UNIVERSAL BIOGRAPHICAL LIBRARY

LIFE AND WARS OF JULIUS CAESAR.

HISTORY OF JULIUS CAESAR.

CHAPTER I.

(654-684.)

FIRST YEARS OF CAESAR.

About the time when Marius, by his victories over the Cimbri and Teutones, saved Italy from a formidable invasion, was born at Rome the man who would one day, by again subduing the Gauls and Germans, retard for several centuries the irruption of the barbarians, give the knowledge of their rights to oppressed peoples, assure continuance to Roman civilization, and bequeath his name to the future chiefs of nations as a conse­crated element of power.

Caius Julius Caesar was born at Rome on the 4th of the ides of Quintilis (July 12, 654), and the month Quintilis, called Julius [July] in honor of him, has borne for 1,900 years the name of the great man. He was the son of C. Julius Caesar, praetor, who died suddenly at Pisa, about 670, and of Aurelia, descended from an illustrious plebeian family.

By ancestry and alliances, Caesar inherited that double prestige which is derived from ancient origin and recent renown.

On one side he claimed to be descended from Anchises and Venus; on the other, he was the nephew of the famous Marius, who had married his aunt Julia. When the widow of this great captain died, in 686, Caesar pronounced her funeral oration, and thus traced out his own genealogy: “My aunt Julia, on the maternal side, is of the issue of kings; on the paternal side she descends from the immortal gods: for her mother was a Marcia, and the family Marcius Rex are the descendants of Ancus Marcius. The Julia family, to which I belong, descends from Venus herself. Thus our house unites to the sacred character of kings, who are the most powerful among men, the venerated holiness of the gods, who hold kings themselves under their subjection.”

This proud glorification of his race attests the value which was set at Rome upon antiquity of origin; but Caesar, sprung  from that aristocracy which has produced so many illustrious men, and impatient to follow in their footsteps, showed, from early youth, that nobility obliges, instead of imitating those whose conduct would make one believe that nobility dispenses.

Aurelia, a woman of lofty character and severe morals, helped above all in the development of his great abilities, by a wise and enlightened education, and prepared him to make himself worthy of the part which destiny had reserved for him. This first education, given by a tender and virtuous mother, has ever as much influence over our future as the most precious natural qualities. Caesar reaped the fruits of it. He also received lessons from M. Antonius Gnipho, the Gaul, a philosopher and master of eloquence, of a rare mind, of vast learning, and well versed in Greek and Latin letters, which he had cultivated at Alexandria.

Greece was always the country of the arts and sciences, and the language of Demosthenes was familiar to every lettered Roman. Thus Greek and Latin might be called the two languages of Italy—as they were, at a later period, by the Emperor Claudius. Caesar spoke both with the same facility; and, when falling beneath the dagger of Brutus, he pronounced in Greek the last words that issued from his lips.

Though eager for pleasure he neglected nothing, says Suetonius, by which to acquire those talents which lead to the highest honors. Now, according to Roman habits, the first offices were attainable only by the union of the most diverse merits. The patrician youth, still worthy of their ancestors, were not idle: they sought religious appointments to give them power over consciences; administrative employments to influence material interests; discussions and public discourses to captivate minds by their eloquence; finally, military labors, to strike imaginations by the brilliancy of their glory. Emulous of distinction in all, Caesar did not confine himself to the study of letters: he early composed works, among which are cited “The Praises of Hercules,” a tragedy of “Edipus,” “A Collection of Choice Phrases,” a book on “Divination.” It seems that these works were written in a style so pure and correct, that they gained for him the reputation of an eminent writer, gravis auctor linguae Latinae. He was less happy in the art of poetry, if we may believe Tacitus. However, there remain to us some verses addressed to the memory of Terence, which are not wanting in elegance.

Education, then, had made Caesar a distinguished man before he was a great man. He united to goodness of heart a high intelligence, to an invincible courage an enthralling eloquence, a wonderful memory, an unbounded generosity; finally he possessed one very rare quality—calmness under anger.  “His affability,” says Plutarch, “his politeness, his gracious address—qualities which he had to a degree beyond his age—gained him the affection of the people.’’

Two anecdotes of later date must come in here. Plutarch relates that Caesar, during his campaigns, one day, surprised by a violent storm, took shelter in a hut where was only one room, too small to contain many people. He hastened to offer it to Oppius, one of his officers, who was sick; and himself passed the night in the open air, saying to those who accompanied him, “We must leave to the great the places of honor, but yield to the sick those that are necessary to them.” Another time, Valerius Leo, with whom he was dining at Milan, having set before him an ill-seasoned dish, the companions of Caesar remonstrated; but he reproached them sharply for their want of consideration1 for his host, saying “that they were free not to eat of a dish they did not like, but that to complain of it aloud was a want of good breeding.”

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

To his natural qualities, developed by a brilliant education, were added physical advantages. His tall stature, his rounded and well-proportioned limbs, stamped his person with grace that distinguished him from all others. He had black eyes, a piercing look, a pale complexion, a straight and high nose. His mouth, small and regular, but with rather thick lips, gave a kindly expression to the lower part of his face, whilst his breadth of brow betokened the development of the intellectual faculties; His face was full, at least in his youth; for in his busts, doubtless made towards the end of his life, his features are thinner, and bear traces of fatigue. He had a sonorous and penetrating voice, a noble gesture, and an air of dignity reigned over all his person. His constitution, at first delicate, became robust by a frugal regimen and the habit of exposing himself to the inclemency of the weather. Accustomed from his youth to all bodily exercises, he was a bold horseman, and bore privations and fatigues without difficulty. Habitually temperate, his health was impaired neither by excess of labor nor by excess of pleasure. However, on two occasions—the first at Corduba, the second at Thapsus—he was seized with nervous attacks, wrongly mistaken for epilepsy.

He paid special attention to his person, carefully shaved or plucked out his beard, and artistically brought his hair forward to the front of his head, which, in more advanced age, served to conceal his bald forehead. He was reproached with the affectation of scratching his head with one finger only, so that he should not disarrange his hair. His toilette was refined; his toga was generally ornamented with a laticlavia, fringed down to the hands, and fastened by a girdle carelessly tied about his loins—a costume which distinguished the elegant and effeminate youths of the period. But Sylla was not deceived by these appearances of frivolity, and repeated that they must take care of this young man with the loose girdle. He had a taste for pictures, statues, and jewels; and, in memory of his origin, always wore on, his finger a ring, on which was engraved the figure of an armed Venus.

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

CAESAR PERSECUTED BY SYLLA (672).

Such was Caesar at the age of eighteen, when Sylla seized the dictatorship. Already he attracted all eyes at Rome by his name, his intellect, his affable manners, which pleased men, and, perhaps, women still more. 

The influence of his uncle Marius caused him to be nominated priest of Jupiter (flamen dialis) at the age of fourteen. At sixteen, betrothed, doubtless against his will, to Cossutia, the daughter of a rich knight, he broke his engagement, after the death of his father, to draw still closer his alliance with the popular party by marrying, a year after, in 671, Cornelia, daughter of L. Cornelius Cinna, the ancient colleague of Marius, and the representative of his cause. From this marriage was born, the following year, Julia, who became, in after time, the wife of Pompey.

Sylla saw with displeasure this young man, who already occupied men’s thoughts, although, as yet, he had done nothing, linking himself more closely with those who were opposed to him. He wished to force him to divorce Cornelia, but he found him inflexible. When everyone yielded to his will, when, by his orders, Piso separated from Annia, the widow of Cinna, and Pompey ignominiously dismissed his wife, the daughter of Antistius, who died for his cause, to marry Emilia, the daughter-in-law of the dictator, Caesar maintained his independence at the price of his personal safety.

Become suspected, he was deprived of his priesthood, and of his wife’s dowry, and declared incapable of inheriting from his family. Obliged to conceal himself in the outskirts of Rome, to escape persecution, he changed his place of retreat every night, though ill with fever; but, arrested by a band of assassins in the pay of Sylla, he gained the chief, Cornelius Phagita, by giving him two talents (about 12,000 francs), and his life was preserved. Let us note here that, arrived at sovereign power, Caesar met this same Phagita, and treated him with indulgence, without reminding him of the past. Meanwhile, he still wandered about in the Sabine country. His courage, his constancy, his illustrious birth, his former quality of flamen, excited general interest. Soon important personages, such as Aurelius Cotta, his mother’s brother, and Mamercus Lepidus, a connection of his family, interceded in his favor. The vestals also, whose sole intervention put an end to all violence, did not spare their prayers. Vanquished by so many solicitations, Sylla yielded at last, exclaiming, “Well! be it so, you will it; but know that he, whose pardon you demand, will one day ruin the party of the great for which we have fought together, for, trust me, there are several Mariuses in this young man.”

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

CAESAR IN ASIA (673, 674).

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

Shortly afterwards he returned to Bithynia, to defend the cause of one of his clients. His frequent presence at the court of Nicomedes served as the pretext for an accusation of shameful condescension. But Caesar’s relations with the Bithynians may be explained quite naturally by his feelings of gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them; it was the reason which made him always defend their interests, and at a later period become their patron, as may be gathered from the fragment of a speech preserved by Aulus Gellius. The motives of his conduct were, nevertheless, so misconstrued, that insulting allusions are to be found in certain debates of the Senate, and even in the songs of the soldiers who followed his triumphal car. But these sarcasms, which told rather of hatred than of truth, as Cicero himself says, magis odio firmata qua proesidio, were only set afloat by his adversaries very much later, that is to say, at one of those moments of excitement when political parties shrink from no calumny(s) to mutually decry each other. Notwithstanding the relaxation of morals, nothing could have ruined the reputation of Caesar more than this accusation, for such a crime was not only abhorred in the army, but, committed with a foreigner, would have been the most degrading disregard of Roman dignity. Wherefore Caesar, whose love for women ought to have shielded him from such a suspicion, repelled it with just indignation.

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

CAESAR ON HIS RETURN TO ROME (676).

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

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

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

The most general way of entering on a political career was by instituting a prosecution against some high personage. Its success mattered little; the real point was to be brought prominently forward by some remarkable speech, and offer a proof of patriotism.

Cornelius Dolabella, one of the friends of Sylla, who had had the honors of the consulate and triumph, and who, two years before, was governor of Macedonia, was now accused by Caesar of excesses committed in his government (677). He was acquitted by the tribunal composed of the creatures of the dictator. Public opinion did not praise Caesar, the less for having dared to attack a man who was supported and defended by orators such as Hortensius and L. Aurelius Cotta. Besides, he displayed so much eloquence, that this first speech gave him at once a veritable celebrity.

Caesar was twenty-one years of age when he attacked Dolabella, in a speech which we still read today with admiration. Encouraged by this success, Caesar cited C. Antonius Hybrida before the Praetor M. Lucullus, for having, at the head of a body of cavalry, pillaged certain parts of Greece when Sylla was returning from Asia. The accused was also acquitted, but the popularity of the accuser still increased. He also spoke, probably, in other causes now unknown. Tacitus speaks of a speech of Caesar’s, in favor of a certain Decius the Samnite, without doubt the same mentioned by Cicero, who, flying from the proscription of Sylla, was kindly received by Aulus Cluentius. Thus Caesar boldly offered himself as the defender of the oppressed Greeks or Samnites, who had suffered so much from the regime preceding. He gained especially the good-will of the former, whose opinions, highly influential at Rome, helped to make reputations.

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

CASAR GOES TO RHODES (678-680).

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

In his passage, Caesar was taken by pirates near Pharmacusa, a small island in the archipelago of the Sporades, at the mouth of the Gulf of Jassius. Notwithstanding the campaign of P. Servilius Isauricus, these pirates still infested the sea with numerous fleets. They demanded twenty talents for his ransom. He offered fifty, which must naturally have given them a high notion of their prisoner, and insured him better treatment. He sent trusty agents, and among others Epicrates, one of his Milesian slaves, to raise this sum in the neighboring towns. Though the allied towns and provinces were in this case obliged to furnish the ransom, it was none the less curious, as a proof of their wealth, to see a young man of twenty-four, arrested in a little island of Asia Minor, instantly able to borrow so large a sum.

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

As soon as he received his ransom from Miletus and the other towns, he paid it. Landed on the coast, he hastened to equip ships, impatient to revenge himself. The pirates, surprised at anchor in the harbor of the island, were almost all made prisoners, and their booty fell into his hands. He secured them in the prison at Pergamus, to deliver them up to Junius Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, whose duty it was to punish them. But, wishing to sell them and make a profit, Junius replied in an evasive manner. Caesar returned to Pergamus and had them crucified.

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

CAESAR PONTIFF AND MILITARY TRIBUNE (680-684).

Whilst he was making war on the coasts of Asia, his friends at Rome did not forget him; and, seeing clearly the importance of Caesar’s being clothed with a sacred character, they nominated him pontiff, in the place of his uncle, L. Aurelius Cotta, consul in 680, who had died suddenly in Gaul the follow­ing year.

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

Immediately on his return to Rome he was elected military tribune, and succeeded by a large majority over his rival C. Popilius. This already elevated rank, since it gave him the command of about a thousand men, was the first step which the young nobility easily attained, either by election or by the choice of the generals. Caesar does not seem to have profited by his new position to take part in the important wars in which the Republic was then engaged. And yet the clang of arms echoed from all quarters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II

(684-691).

STATE OF THE REPUBLIC (684).

When Pompey and Crassus came to the consulship, Italy had been a prey to intestine convulsions for sixty-three years. But, notwithstanding the repose which society demanded, and which the reconciliation of the two rivals seemed to promise, many opposing passions and interests still seethed in her bosom.

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

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

The aristocracy, proud of their wealth and ancestry, absorbed in all the pleasures of luxury, kept the new men out of the highest offices, and, by long continuance of power, had come to look on the chief magistracies as their property. Cato, in a discourse to the Senate, exclaimed : “Instead of the virtues of our ancestors, we have luxury and avarice; the poverty of the State, and the opulence of individuals; we boast of our riches, we cherish idleness; no distinction is made between the good and the wicked; all rewards due to merit are the price of intrigue. Why then are we astonished at this, since each man, isolating himself from the rest, consults only his own interest? At home, the slaves of pleasure; here, of wealth or of favor.”

The elections had for a long time been the result of a shameless traffic, where every means of success was allowable. Lucullus himself, to obtain the government of Asia, did not blush to have recourse to the good offices of a courtesan, the mistress of Cethegus. The sale of consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that the several instruments of electoral corruption had functions and titles almost recognized. Those who bought votes were called divisores; the go-betweens were interpreter; and those with whom was deposited the purchase­money were sequestres. Numerous secret societies were formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage; they were divided into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a supreme head, who treated with the candidates and sold the votes of the associates, either for money, or on the stipulation of certain advantages for himself or his friends. These societies carried most of the elections, and Cicero himself, who so often boasted of the unanimity with which he had been chosen consul, owed to them a great part of the suffrages he obtained.

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

 “In these later years, the men who make a trade of intriguing in elections have been enabled, by diligence and address, to obtain from the citizens of their tribe all that they chose to demand. Endeavor, by any means you will, to make these men serve you sincerely and with the steadfast will to succeed. You would obtain it, if men were as grateful as they ought to be ; and you will obtain it, I am afraid, since, for two years, four societies of those most influential in elections—those of Marcus Fundanius, Quintus Gallius, Gaius Cornelius, and Gaius Orcivius—have engaged them­selves for you. I was present when the causes of these men were intrusted to you, and I know what was promised to you, and what guarantees have been given to you by their associates.”

Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against the avidity of the generals and farmers of the revenues, notwithstanding the patronage of the great at Rome, the conquered peoples were always a prey to the exactions of the magistrates, and Verves was a type of the most shameless immorality, which drew this exclamation from Cicero: “All the provinces groan; all free peoples lament; all the kingdoms cry out against our cupidity and our violence. There is not between the ocean and ourselves a spot so remote or so little known that the injustice and tyranny of our fellow-citizens of these days have not penetrated to it.

“We may judge, by the sufferings of our own fellow-citizens, of what the inhabitants of the provinces have to endure from the public farmers (publicani). When several tolls were suppressed in Italy, remonstrances were made not so much against the principle of taxation as against abuses in levying it, and the cries of the Romans on the soil of the country tell only too plainly what must be the fate of the allies at the extremity of the empire.”

The inhabitants of foreign countries were obliged to borrow, either to satisfy the immoderate demands of their governors and their retinue, or to pay the farmers of the public revenues. Now, capital being nowhere but at Rome, they could only procure it at an excessive rate of interest; and the nobles, giving them­selves up to usury, held the provinces in their power.

The army itself had been demoralized by civil wars, and the chiefs no longer maintained discipline.

“Flamininus, Aquilius, Paulus Emilius,” says Dio Cassius, “commanded men well disciplined, who had learnt to execute the orders of their generals in silence. The law was their rule; with a royal soul, simple in life, bounding their expenses within reasonable limits, they held it more shameful to flatter the soldiery than to fear the enemy. From the time of Sylla, on the contrary, the generals raised to the first rank by violence and not by merit, forced to turn their arms against each other rather than against the enemy, were reduced to court popularity. Charged with the command, they Squandered gold to procure enjoyments for an army, the fatigues of which they paid dearly; they rendered their country venal, without caring for it; and made themselves the slaves of the most depraved men, to bring under their authority those who were worth more than themselves. This is what drove Marius out of Rome, and led him back against Sylla; this is what made Cinna the murderer of Octavius, and Fimbria the murderer of Flaccus. Sylla was the principal cause of these evils, he who, to seduce the soldiers enrolled under other chiefs, and bring them under his own flag, scattered gold in handfuls among his army.”

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

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

Although the army had not as yet acquired this preponderance, it nevertheless weighed heavily on the decisions of the Forum. By the side of men habituated to the noble chances of the fight existed a true army of turbulence, kept at the expense of the State or of private persons, in the principal towns of Italy—above all, at Capua: these were the gladiators, ever ready to undertake any thing for those who paid them, either in the electoral contests or as soldiers in the times of civil war.

Thus all was struck with decadence. Brute force bestowed power, and corruption the magistracies. The empire no longer belonged to the Senate, but to the commanders of the armies; the armies no longer belonged to the Republic, but to the chiefs who led them to victory. Numerous elements of dissolution afflicted society: the venality of the judges, the traffic in elections, the absolutism of the Senate, the tyranny of wealth, which oppressed the poor by usury, and braved the law with impunity.

Rome found herself divided into two thoroughly distinct parties : the one, seeing salvation only in the past, attached itself to abuses, in the fear that to displace one stone would be to shatter the whole edifice; the other wished to consolidate it by ren­dering the base larger and the summit less unsteady. The first party supported itself on the institutions of Sylla; the second had taken the name of Marius as the symbol of its hopes.

Great causes need an historical figure to personify their interests and tendencies. The man once adopted, his faults, his very crimes are forgotten, and his great deeds alone remembered. Thus, the vengeance and massacres of Marius had faded away from memory at Rome. Only his victories, which had preserved Italy from the invasions of the Cimbri and the Teutones, were recalled; his misfortunes were pitied, his hatred to the aristoc­racy vaunted. The preferences of public opinion were clearly manifested by the language of the orators, even those most favorable to the Senate. Thus Catulus and Cicero, speaking of Sylla or of Marius, the tyranny of both of whom had been substantially almost equally cruel, thought themselves obliged to glorify the one and to brand the other; yet the legislation of Sylla was still in full vigor, his party omnipotent—that of Marius dispersed and powerless.

The struggle which was perseveringly continued for sixty-three years against the Senate had never succeeded, because the defence of the people had never been placed in hands either sufficiently strong or sufficiently pure. To the Gracchi had been wanting an army; to Marius a power less disgraced by excesses; to the war of the allies a character less hostile to the national unity of which Rome was the representative. As to Spartacus, by rousing the slaves he went beyond his aim, and his success threatened the whole of society; he was annihilated'. To triumph over a long accumulation of prejudices, the popular cause needed a chief of transcendant merit, and a concurrence of circumstances difficult to foresee. But then the. genius of Caesar was not yet revealed, and the vanquisher of Sertorius was the only one who dominated the situation by his antecedents and high achievements.

CONSULSHIP OF POMPEY AND CRASSUS.

By a line of conduct quite opposite to that of Caesar, Pompey had greatly risen during the civil wars. From the age of twenty-three he had received from Sylla the title of Imperator, and the name of “Great”; he passed for the first warrior of his time, and had distinguished himself in Italy, Sicily, and Africa against the partisans of Marius, whom he caused to be pitilessly massacred.

Pompey slew Carbo, Perpenna, and Brutus, the father of the assassin of Caesar, who had yielded themselves to him: the first had protected his youth and saved his patrimony.

Fate had ever favored Pompey. In Spain, the death of Sertorius had made victory easy to him; on his return, the fortuitous defeat of the fugitive remains of the army of Spartacus allowed him to assume the honor of having put an end to that formidable insurrection; soon he will profit by the success already obtained by Lucullus against Mithridates. Thus a distinguished writer has justly said that Pompey always came in time to terminate, to his own glory, the wars which were just going to end to the glory of another.

The vulgar, who hail good fortune as the equal of genius, surrounded then the conqueror of Spain with their homage, and he himself, of a poor and vain spirit, referred the favors of fortune to his own sole merit. Seeking power for ornament rather than service, he courted it not in the hope of making a cause or a principle triumphant, but to enjoy it peaceably by trimming between different parties. Thus, whilst to Caesar power was a means, to him it was only the end. Honest, but vacillating, he was unconsciously the instrument of those who flattered him. His courteous manners, and the show of disinterestedness which disguised his ambition, removed all suspicions of his aspiring to the supreme power. An able general in ordinary times, he was great only while events were not greater than he. Nevertheless, he then enjoyed the highest reputation at Rome. By his antecedents he was rather the representative of the party of the aristocracy; but the desire of conciliating public favor, and his own intelligence, made him comprehend the necessity of cer­tain modifications in the laws: thus, before entering Rome to celebrate his triumph over the Celtiberians, he manifested the intention of re-establishing the prerogative of the tribunes, of putting an end to the devastation and oppression of the provinces, of restoring impartiality to justice, and respect to the judges.

At last when Pompey, haranguing the people for the first time at the gates of the city, in his capacity of consul designate, came to treat of the matter which seemed to have been most ardently expected, and let it be understood that he would re-establish the power of the tribunes, he was received with applause, and a slight murmur of assent; but when he added that the provinces were devastated and oppressed, the tribunals disgraced, the judges without shame, and that he wished to be watchful of these abuses, and to restore good order, then it was not by a simple murmur, but by unanimous acclamations, that the people testified their desires.  He was then consul elect; his promises excited the most lively enthusiasm; for it was the evil administration of the provinces, and the venality of the senators in their judicial functions, which more than all else made the people demand so ardently the re-establishment of the privileges of the tribuneship, notwithstanding the abuses which they had engendered. Excesses in power always give birth to an immoderate desire for liberty.

Catulus, when asked his opinion on the re-establishment of the tribunary power, began in these authoritative words: “The conscript fathers administer justice evilly and scandalously; and if, in the tribunals, they had but answered the expectations of the Roman people, the power of the tribunes would not have been so warmly regretted.”

In publishing the programme of his conduct, of his own free will, before entering Rome, Pompey did not yield to a fascination cleverly exerted over him by Caesar, as several historians pretend; he obeyed a stronger impulse, that of public opinion. The nobles reproached him with having abandoned their cause, but the popular party was satisfied, and Caesar, seeing the new consul take his ideas and sentiments to heart, resolved to support him energetically. Doubtless, he thought that with so many elements of corruption, so much contempt of the laws, so many jealous rivalries, and so much boundless ambition, the ascendancy . of him whom fortune had raised so high could alone, for the time, assist the destinies of the Republic. Was this a loyal co­operation? We believe so; but it did not exclude a noble rivalry, and Caesar could not be afraid of smoothing for Pompey, the platform on which they must one day meet. The man who understands his own worth has no perfidious jealousy against those who have preceded him in his career; rather, he goes to, their aid, for then he has more glory in rejoining them. Where, would be the emulation of the contest if one was alone in the power of attaining the end?

Pompey’s colleague was M. Licinius Crassus. This remarkable, man, as we have seen, had distinguished himself as a general; but his influence was owing rather to his wealth and his amiable and courteous disposition. Enriched under Sylla by purchasing the property of the proscribed, he possessed whole quarters of the city of Rome, rebuilt after several fires; and he pretended that to be rich one must be able to maintain an army at his own expense. Though his chief passion was the love of gold, avarice did not with him exclude liberality. He lent to all his friends without interest, and sometimes scattered his largesses with profusion. Versed in letters, gifted with a rare eloquence, he accepted eagerly all the causes which Pompey, Caesar, and Cicero disdained to defend; by his eagerness to oblige all those who claimed his services, either to borrow, or to obtain some situation, he acquired a power which balanced that of Pompey. This last had accomplished greater deeds, but his airs of grandeur and dignity, his habit of avoiding crowds and sights, alienated the multitude from him; while Crassus, of easy access, always in the midst of the public and of business, had the advantage over him by his affable manners. We do not find very defined principles in him, either in political or private life; he was neither a constant friend nor an irreconcilable enemy. Fitter to serve as an instrument for the elevation of another, than to elevate himself to the first rank, he was very useful to Caesar, who did his best to gain his confidence. “There existed then at Rome,” says Plutarch, “three factions, the chiefs of which were Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus; Cato, whose power did not equal his glory, was more admired than followed. The wise and moderate part of the citizens were for Pompey; energetic, speculative, and bold men attached themselves to the hopes of Caesar; Crassus, who held the mean between these two factions, used both.”

During his first consulship, Crassus seems to have been only occupied with extravagant expenditure, and to have preserved a prudent neutrality. He made a grand sacrifice to Hercules, and consecrated to him the tenth part of his revenues; he gave the people an enormous feast, spread out on ten thousand tables, and bestowed corn for three months to every citizen.

Pompey occupied himself in more serious matters, and, supported by Caesar, favored the adoption of several laws, all of which announced a reaction against the system of Sylla.

The effect of the first was to give the tribunes the right anew of presenting laws and appealing to the people; already, in 679, the power of obtaining other magistracies had been restored to them.

The second was connected with justice. Instead of leaving to the Senate alone the whole judicial power, the Praetor Aurelius Cotta, Caesar’s uncle, proposed a law which would conciliate all interests, by mating it legal to take the judges by thirds from the three classes; that is to say, from the Senate, the equestrian order, and the tribunes of the treasury, who were for the most part plebeians .

But the measure which most helped to heal the wounds of the Republic was the amnesty proposed by the Tribune Plotius in favor of all those who had taken part in the civil war. In this number was comprised the wreck of the army of Lepidus, which had remained in Spain after the defeat of Sertorius, and amongst which was to be found C. Cornelius Cinna, brother-in-law of Caesar. This last, in speeches which have not come down to us, but which are quoted by different authors, spared nothing to assure among the people the success of the proposition. “He insisted on the propriety of deciding promptly on this measure of reconciliation, and observed that there could not be a more opportune moment for its adoption.” It was adopted without difficulty. All seemed to favor a return to the old institutions. The censorship, interrupted for seventeen years, was re-established, and L. Gellius and C. Lentulus, the censors chosen, exercised their office with so much severity, that they expelled from the Senate sixty-four of its members, probably creatures of Sylla. In the number of those expelled figured Caius Antonius, previously accused by Caesar, and Publius Lentulus Sura, consul in the year 683.

All these changes had been proposed or accepted by Pompey rather to please the multitude than to obey distinct convictions. And by them he lost his true supporters in the upper classes, without gaining, in the opposite party, the foremost place, already occupied by Caesar. But Pompey, blind to real worth, imagined then that no one could surpass him in influence; always favored by circumstances, he had been accustomed to see both the arrogance of Sylla and the majesty of the laws yield before him. Notwithstanding a first refusal by the dictator, at twenty-six years of age he had obtained the honors of the triumph, without having fulfilled any of the legal conditions. Contrary to the laws, a second triumph had been accorded him, as also the consulship, though out of Rome, and without having followed the necessary order of hierarchy of the magistracies. Full of presumption through the examples of the past, full of confidence in the future through the adulation of the present, he thought he might wound the interests of the nobles without alienating them, and flatter the tastes and passions of the people without losing his dignity. Towards the end of his consulship, he, the chief magistrate of the Republic, he, who thought himself above all others, presented himself as a mere soldier at the annual review of the knights. The momentary effect was immense when the censors, seated on their tribunal, saw Pompey traversing the crowd, preceded by all the pomp of the consular power, and leading before them his horse, which he held by the bridle. The crowd, silent till then, burst out into transports of joy, overcome with admiration at the sight of so great a man glorifying himself for being a simple knight, and modestly sub­mitting himself to the legal forms. But on the demand of the censors if he had made all the campaigns required by law, he answered, “Yes, I have made them all, never having had any other general than myself”. The ostentation of this reply shows that this step of Pompey’s was a false modesty, the most insupportable form of pride, according to the expression of Marcus Aurelius.

CAESAR QUESTOR  (686).

Neither did Caesar disdain ceremonial; but he sought To give it a significance which should make an impression upon the mind. The opportunity soon presented itself. Soon after he was nominated questor and admitted to the Senate, he lost his aunt Julia and his wife Cornelia, and hastened to make a veritable political manifestation of their funeral oration. It was the custom at Rome to pronounce a eulogy on women only when they died at an advanced age. Caesar obtained public approbation by departing from this usage in favor of his young wife; they saw in it, according to Plutarch, a proof of sensibility and softness of manners; but they applauded not the family sentiment only, they glorified much more the inspiration of the politician who dared to make a panegyric on the husband of Julia, the celebrated Marius, whose image, in wax, carried by' Caesar’s orders in the funeral procession, reappeared for the first time since the proscription of Sylla.

After having rendered these last honors to his wife, he accompanied, in the capacity of questor, the Praetor Antistius Vetus, sent into Ulterior Spain.The peninsula was then divided into two great provinces: Citerior Spain, since called Tarraconensis, and Ulterior Spain, comprising Baetica and Lusitania. The positive limits, we may well believe, were not  very exactly determined, but at this epoch the Saltus Castulonensis, which corresponds with the Sierras Nevada and Cazorla, was considered as such between these two provinces. To the north, the limitation could not be made any more distinct, the Asturias not being thoroughly conquered. The capitaL of Ulterior Spain was Corduba (Cordova), where the praetor resided.

The chief towns, doubtless connected by military roads, formed so many centres of general meeting, where assizes for the regulation of business were held. These meetings were called conventus civium Romanorum, because the members who composed them were Roman citizens dwelling in the country. The praetor, or his delegate, presided over them once a year. Each province in Spain had several of them. In the first century of our era, there were three for Lusitania and four for Baetica.

Caesar, the delegate of the praetor, visited these towns, presiding over the assemblies and administering justice. He was noted for his spirit of conciliation and equity, and showed a lively solicitude for the interests of the Spaniards.  As the character of illustrious men is revealed in their smallest actions, it is not a matter of indifference to mention the gratitude which Caesar always had for the good offices of Vetus. Plutarch informs us that a strict union reigned between them ever after, and Caesar took care to name the son of Vetus questor, when he himself was raised to the praetorship, as sensible of friend­ship as he was later forgetful of injuries.

Yet the love of glory and the consciousness of his high faculties made him aspire to a more important part. He manifested his impatient desire for this one day when he went to visit the famous temple of Hercules at Gades, as Hannibal and Scipio had done before. At the sight of the statue of Alexander, he deplored with a sigh that he had done nothing at the age when this great man had conquered the whole, world. In fact, Caesar was then thirty-two years old, nearly the age at which Alexander died. Having obtained his recall to Rome, he stopped on his return in Gallia Transpadana (687). The colonies founded in this country possessed the Latin law (jus Latii), which Pompeius Strabo had granted them, but they vainly demanded the rights of Roman. city. The presence of Caesar, already known for his friendly feelings towards the provinces, excited a lively emotion among the inhabitants, who saw in him the representative of their interests and their cause. The enthusiasm was such that the Senate, terrified, thought itself obliged to retain for some time longer in Italy the legions destined for the army in Asia.

The ascendancy of Pompey still continued, though, since his consulship, he had remained without command, having undertaken, in 684, not to accept the government of any province at the expiration of his magistracy; but his popularity began to disquiet the Senate, so much is it in the very essence of the aristocracy to distrust those who raise themselves, and extend their powers beyond itself. This was an additional motive for Caesar to connect himself more closely with Pompey, whereupon he backed him with all his influence; and either to cement this alliance, or because of his inclination for a beautiful and graceful woman, shortly after his return he married Pompeia, the kinswoman of Pompey, and grand-daughter of Sylla. He was thus, at one and the same time, the arbiter of elegance, the hope of the democratic party, and the only public man whose opinions and conduct had never varied.

THE GABINIAN LAW (687).

The decadence of a political body is evident, when the measures, most useful to the glory of a country, instead of arising from its provident initiative, are inaugurated by obscure and often disreputable men, the faithful but dishonored organs of public opinion. Thus the propositions made at this epoch, far from being inspired by the Senate, were put forward by uninfluential individuals, and carried by the violent attitude of the people. The first referred to the pirates, who, upheld and encouraged by Mithridates, had long infested the seas, and ravaged all the coasts; an energetic repression was indispensable. These bold adventurers, whose number the civil wars had greatly increased, had become a veritable power. Setting out from Cilicia, their common centre, they armed whole fleets, and found a refuge in important towns. They had pillaged the much frequented port of Caieta (Gaeta), dared to land at Ostia, and carry off the inhabitants to slavery; sunk in midseas a Roman fleet under the orders of a consul, and made two praetors prisoners. Not only strangers deputed to Rome, but the ambassadors of the Republic, had fallen into their hands, and had undergone the shame of being ransomed. Finally, the pirates intercepted the imports of wheat indispensable for the feeding of the city. To remedy so humiliating a state of things, the tribune of the people, Aulus Gabinius, proposed to confide the war against the pirates to one sole general; to give him, for three years, extended powers, large forces, and to place three lieutenants under his orders. The assembly of the people instantly accepted this proposition, notwithstanding the small esteem in which the character of its author was held; and the name of Pompey was in every mouth; but “the senators,” says Dio Cassius, “would have preferred to suffer the greatest evils from the pirates, than to have invested Pompey with such a power”; they were ready to put to death, in the curia itself, the tribune who was the author of the motion. Scarcely had the multitude heard of the opposition of the senators, when they flocked in crowds, invaded the place of meeting, and would have massacred them, had they not been protected from their fury.

This projected law, submitted to the suffrages of the people, attacked by Catulus and Q. Hortensius, energetically supported by Caesar, is then adopted; and they confer on Pompey, for three years, the proconsular authority over all the seas, over all the coasts, and for fifty miles into the interior; they grant him 6,000 talents, twenty-five lieutenants, and the power of taking such vessels and troops as he should judge necessary. The allies, foreigners, and the provinces, were called on to concur in this expedition. They equipped five hundred ships, they levied a hundred and twenty thousand infantry and five thousand horse. The Senate, in spite of itself, sanctioned the clauses of this law, the utility of which was so manifest that its publication alone was sufficient to lower the price of wheat all through Italy.

Pompey adopted an able plan for putting an end to piracy. He divided the Mediterranean coasts, from the Columns of Hercules to the Hellespont and the southern shores of the Black Sea, into ten separate commands; at the head of each he placed one of his lieutenants. He himself, retaining the general surveillance, went to Cilicia with the rest of his forces. This vast plan protected all the shores, left the pirates no refuge, and enabled him to destroy their fleet and attack them in their dens at once. In three months Pompey re-established the safety of the seas, took a thousand castles or strongholds, destroyed three hundred towns, took eight hundred ships, and made twenty thousand prisoners, whom he transferred into the interior of' Asia, where he employed them building a city, which received the name of Pompeiopolis.

THE MANILIAN LAW (688).

At these tidings, the enthusiasm for Pompey, then in the island of Crete, redoubled, and they talked of placing in his hands the fate of another war. Although Lucullus had obtained brilliant successes over Mithridates and Tigranes, his military position in Asia began to be compromised. He had experienced reverses; insubordination reigned among his soldiers; his severity excited their complaints; and the news of the arrival of the two proconsuls from Cilicia, Acilius Glabrio and Marcius Rex, sent to command a part of the provinces until then under his orders, had weakened respect for his authority. These circumstances determined Manilius, tribune of the people, to propose that the government of the provinces trusted to Lucullus should be given to Pompey, joining to them Bithynia, and preserving to him the power which he already exercised over all the seas. “It was,” says Plutarch, “to submit the whole Roman empire to one sole man, and to deprive Lucullus of the fruits of his victories.” Never, indeed, had such power been confided to any citizen, neither to the first Scipio to ruin Carthage, nor to the second to destroy Numantia. The people grew more and more accustomed to regard this concentration of power in one hand as the only means of salvation. The Senate, taxing these proposals with ingratitude, combated them with all its strength; Hortensius asserted that if all the authority was to be trusted to one man, no person was more worthy of it than Pompey, but that so much authority ought not to be centred in one person. Catulus cried that they had done with liberty, and that henceforth, to enjoy this, they would be forced to retire to the woods and mountains. Cicero, on the contrary, inaugurated his entry into the Senate by a magnificent oration, which has been preserved to us; he showed that it was for the best interest of the Republic to give the conduct of this war to a captain whose noble deeds in the past, and whose moderation and integrity, vouched for the future. “So many other gen­erals,” he said, at the close, “ proceed on an expedition only with the hope of enriching themselves. Can those who think we .ought not to grant all these powers to one man alone ignore this, and do we not see that what renders Pompey so great is not only his own virtues, but the vices of others?” As to Caesar, he seconded with all his power the efforts of Cicero for the adoption of the law, which, supported by public feeling, and submitted to the suffrage of the tribes, was adopted unanimously.

Certainly, Lucullus had deserved well of his country, and it was cruel to deprive him of the glory of terminating a war which he had prosperously begun; but the definitive success of the campaign demanded his substitution, and the instinct of the people did not deceive them. Often, in difficult cases, they see more clearly than an assembly preoccupied with the interests of castes or of persons, and events soon show that they are right.

Lucullus had announced at Rome the end of the war; yet Mithridates was far from being conquered. This fierce enemy of the Romans, who had continued the struggle twenty-four years, and whom evil fortune had never been able to discourage, would not treat, despite his sixty-four years and recent reverses, save on conditions inadmissible by the Romans. The fame of Pompey then was not useless against such an adversary. His ascendancy alone could bring back discipline into the army and intimidate the enemy. In fact, his presence was sufficient to re­establish order, and retain under their standards the old soldiers who had obtained their discharge, and wished to return to their homes; they formed the flower of the army, and were known under the name of Valerians. On the other hand, Tigranes, having learned the arrival of Pompey, abandoned the party of his father-in-law, declaring that this general was the only one to whom he would submit, so much does the prestige of one man, says Dio Cassius, lord it over that of another.

Manilius then demanded the re-establishment of the law of Caius Gracchus, by virtue of which the centuria praerogativa, instead of being drawn by lot from the first classes of the tribes, was taken indiscriminately from all the classes, which destroyed the distinctions of rank and fortune in the elections, and deprived the richer of their electoral privileges.

We see that it was generally the tribunes of the people who obeying the inspiration of greater men, took the initiative in the more popular measures. But the major part, without disinterestedness or moderation, often compromised those who had recourse to their services, by their unruly ardor and subversive opinions. Manilius, in 688, suddenly reopened a question which always created great agitation at Rome; this was the political emancipation of the freedmen. He obtained, by a surprise, the readoption of the law Sulpicia, which gave a vote to the freedmen by distributing them among the thirty-five tribes, and asserted that he had the consent of Crassus and Pompey. But the Senate revoked the law sometime after its adoption, agreeing in this with the chiefs of the popular party, who did not think it was demanded by public opinion.

CAESAR CURULE EDILE (689).

Whilst all the favors of fortune seemed to have accumulated on the idol of the moment, Caesar, remaining at Rome, was chosen inspector (curator) of the Appian Way (687). The maintenance of the highways brought much popularity to those who undertook the charge with disinterestedness; Caesar gained all the more by his, as he contributed largely to the cost, and even compromised his own fortune thereby.

Two years afterwards (689), nominated curule edile with Bibulus, he displayed a magnificence which excited the acclamations of the crowd, always greedy of sights. The place named Comitium, the Forum, the Basilicae, the Capitol itself, were magnificently decorated. Temporary porticoes were erected, under which were exposed a crowd of precious objects. These expenses were not unusual: since the triumph of the Dictator Papirius Cursor, all the aediles were accustomed to contribute to the embellishment of the Forum. Caesar celebrated with great pomp the Roman games and the feast of Cybele, and gave the finest shows of wild beasts and gladiators yet beheld. The number of the combatants amounted to three hundred and twenty couples, according to Plutarch, a contemptuous expression, which proves the small account made of the lives of these men. Cicero, writing to Atticus, speaks of them as we in our day should speak of race-horses; and the grave Atticus himself had gladiators, as had most of the great people of his time. “The gladiators whom you have brought are a very fine acquisition. It is said that they are well trained; and if you had wished to let them out on the last occasion, you would have regained what they have cost you.” These bloody games, which seem so inhuman to us, still preserved the religious character which at first they so exclusively possessed; they were celebrated in honor of the dead; Caesar gave them in honor of his father’s memory, and displayed in them an unwonted pomp. The number of gladiators which he got together terrified the Senate, and for the future it was forbidden to exceed a given number. Bibulus, his colleague, it is true, bore half the expense; nevertheless, the public gave Caesar all the merit of this sumptuous discharge of the duties of their office. Thus Bibulus said, that he was like the temple of Castor and Pollux, which, dedicated to the two brothers, was never called any thing but the temple of Castor.

The nobles saw in the sumptuousness of these games only a vain ostentation, a frivolous desire to shine; they congratulated themselves on the prodigality of the edile, and predicted in his near ruin a term to his influence; but Caesar, while spending millions to amuse the multitude, did not make this fleeting enthusiasm the sole basis of his popularity; he established this on more solid grounds, by reawakening in the people the memories of glory and liberty.

Not content with having helped in several leading measures, with having gained over Pompey to his opinions, and sought for the first time to revive the memory of Marius, he wished to sound public opinion by an astounding manifestation. At the moment when the splendor of his edileship had produced the most favorable impression on the crowd, he secretly restored the trophies of Marius, formerly overturned by Sylla, and ordered them to be placed in the Capitol during the night. The next day, when they saw these images shining with gold, chiselled with infinite art, and adorned with inscriptions which recalled the victories gained over Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutones, the nobles began to murmur, blaming Caesar for having dared to revive seditious emblems and proscribed remembrances; but the partisans of Marius flocked in large numbers to the Capitol, making its sacred roof resound with their acclamations. Many shed tears on seeing the venerated features of their old general, and proclaimed Caesar the worthy successor of that great captain.

Uneasy at these demonstrations, the Senate assembled, and Lutatius Catulus, whose father had been one of the victims of Marius, accused Caesar of wishing to overthrow the Republic, “no longer secretly, by undermining it, but openly, in attacking it by breach.” Caesar repelled this attack, and his partisans, delighted at his success, vied with each other in saying, “that he would carry it over all his rivals, and with the help of the people would take the first rank in the Republic”; Hence forth the popular party had a head.

The term of his edileship having expired, Caesar solicited the mission of transforming Egypt into a Roman province. The matter in hand was the execution of the will of King Ptolemy Alexas, or Alexander, who, following the examples of other kings, had left his state to the Roman peoples. But the will was revoked as doubtful,  and it seems that the Senate shrank from taking possession of so rich a country, fearing, as did Augustus, later, to make the proconsul who should govern it too powerful. The mission of reducing Egypt to a Roman province was brilliant and fruitful. It would have given to those who might be charged with it extensive military power, and the disposal of large resources. Crassus also placed himself on the list, but after long debates the Senate put an end to all rival pretensions.

“Augustus made it one, among other State maxims, to sequester Egypt, forbidding the Roman knights and senators of the first rank ever to go there without his permission. He feared that Italy might be famished by the first ambitious person who should seize the province, where, holding the keys of both land and sea, he might defend himself with very few soldiers against great armies.”

About the same time, when Crassus was endeavoring to get the inhabitants of Gallia Transpadana admitted to the rights of Roman citizens, the tribune of the people, Caius Papius, caused to be adopted a law for the expulsion of all foreigners from Rome. For, in their pride, the Romans thus called those who were not Latins by origin. This measure would specially affect the Transpadanes, who were devoted to Caesar, because he had formerly promised to procure, for them the title of citizen, which had been refused. It was feared that they would get into the comitia, for, since the emancipation of the Italiotes, it was difficult to distinguish among those who had the right of voting, since often even slaves fraudulently participated in the elections.

 Cicero protested: “You name me a foreigner, because I have come from a municipal town. If you regard us as foreigners, although our name and rank were formerly well established at Rome, and in public opinion, how much, then, must these competitors be foreigners in your eyes, this elite of Italy, who come from all parts to dispute with you magisstrateships and honors?"

CAESAR JUDEX QUAESTIONIS (690).

Caesar soon recommenced the political struggle against the still living instruments of past oppression, in which he had engaged at the beginning of his career. He neglected no opportunity of calling down upon them the rigors of justice or the opprobrium of public opinion.

The long duration of the civil troubles had given birth to a class of malefactors called sicarii, who committed all sorts of murders and robberies. In 674 SYLL1a had promulgated a severe edict against them, which, however, excepted the executors of his vengeance in the pay of the treasury. These last were exposed to public animadversion; and though Cato had obtained the restitution of the sums allotted as the price of the heads of the proscribed, no one had yet dared to bring them to justice. Caesar, notwithstanding the law of Sylla, undertook their prosecution.

Under his presidency, in his capacity as judex quaestionis, L. Luscius, who, by the dictator’s order, had slain three of the proscribed, and L. Bellienus, uncle of Catiline and murderer of Lucretius Ofella, were prosecuted and condemned. Catiline, accused, at the instigation of L. Lucceius, orator and historian, the friend of Caesar, of having slain the celebrated M. Marius Gratidianus, was acquitted.

CONSPIRACIES AGAINST THE SENATE (690).

Whilst Caesar endeavored to react legally against the system of Sylla, another party, composed of the ambitious and discontented, ruined by debt, had loNg sought to arrive at power by plotting. Of this number had been, since 688, Cn. Piso, P. Sylla, P. Autronius, and Catiline. These men, with diverse antecedents and different qualities, were equally decried, yet they did not want for adherents among the lower class, whose passions they flattered, or among the upper class, to whose policy or enmity they were serviceable. P. Sylla and Autronius, after having been made consuls elect in 688, had been effaced from the senatorial list for solicitation. Public report mixed up the names of Crassus and Caesar with these secret manoeuvres; but was it possible that these two men, in such opposite positions, and even divided between themselves, should enter into an understanding together for the sake of a vulgar plot; and was it not a new inconsistency of calumny to associate in the same conspiracy Caesar because of his immense debts, and Crassus because of his immense riches?

Let us remark, besides, that each of the factions then in agitation necessarily sought to compromise, for the purpose of appropriating to itself, such a personage as Caesar, notorious for his name, his generosity, and his courage.

A matter which has remained obscure, but which then made a great noise, shows the progress of the ideas of disorder. One of the conspirators, Cn. Piso, had taken part in the attempt to assassinate the Consuls Cotta and Torquatus; yet he obtained, through the influence of Crassus, the post of quaestor pro praetore into Citerior Spain; the Senate, either to get rid of him, or in the doubtful hope of finding in him some support against Pompey, whose power began to appear formidable, consented to grant him this province. But in 691, on his arrival in Spain, he was slain by his escort—some say by the secret emissaries of Pompey. As to Catiline, he was not the man to bend under the weight of the misfortunes of his friends, or under his own losses; he employed new ardor in braving the perils of a conspiracy, and in pursuing the honors of the consulship. He was the most dangerous adversary the Senate had. Caesar supported this candidature. In a spirit of opposition, he supported all that could hurt his enemies and favor a change of system. Besides, all parties were constrained to deal with those who enjoyed the popular favor. The nobles accepted as candidate C. Antonius Hybrida, a worthless man, capable only of selling himself and of treachery. Cicero, in 690, had promised Catiline to defend him; and a year before, the Consul Torquatus, one of the most esteemed chiefs of the Senate, pleaded for the same individual accused of embezzlement.

We thus see that the misfortunes of the times obliged the most notable men to have dealings with those whose antecedents seemed to devote them to contempt.

In times of transition, when a choice must be made between a glorious past and an unknown future, the rock is, that bold and unscrupulous men alone thrust themselves forward; others, more timid, and the slaves of prejudices, remain in the shade, or offer some obstacle to the movement which hurries away society into new ways. It is always a great evil for a country, a prey to agitations, when the party of the honest, or that of the good, as Cicero calls them, do not embrace the new ideas, to direct by moderating them. Hence profound divisions. On the one side, unknown men often take possession of the good or bad passions of the crowd; on the other, honorable men, immovable or morose, oppose all progress, and by their obstinate resistance excite legitimate impatience and lamentable violence. The opposition of these last has the double inconvenience of leaving the way clear to those who are less worthy than themselves, and of throwing doubts into the minds of that floating mass, which judges parties much more by the honorableness of men than by the value of ideas

What was then passing in Rome offers a striking example of this. Was it not reasonable, in fact, that men should hesitate to prefer a faction which had at its head such illustrious names as Hortensius, Catulus, Marcellus, Lucullus, and Cato, to that which had for its mainstays individuals like Gabinius, Manilius, Catiline, Vatinius, and Clodius? What more legitimate in the eyes of the descendants of the ancient families than this resistance to all change, and this disposition to consider all reform as Utopian and almost as sacrilege? What more logical for them than to admire Cato’s firmness of soul, who, still young, allowed himself to be menaced with death rather than admit the possibility of becoming one day the defender of the cause of the allies claiming the rights of Roman citizens? How not comprehend the sentiments of Catulus and Hortensius obstinately defending the privileges of the aristocracy, and manifesting their fears at this general inclination to concentrate all power in the hands of one individual?

And yet the cause maintained by these men was condemned to perish, as every thing which has had its time. Notwithstanding their virtues, they were only an additional obstacle to the steady march of civilization, because they wanted the qualities most essential for a time of revolution—an appreciation of the wants of the moment, and of the problems of the future. Instead of trying what they could save from the shipwreck of the ancient regime, just breaking to pieces against a fearful rock, the corruption of political morals, they refused to admit that the institutions to which the Republic owed its grandeur could bring about its decay. Terrified at all innovation, they confounded in the same anathema the seditious enterprises of certain tribunes, and the just reclamations of the citizens. But their influence was so considerable, and ideas consecrated by time have so much empire over minds, that they would have yet hindered the triumph of the popular cause, if Caesar, in putting himself at its head, had not given it a new glory and an irresistible force. A party, like an army, can only conquer with a chief worthy to command it; and all those who, since the Gracchi, had unfurled the standard of reform, had sullied it with blood, and compromised it by revolts. Caesar raised and purified it. To constitute his party, it is true, he had recourse to agents but little estimated; the best architect can build only with the materials under his hand; but his constant endeavor was to associate to himself the most trustworthy men, and he spared no effort to gain by turns Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Servilius Caepio, Q. Fufius Calenus, Serv. Sulpicius, and many others.

In moments of transition, when the old system is at an end, and the new not yet established, the greatest difficulty consists, not in overcoming the obstacles which are in the way of the advent of a regime demanded by the country, but to establish the latter solidly, by establishing it upon the concurrence of honorable men penetrated with the new ideas, and steady in their principles.

CHAPTER III

(691-695.)

CICERO AND ANTONIUS, CONSULS (691).

In the year 690, the candidates for the consulship were Cicero, C. Antonius Hybrida, L. Cassius Longinus, Q. Cornificius, C. Lucinius Sacerdos, P. Sulpicius Gralba, and Catiline. Informed of the plots so long in progress, the Senate determined to combat the conspiracies of the last by throwing all the votes they could dispose of upon Cicero, who was thus unanimously elected, and took possession of his office at the beginning of 691. This choice made up for the mediocrity of his colleague Antonius. 

The illustrious orator, whose eloquence had such authority, was born at Arpinum, of obscure parents; he had served sometime in the war of the allies; afterwards, his orations acquired for him a great reputation, amongst others the defence of the young Roscius, whom the dictator would have despoiled of his paternal heritage. After the death of Sylla, he was appointed quaestor and sent to Sicily. In 684, he lashed with his implacable speech the atrocities of Verres; at last, in 688, he obtained the praetorship, and displayed in this capacity those sentiments of high probity and of justice which distinguished him throughout his whole career. But the esteem of his fellow-citizens would not have sufficed, in ordinary times, to have raised him to the 1st magistracy. “The dread of the conspiracy,” says Sallust, “was the cause of his elevation. Under other circumstances, the pride of the nobility would have revolted against such a choice. The consulship would have been considered profaned, if, even with superior merit, a new man had obtained it; but, on the approach of danger, envy and pride became silent.” The Roman aristocracy must have greatly lost its influence, when, at a critical moment, it allowed a new man to possess more authority over the people than one from its own ranks.

By birth, as well as by his instincts, Cicero belonged to the popular party; nevertheless, the irresolution of his mind, sensible to flattery, and his fear of innovations, led him to serve by turn the rancors of the great or those of the people. Of upright heart, but pusillanimous, he only saw rightly when his self­esteem was not at stake or his interest in danger. Elected consul, he ranged himself on the side of the Senate, and resisted all proposals advantageous to the multitude. Caesar honored his talent, but had little confidence in his character; hence he was averse to his candidature, and hostile during the whole of his consulship.

AGRARIAN LAW OF RULLUS.

Scarcely had Cicero entered on his functions, when the Tribune P. Servilius Rullus revived one of those projects which, for ages, have had the effect of exciting to the highest degree both the avidity of the proletaries and the anger of the Senate: it was an agrarian law.

It contained the following provisions: To sell, with certain exceptions, the territories recently conquered, and some other domains but little productive to the State; devoting the proceeds to the purchase, by private contract, of lands in Italy, which were to be divided among the indigent citizens; to cause to be nominated, according to the customary mode for the eletion of grand pontiff—that is, by seventeen tribes, drawn by lot from the thirty-five—ten commissioners or decemvirs, to whom should be left, for five years, the power, absolute and without control, of distributing or alienating the domains of the Republic and private properties wherever they liked. No one could be appointed who was not present in Rome, which excluded Pompey, and the authority of the decemvirs was to be sanctioned by a curiate law. To them alone was intrusted the right to decide what belonged to the State and what to individuals. The lands of the public domain which should not be alienated were to be charged with a considerable impost. The decemvirs had also the power of compelling all the generals, Pompey excepted, to account for the booty and money received during war, but not yet deposited in the treasury, or employed upon some monument. They were allowed to found colonies anywhere they thought proper, particularly in the territory of Stella, and in the ager of Campania, where five thousand Roman citizens were to be estab­lished. In a word, the administration of the revenues and the resources of the State came almost wholly into their hands; they had, moreover, their lictors; they could take the omens, and ’ choose amongst the knights two hundred persons to execute their decrees in the provinces, and these were without appeal.

This project offered inconveniences, but also great advantages. Rullus, certainly, was to blame for not designating all the places where he wished to establish colonies; for making two exemptions, one favorable, the other unfavorable to Pompey; for assigning to the decemvirs powers too extensive, tending to arbitrary acts and speculations; nevertheless, his project had an important political aim. The public domain, encroached upon by usurpations or by the colonies of Sylla, had almost disappeared. The law was to reconstitute it by the sale of conquered territories. On the other side, the lands confiscated in great number by Sylla, and given or sold at a paltry price to his partisans, had suffered a general depreciation, for the ownership was liable to be contested, and they no longer found purchasers. The Republic, while desirous of relieving the poorer class, had thus an interest in raising the price of these lands and in secu­ring the holders. The project of Rullus was, in fact, a veritable law of indemnity. There are injustices which, sanctioned by time, ought also to be sanctioned by law, in order to extinguish the causes of dissension, by restoring their security to existing things, and its value to property.

If the great orator had known how to raise himself above the questions of person and of party, he would, like Caesar, have supported the proposal of the tribune, amending only what was too absolute or too vague in it; but, overreached by the faction of the great, and desiring to please the knights, whose interests the law injured, he attacked it with his usual eloquence, exagger­ating its defects. It would only benefit, he said, a small number of persons. Whilst appearing to favor Pompey, it deprived him, on account of his absence, of the chance of being chosen decemvir. It allowed some individuals to dispose of kingdoms like Egypt, and of the immense territories of Asia. Capua would become the capital of Italy, and Rome, surrounded by a girdle of military colonies devoted to ten new tyrants, would lose its independence. To purchase the lands, instead of apportioning the ager publicus, was monstrous, and he could not admit that they would engage the people to abandon the capital to go and languish in the fields. Then, exposing the double personal interest of the author of the law, he reminded them that the father-in-law of Rullus was enriched with the spoils of pro­scripts, and that Rullus himself had reserved the right of being nominated decemvir.

Cicero, nevertheless, pointed out clearly the political bearing of the project, although censuring it, when he said: “The new law enriches those who occupied the domain lands, and withdraws them from public indignation. How many men are embarrassed by their vast possessions, and cannot support the odium attached to the largesses of Sylla! How many would sell them, and find no buyers! How many seek means, of whatever kind, to dispossess themselves of them! And you, Romans, you are going to sell those revenues which your ance­tors have acquired at the cost of so much sweat and blood, to augment the fortune and assure the tranquillity of the possessors of the goods confiscated by Sylla!”

We see thus that Cicero seems to deny the necessity of allaying the inquietudes of the new and numerous acquirers of this kind of national property; and yet, when a short time afterwards another tribune proposed to relieve from civic degradation the sons of proscripts, he opposed him, not because this reparation appeared to him unjust, but for fear the rehabilitation in political rights should carry with it the reintegration into the properties, a measure, according to his views, subversive of all interests. Thus, with a strange inconsistency, Cicero combated these two laws of conciliation; the one because it reassured, the other because it disquieted the holders of the effects of the proscribed. Why must it be that, amongst men of superiority, but without convictions, talent only too often serves to sustain with the like facility the most opposite causes? The opinion of Cicero triumphed, nevertheless, thanks to his elo­quence ; and the project, despite the lively adhesion of the people, encountered in the Senate such a resistance that it was abandoned without being referred to the comitia.

Caesar advocated the agrarian law, because it raised the value of the soil, put an end to the disfavor attached to the national property, augmented the resources of the treasury, prevented the extravagance of the generals, delivered Rome from a turbulent and dangerous populace by wresting it from degradation and misery. He supported the rehabilitation of the children of proscripts, because that measure, profoundly reparative, put an end to one of the great iniquities of the past regime.

There are victories which enfeeble the conquerors more than the vanquished. Such was the success of Cicero. The rejection of the agrarian law, and of the claims of the sons of proscripts, augmented considerably the number of malcontents. A crowd of citizens, driven by privations and the denial of justice, went over to swell the ranks of the conspirators, who, in the shade, were preparing a revolution; and Caesar, pained at seeing the Senate reject that sage and ancient policy which had saved Rome from so many agitations, resolved to undermine by every means its authority. For this purpose he engaged the tribune, T. Labienus, the same who was afterwards one of his best lieutenants, to get up a criminal accusation, which was a direct attack upon the abuse of one of the prerogatives of the government.

TRIAL OF RABIRIUS (691)

For a long time, when internal or external troubles were apprehended, Rome was put, so to speak, in a state of siege, by the sacramental formula, according to which the consuls were enjoined to see that the Republic received no injury; then the power of the consuls was unlimited: “This supreme power, which, according to the institutions of Rome, the Senate confers upon the magistrates, consists in raising troops, in making war, in keeping to their duties, by every means, the allies and citizens; in exercising supremely, equally at Rome or abroad, both civil and military authority. In all other cases, without the express order of the people, none of these prerogatives are conferred upon the consuls.” And often, in seditions, the Senate had profited by this omnipotence to rid itself of certain factious individuals without observing the forms of justice. The more frequent the agitations had become, the more they had used this extreme remedy. The tribunes always protested ineffectually against a measure which suspended all the established laws, legalized assassination, and made Rome a battle-field. Labienus tried anew to blunt in the hands of the Senate so formidable a weapon.

Thirty-seven years before, as will be remembered, Saturninus, the violent promoter of an agrarian law, had, by the aid of a riot, obtained possession of the Capitol; the country had been declared in danger. The tribune perished in the struggle, and the Senator C. Rabirius boasted of having killed him. Despite this long interval of time, Labienus accused Rabirius under an old law of perduellio, which did not leave to the guilty, like the law of treason, the power of voluntary exile, but, by declaring him a public enemy, authorized against him cruel and ignominious punishments. This procedure provoked considerable agitation; the Senate, which felt the blow struck at its privileges, was unwilling to put any one to trial for the execution of an act authorized by itself. The people and the tribunes, on the contrary, insisted that the accused should be brought before a tribunal. Every passion was at work. Labienus claimed to avenge one of his uncles, massacred with Saturninus; and he had the audacity to expose in the Campus Martius the portrait of the factious tribune, forgetting the case of Sextus Titius, condemned, on a former occasion, for the mere fact of having preserved in his house the likeness of Saturninus. The affair was brought, according to ancient usage, before the decemvirs. Caesar, and his cousin Lucius Caesar, were designated by the praetor to perform the functions of judges. The very violence of the accusation, compared with the eloquence of his defenders, Hortensius and Cicero, overthrew the charge of perduellio. Nevertheless, Rabirius, condemned, appealed to the people; but the animosity against him was so great that the fatal sentence was about to be irrevocably pronounced, when the praetor, Metellus Celer, devised a stratagem to arrest the course of justice; he earned away the standard planted at the Janiculum. This battered flag formerly announced an invasion of the country round Rome. Immediately all deliberation ceased, and the people rushed to arms. The Romans were great formalists; and, moreover, as this custom left to the magistrates the power of dissolving at their will the comitia, they had the most cogent motives for preserving it; the assembly soon separated, and the affair was not taken up again. Caesar, nevertheless, had hoped to attain his object. He did not demand the head of Rabirius, whom, when he was subsequently dictator, he treated with favor; he only wished to show to the Senate the strength of the popular party, and to warn it that henceforth it would no more be permitted, as in the time of the Gracchi, to sacrifice its adversaries in the name of the public safety.

If, on the one hand, Caesar let no opportunity escape of brand­ing the former regime, on the other he was the earnest advocate of the provinces, which vainly looked for justice and protection from Rome. He had for example, the same year accused of peculation C. Calpurnius Piso, consul in 687, and afterwards governor of Transpadane Gaul, and brought him to trial for having arbitrarily caused an inhabitant of that country to be executed. The accused was acquitted through the influence of Cicero; but Cesar had shown to the Transpadanes that he was ever the representative of their interests and their vigilant patron.

CAESAR GRAND PONTIFF (691).

He soon received a brilliant proof of the popularity he enjoyed. The dignity of sovereign pontiff, one of the most important in the Republic, was for life, and gave great influence to the individual clothed with it, for religion mingled itself in all the public and private acts of the Romans.

Metellus Pius, sovereign pontiff, dying in 691, the most illustrious citizens, such as P. Servilius Isauricus, and Q. Lutatius Catulus, prince of the Senate, put themselves at the head of the ranks of candidates to replace him. Caesar also solicited the office, and, desirous of proving himself worthy of it, he published, at this time doubtless, a very extensive treatise on the augural law, and another on astronomy, designed to make known in Italy the discoveries of the Alexandrian school.

Servilius Isauricus and Catulus, relying on their antecedents, and on the esteem in which they were held, believed themselves the more sure of election, because, since Sylla, the people had not interfered in the nomination of grand pontiff, the college solely making the election. Labienus, to facilitate Caesar’s access to this high dignity, obtained a plebiscitum restoring the nomination to the suffrages of the people. This manoeuvre disconcerted the other competitors without discouraging them, and, as usual, they attempted to seduce the electors with money. All who held with the party of the nobles united against Caesar, who combated solicitation by solicitation, and sustained the struggle by the aid of considerable loans; he knew how to interest in his success, according to Appian, both the poor that he had paid, and the rich from whom he borrowed. Catulus, knowing Caesar to be greatly in debt, and mistaking his character, offered him a large sum to desist. He answered him that he would borrow a much greater sum of him if he would support his candidature.

At length the great day arrived which was to decide the future of Caesar; when he started to present himself at the comitia, the most gloomy thoughts agitated his ardent mind, and calculating that if he should not succeed, his debts would constrain him perhaps to go into exile, he embraced his mother and said, “Today thou wilt see me grand pontiff or a fugitive.” The most brilliant success crowned his efforts, and what added to his joy was his obtaining more votes in the tribes of his adversaries than they had in all the tribes put together.

Such a victory made the Senate fear whether Caesar, strong in his ascendancy over the people, might not proceed to the great­est excesses; but his conduct remained the same.

Hitherto he had inhabited a very moderate house, in the quarter called Suburra; nominated sovereign pontiff he was lodged in a public building in the Via Sacra. This new position necessarily obliged him, indeed, to a sumptuous life, if we may judge by the luxuriousness displayed at the reception of a simple pontiff, at which he assisted as king of the sacrifices, and of which Macrobius has preserved to us the curious details. Moreover, he built himself a superb villa on the Lake of Nemi, near Aricia.

CATILINE’S CONSPIRACY

Catiline, who has already been spoken Of, had twice failed in his designs upon the consulship; he solicited it again for the year 692, without abandoning his plans of conspiracy. The moment seemed favorable. Pompey being in Asia, Italy was bared of troops; Antonius, associated in the plot, shared the consulship with Cicero. Calm existed on the surface, whilst passions, half extinguished, and bruised interests, offered to the first man bold enough numerous means of raising commotions. The men whom Sylla had despoiled, as well as those he had enriched, but who had dissipated the fruits of their immense plunder, were equally discontented; so that the same idea of subversion formed a bond of union between the victims and the accomplices of the past oppression.

Addicted to excesses of every kind, Catiline dreamed, in the midst of his orgies, of the overthrow of the oligarchy; but we may doubt his desire to put all to fire and sword, as Cicero says, and as most historians have repeated after him. Of illustrious birth, questor in 677, he distinguished himself in Macedonia, in the army of Curio; he had been praetor in 686, and governor of Africa the year following. He was accused of having in his youth imbrued his hands in Sylla’s murders, of having associated with the most infamous men, and of having, been guilty of incest and other crimes ; there would be no reason for exculpating him if we did not know how prodigal political parties in their triumph are of calumnies against the vanquished. Besides, we must acknowledge that “the vices with which he was charged he shared in common with many personages of that epoch, among others with Antonius, the colleague of Cicero, who subsequently undertook his defence. Gifted with a high intelligence and a rare energy, Catiline could not have meditated a thing so insensate as massacre and burning. It would have been to seek to reign over ruins and-tombs. The truth will present itself better  in the following portrait, traced by Cicero, seven years after the death of Catiline, when, returning to a calmer appreciation, the great orator painted in less sombre colors him whom he had so disfigured : “This Catiline, you cannot have forgotten, I think had, if not the reality, at least the appearance of the greatest virtues. He associated with a crowd of perverse men, but he affected to be devoted to men of greatest estimation. If for him debauchery had powerful attractions, he applied himself with no less ardor to labor and affairs. The fire of passions devoured his heart, but he had also a taste for the labors of war. No, I do not believe there ever existed on this earth a man who offered so monstrous an assemblage of passions and qualities so varied, so contrary, and in continual antagonism with each other.”

The conspiracy, conducted by the adventurous spirit of its chief, had acquired considerable development. Senators, knights, young patricians, a great number of the notable citizens of the allied towns, partook in it. Cicero, informed of these designs, assembles the Senate in the Temple of Concord, and communicates to it the information he had received: he informs it that, on the 5th of the calends of November, a rising was to take place in Etruria; that on the morrow a riot would break out in Rome; that the lives of the consuls were threatened; that, lastly, everywhere stores of warlike arms and attempts to enlist the gladiators indicated the most alarming preparations. Catiline, questioned by the consul, exclaims that the tyranny of some men, their avarice, their inhumanity, are the true causes of the uneasiness which torments the Republic; then, repelling with scorn the projects of revolt which they imputed to him, he concludes with this threatening figure of speech : “The Roman people is a robust body, but without head: I shall be that head.” He departed with these words, leaving the Senate undecided and trembling. The assembly, meanwhile, passed the usual decree, enjoining the consuls to watch that the Republic received no injury.

The election of consuls for the following year, till then deferred, took place on the 21st of October, 691, and Silanus having been nominated with Murena, Catiline was a third time rejected. He then dispatched to different parts of Italy his agents, and among others, C. Mallius into Etruria, Septimius to the Picenum, and C. Julius into Apulia, to organize the revolt. At the mouth of the Tiber, a division of the fleet, previously employed against the pirates, was ready to second his projects. At Rome even the assassination of Cicero was boldly attempted.

The Senate was convened again on the 8th of November. Catiline dared to attend, and take his seat in the midst of his colleagues. Cicero, in a speech which has become celebrated, apostrophized him in accents of the strongest indig­nation, and by a crushing denunciation forced him to retire. Catiline, accompanied by three hundred of his adherents, left the capital next morning to join Mallius. During the follow­ing days, alarming news arriving from all parts threw Rome into the utmost anxiety. Stupor reigned there. To the animation of fetes and pleasures had, all of a sudden, succeeded a gloomy silence. Troops were raised; armed outposts were placed at various points; Q. Marcius Rex is dispatched to FAesulse (Fiesole); Q. Metellus Creticus into Apulia; Pomponius Rufus to Capua; Q. Metellus Celer into the Picenum; and, lastly, the consul, C. Antonius, led an army into Etruria. Cicero had detached the latter from the conspiracy by giving him the lucrative government of Macedonia. He accepted in exchange that of Gaul, which he also subsequently renounced, not wishing, after his consulship, to quit the city and depart as proconsul. The principal conspirators, at the head of whom were the PrAetor Lentulus and Cethegus, remained at Rome. They continued energetically the preparations for the insurrec­tion, and entered into communication with the envoys of the Allobroges. Cicero, secretly informed by his spies, among others by Curius, watched their doings, and, when he had indis­putable proofs, caused them to be arrested, convoked the Senate, and exposed the plan of the conspiracy.

Lentulus was obliged to resign the prAetorship. Out of nine conspirators convicted of the attempt against the Republic, five only failed to escape ; they were confided to the custody of the magistrates appointed by the consul. Lentulus was delivered to his kinsman, Lentulus Spinther; L. Statilius to Cesar; Gabinius to Crassus; Cethegus to Cornificius; and Caeparius, who was taken in his flight, to the Senator Cn. Terentius. The Senate was on the point of proceeding against them in a manner in which all the forms of justice would have been violated. The criminal judgments were not within its competence, and neither the consul nor the assembly had the right to condemn a Roman citizen without the concurrence of the people. Be that as it may, the senators assembled for a last time on the 5th of December, to deliberate on the punishment of the conspir­ators; they were less numerous than on the preceding days. Many of them were unwilling to pass sentence of death against citizens belonging to the great patrician families. Some, however, were in favor of capital punishment, in spite of the law Portia. After others had spoken, Caesar made the following speech, the bearing of which merits particular attention:

“Conscript fathers, all who deliberate upon doubtful matters ought to be uninfluenced by hatred, affection, anger, or pity. When we are animated by these sentiments, it is. hard to unravel the truth; and no one has ever been able to serve at once his passions and his interests. Free your reason of that which beclouds it, and you will be strong; if passion invade your mind and rule it, you will be without strength. It would be here the occasion, conscript fathers, to recall to mind how many kings and peoples, carried away by rage or pity, have taken fatal resolutions; but I prefer reminding you how our ancestors, unswayed by prejudice, performed good and just deeds. In our Macedonian war against King Perseus, the Republic of Rhodes, in its power and pride, although it owed its greatness to the support of the Roman people, proved disloyal and hostile to us; but when, on the termination of this war, the fate of the Rhodians was brought under deliberation, our ancestors left them unpunished, in order that no one should ascribe the cause of the war to their riches rather than to their wrongs. So, also, in all the Punic wars, although the Carthaginians had often, both during peace and during the truces, committed perfidious atrocities, our fathers, in spite of the opportunity, never imitated them, because they thought more of their honor than of vengeance, however just.

“And you, conscript fathers, take care that the crime of P. Lentulus and his accomplices overcome not the sentiment of your dignity, and consult not your anger more than your repu­tation. Indeed, if there be a punishment adequate to their offences, I will approve the new measure; but if, on the contrary, the vastness of the crime exceeds all that can be imagined, we should adhere, I think, to that which has been provided by the laws.

“Most of those who have expressed their opinion before me have deplored in studied and magniloquent terms the misfortune of the Republic; they have recounted the horrors of war and the sufferings of the vanquished, the rapes of young girls and boys, infants torn from the arms of their parents, mothers delivered to the lust of the vanquisher, the pillage of temples and houses, the carnage and burning everywhere; in short, arms, corpses, blood, and mourning. But, by the immortal gods, to what tend these speeches ? To make you detest the conspiracy? What! will he whom a plot so great and so atrocious has not moved, be inflamed by a speech ? No, not so; men never consider their personal injuries slight; many men resent them too keenly. But, conscript fathers, that which is permitted to some is not permitted to others. Those who live humbly in obscurity may err by passion, and few people know it; all is equal with them, fame and fortune; but those who, invested with high dignities, pass their life in an exalted sphere, do nothing of which every mortal is not informed. Thus, the higher the fortune the less the liberty; the less we ought to be partial, rancorous, and especially angry. What, in others, is named hastiness, in men of power is called pride and cruelty.

“I think, then, conscript fathers, that all the tortures known can never equal the crimes of the conspirators; but, among most mortals, the last impressions are permanent, and the crimes of the greatest culprits are forgotten, to remember only the punishment, if it has been too severe.

“What D. Silanus, a man of constancy and courage, has said, has been inspired in him, I know, by his zeal for the Republic, and in so grave a matter he has been swayed neither by par­tiality nor hatred. I know too well the wisdom and moderation of that illustrious citizen. Nevertheless, his advice seems to me, I will not say cruel (for can one be cruel towards such men ?), but contrary to the spirit of our government. Truly, Silanus, either fear or indignation would have forced you, consul elect, to adopt a new kind of punishment. As to fear, it is superfluous to speak of it, when, thanks to the active foresight of our illustrious consul, so many guards are under arms. As to the punishment, we may be permitted to say the thing as it is: in affliction and misfortune death is the termination of our sufferings, and not a punishment; it takes away all the ills of humanity; beyond are neither cares nor joy. But, in the name of the immortal gods, why not add to your opinion, Silanus, that they shall be forthwith beaten with rods? Is it because the law Portia forbids it? But other laws also forbid the taking away the lives of condemned citizens, and prescribe exile. Is it because it is more cruel to be beaten with rods than to be put to death  But is there any thing too rigorous, too cruel, against men convicted of so black a design? If, then, this penalty is too light, is it fitting to respect the law upon a less essential point, and break it in its most serious part? But, it may be said, who will blame your decree against the parricides of the Republic? Time, circumstance, and fortune, whose caprice governs the world. Whatever happens to them, they will have merited. But you, senators, consider the influence your decision may have upon other offenders. Abuses often grow from pre­cedents good in principle; but when the power falls into the hands of men less enlightened, or less honest, a just and reasonable precedent receives an application contrary to justice and reason.

“The Lacedaemonians imposed upon Athens vanquished a government of thirty rulers. These began by putting to death without judgment all those whose crimes marked them out to public hatred; the people rejoiced and said it was well done. Afterwards, when the abuses of this power multiplied, good and bad alike were sacrificed at the instigation of caprice; the rest were in terror. Thus, Athens, crushed under servitude, expiated cruelly her insensate joy. In our days, when Sylla, conqueror, caused to be butchered Damasippus and other men of that description, who had attained to dignities to the curse of the Republic, who did not praise such a deed? Those villains, those factious men, whose seditions had harassed the Republic, had, it was said, merited their death. But this was the signal for a great carnage. For if any one coveted the house or land of another, or only a vase or vestment, it was somehow contrived that he should be put in the number of the proscribed. Thus, those to whom the death of Damasippus had been a subject for joy, were soon themselves dragged to execution, and the massacres ceased not until Sylla had gorged all his followers with riches.

“It is true, I dread nothing of the sort, either from M. Tullius, or from present circumstances; but, in a great State, there . are so many different natures! Who knows if at another epoch, under another consul, master of an army, some imaginary plot may not be believed real ? And if a consul, armed with this example and with a decree of the Senate, once draw the sword, who will stay his hand or limit vengeance ?

“Our ancestors, conscript fathers, were never wanting in prudence or decision, and pride did not hinder them from adopting foreign customs, provided they appeared good. From the Samnites they borrowed their arms, offensive and defensive; from the Etruscans, the greater part of the insignia of our magistrates; in short, all that, amongst their allies or then enemies, appeared useful to themselves, they appropriated with the utmost eagerness, preferring to imitate good examples than to be envious of them. At the same epoch, adopting a Grecian custom, they inflicted rods upon the citizens, and death upon criminals. Afterwards the Republic increased; and with the increase of citizens factions prevailed more, and the innocent were oppressed; they committed many excesses of this kind. Then the law Portia and many others were promulged, which only sanctioned the punishment of exile against the condemned.

“This consideration, conscript fathers, is, in my opinion, the strongest for rejecting the proposed innovation. Certainly those men were superior to us in virtue and wisdom, who, with such feeble means, have raised so great an empire, whilst we preserve with difficulty an inheritance so gloriously acquired. Are we then to set free the guilty, and increase with them the army of Catiline? In no wise; but I vote that their goods be confiscated, themselves imprisoned in the municipia best furnished with armed force, to the end that no one may hereafter propose their restoration to the Senate or even to the people; that whoever shall act contrary to this measure be declared by the Senate an enemy of the State and of the public tranquillity.”

With this noble language, which reveals the statesman, compare the declamatory speeches of the orators who pleaded for the penalty of death: “I wish,” cries Cicero, “to snatch from massacre your wives, your children, and the sainted priestesses of Vesta; from the most frightful outrages, your temples and sanctuaries; our fair country from the most horrible conflagration; Italy from devastation. The conspirators seek to slaughter all, in order that no one may remain to weep for the Republic and lament over the ruin of so great an empire.” And when he speaks of Catiline : “Is there in all Italy a poisoner, is there a gladiator, a brigand, an assassin, a parricide, a forger of wills, a suborner, a debauchee, a squanderer, an adulterer; is there a disreputable woman, a corrupter of youth, a man tarnished in character, a scoundrel, in short, who does not confess to having lived with Catiline in the greatest familiarity ?” Certainly, this is not the cool and impartial language which becomes a judge.

Cicero holds cheap the law and its principles; he must have, above all, arguments for his cause, and he goes to history to seek for facts which might authorize the putting to death of Roman citizens. He holds forth, as an example to follow, the murder of Tiberius Gracchus by Scipio Nasica, and that of Caius Gracchus by the Consul Lucius Opimius; forgetting that but lately, in a famous oration, he had called the two celebrated tribunes the most brilliant geniuses, the true friends of the people; and that the murderers of the Gracchi, for having massacred inviolable personages, became a butt to the hatred and scorn of their fellow-citizens. Cicero himself will shortly pay with exile for his rigor towards the accomplices of Catiline.

Caesar’s speech had such an effect upon the assembly, that many of the senators, amongst others the brother of Cicero, adopted his opinion. Decimus Silanus, consul elect, modified his own, and Cicero at last seemed ready to withdraw from his responsibility, when he said: “If you adopt the opinion of Caesar, as he has always attached himself to the party which passes in the Republic as being that of the people, it is proba­ble that a sentence of which he shall be the author and guarantee will expose me less to popular storms.” However, he persevered in his demand for the immediate execution of the accused. But Cato mainly decided the vacillating majority of the Senate by words the most calculated to influence his auditors. Far from seeking to touch the strings of the higher sentiments and of patriotism, he appeals to selfish interests and fear.  In the name of the immortal gods,” cried he, “I adjure you—you, who have ever held your houses, your lands, your statues, your pictures, in greater regard. than the Republic, if these goods, of whatever kind they be, you desire to preserve; if for your enjoyments you would economize a necessary leisure; rise at last from your lethargy, and take in hand the Republic”; which means, in other terms : “If you wish to enjoy peaceably your riches, condemn the accused without hearing them.” This is what the Senate did.

A singular incident happened, in the midst of these debates, to show to what point Caesar had awakened people’s suspicions. At the most animated moment of the discussion, a letter was brought to him. He read it with eagerness. Cato and other senators, supposing it to be a message from one of the conspira­tors, insisted upon its being read to the Senate. Caesar handed the letter to Cato, who was seated near him. The latter saw it was a love-letter from his sister Servilia, and threw it back indignantly, crying out, “There! keep it, drunkard!”, a gratuitous insult, since he himself did justice to the temperance of Caesar, the day when he said that, of all the men who had overthrown the State, he was the only one who had done it fasting. Cato expressed with still greater force the fears of his party, when he said : “If, in the midst of such great and general alarms, Caesar alone is without fear, it is for you as well as me an additional motive for fear.” Cato went further. After the condemnation of the accused to death, he tried to drive Caesar to extremities, by turning against them an opinion which the latter had expressed in their interest: he proposed to confiscate their goods. The debate became then warmer than ever. Caesar declared that it was an indignity, after having rejected the humane part of his opinion, to adopt from it the rigorous spirit it contained, for the purpose of aggravating the lot of the condemned and adding to their punishment. As his protestation met with no echo in the Senate, he adjured She tribunes to use their right of intercession; but they remained deaf to his appeal. The agitation was at its height, and to put an end to it, the consul, in haste to terminate a struggle the issue of which might become doubtful, agreed that the confiscation should not form a part of the Senatus-consultum.

Whilst the populace outside, excited by the friends of the conspirators, raised seditious clamors, the knights who formed the guard around the Temple of Concord, exasperated by the language of Caesar and the length of the debates, broke in upon the assembly; they surrounded Caesar, and with threatening words, despite his rank of pontiff and of praetor elect, they drew their swords upon him, which M. Curio and Cicero generously turned aside. Their protection enabled him to regain his home: he declared, however, that he would not appear again in the Senate until the new consuls could insure order and liberty for the deliberations.

Cicero, without loss of time, went with the praetors to seek the condemned, and conducted them to the prison of the Capitol, where they were immediately executed. Then a restless crowd, ignorant of what was taking place, demanding what had become of the prisoners, Cicero replied with these simple words, “They have lived”.

We are easily convinced that Caesar was not a conspirator; but this accusation is explained by the pusillanimity of some and the rancor of others. Who does not know that, in times of crisis, feeble governments always tax sympathy for the accused with complicity, and are not sparing of calumny towards their s adversaries? Q. Catulus and C. Piso were animated against him with so deep a hatred that they had importuned the consul to include him in the prosecutions directed against the accomplices of Catiline. Cicero resisted. The report of his participation in the plot was not the less spread, and had been accredited eagerly by the crowd of the envious. Caesar was not one of the conspirators ; if he had been, his influence would have been sufficient to have acquitted them triumphantly. He had too high an idea of himself; he enjoyed too great a con­sideration to think of arriving at power by an underground way and reprehensible means. However ambitious a man may be, he does not conspire when he can attain his end by lawful means. Caesar was quite sure of being raised to the consulship, and his impatience never betrayed his ambition. Moreover, he had constantly shown a marked aversion to civil war; and why should he throw himself into a vulgar conspiracy with infamous individuals, he who refused his participation in the attempts of 'Lepidus when at the head of an army ? If Cicero had believed Caesar guilty, would he have hesitated to accuse him, seeing he scrupled not to compromise, by the aid of a false witness, so high a personage as Licinius Crassus? How, on the eve of the condemnation, could he have trusted to Caesar the custody of one of the conspirators? Would he have exculpated him in the sequel when the accusation was renewed? Lastly, if Caesar, as will be seen afterwards, according to Plutarch, preferred being the first in a village in the Alps to being second in Rome, how could he have consented to be the second to Catiline?

The attitude of Caesar in this matter presents nothing, then, which does not admit an easy explanation. Whilst blaming the conspiracy, he was unwilling that, to repress it, the eternal rules of justice should be set aside. He reminded men, blinded by passion and fear, that unnecessary rigor is always followed by fatal reactions. The examples drawn from history served him to prove that moderation is always the best adviser. It is clear also that, whilst despising most of the authors of the conspiracy, he was not without sympathy for a cause which approached his own by common instincts and enemies. In countries delivered up to party divisions, how many men are there not who desire the overthrow of the existing government, yet without the will to take part in the conspiracy ? Such was the position of Caesar.

On the contrary, the conduct of Cicero and of the Senate can hardly be justified. To violate the law was perhaps a necessity; but to misrepresent the sedition in order to make it odious, to have resource to calumny to vilify the criminals, and to condemn them to death without allowing them a defence, was an evident proof of weakness. In fact, if the intentions of Catiline had not been disguised, the whole of Italy would have responded to his appeal, so weary were the people of the humiliating yoke which weighed upon Rome; but they proclaimed him as one meditating conflagration, murder, and pillage. “Already,” it was said, “ the torches are lit, the assassins are at their posts, the conspirators drink human blood, and dispute over the shreds of a man they have butchered.” It was by these rumors, dexterously spread, by these exaggerations, which Cicero himself  afterwards ridiculed, that the disposition of the people, at first favorable to the insurrection, soon turned against it.

That Catiline might have associated, like all promoters of revolutions, with men who had nothing to lose, and every thing to gain, cannot be disputed; but how can we believe that the majority of his accomplices was composed of criminals loaded with vices? By the confession of Cicero, many honorable individuals figured amongst the conspirators. Inhabitants of colonies and municipia belonging to the first families in their country, allied themselves with Catiline. Many sons of senators, and amongst others, Aulus Fulvius, were arrested on their way to join the insurgents, and put to death by the order of their fathers. Nearly all the Roman youth, says Sallust, favored at that time the designs of the bold conspirator; and, on the other hand, throughout the whole empire, the populace, eager for novelty, approved of his enterprise.

That Catiline may have been a perverse and cruel man of the kind of Marius and Sylla, is probable; that he wished to arrive at power by violence, is certain; but that he had gained to his cause so many important individuals, that he had inspired their enthusiasm, that he had so profoundly agitated the peoples of Italy, without having proclaimed one greater generous idea, is not probable. Indeed, although attached to the party of Sylla by his antecedents, he knew that the only standard capable of rallying numerous partisans was that of Marius. Thus for a long time he preserved in his house, with a religious care, the silver eagle which had guided the legions of that illustrious captain. His speeches confirm still further this’ view: in addressing himself to his accomplices, he laments seeing the destinies of the Republic in the hands of a faction who excluded the greatest number from all participation in honors and riches. He wrote to Catulus, a person of the highest respect, with whom he was intimate, the following letter, de­ficient neither in simplicity, nor in a certain grandeur, the calmness of which offers a striking contrast to the vehemence of Cicero:—

“L. Catiline to Q. Catulus, salutation.—Thy tried friendship, which has always been precious to me, gives me the assurance that in my misfortune thou wilt hear my prayer. I do not wish to justify the part I have taken. My conscience reproaches me with nothing, and I wish only to expose my motives^ which truly thou wilt find lawful. Driven to extremity by the insults and injustices of my enemies, robbed of the recompense due to my services; finally, hopeless of ever obtaining the dignity to which I am entitled, I have taken in hand, according to my custom, the common cause of all the unfortunate. I am represented as constrained by debts to this bold resolution : it is a calumny. My personal means are sufficient to acquit my engagements; and it is known that, thanks to the generosity of my wife, and of her daughter, I have done honor to other engagements which were foreign to me. But I cannot see with composure unworthy men at the pinnacle of honors, whilst they drive me away from them with groundless accusations. In the extremity to which they have thus reduced me, I embrace the only part that remains to a man of heart to defend his political position. I should like to write more fully, but I hear they are setting on foot against me the last degree of violence. I commend to thee Orestilla, and confide her to thy faith. Protect her, I beseech thee, by the head of thy children. Adieu.”

The same sentiments inspired the band of conspirators commanded by Mallius. They reveal themselves in these words:

“We call gods and men to witness that it is not against our country that we have taken up arms, nor against the safety of our fellow-citizens. We, wretched paupers as we are, who, through the violence and cruelty of usurers, are without country, all condemned to scorn and indigence, are actuated by one only wish, to guarantee our personal security against wrong. We demand neither power nor wealth, those great and eternal causes of war and strife among mankind. We only desire freedom, a treasure that no man will surrender, except with life itself. We implore you, senators, have pity on your wretched fellow-citizens.”

These quotations indicate with sufficient clearness, the real character of the insurrection; and that the partisans of Catiline did not altogether deserve contempt, is proved by their energy and resolution. The Senate having declared Catiline and Mallius enemies of their country, promised a free pardon and two hundred thousand sestertii to all who would abandon the ranks of the insurgents; “but not one,” says Sallust, “of so vast an assemblage, was persuaded by the lure of the reward to betray the plot; not one deserted from the camp of Catiline, so deadly was the disease, which, like a pestilence, had infected the minds of most of the citizens.” There is no doubt that Catiline, though without a conscience, and without principles, had, notwithstanding, good feeling enough to maintain a cause that he wished to see ennobled, because, so far from offering freedom to the slaves, as Sylla, Marius, and Cinna had done, an example so full of charms for a conspirator, he refused to make use of them, in despite of the advice of Lentulus, who addressed him in these pregnant words: “Outlawed from Rome, what purpose can a Catiline have in refusing the services of slaves?”(6) Finally, that among these insurgents, who are represented to us as a throng of robbers, ready to melt away without striking a blow, there existed, notwithstanding, a burning faith and a genuine fanaticism, is proved by the heroism of their final struggle. The two armies met in the plain of Pistoia, on the 5th of January, 692; a terrible battle ensued, and, though victory was hopeless, not one of Catiline’s soldiers gave way. To a man they were slain, following the example of their leader, sword in hand; all were found lifeless, but with ranks unbroken, heaped round the eagle of Marius, that glorious relic of the campaign against the Cimbri, that venerated standard of the cause of the people.

We must admit that Catiline was guilty of an attempt to overthrow the laws of his country by violence; but in so doing, he was only following the examples of a Marius and a Sylla. His dreams were of a revolutionary despotism, of the ruin of the aristocratic party, and, according to Dio Cassius, of a change in the constitution of the Republic and of the subjugation of the allies. Yet, would his success have been a misfortune : a per­manent good can never be the production of hands that are not clean.

ERROR OF CICERO.

Cicero believed that he had destroyed an entire party. He was wrong; he had only foiled a conspiracy, and disencumbered a grand cause of the rash men who were compromising it. The judicial murder of the conspirators gave them new life, and one day the tomb of Catiline was found covered with flowers. Laws may be justly broken when society is hurrying on to its own ruin, and a desperate remedy is indispensable for its salvation; and again, when the government, supported by the mass of the people, becomes the organ of its interests and their hopes. But  when, on the contrary, a nation is divided into factions, and the government represents only one of them, its duty, if it intends to foil a plot, is to bind itself to the most exact and scrupulous respect for the law; for, at such a juncture, every measure not sanctioned by the letter of the law appears to be due rather to a selfish feeling of interest than to a desire for the general weal; and the majority of the public, indifferent or hostile, is always disposed to pity the accused, whoever he may be, and to blame the severity with which he was put down.

Cicero was intoxicated with his success. His vanity made him ridiculous. He thought himself as great as Pompey, and wrote to him with all the pride of a conqueror. But he received a chilling answer, and in a short time saw the accomplishment of Caesar’s prophetic words: “If even the greatest criminals are too severely dealt with, the heinousness of their offence is lost in the severity of their sentence.”

Even before the battle of Pistoia, whilst the pursuit of the ad­herents of Catiline was still being prosecuted, public opinion was already hostile to him who had urged the measure, and Metellus Nepos, sent recently from Asia by Pompey, openly found fault with Cicero’s conduct. When the latter, on quitting office, wished to address the people for the purpose of glorifying his consulship, Metellus, who had been elected tribune, silenced him with these words: “We will not hear the defence of the man who refused to hear the defence of accused persons,” and ordered him to confine himself to the usual oath, that he had in no way contravened the laws. “I swear,” answered Cicero, “ that I have saved the Republic.” He excited public cavil, not by evil actions, but by his habit of self-glorification. He never went to the Senate, to the assemblies of the people, to the courts of law, without having on his lips the names of Catiline and Lentulus. However loudly this boastful exclamation might be applauded by Cato and the by-standers, who hail him Father of his Country, their enthusiasm will have but a short duration.

CAESAR PRAETOR (692).

Caesar, prsetor elect of the city (urbanus) the preceding year, entered upon his office in the year 692. Bibulus, his former colleague in the edileship, and his declared opponent, was his colleague. The more his influence increased, the more he seems to have placed it at the service of Pompey, upon whom, since his departure, the hopes of the popular party rested. He had more share than all the others in causing extraordinary honors to be decreed to the conqueror of Mithridates, such as the privilege of attending the games of the circus in a robe of triumph and a crown of laurels, and of sitting in the theatre in the official dress of the magistrates, the praetexta. Still more, he used all his endeavors to reserve for Pompey one of those opportunities of gratifying personal vanity which the Romans prized so highly.

It was the custom for those who were charged with the restoration of any public monument, to have their name engraved on it when the work was completed. Catulus had caused his to be inscribed on the Temple of Jupiter, burnt in the Capitol in 671, and of which he had been intrusted with the rebuilding by Sylla. This temple, however, had not been entirely completed. Caesar appealed against this infraction of the law, accused Catulus of having appropriated a part of the money intended for the restoration, and proposed that the completion of the work should be confided to Pompey on his return, that his name should be placed thereon instead of that of Catulus, and that he should perform the ceremony of dedication. Caesar thus not only gave a proof of deference to Pompey, but he sought to please the multitude by gaining a verdict against one of the most es­teemed chiefs of the aristocratic party.

The news of this accusation caused a sensation in the Senate, and the eagerness with which the nobles hurried into the Forum to vote against the proposal was such, that on that day they omitted to go, according to custom, to congratulate the new consuls; a proof that in this case also it was entirely a question of party. Catulus pronounced his own defence, but without being able to gain the tribune  and the tumult increasing, Caesar was obliged to give way to force. The affair went no further.

The reaction of public opinion against the conduct of the Senate continued, and men did not hesitate to accuse it openly of having murdered the accomplices of Catiline. Metellus Nepos, supported by the friends of the conspirators, by the partisans of his patron, and by those of Caesar, proposed a law for the recall of Pompey with his army, that he might, as he said, maintain order in the city, protect the citizens, and prevent their being put to death without a trial. The Senate, and notably Cato and Q. Minucius, offended already by the success of the army of Asia, offered a steady resistance to these proposals.

On the day when the tribes voted, scenes of the greatest turbulence took place. Cato seated himself between the Praetor Caesar and the Tribune Metellus, to prevent their conversing together. Blows were given, swords were drawn, and each of the two factions was in turn driven from the Forum; until at last the senatorial party gained the day. Metellus, obliged to fly, declared that he was yielding to force, and that he was going to join Pompey, who would know well how to avenge them both. It was the first time that a tribune had been known to abandon Rome and take refuge in the camp of a general. The Senate deprived him of his office, and Caesar of that of praetor. The latter paid no attention, kept his lictors, and continued the administration of justice; but, on being warned that it was in­tended to make use of compulsion against him, he voluntarily resigned his office, and shut himself up in his house.

Nevertheless, this outrage against the laws was not submitted to with indifference. Two days afterwards, a crowd assembled before Caesar’s house: the people with loud cries urged him to resume his office, while Caesar, on his part, engaged them not to transgress the laws. The Senate, which had met on hearing of this riot, sent for him, thanked him for his respect for the laws, and reinstated him in his praetorship.

It was thus that Caesar maintained himself within the pale of the law, and obliged the Senate to overstep it. This body, heretofore so firm, and yet so temperate, no longer shrank from extraordinary acts of authority; a tribune and a praetor were at the same time obliged to fly from their arbitrary proceedings. Ever since the days of the Gracchi, Rome had witnessed the same scenes of violence, sometimes on the part of the nobles, at others on the part of the people.

The justice which the fear of a popular movement had caused to be rendered to Caesar, had not discouraged the hatred of his enemies. They tried to renew against him the accusation of having been an accomplice in Catiline’s conspiracy. At their instigation, Vettius, a man who had been formerly employed by Cicero as a spy to discover the plot, summoned him before the questor Novius Niger; and Curius, to the latter of whom a public reward had been decreed, accused him before the Senate. They both swore to his enrolment among the conspirators, pretending that they had received their information from the lips of Catiline himself. Caesar had no difficulty in defending himself, and appealed to the testimony of Cicero, who at once declared his innocence. The court, however, sat for a long time; and the rumor of the charge having been spread abroad in the city, the crowd, uneasy as to what might be Caesar’s fate, assembled in great numbers to demand his release. So irritated they appeared, that to calm them, Cato conceived it necessary to propose to the Senate a decree ordering a distribution of wheat to the poor—a largess which cost the treasury more than 1,250 talents yearly.

No time was lost in pronouncing the charge calumnious; Curius was deprived of his promised reward; and Vettius, on his way to prison, was all but torn to pieces before the rostra.

The questor Novius was in like manner arrested for having allowed a praetor, whose authority was superior to his own, to be accused before his tribunal.

Not satisfied with conciliating the good-will of the people, Caesar won for himself the favor of the noblest dames of Rome; and, notwithstanding his notorious passion for women, we cannot help discovering a political aim in his choice of mistresses, since all. held by different ties to men who were then playing, or were destined to play, an important part. He had had intimate rela­tions with Tertulla, the wife of Crassus; with Mucia, wife of Pompey; with Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius, who was consul in 696; with Postumia, wife of Servius Sulpicius, who was raised to the consulship in 703, and persuaded to join Caesar’s party by her influence; but the woman he preferred was Servilia, sister of Cato and mother of Brutus, to whom, during his first consulship, he gave a pearl valued at six millions of sestertii. This connection throws an air of improbability over the reports in circulation, that Servilia favored an intrigue between him and her daughter Tertia. Was it by the intermediation of Tertulla that Crassus was reconciled with Caesar? or was that reconciliation due to the injustice of the Senate, and the jealousy of Crassus towards Pompey? Whatever was the cause that brought them together, Crassus seems to have made common cause with him in all the questions in which he was interested, subsequent to the consulship of Cicero.

ATTEMPT OF CLODIUS (692).

At this period a great scandal arose. A young and wealthy patrician, named Clodius, an ambitious and violent man, conceived a passion for Pompeia, Caesar’s wife; but the strict vigilance of Aurelia, her mother-in-law, made it difficult to find opportunities for meeting privately. Clodius, disguised in female apparel, chose, for the opportunity to enter her house, the moment when she was celebrating, by night, attended by the matrons, mysteries in honor of the Roman people. Now, it was forbidden to a male to be present at these religious ceremonies, which it was believed that his presence even would defile. Clodius, recognized by a female slave, was expelled with ignominy. The pontiffs uttered the cry of sacrilege, and it became the duty of the vestals to begin the mysteries anew. The nobles, who had already met with an enemy in Clodius, saw in this act a means to compass his overthrow, and at the same time to com­promise Caesar. The latter, without condescending to inquire whether Pompeia was guilty or not, repudiated her. A decree of the Senate, carried by four hundred votes against fifteen, decided that Clodius must take his trial. He defended himself by pleading an alibi; and, with the sole exception of Aurelia, not a witness came forward against him. Caesar himself, when examined, declared that he knew nothing; and when asked to explain his own conduct, replied, with equal regard to his honor and his interest, “The wife of Caesar must be above suspicion!”. But Cicero, yielding to the malicious suggestions of his wife Terentia, came forward to assert that on the day of the event he had seen Clodius in Rome. The people showed its sympathy with the latter, either because they deemed the crime one that did not deserve a severe punishment, or because their religious scruples were not so strong as their political passions. Crassus, on his part, directed the whole intrigue, and lent the accused funds sufficient to buy his judges. They acquitted him by a majority of thirty-one to twenty-five.

The Senate, indignant at this contradiction, passed, on the motion of Cato, a bill of indictment against the judges who had suffered themselves to be bribed. But as they happened to be knights, the equestrian order made common cause with them,  and openly separated themselves from the Senate. Thus the outrage of Clodius had two serious consequences : first, it proved in a striking manner the venality of justice; secondly, it once more threw the knights into the arms of the popular party. But far other steps were taken to alienate them. The farmers of the revenue demanded a reduction in the price of the rents of Asia, on the ground that they had been leased to them at a price that had become too high in consequence of the wars. The opposition of Cato caused their demand to be refused. This refusal, though doubtless legal, was, under the circumstances, in the highest degree impolitic.

POMPEY’S TRIUMPHAL RETURN (692).

Whilst at Rome dissensions were breaking out on all occasions, Pompey had just brought the war in Asia to a close. Having defeated Mithridates in two battles, he had compelled him to fly towards the sources of the Euphrates, to pass thence into the north of Armenia, and finally to cross thence to Dioscurias, in Colchis, on the western shore of the Black Sea. Pompey had advanced as far as the Caucasus, where he had defeated two mountain tribes, the Albanians and the Iberians, who disputed his passage. When he had arrived within three days’ march of the Caspian, having nothing more to fear from Mithridates, and surrounded by barbarians, he began his retreat through Armenia, where Tigranes came to tender his submission. Next, taking a southerly course, he crossed Mount Taurus, attacked the King of Commagene, fought a battle with the King of Media, invaded Syria, made alliance with the Par­thians, received the submission of the Nabathean Arabs and of Aristobulus, King of the Jews, and took Jerusalem.

During this period, Mithridates, whose energy and whose views appeared to expand in proportion to his dangers and his reverses, was executing a bold scheme. He had passed round by the eastern coast of the Black Sea, and, allying himself with the Scythians and the peoples of the Crimea, he had reached the shores of the Cimmerian Hellespont; but he had still more gigantic designs in his mind. His idea was to open communications with the Celts, and so to reach the Danube, traverse Thrace, Macedonia, and Illyria, cross the Alps, and, like Hannibal, descend upon Italy. Alone, he was great enough to conceive this enterprise, but he was obliged to give it up; his army deserted him, Pharnaces, his son, betrayed him, and he committed suicide at Panticapaeum (Kertch). By this event the vast and rich territories that lie between the Caspian and the Red Sea were placed at the disposal of Pompey. Pharnaces received the kingdom of the Bosphorus. Tigranes, deprived of a portion of his dominions, only preserved Armenia. Deiotarus, tetrarch of Galatia, obtained an increase of territory, and Ariobarzanes obtained an enlargement of the kingdom of Cappadocia, which was re-established in his favor. Various minor princes devoted to the Roman interests received endowments, and thirty-nine towns were rebuilt or founded. Finally, Pontus, Cilicia, Syria, Phoenicia, declared to be Roman provinces, were obliged to accept the constitution imposed upon them by the conqueror. These countries received .institutions which they preserved through several centuries. All the shores of the Mediterranean, with the exception of Egypt, became tributaries of Rome.

The war in Asia terminated, Pompey sent before him his lieutenant, Pupius Piso Calpurnianus, who was soliciting the consulship, and who, for that reason, requested an adjournment of the elections. This adjournment was granted, and Piso unanimously elected consul for the year 693, with M. Valerius Messala; to such a degree did the terror of Pompey’s name make every one eager to grant what he desired. For no one knew his designs; and it was feared lest, on his return, he should again march upon Rome at the head of his victorious army. But Pompey, having landed at Brundusium about the month of January, 693, disbanded his army, and arrived at Rome, escorted only by the citizens who had gone out in crowds to meet him. After the first display of public gratitude, he found his reception different from that on which he had reckoned, and domestic griefs came to swell the catalogue of his disappointments. He had been informed of the scandalous conduct of his wife Mutia during his absence, and determined to repudiate her.

Envy, that scourge of a Republic, raged against him. The nobles did not conceal their jealousy: it seemed as though they were taking revenge for their own apprehensions, to which they were now adding their own feelings of personal resentment. Lucullus had not forgiven him for having frustrated his expectation of the command of the army of Asia. Crassus was jealous of his renown; Cato, always hostile to those who raised themselves above their fellows, could not be favorable to him, and had even refused him the hand of his niece; Metellus Creticus cherished a bitter remembrance of attempts which had been made to wrest from him the merit of conquering Crete; and Metellus Celer was offended at the repudiation of his sister Mutia. As for Cicero, whose opinion of men varied according to their more or less deference for his merit, he discovered that his hero of other days was destitute of rectitude and greatness of soul. Pompey, foreseeing the ill feeling he was about to encounter, exerted all his influence, and spent a large sum of money to. secure the election of Afranius, one of his old lieutenants,'as consul. He reckoned upon him to obtain the two things which he desired most: a general approval of all his acts in the East, and a distribution of lands to his veterans. Notwithstanding violent opposition, Afranius was elected, with Q. Metellus Celer. But, before proposing the laws which concerned him, Pompey, who till then had not entered Rome, demanded a triumph. It was granted him, but for two days only. However, the pageant was not the less remarkable for its splendor. It was held on the 29th and 30th of September, 693.

Before him were carried boards on which were inscribed the names of the conquered countries, from Judaea to the Caucasus, and from the shores of the Bosphorus to the banks of the Euphrates; the names of the towns and the number of the vessels taken from the pirates; the names of thirty-nine towns repeopled; the amount of wealth brought into the treasury, amounting to 20,000 talents, without counting his largesses to his soldiers, of whom he who received least had 1,500 drachmas. The public revenues, which .before Pompey’s time amounted only to fifty millions of drachmas, reached the amount of eighty-one millions and a half. Among the precious objects that were exposed before the eyes of the Romans was the Dactylotheca (or collection of engraved stones) belonging to the King of Pontus; a chess-board made of only two precious stones, but which, nevertheless, measured four feet in length by three in breadth, ornamented with a moon in gold, weighing thirty pounds; three couches for dinner, of immense value; vases of gold and precious stones numerous enough to load nine side­boards; thirty-three chaplets of pearls: three gold statues, representing Minerva, Mars, and Apollo; a mountain of the same metal, on a square base, decorated with fruits of all kinds, and with figures of stags and lions, the whole encircled by a golden vine, a present from King Aristobulus; a miniature temple dedicated to the Muses, and provided with a clock; a couch of gold, said to have belonged to Darius, son of Hystaspes; murrhine vases; a statue, in silver, of Pharnaces, King of Pontus, the conqueror of Sinope, and the contemporary of Philip HI. of Macedon; a silver statue of the last Mithridates, and a colossal bust of him in gold, eight cubits high, together with his throne and sceptre; chariots armed with scythes, and enriched with gilt ornaments; then the portrait of Pompey himself, embroidered in pearls. Lastly, trees were now introduced for the first time as rare and precious objects: these were the ebony-tree and the shrub which produces balsam Before the chariot of Pompey came the Cretan Lasthenes and Panares, taken from the triumph of Metellus Creticus; the chiefs of the pirates; the son of Tigranes, King of Armenia, his wife and his daughter; the widow of the elder Tigranes, called Zosima; Olthaces, chief of the Colchians; Aristobulus, King of the Jews; the sister of Mithridates, with five of his sons; the wives of the chieftains of Scythia; the hostages of the Iberians and Albanians,, and those of the princes of Commagene. Pompey was in a chariot, adorned with jewels, and dressed in the costume of Alexander the Great; and as he had already three times obtained the honors of a triumph for his successes in Africa, Europe, and Asia, a grand trophy was displayed, with this inscription: “ Over the whole world!”

So much splendor flattered the national pride without disarming the envious. Victories in the East had always been obtained without extraordinary efforts, and therefore people had always depreciated their merit, and Cato went so far as to say that in Asia a general had only women to fight against. In the Senate, Lucullus, and other influential men of consular rank, threw out the decree that was to ratify all the acts of Pompey; and yet, to refuse to ratify either the treaties concluded with the kings, or the exchange of the provinces, or the amount of tribute imposed upon the vanquished, was as though they questioned all that he had done. But they went still further.

Towards the month of January, 694, the Tribune L. Flavius proposed to purchase and appropriate to Pompey’s veterans, for purposes of colonization, all the territory that had been declared public domain in the year 521, and since sold; and to divide among the poor citizens the ager publicus of Volaterrae and Arretium, cities of Etruria, which had been confiscated by Sylla, but not yet distributed. The expense entailed by these measures was to be defrayed by five years’ revenue of the conquered provinces. Cicero, who wished to gratify Pompey, without damaging the interests of those he termed his rich friends, proposed that the ager publicus should be left intact, but that other lands of equal value should be purchased. Nevertheless, he was in favor of the establishment of colonies, though two years before he had called the attention of his hearers to the danger of such establishments; he was ready to admit that that dangerous-populace, those dregs of the city, must be removed to a distance from Rome, though in former days he had engaged that same populace to remain in Rome, and enjoy their festivals, their games, and their rights of suffrage. Finally, he proposed to buy private estates, and leave the ager publicus intact; whereas, in his speech against Rullus, he had blamed the establishment of colonies on private estates as a violation of all precedent. The eloquence of the orator, which had been powerful enough to cause the rejection of the law of Rullus, was unsuccessful in obtaining the adoption of that of Flavius; it was attacked with such violence by the Consul Metellus, that the tribune caused him to be put in prison ; but this act of severity having met with a general disapproval, Pompey was alarmed at the scandal, and bade Flavius set the consul at liberty, and abandoned the law. Sensitive to so many insults, and seeing his prestige diminish, the conqueror of Mithridates regretted that he had disbanded his army, and determined to make common cause with Clodius, who then enjoyed an extraordinary popularity.

About the same period, Metellus Nepos, who had returned a second time to Italy with Pompey, was elected Praetor, and obtained a law to abolish tolls throughout Italy, the exaction of which had hitherto given rise to loud complaints. This measure, which had probably been suggested by Pompey and Caesar, met with general approval; yet the Senate made an unsuccessful attempt to have the name of the proposer erased from the law: which shows, as Dio Cassius says, that the assembly accepted nothing from its adversaries, not even an act of kindness.

DESTINY REGULATES EVENTS.

Thus all the forces of society, paralyzed by intestine divisions, and powerless for good, appeared to revive only for the purpose of throwing obstacles in its way. Military glory and eloquence, those two instruments of Roman power, inspired only distrust and envy. The triumph of the generals was regarded not so much as a success for the Republic as a source of personal gratification. The gift of eloquence still exercised its ancient empire, so long as the orator remained upon the tribune; but scarcely had he stepped down before the impression he had made was gone; the people remained indifferent to brilliant displays of rhetoric that were employed to encourage selfish passions, and not to defend, as heretofore, the great interests of the fatherland.

It is well worthy of our attention that, when destiny is driving a state of things towards an aim, there is, by a law of fate, a concurrence of all forces in the same direction. Thither tend alike the attacks and the hopes of those who seek change; thither tend the fears and the resistance of those who would put a stop to every movement. After the death of Sylla, Caesar was the only man who persevered in his endeavors to raise the stand­ard of Marius. Hence nothing more natural than that his acts and speeches should bend in the same direction. But the fact on which we ought to fix our attention is, the spectacle of the partisans of resistance and the system of Sylla, the opponents of all innovation, helping, unconsciously, the progress of the events which smoothed for Caesar the way to supreme power.

Pompey, the representative of the cause of the Senate, gives the hardest blow to the ancient regime, by re-establishing the tribuneship. The popularity which his prodigious successes in the East had won for him, had raised him above all others; by nature, as well as by his antecedents, he leaned to the aristocratic party; the jealousy of the nobles throws him into the popular party and into the arms of Caesar.

The Senate, on its part, while professing to aim at the preservation of all the old institutions intact, abandons them in the presence of danger; through jealousy of Pompey, it leaves to the tribunes the initiative in all laws of general interest; through fear of Catiline, it lowers the barriers that had been raised between new men and the consulship, and confers that office upon Cicero. In the trial of the accomplices of Catiline, it violates both the forms of justice and the chief safeguard of the liberty of the citizens, the right of appeal to the people. Instead of remembering that the best policy in circumstances of peril is to confer upon men of importance some brilliant mark of acknowledgment for the services they have rendered to the State, either in good or bad fortune; instead of following, after victory, the example given after defeat by the ancient Senate, which thanked Varro because he had not despaired of the Republic, the Senate shows itself ungrateful to Pompey, gives him no credit for his moderation, and, when it can compromise him, and even bind him by the bonds of gratitude, it meets his most legitimate demands with a refusal, a refusal which will teach generals to come that, when they return to Rome, though they have increased the territory of the Commonwealth, though they have doubled the revenues of the Republic, if they disband their army the approval of their acts will be disputed, and an attempt made to bargain with their soldiers for the reward due to their glorious labors.

Cicero himself, who is desirous of maintaining the old state of things, undermines it by his language. In his speeches against Verres, he denounces the venality of the Senate, and the extortions of which the provinces complain; in others, he unveils in a most fearful manner the corruption of morals, the traffic in offices, and the dearth of patriotism among the upper classes; in pleading for the Manilian Law, he maintains that there is need of a strong power in the hands of one individual to insure order in Italy and glory abroad; and it is after he has exhausted all the eloquence at his command in pointing out the excess of the evil and the efficacy of the remedy, that he thinks it is possible to stay the stream of public opinion by the chilling counsel of immobility.

Cato declared that he was for no innovations whatever; yet he made them more than ever indispensable by his own opposition. No less than Cicero, he threw the blame on the vices of society; but whilst Cicero wavered often through the natural fickleness of his mind, Cato, with the systematic tenacity of a stoic, remained inflexible in the application of absolute rules. He opposed every thing, even schemes of the greatest utility; and, standing in the way of all concession, rendered personal animosities as hard to reconcile as political factions. He had separated Pompey from the Senate by causing all his proposals to be rejected; he had refused him his niece, notwithstanding the advantage for his party of an alliance which would have impeded the designs of Caesar. Regardless of the political consequences of a system of extreme rigor, he had caused Metellus to be deposed when he was tribune, and Caesar when he was praetor; he caused Clodius to be put upon his trial; he impeached his judges, without any foresight of the fatal consequences of an investigation which called in question the honor of an entire order. This inconsiderate zeal had rendered the knights hostile to the Senate; they became still more so by the opposition offered by Cato to the reduction of the price of the farms of Asia. And thus Cicero, seeing things in their true light, wrote as follows to Atticus: “With the best intentions in the world, Cato is ruining us: he judges things as if we were living in Plato’s Republic, while we are only the dregs of Romulus.”

Nothing, then, arrested the march of events; the party of resistance hurried them forward more rapidly than any other. It was evident that they progressed towards a revolution; and a revolution is like a river, which overflows and inundates. Caesar aimed at digging a bed for it. Pompey, seated proudly at the helm, thought he could command the waves that were sweeping him along. Cicero, always irresolute, at one moment allowed himself to drift with the stream, at another thought himself able to stem it with a fragile bark. Cato, immovable as a rock, flattered himself that alone he could resist the irresistible stream that was carrying away the old order of Roman society.

CHAPTER IV.

(693-695.)

CAESAR PROPRIETOR IN SPAIN (693)

Whilst at Rome ancient reputations were sinking in struggles destitute alike of greatness and patriotism, others, on the contrary, were rising in the camps, through the lustre of military glory. Caesar, on quitting his praetorship, had gone to Ulterior Spain (Hispania Ulterior), which had been assigned to him by lot. His creditors had vainly attempted to retard his departure; he had had recourse to the credit of Crassus, who had been his security for the sum of 830 talents. He had not even waited for the instructions of the Senate, which, indeed, could not be ready for some time, as that body had deferred all affairs concerning the consular provinces till after the trial of Clodius, which was only terminated in April, 693. This eagerness to reach his post could not therefore be caused by fear of fresh prosecutions, as has been supposed; but its motive was the desire to carry assistance to the allies, who were imploring the protection of the Romans against the Mountaineers of Lusitania. Always devoted without reserve to those whose cause he espoused, he took with him into Spain his client Masintha, a young African of high birth, whose cause he had recently defended at Rome with extreme zeal, and whom he had concealed in his house after his condemnation, to save him from the persecutions of Juba, son of Hiempsal, King of Numidia.

It is related that, in crossing the Alps, Caesar halted at a village, and his officers asked him, jocularly, if he thought that even in that remote place there were solicitations and rivalries for office. He answered, gravely, “I would rather be first among these savages than second in Rome.” This anecdote, which is more or less authentic, is repeated as a proof of Caesar’s ambition. Who doubts his ambition? The important point to know is whether it were legitimate or not, and if it were to be exercised for the salvation or the ruin of the Roman world. After all, is it not more honorable to admit frankly the feelings which animate us, than to conceal, as Pompey did, the ardor of desire under the mask of disdain?

On his arrival in Spain, he promptly raised ten new cohorts, which, joined to the twenty others already in the country, furnished him with three legions, a force sufficient for the speedy pacification of the province. Its tranquillity was incessantly disturbed by the depredations of the inhabitants of Mount Herminium, who ravaged the plain. He required them to establish themselves there, but they refused. Caesar then began a rough mountain war, and succeeded in reducing them to sub­mission. Terrified by this example, and dreading a similar fate, the neighboring tribes conveyed their families and their most precious effects across the river Durius (Douro). The Roman general hastened to profit by the opportunity, penetrated into the valley of the Mondego to take possession of the abandoned towns, and went in pursuit of the fugitives. The latter, on the point of being overtaken, turned, and resolved to accept battle, driving their flocks and herds before them, in the hope that,  through this stratagem, the Romans would leave their ranks in their eagerness to secure the booty, and so be more easily overcome. But Caesar was not the man to be caught in this clumsy trap; he left the cattle, went straight at the enemy, and routed them. Whilst occupied in the campaign in the north of Lusitania, he learnt that in his rear the inhabitants of Mount Herminium had revolted again with the design of closing the road by which he had come. He then took another; but they made a further attempt to intercept his passage by occupying the country between the Serra Albardos and the sea. Defeated, and their retreat cut off, they were forced to fly in the direction of the ocean, and took refuge in an island now called Peniche de Cima, which, being no longer entirely separated from the continent, has become a peninsula. It is situated about twenty- five leagues from Lisbon.  As Caesar had no ships, he ordered rafts to be constructed, on which some troops crossed. The rest thought that they might venture through some shallows, which, at low tide, formed a ford; but, desperately attacked by the enemy, they were, as they retreated, engulfed by the rising tide. Publius Scaevius, their chief, was the only man who escaped, and he, notwithstanding his wounds, succeeded in reaching the mainland by swimming. Subsequently, Caesar obtained some ships from Cadiz, crossed over to the island with his army, and defeated the barbarians. Thence he sailed in the direction of Brigantium (now La Corogne), the inhabitants of which, terrified at the sight of the vessels, which were strange to them, surrendered voluntarily. The whole of Lusitania became tributary to Rome.

Caesar received from his soldiers the title of Imperator. When the news of his successes reached Rome, the Senate decreed in his honor a holiday, and granted him the right of a triumph, on his return. The expedition ended, the conqueror of the Lusitanians took in hand the civil administration, and caused justice and concord to reign in his province. He merited the gratitude of the Spaniards by suppressing the tribute imposed by Metellus Pius during the war against Sertorius. Above all, he applied himself to putting an end to the differences that arose each day between debtors and creditors, by ordaining that the former should devote, every year, two-thirds of their income to the liquidation of their debts; a measure which, according to Plutarch, brought him great honor. This measure was, in fact, an act which tended to the preservation of property; it prevented the Roman usurers from taking pos­session of a debtor’s entire capital to reimburse themselves; and we shall see that Caesar made it of general application when he became dictator. Finally, having healed their dissensions, he loaded the inhabitants of Cadiz with benefits, and left behind him laws, the happy influence of which was felt for a long period. He abolished among the people of Lusitania their barbarous customs, some of which went as far as the sacrifice of human victims. It was there that he became intimate with a man of consideration in Cadiz, L. Cornelius Balbus, who became magister fabrorum (chief engineer) during his Gaulish wars, and who was defended by Cicero when his right of Roman citizen was called in question.

Though he administered his province with the greatest equity, yet, during his campaign, he had amassed a rich booty, which enabled him to reward his soldiers, and to pay considerable sums into the treasury, without being accused of peculation or of arbitrary acts. His conduct as propraetor of Spain was praised by all, and among others by Mark Antony, in a speech pronounced after Caesar’s death.

It was not, then, as Suetonius pretends, by the begging of subsidies (for a general hardly begs at the head of an army), nor was it by an abuse of power, that he amassed such enormous riches; he obtained them by contributions of war, by a good administration, and even by the gratitude of those whom he had governed.

CAESAR DEMANDS TRIUMPH AND CONSULSHIP (694).

Caesar returned to Rome towards the month of June without waiting for the arrival of his successor. This return, which the historians describe as hasty, was by no means so, since his regular authority had expired in the month of January, 694. But he was determined to be present at the approaching meeting of the consular comitia; he presented himself with confidence, and whilst preparing for his triumph, demanded at the same time permission to become a candidate for the consulship. Invested with the title of Imperative, having, by a rapid conquest, extended the limits of the empire to the northern shores of the Ocean, he might justly aspire to this double distinction; but it was granted with difficulty. To obtain a triumph, it was necessary to remain without the walls of Rome, to retain the lictors and continue the military uniform, and to wait till the Senate should fix the date of entry. To solicit for the consulship, it was necessary, on the contrary, to be present in Rome, clad in a white robe, the costume of those who were candidates for public offices, and to reside there several days previous to the election. The Senate had not always considered these two demands incompatible: it would perhaps even have granted this indulgence to Caesar, had not Cato, by speaking till the end of the day, rendered all deliberation impossible. He had not, however, been so severe in 684; but it was because, on that occasion, Pompey was triumphing in reality over Sertorius, that foe to the aristocracy, though officially it was only talked of as a victory over the Spaniards.  Constrained to choose between an idle pageant and real power, Caesar did not hesitate.

The ground had been well prepared for his election. His popularity had been steadily on the increase; and the Senate, too much elated by its successes, had estranged those who possessed the greatest influence. Pompey, discontented at the uniform refusals with which his just demands had been met, knew well also that the recent law, declaring enemies of the State those who bribed the electors, was a direct attack against himself, since he had openly paid for the election of the Consul Afranius; but, always infatuated with his own personal attractions, he consoled himself for his checks by strutting about in his gaudy, embroidered robe. Crassus, who had long remained faithful to the aristocratic party, had become its enemy, on account of the ill-disguised jealousy of the nobles towards him, and their intrigues to implicate him with Caesar in the conspiracy of Catiline. However, though he held in his hands the strings of many an intrigue, he was fearful of compromising himself, and shrank from declaring in public against any man in credit. Lucullus, weary of warfare and of intestine struggles, was withdrawing from politics in order to enjoy his vast wealth in tranquillity. Catulus was dead, and the majority of the nobles were ready to follow the impulse given them by certain enthusiastic senators, who, caring little about public affairs, thought themselves the happiest of men if they had in their fishponds carp sufficiently tamed to come and eat out of their hands. Cicero felt his own solitary position. The nobles, whose angry feelings he had served, now that the peril was over, regarded him as no better than an upstart. Therefore, he prudently changed his principles; he, the exterminator of conspirators, had become the defender of P. Sylla, one of Catiline’s accomplices, and procured his acquittal in the teeth of the evidence; he, the energetic opponent of all partitions of land, had spoken in favor of the agrarian law of Flavius. He wrote to Atticus, “I have seen that those men whose happiness belongs to the passing hour, those illustrious lovers of fishponds, are no longer able to conceal their jealousy of me; so I have sought more solid support.”

In a word, he had made overtures to Pompey, though in secret he admitted that he possessed neither greatness of mind nor nobleness of heart. “He only knows how to curry favor and flatter the people,” he said; “and here am I bound to him on such terms that our interest, as individuals, is served thereby; and, as statesmen, we can both act with greater firmness. The ill-will of our ardent and unprincipled youth had been excited against me. I have been so successful in bringing it round by my address, that at present it cares for no one but me. Finally, I am careful to wound no man’s feelings, and that without servileness or popularity-hunting. My entire conduct is so well planned, that, as a public man, I yield in nothing; and as a private individual, who knows the weakness of honest men, the injustice of the envious, and the hatred of the wicked, I take my precautions and act with prudence.”

Cicero deceived himself with regard to the causes of his change of party, and did not acknowledge to himself the reasons that constrained him to look out for powerful patrons. Like all men destitute of force of character, instead of openly confessing the motives of his conduct, he justified himself to his friends by pretending that, so far from having altered his own opinions, it was he who was converting Pompey, and would soon make the same experiment upon Caesar. “You rally me pleasantly,” he wrote to Atticus, “on the subject of my intimacy with Pompey; but do not fancy that I have contracted it out of regard for my personal safety. It is all the effect of circumstances. When there was the slightest disagreement between us, there was trouble in the State. I have laid my plans and made my conditions, so that, without laying aside my own principles, which are good, I have led him to better sentiments. He is somewhat cured of his madness for popularity. ... If I am equally successful with Caesar, whose ship is now sailing under full canvas, shall I have done great harm to the State?” Cicero, like all men whose strength lies in eloquence, felt that he could play no important part, or even secure his own personal safety, unless he allied himself with men of the sword.

Whilst at Rome the masters of the world were wasting their time in mean quarrels, alarming news came suddenly to create a diversion in political intrigue. Information was brought that that the Gaulish allies on the banks of the Saone had been defeated by the Germans, that the Helvetii were in arms, and making raids beyond their frontiers. The terror was universal. Fears were entertained of a fresh invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones; and, as always happened on such occasions, a general levy, without exception, was ordered. The consuls of the previous year drew lots for their provinces, and it was decided to dispatch commissioners to come to an understanding with the Gaulish tribes, with a view to resist foreign invasions. The names of Pompey and Cicero were at once pronounced; but the Senate, influenced by different motives, declared that their presence was too necessary in Rome to allow them to be sent away. They were unwilling to give the former an opportunity of again distinguishing himself, or to deprive themselves of the concur­rence of the latter.

ALLIANCE OF CAESAR, POMPEY, AND CRASSUS.

News of a more reassuring character having been received from Gaul, the fear of war ceased for a time, and things had returned to their customary course when Caesar came home from Spain. In the midst of conflicting opinions and interests, the presence of a man of steady purpose and deeply-rooted convictions, and illustrious through recent victories, was, without any doubt, an event. He did not require long to form his estimate of the situation; and as he could not as yet unite the masses by the realization of a grand idea, he thought to unite the chiefs by a common interest.

All his endeavors from that time were devoted to making Pompey, Crassus, and Cicero share his ideas. The first had been rather ill disposed towards him. On his return from his campaign against Mithridates, Pompey had called Caesar his Egistheus, in allusion to the intrigue which, he had had with his wife Mucia, whilst he, like Agamemnon, was making war in Asia. Resentment, on this account, usually slight enough among the Romans, soon disappeared before the exigencies of political life. As for Crassus, who had long been separated from Pompey by a jealous feeling of rivalry, it needed all Caesar’s tact, and all the seduction of his manners, to induce him to become reconciled with his rival. But, to bring them both to follow the same line of conduct, it was necessary, over and above this, to tempt them with such powerful motives as would insure conviction. The historians, in general, have given no other reason to account for the agreement of these three men than personal interest. Doubt­less, Pompey and Crassus were not insensible to a combination that favored their love of power and wealth ; but we ought to lend Caesar a more elevated motive, and suppose him inspired by a genuine patriotism.

The condition of the Republic must have appeared thus to his comprehensive grasp of thought: The Roman dominion, stretched, like some vast figure, across the world, clasps it in her sinewy arms; and whilst her limbs are full of life and strength, the heart is wasting by decay. Unless some heroic remedy be applied, the contagion will soon spread from the centre to the extremities, and the mission of Rome will remain unfinished! Compare with the present the prosperous days of the Republic. Recollect the time when envoys from foreign nations, doing homage to the policy of the Senate, declared openly that they preferred the protecting sovereignty of Rome to independence itself. Since that period, what a change has taken place! All nations execrate the power of Rome, and yet that power preserves them from still greater evils. Cicero is right: “Let Asia think well of it: there is not one of the woes that are bred of war and civil strife that she would not experience did she cease to live under our laws.” And this advice may be applied to all the countries whither the legions have penetrated. If, then, fate has willed that the nations are to be subject to the sway of a single people, it is the duty of that people, as charged with the execution of the eternal decrees, to be, towards the vanquished, as just and equitable as the Divinity, since he is as inexorable as destiny. How are we to fix a limit to the arbitrary conduct of proconsuls and propraetors, which all the laws promulgated for so many years have been powerless to check ? How put a stop to the exactions committed at all points of the empire, if a firmer and stronger direction do not emanate from the central power?—The Republic pursues an irregular system of encroachment, which will exhaust its resources; it is impossible for her to fight against all nations at once, and at the same time to maintain her allies in their allegiance, if, by unjust treatment, they are driven to revolt. The enemies of the Republic must be diminished in number by restoring their freedom to the cities which are worthy of it, and acknowledging as friends of the Roman people those nations with whom there is a chance of living in peace. Our most dangerous enemies are the Gauls, and it is against this turbulent and warlike nation that all the strength of the State ought to be directed.—In Italy, and under this name Cisalpine Gaul must be included, how many citizens are deprived of political rights! At Rome, how many of the proletaries are living on the charity either of the rich or of the State! Why should we not extend the Roman commune as far as the Alps, and why not augment the race of laborers and soldiers by making them landowners? The Roman people must be raised in its own eyes, and the Republic in the eyes of the world!—Absolute liberty of speech and vote was a great benefit, when, modified by morality, and restrained by a powerful aristocracy, it gave scope to individual faculties without damaging the general well-being; but, ever since the morality of ancient days disappeared with the aristocracy, we have seen the laws become weapons of war for the use of parties, the elections a traffic, the forum a battlefield; while liberty is nothing more than a never ending cause of weakness and decay.—Our institutions cause such uncertainty in our councils, and such independence in our offices of state, that we search in vain for that spirit of order and control which are indispensable elements in the maintenance of so vast an empire. Without overthrowing institutions which have given five centuries of glory to the Republic, it is possible, by a close union of the most worthy citizens, to establish in the State a moral authority, which governs the passions, tempers the laws, gives a greater stability to power, directs the elections, maintains the representatives of the Roman people in their duty, and frees us from the two most serious dangers of the present: the selfishness of the nobles and the turbulence of the mob. This is what they may realize by their union; their disunion, on the contrary, will only encourage the fatal conduct of these men who are endangering the future equally, some by their opposition, the others by their headlong violence.

These considerations must have been easily understood by Pompey and Crassus, who had themselves been actors in such great events, witnesses of so much blood shed in civil wars, of so many noble ideas, triumphing at one moment and overthrown the next. They accepted Caesar’s proposal, and thus was concluded an alliance which is wrongly termed the First Triumvirate. As for Cicero, Caesar tried to persuade him to join the compact which had just been formed, but he refused to become one of what he termed a party of friends. Always uncertain in his conduct, always divided between his admiration for those who held the sovereign power and with his engage­ments with the oligarchy, and uneasy for the future which his foresight could not penetrate, he set his mind to work to pre-vent the success of every measure which he approved as soon as it had succeeded. The alliance which these three persons ratified by their oaths remained long a secret; and it was only during Caesar’s consulship that it became matter of public notoriety, from the unanimity they displayed in all their political resolutions. Caesar then set energetically to work to unite in his own favor every chance that could render his election certain.

Among the candidates was L. Lucceius. Caesar was desirous of attaching to his cause this person, who was distinguished alike by his writings and his character, and who, possessed of vast wealth, had promised to make abundant use of it for their common profit, in order to command the majority of votes in the centuries. “The aristocratic faction,” says Suetonius, “ on learning this arrangement, was seized with fear. They thought that there was nothing which Caesar would not attempt in the exercise of the sovereign magistracy, if he had a colleague who agreed with him, and who would support all his designs.” The nobles, unable to eject him, resolved to give him Bibulus for a colleague, who had already been his col­league in the edileship and the praetorship, and had constantly shown himself his opponent. They all made a pecuniary contribution to influence the elections; Bibulus spent large sums, and the incorruptible Cato himself, who had solemnly sworn to impeach anyone who should be guilty of bribery, contributed his quota, owning that for the interest of the State his principles must for once yield. Neither was Cicero more inflexible: some time before, he expressed to Atticus the necessity of purchasing the concurrence of the equestrian order. We can see how even the most honorable were swept along, by the force of events, in the current of a corrupt

By the force of public opinion, and by the support of the two men of greatest influence, Caesar was elected consul unanimously, and conducted, according to custom, from the Campus Martius to his own house by an enthusiastic crowd of his fellow-citizens, and a vast number of senators.

If the party opposed to Caesar had been unable to stand in the way of his becoming consul, it did not despair of preventing his playing the important part he had a right to expect as pro- consul. To effect this, the Senate determined to evade the law of Caius Gracchus, which, to prevent the assignment of provinces from personal considerations, provided that' it should take place before the comitia were held. The assembly, therefore, departing from the rule, assigned to Caesar and his colleague, by an act of flagrant ill-will, the supervision of the public roads and forests, an office, somewhat similar, it is true, to that of governor of a province. This humiliating appointment, proof as it was of a persevering hostility, wounded him deeply; but the duties of his new office imposed silence upon his resentments. Caesar, the consul, would forget the wrongs done to Caesar the man, and generously attempt a policy of conciliation.

CHAPTER V.

CONSULSHIP OF CAESAR AND BIBULUS.

(695).

Caesar has arrived at the first magistracy of the Republic. Consul with Bibulus at the age of forty-one, he has not yet acquired the just celebrity of Pompey, nor does he enjoy the treasures of Crassus, and yet his influence is perhaps greater than that of those two personages. Political influence, indeed, does not depend solely on military successes or on the possession of immense riches; it is acquired especially by a conduct always in accord with fixed convictions. Caesar alone represents a principle. From the age of eighteen, he has faced the anger of Sylla and the hostility of the aristocracy, in order to plead unceasingly the grievances of the oppressed and the rights of the provinces.

So long as he is not in power, being exempt from responsibility, he walks invariably in the way he has traced, listens to no compromise, pursues unsparingly the adherents of the opposite party, and maintains his opinions energetically, at the risk of wounding his adversaries; but, once consul, he lays aside all resentment, and makes a loyal appeal to all who will rally round him; he declares to the Senate that he will not act without its concurrence, that he will propose nothing contrary to its prerogatives. He offers his colleague Bibulus a generous reconciliation, conjuring him, in the presence of the senators, to put a term to differences of opinion, the effects of which, already so much to be regretted during their common edileship and praetorship, would become fatal in their new position. He makes advances to Cicero, and, after sending Cornelius Balbus to him in his villa of Antium to assure him that he is ready to follow his counsels and those of Pompey, offers to take him as an associate in his labors.

Caesar must have believed that these offers of co-operation would be embraced. In face of the perils of a society deeply agitated, he supposed that others had the same sentiments which animated himself. Love of the public good, and the consciousness of having entirely devoted himself to it, gave him that confidence without reserve in the patriotism of others which admits neither mean rivalries nor the calculations of selfishness: he was deceived. The Senate showed nothing but prejudices, Bibulus but rancors, Cicero but a false pride.

It was essential for Caesar to unite Pompey, who was wanting in firmness of character, more closely with his destinies; he gave him in marriage his daughter Julia, a young woman of twenty-three years of age, richly endowed with graces and intelligence, who had already been affianced to Servilius Csepio. To compensate the latter, Pompey promised him his own daughter, though she also was engaged to another, to Faustus, the son of Sylla. Soon afterwards Caesar espoused Calpurnia, the daughter of Lucius Piso. Cato protested energetically against these marriages, which he qualified as disgraceful traffics with the common weal. The nobles, and especially the two Curios, made themselves the echoes of this reprobation. Their party, nevertheless, did not neglect to strengthen themselves by such alliances. Doubtless, when Cato gave his daughter to Bibulus, it was for a political motive; and when he ceded his own wife to Hortensius, although the mother of three children, to take her back again when enriched by the death of her last husband, there was also an interest hardly honorable, which Caesar subsequently unveiled in a book entitled Anti-Cato.

The first care of the new consul was to establish the practice of publishing daily the acts of the Senate and those of the people, in order that public opinion might bear with all its Weight upon the resolutions of the conscript fathers, whose deliberations had previously been often secret. The initiative taken by Caesar from the commencement of his consulship, in questioning the senators on the projects of laws, is an evidence that he had the fasces before Bibulus. We know, in fact, that the consuls enjoyed this honor alternately for a month, and it was in the period when they were invested with the signs distinctive of power that they were permitted to ask the advice of the senators.

AGRARIAN LAWS.

He proposed, next, in the month of January, an agrarian law founded upon wise principles, and which respected all legitimate rights. The following were its principal provi­sions :—Partition of all the free part of the ager publicus, except that of Campania and that of Volaterrae; the first excepted originally on account of its great fertility, and the second guaranteed to all those who had got it into their possession.—In case of insufficiency of territory, new acquisitions, by means either of money coming from Pompey’s conquests, or from the overplus of the public revenues.—Prohibition of all appropriation by force.—The nomination of twenty commissioners to preside at the distribution of the lands, with exclusion of the author of the proposal.—Estimate of private lands for sale, made according to the declaration at the last census, and not according to the valuation of the commissioners.—Obligation upon each senator to swear obedience to the law, and to engage never to propose any thing contrary to it.

It was, as may be seen, the project of Rullus, relieved from the inconveniences pointed out with so much eloquence by Cicero. In fact, instead of ten commissioners, Caesar proposed twenty, in order to distribute among a greater number a power of which men feared the abuse. He himself, to avoid all suspicion of personal interest, excluded himself from the possibility of forming part of it. The commissioners were not, as in the law of Rullus, authorized to act according to their will, and tax the properties arbitrarily. Acquired rights were respected; those territories only were distributed of which the State had still the full disposal. The sums arising from Pompey’s conquests were to be employed in favor of the old soldiers; and Caesar said himself that it was just to give the profit of that money to those who had gained it at the peril of their lives. As to the obligation of the oath imposed upon the senators, it was not an innovation, but an established custom. In the present case, the law having been voted before the elections, all the candidates, and especially the tribunes of the following year, had to take the engagement to observe it.

“Nobody,” says Dio Cassius, “had reason for complaint on this subject. The population of Rome, the excessive increase of which had been the principal aliment of seditions, was called to labor and a country life; the greater part of the countries of Italy, which had lost their inhabitants, were repeopled. This law insured means of existence not only to those who had supported the fatigues of the war, but also to all the other citizens, without causing expenditure to the State or loss to the nobles; on the contrary, it gave to several honors and power.”

Thus, while some historians accuse Caesar of seeking in the populace of Rome the point of support for his ambitious designs, he, on the contrary, obtains a measure, the effect of which is to transport the turbulent part of the inhabitants of the capital into the country.

Caesar, then, read his project to the Senate; after which, calling the senators by their names, one after the other, he asked the opinion of each, declaring his readiness to modify the law, or withdraw it altogether, if it were not agreeable to them. But, according to Dio Cassius, “It was unassailable, and if any disapproved of it, none dared to oppose it; what afflicted its opponents most was, that it was drawn up in such a manner as to leave no room for a complaint.” So the opposition was limited to adjourning from time to time, under frivolous pretexts. Cato, without making a direct opposition, alleged the necessity of changing nothing in the constitution of the Republic, and declared himself the adversary of all kind of innovation; but when the moment came for voting, he had recourse again to his old tactics, and rendered all deliberation impossible by speaking the entire day, by which he had already succeeded in depriving Caesar of the triumph. The latter lost patience, and sent the obstinate orator to prison; Cato was followed by a great number of senators, and M. Petreius, one of them, replied to the consul, who reproached him for withdrawing before the meeting was closed: “I would rather be in prison with Cato than here with thee.” Regretting, however, this first movement of anger, and struck by the attitude of the assembly, Caesar immediately restored Cato to liberty; then he dismissed the Senate, addressing them in the following words: “I had made you supreme judges and arbiters of this law, in order that, if any one of its provisions displeased you, it should not be referred to the people; but, since you have refused the previous deliberation, the people alone shall decide it.”

His attempt at conciliation having failed with the Senate, he renewed it towards his colleague, and, in the assembly of the tribes, adjured Bibulus to support his proposal. On their side, the people joined their entreaties with those of Caesar; but Bibulus, inflexible, merely said: “You will not prevail with me, though you were all of one voice; and, as long as I shall be consul, I will suffer no innovation.”

Then Caesar, judging other influences necessary, appealed to Pompey and Crassus. Pompey seized happily this opportunity for speaking to the people: he said that he not only approved the agrarian law, but that the senators themselves had formerly admitted the principle, in decreeing, on his return from Spain, a distribution of lands to his soldiers and to those of Metellus; if this measure had been deferred, it was on account of the penury of the treasury, which, thanks to him, had now ceased.

Then, replying to Caesar, who asked him if he would support the law in case it were opposed by violence, “If any one dared to draw his sword,” he cried, “I would take even my buckler,” meaning by that, that he would come into the public place armed as for the combat. This bold declaration of Pompey, supported by Crassus and Caepio, silenced all opposition, except that of Bibulus, who, with three tribunes, his partisans, called an assembly of the Senate in his own house, where it was resolved that, at all risk, the law should be openly rejected.

The day of meeting of the comitia having been fixed, the populace occupied the Forum during the night. Bibulus hurried, with his friends, to the temple of Castor, where his colleague was addressing the multitude; he tried in vain to obtain a hearing, was thrown down from the top of the steps, and obliged to fly, after seeing his fasces broken to pieces, and two tribunes wounded. Cato, in his turn, tried to mount the rostra; expelled by force, he returned, but, instead, of treating of the question, seeing that nobody listened to him, he attacked Caesar with bitterness, until he was dragged a second time from the tribune. Calm being restored, the law was adopted. Next day Bibulus tried to propose to the Senate its abrogation; but nobody supported him, such was the effect of this burst of popular enthusiasm : from this moment, he took the part of shutting himself up at home during the residue of Caesar’s consulship. When the latter presented a new law on the days of the comitia, he contented himself with protesting, and with sending by his lictors to say that he was observing the sky, and that, consequently, all deliberation was illegal. This was to proclaim loudly the political aim of this formality.

The consuls, praetors, and generally all those who presided at an assembly of the people, or even who attended in quality of magistrates, had a right of veto, founded on popular superstition. This right was exercised by declaring that a celestial phenomenon had been observed by them, and that it was no longer permitted to deliberate. Jupiter darting thunder or rain, all treating on affairs with the people must be stopped; such was the text of the law, religious or political, published in 597. It was not necessary that it should thunder or rain, in fact; the affirmation of a magistrate qualified to observe the sky being enough.

Caesar was far from yielding to this religious scruple, which, indeed, had lost its authority. At this very time Lucretius wrote a bold poem against the popular credulity, and for some time the observation of the auspices had been regarded as a puerile superstition; two centuries and a half before, a great captain had given a remarkable proof of this. Hannibal, then a refugee at the court of King Prusias, engaged the latter to accept his plans of campaign against the Romans; the king refused, because the auspices had not been favorable. “What!” cried Hannibal, “have you more confidence in a miserable calf’s liver than in the experience of an old general like me?”

Be this as it may, the obligation not to hold the comitia while the magistrate was observing the sky was a law; and to excuse himself for not having observed it, as well as to prevent his acts from being declared null, Caesar, before quitting his office, brought the question before the Senate, and thus obtained a legal ratification of his conduct.

The law being adopted by the people, each senator was called to take his oath to observe it. Several members, and among others, Q. Metellus Celer, M. Cato, and M. Favonius, had declared that they would never submit to it; but when the day of taking the oath arrived, their protests vanished before the fear of the punishment decreed against those who abstained, and, except Laterensis, everybody, even Cato, took the oath.

Irritated at the obstacles which he had encountered, and sure of the approval of the people, Caesar included, by a new law, in the distribution of the public domain, the lands of Campania and of Stella, omitted before out of deference to the Senate.

In carrying the law into effect, Pompey’s veterans received lands at Casilinum, in Campania; at Minturnae, Lanuvium, Volturnum, and Aufidena, in Samnium; and at Bovianum; Clibae, and Veii, in Etruria; twenty thousand fathers of families having more than three children were established in Campania, so that about a hundred thousand persons became husbandmen, and repeopled with free men a great portion of the territory, while Rome was relieved from a populace which was inconvenient and debased. Capua became a Roman colony, which was a restoration of the democratic work of Marius, destroyed by Sylla. It appears that the ager of Leontinum, in Sicily, was also comprised in the agrarian law. The nomination of the twenty commissioners, chosen among the most commendable of the consulars, was next proceeded with. Of the number were C. Cosconius and Atius Balbus, the husband of Caesar’s sister. Clodius could not obtain admission among them, Q and Cicero, after the death of Cosconius, refused to take his place.  The latter, in his letters to Atticus, blames especially the distribution of the territory of Capua, as depriving the Republic of an important revenue; and inquires what will remain to the State, unless it be the twentieth on the enfranchisement of slaves, since the rights of toll had already been aban­doned through the whole of Italy; but it was objected with reason that, on the other hand, the State was relieved from the enormous charges imposed by the necessity of distributing wheat to all the poor of Rome.

Nevertheless, the allotment of the ager Campanus and of the ager of Stella met with many delays; it was not yet terminated in 703, since at that epoch Pompey was advised to hasten the distribution of the last-mentioned lands, in order that Caesar, on his return from Gaul, might not have the merit of it.

CAESAR’S VARIOUS LAWS

We have seen how, in previous years, Cato was instrumental in refusing the request of those who farmed the taxes of Asia to have the terms of their leases lowered. By this rigorous measure, the Senate had estranged from itself the equestrian order, whose complaints had been far from unreasonable. In fact, the price paid for the farming of the revenues of Asia had, been heavy during the war against Mithridates, as may be learnt from the speech of Cicero against the Manilian law; and the remission of a portion of the money due to the State was a measure not without some show of justice to excuse it. Caesar, when he became consul, influenced by a sense of justice no less than by policy, lost no time in proposing a law to remit to the farmers of the revenue one-third of the sums for which they were responsible. He first addressed himself to the Senate; but that body having refused to deliberate on the question, he found himself compelled to submit it to the people, who adopted his opinion. This liberality, so far beyond what they had hoped for, filled the farmers of the revenue with joy, and rendered them devoted to the man who showed himself so generous; he advised them, however, publicly, to be more careful in future, and not overbid in an inconsiderate manner at the time of the sale of the taxes.

The agrarian law, and the law concerning the rents, having satisfied the interests of the proletaries, the veterans, and the knights, it became important to settle the just demands of Pompey. Therefore Caesar obtained from the people their approbation of all the acts of the conqueror of Mithridates. Lucullus had been till then one of the most earnest adversaries of this measure. He could not forget the glory of which Pompey had frustrated him; but his dread of a prosecution for peculation was so great that he fell at Caesar’s feet and forswore all opposition.

The activity of the consul did not confine itself to internal reforms; it extended to questions which were raised abroad. The condition of Egypt was precarious: King Ptolemy Auletes, natural son of Ptolemy Lathyrus, was afraid lest, in virtue of a forged will of Ptolemy Alexander, or Alexas, to whose fall he had contributed, his kingdom might be incorporated with the Roman empire. Auletes, perceiving his authority shaken in Alexandria, had sought the support of Pompey during the war in Judaea, and had sent him presents and a large sum of money to engage him to maintain his cause before the Senate. Pompey had offered himself as his advocate; and Caesar, whether from policy, or from a wish to please his son-in-law, caused Ptolemy Auletes to be declared a friend and ally of Rome. At his demand the same favor was granted to Ariovistus, King of the Germans, who, after having made war upon the aEdui, had withdrawn from their country at the invitation of the Senate, and had expressed a desire to become an ally of Rome. It was entirely the interest of the Republic to conciliate the Germans, and send them to the other bank of the Rhine, whatever might be the views of the consul regarding his future command in Gaul. Next, he conferred some privileges on certain municipia and satisfied many ambitions; “for,” says Suetonius, “he granted everything that was asked of him: no man dared oppose him, and, if any one attempted, he knew how to intimidate him.”

Among the cares of the consul was the nomination of tribunes devoted to him; since it was they generally who proposed the laws for the people to ratify.

Clodius, on account of his popularity, was one of the candidates who could be most useful to him; but his rank of patrician obliged him to pass by adoption into a plebeian family before he could be elected, and that he could only do in virtue of a law. Caesar hesitated in bringing it forward; for if, on the one hand, he sought to conciliate Clodius himself, on the other, he knew his designs of vengeance against Cicero, and was unwilling to put into his hands an authority which he might abuse. But when, towards the month of March, at the trial of C. Antonius, charged with disgraceful conduct in Macedonia, Cicero, in defending his former colleague, indulged in a violent attack upon those in power, on that same day Clodius was received into the ranks of the plebeians, and soon afterwards became, together with Vatinius, tribune elect. There was a third tribune, whose name is unknown, but who was equally won over to the interests of the consul.

Thus Caesar, as even Cicero admits, was alone more powerful already than the Republic. Of some he was the hope; of others, the terror; of all, master irrevocably. The inactivity of Bibulus had only served to increase his power. Thus it was said in Rome, as a jest, that men knew of no other consulship than that of Julius and Caius Caesar, making two persons out of a single name; and the following verses were handed about:—

“ Non Bibulo quidquam nuper sed Caesare factum est: Nam Bibulo fieri consule nil memini.”

And as popular favor, when it declares itself in favor of a man in a conspicuous position, sees something marvellous in everything that concerns his person, the populace drew a favorable augury from the existence of an extraordinary horse born in his stables. Its hoofs were forked, and shaped like fingers. Caesar was the only man who could tame this strange animal, the docility of which, it was said, foreboded to him the empire of the world.

During his first consulship, Caesar caused a number of laws to be passed, the greater part of which have not descended to us. Some valuable fragments, however, of the most important ones have been preserved, among others, the modifications in the sacerdotal privileges. The Tribune Labienus, as we have seen, in order to secure Caesar’s election to the office of pontiff, had granted the right of election to seventeen tribes selected by lot. Although this law seemed to authorize absentees to become candidates for the priesthood, the people and the priests disputed the right of those who did not solicit the dignity in person. Endless quarrels and disturbances were the result. To put an end to these, Caesar, while confirming the law of Labienus, announced that not only those candidates who appeared in person, but those at a distance also, who had any title whatever to that honor, might offer themselves as candidates.

He turned his attention next to the provinces, whose condition had always excited his sympathy. The laws intended to reform the vices of the administration (De provinciis ordinandis) is of uncertain date; it bears the same title as that of Sylla, and resembles it considerably. Its provisions guaranteed the inhabitants against the violence, the arbitrary conduct, and the corruption of the proconsuls and propraetors, and fixed the allotments to which these were entitled.

It released the free states, liberae civitates, from dependence upon governors, and authorized them to govern themselves by their own laws and their own magistrates. Cicero himself considered this measure as the guarantee of the liberty of the provinces; for, in his speech against Piso, he reproaches him with having violated it by including free nations in his government of Macedonia. Lastly, a separate proviso regulated the responsibility and expenses of the administration, by requiring that on going out of office the governors should deliver, at the end of thirty days, an account explaining their administration and their expenses, of which three copies were to be deposited, one in the treasury (aerarium) at Rome, and the others in the two principal towns of the province. The propraetors were  to remain one year, and the proconsuls two, at the head of their governments.

The generals were in the habit of burdening the people they governed with exorbitant exactions. They extorted from them crowns of gold (aurum coronarium), of considerable value, under pretence of the triumph, and obliged the countries through which they passed to bear the expenses of themselves and their attendants. Caesar remedied these abuses, by forbidding the proconsuls to demand the crown before the triumph had been decreed, and by subjecting to the most rigorous restrictions the contributions in kind which were to be furnished. We may judge how necessary these regulations were from the fact that Cicero, whose government was justly considered an honest one, admits that he drew large sums from his province of Cilicia, eight years after the passing of the law Julia. The same law forbade all governors to leave their provinces, or to send their troops out of them to interfere in the affairs of any neighboring State, without permission of the Senate and the people, or to extort any money from the inhabitants of the provinces.

The law, by similar provisions, diminished the abuse of free legations (legationes liberae). This was the name given to the missions of senators, who, travelling into the provinces on their own' affairs, obtained by an abuse the title of envoy of the Roman people, to which they had no right, in order to be defrayed the expenses and costs of travelling. These missions, which were for an indefinite time, were the subject of incessant complaints. Cicero had limited them to a year: Caesar prescribed a still narrower limit, but its exact length is unknown.

As a supplement to the preceding measures he brought in a law (De pecuniis repetundis), the provisions of which have often been confounded with those of the law De provinciis ordinandis. Cicero boasts of its perfection and justice. It contained a great number of sections. In a letter from Coelius to Cicero, the 101st chapter of the law is referred to. Its object was to meet all cases of peculation, out of Italy as well as in Rome. Persons who had been wronged could demand restitution before a legal tribunal of the sums unjustly collected. Though the principal provisions of it were borrowed from the law of Sylla on the same subject, the penalty was more severe and the proceedings more expeditious. For instance, as the rich contrived, by going into voluntary exile before the verdict, to elude the punishment, it was provided that in that case their goods should be confiscated, in part or wholly, according to the nature of the crime. If the fortune of the defendant was not sufficient for the repayment of the money claimed, all those who had profited by the embezzlement were sought out and jointly condemned. Finally, corruption, was attacked in all its forms, and the law went so far as to watch over the honesty of business transactions.

“The law is directed against those who, holding a magistracy, an embassy, or any other office, or forming part of the attendants of these functionaries, receive money.

“They may receive money to any amount from their cousins, their still nearer relatives, or their wives.

“The law includes those who have received money: For speaking in the Senate, or any public assembly; for doing their duty or absenting themselves from it; for refusing to obey a public order, or for exceeding it; for pronouncing judgment in a criminal or a civil case, or for not pronouncing it; for condemning or acquitting; for awarding or withdrawing the subject of a snit; for adjudging or taking an object in litigation; for appointing a judge or arbitrator, changing him, ordering him to judge, or for not appointing him or changing him, and not ordering him to judge; for causing a man to be imprisoned, put in irons, or set at liberty; for accusing or not accusing; for producing or suppressing a witness; for recognizing as complete an unfinished public work; for accepting wheat for the use of the State without testing its good quality; for taking upon himself the maintenance of the public buildings with­out a certificate of their good condition; for enlisting a soldier or discharging him.

“All that has been given to the proconsul or praetor contrary to the provisions of the present law, cannot become his by right of possession.

“Sales and leases are declared null and void which have been made, for a high or a low price, with a view to right of possession by a third.

“The magistrates are to abstain from all extortion, and receive as salary but 100 pieces of gold each year.

“The action will lie equally against the heirs of the accused, but only during the year succeeding his death.

“No one who has been condemned under this law can be either judge, accuser, or witness.

“The penalties are exile, banishment to an island, or death, according to the gravity of the offence”.

One article deserves special remark, that which forbade a public work to be accepted as completed, if it were not absolutely finished. Caesar had doubtless in mind the process which he had unsuccessfully instituted against Catulus, for his failure to complete the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

We may for the most part consider as Caesar’s laws those which were passed at his instigation, whether by the Tribune P. Vatinius, or the Praetor Q. Fufius Calenus.

One of the laws of the former authorized the accuser in a suit, as well as the accused, to challenge for once all the judges; down to this time they had only been permitted to challenge a certain number. Its object was to give to all the same guarantee which Sylla had reserved exclusively to the senators, since for the knights and plebeians he limited the challenge to three. Vatinius had also conferred on five thousand colonists, established at Como (Novum Comum), the rights of a Roman city. This measure flattered the pride of Pompey, whose father, Pompeius Strabo, had rebuilt the town of Comum; and it offered to other colonists the hope of obtaining the qualification of Roman citizens, which Caesar subsequently granted to them.

Another devoted partisan of the consul, the Praetor Q. Fufius Calenus, proposed a law which, in judicial deliberations, laid the responsibility upon each of the three orders of which the tribunal was composed: the senators, the knights, and the tribunes of the treasury. Instead of pronouncing a collective judgment, they were called upon to express their opinion separately. Dio Cassius explains the law in these terms : “Seeing that in a process all the votes were mixed together, and that each order took to itself the credit of the good decisions, and threw the bad ones to the account of the others, Calenus had a law made that the different orders should vote independently, in order to know thus, not the opinion of individuals, since the vote was secret, but that of each order.”

All the laws of Caesar were styled “Julian Laws”; they received the sanction of the Senate, and were adopted without opposition, and even Cato himself did not oppose them; but when he became praetor, and found himself obliged to put them into execution, he was little-minded enough to object to call them by their name.

We may be convinced by the above facts, that, during his first consulship, Caesar was animated by a single motive, the public interest. His ruling thought was to remedy the evils which afflicted the country. His acts, which several historians have impeached as subversive and inspired by boundless ambition, we find, on an attentive examination, to be the result of a wise policy, and the carrying out of a well-known plan, proclaimed formerly by the Gracchi, and recently by Pompey himself. Like the Gracchi, Caesar desired a distribution of the public domain, the reform of justice, the relief of the provinces, and the extension of the rights of city; like them, he had protected the knightly order, so that he might oppose it to the formidable resistance of the Senate; but he, more fortunate, accomplished that which the Gracchi had been unable to realize. Plutarch, in the life of Crassus, pronounces a eulogium on the wisdom of his government, although an intemperate judgment had led that writer, elsewhere, to compare his conduct to that of a factious tribune.

Following the taste of the age, and especially as a means of popularity, Caesar gave splendid games, shows, and gladiatorial combats, borrowing from Pompey and Atticus considerable sums to meet his love of display, his profusion, and his largesses. Suetonius, ever ready to record, without distinction, the reports, true and false, current at the time, relates that Caesar had taken from the treasury three thousand pounds of gold, for which he substituted gilt metal; but his high character is sufficient to refute this calumny. Cicero, who had not, at this time, any reason to spare him, makes no mention of it in his letters, where his ill-humor displays itself, nor in his speech against Vatinius, one of Caesar’s devoted friends. On the other hand, Pliny mentions a similar fact which happened during Pompey’s consulate.

C2ESAB RECEIVES THE GOVERNMENT OF THE GAULS.

Caesar did not confine his ambition to discharging the functions of a consul and legislator; he desired to obtain a command worthy of the elevation of his genius, to extend the frontiers of the Republic, and to preserve them from the invasion of their most powerful enemies, it will be remembered that at the time of the election of the consuls, the Senate had conferred upon them the superintendence of the woods and public roads. He had, therefore, slender grounds to expect a return of friendly feeling on the part of that assembly, and, if the distribution of governments was vested in them, history offered examples of provinces given by vote of the people. Numidia was assigned to Marius on the proposal of the Tribune L. Manlius; and L. Lucullus, having received Cisalpine Gaul from the Senate, obtained Cilicia from the people. It was thus that the command of Asia had been conferred upon Pompey. Strong in these precedents, Vatinius proposed to the people to confer upon Caesar, for five years, the command of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria, with three legions. Pompey supported this proposal with all his influence. The friends of Crassus, Claudius,  and L. Piso, gave their votes in favor of this law.

At first, it appeared strange that the proposal of the tribune only included Cisalpine Gaul, without reference to the other side of the Alps, which alone offered chances of acquiring glory. But, on reflection, we discover how skilful and politic was this manner of putting the question. To solicit at the same time the government of both the Gauls might have seemed exorbitant, and likely to expose him to failure. To demand the government of Gaul proper, was dangerous, for if he had obtained it without Cisalpine Gaul, which would have devolved upon another proconsul, Caesar would have found himself completely separated from Italy, inasmuch as it would have been impossible for him to repair thither during the winter, and so preserve continuous relations with Rome. The proposal of Vatinius, on the contrary, having for its object only Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria, they could scarcely refuse a command limited to the ordinary bounds, and Caesar acquired thereby, a solid basis for operations in the midst of devoted populations, where his legions could be easily recruited. As to the province beyond the Alps, it was probable that some fortuitous circumstance, or new proposal, would place it under his orders. This happened sooner than he expected, for the Senate, by a skilful, but at this time unusual, determination, added to his command a third province, Gallia Comata, or Transalpine, and a fourth legion. The Senate thus obtained for itself the credit of an initiative, which the people would have taken of itself had it not been anticipated.

Transported with joy at this news, Caesar, according to Suetonius, exclaimed in the full Senate, that now, having succeeded to the utmost of his desire in spite of his enemies, he would march over their heads. This story is not probable. He was too prudent to provoke his enemies in their face at the moment he was going to a distance from Rome. “Always master of himself,” says an old writer, “he never needlessly ran against anybody.”

OPPOSITION OF THE PATRICIANS.

Whilst contending with the most serious difficulties Caesar endeavored to establish the Republic on the securest foundations, the aristocratic party consoled itself for its successive defeats by a petty war of sarcasm and chicanery. At the theatre they applauded all the injurious allusions to Pompey, and received Caesar with coldness. Bibulus, the son-in-law of Cato, pubfished libels containing the grossest attacks. He renewed the accusation of plotting against the Republic, and of the pretended shameful relations with Nicomedes. People rushed to read and copy these insulting placards. Cicero gladly sent them to Atticus. The party, too, to which Bibulus belonged extolled him to the skies, and made him a great man. His opposition, however, had only succeeded in postponing the consular comitia until the month of October. This prorogation was made in the hope of preventing the election of consuls friendly to the triumvirs. Caesar, on this occasion, attacked him in a violent speech, and Vatinius proposed to arrest him. Pompey, on his part, moved by invectives to which he was unaccustomed, complained to the people of the animosity of which he was the object; but his speech does not appear to have been attended with much success.

It is sad to see the accomplishment of great things often thwarted by the little passions of short-sighted men, who only know the world in the small circle to which their life is confined. By seconding Caesar, Bibulus might have obtained an honorable reputation. He preferred being the hero of a coterie, and sought to obtain the interested applause of a few selfish senators, rather than, with his colleague, to merit public gratitude. Cicero, on his part, mistook for a true expression of opinion the clamors of a desperate faction. He was, moreover, one of those who find that all fares well while they are themselves in power; and that everything is endangered when they are out. In his letters to Atticus he speaks of the general hatred to these new kings, predicts their approaching fall, and exclaims: “What murmurs! what irritation! what hatred against our friend Pompey ! His name of great is growing old like that of rich Crassus.” .

He explains, with a perfect naiveté, the consolation which his self-love finds in the abasement of him who was formerly the object of his admiration. “I was tormented with fear that the services which Pompey rendered to our country should hereafter appear greater than mine. I have quite recovered from it. He is so low, so very low, that Curius himself appears to me a giant beside him.” And he adds, “Now there is nothing more popular than to hate the popular men; they have no one on their side. They know it, and it is this which makes me fear a resort to violence. I cannot think without shuddering of the explosions which are inevitable.” The hatred which he bore to Clodius and Valerius misled his judgment.

Whilst Caesar laboriously pursued the course of his destiny, the genius of Cicero, instead of understanding the future and hastening progress by his co-operation, resisted the general impulse, denied its evidence, and could not perceive the greatness of the cause through the faults of certain adherents to power.

Caesar bore uneasily the attacks of Cicero; but, like all who are guided by great political views, superior to resentment, he conciliated everything which might exercise an ascendancy over people’s minds; and the eloquence of Cicero was a power. Dio Cassius thus explains the conduct of Caesar: “He did not wound Cicero either by his words or his acts. He said that often many men designedly throw vain sarcasm against those who are above them in order to drive them to dispute, in the hope of appearing to have some resemblance to them,, and be put in the same rank if they succeed in being abused in return. Caesar therefore judged that he ought not to enter the lists with anybody. Such was his rule of conduct towards those who insulted him, and, as he saw very well that Cicero sought less to offend him than to provoke him to make some injurious reply, from the desire which he had to be looked upon as his equal, he took no notice of him, made no account of what he said, and even allowed Cicero to insult him as he liked, and to praise himself beyond measure. However, he was far from despising him; but, naturally gentle, his anger was not easily aroused. He had much to punish, as must be the case with one mixed up with great affairs, but he never yielded to passion.”

An incident occurred which showed all the animosity of a certain party. L. Vettius, an old spy of Cicero’s in the Catiline conspiracy, punished for having falsely accused Caesar, was arrested on suspicion of wishing to attempt his life, as well as that of Pompey. A poignard was found upon him; and being interrogated before the Senate, he denounced, as the instigators of his crime, the young Curio, Caepio, Brutus, Lentulus, Cato, Lucullus, Piso, son-in-law of Cicero, Cicero himself, M. Laterensis, and others. He also named Bibulus, which removed all air of probability from his accusations, Bibulus having already warned Pompey to be on his guard. Historians, such as Dio Cassius, Appian, and Plutarch, treat this plot seriously; the first maintains expressly that Cicero and Lucullus had armed the hand of the assassin. Suetonius, on the contrary, reproaches Caesar with having suborned Vettius in order to throw the blame upon his adversaries.

In face of these contradictory informations, it is best, as in the case of an ordinary law suit, to estimate the worth of the charge according to the previous character of the accused. Now, Cicero, notwithstanding his instability, was too honest to have a hand in a plot for assassination, and Caesar had too elevated a character and too great a consciousness of his power to lower himself so far as to seek, in a miserable intrigue, the means of augmenting his influence. A senatus consultum caused Vettius to be thrown into prison; but Caesar, interested in, and resolved on, the discovery of the truth, referred the matter to the people, and forced Vettius to mount the tribune of the orators. He, with a suspicious versatility, denounced those whom he had before acquitted, and cleared those whom he had denounced, and among others, Brutus. With regard to the latter, it was pretended that this change was due to Caesar’s connection with his mother. Vettius was remanded to prison, and found dead next day. Cicero accused Vatinius of killing him; but, according to others, the true authors of his death were those who had urged him into this disgraceful intrigue, and were in fear of his revelations.

The comparison of these various accounts leads us to conclude that this obscure agent of dark intrigues had made himself the instigator of a plot, in order to have the merit of revealing it, and to attract the favor of Caesar by pointing to his political ad­versaries as accomplices. Nevertheless, the event turned to the profit of Caesar, and the people permitted him to take measures for his personal safety. It was doubtless at this period that the ancient custom was re-established of allowing a consul, during the month when he had not the fasces, the right of being preceded by a beadle (accensus) and followed by lictors.

Without changing the fundamental laws of the Republic, Caesar had obtained a great result; he had replaced anarchy by an energetic power, ruling at the same time the Senate and the comitia; by the mutual understanding between the three most important men, he had substituted for personal rivalries a moral authority which enabled him to establish laws conducive to the prosperity of the empire. But it was essential that his departure should not entail the fall of the edifice so laboriously raised. He was not ignorant of the number and power of his enemies; he knew that if he abandoned to them the forum and the curia, not only would they reverse his enactments, but they would even deprive him of his command. If there was any doubt of the degree of hatred of which he was the object, it would be sufficient to be reminded that a year afterwards Ariovistus confessed to him, in an interview on the banks of the Rhine, that many of the important nobles of Rome had designs against his life. Against such animosities he had the task, no easy one, of directing the elections. The Roman constitution caused new .candidates to spring up every year for honors; and it was indispensable to have partisans amongst the two consuls, the eight praetors, and the ten tribunes named in the comitia. At all epochs, even at the time when the aristocracy exercised the greatest influence, it could, not prevent its opponents from introducing themselves into the public offices. Moreover, the three who had made common cause had reason to fear the ambition and ingratitude of the men whom they had raised, and who would soon seek to become their equals. There was still a last danger, and perhaps the most serious; it was the impatience and want of discipline of the democratic party, of which they were the chiefs.

In face of these dangers, the triumvirs agreed to cause L. Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, and A. Gabinius, the devoted partisan of Pompey, to be elected to the consulship the following year. They were, in fact, designated consuls on the 18th of October, in spite of the efforts of the nobles and the accusation of Cato against Gabinius.

At the end of the year 695, Caesar and Bibulus ceased their functions. The latter, in reporting his conduct according to custom, endeavored to paint in the blackest colors the state of the Republic; but Clodius prevented him from speaking. As for Caesar, his presentiment of the attacks to which he was to be subjected was only too well founded; for he had hardly quitted office, when the Praetor L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, and C. Memmius, friends of Cicero, proposed to the Senate to prosecute him for the acts committed during his consulate, and especially for not having paid attention to the omens. From this proposal the Senate recoiled. Still they brought Caesar’s questor to trial. He himself was cited by the Tribune L. Antistius. But the whole college refused to entertain the charge, in virtue of the law Memmia, which forbade an accusation to be entertained against a citizen while absent on the public service

Caesar found himself once more at the gates of Rome, invested with the imperium, and, according to Cicero’s letters,  at the head of numerous troops, composed apparently of veteran volunteers. He even remained there more than two months, in order to watch that his departure should not become the signal for the overthrow of his work.

LAW OF CLODIUS.—EXILE OF CICERO.

During this time, Clodius; a restless and turbulent spirit, proud of the support which he had lent the triumvirs, as well as of that he had received from them, listened only to his passion, and caused laws to be enacted, some of which, flattering the populace, and even the slaves, menaced the State with anarchy. In virtue of these laws, he re-established political associations (collegia), clubs dangerous to public tranquillity, which Sylla had dissolved, but which were subsequently re­organized to be again suppressed in 690; he made gratuitous distributions of wheat to the people; took from the censors the right of excluding from the Senate anybody they wished, allowing them only to reject those who were under condemnation; forbade the magistrates taking omens, or observing the sky on the day of the deliberation of the comitia; and, lastly, he inflicted severe penalties on those who had condemned Roman citizens to death unheard. This last enactment was evidently directed against Cicero, although his name was not mentioned in it. In order to insure its adoption, its author desired the acquiescence of Caesar, who was detained at the gates of Rome by the military command, which forbade him to enter. Clodius then convoked the people outside the walls, and when he asked the proconsul his opinion, the latter replied that it was well known by his vote in the affair of the accomplices of Catiline; that, nevertheless, he disapproved of a law which pronounced penalties upon facts which belonged to the past.

On this occasion the Senate went into mourning, in order to exhibit its discontent to all eyes; but the Consuls Gabinius and Piso obliged the Senate to relinquish this ill-timed demonstration.

Caesar, in order to defend Cicero from the danger which threatened him, offered to take him with him to Gaul as his lieutenant. Cicero rejected the offer, deceiving himself through his confidence in his own influence, and reckoning, moreover, on the protection of Pompey. It appears positive from this, that Clodius exceeded Caesar’s views, a new proof that such instruments when employed are two-edged swords, which even the most skilful hands find it difficult to direct. It is thus that later, Vatinius, aspiring to become praetor, received from his old patron this strong warning: “Vatinius has done nothing gratuitously during his tribuneship; he who only looks for money, ought to dispense with honors.” In fact, Caesar, whose efforts to re-establish the popular institutions had never slackened, desired neither anarchy nor democratic laws; and just as he had not approved of the proposal of Manilius for the emancipation of the freedmen, so he opposed the reorganization of the corporations, the gratuitous distributions of wheat, and the projects of vengeance entertained by Clodius, who, however, continually boasted of his support.

Crassus, on his part, desiring to be useful to Cicero without compromising himself, engaged his son to go to his aid. As for Pompey, wavering between fear and friendship, he devised a pretext not to receive Cicero when he came to seek his support. Deprived of this last resource, the great orator abandoned his delusions, and after some show of resistance voluntarily withdrew. Scarcely had he quitted Rome when the law against him was passed without opposition, with the concurrence of those whom Cicero had looked upon as his friends. His goods were confiscated, his house razed, and he was exiled to a distance of four hundred miles.

Caesar had skilfully taken precautions that his influence should be felt at Rome during his absence, as much as the instability of the magistracy would permit. By the aid of his daughter Julia, whose charms and mental accomplishments captivated her husband, Caesar retained his influence over Pompey. By his favors to the son of Crassus, a young man of great merit, who was appointed his lieutenant, he assured himself of his father. Cicero is removed, but soon Caesar will consent to his return, and will conciliate him again, by taking into his favor his brother Quintus. There remains the opposition of Cato. Clodius undertakes to remove him under the pretence of an honorable mission; he is sent to Cyprus to dethrone King Ptolemy, whose irregularities excited the hatred of his subjects.  Finally, all the men of importance who had any chance of obtaining employment are gained to the cause of Caesar; some even engage themselves to him by writing. He can thus proceed to his province. Destiny is about to open a new path; immortal glory awaits him beyond the Alps, and this glory, reflected upon Rome, will change the face of the world.

THE EXPLANATION OF CAESAR’S CONDUCT.

We have shown Caesar obeying only his political convictions, whether as the ardent promoter of all popular measures, or as the declared partisan of Pompey; we have shown him aspiring with a noble ambition to power and honors; but we are not ignorant that historians in general give other motives for his conduct. They represent him, in 684, as having already his plans defined, his schemes arranged, his instruments all prepared. They attribute to him an absolute prescience of the future, the faculty of directing men and things at his will, and of rendering each one, unknowingly, the accomplice of his profound designs. All his actions have a hidden motive, which the historian boasts of having discovered. If Caesar raises up again the standard of Marius, makes himself the defender of the oppressed, and the persecutor of the hired assassins of past tyranny, it is to acquire a concurrence necessary to his ambition; if he contends with Cicero in favor of legality in the trial of the accomplices of Catiline, or to maintain an agrarian law of which he approves the political aim, or if, to repair a great injustice of Sylla, he supports the restoration of the children of the proscribed to their rights, it is for the purpose of compromising the great orator with the popular party. If, on the contrary, he places his influence at the service of Pompey; if on the occasion of the war against the pirates, he contributes to obtain for him an authority considered exorbitant; if he seconds the plebiscitum which further confers upon him the command of the army against Mithridates; if subsequently he causes extraordinary honors to be awarded him, though absent, it is still with the Machiavellian aim of making the greatness of Pompey redound to his own profit. So that, if he defends liberty, it is to ruin his adversaries ; if he defends power, it is to accustom the Romans to tyranny. Finally, if Caesar seeks the consulate, like all the members of the Roman nobility, it is, say they, because he already foresees, beyond the fasces of the consul and the dust of battles, the dictatorship and even the throne. Such an interpretation results from the too common fault of not being able to appreciate facts in themselves, but according to the complexion which subsequent events have given them.

Strange inconsistency, to impute to great men at the same time mean motives and superhuman forethought! No, it was not the miserable thought of checking Cicero which guided Caesar; he had not recourse to a tactic more or less skilful; he obeyed a profound conviction, and what proves it indisputably is, that once elevated to power, his first acts are to execute, as consul or dictator, what as a citizen he had supported: witness the agrarian law and the restoration of the proscribed. No, if he supports Pompey, it is not because he thinks that he can degrade him after having once elevated him, but because this illustrious captain had embraced the same cause as himself; for it would not have been given to anyone to read so far into the future as to predict the use which the conqueror of Mithridates would make of his triumphs and veritable popularity. In fact, when he disembarked in Italy, Rome was in anxiety; will he disband his army? Such was from all quarters the cry of alarm. If he returns as a master, no one is able to resist him. Contrary to the general expectation, Pompey disbanded his troops. How then could Caesar foresee beforehand a moderation then so unusual?

Is it truer to say that Caesar, having become proconsul, aspired to the sovereign power? No, in departing for Gaul, he could no more have thought of reigning over Rome, than could General Buonaparte starting for Italy in 1796, have dreamed of the Empire. Was it possible for Caesar to foresee that, during a sojourn of ten years in Gaul, he would there link Fortune to him forever, and that, at the end of this long space of time, the public mind at Rome would still be favorable to his projects? Could he foresee that the death of his daughter would break the ties which attached him to Pompey? that Crassus, instead of returning in triumph from the East, would be conquered and slain by the Parthians? that the murder of Clodius would throw all Italy into commotion? and, finally, that anarchy, which he had sought to stifle by the triumvirate, would be the cause of his own elevation? Caesar had before his eyes great examples for his guidance; he marched in the track of the Scipios and of Paulus Aemilius; the hatred of his enemies forced him, like Sylla, to seize upon the dictatorship, but for a more noble cause, and by a course of proceeding exempt from vengeance and cruelty.

Let us not continually seek little passions in great souls. The success of superior men—and it is a consoling thought—is due rather to the loftiness of their sentiments, than to the speculations of selfishness and cunning; this success depends much more on their skill in taking advantage of circumstances, than on that presumption blind, enough to believe itself capable of creating events, which are in the hands of God. alone. Cer­tainly, Caesar had faith in his destiny, and confidence in his genius; but faith is an instinct, not a calculation, and genius foresees the future without understanding its mysterious progress.