor than to allow him to attain the legiti- K mate power of the highest magistracy. He applied himself to the support of Silanus and Murena, both of them, as has been said, chiefs among the optimatcs, but both of them held in regard by Crassus and Cassar, and fitted accordingly to secure the suffrage of all the party leaders. It was only by outrageous bribery that Catilina could hope to succeed against such a combination ; and here, too, Cicero contrived to baffle him by promising a decree of ten years' banishment against the candidate who should be convicted of buying the votes of the people. This decisive measure drove the conspirator to despair. His preparations for the alternative on which he had resolved were already far advanced ; arms had been collected ; the restless veterans of Sulla had been tampered with, and abundant aid elsewhere secured. It was said that the fleet at Ostia, which commanded the access of the corn vessels to the city, had been gained. The officers in com.mand in Africa, and even in Spain, had promised assistance. The garrisons of these neigh- bouring provinces might be wafted to Italy before the first news of disturbance could reach the faithful legions of the East. Even the loyahy of the consul Antonius was at the best doubtful ; but Cicero would not allow it to be called in question. The band of traitors certainly com- N^ prised, however, various personages of distinction and influence. Sallust has recorded the names of several senators and as many knights. Cornelius Lentulus was designated prcetor for the ensuing year, a vain and ambitious man, who fancied he was himself the leader of «fii*'-?f^'if*'-«W«Mli' --^^d - the f V tLelff ;"°r '"'"'• ^"' *'y ^-^'^ "°' °">y imitated by the affront; they were alarmed at the design which e es't o h° ' ?'-' '"'""' "'• "'""^""^ ^^^P-' -" 'he in teres of his patron, connected himself with Casar and the / s'^^^rument oTr^"'" ''""° ''"'' '^<=^" "''^ ^^erished in! Cthrr.hr "^V^"";"' ^^ ^^ "°- struck at the senate Vthrough Cicero's side. The consul, on resigning the fasces made an oration to the people, and proudK- de! claimed on the subject of his own patriotic exer ions. But Nepos abruptly interposed. ' The man,' he said who condemned our fellow-citizens unheard shall not Limself be listened to.' He required the orator to con 58 The Roman Triumvirates, cii. in. B.C. 62. Crassus unites with Ccesar. S9 fine himself to the customary oath that he had done nothing contrary to the laws. *I swear/ exclaimed Cicero, 'that I have saved the state!' The nobles shouted applause ; Cato hailed him as the ' father of his country ; ' and the gi-eat mass of the citizens added their acclamations, and put down the opposition of the fac- tions. Nepos threatened the senate with the recall of Pompeius, ostensibly to crush Catilina, who at this moment was not yet hunted down, but really to overbear its influ- ence in the city. Cato vowed that he would resist such a motion to the death. A scuffle ensued, in which Cato was perhaps the first to employ actual violence. Nepos profited by his colleague's indiscretion to declare his sanctity violated, and to flee, as if for safety, to his patron's camp. The senate retorted by ass^ing that he had himself vacated his office, inasmuch as the tribune was forbidden by law to quit the city. At the same time it suspended Caesar from his functions as praetor, and when he refused to resign his fasces, extorted them from . him by military force. V- . Cxsar retired with dignity to the inviolable asylum of the Regia, the official residence of the chief pontiff", and Cicero takes there Calmly awaited the result of this impolitic his part with ^ct of povvcr. The people soon rallied round ^ chy° '^'^'^" him, and compelled the nobles to retrace their ' steps. Cicero meanwhile, alarmed for his own position, counselled moderation. When Vettius, one of his spies in the affair of Catilina, insisted on proclaiming Caesar's complicity in the plot, the senate refused to listen to him. /Cicero himself took pains to appease Crassus, and re- / store him to the confidence of the optimates, who still, ^ however, received him coldly. It would have been more prudent to have acknowledged him as their chief in con- junction, at least, with Catulus, and thus to have secured the services of the man who, besides his ample wealth 3-- :i.^ I if %- and large personal following, was the best of the captains whom they might have pitted against Pompeius. But Crassus seems to have been eminently unpopular. De- scended from the long-ennobled stock of the Licinii he might have put forth a special claim to the respect of the old patrician houses of the commonwealth. His family name might serve to remind them of the highest triumphs of Roman eloquence at the bar and in the forum. But while his great rivals had each their party of devoted adher- ents, he alone conciliated no personal attachments. Cicero,\ whose flatteries extorted a smile from Pompeius, andy gained more genuine gratitude from Caesar, w^ho soothed' the wrath even of the surviving friends of Catilina by judicious compliances, could make no impression upon the ungenial nature of Crassus. Under this discouragement, he still struggled to maintain a politic union between the senators and the knights, the two privileged bulwarks of social order. But the perverseness of the associates with whom he had to deal rendered the task hopeless. The nobles spurned the knights haughtily from them. Cato re- pulsed the prayer of the collectors of revenue, who sought relief from an imprudent contract with the treasury. The chasm between the two orders opened more widely than ever, and Cicero at last resolved to throw himself wholly into the arms of the oligarchy, who really despised him, and reject the advances of the class to which he person- ally belonged, and which might have more justly appre- ciated his merits. The coldness with which the optimates persisted in treating Crassus naturally induced that important person- age to connect himself more closely with crassus Caesar. Pompeius was at this moment ex- purchases pected back in Italy. Between him and Cras- of Caesar, sus there were ancient grudges and actual jealousies. Each was disposed to regard the other as his direct / 6o TJlc Roman Triiunviratcs. . c\\. m. opponent, and the main obstacle to his own attainment ol undisputed ascendency in the pubhc councils. When the optimates refused to support Crassus in his suit for the consulship, they had driven him for the moment to ally himself with his competitor, Pompeius ; but in de- nouncing him as the accomplice of Catilina they had reduced him to the alternative of making terms with Caesar. This last alliance he now strengthened by lend- ing money to the young spendthrift ; for CL\:sar was now sunk in debt more deeply than ever. His tastes were splendid, his profusion lavish ; every step in the career of honours he had purchased with immense sacrifices. His turn had come to take the command of a praetorial province, and the Further Spain had fallen to him ; but he lacked means to make the necessary outlay. He had already borrowed, as we have seen, of his friends and parti- zans,and wanted, as he carelessly said, a sum of 2,000,000/. sterling to be * worth nothing.' The purse of Crassus was now his last resource, and this purse Crassus was content to open to him for the sake of the connexion it offered him with one whom he regarded as a bold but an obse- quious dependent. Nor was this the only way in which fortune smiled on Caesar's aspirations. At the moment when the violent ''] Clodiuspro- action of the senate against him had attached n^^sterilTs ^^^ ^^^'^ party more closely to his side, an / of the Bona incident had occurred which threatened to u.c. 693. create a schism between them. P. Clodius, , B.C. 61. ^ dissolute youth and a favourite with the people, had introduced himself into Caesar's house in female attire, during the celebration of the rites of the Bona Dea, from which all males were rigorously excluded. Discovered by the outcry of a servant-maid who had re- cognised him, he was hastily expelled ; but the affair, which originated probably in private intrigue, became u.c. 62-61. Pompeius 7'ettir7isfro7n the East. 61 known, and denounced by interested parties as a grave public scandal. The senate affected alarm ; the pontiffs were consulted ; Caesar's wife, Pompeia, seemed to be an accomplice in the crime. A solemn enquiry was instituted, and Caesar was expected to prosecute the offender, who was a friend of his own, as well as a favourite with the popular party. The senate passed a decree that he should not quit Rom.e for his province till an affair which thus compromised his interests had been brought to a conclusion. Caesar sacrificed his wife to save his party connexions. He divorced Pompeia, not, as he said, because he judged her guilty, but because, as he proudly proclaimed, ^ the wife of Caesar should be above suspicion.' The phrase had immense success. The populace were charmed at its high-flown magnani- mity. The nobles themselves smiled — possibly at its ingenuity. Clodius succeeded in gaining the suffrages \ of his judges by favour and bribery ; Crassus lent the ) money, but Caesar was reputed to have negotiated the loan. The restless adversary of the nobles hastened to quit the city for his province, well satisfied at having thrown into it the seeds of discord, which would keep PoUcy of the commonwealth from subsiding- into a Po^npeius ° on his re- state of settled government until his return, tum to The venture was indeed a bold one, but u.c!%2. Caesar's calculations proved to be well ^•^- ^^• founded. Pompeius had but just returned from the East, with a numerous army. He had only to show himself at the gates of the city at the head of his legions, and it would be impossible to resist whatever demands he might choose to advance. He might require the honour N of a triumph ; he might insist on the recognition by the state of the acts of his long-protracted government ; jealous as the senate was of its authority, and well 62 TJlc Roman Triumvirates. CH. III. disposed to thwart and affront him, it could not dare to withhold such marks of approbation. But Pompeius was supposed to have further objects in view. He might regard himself as the heir of Sulla, and claim the dictator- ship. He might emulate the Oriental potentates with whom he had so long been associated, whose manners and principles he had studied ; he might aspire to the diadem. The times indeed were hardly ripe for such a concession; but the most desperate resistance would have been for the moment unavailing. The master of the legions was really the master of the commonwealth. But Ca}sar had studied the character of the great commander, and had taken his measure accurately. Pompeius had not the spirit, nor had he the genius of a usurper. It would be too much to say of him that he was withheld from violence by constitutional and patriotic principles. He had never refused the honours or the powers, however excessive, that had been thrust into his hands. He had never shown abhorrence from the shedding of Roman blood, or from other acts of violence, when backed by authority legally committed to him. But his temper was naturally sluggish, and lacked the ardour of a youth- ful ambition. His advance had been too early and too rapid, and everything had hitherto yielded to him too easily, to allow him to doubt that the same fortune would follow him to the end. He was imbued with a calm con- viction that ' if fate would have him king, fate would crown him,' and that no effort was required on his part to pluck the fruit which was ready to drop into his lap of its own accord. Accordingly, he disbanded his army at Brundisium, and proceeded with a few officers and a slender escort to the gates of Rome, before which he awaited, in the garb of an imperator, the moment when they should be opened by a decree of the senate to admit him to the glories of the triumph he had no doubt well B.C. 6l. Triumph of Pompeius. 63 deserved. The nobles were just at the height of their self-gratulation. Pompeius entered Italy at the moment when Catilina was being brought to bay in the Apennines. When the arch conspirator fell, they were convinced that they had nothing more to fear, and could have no further use for their victorious champion. They had just granted Lucullus the triumph which he had vainly solicited for three years. They now conceded the same reward to Metellus Creticus. They were in no hurry to associate a third commander in the honours due to the conquerors of Mithridates. They allowed Pompeius to linger out- side the walls, haranguing the people from time to time in the Campus Martius, trumpeting his own services, affecting to mete out praise and blame among all parties and personages, showing his own uneasiness by his jealous depreciation of Cicero, whom he regarded as a rival champion of the senate, and vainly calling for the prompt confirmation of his acts, and satisfaction of his claims to the triumph. It was not till September in the same year that this honour, so dear to every imperator, was grudgingly accorded him. He expected Triumph of a solemnity of three days ; the senate would u^jP^g^"^* indulge him with two only, and he might u.c. 61. complain that their unworthy jealousy would not allow him to exhibit a large portion of the various spoils he had accumulated for the occasion. But he could parade a list of 800 vessels, 1,000 fortresses, and 300 cities captured, 39 cities re-peopled, 20,000 talents of gold poured into the treasury, and the tribute from foreign subjects nearly doubled, a goodlier array of services than any imperator before him. The great conqueror had now celebrated his third triumph. His first had been for victories in Africa, his second for the overthrow of Sertorius in Europe; he had now completed the illustrious cycle by inscribing on the 64 TJie Roman Triumvirates, ClI. III. list the name of Asia. Each section of the globe had succumbed to his prowess. Nevertheless, on descending from his car the hero found himself alone in the city in Pom eius ^^'^^ich he was wont to be thronged by friends becomes un- and flatterers. Lucullus was aroused from his lethargy to attack his former rival and de- popular with the ^co^'^e'^"^ prcciate his services. The senate was cold u.c. 694. or hostile ; Cicero renounced the idol of his B.C. 60. ^^j.|y admiration. Afranius, the consul whom Pompeius had engaged to support his interests, failed to obtain the ratification of his acts. Flavius, the tribune, sought to obtain a grant of lands for his veterans. Cato and Metellus Creticus opposed him; violence ensued, and the tribune complaining that his sanctity was out- raged, dragged the consul to prison. The senators would have insisted on sharing the insult put upon their chief, but Pompeius, ashamed or alarmed, gave way once more, and withdrew his demands to a more favourable oppor- tunity. He was deeply chagrined at the dishonour he had suffered in the eyes of his own soldiers. Re- pulsed by the nobles, he betook himself once more to the people, and sought to ingratiate himself with them by popular acts. They had gazed vv^ith admiration at the splendours of his triumph, and at the lavish profusion of his shows; but his magnificence was tasteless, still more did his person and demeanour lack the grace of his rival in their affections. Pompeius was no doubt in pos- session of great resources if he could resolve to use them himself; but he had no wann friends, no devoted fol- lowers or enthusiastic party at his back, who would volunteer their services in his behalf, and press them upon him. ^5 v/ CHAPTER IV. THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE OF CiESAR, POMPEIUS, AND CRASSUS. CiESAR had reached his fortieth year, and had never led an army under his own auspices, nor served at all, except in a subordinate rank. He had now Csesarinhis attained the government of a province, with Pfo^i^ce . r > the I" urther the command of a strong military force Spain. constantly engaged in the maintenance of the Roman occupation of Spain, and ready at any moment to be employed in the extension of the Roman territory, and' the subjugation of the restless tribes on its frontier. He had two proximate objects before him — the one to relieve himself from the pressure of his debts at home, and amass a fund for future expenditure; the other to attach to his person a handful at least of officers and soldiers, to form the nucleus of a great military power. He found himself at the head of two or more legions ; and the attitude of the predatory tribes of Lusitania, yet un- conquered, furnished a ready pretext for action. He carried his eagles to the shores of the Atlantic, and into recesses of the country whither the Romans had never yet penetrated, driving the enemy before him through the defiles of the Herminian mountains and across the Douro and the Minho. With a rude flotilla, prepared for the service with the usual celerity of the Roman ship-builders, he assailed the rocky strongholds to which the natives had betaken themselves on ,, ^ ^, u.c. 093. the coast of Gallaecia, and could pretend that bc 6i. in one campaign the Further Spain was pacified even to the ocean. Through the ensuing winter he occupied A. H, y ■ / 66 The Roman Triiunviratcs. ch. iv. himself with settling the finances of his province. He pretended to relieve the exhausted provincials from the burden of their obligations ; he gave satisfaction at least to the Roman residents, their creditors. The booty he had extorted, the tributes he had levied, gratified the cupidity of his officials, and he remitted large sums for the liquidation of his own debts at home. Brief as his command had been, it constituted, nevertheless, a crisis of no trifling importance in his career. It gave him con- fidence in his own military talents which he had never previously exercised ; it gained him devoted officers and adherents ; it freed him from the stress of his pecuniary , embarrassments, and it sent him back to Rome a : mature aspirant to the triumph and the consulate. \. Accordingly, as the period for the elections drew near, Csesar ventured to quit his province, in the middle of the vear 60, before the arrival of a successor. He Csesixr sues j > for the con- demanded a triumph for his military exploits, u"c!^694. but he was still more anxious for the solid B.C. 60. advantages of the consulship, for which he offered himself as a candidate. The law required that every competitor for the chief magistracy should present himself to the people on three stated occasions in the forum ; whereas the imperator who still expected his triumph was not allowed in the interval to enter the city walls. This jealous regulation, which separated by so sharp a line the military character from the civil, had indeed in later times been frequently set aside, and Caesar might fairly claim the same indulgence which had recently been conceded to LucuUus. But the nobles chose on this occasion to screen themselves behind the letter of the law ; for they made no doubt that Caesar, with the vanity common to his countrymen, would forego the consulship, from which they were anxious to exclude him, and grasp at the shadowy honour of the laurel crown B.C. 60. The First Trminv irate. 67 and gilded chariot, which they did not care to refuse. But the present claimant was not to be so trifled with. He waived his triumph, disbanded his soldiers, and paced the forum as a private citizen. The people, though baulked of the spectacle they dearly loved, acknowledged the compliment he thus paid to the value of their suffrages. There were, moreover, other interests at work to advance the suit of the popular candidate, and the nobles were obliged to content themselves with simply offering him a colleague from their own ranks. Cassar had evinced not only great self-control in his suit for this illustrious office ; he had exerted the special talent he most eminently possessed, that of turning the interests of others to his own advantage, and securing for his schemes the co-operation of his own csesar re- most distinguished rivals. His first care on conales ° Crassus and his return to Rome was to brm g t ogether the Pompeius. two men whose mutual jealousy a meaner politician would have been most anxious to foster. Crassus hadg^ever forgiven Pompeius the laurels which he had so curtly plucked from him ; PompeiuS;, having once abased this, statesman by whose competition he felt himself most nearly touched, had neither the generosity nor the fore- sight to take him again by the hand. Baffled himself by the opposition of the senate, he had sullenly withdrawn from public affairs, and held himself aloof both from friends and enemies. It was the policy of Cassar to over- come the mutual repulsion of two such important person- ages, and to open to each of them new views r^j^^ pj of ambition, in which he could assist them Trium- both conjointly. The formation of the league u.c. 694. between these three aspirants to a dominant ^•^- ^• power in the state, which is marked as the First Tri- umvirate, constitutes no doubt a signal epoch in the history of the republic. It was not, indeed, like the F 2 6S The Roman Triumvirates. CH. IV* Second Triumvirate, which succeeded at a later period, a regularly appointed board of three for the administration of affairs. It neither had, nor pretended to have, any legal basis ; it was no more than a spontaneous and possibly a tacit understanding, by which the parties interested mutually bound themselves to advance the special objects of each, leaving the ultimate issue of their confederacy to the chances of the future. It con- stituted, in fact, in the eyes of legists and statesmen, a * rcgmijji ' or * tyranny/ a scheme of lawless usurpation ; and as such it was ever denounced by the mouths of real or pretended patriots. The application of the word *regnum' to this unholy combination ytrikes the key- note of Lucan's rhetorical poem on the civil wars which followed upon its rupture ; but the conception of such a compact, fraught as it was with the gravest conse- quences, was due to the genius of Cxsar alone. It was by the ability and conduct of Caesar alone that it was carried into execution ; nor was he disloyal to his colleagues in carrying it out. It was to the ascendency of his own character and talents that he owed the superior fortune which abased in turn both his associates, and raised him alone to the highest pre-eminence. The ambition of Caesar was indeed of a different type from that of his two competitors. Pompeius and Crassus Views of the both aimed at an ascendency over the com- respec-'^ monwealth, and a position in which they tiveiy. should bc unassailable by the stormy winds of the forum and the senate-house. They both regarded Sulla, perhaps, as their model ; though neither of them was naturally disposed to violence and the shedding of blood, they had shown themselves equally capable of the most ruthless barbarity. Crassus had nailed thousands of the captive insurgents to the cross ; Pompeius had taken the lives of manv distiniiuishcd citizens in his B.C. 60. Views of Ccesar, G9 contest with the Marian faction. He had, as Lucan says, * licked the sword of Sulla,' and the tiger, as the poet also reminds us, never forgets the taste of blood. But at all events they would bc unscrupulous in grasping and in retaining any powers which the state might allow them. They would willingly accept the dictatorship if it were tendered to them, and might hardly be expected to surrender it again ; while neither the one nor the other had the hardihood to seize an authority beyond the laws and traditions of the commonwealth. Neither of them understood that the time was come when the state could no longer be governed in the spirit of the republic of the Scipios, and that whether the old forms were still preserved or not, the life of the Rome of antiquity had really passed away. Cassar was influenced by no such legal superstitions as theirs. He could openly^ declare that the commonwealth was now * a body without a soul ; ' that the progress of conquest had transfoiTned the city into an empire, for the government of which it was necessary to consult the views of the vast aggregate | of its subjects no less than those of their meagre hand- ful of conquerors. All the foreign nations and races which had become incorporated in the empire looked to an autocracy as the most natural and legitimate of all rules. Ccesar was determined to make himself the inter- preter of the great imperial will as opposed to the little clique which pretended to sway it from the city of the seven hills. He was convinced that the world required a despot, and would itself create a despot suited to its wants; it was his ambition to be himself the man in whom its wants and its determination should centre. Whatever we may think of his personal morality, we must acknowledge that it was well for the world that a man of genius should arise at such a crisis to direct the •general sentiment, and show how it could be realized. 70 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. IV. Accordingly, in contemplating the rivalry of these three chiefs, we need not scruple to give all our sympathy The 1 aders ^^ Caesar as compared with either of the of the others. Nor can we feel much interest in the nobles. position of the great body of the Roman nobility, who, while pretending to be the defenders of ancient law and usage, were really standing up for their class privilege to turn the blood and treasure of every other people to their own profit, and to lord it over the world as a banded array of tyrants. The nobles of Rome, who monopolized the emoluments of universal conquest, were, moreover, at this period an effete aristocracy. Had they added the possession of talents and conduct to their numerous social advantages, they could certainly have made head against any one of the triumvirs, or against all the three combined. But they were for the most part steeped in luxury and corrupted by vicious indul- gences. With the death of Catulus they lost the most honourable of their chiefs, though even he had shown little ability as a leader. Lucullus allowed himself to sink into political torpor, and among the princes of the aristocracy none other of great mark can be mentioned. A Scipio, a Lentulus, a Marcellus, bore each a great name, but there was no other greatness among them. Two personages, indeed, must still be mentioned as the real guides of a faction which refused the leading of these genuine aristocrats ; the one was Cicero, the other Cato. Both these men were honest, and both had a Cicero and definite purpose ; both could persuade them- Cato. selves that the republic might be saved by chnging to its ancient traditions, and that the common- wealth of the Scipios might still be actually revived and perpetuated. Both were blind to the real circumstances of the case. Cato was blinded by superstition, Cicero by philosophy ; Cato was the victim of his ignorance, Cicero B.C. S9. Ccesar becomes Consul , ^i of his learning. Both lived as it were in a world which he had invented for himself, totally unlike that in which his contemporaries moved and acted. Cato, indeed, was a man of firmness and resolution ; Cicero, too, was an en- thusiast himself, and had the gift of arousing enthusiasm in others. Much they might have done, indeed they did effect much, for the preservation of the commonwealth, though certainly not enough to preserve it ; but, in fact, a fair chance was throughout denied them. The nobles, as a party, gave their confidence to neither, daring in their fatuity to despise the courage of the one and the eloquence of the other ; for Cato, as we have seen, was a noble of the second rank only ; Cicero was a ' new man ' altogether. They alternately flattered and thwarted both. Besides securing the support of the two most power- ful of the citizens, Csesar had connected himself with a wealthy candidate, Lucceius, who gladly de- Cgjsar frayed a lars^e part of his expenses. The attains the "' or- • 1 • /- • J consulship. nobles who set up Bibulus agamst this formid- able combination entered the field with a vast subscrip- tion for bribing the centuries. Cato himself yielded to the urgency of the crisis, and acknowledged that gold must be thrown into the balance against gold. Caesar and Bibulus were elected ; but the candidate of the nobles proved no match for the candidate of the people. Caesar aimed at confirming his popularity by an agrarian law for the distribution of public domains among the needy citizens. The spoils of the eastern wars had placed ample means at the disposal of the state for the purchase of land ; the methods which Caesar devised for effecting it were liberal and conciliatory. But the nobles refused to be conciliated. Cicero was alarmed at their im- practicable conduct ; he was himself, perhaps, overcome by the fascination of Caesar's genius, and not insensible 7-2 TJie Roman Triumvirates, CH. IV. to the general justice of the proposal which in one shape or another had been brought repeatedly before the as- semblies. The nobles were willing to make a tool of Cato, who thereupon opposed his veto to the measure as tribune ; but Caesar, who could act with at least equal decision, directed the lictor to lay hands upon his oppo- nent. Satisfied, however, with the vigour of the first blow, he refrained from carrying his threat into execution. Jj^ Caesar continued throughout his term of office to act with repeated violence. His aggressions upon the party of the nobles, however provoked, were grossly arbitrary. He refused to consult the senate, and declared that the comitia of the tribes was competent to make laws with- out its concurrence. Even when the people were sum- Caesar's moncd to vote for the division of lands, he violent took carc to overawe all adverse influence by measures in ' the consul- filling the city with the armed followers of u.o 695. l"iis ally Pompeius. Bibulus, indeed, was not Bc. 59. wanting in courage. Summoned by the nobles, and backed by Cato and Lucullus, he advanced to Caesar's seat, and abruptly dissolved the assembly on the plea of adverse signs in the heavens. But the time had passed for rallying upon such superstitions. The populace attacked and flung him on the ground. Two of the tribunes were wounded, Lucullus was nearly killed, Cato dragged by main force from the rostra, and the measure carried at last by the rout of the opposing party, Caesar had executed the great project of the Gracchi, and proved himself a worthy successor of Marius. He impressed even his vain associate with respect for his abilities, and when he extorted from the senate the con- firmation of the great captain's * acts,' Pompeius was completely charmed, and, blindly or weakly, bound him- self in still closer alliance with him by accepting the liand of his youthful daughter Julia. E.c. 59. Cicero threatened by Clodius, 73 (X Caisar's consulship was indeed an epoch of grave im portance from the expression which it gave to the views of the popular party. WTien the nobles, abashed at their recent discomfiture, shrank from all favour with public action, and Bibulus, shut up in his own *^^ people, house, proclaimed a justltiuui, or cessation of all busi- ness, for the remainder of the year, his colleague was proposing measures to the comitia for regulating the tribunals, for controlling the proconsuls, and for raising the population of the provinces in the scale of Roman society. From the first he had avowed himself the pa- tron of the provincials, and now that the occasion offered he fulfilled the promise of his early career. The mob of the forum applauded his liberal enactments, from no liberal sentiments of their own, but rather for the defiance which they breathed against the faction they detested ; and they heedlessly surrendered the principles of the consti- tution, while proposing as an excellent jest that the year in which their hero had thus been all in all should be in- scribed with * the names of Caius Cajsar and Julius Caesar as consuls.' While Cato with Favonius, another tribune, as vehe-X ment but not more efficient than himself, was fruitlessly dashing himself against the cool machina- p^.^ ^^' tions of this consummate politician, Cicero position of was swaying uncertainly from side to side, attaching himself now to the party of the senate^^iipse coldness alarmed and irritated him, and again courting the powerful consul for the sake of the protection which he might himself soon require against the intrigues of Clodius, who threatened him with impeachment for his action in the affair of Catilina. He still continued, indeed, to vaunt the merits of his own famous consulship, and descended so far as to solicit Lucceius-to-sing-its-praises in the, work he was composing on contemporary history ; / •■ ^ The Roman Triumvirates, CH. IV, but he felt the ground already slipping from under him. He had reason to fear that the nobles would basely aban- don him to his enemies, if they thought that they could advance their own interest by so doing. The knights, to whose claims he had at first proposed passionately to devote himself, proved faithless to the champion whose sincerity they might perhaps reasonably question. On all sides it became apparent that the abihty which he had so nobly exercised had gained him no solid and permanent position in the state ; that in the absence of high birth and connexions, of a large political following, or of strong military supports, the ^ burgher of Arpinum ' must despair of guiding the commonwealth through the shoals of its civil dissensions. Withdrawing from the forum, Cicero now wandered restlessly from one of his villas to another, ttying to divert his mind by study and composition. He persuaded himself, perhaps, that he was honourably shrinking from the crafty seductions of the various heads of factions. He declined a seat at the board for the divi- sion of public lands, but he sighed for the security which might be afforded him by the dignified office of an augur, and such he said, with pretended playfulness, was the^ only bribe he would accept. But his enemy Clodius was ingratiating himself assiduously with the chiefs of rival factions, and everything foreboded an attack upon him, against which he had no solid defence to offer. At this crisis the favour in which the people held their champion was increased by the discovery, real or Ambitious fictitious, of a plot against his life. Vettius, policy of who had previously accused Caesar of com- plicity with Catilina, was seized with a dagger on his person, and avowed, it was said, that Cato and other nobles had suborned him to assassinate both Caesar and Pompeius. The nobles retorted, indeed, that the pretended plot was a fabrication of the consul himself. The culprit was thrown into prison, and was found a few B.C. 59. Ccesar's political objects. /D days afterwards dead in his bed. Suspicion became rife, and various personages of note were more or less impli- cated in it. But no further light was ever thrown upon the subject ; and the state of public feeling, already greatly excited, was rendered more uneasy than ever. Meanwhile Caesar pursued the object he had in view without faltering and without a failure. When the nobles had been frustrated in their opposition to his election, they had made a futile attempt to neutralize their defeat by fastening upon him the reversion of a petty charge, the supervision of the roads and forests in Italy. Such a * pro- vince ' might have contented an indolent man of fashion, one who on quitting his chair as consul might prefer an easy post at home to the toils and dangers of a distant government. But such were not Caesar's views, and he was not to be so baulked of them. His first command ift Spain had satisfied his immediate necessities ; he cared not to go abroad a second time merely for the sake of plunder, but he was determined to place himself at the head of a powerful army, and consolidate a basis of military operations. Pompeius had made himself an army, though he had since thrown it away. Caesar would do no less ; his position would not, perhaps, allow him to be equally magnanimous. As consul he had been secure, and as proconsul he might also effectually protect himself ; but whenever he should descend from the van- tage of the imperium, he might easily fall a victim to the vengeance of the parties he had outraged. He had in fact already drawn the sword, though it was nine years before he * passed the Rubicon'; he could never sheathe his weapon again till he had gained the victories of Pharsalia and Munda. He resolved to quit the city, gather strength and resources on the field of foreign adventure, and at the fitting season interpose, if necessary, with arms, and fling all his enemies under his feet. Beyond that his views were vague and misty ; but they were full, no doubt, of broad 76 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. IV. B.C. 58. Intrigues of Cloditis, 77 .and generous aspirations. In the confusion of affairs at home, in the manifest debiUty of the senate, and in the corruption of the people, he saw the evidence that the days of the free-state were numbered. He knew that the government must be reconstru<:ted, and he trusted in his own energy and genius to seize the right means at the right moment for launching it upon a new career, ex- panded and fortified by the provinces which had hitherto enjoyed so little share in it. But his own pre-eminence was the first object that occupied his field of vision ; and with all his genius and all his magnanimous impulses, to the last he saw but dimly beyond it. But meanwhile the affections of the populace in the city had been completely won by the games, the shows, ,„ . the larcfesses which Caesar had showered Illyncum, ° 1 -j with the upon it. The tribes contemptuously set aside anTTrans- the paltry commission which the senate iiipineGaui, ^yould have assicfncd him, and offered him, assicned to • • 1 • j Caesar for his collcague m vam protestmg, the united firfivr'"" provinces of the Cisalpine and Illyricum for years. f^yg years, with an army of five legions. The city had been recently alarmed by renewed movements among the conquered races beyond the Alps. The Allobroges had flown to arms at the first outbreak of Catilina's insurrection. The Helvetii, from the sources of the Rhine and the Rhone, were preparing a great national migration westward, which threatened a wide displace- ment of the native populations, and portended still further revolutions. The apprehension thus excited issued in a call for measures of vigilance and repression. We know not what intrigues were set in motion, how Caesar's friends exerted themselves, how Pompeius was cajoled into assisting them, how the nobles were baffled •or coerced ; but so it was that, in spite of Cato's angry warnings, the senate was induced to add the Transalpine province to the government, already exorbitant, which had been pressed upon their favourite by the people. The proconsulate of Caesar in the West might now ^^ rival the extraordinary eastern command conceded to the ambition of Pompeius. Such a precedent as that of the Manilian bill could not long remain without its natural consequences, and this second representation of the same startling drama was not destined to pass without a tragic consummation. Cassar did not immediately quit the city. He might pretend, perhaps, to be still occupied in the completion of his numerous levies, but he was no doubt ^,^^j^^ ^^^ intent on watching affairs at home before tribune,' removing to a distant government. The new cicero^with consuls, Gabinius and Calpurnius Piso, were impeach- ment. both adherents of the triumvirs, men, it would i-.c. 696. seem, of bad private character, as well as ^•^' 5^- unscrupulous poHticians ; but our accounts of them rest chiefly upon the representations of Cicero, who at a later period vehemently assailed them. Of the scandalous reputation of P. Clodius, who now rises into prominence as a tribune, there can be less question. This young reprobate was content to make himself the tool of the triumvirs, and aimed at a position in which he could effectually serve their projects. Being of the patrician order he obtained his adoption into a plebeian house, to enable him to sue for the tribuneship of the plebs. Having attained to this office, he introduced various mea- sures for'^ checking the power of the senatorial faction. He declared himself the avenger of the men who had fallen as alleged accomplices of Catilina, contending that Cicero had sacrificed them to his own selfish policy, and had exceeded the law in condemning them to death unheard. Like the bold tribunes of old, he denied the authority of the senate to arm the consul with irregular 78 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. IV. B.C. 58. Banishment of Cicero, 79 powers for the safety of the state. The 'ultimate decree ' was no doubt an irregularity which never had been, and perhaps could not be, reduced within the legitimate prescriptions of the constitution. Clodius threatened Cicero with impeachment. Pompeius and ( Crassus looked on complacently. Caesar, more kindly / disposed towards him, would have removed him from ) the impending storm by the offer of service under his I own government or elsewhere ; but Cicero, always hoping /that the state would one day allow itself to be saved , /by his eloquence, refused to quit the centre of affairs, and trusted to his own ability to save himself The nobles for their part proved their cruel ingratitude, and did not care to exert themselves in the defence of the upstart statesman. The tribune was left free on all hands to plant his batteries against him. The attack of Clodius assumed the form of a resolu- tion of the people in general terms ^ interdicting fire and water' to whosoever should have inflicted Clodius ob- - , . . -.1 ^ • • 1 • 1 tains the death on a citizen without giving him an appeal ^rclcero"'^ to the tribcs. No culprit was named, but u.c. 696. Cicero was manifestly indicated. In vain had "■^* ^ ■ the senate thrown over him the shield of its n/ decree ; accused by a tribune before the people, he could ' iiot venture to plead a sanction which they would de- nounce as tyrannical. He descended into the forum in the garb of a suppliant, and formally invoked the assistance of his friends and the compassion of the multitude. The knights, among whom he had many sympathizers, clothed themselves in black, and attended his steps as he addressed the citizens from door to door. Crowds of the meaner populace swelled the mournful retinue. The senators were encouraged to mediate in J his behalf, and propose a decree declaring that the attack ' now made upon him was regarded as a public calamity. But the consuls interposed ; Clodius called on the people to resist, raised tumults in the streets, and easily proved that his faction was the stronger of the two. Cicero threw himself on the protection of Pompeius, but was ^ coldly repulsed. Clodius pressed his resolution. He ) convened the tribes in the Flaminian circus outside the walls, to give Caesar, who at the beginning of the year had not yet quitted Italy, an opportunity of attending. The proconsul reminded the assembly of his own vote against the capital sentence, and repeated his condemna- tion of it as an act of illegal violence. At the same time, with his usual moderation, he dissuaded, though perhaps but faintly, the indulgence of revenge. Cicero, however, saw that his case was desperate, and fled, hopingto escape at least a public condemnation. But Clodius still pur- sued his triumph, and exacted a sentence of banishment beyond four hundred miles from the city. He obtained also a decree for the forfeiture of the criminal's estates, gave up his villa at Tusculum to be pillaged by the consuls who were his bitter personal enemies, and razed to the ground his mansion on the Palatine, consecrating its site to the goddess Liberty, to render its future restitution impossible. But the associates of Catilina were not yet fully avenged while Cato, who had most sternly denounced them, was still unassailcd in person or repute, cato ap- Clodius, with the countenance at least of his P?i"^ed to a , dishonour- patrons, prepared a snare for the immaculate able mission statesman, and sought to lower his estima- kfng"of '^^ tion under the guise of honourable employ- Cyprus. ment. The tribune, it seems, had a private grudge against the king of Egypt, Ptolemasus Lathyrus, and he induced the people to take umbrage at this potentate's appointment of his younger son to succeed him on the throne of Cyprus. The inheritance was a rich one ; So TJie Roman Triumvirates. CII. IV. there was plunder to be obtained ; and the victim was innocent and harmless. By a refinement of ill-nature, Clodius imposed upon Cato, through a vote of the people, a task unjust and cruel in itself, and one to the temptations of which his purity might be expected to succumb. Cato, who made it a point of honour to accept any charge laid upon him by the sovereign people, submitted to become the instrument of their insolent wickedness. He executed their orders with inflexible strictness, though he mingled some personal kindness with the harshness of his pubUc measures. It is recorded, moreover, to his honour that he kept his hands free from all taint of corruption throughout this indecent transaction. The triumvirs meanwhile were satisfied with the removal of an importunate opponent for a brief period only. The triumphant career of Clodius did not extend beyond his single year of office. Caesar quitted the city at the same time as Cicero. Clodius might have shrunk from offending a chief of his vigour and determina- tion, but he allowed himself to affront the more phlegmatic Pompeius, and even laid himself under suspi- cion of planning his assassination. One of the tribune's slaves was seized, it seems, at the door of the triumvir, with a dagger under his clothes, and avowed that he had been placed there by his master to commit the murder. At the same time the attitude of the populace under the unruly tribune's influence, was supposed to menace the great man's safety. Pompeius took the precaution of withdrawing from public view. He was assailed by the mob in his own house, and the consul Piso openly took part with Clodius. Pompeius was now roused to stronger measures. He detached the other consul, Gabinius, from his colleague, lent all his influence to the faction of the senate, and obtained the election of consuls of his own The trium- virs com- bine to put down Clo- dius and re- call Cicero from ban- ishment. ^ B.C. 57. Cicero's Return from Exile. Si choice for the year ensuing. The triumvirs now combinedC to favour the restoration of Cicero and the abasement of | his enemy. Clodius failed to obtain a second year of? office. All the new tribunes were men disposed to the recall of the patriot orator. The new consuls, Lentulus and Mctcllus, in the very first days of their office, pro- posed it. All the acts of Clodius were declared illegal ; his pretended adoption into the plebs had been informal • the bill against Cicero was suddenly discovered to be unconstitutional, as hzmz^i privileghun, that is, an enact- ment against an individual citizen. Clodius, indeed, divested of all legitimate power, ventured to oppose the • measure by violence, and armed a mob to overawe the debates. The nobles were ready to meet force by force. They encouraged Milo to lead his gladiators into the streets. For seven months the city was infested by licen- tious rioters on both sides. It was a legitimate oppor- tunity for Pompeius to summon his veterans to control the rival factions ; but the chief of the army still hesi- tated to employ it, and waited to be himself invoked. The senate would not sacrifice its recovered indepen- dence, and preferred anarchy to submission. It was not till the 4th of August that the tribes could at last meet and deliberate unmolested, and the recall of Cicero was voted with acclamation. The return of the long-lost patriot might be hkened to a triumphal procession. From his landing at Brundisium to his entiy into Rome he was hailed with un- Return of bounded acclamations by the volatile Italians, ^^''^ero. The citizens, ashamed of the favour which b.c.'s^.^' they had bestowed upon a worthless demagogue, greeted with redoubled fervour the real saviour of the state, the father of his country. Such, at least, is Cicero's own account of his return; nor is there any reason to question its general truth. We may hope, however, that he had A.H. G 82 The Roman Triinnvirates, CM. IV. learnt some lesson from his late disgrace ; the hollowness of popular flattery on the one hand, the insincerity of aristocratic favour on the other. He had been the idol of the multitude and the puppet of the nobles ; by neither had he been justly estimated or admired for his own substantial merits. He must have felt that he did not possess that weight in public affairs to which his talents and virtues legitimately entitled him. He had failed, partly through the natural disadvantages of his posi- tion, but in no slight degree also from a want of force and simplicity in his own character. So it was that his dream of conciliating interests and classes had vanished; his countrymen were impracticable ; the position was beyond hope ; the state was manifestly doomed to perish, and he had saved it only for a moment. After all, the great action of his life was destined to be cited in history as no better than a splendid failure. Wearied out and sickened of affairs he now withdrew himself more and more from public life. Lucullus, Catulus, Hoitensius had all done the like, perhaps from similar feelings of vexa- tion and disgust. But the aspirations of Cicero were still noble and worthy of his enlightened genius. He now threw himself more devotedly into literar}- occupations, and sought forgetfulness or repose in the philosophical speculations of the great masters of thought who had gone before him. 83 CHAPTER V. Cesar's conquest of gaul — death of crassus and dissolution of the first triuxmvirate. The narrative of the conquest of Gaul by the most con- summate captain that ever led the Roman legions — a narrative related by himself in a style dis- c^gs^r's tinguished for its truthfulness and simplicity — conquest of must have a special interest of its own in the history of the conquering republic. Both the military tactics and the administrative policy of Rome are pre- sented to our view in the commentaries of Ccesar on the Gallic war. We learn from this lucid record how the greatest empire of the ancient or the modern world was acquired, and how also it was organized and maintained. The commentaries are, in fact, an epitome of the history of Roman conquest. But as regards the object of the present work it will suffice to refer to them briefly as a chapter in the annals of the first triumvirate, for the light which they throw upon the aims of Csesar and the means by which he accomplished them. The conquest and the provincial settlement of the Further Gaul occupied the proconsul without interruption from the year 696 of the city, when he entered on the command, to the year 705, when he relinquished it for the conquest of the empire. A vast amount of Roman blood and treasure was spent in his successive campaigns, but the losses of the enemy were no doubt far more exhausting. From the date of their subjugation by Caesar the Gauls never rose again as a nation in revolt ; but their pacification was due to the wise and liberal policy of their conqueror even more than to the terror of his arms. G 2 «4 The Roman Triumvh'atcs. CH. V. The Gauls had been in earlier times among the most formidable enemies of Rome. The citizens could never for- Caesar's first get that the barbarians of the North had once u^?^Q*6 °* entered and burnt their city. For a space of B.C. 58. two centuries indeed these invaders had re- treated step by step ; nevertheless, from time to time they had again threatened the republic with the gravest dis- asters. Step by step Rome had driven them across the Apennines to the valley of the Po, and had there subdued and pacified those of their tribes that dwelt within the limits of the Alps. She had advanced by sea to the coast of Transalpine Gaul ; had settled her colonies at Massilia and Aquae Sextia?, and had penetrated from thence still further into the interior. She had eventually organized the ' Provincia/ her first military dependency beyond the Alps ; and to this province, which lay between the Alps and the Rhone, she had added a second, which reached from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and was named, from its capital, the * Narbonensis.' Rome had little now to fear from the Gauls, brave and warlike as they were, for they had lost their earlier power of combi- nation for attack or defence, and were for the most part ■distracted by the mutual animosity of their various tribes, and by the class jealousies of rival parties in each. The Romans could easily afford to despise the murmurs of the AUobroges, who had pretended for a moment to take a part in the revolt of Catilina. But a movement of another kind was now in progress among these northern peoples. The Helvetii had determined to make a general emigra- tion from their own narrow and barren territory, and direct their course in a body through the centre of Gaul to the broad and fertile shores of the Atlantic. The tribes of the interior were alarmed ; great disturbances might be expected to ensue. The frontiers of the Roman province itself might not be secure. It was deemed necessary to B.C. 58. Ccesar's Campaigns in GanL S^ assume a high tone and forbid the movement. Ccesar hastened across the Alps, amused the Helvetii for a few days with negotiations while he fortified the He checks banks of the Rhone which they proposed to ^^^ "^°^'^- cross below Geneva, and forced them to take a He'Keli?^*' difficult route to the northward, and plunge into the country of the yEdui in the centre of Gaul. Upon this track he quickly followed them, routed them first on the banks of the Saone, and thence pursued them to the neighbour- hood of Bibracte (Autun), where he finally crushed them. From thence he turned his arms against the r^ ^^^^^ Suevi, a German tribe, who, under their chief, the^Sul^. Ariovistus, had crossed the Rhine on a predatory incur- sion, and approached Vesontio (Besangon). Having re- lieved the more quiet and settled communities of Gaul from both these invaders, he set himself to form an alliance with some, and sow dissensions among others, so as to prepare the way, in accordance with the usual policy of the Roman conquerors, for the eventual subiucra- tion of all. "^ "" The ^dui and Arverni in the centre of Gaul, the Remi in the north-east, were disposed, each with selfish views of their own, to aid in the ruin of their common country, while they hailed Caesar as s^e?ond' their protector against the restless Germans campaign on their eastern frontier. In the second year S?^S' '^^ of his command (u.C. 697) the proconsul '"^'• broke the confederacy of the Belgic tribes on the Meuse and the Moselle. In his next campaign (698) Third cam. he worsted the naval power of the Veneti in p^^^" Armorica, and reduced for the most part the wf '^* coast of the Channel, while his lieutenants v^ere equally successful in overcoming the tribes of Aquitania. In the' year 699 Gaul was very generally pacified; but the- legions required to be kept in exercise ; their officers were S6 TIic Roman Triumvirates, ac. 57. Extraordinary Commissiojis. S7 CH. V. ipaign : cross- ing of the Rhine and invasion of Britain, u.c. 699. B.C. 55. greedy of more plunder. Caesar had a great military engine to form and to maintain, and he did not scruple as to the means to be employed. He advanced beyond ^ _,, the limits of his province, threw a bridge Fourth cam- ^ • 1 -r^t • T across the broad and rapid Rhme — the greatest effort of the kind yet accomphshed by the Roman forces — and penetrated for an instant into the German forests. This incursion indeed had no result. Caesar turned in another direction. In the autumn of the same year he made a descent with two legions upon the coast of Britain. Having beaten the natives of the Kentish territory in some slight encounters, but suffered at the same time much injury to his vessels from tides and storms, he withdrew hastily into winter quarters in Gaul. In Second de- no Way discouragcd, however, he again at- scent on tackcd the Britons in the succeeding summer, U.C. 700. and after beating down the opposmg forces, effected the passage of the Thames at a ford above London. There is reason to believe that he penetrated into the interior as far as Verulamium, in Hertfordshire. An important discovery of coins of Julius Caesar seems to indicate that a detachment at least of his forces was for a moment advanced some miles to the north of that spot. But he did not care to effect a permanent lodgment in our island, which would have weakened his position in Gaul. He was content to retire with the promise of a slender tribute, and this was probably never paid after his depar- ture. He had occupied his troops, he had amused the people at Rome, who listened with delight to their hero's despatches, and he had allowed affairs at home to ripen for the crisis to which, through his partizans, he was gradually urging them. \/ During the progress of his campaigns the proconsul's vigilance had indeed never been entirely diverted from con- certs with the trium- virs at the march of events in the city. After each season of military operations he had repaired to the baths of Lucca, at the southern limit of his province — for the q^^^ laws forbade an imperator to enter Italy while retaining his command — and there had concerted, with the friends who flocked to him Lucca, from Rome, the measures most conducive to their common interests. During his absence the bands of the triumvi- rate had become relaxed. Pompcius and Crassus, always cold towards one another, were pursuing their own pri\'ate r objects, each hastening as he thought to the attainment ) of supreme power. Cicero had attached himself to ) Pompeius ; and, a scarcity of corn occurring, he moved ^ that an extraordinary commission should be assigned to j his patron for supplying the necessities of the capital \ The republic had now become famihar with these mono- polies of power. The consuls assented, and for the third time Pompeius was placed above the laws. He was au- thorized to demand supplies from any part of the empire, and to fix the prices at his own discretion. The officers . to be employed, and enriched by the employment, were ^ to be appointed by himself ; his powers were Anextra- •to be continued for five years. Cicero him- self accepted a place on the commission. (The whole scheme was a mere pretence for .putting the great captain at the helm of state which four years before he had unwarily abandoned. But Pompeius, from carelessness or incapacity, failed to gain any accession of strength from the powers thus thrust upon him. With ample means of encouraging his friends and purchasing his enemies, he found himself more than ever exposed to the intrigues of the nobles and the vio- lence of the mob. He was defeated in suing for a further appointment which now offered itself as a prize for con- tending factions. The republic seems to have postponed ordinary commission assigned to Pompeius. u.c. 697. B.C. 57. S8 The Roman Triumvirates, CM. V. the acceptance of the king of Egypt's legacy. The story of this legacy is indeed obscure and doubtful. Proposed The reigning sovereign, Ptolcma^us Auletes, restoration , , i_ • • of the king nad at this juncture been expelled by his nx^M^ subjects, and the senate proposed to restore B.C. 56. him. The public man to whom this busi- ness should be committed would require the command of an army, and doubtless would reap for himself fame, power, and emolument. The government desired to send one of their own party. The consular Lentulus and some tribunes in the interest of Pompeius interposed, alleging an oracle of the Sibyl to the effect that the king must not be restored ^ with a muhitude;' a phrase which was deemed to preclude the use of an armed force. Lentulus was baffled ; the appointment, army and all, was still open. But when Pompeius, through his creatures, demanded ic for himself, he could succeed no better. The turbulence of the popular demagogues rendered any decision impossible. The city became once more a prey Distur- to internal tumults ; the nobles threw them- the"citV" selves again on the support of their licentious champion, Milo. At such critical moments omens are never wanting to stir the popular feeling. The statue of Jupiter on the Alban mount Avas struck with lightning, an event which caused general consterna- tion, as a presage of impending calamity. Clodius seems to have sown dissension between Pompeius and Crassus. At the same time the senate was emboldened to talk of recalling Caesar from his province, and exposing him, unarmed, to impeachment and exile, or even death. Towards the close of the year 698 the proconswl had repaired, as in the previous winter, to his station at Lucca ; and thither consulars and officials of all ranks flocked from the city to meet him. A hundred and twenty lictors might be counted at his door, while two B.C. 56. Growth of Anarehj in Rome, 89 hundred senators, nearly one-half of the whole order, paid their court at his receptions. All these magnates returned to Rome channed with his affable Caesaragain manners and his full-handed generosity. All ^' Lucca, were rapidly coming to the conclusion that n.'c.* ^l' the reign of equal law was approaching Jniis of'^f^ its end, to be succeeded by the ascen- free-state, l/dency of a popular hero. The fatal crisis had indeed almost arrived. The machinery of the free-state could perform its functions no longer. The consuls and tri- bunes, the senate and the people, mutually checked each other's movements, and paralysed the action of the body politic. The elections for the ensuing year were impeded, the consuls interposing under pretence of adverse auspices, and forbidding the tribes to assemble. Mean- while they abstained in person from all the duties of their office, clad themselves in mourning, refrained from the spectacles and from the solemn festival on the Alban mount, as men under constraint of the mob and deprived of their legitimate power. When at last the consuls' chairs became vacant no successors had been duly appointed. The year 699 opened with an interregnum. While riot reigned at home there could be little check upon licence abroad. Gabinius, as proconsul of Syria, took upon himself to set Ptolemceus on his throne at Alexandria, in defiance of the recent veto of the senate. Meanwhile, the impatient candidates, disregarding the legal forms of an interregnum, induced the tribunes to convene the people irregularly. While the nobles em- ployed bribery for their nominee Domitius, the younger Crassus arrived from Gaul with a detachment of Caesar's veterans, and overbore all opposition. The new consuls, Pompeius and Crassus, having thus obtained ^ ^ g their appointment by violence, secured the b.css.^* other offices for their friends by similar outrage. Cato, 90 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. V. who had returned from his mission to Cyprus without stain of pecuniary corruption, now sued for the pra^tor- ship, but was mortified by a rejection, which was rendered doubly vexatious by the infamy of Vatinius, whom the triumvirs exalted over his head. Ca3sar had induced his colleagues to smother their mutual jealousies. He next secured for them, by the Caesar's intervention of the tribune Trebonius, the im- cxt^nckdfor P°^^^^^ provinccs of Spain and Syria on their a second dcscent from office. In return he obtained, yeSs? ^^ through their assistance, the extension of his u.c. 700. own command for a second period of five years. They could urge that the regions which he had so quickly conquered were but half pacified, and as yet imperfectly organized. Ca:sar himself looked forward to confirming his influence over his legions, while he anticipated the decline of his rivals' power in the interval. The resistance of the nobles to a measure which proved so fatal to them was petulant rather than determined. Cato, who had lost much of his authority by daily col- lision with violence and vulgarity, and Favonius, a party brawler rather than a political leader, were the most active champions of a faction from which Lucullus, Servilius, and Lentulus now held themselves aloof. The tribunes on different sides engaged in the petty warfare of obstructing public ways and locking the doors of civic buildings. Cato got himself lifted on men's shoulders in order to force his way into the place of meeting, and employed the stale trick of declaring the auspices adverse. He was answered by the brandishing of clubs and showers of stones ; swords and daggers were drawn in the affray, and the friends of the optimates were driven from the arena, not without bloodshed. Such were the tumultuous proceedings by which the desperate policy of the triumvirs was ratified. It was in one of these scenes K.c. 54. Crassits attacks the Parthians, 91 of violence that the robe of Pompeius became sprinkled with blood. On his return home thus disfigured he was met by his youthful consort Julia, who was Death of alarmed for his safety. Horrified at the sight, Julia, she was seized with premature labour, and died from its effects shortly afterwards. Pompeius, notwithstanding his coldness in public affairs, was a man of strong domestic sensibility. The loss of his young wife affected him deeply, and Relative made him perhaps more than ever supine and position of sluggish in the prosecution of his interests, virsatthis He might otherwise have turned to good ac- l\c°7oo. count an event which cut through the entan- ^•^- 54- glements of his personal connexion with his rival. The supereminent position he now enjoyed, as the head of an important commission, and the chief of a large army which he could command from beneath the walls of Rome, gave him an immense advantage over Caesar, who was engaged, at a great distance, in a long and still precarious warfare ; and over Crassus also, who at the same moment was rushing blindly upon an arduous expedi- tion. Caesar had conquered the Gauls, and could pretend that he had received their submission ; but the Belgic tribes were again in arms, and his enemies at home might anticipate at any moment his defeat of death. Crassus, in undertaking the government of Syria, had announced his intention of making war upon the Parthians ; and he, too, now advanced in years and long disused to arms, might soon succumb to a formidable foe in a difficult country. The nobles, indeed, who had little fear of him at home, were jealous of his possible success abroad, and induced one of the tribunes to denounce his enterprise as a national crime, and stir up the superstitious feelings of the people against it. But Crassus was not deterred by the direful omens which were said to attend his exit 92 The Roman Triumvirates, cir. V, from the city. On arriving at the seat of his govern-, ment he directed the advance of troops to the Euphrates. Cra-ssuspro- ^^^ entered the region of Osrhoene, captured consul in some towns, and placed in them Roman oyria. . * u.c. 700. garrisons, before he returned to his headr "•^- 54- quarters for the winter. When the Parthian government complained of this unprovoked aggression upon their dependency, the proconsul replied that he would give them an answer in their capital, Scleucia. As soon as he had completed his preparatio ns,he led a force of several legions across the desolate and arid district between the Euphrates and the Tigris. The Parthians had determined to let him advance to a cer- tain distance unopposed; they had directed an officer of their own to offer his services as guide, and lead him into the ambush which they had prepared for him. The Roman troops had become exhausted and demoralized under a chief in whom they had no confidence. When they turned back disheartened, the Parthians closed around them with their clouds of light cavalry, and in- flicted upon them disastrous losses. At last the Romans sustained a crushing defeat under the walls of Carrhjc. Battle of The son of Crassus, a gallant young officer u.c"^7?i. ^rom Caesar's army, was slain ; and the pro- 8c 53. consul, stricken with grief and shame, deemed it more prudent to negotiate than to hazard a rapid flight. The Parthians deceived and entrapped him, and Crassus himself was slain in a futile attempt at rescue ; the main body of his army was captured, and carried away into the interior. A small remnant only was saved by the prompt vigour of C. Cassius Longinus, and led back within the frontiers of Syria. The overthrow of Carrh^ was one of the gravest disasters ever sustained by the Roman arms. It is said that 20,000 were slain and 10,000 carried into captivity. The officers were treated with B.C. 53. Revolt in Northern Gaul. 93 scorn and mockery; the head of Crassus was cut off; and molten gold, according to the story, was poured into the mouth of the most avaricious of the Romans ; but the captives seem to have been treated with indulgence and allowed to settle in the land of their conquerors. The mass of the citizens at home appear to have regarded this discomfiture with comparative indiff"erence ; so little was Crassus loved or respected among Cae^ars them ; so distant was the scene of operations, g^"' '" . It was not till a later period, and under other year of tiae political circumstances, that so signal a defeat u.c.' 70^'' was deemed to demand an equally signal "•^- 53- reparation. Doubtless, the eyes of nobles and people became more intently fixed on the position of the pro- consul of Gaul, which was becoming more and more hazardous. On his return from his second expedition into Britain, Caesar had found Gaul tranquil and appa- rently resigned to the yoke. He held a meeting of the states at Samarobriva (Amiens^, his northern capital, and assured himself of their fidelity. He had intended to spend the winter at Lucca. But meanwhile the tribes between the Loire and the Rhine had concerted a wide conspiracy, and only waited for the proconsul's departure to rise in arms. Their revolt was accidentally precipi- tated, and Caesar was still at hand; but, cooped up in his own quarters, he remained for some time ignorant of the imminent danger to which his outlying detachments were exposed. O. Cicero, the orator's brother, was at the head of one of these, and could with difficulty notify his peril to his chief by a billet, inscribed with Greek characters, shot into his camp. The vigour and genius of Caesar now prevailed. He restored tranquillity among the great mass of the insurgent peoples ; he made a signal example of the Eburones, a tribe of Cimbric origin, whom he delivered over as aliens to the blind hostility of the Gauls around 94 The Roman Triumvirates. CH. V. them ; and with the defeat of the wailike Treviri he seemed to have accomphshed a second and final pacification of the province. But his peril had been great ; his conquests were evidently incomplete ; his posi- tion was precarious. Both his friends and enemies at Rome might equally doubt whether he would survive the prolongation of his foreign adventure. The year of the defeat of Carrha^ and the sudden in- surrection of the Gauls had again opened at Rome with Ascendency an interregnum, which lasted for more than inthe"^*^*"^ six months. The flagrant bribery practised senate. by the Candidates for office had induced the best of the senators and of the tribunes to combine in preventing the assembling of the comitia. At last Cato himself became alarmed, and urged Pompeius to assume the functions of a dictator and demand an election. The triumvir, released from his connexion with one colleague, and apprised, perhaps, of the fresh embarrassment of the other, gladly drew near to the party of the optimates. He interposed to procure the election of two chiefs of their faction, Calvinus and Messala, and the nobles hailed him once again as the champion of their special interests. The calm, however, which succeeded was of short dura- tion. The elections for the ensuing year were again thwarted ; the year 702 opened, like the preceding, with an interregnum. Assuredly Pompeius could have con- trolled the disorder; but he seems rather to have assisted it. Milo, Scipio, and Hypsasus demanded each the consulship with arms in their hands ; every day was marked with fresh riot, and blood was frequently shed. But amidst the obscure murders which marked this era of violence and ferocity, there was one which caused especial sensation, and demanded stronger measures of repression. It happened that in the month of January of this year, Milo was journeying on the Appian Way, B.C. 52. Death of Clodius, 95 accompanied in his carriage by his wife, and attended by a retinue of servants, and, as was his wont, by a troop of gladiators. Near to Bovillae, a few Milo slays miles from the city, he was met by Clodius, y.c J-cS. who was on horseback, with a small company bc. 52. of armed men around him. It does not appear that the affray which ensued was premeditated, for to travel with armed attendants was not unusual, and both INIilo and Clodius were men who might apprehend the violence which they had themselves often provoked. But a quarrel ensued between their respective escorts, and Clodius, wounded in the struggle, took refuge in a roadside holstelry. Milo, giving way to his fury, attacked the house, and caused his enemy to be dragged forth and slain. The corpse lay in the road till it was picked up by a passing friend and brought to the city. Here it was exposed to the gaze of the multitude, who worked themselves into frenzy at the sight. A riot broke out; benches, books, and papers were snatched from the curia in which the senate was wont to assemble, fire was set to the pile, and the flames which consumed the remains of Clodius spread from house ta house over a considei^able space bordering on the forum. The rioters proceeded to attack the mansions of several nobles, and particularly that of Milo himself. He was prepared, however, for the attempt, and repulsed the as- sailants with bloodshed. The knights and senators armed their clients to suppress the commotion, and quiet was at last restored after several days of uproar and violence. The disorder of public affairs had thus reached a crisis which demanded exceptional measures for the public security. Men of peace who dared pompeius not yet insist upon the appointment of a appointed ,. , .11 1 1 • •'*°'^ consul. dictator, men who still clung to the vain u.c 702. shadow of constitutional forms, men such as °*^- ^'^' Cicero, fled from the city where there was no longer a 96 The Roman Trimnviratcs. CII. V. people or a senate, where the mob held the streets and the tribunals were impotent or corrupt. The great parties which had formerly represented social interests had lapsed into mere factions of families or classes, which sought power for the sake of public plunder/ Few honest patriots still continued to haunt the forum or obtrude themselves upon the cabals of selfish oligarchs. Cato himself, as we have seen, though unshaken in courage, despaired of the ancient principles of the commonwealth. Liberty, he saw, was menaced by two dangers, within by anarchy, without by usurpation ; and when he looked around for a defender he found, even among those whom Cicero had designated as the party of the *good men/ so much cowardice and self-interest that he at last determined to demand from an individual that protection forthe state which the laws could no lono-er/ assure to her. ^ Better,' he said, ' to choose our own master than to wait for the tyrant whom anarchy will impose upon us.' But there remained in fact no choice m the matter. There was as yet only one master at whose feet Rome could throw herself With bitter mor- tification Bibulus proposed, after an interregnum of nearly three months, the appointment of Pompeius as sole consul, and Cato supported him. They might hope that content with this pre-eminence, which was less odious than that of dictator, though in fact even less known to the laws, the great man would restore order in the city, and find means for compelling the proconsul of Gaul to surrender his province and disband his formidable armies. The repression of scandalous disorders, the overthrow of a licentious ambition, might, after all, it seemed, be cheaply purchased by one year of despotism. Pompeius was old in years, supine and vain ; possibly he might be used for the occasion, and thrown away aftenvards. But if such was the secret reasoning of the B.C. 52. Pompeius as sole Consul, 07 . despairing chiefs of the senate, they did not consider how surely the precedent which they were about to set would give occasion and colour to further attempts, and pave the way to the inevitable monarchy. The sole consul entered upon his irregular office in a month irregularly intercalated, for the calendar of the year had long fallen into confusion, and, like the state, required vigorous measures of amendment. ' Kind as kings upon their coronation day,' he vowed that he would take Cato as his adviser, and rule the state in the interests-^ of freedom. He had taken no counsel with Caesar ii^e matter. He now finally cast off the bonds of ailHte with his late associate, and devoted himself to the pohcy of the optimates, which he had long felt to be properly his own. Twice already he had achieved the lead of their party, and twice he had sacrificed it to the pride of stand- ing aloof from all connexion with men whom he deemed his inferiors in influence and abihty. The consulship, which he now held without a colleague, raised him above all the citizens in dignity; but his proconsular imperium was far more valuable to him from the actual power which it lodged in his hands. He commanded legions in Spain and cohorts at the gates of the city, and these he would never suffer to be wrested from him, while he was pre- pared to insist on Cassar's return, unarmed, to the city. Meanwhile he was content to surrender Milo to the de- mands of the populace. The culprit, arraigned before a select body of eighty-one judices, enlisted Cicero in his defence. The great orator prepared to assert his client's innocence, and exult in the bold act of self- Trial of defence which had freed the commonwealth MUo. ° from a danger and a pest. But when he rose to speak he was greeted by furious shouts, and was at the same time put out of countenance by the display of an armed force which Pompeius had introduced into the forum to A. H. H l\i 98 The Roman Triimiviraics. CH. \, overawe him. He stammered through a short and nerve- less oration, and sat down with his task only half finished. Milo, convicted of murder, was allowed to retire into exile,' and chose Massilia for his retreat. On returning home, Cicero composed for publication the speech he should have delivered in his defence. The story is told that his vanity prompted him to send to his client the splendid declamation he had penned ; and that Milo replied with a sneer, not wholly undeserved, that he deemed himself fortunate that so convincing an argument had not been actually delivered ; ' else,' he said, 'I should not now be enjoying the delicious mullets of this place.' Pompeius was now at the height of his fortunes. Ho enjoyed all but the name of royalty. The armed bands Seventh which had kept the city in an uproar were year of the speedily dispersed ; tranquillity was restored; u.c" 70^*^' abundance was secured; the nobles acquiesced, B.C. 52. ^^^ |-|^e people were satisfied. The only rival he had cause to fear was far away and entangled in increasing difficulties. Caesar had barely escaped from the last attack of his revolted subjects, and he was now held in so little awe by his adversaries at home, that on the occasion of an act of perfidy, which might not unjustly be imputed to him, in his dealings with the public enemy, Cato had not scrupled to demand that he should be delivered up to the Gauls to save, as he pretended, the honour of the republic. The demand, indeed, was refused or evaded ; but it might give him a significant hint of the bitterness of his enemies and the insecurity of his position at home. At the close of the year 53, after the second pacification of his province, he had repaired, as usual, for the winter to Lucca to watch events in Italy ; but fresh plots were in agitation among the Gauls. Jt was in the centre of their countr}', between the Seine and the B.C. 51. Rciwlt of VcrciugetGrix. 99 Garonne, that the flame burst forth and spread rapidly It was kindled by the Druids, the religious caste which was most powerful among the Carnutes, and was closely connected with the ruling classes throughout the country At Genabus (Orleans, or rather Gien), on the Loire, the Koman traders had established themselves in consider- able numbers ; for the traf^c of the north and south followed the track of the great streams, and the bend which that river makes in the middle of its course formed a central point of communication between them. The native population rose; the foreigners were surprised and massacred. The command of a general revolt was taken by Vercingetorix, a chief of the Arverni, the only name among the Gauls which attained to any distinction in these wars, and that a title, perhaps, rather than a per- sonal appellative. But the man who bore it deserves to be better known to us, for even in the commentaries of nis enemy he stands forth as a great military genius, and the struggle which he maintained, however brief, was one of the most critical in the Roman military annals. Under his command the Gauls inflicted a notable disaster upon the mvader at Gergovia, struck his own sword Gallant from his hand, and cut off his retreat into '•^'^'s^ance Italy. In this, indeed, Vercingetorix was only getorixr"' too successful. To escape from the Gauls would have been to fall into the hands of the enemy at home. Had the victor left Caesar but a loophole for retreat, he might have been rid of him for ever. There was, however,°no alternative for him but to conquer beyond the Alps, or be crushed within them. But his forces were still numerous to the north of the Seine ; his lieutenant Labienus checked and worsted the tribes by which he was himself there as- sailed, and was enabled to join his chief, and sustain him against the attack of the populations that were rising be- hind him. Another engagement ensued, and Ca?sar was H 2 lOO The Roman Trimnviratcs. B.C. 51. CH. V. Ccvsar organizes GaiiL lOr this time victorious. Vercingetorix led his routed fol- lowers to Alesia, near the modern Dijon, which he invested with a force of 80,000 warriors. Caesar pursued him, and completed another circumvallation, in which he enclosed these vast numbers, together with a multitude of unarmed fugitives, who perished with hunger between the two contending armies. The forces of Vercingetorix, after divers attempts to break through the blockading lines, were at last reduced by famine. Their gallant leader offered himself as a sacrifice for them, and the lives of his people were spared; but he was himself ungenerously carried off, and reserved for the future triumph of the conqueror, and Final con- ^^^ crwcl death of a Pontius and a Perseus, quest of The crisis had passed ; the subjugation of the u.c. 703. whole region between the Alps, the Rhine, and B.C. 51. ^i^g ocean was completed in the following year, the eighth of Caesar's proconsulship; and the spirit of insur- rection was daunted, perhaps, by the unrelenting severity with which he chastised it. In eight campaigns he had taken, as Plutarch has recorded, more than 800 cities, worsted 300 nations, and encountered three millions of men in arms, of whom he had slain one million and made an equal number prisoners. Secure as he felt himself in his position at the head of affairs, Pompeius had been unable to conceive any large Feeble measures for the public weal. He had provided, measures of by mcans of the extensive powers committed to ompeius. j^.^^ ^^^ ^^^ supply of the city with corn ; but he had not attempted to grapplq with the great economi- cal difficulties of the day, under which the mass of the citizens was sinking into poverty and degradation. The planting of colonies, the introduction of foreigners to the privileges of the state, the relief of debtors oppressed by hard laws and still harder usages, were matters which he left to be dealt with by one who should rise hereafter to the true spirit of the dictators of old. His laws against bribery, and other specious political measures, were mere palliative expedients. Nor did he care to observe even these in his own conduct. He had interdicted the eulogies which the powerful friends of a culprit had been allowed to utter before his judges ; but when Metellus Scipio, a magnate of the highest standing, whose daughter he had recently espoused, was cited before a tribunal, he conde- scended to speak himself in his favour, and thereby extort an acquittal. He had obtained a decree that no magistrate should enjoy a province till five years after quitting his office at home ; but this enactment, which, however im- portant, was impossible of execution, he promptly violated in his own case, by causing his proconsulship to be pro- longed for a second term, even while he was himself actually consul. Again, he had appointed that no man should sue for a public charge while absent from the city. The rule was intended no doubt as a check upon Cassar ; but he had become jealous of his rival's military achievements, and when he found it for his own interest to facilitate Caesar's election to a second consulship, in order to draw him prematurely from his command in Gaul, he made an exception to this law also. The final reduction of Gaul found the work of pacifi- cation already far advanced. Cassar's policy differed from that of former governors. The provinces q^^^^^ on either side of the Alps had been placed orgSiizltlon under the control of garrisons and colonies. °^^^"^' Portions of their soil had been conferred upon such Roman citizens as would exchange security at home for lands to be maintained at the risk of their own lives abroad. But the ancient policy of the republic could not be extended to the vast territories which Ccesar had now to organize. Nor was it his wish to bring Rome, as it were, into the provinces ; his object was rather to intro- s»*» „«¥i«»«»a*)»BniK» I I 02 TJlc Roman Triumvirates, CH. V. duce the Gaulish foreigners into Rome, and give them an interest in the city of their conquerors. The first step towards making them citizens was to lighten for them the Roman yoke. Accordingly he established among them no badges of subjection in the shape of colonies. He left them their realms and territories as well as their laws and their religion. He allowed to most of them a spe- cious show of freedom. They retained their magistrates and senates, guided no doubt by Roman agents. The tribute required of the provincials was softened by the title of military assessment. Honours and privileges were showered upon their chiefs and cities. But, after all, the manner of the magnanimous Roman won as many hearts as his benefactions. When he saw the sword which had been snatched from him in his battle \vith the Arverni suspended in the temple of its captors, he refused to reclaim it, saying, with a gracious smile, that the offering was sacred. But Caesar had yet another enemy within the bounds of his wide dominion. The senate, towards whom his Caesar or a- position had bccome one of open defiance, had nizes his established a stronghold of its own interests in resources in the citics of the Narboncnsis. From the time Gaul. ^^^ Pompeius had led his legions through that country against Sertorius, driving the remnant of the Marians before him, the south of Gaul had been filled with the agents of the senatorial party, and its resources applied to the furtherance of their policy. Since his return to Rome Pompeius had continued, in fact, to govern the district by the hands of Fonteius and other proconsuls up to the time of Caesar's appointment. The new governor had set himself to undo the work of his predecessors. He exerted himself to recover the favour of the jVIassilians, by extending the strip of terri- tory which they were allowed to hold in nominal inde- B.C. 51. Ccesars legions in GanL 10% I pendence. He rewarded his faithful adherents, both Roman and provincial, with lands and largesses, and placed the government of the country in their hands. Meanwhile he kept his legions ready for future service. Every cohort, stationed far or near, became a depot for the enlistment of the most warlike of the natives, whose military spirit prompted them to attach themselves to the service of so gallant and generous a captain. The soldiers, indeed, with whom he had effected the conquest had themselves been principally of Gaulish blood ; the republic had furnished him with no troops from Italy, and a contingent which he had borrowed from Pompeius he had promptly surrendered when it was demanded of him, and trusted himself solely to his own levies. The legions numbered the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth, which he h id found in the Cisalpine at the outset of his career, were probably the forces raised by Metellus in that region, when he closed the Alps against Catilina. The Tenth legion had been formed by his predecessors in the Transalpine to control the Allobroges. The Eleventh and Twelfth were the proconsul's own hasty conscription within the two provinces at the commencement of his first campaign against the Helvetii. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth he enlisted also in Gaul to oppose the great confederacy of the Belgians. Of these the latter had been cut in pieces by the Eburones ; but another Fourteenth and a Fifteenth also were afterwards levied in the Gaulish terri- ^ tories. A small portion only of these warriors levies in could have been of genuine Roman or Italian ^^"'* extraction ; they were mainly drawn, no doubt, from the native population of the states which had been endowed with the ' rights of Latium,' and thus placed by special favour on a footing of subordinate or incomplete citi- zenship. The legions, however, thus semi-Romanized, I04 The Roman Triumvirates. CH. V. were attended by numerous foreign cohorts, equipped with similar arms, and trained under the same disci- pHne. The common dangers and glories of a few cam- paigns, side by side, had rendered these auxiliaries no - less efficient than their regular comrades. One entire legion Caesar did not scruple to compose of Gauls only. The helmets of these soldiers were distinguished by the figure of a lark, or a tuft of its plumage, whence the legion itself derived its name Alanda. The bird was itself no bad representative of the noisy and vivacious people who were proud to accept it as their symbol. They were glad, perhaps, to escape from the patriarchal tyranny of their priests and nobles, and put themselves under a discipline, which, however stem, was congenial to their military instincts. They admired and loved the generous leader who sought to gain the personal attachment of his warriors as no Roman imperator had cared to do before him. Among Caesar's contemporaries it was remarked that throughout his Gallic campaigns his soldiers never mutinied. Their cheerful endurance of toils and priva- tions more dismayed the enemy than their well-known j prowess in the field. They could never be induced, when ! captured, to turn their arms against him, while Pompeius and Lucullus, it was said, had constantly been confronted by renegades from their own ranks. Gaul had been con- quered under Caesar by the Gauls themselves, and it was perhaps the greatest of their conquests hitherto. They had indeed gained a triumph over Rome in earlier times; but the triumph had been signally reversed and never yet repeated. The day was coming when they were about to conquer Rome once for all, and establish the throne of the Caesars upon a lasting foundation. 105 CHAPTER VI. RUPTURE BETWEEN C^SAR AND THE SENATE. At the end of six montlis, Pompeius, following the prescriptive rule of the dictatorial office, divested him- self of his sole consulship, and caused his ^ , father-in-law, Metellus Scipio, to be associated pSwo'„ a,,, with him. He had succeeded in imposing Llt^ol"" order upon the populace in the city ; he had P»"y- given the tribunals a semblance at least of purity and justice, and the senate might seem to recover under his shelter some portion of its pristine dignity. To maintain this outward show he obtained the consulship for the next year for two of its leading members, Servius Sul- picius, a moderate man and of high character, and M. Marcellus, a violent aristocrat devoted to his patron's personal interests, while he procured the defeat of Cato whom he regarded as a troublesome interloper. Cajsar had just effected the destruction of Vercingetorix, and the people had constrained the senate to decree a ' sup- plication ' or public thanksgiving in his honour. Mar- cellus retorted by gravely demanding that the proconsul of Gaul should be recalled. The fiercest partisans of the oligarchy, confident in the pre-eminent position now occupied by Pompeius, supported him vehemently : but their violence disturbed their own champion, who feared ■ a renewal of the recent tumults, and this desperate measure was overruled. The enemies of C^sar found other ways of venting their displeasure. The proconsul had accepted the patronage of the Transpadane Gauls and had founded a colony at Novum Comum, the modem Como. The Transpadanes had already acquired from '1 io6 The Roman Triumvirates. ch. vi. Pompeius Strabo the ' rights of Latium/ which at this time conferred ahnost the consideration, as well as many of the privileges, of the Roman franchise. Marcellus, in order to irritate Csesar, had caused a citizen of this Latin colony to be seized on some pretence, and beaten with rods. The man was not a Roman, indeed, nor had he served, it would seem, a magistracy in his own town, by which he would have acquired the immunities of a Roman. Marcellus may not have violated the actual letter of the law, which exempted a Roman citizen from the degradation of the scourge ; nevertheless, the Romans themselves acknowledged that it was an B.C.' 51- indignity to scourge even a Latin, and both C^sar and his friends in the city regarded the act as a deliberate affront to the popular chieftain. Ccesar, with studied moderation, refrained from re- senting this high-handed proceeding. He knew that the insolence of the nobles was confirming him in the favour of the populace. Nor, indeed, did Pompems Snsu°or give it his august countenance. Possibly S*c.^i,o3. he, too, was content to let the citizens mark the B.C.' 51. difference between a sage and experienced champion, such as himself, and the vulgar violence of the headstrong faction to which he had given their turn of office. He absented himself from Rome during the remainder of the year, and visited his villas, pretending to be employed in provisioning the city. While his rival was completing, in his eighth campaign, the long iwar which formed his army and created his resources, he ivithdrew with his intimates from the more eminent men of his party, dallied with the pursuits of literature and i)hilosophy, and sought perhaps to recruit his failing health. Meanwhile the nobles, as if bent on their own (ruin, strove to remove the man from whose moderation they might still have learnt a salutary lesson. They had ^mmmmmtmrnmrt tt a MX ^ ^ MfMitI' B.C. 51. Cccsars enemies iw^e his reealL 107 persuaded Cicero to quit, not without reluctance, the centre of affairs, and assume the government of Cilicia from the month of August in this year. Discarded as he had long been from the councils of the optimates, and treated with ill-disguised contempt by the brawlers who swayed them, he still clung to the hope that all classes would at last combine to invoke him to save the state a second time. But the spirit of the senatorial factionN was such that he would have been allowed to do them s no service had he remained within their call, while , his short career as proconsul in Cilicia had obtained; for him well-merited honour. In the conduct of his civil administration in that province he left a brilliant example of honour and integrity ; and even in the com- mand of a military force against the marauders in the mountains, he demeaned himself, though untrained in arms, as became a Roman impcrator. His opportunities, however, were slight, and his successes were necessarily trifling. The innate vanity of his character is again curiously evinced by the dream in which he indulged, that (y^ he had merited the glories of a legitimate triumph, which on his return he solicited with unworthy importunity. The consul M. Marcellus had urged Caesar's per- emptory recall. Pompeius, who had himself obtained leave for him to sue for the consulship without Csesar quittmg his government, gave way so far as support by to allow the senate to decree at the end of bnbery. September in this year that a successor to his province should be definitely appointed six months from that time, that is, in the March following. No policy could be more feeble than this. It irritated Caesar ; at the same time it gave him an interval to provide for his own defence. Two of the tribunes sprang forward to put their veto upon the decree. The consul Sulpicius him- self exclaimed against it. It seems that even at this -oigjMr~r~»»-~ i>v«»«*>*«»*>-«i***iwi««»w«*«*«**'* loS The Roman Trhnnvirates, CH. VI. B.C. 50. Confidence of Ponipeius, 109 moment of embittered feeling many of the more respect- able members of the senate demurred to an act so violent and indecent. Pompeius, who had just quitted the city under pretence of hastening to repair to his province, watched every turn in the game, and now affected to dis- approve of so extreme a measure. He allowed C. Mar- cellus, the cousin of Marcus, to be elected consul for the ensuing year, thus securing one strong partisan to the senate ; but he neutralized this act of vigour to some extent by getting PaulusTEmilius appointed his colleague, who was well known to have sold himself to Ca;sar for a large sum of money with which to erect his splendid basilica in the forum. Among the new tribunes was another friend of Caesar, v/ho was also reputed to have been bought with Gallic gold. C. Scribonius Curio was the son of a senator of high rank and authority, a firm but temperate supporter of his party. The son had early disgraced himself by his licentiousness ; he had found himself companions among the most dissolute young men of his class ; he was needy and unprincipled. Yet he was a youth not only of excellent parts but also of amiable character. He was a favourite with Cicero, who, despairing of his own contemporaries, now often looked with pleasing enthusiasm to the rising generation for objects of hope and faith. But he was not proof against Caesar's seductions, and now, having attained an important office, he was prepared to defend his cause with desperate resolution. Cassar's enemies were no doubt well aware of the sums he had lavished in the purchase of adherents. Far The senate "lore lavish was the expenditure which he strengthen incurred in the organization of his province and their mih- ,. . _^. . i-,., , taryre- his armics. Disappomted ni their hope that sources. j^^ might be crushed by the Gauls, they now flattered themselves that his resources were exhausted, that they could outbid him in the favour of the provin- cials and even of his own soldiers. When Atticus the Epicurean, who looked more to money than to politics, called on him for the liquidation of a private debt of fifty talents, they imagined that he would be seriously embarrassed. He repaid this trifling blow by ordering the construction of a sumptuous villa at Aricia. Above all, they placed their reliance on the force of seven legions which were under the command of Pompeius, and which, though quartered in Spain, might be promptly transported across the sea, even if the route of Gaul should be closed against them. At this moment the commander in Syria was calling for reinforcements against the Parthians. The senate decreed that two additional legions should be sent to him. The re- sources of the republic lay in the rival camps of Pom- peius and Caesar. The senate demanded a legion from each. Pompeius, as has been before mentioned, had previously lent a legion to Caesar ; this he now required to be returned to him for his own contingent, while the senate insisted on his furnishing another for his own. Two divisions were thus removed from Gaul, and when they arrived in Italy the senate unscrupuously retained them near the frontier to strengthen their own position. But Caesar had pUed them with generous gifts, and in the end they imparted weakness rather than strength to his enemies. Meanwhile these untoward conse- quences were little foreseen by Pompeius or the faction which clamoured around him. When they discussed among themselves their chances of success, and some one enquired of their champion what he would do should their enemy persist in suing for the consulship, and refuse at the same time to relinquish his command e«*>aj!««>if^i«B^»iWi(^ « .:■ ,'S!9K%^S!!i«p^ A»f iiMiM i ii > «m >. a at s«aMW feaii 112 The Roman Triumvirates. ch. vr. B.C. 50. Vacillation of the Senate. 113 instance of the vehemence of popular enthusiasm. When his health was unexpectedly restored, the people rushed tumultuously to congratulate their ancient favourite, and showered their blessings upon him as he was slowly transported in his litter to Rome. Memorable, indeed, was the example thus presented of the shortsightedness of mortals and the vanity of human wishes. The gods, exclaimed the Roman moralists, offered, in their divine prescience, to remove the great Pompeius, at the summit of his fortunes, beyond the sphere of human contin- gencies ; but the cities and the nations interposed with prayer, and preserved their beloved hero for defeat and decapitation. Pompeius himself was no less blind than his admirers. Estimating the depth of his influence by the loudness of these flattering acclamations, he no longer mistrusted the extent of his resources, nor doubted the terror of his name. There was no one at his ear to whisper to him how hollow these demonstrations were ; to foretell that his garrisons would lay down their arms and Italy surrender without a blow, while the voices now most eager in their devotion to him would welcome the conqueror of Gaul with no less fervent enthusiasm. 'But what,' murmured Cicero, when the delusion was over, and his chief was shifting the basis of his power to a foreign shore, *what are the prospects of a party whose champion falls dangerously sick at least once a year ? ' The Gallic legions, indeed, were still retained in their cantonments beyond the mountains ; but the proconsul Casar's himself was drawing nearer to Rome, and the demands. progress he now made through the cities of the Cisalpine, but strictly within the limits of his province, was a continued triumph and defiance. Under pretence of courting the suffrages of the citizens in that district for his quaestor Antonius, who was suing for the augurate, he passed the summer on the confines of his government. The people came to greet him on every side, or celebrated his arrival in their towns with feasts and sacrifices. From the Cisalpine he hastened back in the autumn to the country of the Treviri, where he had summoned his forces to a general review ; and there he doubtless com- municated to his officers his resolve to extort from the senate full satisfaction of all their demands — the consul- ship for himself, the honour of the triumph, and confir- mation of the acts of his long proconsulship, with lands and money for his soldiers. * They cabal,' he said, ^ to wrest from me my rights ; but ' — laying his hand on his sword — * this shall maintain them.' At this moment Cicero had just returned from Cilicia, and sued for a tri- umph. Trifling as his successes had been, the greatest of all military honours had sometimes no doubt been granted for less. It was not a time for mortifying even the vanity of a good citizen. But Cato opposed himself to the demand with his surly impracticability, and the senate weakly or spitefully sanctioned the refusal. Pom- peius, to whom Cicero had applied for his support, had amused his petitioner with hollow compliments, while Caesar on his part expressed his warm approbation, together with the offer of his services, thus easily de- taching him from the counsels of his ungenerous party, and disposing him to remain a mute spectator of the rapid advance of the crisis before him. The senate, meanwhile, made no actual preparation for the approaching contest. If Marcellus applied to Pompeius, and urged him to concentrate the vacillation legions which he had under his command in of the the West, he was satisfied, or at least silenced, with the great captain's vainglorious reply : * I have only to stamp with my foot, to raise up legions from the soil of Italy.' Pompeius depended on the veterans to whom A.H. I ) 1 14 The Roman Trunnvirates, ch. vi. he had himself given lands, and to the sons, perhaps, of the veterans of Sulla. Neither he nor his adherents knew how slight was the tic which bound these grace- less clients to him. The senators were reassured, how- ever, by his boastful confidence, and, voting agam at the bidding of their favourite consul, decided by a great majority, in the teeth of their recent vote, that Cccsar should be at once recalled and his rival be allowed at the same time to retain his powers. The injustice of this decision was palpable ; nor less so that Caesar, by yieldincr to it, would have rushed on his own destruction. It was^'impossible for him to come to the city, and sue for the consulship as a candidate in the toga. His hfe would not have been safe for a moment. Nor was it more safe for him even to descend into private life, and surrender his claim to the office which was necessary for his personal security. Once more Curio exclaimed against the action of the nobles, and the populace, per- ceivincT the situation at a glance, hailed his efforts with tumuUuous applause. The senate was alarmed, and swayed back again with the natural levity of the southern temperament. On a second division the consul was outvoted by a majority as great as that which had but just now supported him. Marcellus was baffled. He dismissed the senate, exclaiming, in his irritation : ' You have carried the day, but you shall have Caesar for your master.* A few days later, at the commencement of Decem- ber the city was alarmed by a report that Caesar's leo-ions were crossing the Alps. The consuls hastily Cu^'rio urges Called the senate together, and proposed to Caesar to summon somc cohorts stationed at Capua to aSon!' the defence of the city. Curio derided their fears, asserting that the rumour was untrue. It was at least premature. But Marcellus retorted that, prevented B.C. 49. The reign of law at an end, i 1 5 as he was from concerting with the supreme council for the safety of the state, he would venture to save it by measures of his own. He marched solemnly through the city, attended by the chiefs of his party, and sought Pompeius in his residence at Alba. There he thrust a sword into the imperator's hand, and invited him to assume the command of all the forces of the common- wealth then in Italy. Pompeius accepted the charge, adding, with the pretended moderation which never for- sook him, * If no better expedient can be discovered.' He declined, however, to make further levies ; he refused to recall the legions in the East or the West to the centre of the empire. He was either singularly careless or he still looked to an overt attack on the part of Csesar to justify his assumption of extraordinary powers. The Gallic proconsul had now again quitted the Transalpine province and stationed himself at Ravenna. He was attended there by a single legion only, but other bat- talions were no doubt moving quietly southwards to its support. Yet it was hard to believe that he meditated any sudden outbreak, and possibly Marcellus was himself deceived by the vigour of his own stroke. Curio, how- ever, who was more in his patron's secrets, pretended that the inviolability of his own person was no longer secure. Protesting against the consul's call to arms, and proclaiming that the reign of law was at an end, he sud- denly quitted the city still early in December, and betook himself to the proconsul's quarters. The people re- garded both the one and the other as victims of oligar- chical injustice. The political atmosphere was fully charged with electricity. Curio was urgent for action. Caesar still kept his head, waiting and watching for the fit moment with the arrival of the new year. O. Cas- sius and M. Antonius, two of his most devoted officers, would succeed to the office of tribune; another Caius I 2 .«iMllg»4S^%^#-» The Roman Ti'iiimvtratcs. CH. V5, B.C. 49. Was Ccesar justified? T T *T Marcellus, not less violent than the first, and Lentulus Crus, an uncompromising optimate, would become con- suls ; a final collision would inevitably follow. He determined that the act of his own hand which should furnish direct occasion for it should be specious and popular. He commanded Curio to return and lay before the senate and people his offer to surrender at once the Transalpine province, together with the troops which held it, now ten months before the legal expiration of his office, retaining only the Cisalpine and Illyricum with the moderate force of two legions. Should these concessions be rejected, he would still be content to lay down his command without reserve, provided that Pom- peius, on his part, should do the like. Failing the ac- ceptance of this last condition, he boldly declared that he would come in arms to Rome, and avenge his own and what he afifirmed to be his country's injuries. The letter containing these proposals was presented to the senate and the new consuls on the first dav of the new year (B.C. 49). The bearer was refused even a hear- ing ; but Cassius and Antonius took care that the people should be informed of them, and insisted that Caesar's claims should be considered. A noisy and confused debate ensued. The consuls declared ^ the state in danger,' and refused all concession to a 'rebel with bunes^^rteeto arms in his hands;' the senate ultimately Cjesar's adopted the motion of Scipio, that unless camp. ^ . u.c. 705. Caesar yielded both army and province before * ^^' a certain day, he should be treated as a public enemy. The tribunes interposed their vetos, exclaiming that the people had granted and prolonged his office, the people alone could legally withdraw it. But no heed was paid to the voice of law or the forms of the constitution. The decree was carried by a large majority; the tribunes formally protesting, and declaring that they were coerced in the exercise of their legitimate functions. Their oppo- nents retorted by a solemn proclamation of the danger of the state, and by inviting the citizens to put on mourning. Pompeius from his station outside the walls sent some cohorts into the city. The consuls were emboldened to act with a high hand. They convened the senate on the 6th of January to determine on the punishment of the re- fractory tribunes. When it was intimated to these offi- cials that they would be formally expelled from the assembly, they pretended to disguise themselves and fled, along with Curio, as if for their lives. In thus leaving the city they signified that they threw up their outraged and defenceless ofBce; for the tribune was forbidden to step outside the walls during his term of service. They were eagerly received in the proconsul's quarters. Cassar could now take up their cause as his own, and the use of force would be doubly justified in the eyes of the people, ever sensitive of the privileges of their traditional protectors. Caesar had suffered a technical wrong, and so had the tribunes also. Neither of them had perhaps any consti- tutional means of redress. Such illegal acts as those of the consuls and senate betrayed a signal defect in the Roman polity for which no legitimate remedy had been appointed, for which none, perhaps, was ultimately pos- sible. Aggrieved as they doubtless were, were ^^^^^ they morally justified in making an appeal to appeals to force 1 Such is the question which their coun- ''^^'" trymen asked themselves, both then and afterwards ; but they could find no satisfactory answer. Such, again, is the question which the moderns have repeatedly asked, and again with no result. The problem is one which has had a deep interest for succeeding generations ; for the con- sequences of Caesar's bold resolve to vindicate his claims by arms have had a wide effect upon human history ii8 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. VI. which has not even yet ceased to operate. Sulla and Marius and many other public men at Rome had acted with equal or greater violence, and no one has cared to inquire how far their circumstances excused or justified them ; but all the world has taken a common interest in criticizing the action of the immortal Caesar. A full century later, when passions, it may be sup- posed, had cooled, and the conditions of the problem T ^,^ admitted of calmer consideration, the poet estimate of Lucan givcs US thc final judgment of his own the causes , . ,. ^ i. ^ v of the civil contemporaries. Lucan was a poet, but he ■^^^ had sat at thc feet of statesmen and philoso- phers ; he was an ardent enthusiast for liberty, but his notions of liberty were those of a Roman oligarch and the heir of senatorial prejudices. The first sentence of his poem paradoxically characterizes the civil war as a justifiable outrage — ^ Jus datum sceleri ; ' and waiving all subtle technical criticism on the merits of the case, he refers it to a moral necessity, such as places it altogether beyond the scope of human judgment. The doctrine of the Stoics, which he had imbibed from his uncle Seneca, assured him that all mundane things are subject to a natural law of production and decay ; that as the frame of the universe itself is doomed to return to Chaos, so the noblest creations of human genius must run their destined course, and finally crumble to their foundations. * In se magna ruunt:' Great things fall by their own bulk and greatness. The commonwealth of Rome had reached the summit of its triumphs, and straightway Fate stepped in and claimed her victim. Nevertheless, within the Division of Controlling action of this primal law there is sovereignty room, he allows, for secondary causes. The among the ' ' ; . three rulers, immediate impulse to revolution was given, he says, by the division of political power between the three conspiring chiefs, and the exclusion of the people B.C. 49. Causes of the Civil Wars. 119 from the direction of their own affairs. This tyranny, disguised by its partition among three equals, must even- tually centre in one alone ; for such colleagues cannot fail to become rivals, and such rivals must at last rush in arms against each other. So had even the rising walls of Rome been moistened with a brother's blood. Cras- sus indeed, while he yet lived, had stood, like a slender isthmus, between encroaching oceans ; on his death no barrier remained to part the contending claims of Caesar and Pompeius. Julia carried to her early grave the last bond of union between two alien houses ; she who, like the Sabine women of ancient legend, might have flung herself between the husband and the father, and dashed away their swords and joined their hands together. Thenceforth there was only jealousy on the one Rivalry of side and ambition on the other; Pompeius Pompeius —, . and Caesar. could not brook an equal nor Caesar a superior. Betwixt them who should decide the right ? The gods pronounted in favour of the victor, but Cato had con- curred with the vanquished. But the contending cham- pions came into the field on no equal terms. The one was old in years and content with the applause of the forum and the theatre ; the other ardent and active, flushed with recent victories, and eager for power ; the one had long adopted thc garb of peace ; the other had not yet sheathed the sword which had subdued the Gauls. Pom- peius stood like the veteran oak, conspicuous and alone in some fertile field, crowned with the trophies of many triumphs, majestic in its decay, and revered for its ancient associations. Caesar fell upon it like the light- ning of Jupiter, which spares nothing venerable, nothing holy, neither the monarch of the forest nor the temples of its own divinity. Such, he continues, were the causes of enmity between the illustrious rivals ; but the seeds of discord lay far I20 The Roman Triiunvirales, CH. VI. deeper, and pervaded the commonwealth itself with the fatal germs of dissolution. Luxury, and the wealth of Luxury and ^ities and empires amassed in a few hands, vices of the had transformed the equal citizens of Rome into a group of rival tyrants who cajoled or trampled upon a herd of paupers. The thirst of gold and the ruthless means by which it had been gratified, had blunted all sense of public or private honour. No eminence satisfied the ambitious aspirant but one which towered above the laws ; no power contented him but such as defied the commonwealth itself The decrees of the senate, the resolutions of the people, were alike coerced or disregarded. Consuls and tribunes vied with one another in violating the restrictions imposed on them by the laws. Every honour was bought with money or extorted by force ; the citizens set their own price on their favour, while the recurring elections of the Field of Mars brought the republic year by year to the verge of anarchy and dissolution. The men most powerful in the camp, most influential in the comitia, were plunged in the deepest embarrassments, from which war alone could extricate them; the usurers, the last element of national stability, trembled for their preposterous ven- tures, while spendthrifts and bankrupts invoked with all their vows the chances of universal confusion. Such is the view which Lucan took— such are nearly the words in which he explained it — of the causes of the Monarchy great Civil war. His compliment to the des- a consum- potism of Ncro, as the sole means of restor- piainiy in- ing Order, may be suspected of hypocrisy and evitable. adulation. Nevertheless, the fact is indisput- able, that everything had been long tending to monarchy, and that for the last eighty years the decay of ancient ideas, the obliteration of republican manners, and the disorganization of government, had combined to render l-~^»^ 'S&Stl^^iain-j^^ll V B.C. 49. Monarchy becomes popular. "i % such a consummation inevitable. The tribunate of the younger Gracchus, the consulships of Marius and Cinna, the dictatorship of Sulla, the wide and protracted com- mands of Pompeius and Caesar, had been in fact no other than temporary autocracies. The nobles were content that the state should be ruled by a series of ex- traordinary commissions of their own appointment ; the people would have willingly merged all their rights of self-government in the paramount authority of a sove- reign pledged to subject the nobles to them. The readers and thinkers of the day, a small but increasing class, withdrew more and more from the turbid sphere of political action. Atticus, who piqued himself on his practical shrewdness, professed neutrality on all questions of state, and lived in amity with three generations of public men of every faction. Cato and his nephew Brutus, who strove to mould their public conduct by the precepts of the highest philosophy, only proved that virtue and honour could no longer live untainted in the atmosphere of the Roman free-state. The republic to which Cicero devoted his faith and love was the republic of antiquity, the republic of his own imagination, the republic of the good and wise ; nor are indications wanting that even he admitted that liberty is never more amiable than when she yields to the mild authority of a constitutional sovereign. But few men were cautious and temperate as he was ; the bold and freespoken openly proclaimed, with Curio, that * the republic was a vain chimera ; ' or called it, with Caesar himself, * a mere name devoid of substance or reality.' The fact of such a movement of men's spirits in the direction of royalty is one of the great lessons we learn from the history of the Roman commonwealth ; the history of a vigorous nation governed by a close aristo- cracy of birth, which asserted for itself the full power and -i -> T "» ' The Roman Triumvirates. CH. VI. privileges of government, and slowly and with reluctance conceded a share in them to the popular class below it. Sentiments "^^^ people were driven, by want and jealousy, conveyed in to support the ambition of any one among: 'Sallust's .if-, , ij , i_ J letters to the rulmg class who would take them and Caesar. their interests under his protection. Their minds became gradually prepared for the abandonment of their personal freedom ; all the specious arguments in favour of monarchy obtained more and more a hearing with them, and writers or speakers soon arose who could place them in a light sufficiently effective. Such a writer is one whose ' Letters addressed to Caesar' go under the name of Sallust the historian. This tract does not indeed deserve to be considered genuine ; but it seems to belong at least to the period before us, and to speak the common sentiments of the public men of the day who despaired of the free-state, in these letters Caesar is invited to assume the government, as the only man who can heal the public disorders. * Save Rome,' exclaims the orator, * for, if Rome perishes, the world will perish with her in blood and ruin. Vast is the task imposed upon you. The genuine free people is annihilated ; there re- mains only a corrupt populace without unity of sentiment or action. Infuse a new element into the mass ; intro- duce numbers of foreign citizens ; found colonies and restore cities ; crush the faction of tyrants at home, and extend far the roots of the Roman community abroad. Exact military service of all alike (not of Romans or Latins only), but limit the term of it. Let the magistrates be chosen for their virtues, not merely for their riches. To entrust to the citizens themselves the working of this re- formed polity would be useless. But the impartial eye of a sovereign ruler may watch securely over it, and neither fear, nor favour, nor interest must be suffered to impede its operation.' This exposition of the views of intelligent B.C. 49. Popularity of Ccesar, public men was supported by the mass of the middle classes ; it was sanctioned by many from disgust at the cori-uption of the optimates. Nevertheless, the ruling powers would doubtless struggle for their ascendency. The revolution in view must be a work of force and of manifold perils. The atrocities of Sulla had not been forgotten. Again and again the nobles would surely resort to violence and bloodshed. Even at this moment it was reported that the government had prepared a list of forty senators, and multitudes of lesser quality, for pro- scription. But Caesar had already gained a name for personal clemency, and his success was anticipated as a pledge of public and private security. The sentiment in favour of Caesar's aggression re- ceived, no doubt, further impulse from the partiality of the provincials. To the foreign subjects of the Csesar's pre. republic monarchy was, for the most part, tensions more familiar than the forms of a common- with favour wealth ; and to the multitudes of Greeks and vmdaTs, Asiatics who thronged the streets of Rome subjects, the populace lent an attentive ear when they foreigners. dilated on the pomp and splendour of Oriental royalty. But Caesar himself was personally beloved by the very people whom he had conquered, as well as by multitudes who had never seen him. The nephew of Marius had carried the traditions of his party further than any of his predecessors. The incorporation of the Italians was not enough for him. He had advanced the Cispadane Gauls to the franchise also ; he was evidently prepared to carry the same policy onward. The Gauls beyond the Po, and even beyond the Alps, might expect similar favour at his hands. He had secured the independence of certain communities in Greece. He had attached to himself some of the potentates of Asia. The whole nation of the Jews, very popular at this period in Rome, loved* 12^ The Roman Triumvirates. CH. VI. Y him as much as they hated his opponent. Cassar had lavished vast sums in the decoration of provincial cities, both in the East and West. Foreign nations might well imagine that the conqueror and organizer of Gaul was preparing to mould the whole Roman world into a mighty- monarchy under equal laws. To be a second Alexander had been the dream of many kings and conquerors. The hour and the man might seem to have at last arrived for its realization. ' Would that I had seen/ exclaims the French his- torian Michelet, 'that man of pale and sallow counte- Cxsar on nance, faded before its time by the dissipations Itiiy.'"""" ^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^y^ ^^^ delicate and epileptic Csesar, marching at the head of his legions beneath the rainy skies of Gaul, swimming across our Gaulish rivers, or riding on horseback between the litters which bore his exhausted secretaries, dictating four or six letters at a time (seven, says Pliny, when he had no other busi- ness in hand), agitating Rome from the depths of Belgium, exterminating on his way two millions of ene- mies, subduing in ten years the Continent to the Rhine and the Northern Ocean.' Such was the Cccsar who had quitted the city for his province ; such had been his career during his long but voluntary exile ; and now at last he was returning : his conquests completed, his dangers overcome, his bodily vigour strengthened, no doubt, by the toils he had endured ; his mental powers strained to the utmost, his fame established, his character purged in the eyes of his countrymen by merits and suf- ferings, all Rome prepared to bow before the genius which was now shining forth and eclipsing the long-faded glories of every other candidate for their worship. Caesar exerted a moral and intellectual force which kindled to flame the imagination of his countrymen. Great as he was, transcendently great among the leaders of the B.C. 50. Pompciiis takes 2ip a^-ms. 125 people, gieat as a speaker, great as a writer, great as a statesman, greatest of all as a military chieftain, the excitable temperament of the Romans was already prone to adore him as greater than he was or ever could be. vi' CHAPTER VII. THE CIVIL WAR— BATTLE OF PHARSALIA— DEATH OF POMPEIUS — DEATH OF CATO. The tribunes had quitted the city on the night of January 6 (-Nov. 13, B.C. 50, before the revision of the calendar). The consuls thereupon convoked the senate Preparations in the temple of Bellona, which lay outside *^^ Ponipeius: tne walls, m order to enable Pompeius to consuls. attend their meeting and virtually to control it. Their favoured leader had attained the object of his ambition ; the republic had thrown itself at his feet. New levies were commanded throughout Italy. Favonius petulantly urged him to ' stamp with his foot,' and evoke armed legions from the soil. But the wary veteran determined to leave in Spain the large forces which he had collected in his province, to act as a check upon Caesar in his rear. Both he and the chiefs of his party still clung to the idea that their foe would be betrayed by disaffection in his own ranks. They were aware, perhaps, that his lieutenant Labienus was about to desert him, and they hoped that many others would follow his example. They were still convinced that the clouds of danger would disperse, and assigned magistracies and provinces among themselves and their adherents with reckless disregard even of the due forms of law. But Pompeius continued to make pre- parations for a lengthened conflict. Arms and money were collected by forced contributions ; Italy was placed 126 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. VII. under military perquisition ; her temples were rifled of their treasures. The report of these tumultuary proceed- ings reached Caesar at Ravenna, where his plans were Caesar already matured. He harangued the soldiers of crosses the thc single Icgion which he had there with him, Rubicon. 1 • T 1 • , /- ,, explamed his wrongs to the full satisfaction of their blunt understandings, and called upon them to draw their swords and hasten to redress them. On the morn- ing of the 15th he sent forward some cohorts to the Jan. 15, Rubicon, the frontier stream of his province. Nov.^27r Throughout the day he presented himself at a Bc. 50. public spectacle, invited company to his table, and entertained them with his usual afflibility. At sunset he made an excuse for a brief absence, and hastened with a few attendants to overtake his soldiers. The Romans signalized the famous passage of the Rubicon •with various reputed marvels ; but the act which decided the fate of Rome for so many centuries was quickly and quietly accomplished. On the morrow the proconsul of Gaul appeared in arms before Ariminum, as an invader of Italy. The Gauls were marching upon Rome; the frontier garrison opened its gates in terror. It was here that the tribunes met him in their flight from Rome ; but what should have detained them ten days on their journey does not clearly appear. From these quarters Caesar issued his orders for the movement of his troops ; one legion reached him within a fortnight, another in the course of the next month. For the moment, however, his whole force was hardly six thousand strong, while his opponents had at least three times that number actually in hand. But Pompeius, it seemed, was struck with consternation, together with all his party, at these rapid movements. They were, after all, taken by surprise and utterly un- manned. The proscriptions of Marius, the slaughter of the Allia, the burning of the city by the Gauls, such were the B.C. 50. Ccesar advances into Italy, iz Pompeius retires from Rome. horrors that seized on their imaginations, and unnerved them for the encounter. Pompeius betook himself to the Appian Way, and magistrates and nobles streamed through the gates and pressed after him to the southward. His forces, he declared, were unequal to the con- test ; let all good citizens follow him to a place of security. At Capua he halted, and there it was found that the consuls had carried away the keys of the temple of Saturn, but had left the treasure of the state behind them. Pompeius bade them fly back and fetch it ; but they hesitated and asked for an escort. He could not spare a man. The gladiators in keeping at Capua required a large force to watch them. It was not till these dangerous swordsmen were broken up into small parties and lodged in security that the two legions which kept guard over them could be utilized for more active service. Meanwhile there was some pretence at negotiation ; but Pompeius, encouraged by the defection of Labienus, insisted that Csesar should lay down his arms, The citieF of while C^sar no less peremptorily demanded suJr^ender^t^ that if one surrendered his command the Caesar, other should do so hkewise. But Csesar advanced; Arretium, Iguvium, and Auximutn promptly received him. The road to Rome lay open to him ; but when he heard that his adversaries were cros^g from Capua to the Upper Coast, he turned to the left and threw himself on the strong central position of Corfinium, where Pompeius had left a detachment to hold him in check. Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of the boldest and most sanguine of the party, had insisted that this place at least should not be abandoned; but to leave it unsupported was equivalent to abandoning it. Domitius preferred to stand a siege, but his soldiers delivered up the place to the 128 The Roman Triumvirates. ch. vii. assailant as soon as he appeared before it. Domitius himself fell into the victor's hands ; but Caesar well knew the advantage of making a signal example of clemency, and not only spared the captive's life, but allowed him his freedom also. Politic as Caesar's forbearance was, it accorded, doubtless, with his natural temper. Barbarous as he had shown himself in contest with the enemies of the state, he was always sparing of the blood of the citizens. He could be not forbearing only, but gene- rous. The beaten soldiers joined his standard with alacrity ; the people of the country flocked around him. Tliey Pompeius were dismayed by the proclamations of Pom- makes his peius, who threatened the severest measures escape from r 7 j , . Italy. against all who assisted or countenanced his enemy. Cicero, who was deeply mortified at his chief's abandonment of the city, murmured with disgust at these / impolitic menaces. Pompeius charged him to relinquish Capua, where he had been entrusted with a command, 1 and join him in Apulia. He was loth to withdraw further ^ from the city; and the road, it seems, was no longer open. From Luceria Pompeius led the consuls and magistrates to the port of Brundisium. There he had already secured a number of transports, and from thence he immediately despatched several legions to Epirus. To remain him- self behind and embark with the last of his division, was the only duty of a general that he consented to perform. Caesar, hastening from Corfinium, was already at the gates ; but he was destitute of vessels, and the sea was open to the transports, which were returning to bear March 19, away the remnant of the fugitives. He made u.c. 705= g^ vigorous attempt to throw a mole across B.C. 49.' the mouth of the harbour ; but in this opera- tion he was baffled, and Pompeius effected his escape. The situation was now completely reversed. Pom- e jB.c. 49. Pompeius ranoves to the East. 129 peius and Cassar had exchanged places. The government of Rome had emigrated to a foreign shore ; the assail- ant reigned supreme throughout Italy, and p^^ ^j^^ had only to show himself in the city to be th^owshim- received with acclamations. The senators, at riources'ia the bidding of their champion, had thrown ^^^East. themselves upon the support of subjects or strangers. While still possessed of large armies and abundant resources in the West, they had preferred to secure their position in the opposite quarter of the empire. They carried with them all the levies which they had made from Roman citizens, with several complete legions, and were accompanied by the great mass of the ruling classes, the knights and publicani, whose pecuniary interests were bound up with lands and cities in the Eastern provinces ; and they demanded aid from all the dependent sovereigns who lined the frontiers of Greece and Asia Minor, the petty kings of Thrace, of Galatia, of Cappadocia, and others, who could furnish ample military supplies, as well as dense crowds of well-equipped though ill-trained warriors. They were protected, moreover, from any sudden attack by a numerous fleet, which, after trans- porting them across the Adriatic, could guard the passage against the assailant, should he threaten to pursue them. Caesar himself was utterly unprovided with ships or maritime resources. The great naval powers of the Mediterranean, Rhodes, and Egypt, were attached by special bonds to the interests of Pompeius. He had not calculated on having to pursue the senate on the ocean. Nevertheless, the moral weight lay on the side of Caesar, and this soon appeared to be preponderant. The flight of Pompeius was viewed with disgust ^^^^^ and alarm by a large section of his own sup- repaid to porters. Cato took the same step only as a ^'''"^" frightful necessity. Cicero shrank from it, and returned A.H. K 130 The Roman Triumvirates, ch. vii. to Rome to abide the progress of events. Many senators and other men of consequence followed his example. Public men and magnates who possessed a stake in the country were terrified at the violent language of the fugitives, who threatened to return as conquerors and tyrants. Pompeius was wont to exclaim: * Sulla could do this and that; why should not I ?* Sulla had brought his legions from the East, and made himself dictator by massacre. His pupil and successor might do the like. Confiscation, plunder, and proscription were in the mouths of his most rabid followers, such as Bibulus, Favonius, Labienus, and Lentulus. Nor was the state of things secure at Rome itself. The government was dissolved ; the con- suls and higher magistrates had fled from the forum ; the laws were in abeyance, and a reign of anarchy seemed impending. The domestic warfare of the debtors and creditors, which had so often brought the repubhc to the verge of ruin, which had been arrested by the over- throw of Catilina, and with difficulty kept under by the authority and the armed forces of Pompeius, was about to blaze out again. Every day of the interregnum was fraught with infinite peril. Caesar was not in a position to pursue Pompeius ; but had he been so, it would have been necessary for him to abandon the pursuit till he had secured the basis of his power at home. He had driven his enemies out of Italy in sixty days ; he now turned promptly back, crossed the Apennines, and presented himself, almost unattended, in the city. The people high and low received him joyfully, for he brought them the pledge of security at least for the day, and they had almost ceased, through their long period of anxiety and despair, to look forward to the morrow. Thus possessed of the centre of his enemies' position, the conqueror might determine more at leisure on which wing of their forces he should first throw himself. In B.C. 49. Cccsar repairs to Rome, the absence of the civil magistrates, he could only impose a military government on the city ; q^^^ , ■ seizes but this was cheerfully accepted. A large thetrea- donative gratified his soldiers ; a liberal gra- temple of tuity to every citizen delighted the populace. Saturn. But he carefully abstained from private spoliation for the discharge of these sums. He bethought himself of the treasure which the consuls had forgotten to carry away, and ordered the temple of Saturn to be thrown open to him. L. Metellus, one of the tribunes, was on the spot, and had the courage to interpose his inviolable person. Csesar pushed him scornfully aside ; he addressed the people, reminding them that the precious store was reserved as a sacred deposit for repelling a GaUic in- vasion. It was believed to comprise the actual ingots of gold which Rome had paid to Brennus as the ransom of the city, and which Camillus had wrested again from the barbarians at the point of the sword. *No fear henceforth,' he cried, ^of a Gallic invasion : I have sub- dued the Gauls.' But the Pompeian party had yet another weapon in store which might make the position of their adversary untenable. The nearest granaries of the city, Sardinia, Sicily, and Africa, were all held at the moment by their own officers, while Egypt itself was very closely con- nected with their chief and his interests. Caesar's first care now was to establish his power in the curiois neighbouring islands. A legion which he slain m promptly despatched to Sardinia was received by the inhabitants with open arms, while the garrison of the senate was ignominiously expelled from it. Cato, who had charge of Sicily, was obliged to abandon his post as soon as Curio appeared in sight. Africa still remained to conquer ; but Curio, when he transported his forces to the continent, was encountered by the Pompeian lieutenant K 2 13- The Romaji Triumvirates. CH. VII. B.C. 49. Ccesar's fiscal measures. Varus, with the Numidian chieftain Juba at his side, and was routed and slain. This important province was thus left in the hands of the senate; but the immediate needs of the city were now adequately supplied. Meanwhile Caesar, having left Rome in the keeping of ^milius Lepidus — a noble of high position, whose descent Caesar con- ^"^ Connexions attached him to his cause— quers the and the Italian peninsula under the command Pompeian _ , . , 1 ^ ,, forces in of his dcvotcd follower M. Antonius, had set ^P^"- off in person for Spain. ' I go,' he said, ' to encounter an army without a general ; I shall return to attack a general without an army.' The three Iberian provinces were held by good and veteran soldiers ; but were commanded by Varro, Afranius, and Petreius, a man of letters, a man of fashion, and a stiff regimental officer. Caesar might hope to despatch them all quickly ; but he was detained by the defection of Massilia, which lay on his route, and now shut its gates against him at the instigation of Domitius, the same Pompeian officer whom he had so recently spared at Corfinium. This im- portant city held as it were the keys of the Transalpine province, of which it was the principal emporium. It was necessary to reduce it at any sacrifice of time and re- sources ; but Caesar left three legions to invest it, while he passed by it himself, and pushed on, crossing the Pyrenees, and throwing himself upon the Pompeian forces which held the line of the Ebro. The events of the brief and spirited campaign which followed are told in the concise and nervous narrative of the conqueror, who succeeded, after suffering great hardships from flood and famine, and displaying singular ability and fruitfulness of resource, in reducing his opponents to submission. The Pompeian soldiers for the most part took service under him ; once more Afranius and Petreius, with their princi- pal officers, were allowed to go free. From Ilerda Caesar marched swiftly southward, and easily brought VaiTO to terms at Corduba. There he found a store of treasure already accumulated for the campaign against him, and returned from his adventurous expedition reinforced with fresh supplies both of men and money. The Massilians made no further resistance. Domitius escaped and re- joined Pompeius in Kpirus, and added another element of rashness and violence to his noisy and discordant camp. But Caesar had effected the reduction of the West. At this moment he might have declared himself the ac- knowledged sovereign of one half of the empire. During his absence the citizens at Rome, inspired by his influential agent, Lepidus, had proclaimed him dic- tator. Some of the prescribed forms had p^^^ ^.j indeed been omitted; but little care of legal created forms had been taken in many recent elec- tions. The dictator had been created, it seems, by the praetor, in place of the consul, with the acclamations of the people, and not by the suffrage of the senate or the curies. It was better, however, that the commander of the legions should rule under a known historical title than with none at all. The people, who saw the odious power of a dictator wielded at last by a champion of their own, rejoiced in the master whom they seemed to have them- selves chosen, and forgot for the moment that C^sar ruled by the army and not by the voice of their comitia. It was for fiscal measures which brooked neither delay nor weakness, that the appointment of a dictator importance was demanded at this crisis. When, in the of his fiscal middle of the seventh century of the city, the futile laws against usury had been suffered to fall into abeyance, a consul was found to carry a sweeping law for the reduction of all debts by three-fourths. The money-lenders, who demanded interest from twelve to forty per cent., exclaimed loudly against this confiscation The Roman Trm7nvirates, cH. vir. of their property ; but it was impossible to maintain the government except by such violent enactments from time to time. Nor indeed did the money-lenders of Rome suffer permanently from these arbitrary measures, any more than the Jews suffered from even harsher inter- ference with their gains in the Middle Ages. The spirit of luxury growing with the greatness of the empire gave fresh impulse to their transactions. Large classes of citizens were lying overwhelmed by the weight of their obligations. Among the various interests evoked in favour of Caesar's schemes, none were more attached to him than those of the debtors and repudiators. His heredi- tary connexion with the party opposed to the noblest and wealthiest classes, his reputed f^miiliarity with Catilina, his own early embarrassments and laxity of principles entailed by them, all pointed him out as the destined leader of a great fiscal revolution. But the anticipations thus formed of him were deceived. Assailed by clamo- rous importunity, the dictator, absolute as he was, refused to yield to the cry for confiscation.* He appointed arbi- trators for the valuation of debtors' property, and insisted on its sale ; all he required of the creditors was that they should forego their claims for excessive interest. He seems, further, to have resorted to the old expedient of the tribunes in distributing grants of land among the bankrupts, and relieving the state from the dangers of a needy aristocracy. The chief measures of Caesar's dictatorship mciuded a liberal distribution to the wants of the poorer citizens, the revocation of the enactments of Sulla which establishes had Condemned even the children of his vic- vemJ^nir ^^"^^ *° *^^^^^ incapacity, and the concession of and then citizenship to the inhabitants of the Cisalpine. At the end of eleven days he abdicated his office ; but he caused himself to be elected consul, to- B.c. 48. Ccesar crosses the Adriatic. gether with his now declared adherent, Servilius, for the ensuing year. The actual consuls were suffered to retain their nominal magistracy to the close of their legitimate term, which was at the moment expiring. Nothing was henceforth wanting to the regularity of his government : neither the decrees of a senate — for he had assembled more than one-half of its members at Rome — nor the election of the people, nor the sanction of the curies and of the auspices taken on the spot appointed by religion. Caesar, as proconsul, was a rebel from the moment he quitted his province ; but as soon as he became consul, lawfully installed, the right seemed to pass at once to his side, while his adversaries were transformed into enemies and traitors. This they themselves tacitly acknowledged; for, numerous as they were, influential as they seemed to be, they dared not enact a law, nor hold an election, nor confer an imperium. 'The representative of the people had become the guardian of usage and public order, while the champion of the oligarchy derived his arbitrary power from the passions of a turbulent camp. But in fact the names both of Senate and People were little regarded amidst the excitement of personal contention. Caesar and Pompeius were now the real watchwords of parties ; and even the children playing in the streets divided themselves, we are told, into Caesarians and Pompeians. Caesar, victorious everywhere by land, had made no effort, it would seem, to contest with his adversary the possession of the sea. He trusted to the q^^^ rapidity of his movements and to the many crosses the chances of maritime enterprise, to throw his u.c. 706. forces across the narrow channel between ^•^- ^^• Italy and Epirus, and evade or discomfit the flotillas opposed to him. He reached Brundisium, where he had collected a number of transports, and on the 4th of 1^6 XJic Roman Triumvirates. CH. \TI. January, B.C. 48, three days from his leaving Rome, he embarked seven legions, amounting to 15,000 infantry and 600 cavalry. Bibulus, the commander of the Pompeian fleet, failed to intercept them, and could only attack and destroy the empty vessels on their return to receive a second division. Ciesar had himself crossed over with ihe first, but he was not in a position to act with vigour until the arrival of Antonius with additional succours. He is said to have hastened, in his impatience, to bring over these reinforcements in person, and to have been driven back by a tempest in which he had with difficulty persuaded his trembling pilot to embark. ' Fear not, ' he had exclaimed; 'you carry Caesar and his fortunes.' When indeed Antonius succeeded at last in crossing, he was wafted a hundred miles below the point where his chief expected him ; and Pompeius, who lay between, might easily, it should seem, have overpowered him. But most of the places on the coast had eagerly attached them- selves to the cause of the assailant. The means of supply for the unwieldy hosts of the senate were not, perhaps, easily attainable. Whatever was the cause of this delay Caesar promptly took advantage of it. He was enabled to throw himself between Pompeius and his magazines at Dyrrhachium, and confine him to his secure position on the rocky promontory of Petra. Pompeius indeed felt little concern at this manoeuvre. He coul^ occupy himself in training the loose and motley auxiliaries who had thronged to his standard, even while his adver- sary, with such inferior numbers, ventured to draw his lines around him. The confinement, however, of the great commander by his daring assailant could not fail to have a great moral effect, dispiriting his own friends and exalting the hopes and expectations of his enemies, and of the populations which watched them far and near. After a time Pompeius found his situation become in- B.c. 48 Battle of Pharsalia, tolerable ; he made a strenuous and well-directed attack upon his besiegers, broke their lines with his superior force, and drove them from before him. But Caesar had now secured a party in the heart of Greece Caesar and Macedonia, and thither he retreated, in- ^^^^^^ tending probably to fall upon Scipio, who was Petra. bringing succours to his son-in-law from the East. Pom- peius hastened to follow him. The two rival captains dogged each other's steps from place to place, till at last they met in the valley of the Enipeus, an affluent of the Peneiis, on the plains of Pharsalia. The nobles in the senatorial camp had amused them- selves with quarrelling about the expected spoils of the war, which they hoped to terminate with a g^^j^ armies triumphant victory. Cato was so shocked r^nffiuvre with their truculent threats that he sought a command which should detain him on the coast of Epirus; and Cicero, who had repaired once more to the side of Pompeius, now pleaded ill-health, and remained behind also. But the more sanguine spirits of the party still irrged their chief to the battle from which he would .; fain have shrunk ; nor could his officers bring him into the field till Caesar threatened a flank movement which would have cut off his communications. Yet his army boasted a legionary force fully 40,000 strong, with 7,000 horse, supported by a countless host of forergn allies ; ] while Caesar had but 22,000 well-trained infantry and I 1,000 cavalry, with a few irregular battalions. On August 9 (June 6) the Pompeians descended from their camp to the plain beneath, having the little stream of the Enipeus on their right. Battle of Caesar hastened to the encounter, levelling P^^rsaha. the ramparts of his entrenchments to facilitate b.c. 48. the egress of his troops in line of battle. Extending his cavalry on his right, he ordered his first line to charge, T38 The Roma7i Trmmviratcs. CH. vn. after halting just before they came within reach of their opponents' spears, to take breath for the final onset. The knights and senators who fought in the Pompeian ranks were equipped in complete armour, and the Cassarians were directed to waste no blows on their helms and cors- lets, but strike direct at their unprotected faces. Thus assailed, they soon broke their ranks, retreated, and fled, the support of the cavalry on their flanks having been baflled by Caesar's German horse. Pompeius had already abandoned the field, retiring to his camp at the first turn of fortune. There he would have rallied his troops and defended the works, but the routed battalions fled precipitately past them. The Cassarians pressed closely upon him, and almost surprised him in his tent. Leaping on his horse at the last moment, he galloped swiftly away, escaped through the hinder gate, nor drew rein till he had reached Larissa. His discomfited battalions made a faint show of defence at a good position which they had assumed in the rear of their encampment; but, dismayed by the flight of their commander, they soon gave way before the renewed attack of their indefatigable pursuers. It was Caesar's maxim to *think nothing done while aught remained to do;' and on this occasion he exemplified it to the utmost. He allowed his victorious soldiers no respite till the whole force of the Pompeians was utterly dis- persed, or reduced to capitulate before nightfall. A few only of the senators got away in the darkness. The battle of Pharsalia obtained, however, one honour- able distinction in the annals of civil warfare. From the The loss on close of the day no more blood was shed ; the both sides. fugitives were spared, and the captives received mercy. The victors lost only thirty centurions and two hundred, or, as some stated, twelve hundred legionaries ; of the vanquished there fell ten senators, forty knights, and six thousand of all ranks of citizens. The slaughter B.C. 48. Flight and Death of Pompeitis. 139 among the foreign auxiliaries was probably much greater. Domitius was the only noble of distinction that perished; he was cut down in the flight by Caesar's cavalry-. Many were captured ; many also hastened to give themselves up to the conqueror, whose fame for clemency was now generally established. As he rode across the field of battle he expressed his grief, and perhaps his remorse, at the sight of his countrymen's corpses. * They would have it so,' he exclaimed ; * after all my exploits I should have been lost had I not thrown myself on the protection of my soldiers.' Assuredly this was true enough, whatever be the value of the excuse. ^ The remnant of the vast army of the East was scat- tered far and wide. No reserve had been provided on the field, no place assigned for rallying at a p^^^ ^j^^^ distance. Even the naval force was dispersed ?eeks refuge or distant. Pompeius rushed through Larissa, L"f ^Jh4re hurried down the vale of Tempe to the mouth '""''dered. of the Peneiis, took ship on board a merchant vessel with a handful of attendants, and gained the island of Lesbos, whither he had removed his wife Cornelia. Running thence along the coast of Asia, he picked up a few of his adherents, and held council with them, chiefly, it would seem, about his own personal safety. His first idea of seeking an asylum at the court of Parthia was indignantly overruled. To take refuge with the king of Egypt, a dependent of the republic, was deemed both safer and less dishonourable. The wealth of Egypt was unbounded, its position well-nigh inaccessible to an enemy destitute of a fleet. Ptolemaeus was young and, doubtless, timid ; possibly he might acknowledge a duty towards the senate which had befriended him. Pompeius arrived off Pelu- sium with about 2,000 men — too few or too many for his safety. The court of Alexandria had well weighed the situation. Engaged as it was in contest with Cleopatra, I40 The Roman Triumvirates. CH. VII. B.C. 47. C(2soys operations in Egypt. 141 the king's sister, it discussed the claims of the Roman fugitive, but rejected his dangerous alhance. The victim was inveigled into a boat, under pretence of being con- veyed into the royal presence. He was murdered at a blow, and his head cut off to be presented to Caesar on his expected arrival. The body was flung into the surf, where it was picked up by a charitable hand, and hastily consumed with fuel from a broken vessel. On the stone which covered the remains the same hand inscribed with a blackened brand the illustrious name of * Magnus.' The history of Rome, fertile as it is in tragic issues, affords no more signal instance of a reverse of political fortune. But though Pompeius must fill, next to Caesar, the largest space on our canvas, his character was com- mon and uninteresting, and his career, however splendid and dramatic, has left no such impress on the history of the times as that of his great rival, or even that of Cicero or of Cato. Pompeius had fled from the scene of his defeat; but the sea was closed against the conqueror by his naval Caesar es- armaments. Caesar was enabled, indeed, by tabiishes the treachery of C. Cassius, who commanded Alexandria, in the Straits, to throw himself across the u.c.706-7. Hellespont ; but though the military forces of the senate had dispersed in all directions, and offered no resistance, he could not transport his own army into Asia, but was attended in his pursuit of Pompeius by no more than a single legion. In the Asiatic provinces, however, he was received with enthusiasm, and for- warded on his way. Pompeius had gained no love throughout the ample regions he had conquered and organized. Caesar picked up a few vessels on the coast, and presented himself, with four thousand men, before the capital of the Ptolemies within a few days from the death of his rival. The king's ministers hastened to pro- duce the head of the murdered man ; but he turned from it with horror. Without a moment's delay or hesitation, he entered Alexandria in military array, with the ensigns of a Roman imperator and consul. The populace was dis- turbed. Mercenary battalions, composed of Greeks, Romans, and Asiatics, which maintained the unpopular throne of the Macedonian dynasty, were excited to quar- rel with the Cassarians, and some encounters took place between them. Caesar required money. He seized on the person of the young king ; he listened to the sohci- tations of the king's sister, Cleopatra, who was intriguing against her brother, and required him to share his power with her. But the king's ministers, who had offended her, trembled for themselves. One of them, Pothinus, was arrested and put to death ; but Achillas called the soldiers and citizens to arms, enclosed the intruding Roman in one quarter of the city, and reduced him to desperate straits, in the crisis of which he was obliged to swim for his life, with his Commentaries, so said the legend, in one hand. In the course of his defence Ca:sar fired the Egyptian fleet, and the flames consumed the great library of the museum, with its 400,000 volumes. He consented at last to restore Ptolemaeus ; but on the arrival of rein- forcements from Syria he was enabled to assume the offensive. He overthrew the royal army on the banks of the Nile, when Ptolemaeus himself perished in the stream. The Egyptians accepted Cleopatra for their queen at the command of the conqueror. We can hardly suppose that the great warrior and statesman allowed himself to be drawn into this perilous adventure by the charm, as has been com- ^^^ ^j monly reported, of Cleopatra's beauty and ac- against complishments. More probably he had fixed u.c^ot!"' his eye on the treasures of Alexandria, the ^•^- ^^' wealthiest city of the ancient world, to furnish him with 142 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. VII. the means he so much required, while he firmly abstained from the usual resource of plunder and confiscation. When at last his fortune extricated him from the struggle, he allowed himself indeed to remain three months longer to complete the advantage he had gained. As long as the Pompeians were still scattered, he lost little by post- poning the prosecution of the war against them. He might even wish the disheartened remnant to gather head again, that he might once more strike them down at a blow. Meanwhile, he made a campaign against Phar- naces, the son of Mithridates, who had profited by the general confusion to attack Deiotarus and Ariobarzanes. These Eastern kings had been enrolled as allies of Pom- peius, but they were dependents of the republic also, and as such Caesar now undertook to defend them. Again, perhaps, he was in want of money. The assailant was easily defeated in the battle of Zela ; so speedily indeed that the victor, according to the story, could announce his success to the senate in the three words Veni^ vidi, vici — * I came, I saw, I conquered.' After regulating with all despatch the affairs of the East, he hastened back to Italy, where his presence began to be required. The measures which the dictator had enacted for the adjustment of debts could not be universally acceptable. Disturban- Many Other causes of discontent were rife ces in Italy, in the city and throughout Italy. Caelius, a ' * ^°^" clever intriguer, who, like Curio before him, had deceived even Cicero by his pretensions to patriot- ism, excited disturbance at Rome. The consul Servilius acted with firmness, and caused him to be expelled from the senate and declared incapable of public office. Thereupon he joined himself with Milo, who had crept out of his place of banishment and had armed his numerous gladiators in the south of Italy ; and the two together raised a tum.ultuary force of outlaws and B.C. 46. T^'oiihles at Rome, 143 banditti. The sedition, however, was promptly suppressed, and both its leaders perished. It required a strong hand to maintain a secure and settled government amidst the perils which threatened it from within and from without. Doubtless, the attach- ment of the citizens to Caesar was confirmed by the ferocious menaces of the Pompeians, which still reached them from a distance. Even the victory of Pharsalia could hardly avail to reassure them, while the ^ ,. Lscsar QIC" conqueror was still plunging farther into the tator a remote East, and the military forces of his ^^^ enemy, supported by their powerful navy, were ^c- 707. still accumulating in his rear. Nevertheless, his adherents removed the images of Pompeius and Sulla from the forum, and his secret enemies were controlled by spies, and required to join every demonstration of the general satisfaction. Then came the news of the death of Pompeius, attested by the exhibition of his ring to the citizens. Friends and enemies now combined to flatter the irresistible conqueror. Decrees were issued investing him with unlimited power to raise men and means for the suppression of the republicans, who were again making head in Africa. In October, B.C. 48, Caesar was created, in his absence, dictator by the senate for the second time, while, for the satisfaction of the people, the powers of the tribunate were decreed to him for life. He appointed M. Antonius his master of the horse and com- mandant in the city. Brave, but violent and dissolute, Antonius lacked both sustained vigour and prudence. Sinister rumours began to circulate. Caesar was in peril at Alexandria. Sedition raised her head, and Antonius shrank from the risk of failure in attacking it. Disturb- ances were excited by Cornelius Dolabella, a weak profli- gate, burdened with debts, a son-in-law of Cicero, who, like Caelius, raised the terrible cry of * New Tables,' or 144 TJie Rovian Triumvirates. CH. VII. an extinction of debts. Antonius summoned courage to repress the tumult, but not till Dolabella had personally affronted him. The demagogue had got himself adopted into a plebeian house in order to obtain the tribuneship, and he was allowed to enjoy the legal inviolability with which that office invested him. In September, B.C. 47, Caesar returned to Rome, and at once all men and all factions quailed before him. The traditions of the civil wars pointed to a barbarous proscription ; but the clemency of Ccesar was a star of hope to the citizens, and they were not disap- Ron^and pointed in it. He was satisfied, at least, with third time scizinj:: on the estates of the men who were dictator. ° i . i u.c. 708. still in arms agamst hnn, and with puttmg up *'^' * ' to public sale the property of his great rival. The dictator remained only three months in Rome. He appointed consuls for the closing period of the year, and designated himself with yEmilius Lepidus for the year next ensuing. He caused himself to be again created dic- tator ; the financial crisis had not yet passed, and, doubt- less, a firm hand was required with competent powers to carry the commonwealth through it. He loaded his partisans with offices and honours, and sated the popu- lace with largesses. This lavish expenditure of money seems to have been his chief means of government. But when his soldiers demanded the fulfilment of his golden promises, and his own favourite Tenth Legion broke Mutiny of out into mutiny, he sternly refused concession. Le J^vf^ Calling the soldiers together in the Campus suppressed. Martius, he confronted them unattended, mounted his tribunal, and demanded the statement of their grievances. At the sight of their redoubted general their hearts failed, their voices faltered ; they could only plead piteously for their discharge. * I discharge you, citizens ! ' replied the imperator. The effect of this last ;'sw,i'. .^)SiSi^.*9MKtea^K^KS«Mti^!t%»(9SsKBsai»«'a!flsapi;j^ffl,j!sat»^ B.C. 47. TJie Republican Foi'ccs in Africa. 145 simple word was magical. To the fierce and haughty soldier the peaceful title of citizen seemed a degradation. He entreated to be restored to his standards, and offered to submit to military punishment. This striking anecdote is often cited to show the military pride of the great nation of warriors ; but it testifies more particularly to the effect of the long period of warfare to which the soldier had been now so commonly subjected, and to the scorn which the professional swordsman too often feels elsewhere than in Rome for the name and character of civilian. The veterans of Camillus, of Scipio, perhaps even of Marius, would not have disdained to be addressed as Roman citizens. Thus reassured of the force and temper of the weapon he wielded, Caesar hastened away again to crush the gathering of his enemies assembled in the Therepubii- province of Africa. The defeated host had cans transfer v T TM T • , . their forces been scattered at Pharsalia m many dnxc- to Africa. tions ; but the largest division of the fugitives had made its way to Dyrrhachium, and had there taken breath to concert its further movements. Cato, to whom the com- ,. mand was offered, waived it in favour of Cicero, the\ consular and the proconsul ; but the orator declined to / engage further in a struggle which he regarded as hope-/ less, and withdrew sorrowfully into Italy. Cnasus, the.' violent son of Pompeius, would have laid hands upon\ him, and he was glad to throw himself at last on Caesar's/ clemency. Thereupon Scipio assumed the command, and carried the main body to Utica. Cato, at the head of another division, skirted the coasts of Greece and Asia, picking up some fleeing adherents of the cause. He followed in the track of Pompeius ; but when informed of his chief's assassination he landed on the shore of Libya, and demanded admission into Cyrene. The natives shut their gates ; but Cato respected their fears, A. H. L '-.M .!.-(«!■:« ji.*ii!«!t«i,»KiA^S«='?5*lW smMi0^amt«^ii'mm 146 T/ie Roman Triicmviratcs. ch. vii. u.c. 46. Battle of Thapsus. 147 and refmmed from chastising them. Anxious now to effect a junction with Scipio, he coasted westward as far as the Lesser Syrtis, and then plunged with his httle army into the sandy desert. The march through this torrid and trackless region occupied seven days, and was celebrated as an act of chivalrous endurance, which might raise the character of Cato above that of many victorious and triumphant impcrators. The object of undertaking it is hard to comprehend ; but in this as in many other details of Roman military history we must allow for our imperfect knowledge of the means available for the operations in hand. On joining the bulk of the repub- lican forces in the Roman province, Cato was indignant at the position of his colleagues in command. Scipio had sought the aid of Juba, king of Numidia, an ally and hitherto a dependent of the republic. But this prince had seized the opportunity to exalt his own importance, and presumed on the large resources he could bring, as well as on his recent services to the cause in his defeat of Curio, to take the first place in the republican councils. Cato was glad to escape from this humiHation by accept- ing a local command at Utica, the chief place in the province and the principal port for communication with Italy. Nor were his friends less willing to be relieved from his importunate susceptibilities. For a time, per- haps, they felt themselves secure from Caesar's pursuit, for Caesar was still deficient in naval resources. They forgot the loss of their great army and their still greater chief, and flattered themselves that victory was still in their hands. Labienus, the renegade, had now become their chief military adviser, while Scipio was surrounded by Afranius, Petreius, the sons of Pompeius, and other leaders of the party, all abundantly confident in them- selves, and loud in denunciation of their enemy. But their military capacity was slender ; of political vision they had none at all. Such was the posture of affairs in the republican camp, when Caesar suddenly appeared off the coast with the small division of his troops for which he could secure means of transport, having evaded the vigilance of Scipio's fleet. He summoned the leaders of the force at Adrumetum to surrender to Caesar *the iniperator.' They replied, 'There is no imperator here but Scipio,' and put his herald to death as a deserter. ^ The dictator sailed on to Leptis, and landing victory at there, with the good-will of the inhabitants, u.c^^7oT.' awaited further succours. There he was ^•'-"' ^^^ menaced by Scipio ; and Labienus, who frequently led the opposing cavalry, flung bitter taunts at the veterans whom lie had so often led to victory. But Cxsar main- tained himself quietly within his entrenchments till he could move forward with five legions, while by making an alliance with the Mauretanians he was enabled to drive away Juba to the defence of his own capital. Scipio had no spirit to combat him alone. The republican force drew off ; Caesar advanced, and was rapidly gaining the upper hand. After a time Juba rejoined his friends, and made them feel that they had become more than ever dependent upon him. He forbade Scipio to wear the imperator's purple cloak, which pertained, he said, to kings only. At last, on April 4, the armies met on the field of Thapsus. Some of Caesar's troops were fresh levies, and he was not sure of their steadiness ; but the impetuosity of the redoubted Tenth legion forced on the battle, and carried the imperator along with it. Csesar invoked his wonted good fortune, and spurring his horse took the lead of his battalions. The combat was soon decided. The Numidian elephants turned upon the ranks which they were placed to cover. The native ca- valry, dismayed at the loss of their accustomed support, hastened to abandon the field. Scipio's legions made L 2 148 The Roman Truimviraies, ch. vii. little resistance. Separated from their fleeing officers, they begged for quarter ; but a frightful massacre was made of them, which Caesar was unable to control. Scipio, escaping to the coast, was taken and slain. Juba and Petreius fled together and sought refuge in Zama, but the Numidians refused shelter to their tyrant and his companion. Thus repulsed, the fugitives first ate and drank together ; then, in the spirit of barbarian gladia- tors, challenged each other to mortal combat. Petreius W4S first to fall in the duel ; Juba threw himself on his own sword. Cato was now left to defend himself alone in Africa. His own course had been long decided ; but he allowed his followers to choose for themselves between Catoa° submission, or flight, or resistance to the ut- Utica. most. The senators and knights, despairing, it is said, of pardon, would have held out ; but the traders and men of peace, long settled in Utica, had little to fear from yielding, and insisted on a timely sur- render. Cato closed all the gates except that which opened upon the port, and urged his associates to take to the sea. With his son and a few devoted friends who refused to leave him he sat down to supper on the eve of Caesar's arrival. He discoursed with more than his usual fervour on the highest themes of philosophy, especially on the generous paradox of the Stoics, that the good man alone is free, and all the bad are slaves. Mean- while the embarcation was proceeding. Cato sent re- peatedly to enquire who had already put to sea, and what were the prospects of the voyage. Retiring to his chamber he took up the ' Dialogue on the Soul,' in which Plato has recorded his dying master's last longing for immortality. Looking up, he observed that his sword had been removed. He sent for his friends, rebuked Xhem for their unworthy precaution, * as if,' he said, * he B.C. 46. Death and Character cf Cato, 149 might not at any time kill himself by dashing his head against the wall, or merely by holding his breath.' Re- assured, perhaps, for a moment by the calmness of his demeanour, they restored him his weapon, and, at his earnest desire, left him once more alone. At midnight he enquired again about the departure of his followers. The last vessel, it was replied, was just leaving the quay. He then threw himself on his couch; but when all was quiet he seized his sword and thrust it into his body. The blow was not immediately mortal, and he rolled groaning on the floor. His attendants rushed in ; a surgeon sewed up the gash. But on coming to himself, he repulsed his disconsolate friends, and, tearing open the wound, expired with the same dogged resolution which through life had distinguished him. There is something so Roman, and at the same time so peculiar, in the character of this hero of ancient history that a few words may well be bestowed character of on a special notice of it. Cato of Utica, as Cato of he is commonly called, to distinguish him from his great-grandfather, Cato the Censor, inherited from his ancestor the rugged disposition of the Sabine highlanders. He was naturally harsh in temper, quaint in humour, strict in the discharge of duties interpreted in a narrow sense, enduring much himself and exacting no less of others. The elder Cato had struggled through life resisting the influence of Grecian ideas, which he deemed wholly pernicious, though in his latest years he had deigned at last to make himself acquainted with the Greek language. His descendant, after the lapse of a century, had yielded altogether to the new lights which had pervaded his country, and had received at least the outward polish of the literature and philosophy of the schools. The time had in fact just arrived when the more sensitive . and sanguine spirits at Rome were I50 The Rovian Triumvirates. CH. VII. beginning to throw off the blind devotion of a ruder age to mere fonn and ceremonial, and to look into their own hearts for the moral resources which had become necessary to them. Cato himself was a religious enthusiast, but he was, in Roman phrase, full of the god within his own breast, and retained no external object of belief. From the time of Plato at least the philosophers of Greece had taught men to look into their own hearts for the rule of spiritual life. It was but recently that this subjective idea of religion had been introduced into Rome, where it met with little intelligent acceptance. For the most part, those among the Romans who most readily rejected the creed of antiquity, cast themselves on the tenets of the Epicureans, which were, in fact, a mere negation of religion altogether. Those who, like Cato, embraced the system of the Stoics, were even more rigid and pedantic in their notions than their masters, and of these none was more eminent for the strictness of his rule, and his devotion to his principle, than the philosophic statesman who gave up his life for his faith at Utica. Cato died for his religion as much as any martyr of the heathen or the Christian world ; for he held it as a religious duty to maintain the constitution of his country ; but the error or the vice of his system was that he acknowledged no duty to any Being exterior to himself, to whom he owed his existence, and for whom he was bound to support it. According to the severe logic of his false philosophy, when the republic had perished, his own work, though left undone, was, as far as he was concerned, practically finished. There was now no further place for him in life; wherefore he bowed to his destiny and quitted it without a murmur. The melancholy result of this error was that the pupils of Cato's school elevated it into a principle, and Seneca and others both defended and followed it. B.C. 46. C(2sar returns to Rome. 151 CHAPTER VIII. TYRANNY AND DEATH OY CESAR. The suicide of Cato forms a dignified close to the liberties of Rome. Both in life and death he was a represen- tative man ; and, viewing the subject from Honours our point of view, we can hardly wish that the upon'^csesar bravest champion of the ancient polity should at Rome. have allowed his career to be protracted under the con- ditions which would have been thenceforth imposed upon it. Nevertheless, it is only just to the conqueror to observe that Cato had nothing to fear for his life or per- sonal freedom under the dictator and imperator. Caesar lamented that he had lost the satisfaction of pardoning him his treason to the constituted public authority, while to his comrades in arms he exhibited the same clemency which had so long distinguished him. Nevertheless, unnecessary and useless as this celebrated act of self- sacrifice may appear, it has done more, perhaps, to exalt the free-state and degrade the empire in the imagina- tion of later generations than could have been effected by a supine or sullen acquiescence in evil fortune. A superstition has at times prevailed that an injured man, in committing suicide, may fasten an avenging demon on the author of his calamities. Stained with the blood of Rome's best son, the victor of Thapsus returned to his country vitiated and debased. The honours which a sub- servient senate now heaped upon him have lowered him in the eyes of posterity, even more than they exalted him in those of his contemporaries. After uniting to the African province a part of Numidia, and placing the remaining portion in the hands of his own allies, the dictator repaired once more to Italy at the end of July, IS TJic Roman Triumvirates. cii. vm. B.C. 46. The title of Imperator. 153 B. C. 46. He was received as the conqueror of a foreign enemy. Statues rose in his honour. One fronted the altar of Jupiter in the Capitol ; another stood on a globe, and was inscribed in the Greek language, for the idea was still Hellenic only, to * Ca:;sar, the demigod.' The seventh month of the year, the fifth of the most ancient calendars, exchanged its name, Quintilis, for that of Julius. The dictatorship was now conferred upon Ceesar for ten years, and was presently settled upon him for life. He received the censorship under a slightly different title, which gave him power to revise the list of knights and senators, to degrade whom he would, to thrust whom he would into the highest orders of citizens. He was to nominate many of the chief magistrates hitherto elected by the people, and to appoint the governors of divers provinces, which had been the prerogative of the senate. The title of imperator was prefixed to his name; and the laurel wreath, which was given to him, it is said, to disguise his baldness, became a more signal symbol of power than the regal diadem, which alone was withheld from him. Nor was he ashamed to arrogate to himself the name of father of his country, the most glorious appellation a free people can bestow, which had been conferred by decree upon Camillus, by acclamation upon Cicero. Of all these titles the most remarkable was the prefix of Imperator, which has thus descended through The title of rn^^iy generations even to our own times, and Imperator still bears a political significance, as popularly ^^'' ^^ ' conveying the idea of a despotic ruler. But such was by no means strictly the meaning attached to it by the Romans of the period before us. The * im- perium ' from which it was derived was no doubt the rule of a master ; but this rule might be delegated by law and controlled by appropriate checks. The consul was him- self subject to the law ; nevertheless, he possessed the imperium for certain purposes, under the restraint of election by the people, and of eventual responsibility to them. The commander of a legion had the imperium, or military control, of his soldiers and of the province in which they served, and he received the title of impe- rator ; but his authority was limited in place, in time, and in object. His title, conferred legitimately by the senate, was ratified by the less regular acclamations of his sol- diers when he gained them a victory. The imperator of an arniy in a province abroad bore the title after his own name, as with any other limited magistracy. Caesar, as proconsul of Gaul, was * Caesar imperator ' in relation to the legions with which he conquered Gaul. But when he became consul and dictator in the city he was no longer the ruler of a province or the commander of a pro- vincial army. Chief of the state at home, he was at the same time engaged in the defence of the whole empire against foreign or domestic foes in every quarter. He was rendered by the force of circumstances commander- in-chief of all the legions, and his province was the em- pire itself. Such, it would seem, was the idea conveyed to the minds of the citizens by prefixing the title to his name instead of appending it. The distinction was real ; it was invented to meet an actual need ; and it was legi- timately conferred by the senate itself, a subservient, no doubt, but still a constitutional body. The title so conferred bore little significance in the city. Cicero does s not seem to make any reference to it. Caesar did not( stamp it on his coins. It was directed towards foes and foreigners, not towards the citizens. Some generations later, the reigning emperors could still insist warmly on the constitutional distinction between the imperator over the soldiers,' and * prince or premier among the citizens.' This distinction was indeed too soon lost. The authority of the Imperator came to be regarded as supreme over / IS4 The Roman Triumvirates. ClI. VIII. B.C. 45. Ccesars shows and largesses. ' DD every class and order in the state. But it should not be for- gotten that Suetonius and Dion Cassius, who boldly assert that CiEsar himself received the title in token of his despotic sovereignty, speak in the sense of their own later times, and are no proper exponents of its original and legitimate signification. Pompeius had triumphed thrice. Caesar now claimed an accumulation of four triumphs ; the first for his con- Cffisarcele- quest of the Gauls ; the second for his defeat brates four of Ptolemacus ; the third for his viq^ory over nump s. Pharnaces ; the last for the overthrow of Juba. He condescended to respect the maxim of his country- men, that a civil war can earn no such popular dis- tinctions, and refrained from celebrating the public catastrophe at Pharsalia. These four solemnities were kept with a few days' interval between each. The pro- cession formed again and again in the Campus. Hence it defiled through the triumphal gate at the foot of the Capitoline. In crossing the \^elabrum the imperator's car broke down, a mischance which so affected him that he never again mounted a vehicle without muttering a charm. The long march wound round the southern angle of the Palatine . to the point where the arch of Constantine now stands. There it mounted the gentle slope which leads under the arch of Titus, paved at this day with huge blocks of stone which may possibly have echoed to the tramp of Cjcsar's legions. Inclining to the right at the summit of the Velia and facing the Comitia and the Rostra, it passed the spot where the Julian temple was afterwards erected ; thence it skirted the right side of the Forum till it reached the point just beyond the arch of Severus, where the two roads branched off, the one to the Capitoline temple, the other to the Mamertine prison. Ca[)sar took the route of triumph to the left, while his captive, Vercingetorix, was led away to the right, and strangled in the subterranean dungeon. The Gaulish hero doubtless met his fate with his well- tried courage and dignity, while his conqueror was exhi- biting a wretched spectacle of human infirmity, crawling up the steps of the Capitol on his knees, to avert the wrath of an avenging Nemesis. The Gaulish captive was undoubtedly slain. It is said that other victims perished with him, but the sons of Juba seem to have been spared ; one of them Csesar's at least survived as a tranquil student in the goidiers^nd days of Augustus. Arsinoe, the sister of citizens. Ptolema^us and Cleopatra, was pardoned, perhaps for the sake of the dictator's paramour; for Cleopatra herself fol- lowed her admirer to Rome, and was there entertained by him in high state. The magnates of the city, even Cicero himself, courted her favour. The soldiers who attended on their general's chariot — men of strange tongues and countenances, Gauls, Spaniards, and Africans — chanted ribald songs with the licence of the old Roman legion- aries, in mockery of the leader whom they adored ; he smiled and paid them their expected gratuity of 20,000 sesterces (200/.) a-piece. The largess was extended in due proportion to the whole body of the unarmed citi- zens, each of whom was well content with a present of 400. The people of Rome were entertained at a banquet spread on 22,000 tables, which may have accommodated 200,000 guests. This festival was followed by shows in the amphitheatre and circus. The multitude of beasts and gladiators who were almost indiscriminately sacri- ficed moved some pity even in the brutalized populace ; but the more thoughtful of them were doubly shocked by the licence which Caesar allowed to Roman knights of combating in the arena. It was all the worse, perhaps, that these combats were, it seems, almost wholly volun- tar>' ; the violence of the times had engendered a thirst 'i r / 156 The Roman Triumvirates, CII. VIII. B.C. 45. Battle of Mimda. iS7 y for violence and bloodshed. Laberius, a knight who was required thus to exhibit himself, complained of the indignity to himself, but took no thought of its inhu- manity. Ca:sar had long since commenced a great reconstruc- tion of the interior of the city. The ancient Forum was The Julian Contracted in space, and the population had torum. f^j. outgrown the accommodation it afforded. CiEsar had indeed himself erected his noble basilica on one side of it, and encouraged u^milius Paulus to confine it with another, not less sumptuous, directly opposite. Such large halls were of great convenience to the crowds who met together for public business in an open area exposed to all the vicissitudes of climate. But the area itself required to be enlarged, and the dictator had cleared away some buildings on its northern side, en- closing the space thus acquired with colonnades, and opening an entrance into it. The Julian Forum, as this area was denominated, was adorned with a temple of Venus *the ancestress,' from whom the Julian family was reputed to have sprung, and with an equestrian statue of the impcrator himself — really a bronze effigy of Alexander the Great, by Lysippus, with a new head to it —which became one of the most notable features of the great city. Succeeding emperors — Augustus, Ncrva, and Trajan— made fresh additions to these public areas, each giving his own name to the Forum of his own construc- tion, till the centre of Rome was expanded into one large open space, divided only by public halls and temples. While the issue of the African campaign was yet un- decided, Cnaeus, the elder son of Pompeius, had thrown War in himself into the Iberian peninsula, in which Spain and y • r .y •> • •,, -.it battle of nis fathers mterest was still strong, and had ux.^tS- *^^^^ proclaimed himself, not the liberator of B.C. 45. the commonwealth, but the avenger of his family's wrongs. He had gathered around him adventurers of various kinds. Many even of Caesar's veterans, dis- satisfied with their rewards, had betaken themselves to his standard, and some of the southern cities of the province had lent him the shelter of their walls. Caesar refused to recognise this new assailant as a legitimate enemy ; but when his officers failed to suppress the spirit of brigandage which animated the rebel host, he at last took the field in person, and allowed himself to treat them, not as citizens, but as outlaws or barbarians. Cnseus, indeed, had set the example of ferocity, for of all the leaders of the civil wars this man seems to have been the most sanguinary and brutal. The contest was carried on mainly in the valley of the Guadalquivir and the defiles of the Sierra Morena. The struggle, protracted for several months, was closed, however, on the field of Munda, where Caesar, after encountering great personal danger, gained at last a complete victory. Thirty thousand of the vanquished party perished ; among them were Varus and Labienus, with many other nobles. Cnasus escaped from the field, gained the coast, and put out to sea ; but being forced to land to get relief for an accidental hurt, having cut his foot in releasing himself from a tangled rope, he was discovered and killed, after a miserable struggle. Of all the republican leaders, Sextus, the younger son of Pompeius, was now the sole survivor in arms. He hid himself in the wildest districts of the peninsula, making alliance with roving bands of natives, till occasion served for reappearing, after some intei-val, on the public scene. For a time, however, he was for- gotten or neglected. Caesar devoted some months to arranging the affairs of the western provinces, and thoroughly crushing the republican faction in that quarter. The battle of Munda had been fought on ^larch 17, but the conqueror was not at liberty to return to Italy before September. In the following month Caesar celebrated a fifth iss The Roinaii Triumvirates. CH. vin. triumph, which he pretended to have gained, not over the citizens and the chiefs of the party opposed to him, The Roman but ovcr the Still unconquered natives of the J;qu"res' Ibcrian peninsula. He then proceeded to ad- correction, dress himself to domestic reforms and projects of public benefit, of which a general outline will be here sufficient. Among the first was the revision of the Calendar, a matter of great concern, political as well as scientific. The Calendar of Numa, as it was called, hitherto in use, had assigned to the year a period of 354 days, with the intercalation every second year of a month of 22 and 23 days alternately, which would have given an average of 365 days and 6 hours : so near had the ancient astrono- mers arrived to the precise length of the earth's revolution round the sun. But another day, it seems, had been added to the 354, to make an odd or fortunate number ; and to compensate for this excessive addition, the number of intercalations was diminished by an intricate process. Much carelessness had prevailed in making the requisite corrections. The pontiffs to whom the duty had been entrusted had abused it for political objects, to favour the candidature of a partisan, or to postpone the day when his debts might be demanded. The control of the Calendar had become an engine of state in the hands of the oligarchy, and constituted one of the grievances of the plebs. But latterly, in the general confusion of affairs, the pontiffs had generally abstained from intercalation. The year had been restricted to its 354 days ; the designated months and seasons had fallen far into arrear of the solar time. So it was that the consuls who were appointed to enter upon office on the ist of January, B.C. 46 (U.c. 708), actually commenced their functions on the 13th October, ij.c. 47. The Roman seasons were marked by appropriate festivals on certain fixed days. At the period of harvest and vintage, seasonable offerings were B.C. 45. Reform of the Calendar. 159 to be made accordingly ; and this had now become no longer possible. The husbandman was reduced to reject the use of the Calendar altogether, and to depend on his own rude observations of the rising and setting of the constellations. But Cccsar had acquired a competent knowledge ot astromonical science, and discerned at the same time how popular a use he could make of it. He The re- availcd himself, moreover, of the services of ^^'■'J^ed or Sosigenes, the ablest astronomer of the day. Calendar, who divided the 365 days of the old Calendar among the twelve months in the order they have since retained, and intercalated a single day, as we still do, every fourth year. Some error in the working of this system, which was not attributable to himself, caused another slight correction to be made a i^w years later. It was not for several centuries that the further error was discovered, and finally reformed, by dropping this intercalation on the recurrence of certain centennial years, as decreed by Pope Gregory XIII., and accepted in this country in the middle of the last century. As regarded the actual crisis at ^/hich the Roman Calendar had arrived, Csesar added as many as 90 days to the year of the city, 709, or B.C. 45. He inserted an intercalary month of 23 days between the 23rd and 24th of February ; and at the end of November he added two new months, each of 30 days, together with a supplemental addition of 7 days more. The whole period thus comprised 355 + 90, or 445 days. Marked by this series of alter- ations, it received vulgarly the appellation of the ' year of confusion ; ' but the ' last year of confusion,' if has been justly remarked, would be its more appropriate title. During the whole of this long year the dictator con- tinued to preside over affairs at the centre of the empire, and with his new enactments and projects rendered it i6o TJic Roman Triinnviratcs. cii. viii. perhaps the most illustrious in the Roman annals. His measures were principally directed to the enfranchisement Measures of Communities, of classes, and of individuals, ing theTran- by which Continued process he meditated the creasing'the gr^^'^i^l fusion of the provinces into the city senate, &c. itself He added largely to the numbers of the senate, which had been no doubt much reduced by the massacres of the civil wars. We hear, indeed, of the senate dividing once or twice just before this period, to the number of more than 400; but Caesar increased it at once to 900. Doubtless he lowered the popular estimation of the august assembly by thus cheapening its honours ; but he still more degraded it in the eyes of the older citizens by pouring into it his allies from the provinces^ his rude Gaulish soldiers, and even, if we may believe the stories of the day, the captives who had just followed his triumph. The Romans exercised their wit on these up- start strangers losing themselves among the columns of the Forum, and posted placards recommending that no good citizen should show them the way to the senate- house. But the policy of abating the pride of the oli- garchy, and attaching foreigners to the state by opening to them its honours, deserved a deliberate and a patient trial, which, in fact, it never received. The same populace who mocked or resented this intrusion were willing to surrender to the great conqueror their own privilege of appointment to all public offices ; and he could hardly prevail upon them to give, by their votes in the Campus, even a colour of free election to the men whom he re- commended. The consuls, praetors, and other officers continued to exercise their ordinary functions under the dictator's superintendence. But as the avowed champion of the people, Caesar claimed the distinction of the tribunician power, which also ren- dered his person legally inviolable, and invested it with a Appoint ment to offices. B.C. 45. C<^say foimds Colonies. 161 certain religious sanctity in the eyes of the multitude. He aUowed himself to be surrounded by a body-guard of noble citizens, elsewhere the august privilege of kings only. In the senate and other public places he seated himself on a golden chair, in a robe of regal magni- ficence, and the imperium, or military supremacy which had been given him for his own life, was rendered, if we may believe some later writers, transmissible to his chil- dren. Issue, indeed, of his own he had none, unless Cicsario, the child of Cleopatra, was really his ; and per- haps even the servile populace would have shrunk from giving themselves a master in the baseborn offspring of a foreigner and an Egyptian. But Caesar had a nephew, the promising young son of his sister by a Roman noble, who will soon come prominently upon the stage. But we return to the projects of the great dictator during the course of the year which, under happier aus- pices, might have really become the last of ^^^^^ civil strife and political confusion. The mili- founds tary statesmen of Rome had generally adopted ^°^°"^^'' one of two plans for relieving the impoverished classes of the city, and drafting off from Rome itself the superfluous masses of its soldiery. Pompeius and Sulla had seized upon the forfeited estates of their adversaries throughout the peninsula, and planted their veterans upon them ; but the effect of these forcible assignments had been gene- rally disastrous. They had embittered strife and engen- dered perpetual animosities among the sufferers, while they had demoralized the men whom they were meant to serve, and rendered them both idle and turbulent. C^sar reverted to the ancient method of settling new colonies of Roman citizens, and he selected, from policy or gene- rosity, some of the cities which had suffered most from their rivalry with Rome, and of which Rome had up to this time never ceased to be jealous. He proposed thus A. H, M l62 The Roman Triumvirates. ch. viii. B.C. 44. CcEsar's destined Heir. 163 to restore Corinth, Capua, and Carthage ; and all his colonies, thus wisely chosen, grew and flourished, and became in after ages some of the noblest cities of the empire. Corinth significantly adopted the name of Laus Julia ; perhaps she looked forward from the first to the project he already contemplated, of cutting through the isthmus, and thus mingling in one harbour the commerce of eastern and western Greece, of Europe and of Asia. The liberal views which the dictator entertained for the extension of the Roman franchise might lead him to regard Rome herself as no longer an isolated munici- pium, but the centre and capital of the Roman world. As he proceeded to lay the groundwork of a comprehensive scheme of universal legislation, his first care was to de- velop the material unity of the vast regions before him by an elaborate survey of their local relations. The Roman Further land-mcasurers were accustomed to draw projects. ^j^g boundaries of public and private estates. Survey of r r the empire. Italy and the provinces were to a great extent marked out by their terminal stones and limits. A com- mission of geographers and mathematicians was now appointed to execute a survey of the whole empire, a work of labour which seems to have been steadily con- tinued, even through the turbulent years that followed, till it issued in the great map of Agrippa a whole genera- tion later. Another effort, not less gigantic, was required to impress a moral unity upon this mighty machine. Caesar prepared to collect and combine in a single code the fragments of Roman law, dispersed in a multitude of precedents, in the edicts of praetors, the replies of coun- sellors, the decisions of pontiffs, and the traditions of ^ J.. . patrician houses. No doubt he would have Codification ^ • • 1 of the laws, completed this undertaking by bnngmg the laws and customs of the various provinces into working harmony with those of the ruling city, and adjusting the ■A. ever-conflicting pretensions of the Roman and the subject before the tribunals at home and abroad. Such an im- portant work had been already imagined by Cicero as the hopeless vision of the philanthropic philosopher ; but Cesar's practical sagacity saw that it not only ought to be done, but could be done; and it is possible that, had he lived ten or twenty years longer, he would have antici- pated by six centuries the peaceful glory of Justinian. To these may be added some great material works which the dictator projected nearer home. He was am- bitious of advancing the pomoerium, or sacred limit within which the auspices could be taken ; and he would pro- bably have given a greater circuit to the walls of Rome, which had never been extended since the early demarcation of Servius, and were now jects [he'^^' thrown down or obliterated in many quarters, of the'wrils. He would have reconstructed a real line of ^*^- defence embracing the Campus Martius ; and the Cam- pus itself he would have enlarged by turning the Tiber westward with a bold sweep from the Milvian to the Vatican bridge. Further, he planned, it is said, the emptying of the lake Fucinus, the draining of the Pomptine marshes, the construction of a canal from Rome to Tarracina, a new road across the Apennines, and a capacious harbour at Ostia ; a grand combination of schemes to be conceived at one moment by one head, the utility of which was perceived by his successors, and most of which were actually accomplished by them in the course of after ages. The heir whom Cassar destined for the imperium was already in the camp at Apollonia. This young man was C. Octavius, the son of Atia, daughter of the dictator's sister, Julia, who was now (at the beginning of B. c. 44) in his nineteenth year. Caesar had promoted his house from the plebeian to the patrician order. He allowed it M2 164 The Roman Triumvirates. cii. vm. B.C. 44. Conspiracy against Ccesar, 165 further to be understood that he meant to make him his own son by adoption, and bequeath to him his patri- mony, together with the dignities which the attempts to senate had declared hereditary in his family. fiirtiuroY These dignities, indeed, were not hitherto ^'"S- associated in the minds of the Romans with any ideas of hereditary succession. They could hardly conceive the descent of the dictatorship, for instance, from the hands of mature experience to those of an untried youth, or the establishment of the tribunician power, the free gift of the people, in the line of a par- ticular family. They would naturally conclude that their hero was intent on securing a title, on which alone, in their view, a dynasty could be founded. Cxsar, it was reported, desired to be hailed as king. His flatterers suggested it, his enemies readily believed it, and hoped to make him unpopular by urging him to advance the claim. One morning a laurel garland, with a diadem at- tached, was found affixed to his statue before the Rostra. The tribunes indignantly tore it down, the populace expressing satisfaction at their conduct, and saluting them with acclamations as the modern lirutuses. Ca:sar affected at least to applaud them. When a second attempt of the same kind was made, and the people again murmured, he hastily exclaimed, ' I am no king, but Caesar.' He began now, however, to show some signs of mortification; but his friends, if such were the real pro- moters of the intrigue, still thought the prize within his reach. On the i8th of February, the day of the Luper- calia, the imperator was presiding in his golden chair before the Rostra. His devoted follower, M. Antonius, took a prominent part in the solemnity, running, lightly clad, through the streets, with a thong in his hand, with which he struck the women who presented themselves to receive the blow, which was reputed to avert barrenness. i When he had run his course he broke througli the excited throng, and, drawing from his girdle a diadem, made as if he would offer it to Caesar, exclaiming that it was the gift of the Roman people. Some clapping of hands ensued, but it was faint and brief, and manifestly precon- certed. When Caesar put away from him the proffered gift, the applause was hearty and spontaneous. ' I am not king,' he repeated ; ' the only king of the Romans is Jupiter.' He ordered the diadem to be carried to the Capitol and suspended in the temple, to commemorate the gracious offer of the people and his own patriotic refusal. This discretion bafifled the visions that might be entertained of a popular rising against the usurper; but feelings of distrust and despair were taking ^ . ^ ~ ^ ^ Conspiracy possession ot many of the more eminent citi- against zens, and were not confined to the remnant ^'^^^^' of the republican party. Some, no doubt, were disap- pointed in their hopes of preferment under the new administration ; but others, who had been advanced to high office, still felt aggrieved at the pre-eminence which had been attained by one whom they refused to regard as more than an equal ; and no doubt the prospect of such pre-eminence being transmitted to an inconsiderable stripling added a fresh sting to their vexation. A plot against Caesar's life was now deliberately formed. The secret was shared among sixty or even eighty conspira- tors, some of them the most familiar and the most trusted of his personal friends. Decimus Brutus, Trebonius, Casca, and Cimber, had all received distinguished marks of the dictator's favour. C. Cassius professed himself a republican ; yet he, too, had avowed his preference for the merciful Caesar over the fierce and sanguinary sons of Pompeius. . But he was a man of bitter and jealous temper; a restless intriguer, without a scruple or a 1 66 TJie Roman Triumvirates. ch. vin. principle. He worked upon the simpler and kindlier nature of M. Junius Brutus, a weak follower of his uncle the sturdy Cato, whom he professed to make his example in philosophy and also in civic virtue. Brutus was will- ing, however, to accept the iijiportant government of the Cisalpine from the hands of the dictator, and acquiesced without a murmur in the political situation. The weak- ness of his character may be estimated from the means which the conspirators employed to influence him. They affixed a paper to the statue of the elder Brutus, with the words, * Would thou wert alive.' They thrust billets into his hand inscribed, * Brutus, thou sleepest ; thou art no longer Brutus.' But they rightly calculated the effect of his name in their ranks, which seemed to give a distinct aim to the undertaking, and to invest it with a patriotic colour. The intrigue soon ripened to its execution. Caesar had assumed the consulship, together with M. Antonius, and had announced, at the commencement of the year, his intention of leading a great force into the East to avenge the slaughter of Crassus, and of triumphing over the rival kingdom of Parthia. He even meditated, it is said, to return by the northern coast of the Euxine and crush the hostile league with which IMithridates had threatened to knit together the barbarians beyond the Danube. The preparations for the imperator's departure were almost complete. The senate was convened for the Ides of March, the 15th of the month. On this day, as soon aS he should enter the Curia, March IS t^c t)low was to be struck. The 17th of that u.c. 710/ month was the day on which Pompeius had ^'^ ''*' quitted the shores of Italy ; the 17th was also the day of Caesar's crowning victory at Munda ; but the popular imagination seems to have antedated an anni- versary of so much note in the hero's career, and the Csesar assassi- nated. 6. C 44. Assassi?iatioit of Ccesar, 167 prediction was already current that the Ides of March should be fatal to him. Hitherto he had spurned every warning of danger; the easiest death, he had been recently heard to say, is that which comes most unex- pectedly. He had even dismissed the guard which the senate had assigned for the protection of his person. So far he had refused to take any precautions. But his con- sort Calpurnia had a bad dream ; the victims presented evil omens. At the last moment he seemed to hesitate. On the other side, Marcus Brutus was not less moved, and was sustained in his resolution only by the constancy of his wife, the noble Porcia, the daughter of Cato. Decimus Brutus, with more nerve, still urged Caesar to present him- self in the senate-house, and made a jest of his scruples. Caesar advanced ; but as he proceeded along the Forum towards the theatre of Pompeius in the Campus, more than one person pressed, it is said, upon him, to warn him of his danger. One, indeed, thrust a paper into his hand, and implored him to read it instantly. But he paid no heed, and held it still rolled up unread when he arrived at the hall of assembly. * The Ides of March are come,' he observed complacently to the augur Spurinna. * Aye,' muttered the sage, * but they are not yet passed.' He entered the hall, his enemies closing around him and keeping his friends aloof, Trebonius being specially charged to detain Antonius at the door. On taking his seat, Cimber approached with a petition for his brother's pardon. The others, as was concerted, joined in the supplication, seizing his hands and embracing his neck. Caesar at first put them gently aside ; they redoubled their urgency ; Cimber grasped his toga with both hands, and pulled it over his arms. Then Casca, who was behind, drew his stylus, or a dagger concealed in its case, and grazed his shoulder with an ill-directed stroke. Caesar disengaged one hand with a cry, and snatched at I6S Tfic Roman Triumvh'ates. CH. VIII. the hilt. ' Help ! ' Cried Caesar, and at the moment the others drew, and aimed each his dagger at their victim. Cassar for an instant defended himself, and even wounded one of his assailants with his stylus ; but when he noticed Brutus in the press, and saw the steel flashing in his hand also, ' What ! thou too, Brutus ! ' he exclaimed, let go his grasp of Casca, and drawing his robe over his face, made no further resistance. The assassins stabbed him with thirty wounds, and he fell dead at the foot of Pompeius's statue. CcEsar was assassinated in his fifty-sixth year. He was hacked to death with three-and-twenty blows, of which one only, it was said, would have been in itself mortal. In early life his health was delicate, and he was sub- Remarks J^^^ ^° epileptic fits, which attacked him in his African campaign, and again before the battle of Munda. Yet the energy and rapidity of his movements seem to prove the general robustness of his constitution. Had he escaped the stroke of the assassin he might probably have attained old age, and carried out himself the liberal schemes which he left to be more or less mutilated by a successor in the empire a quarter of a century later. The name of Julius Caesar has filled a larger space in secular history than any other. Such has been the effect produced on the imagination of posterity both by the greatness of the work which he accomplished and by the intrinsic greatness of his own character. The reduction of the unwieldy commonwealth of Rome under a single autocrat was doubtless an abortive effort, terminating in the premature death of its author and the overthrow of his government. It is easy to say that it was not Caesar but Augustus after him that established the Roman empire. Nevertheless, the man who first conceives and executes a great design may command more attention on ihe character of Julius Caesar. 9, itfet B.C. 44. ReJIcctiojis on Cccsar's Character, 169 from mankind than one who works upon his hnes, and brings his designs to completion ; and so it is that from generation to generation men have been wont to regard the immortal Julius as the first of the Caesars and*' the first of the Roman emperors. To him as their political parent the great autocrats of Europe have ever since affiliated themselves ; to the imperial rule derived from him modern civilization, it must be confessed, has been largely indebted, till it has ripened in a i^\N favoured com- munities into constitutional monarchies, and returned only here and there to the republican type out of which it emerged. The part which Caesar has played in the development of human society through so many cen- turies must make him still the most conspicuous of all the actors on the world's stage before us. Our estimate of this great man's actual ability stands on another footing, and must be referred simply to the definite judgment pronounced upon it by the histo- rians. While other illustrious men have been reputed great for their excellence in some one department of intellect, the concurrent voice of antiquity has declared that Caesar was excellent in all. ' He had genius,' says Cicero, 'understanding,memory, taste, reflection, industry, and exactness.' ' He was great,' repeats Drumann, ' in everything he undertook ; as a captain, a statesman, a lawgiver, a jurist, an orator, a poet, an historian, a gram- marian, a mathematician, an architect.' Pliny tells us that he could devote his mind without distraction to several subjects at once ; he could write, dictate, and listen at the same moment. At the same time we are assured that in all the exercises of the camp his vigour and address were not less conspicuous. He fought at the most perilous moments in the ranks of the soldiers ; he could manage his charger without the use of reins ; he saved his life at Alexandria by his skill in the art of I/O TJie Roman Triumvirates. CH. VIII. swimming. But of all his talents his personal influence over men seems to have been the most effective. Of all great men he seems to have been personally the most amiable, and to have retained the respect and love of his fellows notwithstanding a laxity of principle which shocked even his own corrupt times. And this is, per- haps, the more singular, inasmuch as Ca?sar is pour- trayed to us as singularly devoid of the impulsiveness and enthusiasm which so often extort our forgiveness for grave moral delinquencies. But it is evident that none came in contact with him without succumbing to the charm of his superior intelligence, of his courage, his sense, his unerring judgment, still more, perhaps, of his unfailing success. The deep-rooted selfishness of his personal ambition was lost, it may be presumed, on a generation of unblushing self-seekers. But it is as a general that Caesar stands, after all, most pre-eminent ; the common voice of antiquity has been echoed by many of the greatest commanders of modern times, and we may regard his military fame as legiti- mately established. Neither he himself, in his own com- mentaries, nor his lieutenant, who continued them, makes the slightest effort to disguise his occasional fiiilures, or the straits to which they reduced him. All commanders have made such mistakes ; but it is the special praise of Caesar that his mistakes always tended to bring out the extent and variety of his resources, and to show the depth and deliberate character of his plans. The blows inflicted on him by the Treviri and by Vercingetorix prepared the way for his final conquest of Gaul ; the repulse at Petra brought the civil war to a crowning triumph at Pharsalia; the check at Alexandria resulted in the subjugation of the richest kingdom of the East. It was not so with Hannibal ; it was not so with Napoleon. B. c. 44. The L ibcrators appeal to the People. 1 7 » CHAPTER IX. CAIUS OCTAVIUS SUCCEEDS TO THE INHERITANCE OF JULIUS CESAR. When the conspirators looked round, the hall was already empty. The senators had fled with precipitation. Centurions, lictors, and attendants had van- ished with them, and the harangue which ^ake"Jhis Brutus proposed to deliver found no hearers, ^•'^^^p^- Antonius had slipped through the crowd, exchanged clothes with a slave, and made his way to his own house on the Carina?. Among the citizens there was general consternation, none knowing on whom the next blow might fall, or which party would be the first to resort to riot and massacre. Both had arms within reach. On the one hand Decimus Brutus had provided for the defence of his friends by placing some gladiators hard by in the Pompeian theatre ; on the other, the city was filled with the dictator's veterans, and Lepidus, his master of the horse, commanded a legion outside the walls. The assassins now marched forth, brandishing their bloody weapons, and wrapping their gowns about their left arms as a defence against a sudden attack. Antonius They reached the Forum, preceded by a cap ^Iz^^ol of liberty hoisted on a spear, exclaiming that pa^pSsLd they had slain a king and a tyrant. The effects, place was filled with an agitated crowd, but these cries met with no response among them. Disconcerted by this indifference, the liberators, as they now called them- selves, retired hastily to secure a place of refuge on the Capitoline. Here, with the aid of the gladiators of Decimus, they barred the gates of the enclosure. In the evening some of the nobles came to join them; 172 The Roman Triumvirates. CII. IX. among these was Cicero, who, though previously uncon- nected with the conspiracy, recovered hope from its first success, and advised that the senate should be convened immediately. But Brutus preferred to make another appeal to the feelings of the populace. On the morrow he descended into the Forum. To him indeed, personally, the people listened with respect ; but against others who next addressed them they broke out into violence, and drove the whole party back to their place of shelter. Meanwhile Antonius had not been idle ; he had com- municated secretly with Calpurnia, and obtained posses- sion of her husband's private treasure, and also of his will. With the aid of his two brothers, one a pnctor, the other a tribune, he opened, as consul, the national coffers in the temple of Ops, and drew thence a store of coin, with which he made adv^ances to Lepidus, and received promises of support. M. Antonius, who is now coming prominently to the front, had been hitherto slightly regarded as minister and Antonius Companion of Caesar ; but from this moment ?onvrnes ^^ assumed in many eyes the position the senate. of his natural successor. Hitherto known chiefly for his amours and his dissipation, he was now about to display the arts of a consummate politician. Cicero stood alone in dissuading the liberators from negotiating with him. But they believed in his profes- sions of loyalty, and hoped to gain an ascendency over the pliant temper which had always yielded to the influence of the dictator. It was agreed that as consul he should convene the senate for the next day, the 17th of March. He appointed for the place of meeting the temple of Tcllus, near the Forum, which he filled with armed soldiers. The liberators dared not leave the Capitol, and the discussion of their fatal deed was carried on in their absence. The majority of the fathers would B. c. 44. An A miles ty proclaimed. 173 have stigmatized Caesar as a tyrant, and thereby justified his assassination ; but when Antonius represented that this would be to annul his acts and appointments, Dola- bella and others interested in them resisted the decree with all their might. While the senators still deliberated, Antonius went forth into the Forum. The people hailed hmi with acclamations, bidding him at the same time beware for his own life. The senators were uneasy at this demonstration, and Cicero pointed out to them the only course that could relieve them with dignity from their embarrassment. He demanded an aitmesty, or act of oblivion, which should simply confirm every existing appointment, and leave the deed of the conspirators to the judgment of posterity. In private he had declared himself a warm approver of the tyrannicide ; but he now confessed in his public acts that the peace of the city and the interests of the senate required a compromise. An amnesty was decreed. The next day Cicero harangued and calmed the ,populace. The de^ied?''^ liberators were invited to descend from their ^^^'"^^ '^7- place of refuge, Lepidus and Antonius sending them their own children as hostages, and the one entertaining Brutus, the other Cassius at supper. Antonius and Cassius were rude men, and some rude repartees passed between them. ' Have you still a dagger under your arm.?' asked the one. * Yes, truly,' replied the other; ^to slay you with if you aspire to the tyranny.' Next morning all parties met again in the Curia, and the dictator's assignment of provinces was confirmed. Trebonius succeeded to Asia, Cimber to Bithynia, Decimus to the Cisalpine, while Macedonia was secured to Marcus Brutus, and Syria to Cassius, on the expiration of their office as prcetors at home. Notwithstanding the power thus surrendered to the republican leaders, Antonius was still master of the 174 The Roman Trmmvirates, CH. IX. situation. Since C'- men held him, both in his own time and in later genera- tions, is a redeeming feature in the hard and selfish character of the Roman people. Such were the atrocities and horrors with which the year (B.C. 43) closed. Lepidus and Plancus, who next entered on the consulship, commanded the people, still full of dismay and mourning, to celebrate the commence- B.c. 42. Triumph of Lepidus and Plancus. 197 ment of their reign with mirth and festivity. They demanded the honour of a triumph for victories, about which our annals are silent, in Gaul and Spain. Both the one and the other had sacri- otthe""^"' ficed their own brothers in the proscription : Triumvirs' J V , -. . . , ^ ^ ' government and when the fratricides passed along in their at Rome, chariots, the soldiers, it is said, with the usual ^'^^ ^''' camp licence, chaunted, as they followed, ' The consuls triumph, not over the Gauls, but the Germans/ i.e. their brothers. The massacres had now ended, but a course of confiscation commenced. All the inhabitants of Rome and Italy were required to lend a tenth of their fortunes, and to give the whole of one year's income. The consuls proposed an oath to the citizens to maintain all Caesar's enactments, and they proceeded to accord to him divine honours, by an Oriental fiction unknown at least to the Romans since the legendary days of Romulus. The Triumvirs followed their hero's example in assigning all the chief magistracies for several years in advance. Octavius undertook to drive Sextus out of Sicily, where he had established himself under the protection of a flotilla manned by pirates and adventurers; but the passage of the narrow straits was too strictly guarded. Antonius crossed without delay to the coast of Epirus. CHAPTER XI. LAST EFFORT OF THE REPUBLICANS : OF PHILIPPL THE BATTLE The conduct of the struggle which was now about to open, affords an instructive view of the condition of the Roman dominion in the last days of the victorious commonwealth. We have seen the alacrity with which 198 The Roman Tmiviviratcs. CH. XI. Roman armies in the East. Cassius, the chief military leader of the republican party, hastened to throw himself into the remote East and assume the government of the Syrian pro- dencrof the vince. He found himself there at the head of a large army, supported by levies from many states and tributary potentates, sustained by the unbounded resources of the wealthiest region of the known world, constituting an independent power but slightly connected in political feeling with Rome itself, and long disused to the restraints of civil law ; an army encamped upon a subject territory on which it claimed to live at free quarters. The only rule which it acknowledged was that of its own commander, and this rule it obeyed only so far as he gratified its appetite for plunder and its ordinary contempt of discipline. The great army of the East would follow its leader to any enterprise of con- quest among the wealthy regions of Asia, but it did not care to cross the seas and encounter the defenders of the poorer realms of Europe. It preferred the sack of cities and temples to an assignment of lands, and it was dimly conscious that on the soil of Italy its victories could not be crowned by the pillage of Rome, nor even that of Capua or Naples. The veterans of Sulla and Pompeius must be content, when they transferred themselves from the East to the shores of Italy, with the tardy acquisition of forfeited estates and the position of military colonists. Accordingly, the forces of Cassius were all-powerful at Antioch or Ephesus ; but they were of little avail for the rcconquest of the western world. Brutus, as we have seen, had been more loth to quit Rome. His patriotic spirit was attached, like that of Cicero, to the home and centre of his nation, Sckfy at and could ill brook the prospect of a long and, Athens. perhaps, a final separation from it. But he too, as a student of Hellenic culture, was attracted to the B.C. 42. The East opposed to the West, 199 East, as far at least as Greece and Athens, by its scholastic associations ; and the command which he had secured for himself in Macedonia brought him into direct contact with the men of thought and learning who still congregated from all parts, and especially from Rome herself, in the schools of the Porch, the Garden, and the Academy. Athens was at this time much frequented by the young nobihty of Italy; many who came in their tender years for the purpose of study conceived a special attachment to the place, which weaned them from their own country, and made Greece a second home to them. The Romans in Greece con- stituted a provincial society which owned but a languid allegiance to their native city, and cared, perhaps, little for their natural connexion with it. Among the youthful students of the Athenian university, if we may so entitle it, Brutus enlisted many gallant spirits, such as the young poet Horace, who were fired by the name of liberty, but were more ready to defend themselves in their adopted country against an invader from the West than to make any attempt to recover a footing on the shores which they had virtually abandoned. If we may compare this state of things with an instance from modern history, the Romans at this period in the East were in some marked respects not ^j^^ natural unlike the people of the Southern States of repulsion of North America. Desirous as they were chiefly from the of being left alone in the enjoyment of their ^^^^• peculiar advantages, the Romans of the West, like the northerners of the transatlantic continent, would not suffer them to depart, being determined that the empire should not be divided, and that the wealthiest portion of their dominions should not be wrested from the common centre. Doubtless, if there was much pa- triotism in this determination, there was at the same time much greed of power. But so it was that the 200 The Roman Triumvirates, CH. XI. government installed at Rome would never consent to the separation of the East from the West. The Cassarians would not suffer such a separation to be effected by the Pompeians, who for their part might not be unwilling to acquiesce in it. The followers of the triumvirs would not concede it to the republicans, who, in their turn, would have made little effort to oppose it ; and again at the next turn of fortune to which we shall be directed we shall find the triumvir who is master of the West in- exorable in his resolution to recover the eastern half of the empire from his rival beyond the ^gean. It was, in fact, with the utmost difficulty that at three successive crises the unity of the whole unwieldy mass was pre- served, and at last so firmly welded together by Augustus and Agrippa that it endured without a rupture, though not without some violent shocks, for nearly four centuries. To the last, however, the union was mechanical, so to say, rather than organic. There was no community of in- terest, no homogeneous feeling, no moral fusion between the East and the West ; the two hemispheres were maintained in political union only, as they had been first compacted, by the firm will and strong hand of Rome. V^^^ The horrible condition to which the civil wars had reduced the long flourishing communities of the East Meeting of appears in the way in which the Roman chiefs CassVus at*^ in that quarter were obliged to maintain their Sardis. armies. As soon as Antonius threatened them with an attack, and it became necessary to arm and move the vast hosts which could be easily raised to confront him, the most forcible measures were demanded to supply the means required. This want of means would have pre- vented any aggressive movement even had the liberators and those that followed them really cared to carry the war into Italy. But, in fact, they could not attempt to do so. The legionaries themselves might have refused to B.C. 42. Battle of Philippi. 201 engage in a bloody and unprofitable campaign while the cities of the East offered them abundant gratifications. They found or provoked petty enemies around them, and compelled their chiefs to lead them against the Lycians, the Rhodians, and the Cappadocians, either for pay or plunder. Brutus himself consented to the sack of Xanthus, where the wretched people threw themselves into the flames of their own city. Cassius wantonly attacked the great emporium of Rhodes, mulcted it of 8,500 talents, and enforced the fine by cutting off the heads of fifty of its principal citizens. The whole province of Asia was subjected to the severest proscriptions, of which these are perhaps only specimens. At last Brutus, hardly less guilty than his colleagues, but more sensitive to the sin and scandal, interfered to restrain such disgraceful cruelties. At Sardis, where the two proconsuls met to arrange their plan of operations, he sharply rebuked Cassius for bringing odium on their common cause ; but Cassius pleaded his inability to restrain his mer- cenaries, and Brutus let the matter pass with a few unavailing murmurs. The character of Brutus as a dreamy enthusiast is marked by the venerable legend of a terrible figure that appeared to him at night and announced xhe battle itself as his evil demon, which should present of Philippi, ' Nov. itself to him again at Philippi. It was reported b.c 42. further that Brutus divulged the ominous ^-^^ 7"' vision to Cassius, the Epicurean, who explained to him the reasoning by which his master in philosophy had demonstrated the vanity of apparitions. Nevertheless, the Stoic idealist continued anxious and dissatisfied. When at last the republican forces mustered in Mace- donia, in the vicinity of Philippi, t 00,000 strong, and prepared to encounter the armies, still more numerous, of the triumvirs, the vision, it is said, recurred ; the 202 The Roman Triinnviratcs. cir. XI. demon was faithful to his appointment. Never were men's eyes and ears more open to bodings of evil than at this disturbed crisis of human history. The ghosts of Marius and Sulla were supposed to have betokened the renewal of the civil wars. The disaster of Carrhce had been preceded by adverse omens. The battle of Pharsalia had been announced hundreds of miles away at the mo- ment of the impious struggle. Presages of dire significance had been noticed before that fell encounter ; similar in- timations, it would seem, could not be wanting to the last fatal scene which was now about to open. Brutus and Cassius posted themselves on two eminences about twelve miles east of Philippi, their left covered by the sea, from which they drew their supplies. Antonius placed his camp opposite to that of Cassius ; Octavius, on his left, faced the army of Brutus. Cassius, it is said, aware of the enemy's lack of provisions, would have refrained from action ; but Brutus, ever fretful and impatient, overruled his wiser counsels. The contest between forces so numerous extended over a wide space, and was conducted with little mutual concert between the commanders on either side. Octavius was sick and could not take part in the encounter. More than once in the course of his career did he suffer these untoward hindrances, upon which his enemies did not fail to comment ; and now his division was overpowered and precipitately pursued. Brutus believed the battle won ; but in the meanwhile Antonius had charged, with no less success, on the right ; Cassius had been driven from his camp, and descrying, when left almost alone, a body of horsemen advancing, had rashly concluded that Death of they were enemies in pursuit, and had thrown Cassius. himself upon the sword of a freedman. The scouts of Brutus, sent to advertise him of his colleague's advantage, arrived a moment too late. B.C. 42. End of the Republic, 203 t The effect of this blunder was disastrous. Cassius had exercised some control over the soldiers, but Brutus was utterly powerless with them. In vain did Second he scatter all his treasures among them ; they death'of"^ called out the louder for more. In vain did Brutus. he yield up his prisoners to their cruelty ; they grew even more vindictive and bloodthirsty. He was compelled to promise them the plunder of Thessalonica in order to retain them yet awhile at his standards ; for the Caesarians were reduced to great straits, and the dispersion of their fleet on the same day as the recent battle rendered their advanced position no longer tenable. Both the armies still kept the ground which they had before occupied. Twenty days after the first engagement Brutus was hurried into renewing it. The field was well contested ; the instinct of fighting was equally keen on both sides, though on neither was there any real principle at stake, nor any definite object in view. The Roman legionary had become nothing more than a gladiator, bold, expert, and desperate. At the end of the day the Caesarians had broken the ranks of their adversaries, and Octavius assailed them in their camp. Brutus, with four legions kept a position through the night on the neighbouring hills. The next day his men refused to fight, and he could only secure, with a few attendants, some hours of concealment, after which he terminated his life with a blow of his own sword, when none of them could be induced to do him the last faithful service. The cause of the republic is said to have perished on the field of Philippi ; but, to speak truly, the republic itself had, as we have seen, perished already. The ^he end of fragments of the broken party which had J^^^^fJ^^" seemed to gather round it collapsed under this final blow. Many nobles and officers who survived the carnage were captured in the flight, or surrendered 204 TJic Roman Triumvirates. CH. XI. themselves to the victors, who treated them, strange to say, with distinguished clemency. A remnant was taken off by their own fleet, and sought refuge with Sextus at the head of his piratical armament. The Caesarian leaders had shown themselves abler than their opponents. A curse of weakness and barrenness seemed to cling to the murderers of the great dictator, who proved them- selves incompetent throughout to originate any bold design, to overcome any difficulties, or to engender even the slightest enthusiasm for the phantom which they followed. Brutus, the best, but, perhaps, the weakest, of the whole crew, died muttering a spiritless verse which rails at virtue as an empty name and no better than a slave to fortune. If so it be, he should surely have be- thought himself thereof before he gratified his spite or vanity by the crime of an assassination. Amidst the fury, indeed, of armed factions it was plain that the go- vernment of the world had passed out of the hands of contemplative and philosophic students, if such could have ever hoped to retain it. The strong man was the only man who could rule, and the strong man was more than ever necessary to prevent the world from sinking into anarchy. The true patriot at that moment would have hailed the advent of any ruler vigorous enough to control events, and might have forgiven him an act of usurpation in which lay the only chance of progress or at least of peace for the future. But the vain idea that the republic was possible now passed out of men's minds, never again to be revived, except casually and for a moment in the imagination of hot-headed and feeble enthusiasts. There yet remained a short struggle between the personal claims of the foremost captains of the day ; but the commonwealth in general might await with some calmness the issue, which could only be the estabhshment of a constituted government under B.C. 42. Division of East and West. \0^ I the form of monarchy. From the republic to the empire might be a moral decline, but it was plainly both natural and inevitable. CHAPTER XII. CONTEST BETWEEN OCTAVIUS AND ANTONIUS— BATTLE OF ACTIUM— OCTAVIUS BECOMES MASTER OF THE STATE. The two triumvirs who had conducted the campaign against the common enemy paid little regard to the colleague whom they had left in empty state behind them. After Philippi they arranged a new division of the pro- vinces, Antonius taking Gaul and Illyricum, Octavius seizing upon Spain and Numidia, and retaining Italy with the Cisalpine in common between the two, while to Lepidus they gave at first no province at all, though at a later period they allowed him to hold the small but important district of Africa. This divisbnof partition of the provinces seems to have been '^^ p''^' vinccs. made in order to allow each chief to gratify u.c ^\^. his particular followers with subordinate ap- ^'^' '^^' pointments ; but the real distribution of power was of a different kind. Octavius returned to Rome and became at once supreme throughout the West, while Antonius preferred to remain in the opposite quarter, and reign over its wealthy regions and luxurious cities, which were all placed in subjection to him. While Octavius devoted himself in Italy to the interests of his veterans, his colleague lavished upon himself and his parasites all the spoils he could accumulate. His arrival was every\vhere regarded with the utmost dread by cities and potentates, and his favour purchased by flatteries and presents. 2C6 The Roman Triumvirates. CH. XII. The clever and artful Cleopatra addressed him, how- ever, in another fashion. The death of her admirer, Cleopatra's Ca^sar, exposed her to imminent perils at ^tonius^^ Alexandria, both from within and from with- out. It was essential to her security to gain the protection of the new ruler of the East. Antonius had seen her in the train of his master, and even then, no doubt, he had been struck by her showy fascinations. She had returned to Egypt to secure her throne there ; but he now required her to meet him in Cilicia, and answer for some imputed intrigues with his enemy Cassius. The queen was confident in her charms, which had already proved so powerful. Instead of appearing herself as a suppliant, she meant to bring him on his knees before her ; and she succeeded. Steering for Tarsus for the mterview demanded of her, she sailed up the Cydnus in a gilded vessel, with purple sails and silver oars, to the sound of Oriental music. She was seen rechning under a spangled canopy in the garb of Venus, surrounded by Cupids, Graces, and Nereids. Antonius himself had jovially assumed the attributes of Bacchus. The asto- nished natives hailed the happy conjunction of the two most genial of their divinities. Dazzled by her splendid equipage, he invited her to land and sit at banquet with him ; but she haughtily replied that he must come and attend upon herself. The first interview sealed his fate. For the rude triumvir, more of a gladiator than a states- man, Cleopatra discarded the Grecian elegance of man- ners which had charmed the polished dictator ; she sat through his tipsy orgies, laughed at his camp jokes, de- lighted him with her own saucy sallies, and so maintained the hold which she at once acquired over him, till she first ruined and finally betrayed him. While, however, Antonius was forgetting wife and country, and postponing the war announced against the B.C. 40. Third partition of the empire. 207 Parthians for the sake of his new plaything, his brother Lucius had joined with Fulvia in a wanton attack upon Octavius in Italy. Lucius Antonius, and warof Servilius had occupied the consulship for the year 41. Fulvia, daring and ambitious, ruled vhem both, while the indolent Lepidus fell altogether under eclipse. The return of Octavius surprised and alarmed the guilty confederates. Fulvia was irritated by his dismissal of her daughter Claudia, whom he had but just wedded to satisfy the soldiers. She was mortified also at her hus- band's desertion, and hoped to tear him away from Alex- andria by raising commotions at home. With these views she fomented the discontent of the Italian pro- prietors, whose lands Octavius had assigned to his veterans, many of whom had already seized their arms to defend themselves, while the veterans themselves were murmuring at the discontent which their victims so natu- rally manifested. The young triumvir was reduced to great straits. He exerted himself to pacify his followers with fresh confiscations ; but his friend, M. Agrippa, shut up Lucius in Perusia, and at last reduced him to u.c. 713. capitulation by stress of hunger. It is said ^•^- 4'- that Octavius caused 300 knights and senators to be sacrificed to the shade of his father ; but the story of the ArcB Perusinm seems little credible, though doubtless his brutal soldiery thirsted for blood, and perhaps he gratified them too largely. We learn, however, that at all events he spared L. Antonius, and even gave him an appointment in Spain. Antonius was now roused to exertion, and for a mo- ment he broke away from the toils of his Egyptian paramour. He sent his lieutenant, Ventidius, ^ ^j^j^^ p^^. to make head against the Parthians, whose tuionofthe hostility, ever ready to kindle in arms, he had already challenged ; but he shaped his own course for 208 TJie Roman Triumvirates. ch. xii. the West. At Athens he met his consort, Fulvia, who upbraided him with his long abandonment of wife and friends ; but as he was exerting himself just then to repair his error, the rebuke was at least unseasonable, and his resentment seems to have crushed her spirit and hastened her end, which quickly followed. Relieved from this domestic embarrassment, he led his active squadrons to the coast of the Adriatic. There he made a compact with Sextus Pompeius, and got himself transported across the straits ; but the plunder which he seems to have al- lowed raised the indignation of Italy and Rome, which had learnt to regard him as a foreign invader. In Sextus, his base associate, they had long ceased to recognise the son of their ancient favourite. The prince of the pirates had renounced, it was reported, the manners and prin- ciples of his countrymen, had affected to be the son of Neptune, and had actually forgotten the Latin language. Accordingly, when Octavius drew his sword to resist this invasion, the sympathies of the people were enlisted warmly on his side as the champion of the senate, the people, and the national divinities. The soldiers, how- ever, were at this moment stronger than the people, and disposed of their chiefs at their will. They now compelled the two rival leaders to treat. A fresh parr tition of the empire gave the East to Antonius, from the Adriatic to the Euphrates, where he was charged to control the Parthians ; the West to Octavius, with the con- duct of the war against Sextus. Africa was abandoned u.c. 714. to Lepidus. Octavia, the sister of the young B.C. 4a Caesar, recently left a widow by Marcellus, married the widower Antonius. The rivals, thus outwardly reunited, hastened to Rome together, and celebrated their alliance with much hollow rejoicing. The treaty of Brundisium gave to each of the two contracting parties a new start in power, but it put no B.C. 36. Renewal of the Triumvirate. 209 check upon their rivalry. - The final issue of the long struggle between them, thus carefully balanced, must depend upon personal ability and fortune. Thetrium- The popularity which the younger had already ^^^^ concert acquired gave him a ground of vantage; but Sus'^ind he had three arduous tasks before him— to To^armr^"^ keep Rome and Italy contented, to contend at against him. the same time by sea against the resources and skill of Sextus, and to maintain by constant exercise the courage and ardour of his soldiers. In the first of these under- takings he was ably seconded by Cilnius Miecenas, whom he made his chief administrator at home ; who soothed rival ambitions in the senate and the forum, and pacified the murmurs of the dispossessed proprietors thoughout the peninsula. His next endeavour was to come to terms with Sextus, with whom he had connected himself by an opportune marriage with his sister Scribonia. The son of the great Pompeius was now invited to confer with the triumvirs at Misenum, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica were assigned to him as his share of em- pire. The allied potentates entertained one ^.c. 715. another at banquets in a vessel riding at sea, «c' 39- but moored to the land for the equal security of all ; and Sextus gallantly declined, though not without an effort, to let his bold lieutenant, Maenas, cut the cable and carry off his rivals with him. But when he refused to restore some places he had taken on the coast of Italy, the western triumvir took up arms against him. In his naval enter- prises Octavius was well supported by his friend Agrippa, who constructed the Julian port, on the Campanian coast] employed one year in equipping a powerful fleet, and, after some misadventures, effected his enemy's Battle of complete overthrow in the sea-fight of Nau- Naulochus. lochus, off the coast of Sicily. Sextus fled b.c*37.^* in confusion to the East, and was speedily crushed bv A.M. p ' 2IC Tlie Roman Triumvirates . ch. xii. Antonius, to whom he vainly looked for protection. Octavius had already repudiated Scribonia, and allied himself with the great houses of the republic by a curious love-marriage with Livia, divorced for his sake by her husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero. The term prescribed for the triumvirate had expired on the last day of the year 38, but there had been many Renewal of precedents for the protraction of such irregular the trium- powers, and the three colleagues were on suffi- u.c. 717. cientlygood terms with one another to agree to B.C. 37. ^ renewal of their compact for another period of five years. The senate and the people submitted with- out an audible munnur to a tyranny which was now more autocratic than ever. Such, it seems, was the result of a meeting of Octavius and Antonius at Tarentum, in which they pretended to maintain a cordial alliance between themselves, while they retained their superiority over their feeble colleague. When Lepidus ventured at last to turn against the ruler of the West, Octavius easily put down so feeble a Fall of pretender, and spared the life of a magnate Lepidus. illustrious from his birth and from the dignity which he held of chief pontiff. The younger Caesar had now learnt from the elder the policy of clemency, which he continued to practise to the end of his long career. He was cementing his power and popu- larity in every direction, with a view, no doubt, to the final struggle which he knew to be impending ; and his last efforts were directed to keeping his troops in training by campaigns against the barbarians in Dalmatia, where neither spoil nor glory was to be acquired, but which now presented the only field for the arms of a western imperator. On the other hand, a great sphere was open to the martial enterprise of the triumvir in the East. Antonius (■ , ' B.C. 36. Campaigns of Antonius in the East, 211 had acted loyally towards his colleague in supplying him with vessels for his contest with Sextus ; at the same time he had required from him a con- Disastrous tingent of 20,000 men for the expedition ^^'^v^}i^o{ 1 • , , . ^ Antonius wnich he was preparmg to conduct against against the the Parthians. Having secured this succour, u.c'ylT'' however, he did not scruple to abandon the ^•^- ^^^ sister of Octavius, whom he had so recently espoused as a pledge of constant alliance, and rushed again into the toils of Cleopatra, with whom he indulged in sport and revelry till his armaments were completed. About mid- summer of the year B.C. 36, he had assembled 100,000 men on the Euphrates to follow up the partial successes of Ventidius. He had, indeed, delayed the advance too long; and from the haste with which he now moved he suffered his machines to fall into the rear, so that when he reached Praaspa, 300 miles beyond the Tigris, unopposed, he found himself destitute of the means for besieging a strong and well-defended city. An attempt to reduce it by blockade was baffled by the setting in of the cold season in the lofty regions into which he had unwarily plunged. He retreated, and suffered in his retreats hardships almost unparalleled, such as tliose which attended the flight of Napoleon from Moscow. On his crossing the Araxes, however, the Parthians at length desisted from their pursuit ; but still intent on re- gaining the festive halls of Alexandria he hurried his weary soldiers along with great distress and loss. He rejoined the queen in Syria, whither she had advanced to meet him, and returned with her, defeated but un- abashed, to the delights of her court in Eg}'pt. So miserable a retreat after so rash an advance could be regarded only as a grave disaster. The base triumvir chose, however, to announce himself as a conqueror. Octavius did not care to contest his claim, and still p 3 212 TJic Roman Truimviratcs. ch. xii. affected to maintain a cordial understanding with him. Antonius had quitted Alexandria, bent upon another Impending Campaign in the East. Octavia, sent with betwJenthe spccious compHments by her brother, had triumvirs. gone forward to meet him, bringing with her some picked battalions, well armed and clothed, with other valuable equipments for his army. She hoped even now to win him away from his disgrace- Bc* 35. ful amour with the foreigner. Cleopatra was on the watch to baffle her endeavours. The queen soon succeeded in luring her lover back to Egypt ; Octavia returned with dignity to Rome, at last abandoning her reckless lord to the fate which he merited. Antonius grew more and more insensible to the opinions of his country- men. In the year following (B.C. 34) he made some inroads into Armenia, picked a quarrel with the king, Artavasdes, and carried him, loaded with golden chains, to Alexan- dria. For these successes he awarded him- self a triumph, which he celebrated, to the disgust of all Roman citizens, in the streets of his bar- baric capital. The first months of the year 33 were passed at Alexan- dria amidst licentious orgies, the rumour of which caused Antonius much resentment at Rome, where they were no doubt depicted in the darkest colours. The aim of Cleopatra, it was urged, was to wean the Roman imperator from his national ideas; to make him a foreigner and an Egyptian like her- self; to render it impossible for him to show himself again in Rome. This she might, perhaps, easily effect ; but it was more difficult for her to keep the idle volup- tuary constantly occupied and constantly amused. Her personal qualities were of the most varied kind, and such as we might suppose would have been lost upon a coarse debauchee like Antonius. She was an admirable u.c. 720. B.C. 34. amuses himself at Alexandria U.c. 721. fB.c, 33. B.C. 32. Preparations for Civil War, 213 singer and musician; she was skilled in many languages and possessed of high intellectual gifts, in addition to the lighter artifices of her sex. She pampered her lover^s appetites and stimulated his flagging interest with in- genious surprises and playful ridicule, sending divers, as we read, to fasten a salted fish to the bait of his angling rod, and dissolving in a cup of vinegar a pearl of inesti- mable value. Painters and sculptors were charged to group the illustrious pair together, and the coins of the realm represented the effigies of the two conjointly. The Roman legionary bore the name of Cleopatra on his shield, like a Macedonian body-guard. Masques were represented at court, in which the versatile Plancus sank into the character of a stage buffoon, and enacted the part of the sea-god Glaucus, while the princely lovers arrayed themselves as the native divinities I sis and Osiris. Meanwhile the senate had decreed Octavius a legi- timate triumph for his successes over the prepara- Liburni and lapydes. He had sustained an tionsfora honourable wound, and had recovered his u.c!^7^2i." reputation for personal courage, on which some ^'^' 33- slur had been cast by his unseasonable sicknesses. But the youthful hero was not impatient for the celebration of his victory, and deferred the solemnity, while he kept the city in intense expectation of a national crisis by upbraiding Antonius with his foreign connexion, and pointing to him as an enemy to the commonwealth. An- tonius, on his part, had charges also to make against his colleague. These were personal indeed rather than patrio- tic. He complained that his just share of the spoils of Lepidus had been withheld from him ; but such a com- plaint met with no response from the senate and people, and Octavius could well afford to disregard it. The East- ern chief began now to prepare in earnest for a final struggle. He had been collecting troops for another 21^^ The Roman Triumvirates. CH. XII. attack upon the Parthians. Towards the end of 33 B.C. he directed his forces westward, appointing Ephesus for the rendezvous of the contingents from many provinces and nations which he summoned to his standards. Greeks, Asiatics, and Africans found themselves arrayed around him. Cleopatra appeared herself at the head of the great Egyptian navy. Her galleys were renowned for their size and splendid equipment, and combined with the re- sources of the eastern Mediterranean to form the largest armament that had ever been launched on its waters, at least since the time of Xerxes. The consuls for the year 32 were Domitius Aheno- barbus and Sosius, both of them adherents of Antonius, who had received their office according to the agreement then still existing between him and his colleague. But this advantage was balanced by the defection of some of his chief supporters. Plancus, who had consented to degrade himself for the amusement of his patron's court, The triiim- ^^^^ reappeared in the senate and denounced virate ex- j^jg treachery and frivolity. This man betraved pires and is ' not re- to Octavius the testament of the renegade im- u*^c%2. perator, which he had been charged to deposit B.C. 32. vvith the vestal virgins, and in which, it seems, Antonius had acknowledged the validity of Caesar's odious union with the foreigner, had declared her child Ca^sario to be the dictator's legitimate son, had confirmed his own donations of crowns and provinces to his bastards, and, finally, had directed that his own body should be en- tombed by the side of Cleopatra's in the mausoleum of the Ptolemies. None could now doubt the rumours which prevailed, that he had pledged the queen in his cups to remove the government of the world to Alexan- dria, and prostrate the gods of the Capitol before the monstrous deities of the Nile. Octavius was at once greeted as the true champion of the nation, the main- B.c. 31. Position of Antonius, 2IS tainer of its principles and its faith. The consuls hurried away from the city, in which they found themselves ill at ease. Octavius, still moderate, still politic, refrained from declaring the impious chief a public enemy. He was content with proclaiming war against Egypt. The second term of the triumvirate had expired, and he did not renew it. He directed the senate to annul the appointment of Antonius to the next consulship, and assumed it himself with Messala for the year 31. Even the handful of nobles who repaired at this crisis to the side of Antonius, now urged him to dismiss Cleopatra, and reduce the impending struggle to a per- sonal contest with his rival. He replied by formally divorcing his legitimate consort, and thus breaking the last legal tie that bound him to his country. He had now assembled 100,000 foot and 12,000 horse. The kings of Mauretania, of Commagene, Paphlagonia, and Cilicia followed his banners. His fleet counted 500 large war-galleys, some of them with eight ^ Forces or even ten banks of oars. The forces of assembled Octavius were somewhat inferior by land ; orEptrSs^^' his vessels were much fewer in number, but u.c. 723. I' f* O T of a lighter and more manageable class. Antonius adopted Patrae, in the Peloponnesus, for his wifiter quarters, while he disposed of his vast armies, for their better support, along the coast of Epirus. But his navy suffered from sickness, and Agrippa contrived to throw the Caesarian forces across the Adriatic. From that moment defection commenced. Domitius was the first to abscond ; many princes of Asia followed his example. Antonius fancied himself surrounded by trai- tors ; he distrusted even Cleopatra, and required her to taste, in his company, all the viands that were set before him. Some partial engagements first took place at sea, in 2l6 The Roman T7'iuvivirates, CH. XII. which Agrippa's skill gained the advantage. Antonius Battle of ^^s quickly discouraged. He would have Actium withdrawn his land forces further into the B^- 31 interior ; but Cleopatra, fearing for her own pt. 2). retreat, dissuaded him from this project. A strange story is related that he sent Octavius a challenge to single combat, which was scornfully rejected. There- upon he made preparations for flight, and determined to lead a general attack on the Caesarian fleet, with no hope of victory, but merely to gain an opportunity of escape. For several days the agitation of the sea would not allow either armament to move. At last, on September 2, the wind fell, the waters became smoother, and with the rise of a gentle breeze the Antonian galleys made for the open sea. Their huge hulks were ill-adapted for manoeuvring, but they hurled massive stones from their wooden towers, and thrust forth ponderous irons to grapple the unwary assailant. The light triremes of Octavius were, on the other hand, both dexterous and agile. Their well-trained rowers bore up or backed with rapidity, and swept away the banks of the enemy's oars under cover of a shower of arrows. The combat was animated but inde- cisive ; but while the Antonian barges rolled heavily on the water, incapable of attacking their puny assailants, suddenly Cleopatra's galley, moored in the rear, hoisted sail, and threaded the maze of combatants, followed by the Egyptian squadron of sixty vessels. Antonius was not unprepared for the signal. He leapt into a boat and hastened after her. The rage and shame of his adherents filled them with despair. Many tore down their turrets and threw them into the sea, to lighten their decks for flight ; yet many continued to fight recklessly or blindly. Too lofty to be scaled, too powerful to be run down, their huge vessels were at last destroyed by fire. Three hundred of them had been captured ; few probably % A, S B. c. 30. Six Months' Respite at A lexandria, 2 1 7 escaped. The land forces refused lor a time to believe in their leader's ignominy, and might, perhaps, have still maintained their position ; but when their commander, Canidius, abandoned the camp for the Caesarian quarters, they offered no further resistance. So complete a victory as that of Actium has seldom been so easily gained. The accounts we have received of the conduct of the miserable Antonius come, Octavius no doubt, from the side of the victors; but it is f^ures the ^^_^ ^ , , fruits of his impossible to suppose that he lost so great a victory. fleet and army so utterly except by his own misconduct. Octavius might now feel himself secure, and proceed to establish his triumphant position with full deliberation. He sent Maecenas and Agrippa to Italy, the one to govern the city, the other to control the legions in his absence ; while he advanced in person into Greece, and thence into Asia, receiving on all sides the greetings of the people and making arrangements for their future govern- ment. He returned to Italy in the course of u.c. 724, the ensuing winter. Knights and senators, ^•^- 3o- together with multitudes of citizens, came as far as Brun- disium to meetliim. He listened graciously to the com- plaints of his veterans, sold his own effects and those of his nearest friends to satisfy them, planted new colonies in the lands of conquered cities, and finally promised an ample donative from the anticipated spoil of Egypt. With the beginning of spring, B.C. 30, he was again in a condition to follow in the track of the fugitives. To them six months' respite had been granted. We can hardly suppose that the court of Alexandria, even though swayed by the vigorous arms of a great t. ■ . T3 • , , ° Despair of Roman imperator, could present any effective Antonius resistance to the whole power of Rome, if pafra^i^t"*" once brought to bear against it. Yet Egypt Alexandria, abounded in wealth ; she was the emporium of the im- 2lS The Roman Triumvirates CH. XI r. mense trade which converged thither from both the Medi- terranean and the Indian Ocean ; she was one of the principal granaries of Rome and Italy ; though her native population was feeble and unwarlike she could purchase the swords of the mercenary soldiers who swarmed on every side ; her rulers were skilled in statecraft, and could intrigue at least with all the discontented rulers and peoples, to whom their enforced submission to the great republic was ever odious. We cannot but think that chiefs of real spirit and resolution might have defended them- selves under such circumstances against any power that could be arrayed against them. But it was not so. Anto- nius and Cleopatra traversed the sea in the same vessel. The Roman landed at Paraitonium to secure the small garrison of the place ; the Egyptian entered the port of Alexandria with laurels displayed on her deck for fear of the tumult which the sudden news of her disaster might awaken. There was neither love nor obedience awaiting her in her own capital. Her power rested on no popular foundation, and of this, she, as the descendant of a long line of foreign potentates, was no doubt well aware. Antonius himself was repulsed by a handful of Roman soldiers. The only relief for the despair which he began to enter- tain might be derived from the devotion, fruitless though it was, of a small band of gladiators who made their way through Asia and Syria to join him, and only yielded to Herod, king of Judaea, on the false assurance of their patron's death. Then it was that Cleopatra proposed to flee into Arabia ; but her vessels were destroyed by the wild inhabitants of the Red Sea coast. Again the wretched pair contemplated an attempt to escape into Spain; any quarter of the world seemed to them, in their cowardly distress, securer than their own dominion. When this scheme, too' was relinquished, Antonius shut himself up in a solitary tower. Cleopatra made show at least of greater resolution, B.C. 30. Death of Antonius, 219 and presented herself to the people in military costume, as if to animate them to resistance. But in private she abandoned herself, together with her lover, who had crept back to her embraces, to her accustomed orgies, while she made experiments with various kinds of poison, and ascertained, it was said, that the most painless of deaths is that which follows on the bite of the asp. The two helpless associates were not even true to one another. Each began to negotiate separately with the victor. To Antonius no answer was vouch- . Antonius safed ; better hopes were held out to Cleo- kills him- patra if she would turn against her paramour. Octavius, ever cautious, even when the game was in his hands, and anxious to secure her person to embeUish his future triumphs, continued to amuse and deceive her. He allowed his agents to remind her of his youth and of her own well-tried fascinations. When Antonius gained a trifling but useless advantage over the first battalion which the enemy threw on his shore, she deemed the time come to separate her interests from his, and trea- cherously induced his ships to abandon him. At the same moment, and perhaps through the same treachery, the last of his cohorts deserted him. The queen had shut herself up in a tower constructed for her mausoleum. Fearing the violence of the man she had ruined, she caused him to be assured that she had killed herself. With the infatuated renegade all was now over, and he determined himself to die. With the aid of his freedman, Eros, he gave himself a mortal wound; but while yet living he learnt that she, too, still survived, and causing himself thereupon to be brought to the foot of her tower, he was drawn up to her by her women, and there expired in her arms. Octavius at the same moment entered Alexandria. He charged an officer to secure the queen alive. Cleo- 220 The Roman Triiimvirates, CH. XII. patra refused him admittance ; when he scaled her chamber she pretended to stab herself ; he seized her arm Death of ^^^ assured her of his master's kindness. Cleopatra. At length she suffered herself to be removed to the palace, and there awaited an interview with the conqueror, prepared to exert all her charms upon him, with the bust of Caesar presented to his view. But the attempted seduction proved fruitless, as might have been expected. Octavius kept, indeed, his eyes on the ground, but he never lost his coolness and self-{)ossession. While she was flattering and caressing him, he coldly demanded a list of her treasures, which he required to be surrendered ; but for herself ho bade her be of good courage, and trust to his magnanimity. Cleopatra was soon made to understand that though, her life should be spared, she would be removed to Rome and exhibited in the conqueror's triumph. She resolved to die. Retiring to the mausoleum where lay the body of Antonius, she crowned his bier with flowers, and was found the next morning dead on her couch, her two women weeping beside her. Ms this well.'*' exclaimed the dismayed emissary of Octavius. * It is well,' replied Charmion, * and worthy of the daughter of kings.' The manner of her death was never certainly known. At the triumph, thus deprived of the ornament of her living presence, her image was carried on a bier, the arms encircled by two serpents, which served to confirm the rumour that she had perished by the bite of an asp, brought to her, as was reported, in a basket of figs. The child of the foreign woman by Julius Caesar was cruelly put to death, to appease the exaggerated or pretended sentiments of Roman nationality ; while the offspring of Antonius and the matron Fulvia was suffered to survive and retain his birthright as a citizen. The dynasty of the Ptolemies ceased to reign. The Macedonian conquest was replaced B.C. 30. Octavius founds the Empire. 221 by the Roman, and Egypt was finally reduced to the condition of a province. Octavius was master of the commonwealth, and became the founder of an empire. Between these two results there is a great diff"erence to be noted. Marius and Pompeius had both been vir- tually masters of the commonwealth before Concluding Octavius ; Sulla and Caesar had been so actu- remarks, ally, and had been confirmed as such by legal appointment. The first Triumvirate had dominated over it ; the second had extorted from it supreme authority, and had de- manded a renewal of its powers as long as its members could keep on terms of alliance one with another. The commonwealth had fallen under a succession of masters, and if from time to time it recovered a momentary inde- pendence, it was only by a fitful struggle, which showed its own intrinsic weakness and inability to rule itself. Rome might have fallen again and again into the hands of other masters, each wresting the sovereignty from his predecessor by force, and each yielding it in turn to a stronger successor. The body politic might have been torn in pieces, and either have been split into a number of states or perished in anarchy altogether. The barba- rians of the Rhine and the Danube might have arrived three centuries before their time. But it was not to be so. Octavius founded an empire. Every age may pro- duce many men who can destroy an empire, but rarely is the man born who can found one. It was the singular fortune of Rome— rather let us say, it was the special Providence which presides over all human history — that presented mankind, at this most critical epoch of their career, with the individual man who could actually per- form the work required for the maintenance of the ancient civilization. In the overthrow of the so-called Roman liberty there is doubtless something to regret, but surely not much ; for Roman liberty was little else than general 22'> mt Si^ *^ T/ie Roman Ti'iuniviratcs. CH. XII. servitude. In the violence and selfishness by which this overthrow was effected there is much which the morahst may be called upon to denounce, though, in view of the vastness of the issue involved, the historian will hardly pause to weigh nicely in the balance the crimes of one or other of the actors in the shifting scenes before him. The defects and sins of the empire which followed may beestimated by those who undertake specially to describe it ; but the moral to be drawn from the epoch before us is simply this, that Rome had reached the moment when she could no longer retain her political liberty, and that the struggles of her Triumvirates could only end either in anarchy or in monarchy. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE UX. 676.1 rn^,^i, fM. ^MILIUS Lepidus. B.C. 78. J ^^^^^''^ IQ. LUTATIUS CaTULUS. Death of Sulla. P. Servilius (consul 675) attacks the Cilician pirates. Progress of the war with Sertorius. The consul Lepidus conspires against the ruling party in the state. u.c. 677. ) ^ / (D. Junius Brutus. B.C. 77 S ^^^'^^MM.^MiLius Lepidus. Overthrow of M. Lepidus (consul 676). Pompeius sent against Sertorius. U.C. 678.) ronsuls i"^^- OCTAVIUS. B.C. 76. j ^^'^■^"'•^ (C. SCRIBONIUSCURIO. Continuation of war with Sertorius. Sicinius fails in attempting to restore the Tribunician power. U.C. 670.) ^ 7 f L. OCTAVIUS. B.C. 75. } ^''''''^' \ C. AURELIUS COTTA. Progress of the war with Sertorius. Servilius subdues the isaurians. Cicero quaestor in Sicily. 224 Chronological Table. u.c. 680. B. C. 74 ':} ^""^'^ {m. LrCINIUS LUCULLUS. AURELIUS COTTA. War with Sertorius. He refuses an alliance with Mithridates. Further attempt to rescind the Cornelian laws of Sulla. U.C. 681.) ^ , CM. Terentius Varro. Cassius Varus. War with Sertorius. Mithridates defeated at Cyzicus by T.u- cullus. Insurrection of the gladiators under Spartacus. U.C. B.C. 682. 72. } Consuls []- Ge/^l^^s Poplicola. j (Cn. Cornelius Lentui ENTULUS. Sertorius assassinated, and the war brought to an end. cuUus besieges Amisus. The consuls defeated by Spartacus. Lu- u.c. 683.) ^^^^^^^ fP. Cornelius Lentulus. B.C. 71. j (Cn. AuFiDius Orestes. Spartacus overthrown by Crassus. Progress of the Mithridatic war. Pompeius and Metellus iriumph over Spain. U.C. 684. B.C. 70. Consuls (G^- Po^'PEius Magnus. (M. LiciNius Crassus Dives. Censors \ ^' ^^llius Poplicola. (Cn. Cornelius Lentulus. Lucullus occupied with the internal administration of Asia Minor. The consuls restore the Tribunician power (lex Pompeia tribunicia). The Judicia are restored to the knights (lex Aurelia judiciaria). The process against Verres. Birth of the poet Virgil. B.C.' ^6|: } ^^"^"^-^ TQ. Horte < Q. OxiLi ( (Cretici HORTENSIUS. •lus Metellus (Creticus). Lucullus makes war on Tigranes, king of Armenia. Catulus dedicates the temple of Jupiter. Capitolinus restored after the con- flagration. U.C. 671. Cicero sedile. Chronological Table. 225 U.C. 686 B.C. 68, 1 Consuls rL.C^.ciLius Metellus. ) (Q. Marcius Rex. Progress of the war in the East. Q. Metellus, consul (685) attacks the Cretans. U.C. 687. > 67./ B.C. Consuls { C. Calpurnius Piso. M.'AciLius Glabrio. Mutiny in the army of Lucullus. Successes of Mithridates. Pompeius appointed to command against the Cilician pirates (lex Gabinia). Metellus finishes the war in Crete and obtains the sur- name of Creticus. Caesar quaestor in Spain. U.C. 688 B.C. 66 I Cc7«.«/.r (t^-/?^^"^^^^'sLepidus j ( L. \ olcatius 1 ullu: Pompeius appointed to the command against Mitliddates (lex Man ilia). Cicero praetor. Consuls { consuls V^- AURELIUS CoTTA. U.C. 689. 1 (L. Manlius Torquatus. B.C. 65. j ^^^^^^^ SQ- Lutatius Catulus. (M. LiciNius Crassus Dives. Campaign of Pompeius against the Albani and Iberi. Abortive schemes of Catilina. Caesar aedile. Birth of the poet Horace. Br* ^f: 1 Consuls 1^. TULIUS C^SAR. B-c. 64. ) (c. Marcius I-igulus. Pompeius annexes Syria as a province. Cicero a candidate for the consulship, together with Catilina. U.C, B.C. ^f-] Consuls (M.TuLLius Cicero. 63. j ( C. Antonius. Death of Mithridates. Pompeius subdues Palestine and Phoe- nicia. The conspiracy of Catilina defeated by Cicero, and his associates put to death. Birth of C. Octavius, afterwards the Emperor Augustus. A. H. Q 226 V.C. B.C. Chronological Table, ^^-\ Consuls (P- Junius SiLANus. ^^•i (L- LiCINlUS MURENA, Defeat and death of Catilina. Caesar prsetor and pontifex maximus. Cato tribune. i^uuicx \3.C. 693.) Consuls 1^- Pupius Piso. ^•^- °^-i ( M. Valerius Messala. Pompeius returns to Rome and triumphs. Process and acquittal of Clodms. ^ B C' ^' \ Consuls (L. AFRANIUS. ^•^' ^y t Q- C^ciLius Metellus Celer. Caesar propraetor in Further Spain. The senate refuses to Sal. n^? K ^"'•^'l"'- '^^'"""" '"^"^^^^ °f th- tribune Flavius. Disturbances m the city. Pompeius. Caesar, and Crassus form an alhance: the First Triumvirate. B c' ^o 1 Consuls (£ JULIUS C^^SAR. ^•^' 59- j (M. CalpurniusBibulus. The leges Juliae: i. for relief of the publicani in Asia ; 2. for division of lands in Campania. Acts of Pompeius confirmed through Caesar s influence. The Gaulish and Illyricum assigned provinces to Caesar. Birth of the historian Livy. B c" ^8" } Consuls [\- CaLPURNIUS PiSO. ^•^- 5»-J (A. Gabinius. Caesar proconsul in Gaul. First year of the Gallic war Defeat of the Helvetii and Suevi. Tribunate of Clodius. Banishl ment of Cicero. Cato sent to Cyprus. t.c B ^c' ^Vn \ Consuls [^ Cornelius Lentulus Spinther. '^' 57- ) (Q. C^ciLius Metellus Nepos. Second year of the Gallic war. C^sar subdues the Belgian ^bes. Victory over the Nervii. Cicero recalled from banish- Chronological Table, 227 --^«;}cw.(£ C. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus. B.C. 56. J ^'"*-'»'" I L. Marcius Philippus. Third year of the Gallic war. Caesar subdues the Veneti. Subjugation of the west and south of Gaul. The triumvirs meet at the end of the year at Lucca. Cato returns from Cyprus. u.c. B.C. 699 55 } Consuls JCn. Pompeius Magnus n. ( M. Licinius Crassus IL f M. Valerius Messala. ( P. Servilius Isauricus. Censors Fourth year of the Gallic war. Caesar crosses the Rhine and invades Britain. Gabinius restores Ptolemasus Auletes to the throne of Egypt. Pompeius completes and dedicates his theatre at Rome. U.C. 700 B.C ■oo- \ Consuls \ ^- I^OMiTius Ahenobarbus. 54- j (App. Claudius Pulcher. Fifth year of the Gallic war. Caesar's second invasion of Bri- tain. Revolt of the Belgian tribes ; destruction of Sabinus and Cotta with their armies. Crassus proconsul in Syria. Process of Gabinius. Death of Juha. Cato praetor. u.c. 701 B.C. 53 ■ > Consuls \ Cn. Domitius Calvinus. M. Valerius Messala. Sixth year of the Gallic war. Campaign in Belgica and de- struction of the Eburones. Expedition of Crassus against the Parthians. Battle of Carrhae. His defeat and death. U.C. 702. ) ^ , B.C. 52. j Consuls Cn. Pompeius Magnus IIL (without a colleague), Q. C^xiL Metellus Pius Scipio ^ (in the last half of the year). Seventh year of the Gallic war. Revolt of the Gauls under Vercingetorix. Battle of Alesia. Clodius assassinated. Process of Milo. Death of the poet Lucretius. U.C. 703. ■) Consuls /^^^v- SULPICIUS RUFUS. B-C. 51. J (M. Claudius Marcellus. Eighth year of the Gallic war. Final pacification of Gaul. Cicero proconsul in Cilicia. Qa 228 Chronological Table. u.c. B.C. 704 50 ) Consuls (J:- -^MILIUS PAULirS. '\, ( <- Claudius Marcellus, '• I Censors [^^^A ^^^AUDius Pulcher. J ( L. Calpurnius Piso. Coesar regulates the province of Gaul The senate requires him to surrender his command. Sickness and recovery of Pompeius. 1 nbunate of Curio ; imminence of civil war. R r' ^^^' } Consuls \ ?• Claudius Marcellus. B.u 49- J ( L. Cornelius Lentulus Crus Dictator C. Julius C^sar. Outbreak of the civil war. Ccesar crosses the Rubicon Pom- IXMus evacuates Italy. Caesar reduces the legions in Spain and takes Massiha. He is created dictator. Defeat and death of Curio m Africa. U B '5^- 7°^- j Consuls |C. Julius C^.sar II. •^' 40- J ( P. servilius Isauricus. Caesars campaign in Epirus. Rattle of Pharsalia. Flight of 1 ompeius and his assassination in Egypt. Caesar lands at Alex- andria, and supports Cleopatra against Ptolemceus. B c' ^!^' \ Consuls (g- ,^^^^us Calenus. ^•C- 47- 3 ( P. Vatinius. Dictator C. Julius C.^sar II. Caesar's vvarfore at Alexandria. Death of Ptolemr^us Re- ''^'T'"^ y\ Cleopatra. Caesar makes war upon Pharnaces. Battle of Zela. Caesar returns to Rome, and thence transports his forces into Africa. u.c. B.C. 7°?- } Consuls (S ^"^^^"^^ ^^'SA^ "I- 40-3 ( M. .-Emilius Lepidus. Dictator C. Julius Caesar III. The war in Africa. Battle of Thapsus. Death of Cato at cis.^-. , '^'^' ■^''''"'' '^' y^""^"'' ^"- Pompeius in Spain. Snd ^^^^^'■''''' ^' ^°"^^ ^'^^S:es Juliae). Correction of the Chronological Table. 22^ Xi.Q.. jog B.C. 45 V Consuls < < C. Julius C^sar IV. Q. Fabius Maximus. C. Caninius Rebilus, Dictator C. JULIUS Ca:sar IV. Defeat and death of Cn. Pompeius. Cassar triumphs. Com- plete establishment of his power. First year of the Julian Calendar. u.c. 710. B.C. 44. "J rc. Julius ■ > Consuls < M. An TO? •J (p. COKNE Consuls Dictator C. Julius C^sar V. NIUS. elius Dolabella, suffect. C. Julius Cyi-:sAR V. Caesar assassinated. Intrigues of Antonius. Disturbances at Cajsar's funeral. Flight of the Liberators. Octavius assumes Caesar's inheritance. Preparations for war. U.C. 7 B.C. 43 43-3 Consuls /' /C. ViBIUS Pansa. I A. HiRTIUS. C. Julius C^sar Octavianus (Octavius). Q. Pedius. "i C. Carrinas. > suffect. P. Ventidius.J Cicero's activity at Rome. Battles before Mutina and deaths of Hirtius and Pansa. Octavius unites with M. Antonius and Lepidus. The Second Triumvirate. Proscription and death of Cicero. U.C. B.C. 712.\ 42.3 Consuls -| Tv^,' MUNATIUS PlANCUS. .^MILIUS LEPIDUS II. Octavius and Antonius encounter the Republicans in the East. Battle of Philippi. Death of Brutus and Cassius. U.C. B.C. 714 40 :} Consuls Cn. Domitius Calvinus II. C. ASINIUS POLLIO. C. Cornelius Balbus P. Canidius Ckassus } SUFFECT. Antonius quits Alexandria. Death of Fulvia and treaty of Brundisium. Marriage of Antonius with Octavia. The Triumvirs make war upon Sextus Pompeius. 230 Oironolo(^ical Table, U.C. 715) Consuls \ B.C. 39-1 ( L. Marcius Censorinus. C. Calvisius Sabinus. The treaty of Misenum. Octavius and Antonius at Rome. Octavius in Gaul. Antonius at Athens. Ventidius defeats the Parthians. \3.Q. 716. ) rnr-.^jj. f App. Claudius Pulcher. B.C. 38. j' ^'"^^"" \q. Norbanus Flaccus. The Sicilian war. prolonged. Antonius in the East. The Triumvirate U.C. 717. B.C. 37. ^ TM. ViPSA \ Consuls \ L. Can IN > (t. Statu M. ViPSANIUS Agrippa. lus Gallus. riLius Taurus, suffect. Continuation of the Sicilian war. Octavius and Antonius meet at Tarentum. Naval force of Octavius and construction of the Portus Julius. U.C 718, B.C. 36 V f L. Gei \ Consuls -( L. Mu -> (M. Co L. Gellius Poplicola. NATIUS PlANCUS, SUFFECT. COCCEIUS Nerva. End of the Sicilian war. Overthrow and flight of Sextus Pompeius. Fall of Lepidus, the triumvir. Disasters of Antonius in Parthia. U.C. 719. ) r 1 f L. CORNIFICIUS. B.C. 35. ) *^^^ (Sextus Pompeius (not the son of Pompeius Magnus). Octavius fights in the Alps and in lUyricum. Sextus Pompeius slain in Asia. Antonius resides with Cleopatra at Alexandria. He forbids Octavia to come to him. ^ fL. SCRIBONIUS LiBO. U.C. 720. \ Consuls < M. Antonius II. 34-) (l. SEMPRONIUSATRATINUS, SUFFECT. B.C Octavius subdues the Dalmatians. Antonius captures Artavasdes, king of Armenia, and celebrates a triumph in Alexandria. Chronological Table, 231 U.C. 721, B.C. 33, ) fC. > Consuls < P. C. Julius Cesar Octavianus II. AUTRONIUS PCETUS, SUFFECTUS. VOLCATIUS TULLUS. Third campaign of Octavius in Illyricum. Antonius at Alexan- dria. U.C. 722 B.C. 32 • ) ^ 7 f Cn. DOMITIUS Ahenobarbus. j C<^«-^«/^ |c. Sosius. Rupture between Octavius and Antonius. Preparation for war. Antonius at Samos. B.C. 3 ?.} U.C. 723. i c n / 1^- Julius C^sar Octavianus III. •^ " -- > ''^'^^^'" I M. Valerius MessalaCorvinus. Battle of Actium, Egypt. Flight of Antonius and Cleopatra to U.C 724. B.C. } Consuls f C. Julius C^sar Octavianus IV. { Mr 30.) (M. LiCINIUS Crassus. Octavius reaches Egypt in pursuit. Death of Antonius and Cleopatra. Egypt annexed to the Roman Empire. Undisputed ascendency of Octavius. INDEX. ACH A CHILLAS, 141 ■^*- Actium, battle of, 216 iEdui, the, 85 iEmilius, Paulus, consul with Mar- cellus, 108, 156 Afranins, L., 64, 132, 146 Agrarian law of Rulius, denounced by Cicero, 47 Agrippa, M., 207, 209 Ahenobarbus, Domitius, 214 Alauda, 104 Alexander the Great, effigy of, 156 Allobroges, the, 51, 76 Amatius, death of, 176 Annius, 13 Antonius, M., commands against pirates in Crete, 27 ; colleague of Cicero, 47 Antonius, C, brother of last, sent against Caiilina, 55 Antonius, Lucius, consul, 207 Antonius, M. (Triumvir), ruler of Italy, 132 ; crosses the Adriatic, 1^6 ; his weak policy, 143 ; offers diadem to Caesar, 164, 165 ; makes his escape during the murder of Caesar, 171 ; seizes on Casar's papers and effects, 172 ; as consul convenes the senate, 172 ; master of Rome, 173 ; makes advances to conspirators, 173 ; takes com- mand in the city, 175 ; seizes Macedonia, 177; Cicero declaims against him, 181 ; takes the field against Decimus Brutus, 186 ; defeated at Mutina, 188 ; unites with Lepidus and Plancus, 188, 189; Triumvirate with Lepidus and Octavius, 191 ; wins first battle of BRU Philippi, 202 ; his share in the dis- tribution of provinces, 205 : con- quered by Cleopatra, 206 ; marries Octavia, 208 ; his disastrous cam- paigns in the East, 211 ; amuses himself at Alexandria, 212 ; pre- pares for war, 213-215 ; defeated at Actium, 216 ; his despair at Alexandria, 217 ; kills himself, 219 Ariobarzarnes, 34, 142 Ariovistus, Suevi chief, 85 Aristocracy, Roman, relation of, with Sulla, 3 Armenian war, 21 Army, growth of a military order, 8 , influence of a standing army, 9 Arsinoe, sister of Ptolemaeus, 155 Artavasdes, 212 Artaxata, siege of, 22 Arverni, the, 85 Attains, 34 Atticus, the Epicurean, Z09 "D ATTLES, Actium, 216 ; Carrhae, ■*-^ 92 ; Munda, 157 ; Mutina, 187 ; Naulochus, 209 ; Pharsalia, 137 ; Philippi, 201-203 ; Pistoria, 55 ; Thapsus, 147 ; Tigranocerta, 21 ; Zela, 142 Belgic tribes, repulsed by Caesar, 85 Bibulus, colleague of Caesar, 71 ; his violent measures in the consulship, 72 ; supports Pompeius for the consulship, 96 ; commander of Pompeian fleet, 136 Britain, invaded by Caesar, 86 Brundisium, treaty of, 208 Brutus, Decimus, conspires against 234 Index, BRU cic Caesar, 165 ; collects gladiators, 171 ; seizes Cisalpine, 173 ; his flight and death, 190 Brutus, Marcus, 12 ; conspires against Caesar, i66 ; occupies Macedonia, 173 : deprived of Macedonia, 177^0111 s Cassius, 201 ; defeated at Philippi, 203 Z^iELIUS, Rufus M., favourite ^-^ of Caesar, 142 Caesar, C. Julius, 23 ; leader of the Marians, 31 ; marries daughter of Cinna, 35 ; rise of, 35 ; restores trophies of Marius, 38 ; accusation against, 38 ; his aedileship, 38 ; his political impeachments, 39 ; chief pontiff, 40 ; alleged accomplice of Catilina, 52 ; supports PompKjius, 57 ; borrows money of Crassus, 60 ; divorces his wife, 61 ; in his province, the Further Spain, 65 ; sues for the consulship, 66 ; Triumvirate with Crassus and Pompeius, 67 : his views, 68 ; be- comes consul, 71 ; his violent measures in the consulship, 7? ; his favour with the p>eople, 73 ; threatened by Clodius, 73 ; am- bitious pplicy of, 74, 75 ; is as- signed both Gauls, 76 ; his cam- paigns in Gaul, 84-86 ; mvades Kritain, 86 ; concerts with the Triumvirs at Lucca, 87 ; his posi- tion at this period, gi : threatened with general rising of Gauls, 93 ; finally conquers Gaul, 100 ; or- ganises Gaul, loi ; his legions in Gaul, 102, 103 ; his position as- sailed by the senatorial party, 105; his enemies urge his recall to Rome, 107 ; his demands, 112 ; decisive action of, 114; the tri- bunes flee to his camp, n6 ; ap- peals to arms, 117; rivalry with jPompeius, iig ; popularity of, 123; advances into Italy, 127 ; repairs to Rome, 129-131 ; defeats the Pompeian forces, 132 ; dictator, 133 ; his fiscal measures, 133 ; chief measures of his dictatorship, 134 ; abdicates his dictatorship, 134 ; crosses the Adriatic, 135 ; defeats Pompeius at Pharsalia, 138 ; es- tablishes himself in Alexandria, 140 ; created dictator for the second time, 143 : third time dictator, 144 ; his victory at Thapsus, 147; honours conferred upon him in Rome, 151 ; the title of Imperator prefixed, 152-154 ; celebrates four triumphs, 154, 155 ; deleats the Pompeians at Munda, 157 ; his legislative reforms, 159-161; founds colonies, i6i ; destined heir of, 163 ; projects the extension of the walls of Rome, 163 ; abortive at- tempts to give him the title of king, 164 ; conspiracy against, 165 ; assassination of, 167; reflex- ions on his character, 168-170 ; his funeral, 174, 175 Caesario, child of Cleopatra, i6r Calendar, condition of, in Caesar's time, 158 ; reform of, 159 Calpurnia, consort of Caesar, 167, 172 Calvinus, consul with Messala, 94 Camelus, 190 Canidius, 217 Carbo, 10 Carrhae, battle of, 92 Casca, conspires against Caesar, 165 Cassius, C. , 140; conspires against Caesar, 165 ; occupies Syria, 173 ; deprived of Syria, 177 ; in the East, 198 ; joms Brutus, 201 ; his death, 202 Catilina, L. Sergius, conspiracy of, 45 ; preparations of, 47 ; con- spiracy detected, 49 : driven out of Rome, 50 ; the conspirators be- trayed and arrested, 51 ; sentence against the conspirator^, 52, 53 ; defeat and death of, 54, 55 Cato, M., Porcius, position of, 43 ; his influence in the senate, 53 ; in controversy with Cicero, 56 ; as a leader of the nobles, 70 ; sent against the king of Cyprus, 79 ; opposes Caesar, 90 ; supports Pom- peius for the consulship, 96 ; com- mands the Pompeians in Africa, 145 ; kills himself, 149 ; his cha- racter, 149 Catulus, Q. Lutatius, leader of sena- torial party, 11 ; his accusation against Caesar, 38 Cetnegus, 54 Cicero, M. Tullus, orator, charges Index, 235 CIC Verres with crime, 23 ; supports Pompeius, 31 ; position of, 44 ; designs to defend Catilina, 45 ; becomes consul, 46 ; denounces Agrarian law of Rullus, 47 ; his political measures, 49 ; denounces Catilina, 50 ; in controversy with Cato, 56 ; intrigues against, 56, 57 ; takes his part '^^•ith the oli- garchy, 58 ; as a leader of the nobles, 70 ; precarious position of, 73 ; intrigues of Clodius against, 77 ; banishment of, 79 ; returns from exile, 81 ; aspirations of, 82 ; joins Pompeius, 87 ; defends Milo, 97 ; as proconsul of Cilicia, 107 ; demands an amnesty, 173 ; de- claims against Antonius, 181 ; First Philippic, 181 ; publishes Second Philippic, 185 : his politi- cal activity, 185 ; his death, 194 ; reflections on his death, 195 Cicero, Q. Tullius, brother of the orator, ^3 ; his death, 195 Cilician pirates, 26 Cimber, conspires against Caesar, 165 ; seizes Bithynia, 173 Cimbri, the, 9 Cisalpine, province, 76 Civil wars, causes of, 118 ; prepara- tion for, 213 Cleopatra, queen of Eg^^Jt, 141 ; wins Csesar, 141 ; her reception in Rome, 155 ; her conquest of An- tonius, 206 ; at the battle of Ac- tium, 216; endeavours to over- come Octavius, 220; her death, 220 Clodius, C, praetor, 16 Clodius, Pulcher, brother-in-law of LucuUus, 20 ; profanes the mys- teries of the Bona Dea, 60 ; threatens Caesar, 73 ; intrigues of, against Cicero, 77 ; obtains the banishment of Cicero, 79 ; as tri- bune, 80 ; put down by the Tri- umvirs, 81 ; his death, 95 Colonies founded by Caesar, 161 Conquests of Rome, effects of, 5 Corfinium, defended against Caesar, 127 Cornelian laws, 18, 40 Cornelius, tribune, 37 Cotta, consul, 18 Crassus, P. Licinius, sent against Spartacus, 17; consul with Pom- peius, 24 ; policy of, 42 ; unites GAL with Caesar, 59 ; Triumvirate of, with Caesar and Pompeius, 67 ; views of, 68 ; consul with Pompeius, 89 ; position of, at this period, 91 ; attacks the Parthians, 91 ; pro- consul in Syria, 92 ; his death, 92 Crassus, P. Licinius, son of above, 92 Cretan brigands, 30 Curio, M. Scribonius, 54 ; favourite of Caesar, 108 : baffles the motion for Caesar's return, no; urges Caesar to decisive action, in ; slain in Africa, 131 Cyzicus, siege of, 20 T^EIOTARUS, 34, 142 ■*-^ Dolabella, P. Cornelius, son- in-law of Cicero, 143, 144 ; as- signed Syria, 177 Domitius, Ahenobarbus, defends Corfinium against Caesar, 127 ; de- feated by Caesar, 133 ; killed at the battle of Pharsalia, 139 Druids, the, 99 pBURONES, the, 93 ■*— ' Egypt, Caesar's operations in, 141 Eros, 219 ■pTAVONIUS, 73 ; opposes Caesar, 90 Flavius, 64 Fonteius, 102 Forum, Julian, the, 156 Franchise, results of the extension of, 6 ; measures for its extension, 160 Fulvia, betrays Catilina, 49 ; her vengeance on Cicero, 195 ; at war with Octavius, 207 (-ABINIANlaw, 28 ^-^ Gabinius, tribune, 28 ; his death, 54 Gabinius, consul, 77, 80; as pro- consul of Syria, 89 Gallic war, sixth year of, 93 ; seventh year of, 98 236 Index. GAU Gaul, conquest of, by Caesar, 83; revolt in, 93 ; final conquest of, 100 : organised by Caesar, loi Gracchi, Roman constitution under the, 2 Gregory XIII., pope, 159 HELVETII, the, 76 ; repulsed by Caesar, 85 Hirtius, consul, 185 ; takes the field against Antonius, 186 ; killed at Mutina, 187 Hortensius, 23 Ilypsaeus, demands the consulship, 94 TBERIANS, the, 13 ■•■ lUyricum, province of, 76 Imperator, the title of, 152-154 Italy, disturbances in, 142 ; rival forces in, 183 JUBA, Numidian chieftain, 132 ; king of Numidia, 146 ; his death, 148 Judicia. the, 7, 24, 25 Julia, daughter of Caesar, 72 ; her death, 91 Julian Calendar, the, 159 Julian Forum, the, 156 T ABERIUS, 156 •■-' Labienus, 99, 125, 146 Laws, codification of the, 162 Legion, tenth, mutiny of the, 144 Legionaries, Roman, character of the, 9 Legions of Caesar in Gaul, 103 Lentulus, M. Cornelius, 48 ; execu- tion of, 54 , Lentulus, P. Cornelius, as a leader of the nobles, 70 ; consul, 81 Lepidus, M. /Emilius, leader of senatorial party, 1 1 ; consulship of, II ; his death, 12 Lepidus, M. y^'milius, son of last, prefect of the city, 132 ; proclaims Caesar dictator, 133 : colleague of Caesar, 144 ; unites with Antonius, 189 : Triumvirate with Antonius and Octavius, 191 : fall of, 210 Longinus, C. Cassius, 92 MUT Lucan, his estimate of the causes of the civil war, 118 Lucca, baths of, 87 Lucceius, 71, 73, LucuUus, L. Licinius, commander in the Mithndatic war, 18 ; military successes of, iq ; defeats Tigranes, 21 ; opposes Pompeius, 64 ; as « leader of the nobles, 70 Lusitanians, the, 13 "IV/r^t^CENAS, Cilnius, 209 ■'■'■'■ Maenas, 209 Mallius, 49 Manilian bill, 31, 77 Manilius, 31, 37 Marcellus, M. Claudius, as a leader of'the nobles, 70 ; consul, 105 ; his consulship, 106, 108, 110 Marcius Rex, 30, 49 Marians, the, 12 Massilians, the, 102 Mauretanians, the, 147 Messala, consul with Calvinus, 94 ; consul with Octavius, 215 Metellus, L., tribune, 131 Metellus, Q. Caecilius, commander of the Sullan party, 13 ; sent against Sertorius, 14, 15 Metellus, Q. Caecilius (Creticus) acquires the surname of Creiicus, 27, 30; as proconsul, 49: sent against Catihna, 55 ; his triumph, 63 Metellus, Q. Caecilius (Celer), 40 Metellus, Q. Ca;cilius (Nspos), 56, 57 Metellus, Scipio, demands the con- sulship, 94 : his exorbitant claims, 101 ; commands the Pompeians in Africa, 45 ; slain at the battle of Thapsus, 148 Military constitution of Rome, 8 Milo, raises troop of gladiators. 81 ; slays Clodius, 94, 95 : trial of, 97 ; retires to Marsilia, 98 Mithridates, 14: defeat of, 19, 20; besieged by LucuUus, 21 ; over- throw and death of, 33 Mithridatic wars, the, 18 ; end of the, 33 Monarchy becomes popular, 120 Munda, battle of, 157 Murena, 42, 48, 56 Mutina, battle of, 187 Index, 237 NAU TVJ AULOCHVS, battle of, 209 •'■^ Nobles, leaders of the, 41, 70 Numa, the Calendar of, 158 /^CTAVIA, marries Antonius, 208, ^-^ 212 Octavius, C., son of Atia, Caesar's destined heir, 163 ; arrives in Italy, 178 ; assumes Caesar's in- heritance, 179 ; ingratiates himself with the soldiers, 182 ; prepares for war in Italy, 183; defeats An- tonius at Mutina, 188 ; becomes consul, 189 ; Triumvirate with Le- pidus and Antonius, 191 ; defeats Brutus at Philippi, 203 ; his share in the distribution of provinces, 205; concerts terms with Sextus Pom- peius, 209; marries Livia, 210; con- sul with Messala, 215 ; defeats Antonius at Actium, 216 ; secures the fruits of his victory, 217 ; his interview with Cleopatra, 220 ; the founder of an empire, 221 Optimates, the, 3 pANSA, consul with Hirtius, 185 : ■*■ takes the field against Anto- nius, 186 ; killed at Mutina, 187 Parthians, attacked by Crassus, 91 campaigns of Antonius against, 211 Pedius, colleague of Octavius, 190 ; his death, 193 Perpema, 15 Perseus, death of, too Perusia, war of, 207 Petreius, son of Pompeius, 146 ; his death, 148 Pharnaces, son of Mithridates, re- bellion of, 33 ; defeated by Caesar at Zela, 142 Pharsalia, battle of, 137 Philippi, first battle of, 201, 202 ; second battle of, 203 Phraates, 32 Piracy in the Mediterranean, 26 Pirates, Cilician, 26; overthrow of, 29 Piso, Calpurnius, consul, 77, 80, 180 Pistoria, battle of, 55 PUN Plancus, 184, 188, 189 ; betrays An- tonius, 214 Pollio, 184 Pompeia, Caesar's wife, 61 Pompeians, conquered by Caesar in Spain, 132 ; defeated at Pharsalia, 138 ; transfer their forces to Africa, 145 ; defeated at Munda, 157 Pompeius Strabo, Cn., 10 Pompeius Magnus, son of Pom- peius Strabo, 10 ; is sent against Sertorius, 14 ; defeats Spartacus, 17 ; popularity of, 23 ; consul with Cassius, 24 ; predominance of, 25 ; his successes against the Cilician pirates, 29 ; invested with supreme command in the East, 30, 34 ; re- tires from the East, 61 ; his triumph, 63 ; becomes unpopular with the senate and people, 64 ; Triumvirate with Caesar and Cras- sus, 67 ; views of, 68 ; marries Julia, 72 ; extraordinary commis- sion assigned to, 87 ; consul with Crassus, 89 ; his position at this period, 91 ; ascendency of, in the State, 94 ; appointed sole consul, 95 : as sole consul, 97 ; his feeble policy, 100, 106, 107 ; his confi- dence 109; his illness, 11 1 ; ri- valry with Caesar, 119; takes up arms, 125 ; leaves Rome, 127 ; escapes from Italy, 128 ; in the East, 129 ;• conquered in Spain, 132 ; defeat at Pharsalia, 138 ; flight and death of, 139 Pompeius, Cnaeus, son of Pompeius Magnus. 145 ; defeated at Munda, Pompeius Sextus, son of Pompeius Magnus, escapes to Spain, 157 ; m league with Antonius, 208 ; his death, 209 Pontius, death of, 100 Popilius, 195 Porcia, daughter of Cato, 167 Pothinus, 141 Proscriptions, the, ig^ Provincials, enfranchisement of, 6 ; Roman jealousy of, 9 Ptolemaeus, Auletes, king of Egypt, 88 Ptolemaeus, Lathyrus, king of Sicily, 79 Publicani, the, 30 Punic wars, result of, a 238 htdex. RAB "DABIRIUS, senator, impeached ■*-^ by Caesar, 40 Remi, the, 85 RepubHc, Roman, working of the constitution, i ; end of, 203 Rome, leaders of the nobles of, 70 ; disturbances in the city, 88 ; growth of anarchy in, 89 ; troubles at, 143; Casar projects the exten- sion of the walls, 163 ; indepen- dence of the armies in the East, xq8 ; the East opposed to the West, 199 Rubicon, the, 126 RuUus, 47 CALLUST, sentiments conveyed *^ in his letters to Caesar, 122 Samnites, the, 8 Scipios, Roman constitution under the, 2 Senate, purging of, by the censors, 25 ; strengthen their military re- sources, 108; vacillatiun of, 113; measures for increasing, 160 Senatorial party, chiefs of, 1 1 Sertorius, Q., career of, 13 ; his death and consequences, 15 Servile war of Spartacus, ib Servilius, obtains the title of Isauri- cus, 27 ; consul with Casar, 135 ; as consul, 142, 207 Sextius, 55 Silanus, 42, 48, 53, 56 Social wars, result of, 2 Sosigenes, astronomer, 159 Sosius, 214 Spartacus, Servile war of, 16 ; de- feated by Pompeius Magnus, 17 Statilius, 54 Suetonius, 154 Suevi, repulsed by Caesar, 85 ZEL Sulla, L. Cornelius, monarchical power of, 2 ; his relations with the Roman aristocracy, 3 ; abdication of, 3 ; his idea of his work, 4 ; re- sults of his career, 5 Sullan laws, 18 Sulpicius, Servius, 56 ; consul, 105 'T'ENTH Legion, meeting of the, , 144 Teutones, 9 Thapsus, battle of, 147 Tigranes HI., king of Armenia, 19 ; defeated by Lucullus, 21; his power in the East, 21 Tigranocerta, battle of, 21 Transalpine province, 76 Transpadanes, the, 105 Trebonius, conspires against Caesar, 165 ; seizes Asia, 173 Treviri, deftat of, 94 Triumvirate, first, 67 ; second, 191 ; renewal of the, 210; expires and is not renewed, 214 "yARRO, defeated by Caesar, 133 * Varus, Pompeian leader, 132 Vatinius, becomes praetor, 90 Veneti, routed by Ca;sar, 85 Ventidius, consul, 191, 207 Vercingetorix, revolt of, 99 ; his death, 154 Verres, praetor of Sicily, 22 ; charged with crime by Cicero, 23 Verrine Orations, the, 24 Vettius, 58 ; his death, 74 VELA, battle of, 142 LONDON : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARB AND PARLIAMENT STREET tL r iS OF /5 ^ ! "''* "V,,. HISTORY. Jmt published, infcp. %vo. with 4 Coloured Maps, price 2s. 6d. The Greeks and the Persians. By the Rev. G. W. COX, M.A. BEING THE FIBST VOLUME OP EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. A Series of Books narrating the History of Greece and Rome and of their Relations to other Countries at successive Epochs, intended for use in Schools. EDITED BY THE Rev. G. W. cox, M.A. and CHARLES SANKEY, M.A. CRITICAL OPINIONS. * An excellent book for schools.' Standard. ' This eventful epoch of ancient history is related with extraordinary clearness ; a firm grasp of the facts is maintained throughout, and the sequence of events admirably preserved ; lastly, the interest of the narrative nev-er fails.' Western Times. ' In a small compass Mr. Cox has given us an eloquent and stirring picture of a stirring time We hope the other volumes of the new series will be as bright and vigorous as this is ; and in that case we may predict for it no snxall measure of popular favour.' John Bull. •It need hardly be said that this is the very opposite of a cram-book. History is here methodised with a depth and acumen for which Mr. Cox's name is sufficient warrant Such a work as this of Mr. Cox's is indis- pensable to the youthful student of ancient history, and even to learners who may have made considerable progress in that study. The legends which adorn the epoch are told in a sympathetic yet critical manner, which is peculiarly charming. Maps of lands and battlefields enhance the value of the book.' Edinburgh Courant. London, LONGMANS & CO. Cox's Greeks and Persians. OPINIONS of the PRESS. * The want of a book which should give a sufficient and intelligible account of the earlier period of Greek history, and which, at the same time, should be short and simple enough for beginners, has long been felt among toAchers. We can safely say that this book very fairly supplies the want, more than once tlie writer attains, in his sketches of eventful passages of the history, to a high pitch of excellence, especially in his exposition of the chax-acter of Miltiades and of his relation to the Athenian people.' School Guardian. • Mr. Cox's object in this handbook is to shew, not how much of ancient history is mythical, but how much is really trustworthy, and a record of actual events. It is a delightful little work. Like the Author's larger his- tory of Greece, it has all the charm of a romance, while it exhibits great care in the sifting and stating of facts, and is illustrated by capital maps. Students ought to be grateful for works of this kind, which render the acquisition of historical knowledge far easier than it ever was before.' Scotsman. \ * This little volume is a masterpiece of scholarly workmanship. Within the brief compass of two hundred pages is narrated the history of the hundred and tifty years' struggle between the Greeks and the Persians, in a form at once more concise, more elegant, more comj)lete, and more philosophical than can be found elsewhere. A very complete index, chronological table, marginal titles, text references, maps and plans of battles, render this volume a model historical epitome. If the codification of law is imr)ortant, the codification of history is not less so. Mr. Cox's little volume is certainly a model for a standard code.' IlEiiEFOKD Jouiinal. * In the present volume Mr. Cox has treated the antagonism of the two nations, Hellene and Persian, as an epoch in history from its commence- ment, and shows to us in the compass of eight chapters the origin and growth of Greek civilization ; the settlement and government of the Greeks; the Persian Empire under Cyrus, Kumbyses, and Dareios ; the history of Athens in the time of Solon, Peisistratos^ and Kleisthenes ; the Ionic revolt ; the invasion of Datis and Artaphernes : the invasion and fiight of Xerxes ; and the battles of Plataia and Mykale, and the formation of the Athenian con- federacy. This condensed section, as it may be called, of a portion of Mr. Cox's large Greek history, forms a very useful and interesting volume, and is well illustrated with maps of the Greek and Phenician colonies, the Greek settlements in Asia Minor, Thermopylje, the battle of Salamis, and the battle of Plataia, and has a useful index and chronological table.' Examixkb. London, LONGMANS & CO. /• m