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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARC ANTHONY
CHAPTER IVAntony's Growth to Manhood Amidst the Political Struggles which Culminated in the Catilinarian Conspiracy.78 - 62 BC
Amongst these was Cinna, whose sister, Cornelia, the young Julius Caesar
had married, and who was the son of the famous democratic Consul, Cinna, the
colleague of Marius; and immediately upon the death of Sulla this Cinna sent a
private message to Caesar, his brother-in-law, urging him to come home and to
throw in his lot with the People's party which, under the leadership of the
Consul Lepidus, was going to make short work of the late Sulla’s republican
government.
The elegant young Caesar was both ambitious and adventurous, and came
back post haste to Rome to see for himself how matters stood, bringing with him
a curiously paradoxical reputation. On the one hand, he had unexpectedly distinguished
himself by his soldierly qualities while serving at the siege of Mitylene, the
chief city of the island of Lesbos, which had been in revolt against Roman
rule; and for gallantly saving a soldier’s life he had been given the coveted
oak-leaf chaplet, the wearing of which on state occasions entitled its
possessor to a public salute, the entire audience at a theatre, for instance,
rising to its feet on his entry. But, at the same time, his behavior at the
court of the king of Bithynia, whom he had visited more than once on official
business, was such that people put the worst construction upon his relationship
to this potentate. King Nicomedes the Third, the monarch in question, was then
no longer a young man; but his well-known peculiarities, considered in
conjunction with Caesar’s notorious effeminacy at this time, give color to a
story which one would like to discredit. At any rate, the youthful hero of Mitylene
had to submit in Rome to the jests of the ribald, who nicknamed him “The Queen
of Bithynia”, and declared that his official duties at the court of Nicomedes
had been confined to the royal bedchamber.
Yet, at the same time, he was still the recognized lover of Servina, and people smilingly pointed to that lady’s little
son, Brutus, and said that Caesar was certainly the father of the child, if not
also the mother. He was, moreover, a fine athlete, a strong swimmer, a perfect
horseman, and a brilliant swordsman; and these accomplishments, combined with
his courage, his brains, and his self-assurance, already suggested that he was
no ordinary young man, and that his phase of effeminacy would presently pass.
He was very good-looking. He was somewhat taller than the average, and
had a fresh, fair complexion and skin, a graceful figure, a fine forehead, and
dark, thoughtful eyes. The hair on his head always displayed the art of the
barber, but on other parts of his body it was carefully removed by tweezers—a
practice which afterwards became pretty general in Rome, but which was considered
then, as it would be now, an unnecessary and slightly perverted onslaught upon
the peculiar and primeval heritage of the male. He had various little
mannerisms imitated from those of the fashionable youths of Rome and Greece,
and, in particular, he used to adjust his hair by running his fingers lightly
and gracefully over it with a feminine movement which in our own day is still
characteristic of subnormal man. “When I see his hair so carefully arranged”,
said Cicero at a later date, “and observe him adjusting it with his finger, I
cannot imagine that it should enter into such a man’s thoughts to subvert the
Roman state”.
He was what may be described as artistic in his dress, and wore his
rather showy garments loosely draped about him with a carefully studied carelessness
which had once caused Sulla to speak of him as “that ill-girt young man”. Yet
he was always well-washed and groomed; and if he was a little too heavily
scented, he at any rate never reeked of wine as did so many Romans, for he was
extremely temperate. His manners were perfect, he was usually affable to all,
and was scrupulously polite, although sometimes his remarks could be very
caustic.
He was about twenty-four years of age when he returned to Rome, and, in
spite of his love of adventure, was remarkably astute. He saw at once that the
revolt of the democrats which was being engineered by the Consul Lepidus,
assisted by Marcus Junius Brutus, Servilia’s husband, was premature, and he would
have nothing to do with it, although his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius,
probably joined her appeals to those of his brother-in-law, Cinna, m the
attempt to persuade him to take up the people’s cause. Lepidus raised an army
outside Rome and recklessly marched on the city, declaring that he was coming
to bring liberty to the citizens. The capital, however, was successfully
defended by his colleague in the Consulship, Catulus; and Pompey, having been
given the command of the other senatorial forces, attacked and defeated Brutus
whom he put to death, and thereupon Lepidus fled to Sardinia, where his
misfortunes, which included the infidelity of his wife, so preyed upon his mind
that he fell sick and died, leaving behind him, however, a son who will appear
later in these pages as one of Antony’s colleagues. The hopes of the people’s
party were thus speedily crushed, and the young Caesar must have thanked his
lucky stars that he had not followed the advice of his brother-in-law, who was
now a fugitive in Spain.
For a short time Caesar remained in Rome, puzzling his friends as to
whether he was to be regarded as a person of promising character, or a
fashionable man about town whose brilliance and charm would prove to be his undoing;
but after a while he revealed a daring spirit by taking an active part in the
prosecution of the ex-Consul, Dolabella, an important figure in the
aristocratic party, on the charge of bribery. His speech against him, though delivered
in rather a high, shrill voice, proved him to be a natural orator, with a fine
sense of language, a little cold and pedantic, perhaps, but unquestionably
eloquent. Dolabella was acquitted, however, and thereupon Caesar made a second
attempt at oratorical honors by conducting the prosecution of Caius Antonius,
Antony’s aristocratic but rather disreputable uncle, on a similar charge, again
without winning the case. It was seen, of course, that the young man had the
democratic leanings to be expected of a nephew of the great Marius; but since
these views were out of season just now in Rome, and many angry looks were
turned upon him, he wisely went off to study oratory in Rhodes for a while,
with the object of making for himself a career later at the Roman Bar. Servilia,
meanwhile, married a second husband, Decimus Junius
Silanus, a rising politician, but retained, nevertheless, a romantic affection
for the charming young dandy, the angle of whose approach to the wide subject of
sex evidently appealed to the peculiarities of her own nature.
On his way to Rhodes, Caesar had the misfortune to be captured by
Cilician pirates near the little island of Pharmacusa (Fermaco) off the coast of Asia Minor. These men at
once demanded a ransom of twenty talents, but with great bravado their elegant
young captive laughed at their ignorance of his social importance, and, telling
them that he was worth at least fifty, dispatched his attendants to raise the
larger sum at Miletus and other not distant cities where his family was known.
For five or six weeks he lived in the pirates' camp, treating his bloodthirsty
captors with such a mixture of insolence and patronizing banter that it is a
marvel his throat was not cut. He insisted upon joining in their sports and
exercises, running races with them and jeering at them for not being able to
beat him. Around the camp-fire at night he used to read them his own poetry,
and when they did not applaud he smacked their heads and called them illiterate
savages; or, when he wished to sleep, he sent them peremptory orders to make
less noise.
At length his messengers returned bringing the ransom-money; and
thereupon Caesar bade the pirates goodbye, cheerily promising them that he
would come back one day and have them all crucified, at which they laughed
heartily, having conceived quite a liking for the audacious fellow. But he
meant what he said, and having raised a small force at the port of Miletus,
sailed back to the island, took the pirates by surprise, brought them in chains
to Pergamus, and there, not waiting for authorization from the Roman governor,
had them all crucified. But having gone to jeer at them as they hung on their
forest of crosses on the hillside outside the city, he was unexpectedly touched
by their sufferings which, in the ordinary course of events, would have lasted
for several days until hunger, thirst, and exposure had slowly killed them; and
he therefore very kindly ordered his men to get up on ladders and cut all their
throats. He then went his way to Rhodes, where he entered the school of
Apollonius the orator, an institute which Cicero had just left.
Cicero arrived back in Rome in 77 BC,
at the age of twenty-nine—a tall, thin young man, with a high and thoughtful
forehead, a sallow skin due to indigestion, and a voice pitched so far up the
scale that when he spoke with any excitement people feared lest he should
injure his vocal chords; and soon he began to make a name for himself in public
life, being sent as Quaestor to Sicily in 75 BC. Meanwhile, Pompey had been ordered to Spain to deal with a
rebellion there, and was therefore not available when the government was
looking for a capable officer to command the military and naval forces which it
had decided to dispatch against the pirates, whose widespread activities had
become intolerable. Marcus Antonius, the father of the now eight-year-old
Antony, was Praetor at this time; and at last it was agreed that he should be
given the command, although he probably had as little taste for it as he had
ability. He was the son of the great orator, who had been an artistic, eccentric
personage of improvident habits, notorious for throwing his money in showers to
the people when he happened to be in funds; and he himself was a careless,
good-natured, generous man, generally more or less bankrupt; and much afraid of
his patrician wife Julia, the kinswoman of the young Julius Caesar, for she was
a stern upholder of the honor of the Caesars and the Antonii, about which her
easy-going husband does not appear to have cared very greatly.
An illuminating story is told of him by Plutarch. A friend came to see
him one day to borrow some money, but as usual, there was very little in the
house, and, even if there had been sufficient it would have been in the charge
of Julia. Marcus Antonius therefore hit upon the novel expedient of sending for
a basin of water, saying that he wished to shave himself; and when the servant,
having regard to the presence of a guest, had brought the water in the best
silver basin the family possessed, Antonius pretended to begin to shave, then
sent the servant away, and gave the basin to his friend to convert into money.
Unfortunately, however, Julia quickly missed it, and stormed about the house,
accusing everybody in the place of having stolen it; and at last her husband
was obliged to confess what he had done and to ask her pardon.
The campaign against the pirates obliged him to make his headquarters in
the area of hostilities, and it seems that the little Antony and his two
brothers were left in their mothers care in Rome. She was a proud woman, and
she appears to have impressed upon the boys the glory of their lineage,
explaining to them that they were the direct descendants, both through her and
their father, of the immortal gods, for the Julian family, that is to say the
Caesars, claimed descent from the goddess Venus, while the Antonii, although
remotely of plebeian stock, traced their pedigree back to Hercules. But her
pride must have received many cruel blows when from time to time during the
next two years news was brought to Rome that her husband was hopelessly bungling
the war, that he had been completely outmaneuvered by the pirates, and that he
had become little better than a pirate himself, by reason of the endless
demands he was making for food and money for his men from the towns within the
range of his activities. People in Rome began sarcastically to call him Creticus, because of his ineffectual actions
against Crete, the pirates base; and at last, in about
73 BC, came the tidings that he had
died. The little Antony, then ten years of age, was old enough to feel the loss
of his kindly and indulgent father; and for some time he and his brothers were,
no doubt, the object of the commiserations of all the ladies and gentlemen of
Rome's fashionable world who came to the house to offer their sympathy.
Julia, the widow, however, was not broken-hearted: she was glad,
perhaps, to be rid of one who had so signally failed to add any luster to his
line; and very soon afterwards she married another man, Publius Cornelius Lentulus, a member of one of the proudest patrician families, who had
already been Praetor and was expecting soon to be Consul. Lentulus was a rather
shameless personage, often mixed up in society scandals, and notorious for a
kind of lazy impertinence at which people were pleased to smile because he
carried it on with such a charmingly aristocratic air.
When he had been Quaestor in 81 BC he had been called before the terrible Sulla to answer charges of corruption
brought against him; but he had merely shrugged his shoulders and, making a
half turn away from the Dictator, had extended the back of his leg towards him,
in a gesture which Plutarch explains as that of a boy who has made a blunder in
playing at ball and expects a smack for it. The cheeky movement was called Sura, the presenting
of one’s leg; and thenceforth Sura was his
nickname. His manners and appearance were so elegant that Cicero coined the
word lentulitas to denote the outward qualities of the blue-blooded; but he had more charm than
wisdom, and was too bored and languid to be taken very seriously, although,
ever since a certain soothsayer had told him that he was destined to rule Rome,
he had shown an unexpected interest in political movements which offered any
promise of an easy attainment of this half-hearted ambition. As a stepfather to
the young Antony he does not appear to have been a conspicuous success, and
since he was neither rich nor economical, the same struggle against debt which
had troubled the household in the boy’s infancy continued to form the dark
background of his growth to adolescence; but Antony seems to have been fond of
him, and in later life showed much respect for his memory.
In this same year, 73 BC,
Julius Caesar returned to Rome from Rhodes, having daringly crossed the
Adriatic in a little, four-oared boat so as to escape the attentions of the
pirates, and he was, no doubt, a frequent visitor at the house of Lentulus,
over which Julia, his kinswoman, presided; for the political discussions in her
salon may well have been to the young man’s liking, since they were inspired by
a spirit of mild revolt from the hidebound aristocratic party and a leaning
towards democracy, wherein Lentulus saw a better chance of personal
advancement. There was now a widespread feeling that the government bequeathed
by Sulla had not been at all successful, and that the massacre of the leaders
of the People’s party had removed an opposition which was necessary to the
health of the State; and in this house Caesar was able to criticize the men in
power without arousing any animosity in his host, whose loyalty to his fellow-aristocrats
was not conspicuous.
In the house of Servilia, which he also frequented, he was able to speak
even more openly of the future of the People's party; for in spite of the fact
that that lady had presented her husband, Silanus, with three children since Caesar
last saw her, she was still very much in love with the clever young man, and
shared with him his keen interest in the reviving activities of the democracy,
although her brother, Cato, was becoming a strong supporter of the aristocracy.
Caesar, in fact, was beginning to feel that his relationship to the late
Marius, and to his surviving widow, Julia, was no longer a drawback; and in
several houses which he visited there was a decided movement away from the government
instituted by Sulla, and a consequent attitude of respect to Caesar as the
nephew of Marius.
One of the most powerful of the younger men in Rome at this time was
Crassus, now thirty four years of age. Ever since Sulla had checked his
military career he had given his attention, as has been said above, to the
making of his fortune. One of his ingenious methods of acquiring property is
worthy of notice. He organized a highly-trained, private fire-brigade, some
five-hundred strong; and whenever a fire was reported he went to the spot with
his men, and offered to buy the burning house and the endangered buildings
around, these generally being sold to him, in view of their peril, at absurdly
low figures. He then set his highly skilled men to work to put out the fire. If,
however, his offer was refused, he called the firemen off and left the place to
burn. In this manner, says Plutarch, a very large part of Rome passed into his
possession.
He also made a great commercial business of the supplying of highly skilled
slaves. He bought likely young men cheaply in the open market, and trained them,
in schools which he had instituted, to be manuscripts-copyists,
letters-writers, secretaries, accountants, household servants, waiters, cooks,
gardeners, carpenters, silversmiths, and so forth. He himself supervised their
education, and often personally lectured to them; and in the end he sold at
very high prices those whom his own houses and vast business concerns could not
absorb.
Now, in this year 73 BC, a
very remarkable insurrection broke out which at one time seriously menaced the
security of the state. A certain Lentulus Batiates, following somewhat the
methods of Crassus, had organized a super-school for slaves in Capua, north of
Naples, where he trained a large number of Gauls and Thracians as gladiators,
and sold them at good prices to fight at the public shows which were constantly
taking place in Rome and other cities. These men were no better than prisoners
condemned to death, for they were kept in captivity until ordered out to fight,
and one by one they were then killed for the entertainment of the thoughtless
crowds which watched their enforced and pitiful duels. Gladiators usually had a
great respect for their calling and were notoriously obedient to their masters
and trainers. “Even when sinking under his wounds” says Cicero, “a gladiator
will send a message to his master to know whether he has any further orders,
since, if the master thinks he has done enough, he would be glad to be allowed
to lie down and die”.
But Batiates was a particularly heartless man, and his pupils at length
revolted. Under the leadership of a heroic Thracian named Spartacus, a number
of them escaped to the hills, where they were joined by all the outlaws and runaway
slaves who could reach them. In battle after battle they defeated the forces
sent against them, and took possession of their arms; and at length Spartacus
is said to have been able to place no less than forty thousand well-armed men in
the field, though how he collected so great a force is a mystery which has
never been solved.
Pompey was still away in Spain at the time, and Lucullus, the only other
military officer of distinction, was in the East, trying to suppress a renewed
insurrection of Mithridates. When both the Consuls for the year 72 BC had been badly defeated by Spartacus,
the distracted government called upon Crassus to take command, for his
brilliant work under Sulla had not been forgotten; and after a protracted
campaign he succeeded in 71 BC, in
cornering the rebels in southern Italy, and inflicting a complete defeat upon
them, the brave Spartacus being cut to pieces with the best of his men. A
certain number, however, escaped northwards, and, after many adventures, were
approaching the Alps, when Pompey, who was returning with his victorious army
from Spain, chanced upon them and overwhelmed them. Six thousand prisoners were
taken, and these were crucified at intervals along the whole length of the
highroad between Rome and Capua, so that for days afterwards those who
travelled along that road were obliged to witness, every two hundred yards or
so, the agony of a delirious or fainting man, fastened to a cross, slowly dying
of thirst and exposure.
Both Pompey and Crassus reached Rome with their armies at about the same
time; but the former, in view of his victories in Spain, which were painted by
him in most glowing colors, received the greater honors, and was at once
elected Consul for the coming year, 70 BC.
Crassus then, swallowing his pride, asked his help in obtaining the other
Consulship for himself, and, with this generously-given aid, was forthwith
elected.
These two men, it will be remembered, had been strong supporters of the
aristocratic party, but Sulla had insulted them both—Pompey, by leaving him out
of his will, and Crassus, by obstructing his military career; and now each
followed his own inclination and also the trend of public opinion by coming out
on the side of the democrats and by undoing Sulla’s work. It is true that
Crassus was not as whole-hearted as his colleague in this change of front; but
if he acted every now and then as a break upon the wheels of Pompey’s popular
progress, it was chiefly from motives of personal jealousy that he did so. At
any rate they together rescinded the law which obliged the measures placed
before the Comitia to be approved first by the Senate; and they rose again to
its former level the power of the Tribunes of the People, who were now allowed
once more to hold other magisterial offices after that of the Tribuneship. They also restored the office of Censor which
Sulla had abolished; and they approved of the first measure proposed by him,
namely that of turning out of the Senate all those aristocrats whose private
lives were not above reproach.
This drastic action, which involved no less than sixty-four senators, fell
particularly heavy upon the family of young Antony, who was now a boy of
thirteen, already old enough to understand the disgrace of it; for both his
stepfather, Lentulus, who had been one of the Consuls of the previous year, 71 BC, and his uncle, Caius Antonius, the
younger brother of his late father, were expelled from the Senate in this
political clean-up, on the grounds of “luxury” and ill-living. As a consequence
of this disaster, Lentulus found himself cold-shouldered by the aristocracy, and scorned by the party of the People
towards which, as has been said, he had been inclining slightly; and for the
next few years Antony must have heard nothing that was good of either side.
Meanwhile the famous trial of Caius Verres, in which the ambitious
Cicero made his name, became the central point of the struggle between the
conservatives and the People. Verres had been one of Sulla’s trusted officers,
and later, from 73 to 71 BC, had been
governor of Sicily, where he had behaved with such arrogant despotism that,
immediately on his departure, the Sicilians had brought an action against him.
The prosecution was placed in the hands of Cicero, who, gauging the trend of
public opinion, had found it expedient to become a supporter of the democrats;
and the defence was entrusted to the aristocratic Hortensius who, it will be
recalled, was related by marriage to the late Sulla. On the one side the People
were determined that Verres should suffer for his tyranny; on the other, the
nobles were equally determined that he should be acquitted.
The charges against him were manifold. He had amassed such wealth from
the unfortunate Sicilians that he himself declared he would still be a rich man
even if he were forced to disgorge two-thirds of it. He had accepted money from
everybody in the form of bribes, or had taken it from them by sheer robbery. He
had appropriated public funds to his own use, and had so continuously cheated
the farmers and vine-growers of the sums due to them that he had reduced the
agricultural population to beggary. He had seduced the daughters of respectable
citizens by the score; he had unjustly caused people to be put to death or
imprisoned; and, worst of all, he had refused to listen to the appeal of a
certain condemned prisoner who, as a Roman citizen, had claimed his right to be
sent back to Italy for trial, and had crucified him on the seashore in sight of
the Italian coast, so that in his last agonies the wretched man might see
before him his unattainable land of refuge.
Like many Roman noblemen of this period, Verres was a keen collector of
works of art and antiques; and since Sicily had been full of works of art and
antiques and objects d’art, he had
carried away with him a priceless collection of masterpieces which he had
acquired either by purchase at absurdly low prices dictated by himself, or by
actual extortion. Glorious pieces of sculpture by the famous Greek masters
Praxiteles, Myron, Silanion, and Polycletus, had
passed into his hands; he had made off with the magnificent gold and silver
plate from the tables of rich men with whom he had dined; he had filched the
gold and ivory ornaments from the gates of the temple of Pallas at Syracuse;
from the walls of the same temple he had taken the historic paintings; he had
stolen the statue of Ceres from her own holy shrine at Enna (Castro Giovanni); and even the statues standing in public places in the
various cities had been taken down from their pedestals and added to his
collection.
The rich aristocrats of Rome smiled at these latter transgressions, for
most of them were themselves enthusiastic collectors, not above a little
villainy in the acquisition of artistic treasures; but the democrats, who knew
nothing of the connoisseur's delight in competitive possession, appraised this
man at his true worth and called him a common thief. So greatly did they
despise all artistic pretensions that Cicero, in denouncing these robberies,
was obliged to pretend that he himself did not know anything about art, and had
merely learnt the names of the famous Greek sculptors during the preparation of
his brief. One of these statues, he said with a smile, “was by Praxiteles—you
see that in getting up my case I have learnt the names of the artists. Another
was a work by Myron—yes, Myron was the name, I think. A third was by ... Now
what was the name of the artist? Let me see. O, yes, thank you for reminding
me; he was called Polycletus”.
For thirteen days the trial of Verres proceeded amidst intense
excitement, and gradually it became apparent that the opinion of plain men,
mere proletarians, was going to prevail against that of the aristocrats. On the
fourteenth day Verres fled from Rome.
There was now no doubt that the People’s party was once more to be
reckoned with; but it was the impetuous Julius Caesar, who, at the age of
thirty-four, first put public opinion openly to the test. In the year 68 BC his aunt Julia, the widow of the
great Marius, died; and at her funeral Caesar had the boldness to display
publicly the statues of Marius which nobody had dared to exhibit since the days
when Sulla had declared him an enemy of the State. Their appearance caused a
certain amount of booing on the part of the opposing faction, but the crowd in
general clapped their hands and shouted their applause. Yet Caesar was not
satisfied that the tide had really turned, and he preferred to avoid,
committing himself. He was, moreover, immensely proud of his aristocratic ancestry,
and if the People were beginning to see in him a future leader of their party,
he gave them no reason to regard him as one of themselves. He was no plebeian,
like Marius, and he let them know it.
“My aunt Julia”, he declared in his funeral oration, derived her
descent, on her mother’s (my grandmother’s) side, from a race of kings, and, on
her father’s (my grandfather’s) side, from the immortal gods. For the Marcii Reges, her mother’s
family, trace their genealogy back to Ancus Marcius, the fourth King of Rome; and the Julii, our family, derive their
descent from the goddess Venus. We therefore unite in our lineage the sacred
majesty of kings, the chiefest of men, and the divine
majesty of gods, to whom kings themselves are subject”. Such words, spoken by
an elaborately dressed and scented personage with peculiar and effeminate gestures,
were the reverse of democratic; and yet there were these figures of Marius to
remind the crowd that the speaker was no other than his nephew.
In this same year, 68 BC, Caesar’s
wife, Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, the colleague of Marius, also died;
whereupon he married Pompeia, daughter of Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and
grand-daughter of Sulla. Pompeia’s father was one of the men murdered by
Marius; and both on this account and because her mother was Sulla's daughter,
she must have been by every instinct an enemy of the People’s party. The
marriage, therefore, suggested that Caesar desired to belong neither to one
political camp nor to the other, but wished to hold an individual position as a
man with equally balanced aristocratic and democratic connections. He was
already a prominent figure in Rome; and he had now definitely begun his
political career by obtaining the post of Quaestor.
He had a great deal to live down. When people talked about the exploits
of the popular Pompey and said that he was a very King of Rome, there were
those who laughingly declared that Caesar, then, was Queen of Rome; and once when he was asking the Senate to make a
grant to the Princess Nysa, daughter of king Nicomedes
of Bithynia, and had spoken of that king’s great kindness to him, the highly
respectable Cicero sharply replied “Please say no more of that; we all know
what he gave you and what you gave him!”.
Moreover, his love-affairs with fashionable women in Rome which, as he
grew older, were crowding out the episodes of the Bithynian kind, were causing
a new crop of scandals. Everybody knew that Servilia, the wife of Junius
Silanus, and sister of Cato, was his mistress, and most people guessed that her
son Brutus, was his child; and now it was being rumored, with apparent truth,
that he was in love with Mucia, the wife of Pompey, while, at the same time,
his name was linked with those of Tertulla, the wife
of Crassus, Posthumia, the wife of a rising statesman
named Servius Sulpicius, and Lollia, the wife of Aulus Gabinius, a man who was afterwards to be the friend
and patron of the young Anthony.
At about this time the government decided to make another attempt to
exterminate the pirates whose activities had been increased by the failure of
Antony’s father to check them. The above-mentioned Gabinius, therefore,
proposed that Pompey should be placed in command of the operations; and Caesar
seconded the motion so eagerly that people were unkind enough to say that he
evidently wanted the handsome husband of Mucia out of the way. At any rate
Pompey was duly appointed, being given such extraordinary powers that a good
deal of fear was felt in Rome that he might take advantage of them to the
detriment of republican institutions. In a very few weeks he utterly destroyed
the power of the pirates, captured ninety of their battleships and innumerable
smaller vessels, took prisoner no less than twenty thousand men, and received
the surrender of all their strongholds; but, being now a good democrat, he
dealt very leniently with his conquered foes, and turned most of them into
honest colonists, a proceeding which greatly outraged the republicans in Rome
whose militaristic and aristocratic tradition was one of blood and iron, and
who expected him to crucify every man who fell into his hands, as he crucified
the followers of Spartacus.
Meanwhile, the aristocrat, Lucullus, who was in command of the Roman
armies in the east, in spite of many victories was having great difficulty in
bringing the war against Mithridates to a successful conclusion; and now the Comitia
proposed that Pompey, their own beloved democrat, should be created
generalissimo with the powers of Dictator in the East, a measure almost
tantamount to making him absolute monarch of all the Roman Empire. The aristocratic
party opposed the bill with vehemence, and Crassus lent this opposition his
support; but Cicero, who still belonged to the People’s party which later he
deserted, was strongly in favor of it, as also was Julius Caesar, and, indeed,
the public in general was so confident that Pompey was the right man for the
job that when somebody suggested at a meeting that the command should be
divided, the shout of No was loud and sharp enough—so the story went—to cause a
bird which happened to be flying overhead to drop stunned from the sky. In the
spring of 66 BC, therefore, Pompey
was given the supreme command, whereupon he set out upon a career of conquest
which raised his already tremendous reputation to sublime heights.
But during the next three years or so, while he was marching from
victory to victory, very serious events took place in Rome which, in the end,
involved the young Antony’s immediate domestic circle in ruin. The trouble was
caused in the first place by the fact that as soon as Pompey had gone, the
aristocratic party began to conduct a ruthless campaign against the democrats,
with the object of crushing their attempts to reorganize themselves. But the
democratic spirit had already infected once more the minds of people of all
ranks; and the nobles themselves were now sharply divided into those who
supported the existing government and the strictly conservative institutions of
their class, and those who, like Antony’s stepfather, Lentulus, were leaning
towards the popular party.
A great many young patricians were breaking away from the rigid
traditions of aristocracy; and fashionable society now regarded it as rather
smart to sympathize with the aspirations of the People. But the reins of government
were in the grip of an oligarchy of elderly senators of noble birth and
hereditary wealth who looked with disfavor upon this unconventional attitude of
the younger set, and were determined to keep out of office all those who were
tainted with democratic sympathies, and also all who were leading the rather
fast life which was at this time the fashion. Thus the many young men whose
extravagances had landed them in financial difficulties saw no hope of
recovering their fortunes by the time-honored expedient of obtaining lucrative
government posts; and these men all looked to the day when the power should
pass from the hands of what may be described as the Old Brigade.
A new leader of the democracy, however, was rising into prominence.
Lucius Sergius Catilina, Catiline as he is now called, was a middle-aged man of
noble birth, who, in spite of a somewhat tarnished reputation, moved in the
highest society, was looked up to by most of the younger aristocrats, both
those who were in financial straits and those who were blessed with plenty,
and, at the same time, had an immense following amongst the People. He was an
arresting figure: a man of powerful and compelling character, violent,
unscrupulous, and lacking in morals, but a born leader of men. History,
however, has heaped such abuse upon him, and has so established him as a sort
of fiend—in fact, the Guy Fawkes of Rome—that it is almost useless for me to
defend him as the facts impel me to do; but there is no doubt, at any rate,
that some of the most eminent Roman patricians of his time courted him and were
his enthusiastic supporters, and the point is not to be overlooked that what we
have against him can all be traced back to the envenomed tongue and pen of his
bitterest enemy, Cicero.
In the Consular elections of 66 BC,
the two Consuls chosen for the following year were Publius Autronius and Publius Sulla, both of whom were democrats, and their victory over the aristocratic
candidates threw the government into a state of panic, for, since the death of
the Dictator Sulla, the Consuls had always belonged to the conservative party.
A trumped-up charge of bribery was therefore brought against these two men by
the nobles, their election was quashed, and the government announced that its
own two candidates, Aurelius Cotta and Manlius Torquatus,
had been chosen in their stead.
At this, Catiline, burning with indignation, conspired with his
democratic friends to prevent these two taking office at the new
year. It was whispered that he was prepared to have them killed if
necessary, and there were rumors that Julius Caesar, the budding democrat, was
in secret agreement with him—a report which was the more readily believed
because Caesar had already been accused of complicity in other plots of this
kind, and was regarded as a very dangerous man. Be this as it may, the two aristocrats
entered upon their Consulship at the beginning of 65 BC without disturbance,
and gossip had to be content to say that Catiline’s dark plans had miscarried.
Catiline now determined to stand, himself, for me next Consulship—that
of the coming year, 64 BC; but just
before the elections in the summer of 65 BC,
the aristocratic party, repeating its successful policy, brought a charge of
corruption against him—a brazen piece of trickery intended solely to interfere
with his candidature. At this, Cicero, who intended to stand for a Consulship
himself in the following year, made the proposal that he should defend
Catiline, and obtained the consent of the prosecution thereto, his purpose
being to place Catiline under an obligation to him, so that they might the more
amicably work together if they were both candidates at the next year’s
elections. Catiline apparently declined his aid; but he was obliged to resign
his candidature pending the trial; and Lucius Caesar, Antony’s uncle, who was a
conservative, was elected, with another aristocrat, Marcius Figulus, as his colleague. Catiline cleared himself
of the charge, of course, but this fact only added to his bitterness and to the
rage of his supporters, who now saw clearly that the government would not stick
at anything to keep its opponents out of office.
Matters rapidly approached a crisis; and in the next year, 64 BC, the young Antony must have found
himself in the very centre of the disturbance, and the disaster which was to
come upon him must already have been scented in the air. It was the irony of
fate that the dark clouds began to gather just when things were going so very
well for the family of the Antonii, and when, in spite of their chronic
insolvency, they were being received everywhere as people of the highest social
distinction. Fashionable Rome had agreed to forget that Lentulus, Antony’s stepfather,
and Caius Antonius, his uncle, had been expelled from the Senate a few years
ago; and, in fact, society now regarded that occurrence as a political contretemps which might have happened to
anybody. In this year, Lucius Caesar, Antony’s mother’s brother, was Consul; Caius
Antonius was a candidate for the Consulship of the following year; and Lentulus
was a candidate for the Praetorship, a post which would serve as a
stepping-stone to his candidature for a second term of office as Consul. Antony,
therefore, who was now nineteen, must have been cutting quite a figure in
society, being so well-connected; and there can be little doubt that he was one
of that ever increasing host of young men who regarded
Catiline as their hero.
Catiline, who was a close friend of Antony’s family, put himself forward
once more as a candidate for the Consulship for the year 63 BC; and he and Caius Antonius were
already planning what they would do if they were elected together. The lazy and
elegant Lentulus was an interested party to these discussions; and amongst the
men of note who talked matters over were Julius Caesar and the multi-millionaire,
Crassus. In various ways, Catiline attempted to win support for his
candidature. To those who were in the hands of money-lenders he said that it
would be his first business to relieve them of their burdens; and the fact that
Crassus was connected with the project indicates, I think, that the great
financier had some scheme of relief which would be profitable to himself in the
end, such as the paying off of the usurers and the taking over of the debts on
terms easier to the debtors. To the vast numbers of small landowners, many of
them old soldiers, who had mortgaged their properties, Catiline offered a bill
which would remove the immediate menace of ruin from them, though in the end, I
dare say, it would commit them to the mercy of Crassus. And to the impoverished
working classes in general he promised that share in the pillage of the rich
which every demagogue dangles before the eyes of the electorate.
“Ever since the government has fallen into the power of a few”, he said,
“all the rest of us, whether patricians or plebeians, have been regarded as a
mere mob. All influence, power, honor, and wealth, are in their hands; and to
us they have left only rebuffs, difficulties, prosecutions and poverty”. He
spoke with all the more bitterness because he himself was deeply in debt, and
knew that before the year was out he would have to meet his obligations.
The man he most feared was Cicero, who had lately abandoned the Democratic
Party—as was inevitable in a personage of his profoundly conventional
outlook—and now was also a candidate for the Consulship, in the interests of
the oligarchy. Being a provincial of modest family, and having thus espoused
the cause of the old-fashioned and exclusive aristocracy, he was far more
concerned about being a gentleman of the old school than any born gentleman of
that school could ever trouble to be. He practiced high-principles not
unconsciously, as a natural code dictated by the heart, but consciously, as
something to be proud of and to boast about. “I never experience so much
pleasure, he once wrote with disarming candor, as I do in the contemplation of
my own incorruptibility. It is not so much the credit I get for it, though that
is immense, as the thing itself which delights me”.
He was not so thin now as he used to be; his digestion was better, and
he was putting on flesh. He was, in fact, becoming a pompous and imposing
personage, very correct and ceremonious, and astonishingly vain and
self-important; and with all his heart he detested these gentlemen-adventurers,
Catiline, Lentulus, Julius Caesar, and the like, who were always being involved
in unsavory scandals, who were reckless and dissolute, not caring a bit what
people thought of them, and yet whose misdeeds were strangely insufficient to
obscure the fact that they were something which Cicero was not. Unprincipled
though they were, and playing at being democrats largely for their own ends,
they obviously belonged by a kind of natural right to Rome’s most fashionable
society, whereas Cicero, with all his acquired dignity, was aware that he had
no such birthright, and, indeed, smarted under the consciousness of the fact.
It was only by a paradoxical transference of allegiance which is not
infrequently to be observed in the political field, that he was the exponent of
the ideals of the conventional Roman nobility, and that Catiline and his
friends were the representatives of the People; and he was touched on the raw
when Catiline disdainfully called him a mere immigrant, from the provinces.
As the consular elections drew near it became clear that Caius Antonius
was fairly sure of being chosen as one of the two Consuls, but the rivalry of
Catiline and Cicero as candidates for the other Consulship was intense. Cicero
ostentatiously stood for honor, integrity, and the highest traditions of Roman
political life; and he advocated a strong rule by a republican oligarchy which
would keep the frivolous young nobles under control, and the masses in their
place. Catiline, on the other hand, stood for a more even distribution of
wealth, easier treatment of the people, the humanizing of the government, the
widening of its sympathies, and the wresting of the power from the hands of
those obstinate and old-fashioned nobles who had turned so large a part of the
nation into potential rebels. The People's party was being steadily deprived of
all the hopes which had lately begun to be revived, and the Comitia seemed to
be unable to make any headway against the hidebound Senate; for even the
Tribunes of the People were forced upon them by the government. In the year 63 BC, for instance, Cato was Tribune, and
he was an aristocrat of the old school, whose hatred of democracy was
intensified by the galling fact that his sister, Servilia, was the mistress of
Julius Caesar.
Catiline was a man of restless, highly-strung temperament, recklessly
brave, clever, versatile, and eloquent. He was a romantic figure, having a
pale, haggard face, and haunted eyes; and he is described as being always in
pursuit of the unattainable, and perhaps a little mad. When he was in luck he
was prodigal of his money, being at all times surrounded by hosts of friends,
particularly young noblemen of adventurous spirit— “young fops with youthful
little beards”, Cicero calls them; and when hard times were upon him he endured
hunger and cold, and even want of sleep, without complaint. But he had a bad reputation;
and had he not been of noble birth the last, indeed, of an ancient race, he
would, hardly have escaped punishment for some of his escapades.
In his early life he had fallen in love with a young society girl; and,
in consequence, she had become the mother of a daughter, who in turn, scandal
said that he had seduced. His rival for the Consulship had particular reason to
dislike him, for Fabia, a Vestal Virgin, or nun as we
should now say, who was the sister of Cicero’s wife, Terentia, was one of the
women whom he had led astray, though she had been acquitted of the charge and
had escaped the punishment of being buried alive, which was the Vestal’s
penalty for allowing natural instinct to get the better of her. He was now
married to an exquisite creature named Aurelia Orestilla,
“in whom”, as Sallust says, “no decent man at any time of her life commended
anything but her beauty”; and his enemies said that he had committed murder to
get her, “from which cause distraction was plainly apparent in his every
feature and look”.
Cicero, whose voice had wonderfully responded to a severe training in
oratory, was an extremely eloquent and persuasive speaker, and he made so
forceful an attack upon the character of his rival that Catiline was rejected.
His tirades against Caius Antonius, however, were not so successful; and
although Cicero had described him as a mere gladiator and charioteer, in reference
to sports which he enjoyed, and had said that he and Catiline were two daggers
drawn against Rome, the great orator could not prevent his election. Thus
Cicero and Caius Antonius found themselves the two chosen Consuls; but when
they came into office at the beginning of 63 BC Cicero managed to persuade his colleague to abandon his association
with Catiline. Lentulus, Antony’s step-father, however, maintained his
friendship with the unsuccessful candidate; and this fact must thus have
brought bitter dissension into Antony's home. Catiline then put himself forward
as a candidate for the Consulship of the next year; but Crassus this time gave
his support to somebody else; while Julius Caesar favored a third candidate,
Silanus, the husband of his now middle-aged mistress, Servilia.
The new elections were characterized by the utmost bitterness, for
Cicero was furiously attacking Catiline in speech after speech, and was
constantly warning the electorate that the man was a scoundrel who would not
stop at murder to get the power into his own hands. Catiline, deeply chagrined
and hopeless of gaining his ends by constitutional means, then began to plan a
revolution; and wild stones were soon in circulation that he was going to
assassinate Cicero, destroy Rome, and massacre all his enemies in the Senate.
There can be no doubt that he was soon at the head of a widespread secret
society, the members of which were sworn to the regeneration of Rome; but it is
extremely unlikely that their leader ever intended to perpetuate the atrocities
with which he was credited. True, he was deeply in debt and was yearning for
the power to enrich himself, and he was certainly
enraged at the treatment he had received at the hands of the government; but the
unquestionable fact of his great popularity with large numbers of well-to-do
people is a proof that his plans were not so very demoniacal.
One of the conspirators, however, had a mistress, Fulvia, whose
suspicions were aroused by the fact that her lover had lately begun to talk
very grandly about the wealth which would soon be his, and about the wonderful
jewels he would presently be able to give her; and at last she confided her
fears to Cicero, with the result that, just before the elections, he was able
to expose the existence of a plot.
Then, on the day of the elections itself, Cicero appeared m public wearing
a military breast-plate concealed under his clothes, and surrounded by troops;
and when all eyes were upon him he contrived to let his toga fall open,
revealing this armor, at sight of which the crowd realized that his life was in
danger, and, being thus made aware of what was to be feared, rejected Catiline
at the polls. Thereupon, the defeated candidate, mad with anger and
disappointment, sent one of his supporters, Caius Manlius, a disgruntled
veteran of the late Sulla's army, into the country around Faesulae (Fiesole) to raise a fighting force, there being in that region a great many
old soldiers who had lately looked to Catiline to relieve them of their debts. He
himself, meanwhile, boldly remained in Rome, and rumor said that he intended to
take the first opportunity to murder Cicero. A considerable sum of money had
been collected by the conspirators, much of which, as Appian caustically
remarks, had been given by women who hoped that their husbands would get killed
in the rising; and Catiline was thus able to buy the support of many waverers.
At length Crassus, whom Catiline had again approached, went to Cicero's
house by night, and revealed what he knew of the conspiracy, and at this Cicero
convened the Senate. Catiline, always audacious, went himself to the meeting,
but everybody cut him, and when he had taken his seat, all the Senators around
him moved over to other parts of the assembly, leaving him alone. Cicero then
delivered that impassioned speech which he afterwards published, and which is now
known as the First Catilinarian Oration;
and Catiline, seated there in dramatic solitude, with clenched teeth and
defiant, unabashed eyes, listened while the great orator told all the secrets
of the plot, knowledge of which, even to the minutes of the conspirators
council of the previous night, had been brought to him by Fulvia and his other
spies.
“I will have you put to death, Catiline”, he said, pointing his finger
at his haggard victim, “but it shall be later on, when it will be impossible to
find anyone so vile, anyone so abandoned, anyone so like yourself, as to deny
that I am justified. So long as there is anybody left to plead for you, you
shall live; but you shall live, as you live now, hemmed in by my agents, so
that you cannot stir a finger against the State. The eyes and ears of many
shall, in the future as in the past, spy out your doings when you least expect
it, and keep watch on your actions”.
He then ordered him to leave Rome, and scathingly bade him join his
doomed army of reprobates who were gathered under the standard of Manlius. At
this Catiline rose to his feet, and replied that surely the senators could not
believe all that Cicero had said against him, nor suppose that he, a patrician
of ancient lineage, should want to ruin the State. But his words were drowned
by shouts of Traitor, and, muttering a threat, he walked out of the assembly.
That evening he took his departure from the city, accompanied by many of his friends,
leaving Antony’s step-father, Lentulus, in charge of his affairs in Rome. Cicero
then went to the Forum and addressed the people, delivering his Second Catilinarian Oration, in which he
advised Lentulus and Catiline’s other agents to go and join their leader at Fiesole.
“There is no guard set upon the gates, no ambush upon the road” he sneered. “If
anyone wishes to depart, he may do so. But if anyone dares to stir a finger in
the city, then I say that I will make him feel that here in Rome there are
Consuls who will not sleep, there are magistrates who will do their duty, there
is a Senate which will stand firm, there are troops under arms, and there is a
prison which our forefathers built to be the place of vengeance for wicked and
bloody crime”.
For nearly a month Catiline remained in camp with Manlius, where an army
of between ten and twenty thousand revolutionaries was gathered; and here he
assumed the dress and insignia of a Consul, protesting that since Cicero had
prevented his proper election to this office, he was justified in seizing it.
To a friend in Rome he wrote a letter in which he said: “Provoked by injuries
and insults, I have taken up the public cause of the distressed; and because I
have seen unworthy men enriched with honors, and myself rejected, on groundless suspicions, I have adopted the only course for
preserving what honor is left me”. And he added: “I now commend and entrust my
wife Orestilla to your protection, imploring you, as
you love your own children, to shield her from harm”.
Meanwhile in Rome, Lentulus, Antony’s stepfather, was leisurely preparing
a coup which should be carried out at the moment when Catiline should begin his
expected march on the capital. It is said, though the story is probably
exaggerated, that he intended to set fire to the city so as to distract the
attention of the authorities, and then to kill Cicero, massacre the Senate, and
seize the government with the aid of some Gallic mercenaries whom he had
arranged to call in. Although lazy by nature, he had been galvanized into some sort
of action by the great personal danger in which he was situated, and by his
hatred of Cicero who, in these days, was immensely proud of himself and was
behaving with an overweening vanity which ultimately brought great ridicule
upon him.
He, Lentulus, though wasting precious time and showing signs of
nervousness, seems to have been hopeful of the success of the revolution, for
the Senate had trustingly placed the forces upon which it relied under the
command of Caius Antonius, Cicero’s colleague in the Consulship, and there was
some reason to believe that that personage would return to his former allegiance
and would join, rather than fight, his old friend Catiline. There was a rumor,
too, that Pompey was returning from the East; and in the hope that, as a
democrat, he would take sides against Cicero and the aristocratic party, Lentulus
had planned the seizure of Pompey’s children, so that he might appear to be
their guardian and protector, and might hand them over to their father, on his
arrival, as an earnest of the political bargain to be made with him, or,
alternatively, might hold them as hostages for Pompey's friendly behavior.
It is not known whether Antony, who was now twenty years of age,
approved of his stepfather's plans; but it seems, as has already been said,
that he was one of those who regarded Catiline as a hero, and, at any rate, it
is more likely that his sympathies were with Lentulus than that they were with
his turncoat uncle, Caius Antonius, while there is reason to suppose that he
detested the pompous and impressive Cicero, the perfect correctness and
prudence of whose behavior, and the high-sounding nobility of whose words, were
so completely out of harmony with the adventurous and unconventional spirit of
Antony’s home circle. In any case, however, the young man's position must have
been most awkward; for he was at once the stepson of this widely suspected
conspirator and the nephew of the Consul who was in command of the forces now
moving against Catiline.
At last, at the beginning of December, Cicero caught some of the agents
of the conspiracy red-handed, with incriminating documents in their keeping,
and, having convened the Senate, ordered Lentulus and four of his confederates
to be brought before them. Lentulus, under examination, pretended innocence,
but his agents turned against him to save their own skins, and confessed that
one of the seized letters, which was unsigned, had been written by him to
Catiline. In it the writer had said that all was in readiness in Rome for the
coup, and had advised Catiline to hasten his advance on the city; and as soon
as the document was read Lentulus and his four friends were placed in custody.
A sixth conspirator was arrested next morning as he was leaving the city; and,
to the amazement of the Senators, confessed that he had been on his way to
Catiline with a message from the great financier, Crassus, urging him not to
lose heart, but to march with all the more speed to Rome.
This piece of information appeared to be incredible, for a great many of
the senators, whom Catiline was supposed to wish to massacre, owed Crassus
large sums of money; and, in any case, it seemed to be very unlikely that
Crassus, considering his financial interests, would have desired a destructive
revolution. The whole assembly, therefore, began to shout “False witness!” as
the prisoner was repeating his testimony, and in the end the man was sent away,
Crassus being declared innocent of the charge; and it may be added that in
after years Crassus gave it as his opinion that Cicero had concocted the whole
story out of enmity against him.
The name of Julius Caesar was inevitably dragged in during these
enquiries, for so many persons involved in the affair were his friends, and in
character and associations he was readily to be classed with the Catiline
group, several of whom were aristocratic libertines and spendthrifts like
himself, in need of money, worried, and politically restless. As a result of
these suspicions about him he was greeted with catcalls by the republicans, and
his life was threatened by Cicero's bodyguard of young gentlemen, who came
towards him as he sat in the Senate, and made spectacular thrusts at him with
their swords. Thereupon his own youthful friends—for, like Catiline, he always
had a following of admiring young exquisites—clustered
around him to protect him, led by a certain Scribonius Curio, an undersized and
effeminate personage who was evidently far more courageous than his appearance
would suggest, and now, with his sword in one hand and his cloak in the other,
was prepared to give his rotten little life for his hero. Cicero, however,
called his retainers off, and Curio then led the unruffled and ever dignified
Caesar out of the assembly, holding up the cloak behind him as a sort of
shield.
It may be mentioned, by the way, that Curio, who was an admirer of
Catiline, was at this time the young Antony’s inseparable companion, and it is
therefore not unlikely that Antony was present on this occasion. Curio's
father, I may add, who was a senator, and probably witnessed the scene, would
have been happy enough to see Caesar killed, for he deemed him a menace to the
morals of his son and all the younger generation, and, had once publicly
denounced him as “every woman’s man and every man’s woman”; and, indeed, in
later years he and others often told Cicero that he had made a terrible mistake
in ordering his body-guard to sheath their swords. There were people who said
that Caesar's complicity in the plot could be proved by letters he had written,
and his butchery there and then might have been justified; but he was able to
call upon Cicero to affirm that he, Caesar, was one of those who had actually
warned him of the existence of the danger, and thus the Consul did not feel
able to allow him to be harmed.
On December 5th Cicero called the senators together once more, and asked
them what should be done with Lentulus and the other prisoners. The first
person to reply was Silanus, the Consul-elect, who voted that they should be
put to death; but at this Caesar, undaunted by his recent experience, made a
masterly speech, urging that they should only be exiled and should suffer the
confiscation of their property. This speech is history’s first revelation to us
of the future Dictator’s great mental equipment; and, after the unpleasing
start of his career, it comes as a very satisfying surprise.
“I am indeed of opinion”, he said, “that the utmost degree of torture is
inadequate to punish their crime; but mankind in general dwells on that which
happens last, and, in the case of criminals, forgets their guilt and talks only
of their punishment, should that punishment have been unusually severe. The
proposal of Silanus to put these men to death appears to me, I will not say
cruel—for what can be cruel that is directed against such characters?—but
foreign to our policy. True, in trouble and distress, death is a relief from suffering,
and not a torment: it puts an end to all human miseries, and beyond it there is
no place either for sorrow or joy; and who, it may be asked, will blame any
such sentence against these traitors? I answer that time, the course of events,
and fortune whose caprice governs nations, may blame it. The danger was, he
declared, that in after years these men should be regarded as martyrs by their supporters
and that the present government, by unnecessarily taking their lives, would reintroduce
the bloodthirsty methods which had caused so much misery in the time of Sulla”.
Cato, however, whose narrow patriotism and ever hardening support of the
stern old conservative tradition had made him a curiously callous partisan, ruthlessly demanded the
death-penalty; and his opposition to Caesar’s proposal was stiffened by an incident
which then occurred. A note was privately handed to Caesar, which he read with
some embarrassment and then concealed; whereupon Cato accused him of receiving
a communication from the conspirators, and demanded to see the letter. Caesar
handed it to him. It was a love-letter from Servilia, Cato’s sister; and Cato,
having read it, furiously flung it back, saying “Take it, you sot!”. He then
proceeded to make a bitter speech, in which he took the opportunity also to
castigate his fellow-senators for their love of their pleasures and their
comforts.
“In the name of heaven”, he cried, “I call upon you, who have always set
a value upon your houses and villas, your statues and pictures, higher than
that of the welfare of your country—if you wish to preserve these possessions
to which you are so attached, if you wish to secure quiet for the enjoyment of
your pleasures, arouse yourself, and do something for once in defence of your
country. Does anyone talk to me of gentleness and compassion? For some time
past, it is true, we have ceased to call things by their proper names; for to
be lavish with the property of others is called generosity, and audacity in
evil-doing is called heroism. But let those who thus misname things have a care
before they play with our lives, and, whilst they spare a few criminals, bring
destruction on all the guiltless”. Thus, in the end the House was induced to
decide that the prisoners had merited death.
Thereupon, Cicero, surrounded by senators, officials, and soldiers, went
in majestic and funereal state to fetch Lentulus from his prison on the
Palatine hill, and thence conducted him through the Forum to the Tullian dungeon beneath the Capitol, where, some forty
years earlier, King Jugurtha had been done to death. Here Antony’s unfortunate
stepfather was solemnly let down by ropes into the black and evil-smelling pit,
in which three or four soldiers were awaiting in silence to receive him; and,
as his feet touched the ground these men pounced upon him in the semi-darkness,
slipped a cord about his neck, and strangled him. When Cicero, looking down
from above, was notified that life was extinct, he went off to fetch the other
four prisoners, and in like manner supervised their lowering into the dungeon
and their strangulation. It was the great moment of his life. Usually hesitant
and not quite sure of himself, today he was a mighty man dealing out death to
the enemies of his country; and he was quite carried away by this sudden
consciousness of his ability to be terrible.
In the late afternoon he returned to his house through streets crowded
with citizens who, having had their fill of rumors of massacre, acclaimed him as
their preserver and the savior of the city, to which salutations he graciously
bowed his acknowledgements to right and left.
Shortly afterwards, however, public opinion turned against him, it being
stated that he had acted illegally in executing these men without allowing them
the usual appeal to the People; and before the year was out he was shouted down
when he tried to defend his action at a public meeting. But the troops under
the command of Caius Antonius pursued the desperate Catiline to his doom, and
early in the new year the fatal battle took place.
Antonius, refusing to lead his men against his former friend, pretended to be
ill, and handed over the direction of the fight to his second-in-command; but
Catiline took his place at the head of his troops, and at the end of the day
his body was found far in advance of those of his own soldiers—who were killed
almost to a man—and surrounded by a ring of the corpses of his enemies.
The death of Lentulus, of course, had brought sorrow and ruin into
Antony’s home; but though history tells us nothing of the young man’s life at
this tragic time, we may conjecture that his devotion to his kinsman, Caesar,
who had tried at any rate to save the prisoners lives, and his dislike of
Cicero, were greatly increased by this calamity. The Catilinarian Conspiracy
has so generally been regarded by historians as a dastardly and insane attempt
to destroy Rome, that the association of Antony's family with it, and
particularly Julius Caesar’s conduct in this connection, have been blushingly
glossed over; but the above interpretation, I think, supplies the explanation
of an affair which so long has remained inexplicable because of the discrepancy
between the extensive popularity of the movement and its leader on the one hand
and the supposed absence of any but criminally destructive motives on the
other. It was an understandable revolt against an aristocratic tyranny; and in
after years Antony had no reason to be ashamed of his stepfather or of the
cause for which he died.
Antony’s Entrance into Politics on the Side of the Democrats.
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