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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY
CHAPTER IIIThe Infancy of Antony, during the Rule of Sulla, 83-78 BC
Lucius Cornelius Sulla was about fifty-five years of age when he came
back to Italy, for he was born in 138 BC.
Although of patrician family and the great-grandson of a man who had twice been
Consul, he had found himself in his youth so impoverished by the extravagances
of a dissolute father that he was obliged to live in some cheap lodgings in Rome
until a good-natured and extremely successful prostitute, named Nicopolis, who
had ruined her business by falling in love with him, conveniently died and left
him all that remained to her of the money she had received from his friends.
His rise to fame and fortune has been recorded in the previous chapter; but
since he held the centre of the Roman stage for the next few years it will be
as well for us now to look more closely at him.
He was a man of startling appearance, having a thick crop of faded hair
which had once been yellow, staring eyes of blue, and a dead white complexion
so disfigured by pimples and red blotches, due to drink, that somebody
described his face as being like a mulberry sprinkled with flour. His character
has, for us who are not at his mercy, the charm of inconsistency, and he at once
attracts and repels us. When sober he was polite and urbane to his friends, and
even diplomatically deferential to those whose good offices he needed; but
while his heart was tender, and he easily shed tears of compassion, his brain
was cold and pitiless, and he had the mental equipment of a murderer. When
drunk, which was his frequent condition, he was good-natured, generous, and
anxious to oblige; and since it seems to be true that a man in his cups reveals
his real nature, one may say that there was a wealth of natural good in him
held in check by his monstrous and passionless intellect.
He was a very fine scholar, deeply read in Roman and Greek literature;
and, combining wide knowledge with a love of beautiful things and the
fastidious taste of a connoisseur, he derived keen enjoyment both from artistic
and intellectual pursuits. He sought the company of painters, sculptors,
actors, philosophers, men of letters, and, indeed, anybody on whose wits, like
steel upon steel, he could sharpen his own; and nothing gave him greater
pleasure than the kind of conversation which obliged him to exercise his brain.
It amused him to outwit people, and Sallust says that his depth of thought in
disguising his intentions was incredible; yet nobody found more relief than he
did in talking elegant nonsense and giving himself up to laughter. His reason
did not permit him much belief in the religious systems of his age, yet he was
preposterously superstitious, and was firmly convinced of the omnipotence of
his lucky star.
He was flagrantly vicious, and some lack in his spontaneous emotions
obliged him to exert a remarkable ingenuity in his pursuit of sensual pleasure,
in which respect he was as entirely devoid of shame as he was of decency; yet
he could be a normal lover and, when he was not seeking perverted adventure,
was so incorrigibly domestic that he entered the bonds of matrimony no less
than five times.
He did not often permit his pleasures, however, to interfere with his
duties; and if he was too frequently drunk, he was never idle when he was
sober. He was a man of iron will, courageous but impatient, and neither fear of
the consequences nor any instinct of mercy—nothing, in fact, except
boredom—ever turned him from his purpose. The nature of that purpose is the
redeeming feature in a character terrifying to contemporary Rome because of its
pitilessness; for Sulla undoubtedly acted in what he believed to be the best
interests of the Republic, and showed so little personal ambition that he
resigned office as soon as he deemed his work done.
The war in Greece and Asia Minor from which he was now returning had
proved him to be a brilliant general. His small army which marched out to
suppress the Greek rebellion was soon left to its fate by distracted Rome, and
received no support from the government of Cinna; but by his skilful leadership
it succeeded in reconquering the lost provinces and in humbling the arch-enemy,
King Mithridates of Pontus, who from his headquarters at Ephesus had organized
the insurrection. Sulla took Athens by storm in March, 86 BC, but called his soldiers off before its sack was complete,
announcing that he had decided to spare that fallen generation of Athenians as
a mark of his respect for their great countrymen of long ago–Plato, Pericles,
Socrates, Thucydides, and the many others. As his personal share of the loot he
appropriated the library of the philosopher Apellicon of Teos, who had recently
died, which contained the original manuscripts of Aristotle’s works, and other
literary treasures more pleasing to him than gold or silver. He then marched
against Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, and having twice defeated him,
crossed the Hellespont, and early in 84 BC concluded peace. Thence he returned to the port of Dyrrachium (Durazzo) on the
Greek coast opposite Italy, where he gathered a fleet of twelve hundred vessels
in which to transport his victorious army across to Brindisi.
Just before he sailed a curious incident occurred which may be mentioned
here because of the light it throws upon the mental outlook of the age. Not far
from Dyrrachium stood the town of Apollonia, near which was the Nymphaeum, or
Abode of the Nymphs, a tract of mountainous and wooded country wherein there
were hot springs and other volcanic peculiarities. Here, one day, some of his
soldiers, carelessly trespassing upon this uncanny preserve of the half-gods,
came upon a little bearded man like a satyr, asleep under a tree; and, having
caught him, they brought him to Sulla. He was earnestly questioned by
interpreters as to who he was, whether mortal or elfin; but he only uttered
strange, frightened cries, something between the neighing of a horse and the
bleating of a goat, and this so dismayed Sulla that he hastily told the
soldiers to take him away, and for some time was greatly troubled as to what
the bringing in of so primeval a prisoner might portend. We are not told,
unfortunately, whether the little creature was set free to return to his
woodland glades and mountain streams; nor would it be true to the spirit of the
old world to seek a natural explanation of the phenomenon.
The arrival of Sulla and his army in Italy, expressly sworn to the
restoration of the aristocracy, caused the greatest consternation in Rome; and Marius
the Younger and Carbo led out the forces which were loyal to the party of the
People to do battle with him. Many of the patricians, however, went over to
him, and amongst these mentions must be made particularly of Crassus and
Pompey, who afterwards figured conspicuously in the affairs of the Republic.
Marcus Crassus, born about 107 BC,
was the son of an ex-Consul who, because he belonged to the aristocratic party,
had been forced by Marius to commit suicide, but he himself had fled with some
others to Spain, where for eight months he and his friends lived in hiding in a
spacious cavern beside the sea. The owner of the land in which the cave was
situated was a friend of his, and used daily to dispatch a servant thither who,
without ever seeing the noble fugitive or knowing his identity, left food for
him and his companions upon the rocks. The historian Fenestella, who lived a
generation later, but whose works are lost, used to tell, moreover, how he met
an old woman who in her youth had been sent by this considerate host to the
cave to distribute her charms amongst the little band of outlaws, a mission
upon which she looked back with the greatest pleasure as the most agreeable of
her life. But when both Manus and Cinna were dead, Crassus, now about
twenty-four years of age, was able to come out of hiding; after which he joined
forces with another exile of aristocratic sympathies, Metellus, the son of that
Metellus of whom we have read in the previous chapter, and together they
offered their services to Sulla.
Cnaeus Pompeius, whom we now call Pompey, was no more than twenty-three
years of age when he, too, threw in his lot with Sulla; but already he was an
outstanding figure in Rome and was greatly beloved by the rank and file of the
patrician party, in spite of the intense unpopularity of his fattier, a former
Consul, who, in the end was struck dead by lightning a fate which most people
believed to be a divine punishment for his cruelty and avarice. He was an
extremely good-looking young man, whose features were often compared to those
of Alexander the Great, and whose eyes were so “languishing”, as Plutarch
relates, that women were always falling in love with him. Indeed, a famous and
beautiful courtesan, named Flora, declared that she could never resist biting
him; and when he refused to have anything more to do with her out of
consideration for a friend of his who had lost his heart to her, she very
nearly died of grief. He was a happy-go-lucky youth, so charming that he could
do whatever he liked without giving offence, and so easy and simple in his
manners that his vast opinion of himself and his youthful assurance were
tolerated with the greatest good-nature by his elders.
Nowhere was he more beloved than in Picenum, the country on the east
side of the Italian peninsula opposite Rome, for that was his ancestral home;
and now at his audacious bidding thousands of his countrymen flocked to his
standard, and soon the amazing young man had organized and drilled them into
three first-rate legions, complete with arms, munitions, and baggage-wagons. It
troubled him not at all that the country between him and Sulla was held by the
forces of the People; and in the first battle he rode out alone in advance of
his men, met the fire-eating leader and champion of the opposing cavalry in a
hand to hand duel, and killed him with such unruffled ease that the others
thought him to be superhuman and fled. Shortly after this his little army came
face to face with a large force under the command of the People's Consul for
that year, Scipio Asiaticus; but these troops at once came over to his side,
and Scipio was obliged to fly for his life. He then outmaneuvered another army
sent against him by Carbo, and, having obliged them to surrender, made them
hand over their fine arms, armor, and horses, and then let them go.
The road to Sulla’s headquarters was now open, and when Pompey had come
in sight of the camp he drew up his troops in parade-order: glittering rank
upon rank of them, infantry and cavalry, and riding forward to meet the
astonished Sulla, politely dismounted and hailed him as Imperator, the title given to a victorious Commander-in-Chief. At
this Sulla also dismounted, and addressed the young man with the same most
exalted title, Imperator, an
unprecedented honor for a youth of that age. Pompey accepted the generous
compliment with a happy smile: his head was not in the least turned by it, nor
did he show any signs of modest embarrassment when the pimpled but dignified
Sulla, at all future meetings, gravely stood up and saluted him with exaggerated
deference.
Meanwhile, in Rome, the father and mother of the baby Marc Antony must
have been living in fear of their lives; for the successes of Sulla, who had
sworn to reinstate the aristocratic or republican party, had exasperated the
leaders of the People, and they were quite capable of exterminating this little
family which, if Rome fell to Sulla, would doubtless seek its revenge for the
murder of the old orator who had been the head of the house. Already several nobles
and men of aristocratic sympathies had been arrested, and some of them executed
on trumped-up charges; and the younger Marius was showing himself to be as
bloodthirsty as his father. It was a period of terror for the senatorial party,
and, with beating heart, Antony’s mother must have clutched her baby to her
bosom at every unusual sound. On all sides it was felt that Rome had reached a
crisis in its affairs which marked the end of an epoch, and none could say
whether the approach of Sulla would precipitate the destruction of the city or
bring it a new lease of life; but when in July, 83 BC, the Capitol was accidentally burnt to the ground, and the best
copy of the Sibylline Books destroyed, no doubt remained in the minds of the
citizens that, for better or for worse, Rome’s violent hour of change had
arrived.
To the anxious parents of the baby it seemed that the birth of this son
of theirs was not unconnected with the turmoil which ushered him into the
world. Perhaps, they said to themselves in the nepotism of their parental
pride, he was the nation's hoped-for deliverer; perhaps he had been born to
avenge the murders not only of his two grandfathers, but of all the other
victims of the People’s rule; perhaps it would fall to his lot to sweep away
the ruins of the old Rome and to build a fairer city in its place. An outstanding
career at any rate was surely to be expected of a male child, born to an
important family at such a time as this, when portents and omens were
everywhere being discussed, and fearful occurrences were almost daily shocking
their minds. But for the present their eyes were turned to the approaching Sulla,
the champion of their cause, whose coming was the one hope they had of safety
for themselves and their child of destiny.
During the following months Sulla defeated the enemy several times, and
gradually broke their resistance, Marius the Younger finally shutting himself
up in the town of Praeneste (Palestrina), some twenty miles from Rome, where he
was closely besieged. In the early spring of 82 BC Sulla was thus able to march on Rome; but when his approach was
reported the leaders of the People began a last, savage massacre of their
political opponents, in which so many patricians and their sympathizers were
killed that the escape of the baby Antony and his parents seems to have been
almost miraculous. The war, however, was not yet at an end; and Sulla was soon
obliged to take the field again against Carbo and a formidable army
concentrated in Etruria, north of Rome. But while he was thus engaged, the
Samnites from central Italy, who were tired of Rome's quarrels and, under the
pretence of helping the People's cause, wished to take this opportunity to
destroy the city entirely and massacre its inhabitants, made a sudden rush on
the capital; and Sulla returned only just in time to prevent their entry.
The two armies met at sunset just outside the Colline Gate, on the
northern side of the city, and Sulla was very nearly defeated, for his men were
exhausted by their rapid march. The young Crassus, it is true, who commanded
one wing, was victorious, but the main body was pressed back against the walls
of the city. Sulla himself, mounted on a white charger, his pimpled and blotchy
face terrible in his anguish, his voice hoarse from shouting, was within an ace
of being killed. Two javelins at the same moment flew through the air towards
him while he was looking the other way; but his groom saw them coming and
struck the horse a sudden blow, at which it bounded forward, and the javelins
missed their mark by inches. At this Sulla pulled from his bosom a little
golden image of Apollo which he had bought at Delphi, and fervently kissed it,
praying aloud to that god to come to his aid; but it was the falling darkness
which saved him and Rome, for the battle was suddenly discontinued by the enemy
in order that they might gather their scattered forces in preparation for the
final onslaught upon the gates.
Just then the news was received by both sides that young Crassus had
driven back the Samnites opposed to him, and was in a position to outflank the
remainder, whereupon the latter retired in dismay; and by break of day Sulla
and Crassus effected a juncture, as a result of which eight thousand of the
enemy surrendered and were marched, disarmed, to the western side of the city,
where they were penned into a small area of the Circus Flaminius between the
Capitoline Hill and the river.
Close to this spot was the temple of Bellona in which the Senate was
accustomed occasionally to meet; and here Sulla called the senators together,
after their night of terror, to receive their thanks for the saving of the city,
and to give his orders in regard to the future government. But while he was
addressing them, the most terrible screams and cries penetrated the building,
at which the senators rose to their feet in alarm, thinking that a new attack
upon the city was being made. Sulla, however, without raising his voice or
changing the expression of his face, told them to be seated and kindly to give
their attention to him, not to the disturbance outside. “What you hear, he
said, is merely due to my having given orders for the punishment of some
criminals”. Actually, Sulla had instructed his men to kill all the eight thousand
prisoners, his justification for this slaughter being that they had, on their
side, intended to massacre the citizens.
During the day four of the enemy’s generals were brought in and summarily
executed, after which their heads were carried to Praeneste, where Marius was
besieged, and, having been fixed on long poles, were bobbed about in front of
the walls. On seeing them Marius killed himself, and the city surrendered. His
head was sent to Rome, and was stuck up on the Rostra, where Sulla went to see
it, and addressing it in scholarly criticism, quoted a line from Aristophanes: “You
should have worked at the oar before trying to handle the helm”. He then
hastened to Praeneste where, next day, he gathered the civil and military
prisoners in an open space, to the number of twelve thousand, and callously told
his soldiers to kill the lot, the women and children, however, being spared. He
had the politeness to exempt also the owner of the house in which he had spent
the night; but the unhappy man could not bear the cries of the dying, and,
rushing in amongst them, eagerly submitted himself to the soldiers’ swords.
Having come back to Rome, Sulla began at once to reestablish the power
of the republican aristocracy and the Senate and to reduce that of the People
and the Comitia to a minimum, with which end in view he decided, in the
interests of the Republic, to kill all the democrats of any note or standing,
that being the surest way of preventing political arguments. He therefore
issued a list or proscriptum of
eighty names of persons who were to be killed at sight, a reward being given
for their heads and the penalty of death being decreed against any who should
aid their escape. The property of the proscribed was to be confiscated, and
their sons and grandsons were to be prohibited from holding any public office.
Few of the unfortunates got away: most of them were killed during the
same day by soldiers or even by their own slaves, and their pallid,
blood-drained heads were arranged in rows on the Rostra from which Sulla made
his pithy speeches. Two days later he issued a second list of two hundred and
twenty names, and on the following morning another list of the same number
appeared. In addressing the people after this third proscription had been
posted up, he told them casually that these were all the names he could think
of at the moment, but that if he found that any had escaped his memory he would
issue supplementary lists, which, in fact, he continued to do for some weeks.
Altogether more than four thousand persons, including fifty senators of democratic
sympathies, lost their lives as a result of these proscriptions; and there can
be no doubt that there were many who were the victims of personal envy or
spite, their names being sent in to Sulla even because somebody coveted their
property.
Quintus Aurelius, for example, the owner of a desirable farm in Alba,
near Rome—a perfectly harmless man whose only crime was that he had offered his
condolences to a family thus bereaved—went into the Forum to read the list,
and, to his horror, found his own name in it, whereupon he exclaimed, “O my
God! my Alban farm has convicted me”, and a few minutes later was murdered and
his head added to the horrifying collection on the Rostra.
These fearful proscriptions bring into our pages two more persons who
played leading parts in the subsequent drama, namely, the great Julius Caesar
and Cicero. Caius Julius Caesar was born in July, 102 BC, and was therefore
about twenty years of age at the time. He was the scion of a particularly proud
patrician family, but his own branch of it had not of recent years performed
any striking public service. His father, of whom practically nothing is known,
had been Praetor and had died in 84 BC; but his mother, Aurelia, who belonged
to the Cotta family, was living, and, indeed, survived to see her son the
greatest man of his time. Little is recorded of her in history, which is an
indication, perhaps, that her character was not outstanding; and Plutarch has
unintentionally pilloried her forever by describing her in later life as “a
discreet woman who was continually around her son's wife”. His father’s sister,
Julia, had married the great Marius, who was thus his uncle and Marius the
Younger his cousin; and this was enough in itself to damn him in Sulla’s eyes.
Again, he had recently been married to Cornelia, the daughter of the late
Cinna, who, it will be recalled, had been one of the chief leaders of the
People and had been one of Sulla’s arch-enemies. Moreover, for the last three
years or so he had been notoriously the lover of Servilia, the wife of Marcus
Junius Brutus, a man whose whole family was closely connected with the party of
Marius; and it was even rumored that he was the father of her child, the little
Brutus (who ultimately was one of his murderers), although he was not more than
seventeen when the boy was born. Servilia was the sister of that curious
fanatic, Cato the Younger, who was later the mainstay of the aristocratic
party; but he, too, was opposed to Sulla.
Caesar, however, was such a curled and scented young fop, so overdressed
and effeminate in appearance, that nobody could then accuse him of being a
supporter of the rough Proletariat, or a menace to the aristocratic party whose
most exaggerated manners he emulated. Sulla therefore decided to deal leniently
with him, and merely ordered him to divorce the offending Cornelia; but, to his
great surprise, the pink-and-white young Caesar absolutely refused to do this,
and fled from Rome, his property being thereupon confiscated and his name,
apparently, proscribed. His aristocratic relations, however, including, no doubt,
the mother of the little Anthony, who was a member of the family of the Caesars,
pleaded with Sulla to forgive him; and, after some hair-raising adventures as a
fugitive, he was pardoned, whereupon he went away soldiering, which was the
wisest thing he could do, even though some lady’s boudoir seemed to be a more
natural place for him than the camp.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, afterwards Antony’s most deadly enemy, was at
this time a rising young barrister of twenty-five, having been born in January,
106 BC, the same year in which Pompey
first saw the light. His ancestral home was that same Arpinum, in the Volscian
Mountains, from which Marius had come. He was not of patrician blood, but he
belonged to the local bourgeoisie, and no doubt he would from the first have
sided with the aristocratic party in Rome had not Sulla, the enemy of his great
fellow-townsman, been its leader. He was afraid, of course, to say anything
against so powerful and so dreaded a man; but he now dared to plead the cause
of one who had suffered indirectly by Sulla's actions, and thereby he must have
endangered his life. A certain wealthy citizen of Ameria (Amelia) in Umbria,
named Sextus Roscius, was murdered by some distant kinsmen, who, in order to
escape punishment, persuaded Chrysogonus, a man in Sulla’s employ, to get the
name of their victim inserted in one of the proscription-lists; and when this
had been done, Chrysogonus bought the dead man's confiscated property for a
song and divided it with the murderers. Roscius, however, had left a son of the
same name, and, in order to remove him, these scoundrels now accused him of
having himself killed his father for private motives before his proscription
had been published.
Cicero defended the younger Roscius before the senatorial court, and
boldly laid bare the wickedness of Chrysogonus, although he knew well enough
that the man was high in Sulla’s favor. With diplomatic flattery, he declared,
that Sulla himself was no more to blame for the occurrence than God was for man’s
frequent misfortunes, for Sulla, like God, was far too busy to know always what
his servants were up to; but he asked whether the aristocratic party had won
back its control of the State only that rascally menials and lackeys should
thus be able to rob innocent men of their goods under pretence of obeying their
busy masters orders. He demanded the punishment of Chrysogonus and the
rehabilitation of Roscius, and he won his case so brilliantly that he
established himself at once both as a great advocate and as a man of some
courage. Sulla, however, seems to have been greatly annoyed by the affair, for
his was not the type of mind to overlook the reproach behind Cicero’s likening
him to God; and the young barrister decided to get out of danger’s way by going
to Greece, for the ostensible purpose of improving his health and studying
rhetoric. Neither he nor Julius Caesar returned to Rome until after Sulla’s
death.
Meanwhile Sulla, who had caused himself to be made Dictator, with
absolute power for as long as he deemed necessary, energetically set about the
reorganization of the government. In order to deprive the Comitia of its power,
he decreed that no proposed law should be put to the vote in that assembly
until it had already received the sanction of the Senate; but he did not interfere
with the technical right of the Comitia to reject measures sent down to them by
the Senate, for now that the People’s party had not a single man of any
standing left alive, this right, he knew, would not be used. At the same time,
however, he enfranchised ten thousand of the slaves of the men killed in his
proscriptions, and thus created a solid body of voters who looked to him as
their patron and were capable of swamping any meeting of the Comitia to which
they were called. He also destroyed the powers of the People’s Tribunes by the
simple device of decreeing that no Tribune could hold office for more than one
year, and that the holding of that office debarred him from occupying any other
magisterial post. Thus, only men of no importance and without political ambition
would be likely to accept the Tribuneship, and dangerous persons like Marius or
the Gracchi would not again be found in the position to exercise the
tribunitial veto or to shield themselves behind the sacrosanctity of the office.
Moreover, the Senate was empowered to impose a crushing fine upon any Tribune
whose conduct was deemed unbecoming.
It was further decreed that the great offices in the State were to be
held annually, in strict rotation, and at fixed ages, so that a man in rising
from Quaestor to Praetor and from Praetor to Consul would have to be out of
office for long periods between, nor was he to be allowed to hold the
Consulship twice unless an interval of ten years had elapsed before his second
election. Thus he guarded the State against continuous governance by one
outstanding politician, and placed the real power in the hands of the senators,
whose influence as a body he increased in numerous ways, and whose election he
limited, in actuality, to candidates drawn from his own Party. His measures, in
fact, insured the absolute control of affairs by the aristocracy, and the
People were reduced to complete impotence. Everything that the Gracchi and Marius
had stood for went by the board; and, at the moment, the great fight between
the Senate and the Comitia, the republicans and the democrats, was ended by the
utter rout of the latter. For the time being Sulla was like a king, and more
than a king, in Rome; but it is certainly to be said in his favor that he used
his unlimited authority in believed to be the best interests of the Republic.
He was not altogether to blame for some of the atrocities committed in
his name. For example, the circumstances of the murder of Marcus Marius Gratidianus,
one of the remaining members of the family of Marius, were probably beyond his
control. This man was taken to the grave of Catulus, a victim of the great
Marius, and, after being kept there for some time, was tortured to death as a
kind of human sacrifice to the spirit of the dead. He was first flogged, then
his eyes were put out, next his nose, hands, and feet were cut off, “that he
might die as it were piecemeal” and finally he was decapitated, the severed
head being carried away by gamine, of whom we shall presently hear more.
Another democrat, Baebius by name, was literally torn limb from limb by a mob
of me opposite faction.
Sulla’s attempt to force the youthful Julius Caesar to divorce his wife
has already been mentioned; and he now interfered, likewise in the matrimonial
life of the brilliant young Pompey. Sulla’s wife at this time was Cecilia
Metella, niece of that uncompromising supporter of the aristocrats, Metellus,
whom Marius had ousted from his command in the war against King Jugurtha. She
had previously been married to Aemilius Scaurus, a former Consul, by whom she
had had a daughter, Aemilia, who was now Sulla’s stepchild; and this Aemilia
had been married to Manius Glabrio, and was about to have a child by him. But
in spite of this fact, her mother, Cecilia, and Sulla both decided to marry her
to Pompey, so that this rising young man might be brought into the family.
Unfortunately, Pompey was already married to a girl named Antistia, daughter of
the distinguished orator Antistius, who had been killed by the younger Marius
because of his aristocratic sympathies; but a trifle such as that was brushed
aside by Sulla, who obliged Pompey to divorce her, whereat her mother, deeply
feeling the disgrace of it, committed suicide. Aemilia was then divorced from
Glabrio and married to Pompey; but she spoilt Sulla’s plans by dying a few
weeks later when giving birth to her first husband’s child in her second
husband’s house.
Sulla’s stem and despotic rule is well exemplified in an incident which
occurred at the close of 82 BC. A
certain Lucretius Ofella, who had once belonged to the party of Marius but had
deserted to that of Sulla, offered himself as a candidate for the Consulship of
the following year, although he had not yet been either Quaestor or Praetor,
and was thus acting in defiance of the new law made in that regard by the
Dictator. Sulla, therefore, forbade him to stand for election; but Ofella
nevertheless went down into the Forum, surrounded by his friends, to canvass
votes. Sulla saw him, and, without a moment's hesitation, ordered an officer to
go and kill him; and a few minutes later Ofella lay dead.
At the beginning of the year 81 BC Sulla celebrated his Triumph, in honor, particularly, of his victories in
Greece and Asia Minor. The procession was one of the most splendid ever seen in
Rome, but its most striking feature was the group of returned exiles of the
aristocratic party, banished under Marius and Cinna, and brought back by Sulla.
They were crowned with garlands, and marched joyfully along the streets
shouting the praises of their savior until they were hoarse. Sulla, then asked,
and of course received permission to call himself by the name Felix, “the Happy”,
or, rather, the “Lucky”; for he declared that he was obviously the child of
good fortune, the favored of the gods.
For many days after tins he feasted the citizens so lavishly that the
surplus meat had to be thrown in quantities into the river, while valuable
wine, forty and more years old, was drunk as though it were water. During the
festivities, however, his wife, Cecilia, who had recently given birth to twins,
became fatally ill; and Sulla was so upset at thought of anything so unlucky as
a death taking place in his home circle that he hastily divorced the dying lady
and had her removed from his house, refusing to visit her in her last hours,
but giving her a very fine funeral to show his respect for her.
Meanwhile the young Pompey was covering himself with glory in Sicily and
Africa, where he had been sent in pursuit of the remnants of the People’s army.
Having hunted down and killed Carbo and other democratic leaders, he returned
to Rome, and went smiling to Sulla, mightily pleased with himself and quite at
his ease in the Dictator's awe-inspiring presence, Sulla at once conferred on
him the name Magnus, “the Great”; but he was staggered when Pompey then asked
for a Triumph, although he was hardly twenty-five years of age and was not old
enough even to be a senator. Sulla told him that it was quite impossible to
grant his request, but Pompey, nothing daunted, reminded him that the rising
sun was more generally worshipped than the setting, thereby indicating that his
glory was only beginning whereas Sulla’s was on the wane. At this bold remark
those who were present held their breath in amazement and fear, while Sulla,
who could not believe his ears, asked him to repeat what he had said. Pompey
blandly did so, and Sulla was so astounded at his audacity that he seemed for
some moments to be quite stupefied. But at length he turned with a laugh to the
others, and said: “O, very well, then; let the boy triumph, let him triumph”.
The irrepressible Pompey thereupon crowned the incident by asking that his
triumphal chariot might be draw by four elephants instead of horses, so that the
spectacle might be really unique.
Thus, in September, 81 BC,
Pompey “the Great” celebrated his Triumph, and thenceforth was second only to
the Dictator in the estimation of his party. Meanwhile, Crassus, who had allied
himself with Sulla, it will be recalled, at the same time that Pompey had done
so, had made a great name for himself as a military leader, but had incurred
Sulla's grave displeasure by ordering the execution of certain persons in the
provinces without first asking permission, and by seizing their money and also
the pay-box of the defeated forces, and enriching himself thereby. For this reason
Sulla gave him no further military command, and thereupon Crassus turned his
attention to money-making, and soon earned for himself the names Dives, the Rich. He seems to have been
bitterly jealous of Pompey, and since he was now debarred from rivaling that
dazzling young man's military career, he did his best to establish a commanding
position for himself in the city’s financial life, and his success in that
respect will presently bring him before us as one of the big men of Rome.
It has been pointed out that Sulla, in spite of the hard work of which
he was capable, was fond of good living, and was, in fact, a very heavy drinker,
as his “mulberry” face testified and now that he had destroyed the power of the
People and the Comitia and had established that of the aristocratic and
senatorial party, he began to indulge his inclinations with increasing
frequency. In spite of the fact that he was nearly sixty years of age, pretty
women and handsome young men continued to attract him as much as they had
always done, for, like so many Romans, he was strangely indifferent to the sex
of those who caught his roving eye. For years he had expressed a passionate
devotion to a romantic actor named Metrobius, and though this personage was now
long past his beautiful prime, Sulla still delighted in his very intelligent
society. Roscius, a comedian, and Sorex, a mime-dancer, were also his constant
companions at dinner, not, however, by any means to the exclusion of several
well-known actresses and ladies of easy virtue.
His fourth wife, Cecilia Metella, it will be recalled, had died at the
time of his Triumph; but now, notwithstanding his years and his catholic
interests, his erratic fancy was taken by a young society-lady, Valeria, the
daughter of Valerius Messala, one of Sulla's noble supporters, and
sister-in-law of Hortensius, the famous orator. The story of their meeting is
told by Plutarch, and may best be related in his own words: “At a gladiatorial
exhibition, this Valeria, who was a beautiful woman of noble birth but had
lately been divorced from her husband, had a seat near Sulla; and passing along
to it behind him she leaned on him with her hand, and, plucking a little bit of
wool from his cloak, carried it to her seat. Sulla looked round wondering what
was the meaning of her action, whereupon she whispered: ‘What harm is there,
sir, in my wanting to share a little in your good luck?’. It was apparent at
once that Sulla was not displeased, but was, in fact, intrigued; for he
immediately took steps to find out her name, her parentage, and her past. During
the performance many side glances passed between them, each of them continually
turning to look at the other, and frequently exchanging smiles; and afterwards
an introduction was effected and, in the end, a marriage was arranged”
At the beginning of the year 79 BC,
Sulla nonchalantly resigned his stern and pitiless Dictatorship and retired
with his charming young wife to his villa near Puteoli, close to Baiae, the
fashionable resort on the Bay of Naples, where he hoped to enjoy himself in his
own way for the remainder of his life. He had always been impatient of the
restraints imposed upon him by his office, and he could not be bothered any
longer with the worries of autocratic rule. He had created new machinery of
government, which, in any case, he wished to test, but which could not be
tested so long as he kept the command in his hands. His method had always been
to kill off his political opponents, or to scare them into obedience; but he
was well aware that permanent government could not be carried on by such rough
and ready means, and he wanted the senatorial party to learn to stand upon its
own feet without that aid from him, the giving of which was becoming more and
more tedious now that the pleasure of actual construction was gone.
He wanted leisure in which to write his memoirs; he wanted time for his
various intellectual and artistic pursuits; but, above all, he wanted to be
left alone to enjoy himself in his own way, to make love, to be merry, and to
get drunk to his heart’s content, without the critical eyes of the world being
fixed upon him. He had become enormously wealthy during his career, and his
house and gardens beside the Neapolitan sea were luxurious and beautiful. The
charming estates of his friends were dotted all over this part of the country. Hortensius,
for instance, lived nearby, and had so vast a wine-cellar that he left ten
thousand casks of Chian to his heir; while his parks were celebrated for their
beautiful trees, for the rare animals which they contained, and for the ponds
beside the sea which were stocked with fish. The best society of Rome
congregated at Baiae and other watering-places round about; and thus Sulla
could expect to be far more happy here than ever he could be in his office in
the capital.
But a year later, in 78 BC, an
early death cut short his hopes of earthly happiness. It is said that he
contracted the horrible disease of phthiriasis,
that is to say his body became the breeding-ground of lice; but a similar
misfortune is attributed to many well-known persons in ancient history, and the
story is not readily to be credited. He certainly became very ill, however; and
his death was not unexpected. One day he was told that a magistrate named
Granius was deferring the payment of a public debt because he believed that
Sulla, who was the only man who could force him to pay up, was about to die;
and thereupon Sulla sent for him and, after an exchange of hot recriminations,
ordered him to be strangled in his presence. The excitement of this violent
scene, however, caused him to break a blood-vessel, and he died next day.
On hearing the news the mob went wild with excitement, thinking that the
rule of the aristocracy would soon be at an end, and that the party of the
People would come back to power. They surrounded the house, shouting that they
would not allow the dead man a public funeral; but the young Pompey, who
happened to be in the neighborhood, took matters in hand, and caused the
arrangements for the funeral to be made. Meanwhile the reading of the will was
proceeded with, and it was found that Sulla had left legacies to every one of
his friends and prominent supporters with the one exception of Pompey, whose
popularity he had evidently come to resent. But the light-hearted young man
pretended to take no offence at this slight, and himself escorted the body to
Rome, where, after a funeral of unprecedented magnificence, it was cremated on
the Campus Martius, while senators, nobles, officials, and soldiers marched in
procession around the pyre, and countless flute-players poured forth a wild and
tender lament.
The little Antony, who now had two younger brothers, Lucius and Caius,
was five years of age at this time, and it is hardly likely that in after life
he remembered any of these events; yet the fact that his father was one of the
Quaestors at about this period, and was a man of social importance, suggests
that the child and his brothers may have come under Sulla’s polite notice from
time to time. The family, however, was not well off, and was generally in debt,
on which account it is not to be supposed that their shabby house in Rome was a
rendezvous of statesmen and politicians. Nevertheless, Antony’s subsequent
actions cannot be understood clearly unless we follow further the movement of
public affairs which accompanied his growth to manhood.
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