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Title: The History of Rome, Book V

Author: Theodor Mommsen

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Most recently updated March 16, 2005

Language: English

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THE HISTORY OF ROME, BOOK V

The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

by

THEODOR MOMMSEN

Translated with the Sanction of the Author

by

William Purdie Dickson, D.D., LL.D.
Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow

A New Edition Revised throughout and Embodying Recent Additions






Preparer's Notes

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1) Words and phrases regarded as "foreign imports", italicized
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2) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that do not
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and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.

3) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents,
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CONTENTS

BOOK V:  The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

   CHAPTER

      I. Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius

     II. Rule of the Sullan Restoration

    III. The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius

     IV. Pompeius and the East

      V. The Struggle of Parties during the Absence of Pompeius

     VI. Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders

    VII. The Subjugation of the West

   VIII. The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar

     IX. Death of Crassus--Rupture between the Joint Rulers

      X. Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus

     XI. The Old Republic and the New Monarchy

    XII. Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art




BOOK FIFTH

The Establishment of the Military Monarchy




Wie er sich sieht so um und um,
Kehrt es ihm fast den Kopf herum,
Wie er wollt' Worte zu allem finden?
Wie er mocht' so viel Schwall verbinden?
Wie er mocht' immer muthig bleiben
So fort und weiter fort zu schreiben?

Goethe.




Chapter I

Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius

The Opposition
Jurists
Aristocrats Friendly to Reform
Democrats

When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had
restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but,
as it had been established by force, it still needed force
to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes.
It was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly
expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass
of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless
under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing
the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds
and with very different designs.  There were the men of positive
law who neither mingled in nor understood politics, but who detested
the arbitrary procedure of Sulla in dealing with the lives
and property of the burgesses.  Even during Sulla's lifetime,
when all other opposition was silent, the strict jurists resisted
the regent; the Cornelian laws, for example, which deprived various
Italian communities of the Roman franchise, were treated
in judicial decisions as null and void; and in like manner the courts
held that, where a burgess had been made a prisoner of war and sold
into slavery during the revolution, his franchise was not forfeited.
There was, further, the remnant of the old liberal minority
in the senate, which in former times had laboured to effect
a compromise with the reform party and the Italians, and was now
in a similar spirit inclined to modify the rigidly oligarchic
constitution of Sulla by concessions to the Populares.
There were, moreover, the Populares strictly so called,
the honestly credulous narrow-minded radicals, who staked property
and life for the current watchwords of the party-programme,
only to discover with painful surprise after the victory
that they had been fighting not for a reality, but for a phrase.
Their special aim was to re-establish the tribunician power, which Sulla
had not abolished but had divested of its most essential prerogatives,
and which exercised over the multitude a charm all the more mysterious,
because the institution had no obvious practical use and was
in fact an empty phantom--the mere name of tribune of the people,
more than a thousand years later, revolutionized Rome.

Transpadanes
Freedmen
Capitalists
Proletarians of the Capital
The Dispossessed
The Proscribed and Their Adherents

There were, above all, the numerous and important classes
whom the Sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whose political
or private interests it had directly injured.  Among those
who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense
and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps,
which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in 665(1)
as merely an instalment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded
a ready soil for agitation.  To this category belonged also
the freedmen, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially
dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could
not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their
earlier, practically useless, suffrage.  In the same position
stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious
silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment
and their equal tenacity of power.  The populace of the capital,
which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise
discontented.  Still deeper exasperation prevailed among
the burgess-bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations--whether
they like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed
by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter,
and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arretines
and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory,
but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them
by the Roman people; or, as was the case in Etruria especially,
were reduced to be beggars in their former abodes, or robbers
in the woods.  Finally, the agitation extended to the whole family
connections and freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had lost
their lives in consequence of the restoration, or who were wandering
along the Mauretanian coasts, or sojourning at the court
and in the army of Mithradates, in all the misery of emigrant exile;
for, according to the strict family-associations that governed
the political feeling of this age, it was accounted a point of honour(2)
that those who were left behind should endeavour to procure for exiled
relatives the privilege of returning to their native land, and,
in the case of the dead, at least a removal of the stigma attaching
to their memory and to their children, and a restitution to the latter
of their paternal estate.  More especially the immediate children
of the proscribed, whom the regent had reduced in point of law
to political Pariahs,(3) had thereby virtually received from the law
itself a summons to rise in rebellion against the existing
order of things.

Men of Ruined Fortunes
Men of Ambition

To all these sections of the opposition there was added the whole
body of men of ruined fortunes.  All the rabble high and low,
whose means and substance had been spent in refined or in vulgar
debauchery; the aristocratic lords, who had no farther mark
of quality than their debts; the Sullan troopers whom the regent's
fiat could transform into landholders but not into husbandmen,
and who, after squandering the first inheritance of the proscribed,
were longing to succeed to a second--all these waited only
the unfolding of the banner which invited them to fight against
the existing order of things, whatever else might be inscribed on it.
From a like necessity all the aspiring men of talent, in search
of popularity, attached themselves to the opposition; not only
those to whom the strictly closed circle of the Optimates denied
admission or at least opportunities for rapid promotion,
and who therefore attempted to force their way into the phalanx
and to break through the laws of oligarchic exclusiveness and seniority
by means of popular favour, but also the more dangerous men,
whose ambition aimed at something higher than helping to determine
the destinies of the world within the sphere of collegiate intrigues.
On the advocates' platform in particular--the only field of legal
opposition left open by Sulla--even in the regent's lifetime
such aspirants waged lively war against the restoration with the weapons
of formal jurisprudence and combative oratory: for instance,
the adroit speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero (born 3rd January 648),
son of a landholder of Arpinum, speedily made himself a name
by the mingled caution and boldness of his opposition to the dictator.
Such efforts were not of much importance, if the opponent desired
nothing farther than by their means to procure for himself a curule
chair, and then to sit in it in contentment for the rest of his life.
No doubt, if this chair should not satisfy a popular man
and Gaius Gracchus should find a successor, a struggle for life
or death was inevitable; but for the present at least no name could
be mentioned, the bearer of which had proposed to himself
any such lofty aim.

Power of the Opposition

Such was the sort of opposition with which the oligarchic government
instituted by Sulla had to contend, when it had, earlier than
Sulla himself probably expected, been thrown by his death
on its own resources.  The task was in itself far from easy, and it
was rendered more difficult by the other social and political evils
of this age--especially by the extraordinary double difficulty
of keeping the military chiefs in the provinces in subjection
to the supreme civil magistracy, and of dealing with the masses
of the Italian and extra-Italian populace accumulating in the capital,
and of the slaves living there to a great extent in de facto freedom,
without having troops at disposal.  The senate was placed
as it were, in a fortress exposed and threatened on all sides,
and serious conflicts could not fail to ensue.  But the means
of resistance organized by Sulla were considerable and lasting;
and although the majority of the nation was manifestly disinclined
to the government which Sulla had installed, and even animated
by hostile feelings towards it, that government might very well
maintain itself for a long time in its stronghold against
the distracted and confused mass of an opposition which was not agreed
either as to end or means, and, having no head, was broken up
into a hundred fragments.  Only it was necessary that it should
be determined to maintain its position, and should bring
at least a spark of that energy, which had built the fortress,
to its defence; for in the case of a garrison which will not
defend itself, the greatest master of fortification constructs
his walls and moats in vain.

Want of Leaders
Coterie-Systems

The more everything ultimately depended on the personality
of the leading men on both sides, it was the more unfortunate
that both, strictly speaking, lacked leaders.  The politics of
thisperiod were thoroughly under the sway of the coterie-system
in its worst form.  This, indeed, was nothing new; close unions
of families and clubs were inseparable from an aristocratic
organizationof the state, and had for centuries prevailed in Rome.
But it was not till this epoch that they became all-powerful,
for it was only now (first in 690) that their influence was attested
rather than checked by legal measures of repression.

All persons of quality, those of popular leanings no less than
the oligarchy proper, met in Hetaeriae; the mass of the burgesses
likewise, so far as they took any regular part in political events
at all, formed according to their voting-districts close unions
with an almost military organization, which found their natural
captains and agents in the presidents of the districts, "tribe-
distributors" (-divisores tribuum-).  With these political clubs
everything was bought and sold; the vote of the elector especially,
but also the votes of the senator and the judge, the fists too
which produced the street riot, and the ringleaders who directed
it--the associations of the upper and of the lower ranks
were distinguished merely in the matter of tariff.  The Hetaeria
decided the elections, the Hetaeria decreed the impeachments,
the Hetaeria conducted the defence; it secured the distinguished
advocate, and in case of need it contracted for an acquittal
with one of the speculators who pursued on a great scale lucrative
dealings in judges' votes.  The Hetaeria commanded by its compact bands
the streets of the capital, and with the capital but too often the state.
All these things were done in accordance with a certain rule,
and, so to speak, publicly; the system of Hetaeriae was better organized
and managed than any branch of state administration; although there was,
as is usual among civilized swindlers, a tacit understanding
that there should be no direct mention of the nefarious proceedings,
nobody made a secret of them, and advocates of repute were not ashamed
to give open and intelligible hints of their relation to the Hetaeriae
of their clients.  If an individual was to be found here or there
who kept aloof from such doings and yet did not forgo public life,
he was assuredly, like Marcus Cato, a political Don Quixote.
Parties and party-strife were superseded by the clubs and their rivalry;
government was superseded by intrigue.  A more than equivocal
character, Publius Cethegus, formerly one of the most zealous
Marians, afterwards as a deserter received into favour by Sulla,(4)
acted a most influential part in the political doings
of this period--unrivalled as a cunning tale-bearer and mediator
between the sections of the senate, and as having a statesman's
acquaintance with the secrets of all cabals: at times the appointment
to the most important posts of command was decided by a word
from his mistress Praecia.  Such a plight was only possible
where none of the men taking part in politics rose above mediocrity:
any man of more than ordinary talent would have swept away
this system of factions like cobwebs; but there was in reality
the saddest lack of men of political or military capacity.

Phillipus
Metellus, Catulus, the Luculli

Of the older generation the civil wars had left not a single man
of repute except the old shrewd and eloquent Lucius Philippus (consul
in 663), who, formerly of popular leanings,(5) thereafter leader
of the capitalist party against the senate,(6) and closely associated
with the Marians,(7) and lastly passing over to the victorious
oligarchy in sufficient time to earn thanks and commendation,(8)
had managed to escape between the parties.  Among the men
of the following generation the most notable chiefs of the pure
aristocracy were Quintus Metellus Pius (consul in 674), Sulla's
comrade in dangers and victories; Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul
in the year of Sulla's death, 676, the son of the victor of Vercellae;
and two younger officers, the brothers Lucius and Marcus Lucullus,
of whom the former had fought with distinction under Sulla
in Asia, the latter in Italy; not to mention Optimates like Quintus
Hortensius (640-704), who had importance only as a pleader,
or men like Decimus Junius Brutus (consul in 677), Mamercus
Aemilius Lepidus Livianus (consul in 677), and other such nullities,
whose best quality was a euphonious aristocratic name.
But even those four men rose little above the average calibre
of the Optimates of this age.  Catulus was like his father a man of
refined culture and an honest aristocrat, but of moderate talents
and, in particular, no soldier.  Metellus was not merely estimable
in his personal character, but an able and experienced officer;
and it was not so much on account of his close relations as a kinsman
and colleague with the regent as because of his recognized ability
that he was sent in 675, after resigning the consulship, to Spain,
where the Lusitanians and the Roman emigrants under Quintus
Sertorius were bestirring themselves afresh.  The two Luculli
were also capable officers--particularly the elder, who combined
very respectable military talents with thorough literary culture
and leanings to authorship, and appeared honourable also as a man.
But, as statesmen, even these better aristocrats were not much less
remiss and shortsighted than the average senators of the time.
In presence of an outward foe the more eminent among them, doubtless,
proved themselves useful and brave; but no one of them evinced
the desire or the skill to solve the problems of politics proper,
and to guide the vessel of the state through the stormy sea of intrigues
and factions as a true pilot.  Their political wisdom was limited
to a sincere belief in the oligarchy as the sole means of salvation,
and to a cordial hatred and courageous execration of demagogism
as well as of every individual authority which sought to emancipate
itself.  Their petty ambition was contented with little.
The stories told of Metellus in Spain--that he not only allowed
himself to be delighted with the far from harmonious lyre
of the Spanish occasional poets, but even wherever he went had himself
received like a god with libations of wine and odours of incense,
and at table had his head crowned by descending Victories amidst
theatrical thunder with the golden laurel of the conqueror--
are no better attested than most historical anecdotes; but even
such gossip reflects the degenerate ambition of the generations
of Epigoni.  Even the better men were content when they had gained
not power and influence, but the consulship and a triumph
and a place of honour in the senate; and at the very time
when with right ambition they would have just begun to be truly useful
to their country and their party, they retired from the political stage
to be lost in princely luxury.  Men like Metellus and Lucius Lucullus
were, even as generals, not more attentive to the enlargement
of the Roman dominion by fresh conquests of kings and peoples than
to the enlargement of the endless game, poultry, and dessert lists
of Roman gastronomy by new delicacies from Africa and Asia Minor,
and they wasted the best part of their lives in more or less ingenious
idleness.  The traditional aptitude and the individual self-denial,
on which all oligarchic government is based, were lost
in the decayed and artificially restored Roman aristocracy of this age;
in its judgment universally the spirit of clique was accounted
as patriotism, vanity as ambition, and narrow-mindedness as consistency.
Had the Sullan constitution passed into the guardianship of men
such as have sat in the Roman College of Cardinals or the Venetian
Council of Ten, we cannot tell whether the opposition would have been able
to shake it so soon; with such defenders every attack involved,
at all events, a serious peril.

Pompeius

Of the men, who were neither unconditional adherents nor open
opponents of the Sullan constitution, no one attracted more the eyes
of the multitude than the young Gnaeus Pompeius, who was at the time
of Sulla's death twenty-eight years of age (born 29th September 648).
The fact was a misfortune for the admired as well as
for the admirers; but it was natural.  Sound in body and mind,
a capable athlete, who even when a superior officer vied with his
soldiers in leaping, running, and lifting, a vigorous and skilled
rider and fencer, a bold leader of volunteer bands, the youth had
become Imperator and triumphator at an age which excluded him
from every magistracy and from the senate, and had acquired
the first place next to Sulla in public opinion; nay, had obtained
from the indulgent regent himself--half in recognition, half in irony--
the surname of the Great.  Unhappily, his mental endowments by no means
corresponded with these unprecedented successes.  He was neither
a bad nor an incapable man, but a man thoroughly ordinary, created
by nature to be a good sergeant, called by circumstances to be
a general and a statesman.  An intelligent, brave and experienced,
thoroughly excellent soldier, he was still, even in his military
capacity, without trace of any higher gifts.  It was characteristic
of him as a general, as well as in other respects, to set to work
with a caution bordering on timidity, and, if possible, to give
the decisive blow only when he had established an immense superiority
over his opponent.  His culture was the average culture of the time;
although entirely a soldier, he did not neglect, when he went
to Rhodes, dutifully to admire, and to make presents to,
the rhetoricians there.  His integrity was that of a rich man
who manages with discretion his considerable property inherited
and acquired.  He did not disdain to make money in the usual senatorial
way, but he was too cold and too rich to incur special risks,
or draw down on himself conspicuous disgrace, on that account.
The vice so much in vogue among his contemporaries, rather than
any virtue of his own, procured for him the reputation--comparatively,
no doubt, well warranted--of integrity and disinterestedness.
His "honest countenance" became almost proverbial, and even after
his death he was esteemed as a worthy and moral man; he was in fact
a good neighbour, who did not join in the revolting schemes
by which the grandees of that age extended the bounds of their domains
through forced sales or measures still worse at the expense
of their humbler neighbours, and in domestic life he displayed
attachment to his wife and children: it redounds moreover to his
credit that he was the first to depart from the barbarous custom
of putting to death the captive kings and generals of the enemy,
after they had been exhibited in triumph.  But this did not prevent
him from separating from his beloved wife at the command of his lord
and master Sulla, because she belonged to an outlawed family,
nor from ordering with great composure that men who had stood
by him and helped him in times of difficulty should be executed
before his eyes at the nod of the same master:(9) he was not cruel,
thoughhe was reproached with being so, but--what perhaps was worse--
he was cold and, in good as in evil, unimpassioned.  In the tumult
of battle he faced the enemy fearlessly; in civil life he was a shy
man, whose cheek flushed on the slightest occasion; he spoke
in public not without embarrassment, and generally was angular, stiff,
and awkward in intercourse.  With all his haughty obstinacy he was--
as indeed persons ordinarily are, who make a display of their
independence--a pliant tool in the hands of men who knew how
to manage him, especially of his freedmen and clients, by whom he had
no fear of being controlled.  For nothing was he less qualified
than for a statesman.  Uncertain as to his aims, unskilful in the choice
of his means, alike in little and great matters shortsighted
and helpless, he was wont to conceal his irresolution and indecision
under a solemn silence, and, when he thought to play a subtle
game, simply to deceive himself with the belief that he was
deceiving others.  By his military position and his territorial
connections he acquired almost without any action of his own
a considerable party personally devoted to him, with which
the greatest things might have been accomplished; but Pompeius
was in every respect incapable of leading and keeping together a party,
and, if it still kept together, it did so--in like manner without
his action--through the sheer force of circumstances.  In this,
as in other things, he reminds us of Marius; but Marius, with his
nature of boorish roughness and sensuous passion, was still less
intolerable than this most tiresome and most starched of all
artificial great men.  His political position was utterly perverse.
He was a Sullan officer and under obligation to stand up for
the restored constitution, and yet again in opposition to Sulla
personally as well as to the whole senatorial government.  The gens
of the Pompeii, which had only been named for some sixty years
in the consular lists, had by no means acquired full standing
in the eyes of the aristocracy; even the father of this Pompeius
had occupied a very invidious equivocal position towards
the senate,(10) and he himself had once been in the ranks
of the Cinnans(11)--recollections which were suppressed perhaps,
but not forgotten.  The prominent position which Pompeius
acquired for himself under Sulla set him at inward variance
with the aristocracy, quite as much as it brought him into outward
connection with it.  Weak-headed as he was, Pompeius was seized
with giddiness on the height of glory which he had climbed
with such dangerous rapidity and ease.  Just as if he would himself
ridicule his dry prosaic nature by the parallel with the most
poetical of all heroic figures, he began to compare himself
with Alexander the Great, and to account himself a man of unique
standing, whom it did not beseem to be merely one of the five
hundred senators of Rome.  In reality, no one was more fitted
to take his place as a member of an aristocratic government than
Pompeius.  His dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality,
his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want
of all initiative might have gained for him, had he been born
two hundred years earlier, an honourable place by the side
of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius: this mediocrity, so characteristic
of the genuine Optimate and the genuine Roman, contributed not a little
to the elective affinity which subsisted at all times between Pompeius
and the mass of the burgesses and the senate.  Even in his own age
he would have had a clearly defined and respectable position
had he contented himself with being the general of the senate,
for which he was from the outset destined.  With this he was
not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight of wishing
to be something else than he could be.  He was constantly aspiring
to a special position in the state, and, when it offered itself,
he could not make up his mind to occupy it; he was deeply indignant
when persons and laws did not bend unconditionally before him,
and yet he everywhere bore himself with no mere affectation
of modesty as one of many peers, and trembled at the mere thought
of undertaking anything unconstitutional.  Thus constantly
at fundamental variance with, and yet at the same time the obedient
servant of, the oligarchy, constantly tormented by an ambition
which was frightened at its own aims, his much-agitated life
passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction.

Crassus

Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among
the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy.  He is a personage
highly characteristic of this epoch.  Like Pompeius, whose senior
he was by a few years, he belonged to the circle of the high Roman
aristocracy, had obtained the usual education befitting his rank,
and had like Pompeius fought with distinction under Sulla
in the Italian war.  Far inferior to many of his peers in mental gifts,
literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped them
by his boundless activity, and by the perseverance with which he strove
to possess everything and to become all-important.  Above all,
he threw himself into speculation.  Purchases of estates during
the revolution formed the foundation of his wealth; but he disdained
no branch of gain; he carried on the business of building
in the capital on a great scale and with prudence; he entered
into partnership with his freedmen in the most varied undertakings;
he acted as banker both in and out of Rome, in person or by his agents;
he advanced money to his colleagues in the senate, and undertook--
as it might happen--to execute works or to bribe the tribunals
on their account.  He was far from nice in the matter
of making profit.  On occasion of the Sullan proscriptions a forgery
in the lists had been proved against him, for which reason Sulla
made no more use of him thenceforward in the affairs of state:
he did not refuse to accept an inheritance, because the testamentary
document which contained his name was notoriously forged; he made
no objection, when his bailiffs by force or by fraud dislodged
the petty holders from lands which adjoined his own.  He avoided open
collisions, however, with criminal justice, and lived himself
like a genuine moneyed man in homely and simple style.  In this way
Crassus rose in the course of a few years from a man of ordinary
senatorial fortune to be the master of wealth which not long before
his death, after defraying enormous extraordinary expenses, still
amounted to 170,000,000 sesterces (1,700,000 pounds).  He had
become the richest of Romans and thereby, at the same time, a great
political power.  If, according to his expression, no one might
call himself rich who could not maintain an army from his revenues,
one who could do this was hardly any longer a mere citizen.
In reality the views of Crassus aimed at a higher object than
the possession of the best-filled money-chest in Rome.  He grudged
no pains to extend his connections.  He knew how to salute by name
every burgess of the capital.  He refused to no suppliant
his assistance in court.  Nature, indeed, had not done much
for him as an orator: his speaking was dry, his delivery monotonous,
he had difficulty of hearing; but his tenacity of purpose,
which no wearisomeness deterred and no enjoyment distracted, overcame
such obstacles.  He never appeared unprepared, he never extemporized,
and so he became a pleader at all times in request and at all times
ready; to whom it was no derogation that a cause was rarely too bad
for him, and that he knew how to influence the judges not merely
by his oratory, but also by his connections and, on occasion,
by his gold.  Half the senate was in debt to him; his habit of advancing
to "friends" money without interest revocable at pleasure rendered
a number of influential men dependent on him, and the more so that,
like a genuine man of business, he made no distinction among
the parties, maintained connections on all hands, and readily lent
to every one who was able to pay or otherwise useful.  The most daring
party-leaders, who made their attacks recklessly in all directions,
were careful not to quarrel with Crassus; he was compared
to the bull of the herd, whom it was advisable for none to provoke.
That such a man, so disposed and so situated, could not strive
after humble aims is clear; and, in a very different way from Pompeius,
Crassus knew exactly like a banker the objects and the means
of political speculation.  From the origin of Rome capital
was a political power there; the age was of such a sort, that everything
seemed accessible to gold as to iron.  If in the time of revolution
a capitalist aristocracy might have thought of overthrowing
the oligarchy of the gentes, a man like Crassus might raise
his eyes higher than to the -fasces- and embroidered mantle
of the triumphators.  For the moment he was a Sullan and adherent
of the senate; but he was too much of a financier to devote himself
to a definite political party, or to pursue aught else than his personal
advantage.  Why should Crassus, the wealthiest and most intriguing
man in Rome, and no penurious miser but a speculator on the greatest
scale, not speculate also on the crown?  Alone, perhaps,
he could not attain this object; but he had already carried out
various great transactions in partnership; it was not impossible
that for this also a suitable partner might present himself.
It is a trait characteristic of the time, that a mediocre orator
and officer, a politician who took his activity for energy
and his covetousness for ambition, one who at bottom had nothing
but a colossal fortune and the mercantile talent of forming
connections--that such a man, relying on the omnipotence of coteries
and intrigues, could deem himself on a level with the first generals
and statesmen of his day, and could contend with them
for the highest prize which allures political ambition.

Leaders of the Democrats

In the opposition proper, both among the liberal conservatives
and among the Populares, the storms of revolution had made fearful
havoc.  Among the former, the only surviving man of note was Gaius
Cotta (630-c. 681), the friend and ally of Drusus, and as such
banished in 663,(12) and then by Sulla's victory brought back
to his native land;(13) he was a shrewd man and a capable advocate,
but not called, either by the weight of his party or by that of his
personal standing, to act more than a respectable secondary part.
In the democratic party, among the rising youth, Gaius Julius
Caesar, who was twenty-four years of age (born 12 July 652?(14)),
drew towards him the eyes of friend and foe.  His relationship
with Marius and Cinna (his father's sister had been the wife of Marius,
he himself had married Cinna's daughter); the courageous refusal
of the youth who had scarce outgrown the age of boyhood to send
a divorce to his young wife Cornelia at the bidding of the dictator,
as Pompeius had in the like case done; his bold persistence
in the priesthood conferred upon him by Marius, but revoked by Sulla;
his wanderings during the proscription with which he was threatened,
and which was with difficulty averted by the intercession
of his relatives; his bravery in the conflicts before Mytilene
and in Cilicia, a bravery which no one had expected from the tenderly
reared and almost effeminately foppish boy; even the warnings
of Sulla regarding the "boy in the petticoat" in whom more than a Marius
lay concealed--all these were precisely so many recommendations
in the eyes of the democratic party.  But Caesar could only be the object
of hopes for the future; and the men who from their age and their
public position would have been called now to seize the reins
of the party and the state, were all dead or in exile.

Lepidus

Thus the leadership of the democracy, in the absence of a man
with a true vocation for it, was to be had by any one who might please
to give himself forth as the champion of oppressed popular freedom;
and in this way it came to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a Sullan,
who from motives more than ambiguous deserted to the camp
of the democracy.  Once a zealous Optimate, and a large purchaser
at the auctions of the proscribed estates, he had, as governor of Sicily,
so scandalously plundered the province that he was threatened
with impeachment, and, to evade it, threw himself into opposition.
It was a gain of doubtful value.  No doubt the opposition
thus acquired a well-known name, a man of quality, a vehement orator
in the Forum; but Lepidus was an insignificant and indiscreet
personage, who did not deserve to stand at the head either
in council or in the field.  Nevertheless the opposition welcomed him,
and the new leader of the democrats succeeded not only in deterring
his accusers from prosecuting the attack on him which they had
begun, but also in carrying his election to the consulship
for 676; in which, we may add, he was helped not only by the treasures
exacted in Sicily, but also by the foolish endeavour of Pompeius
to show Sulla and the pure Sullans on this occasion what he could do.
Now that the opposition had, on the death of Sulla, found a head
once more in Lepidus, and now that this their leader had become
the supreme magistrate of the state, the speedy outbreak of a new
revolution in the capital might with certainty be foreseen.

The Emigrants in Spain
Sertorius

But even before the democrats moved in the capital, the democratic
emigrants had again bestirred themselves in Spain.  The soul
of this movement was Quintus Sertorius.  This excellent man,
a native of Nursia in the Sabine land, was from the first
of a tender and even soft organization--as his almost enthusiastic love
for his mother, Raia, shows--and at the same time of the most chivalrous
bravery, as was proved by the honourable scars which he brought
home from the Cimbrian, Spanish, and Italian wars.  Although wholly
untrained as an orator, he excited the admiration of learned
advocates by the natural flow and the striking self-possession
of his address.  His remarkable military and statesmanly talent
had found opportunity of shining by contrast, more particularly
in the revolutionary war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly
mismanaged; he was confessedly the only democratic officer
who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the only democratic
statesman who opposed the insensate and furious doings of his party
with statesmanlike energy.  His Spanish soldiers called him the new
Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost
an eye in war.  He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician
by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, by his rare talent
of organizing war by means of war, by his adroitness in attracting
foreign nations to his interest and making them serviceable to his ends,
by his prudence in success and misfortune, by the quickness
of his ingenuity in turning to good account his victories
and averting the consequences of his defeats.  It may be doubted
whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period, or of the present,
can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius.
After Sulla's generals had compelled him to quit Spain,(15)
he had led a restless life of adventure along the Spanish and African
coasts, sometimes in league, sometimes at war, with the Cilician
pirates who haunted these seas, and with the chieftains
of the roving tribes of Libya.  The victorious Roman restoration had
pursued him even thither: when he was besieging Tingis (Tangiers),
a corps under Pacciaecus from Roman Africa had come to the help
of the prince of the town; but Pacciaecus was totally defeated,
and Tingis was taken by Sertorius.  On the report of such achievements
by the Roman refugee spreading abroad, the Lusitanians, who,
notwithstanding their pretended submission to the Roman supremacy,
practically maintained their independence, and annually fought
with the governors of Further Spain, sent envoys to Sertorius
in Africa, to invite him to join them, and to commit to him
the command of their militia.

Renewed Outbreak of the Spanish Insurrection
Metellus Sent to Spain

Sertorius, who twenty years before had served under Titus Didius
in Spain and knew the resources of the land, resolved to comply
with the invitation, and, leaving behind a small detachment
on the Mauretanian coast, embarked for Spain (about 674).
The straits separating Spain and Africa were occupied by a Roman
squadron commanded by Cotta; to steal through it was impossible;
so Sertorius fought his way through and succeeded in reaching
the Lusitanians.  There were not more than twenty Lusitanian
communities that placed themselves under his orders; and even
of "Romans" he mustered only 2600 men, a considerable part
of whom were deserters from the army of Pacciaecus or Africans
armed after the Roman style.  Sertorius saw that everything depended on
his associating with the loose guerilla-bands a strong nucleus
of troops possessing Roman organization and discipline: for this end
he reinforced the band which he had brought with him by levying
4000 infantry and 700 cavalry, and with this one legion
and the swarms of Spanish volunteers advanced against the Romans.
The command in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius,
who through his absolute devotion to Sulla--well tried amidst
the proscriptions--had risen from a subaltern to be propraetor;
he was totally defeated on the Baetis; 2000 Romans covered the field
of battle.  Messengers in all haste summoned the governor
of the adjoining province of the Ebro, Marcus Domitius Calvinus,
to check the farther advance of the Sertorians; and there soon appeared
(675) also the experienced general Quintus Metellus, sent by Sulla
to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain.  But they did
not succeed in mastering the revolt.  In the Ebro province
not only was the army of Calvinus destroyed and he himself slain
by the lieutenant of Sertorius, the quaestor Lucius Hirtuleius,
but Lucius Manlius, the governor of Transalpine Gaul, who had crossed
the Pyrenees with three legions to the help of his colleague,
was totally defeated by the same brave leader.  With difficulty
Manlius escaped with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence
to his province, losing on the march his whole baggage through
a sudden attack of the Aquitanian tribes.  In Further Spain Metellus
penetrated into the Lusitanian territory; but Sertorius succeeded
during the siege of Longobriga (not far from the mouth
of the Tagus) in alluring a division under Aquinus into an ambush,
and thereby compelling Metellus himself to raise the siege
and to evacuate the Lusitanian territory.  Sertorius followed him,
defeated on the Anas (Guadiana) the corps of Thorius, and inflicted
vast damage by guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in-
chief himself.  Metellus, a methodical and somewhat clumsy
tactician, was in despair as to this opponent, who obstinately
declined a decisive battle, but cut off his supplies
and communications and constantly hovered round him on all sides.

Organizations of Sertorius

These extraordinary successes obtained by Sertorius
in the two Spanish provinces were the more significant,
that they were not achieved merely by arms and were not of a mere
military nature.  The emigrants as such were not formidable;
nor were isolated successes of the Lusitanians under this or that
foreign leader of much moment.  But with the most decided political
and patriotic tact Sertorius acted, whenever he could do so,
not as condottiere of the Lusitanians in revolt against Rome,
but as Roman general and governor of Spain, in which capacity
he had in fact been sent thither by the former rulers.
He began(16) to form the heads of the emigration into a senate,
which was to increase to 300 members and to conduct affairs
and to nominate magistrates in Roman form.  He regarded his army
as a Roman one, and filled the officers' posts, without exception,
with Romans.  When facing the Spaniards, he was the governor,
who by virtue of his office levied troops and other support
from them; but he was a governor who, instead of exercising
the usual despotic sway, endeavoured to attach the provincials
to Rome and to himself personally.  His chivalrous character
rendered it easy for him to enter into Spanish habits,
and excited in the Spanish nobility the most ardent enthusiasm
for the wonderful foreigner who had a spirit so kindred
with their own.  According to the warlike custom of personal following
which subsisted in Spain as among the Celts and the Germans,
thousands of the noblest Spaniards swore to stand faithfully
by their Roman general unto death; and in them Sertorius found
more trustworthy comrades than in his countrymen and party-associates.
He did not disdain to turn to account the superstition of the ruder
Spanish tribes, and to have his plans of war brought to him as commands
of Diana by the white fawn of the goddess.  Throughout he exercised
a just and gentle rule.  His troops, at least so far as his eye
and his arm reached, had to maintain the strictest discipline.
Gentle as he generally was in punishing, he showed himself inexorable
when any outrage was perpetrated by his soldiers on friendly soil.
Nor was he inattentive to the permanent alleviation of the condition
of the provincials; he reduced the tribute, and directed the soldiers
to construct winter barracks for themselves, so that the oppressive
burden of quartering the troops was done away and thus a source
of unspeakable mischief and annoyance was stopped.  For the children
of Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca (Huesca),
in which they received the higher instruction usual in Rome,
learning to speak Latin and Greek, and to wear the toga--a remarkable
measure, which was by no means designed merely to take from the allies
in as gentle a form as possible the hostages that in Spain
were inevitable, but was above all an emanation from, and an advance
onthe great project of Gaius Gracchus and the democratic
party for gradually Romanizing the provinces.  It was the first
attempt to accomplish their Romanization not by extirpating
the old inhabitants and filling their places with Italian emigrants,
but by Romanizing the provincials themselves.  The Optimates
in Rome sneered at the wretched emigrant, the runaway from the Italian
army, the last of the robber-band of Carbo; the sorry taunt
recoiled upon its authors.  The masses that had been brought into
the field against Sertorius were reckoned, including the Spanish
general levy, at 120,000 infantry, 2000 archers and slingers,
and 6000 cavalry.  Against this enormous superiority of force Sertorius
had not only held his ground in a series of successful conflicts
and victories, but had also reduced the greater part of Spain
under his power.  In the Further province Metellus found himself
confined to the districts immediately occupied by his troops;
hereall the tribes, who could, had taken the side of Sertorius.
In the Hither province, after the victories of Hirtuleius,
there no longer existed a Roman army.  Emissaries of Sertorius
roamed through the whole territory of Gaul; there, too,
the tribes began to stir, and bands gathering together began
to make the Alpine passes insecure.  Lastly the sea too belonged
quite as much to the insurgents as to the legitimate government,
since the allies of the former--the pirates--were almost as powerful
in the Spanish waters as the Roman ships of war.  At the promontory
of Diana (now Denia, between Valencia and Alicante) Sertorius established
for the corsairs a fixed station, where they partly lay in wait
for such Roman ships as were conveying supplies to the Roman
maritime towns and the army, partly carried away or delivered goods
for the insurgents, and partly formed their medium of intercourse
with Italy and Asia Minor.  The constant readiness of these men moving
to and fro to carry everywhere sparks from the scene of conflagration
tended in a high degree to excite apprehension, especially at a time
when so much combustible matter was everywhere accumulated
in the Roman empire.

Death of Sulla and Its Consequences

Amidst this state of matters the sudden death of Sulla took place
(676).  So long as the man lived, at whose voice a trained
and trustworthy army of veterans was ready any moment to rise,
the oligarchy might tolerate the almost (as it seemed)
definite abandonment of the Spanish provinces to the emigrants,
and the election of the leader of the opposition at home to be supreme
magistrate, at all events as transient misfortunes; and in their
shortsighted way, yet not wholly without reason, might cherish
confidence either that the opposition would not venture to proceed
to open conflict, or that, if it did venture, he who had twice
saved the oligarchy would set it up a third time.  Now the state
of things was changed.  The democratic Hotspurs in the capital,
long impatient of the endless delay and inflamed by the brilliant news
from Spain, urged that a blow should be struck; and Lepidus,
with whom the decision for the moment lay, entered into the proposal
with all the zeal of a renegade and with his own characteristic
frivolity.  For a moment it seemed as if the torch which kindled
the funeral pile of the regent would also kindle civil war;
but the influence of Pompeius and the temper of the Sullan veterans
induced the opposition to let the obsequies of the regent
pass over in peace.

Insurrection of Lepidus

Yet all the more openly were arrangements thenceforth made
to introduce a fresh revolution.  Daily the Forum resounded
with accusations against the "mock Romulus" and his executioners.
Even before the great potentate had closed his eyes, the overthrow
of the Sullan constitution, the re-establishment of the distributions
of grain, the reinstating of the tribunes of the people in their
former position, the recall of those who were banished contrary
to law, the restoration of the confiscated lands, were openly indicated
by Lepidus and his adherents as the objects at which they aimed.
Now communications were entered into with the proscribed;
Marcus Perpenna, governor of Sicily in the days of Cinna,(17)
arrived in the capital.  The sons of those whom Sulla had declared
guilty of treason--on whom the laws of the restoration bore
with intolerable severity--and generally the more noted men of Marian
views were invited to give their accession.  Not a few, such as
the young Lucius Cinna, joined the movement; others, however,
followed the example of Gaius Caesar, who had returned home from Asia
on receiving the accounts of the death of Sulla and of the plans
of Lepidus, but after becoming more accurately acquainted
with the character of the leader and of the movement prudently withdrew.
Carousing and recruiting went on in behalf of Lepidus
in the taverns and brothels of the capital.  At length a conspiracy
against the new order of things was concocted among the Etruscan
malcontents.(18)

All this took place under the eyes of the government The consul
Catulus as well as the more judicious Optimates urged an immediate
decisive interference and suppression of the revolt in the bud;
the indolent majority, however, could not make up their minds to begin
the struggle, but tried to deceive themselves as long as possible
by a system of compromises and concessions.  Lepidus also on his
part at first entered into it.  The suggestion, which proposed
a restoration of the prerogatives taken away from the tribunes
of the people, he as well as his colleague Catulus repelled.
On the other hand, the Gracchan distribution of grain
was to a limited extent re-established.  According to it not all
(as according to the Sempronian law) but only a definite number--
presumably 40,000--of the poorer burgesses appear to have received
the earlier largesses, as Gracchus had fixed them, of five -modii-
monthly at the price of 6 1/3 -asses- (3 pence)--a regulation
which occasioned to the treasury an annual net loss of at least
40,000 pounds.(19)  The opposition, naturally as little satisfied
as it was decidedly emboldened by this partial concession, displayed
all the more rudeness and violence in the capital; and in Etruria,
the true centre of all insurrections of the Italian proletariate,
civil war already broke out, the dispossessed Faesulans resumed
possession of their lost estates by force of arms, and several
of the veterans settled there by Sulla perished in the tumult.
The senate on learning what had occurred resolved to send the two consuls
thither, in order to raise troops and suppress the insurrection.(20)
It was impossible to adopt a more irrational course.  The senate,
in presence of the insurrection, evinced its pusillanimity
and its fears by the re-establishment of the corn-law; in order
to be relieved from a street-riot, it furnished the notorious
head of the insurrection with an army; and, when the two consuls
were bound by the most solemn oath which could be contrived not to turn
the arms entrusted to them against each other, it must have required
the superhuman obduracy of oligarchic consciences to think of erecting
such a bulwark against the impending insurrection.  Of course Lepidus
armed in Etruria not for the senate, but for the insurrection--
sarcastically declaring that the oath which he had taken bound him
only for the current year.  The senate put the oracular machinery
in motion to induce him to return, and committed to him the conduct
of the impending consular elections; but Lepidus evaded compliance,
and, while messengers passed to and fro and the official year drew
to an end amidst proposals of accommodation, his force swelled to an army.
When at length, in the beginning of the following year (677),
the definite order of the senate was issued to Lepidus to return
without delay, the proconsul haughtily refused obedience,
and demanded in his turn the renewal of the former tribunician power,
the reinstatement of those who had been forcibly ejected
from their civic rights and their property, and, besides this,
his own re-election as consul for the current year or, in other words,
the -tyrannis- in legal form.

Outbreak of the War
Lepidus Defeated
Death of Lepidus

Thus war was declared.  The senatorial party could reckon, in addition to
the Sullan veterans whose civil existence was threatened by Lepidus,
upon the army assembled by the proconsul Catulus; and so, in compliance
with the urgent warnings of the more sagacious, particularly of Philippus,
Catulus was entrusted by the senate with the defence of the capital
and the repelling of the main force of the democratic party stationed
in Etruria.  At the same time Gnaeus Pompeius was despatched with another
corps to wrest from his former protege the valley of the Po, which was held
by Lepidus' lieutenant, Marcus Brutus.  While Pompeius speedily
accomplished his commission and shut up the enemy's general closely
in Mutina, Lepidus appeared before the capital in order to conquer
it for the revolution as Marius had formerly done by storm.
The right bank of the Tiber fell wholly into his power, and he was able
even to cross the river.  The decisive battle was fought
on the Campus Martius, close under the walls of the city.
But Catulus conquered; and Lepidus was compelled to retreat to Etruria,
while another division, under his son Scipio, threw itself
into the fortress of Alba.  Thereupon the rising was substantially
atan end.  Mutina surrendered to Pompeius; and Brutus was,
notwithstanding the safe-conduct promised to him, subsequently
put to death by order of that general.  Alba too was, after a long siege,
reduced by famine, and the leader there was likewise executed.
Lepidus, pressed on two sides by Catulus and Pompeius, fought another
engagement on the coast of Etruria in order merely to procure
the means of retreat, and then embarked at the port of Cosa for Sardinia
from which point he hoped to cut off the supplies of the capital,
and to obtain communication with the Spanish insurgents.
But the governor of the island opposed to him a vigorous resistance;
and he himself died, not long after his landing, of consumption (677),
whereupon the war in Sardinia came to an end.  A part of his soldiers
dispersed; with the flower of the insurrectionary army
and with a well-filled chest the late praetor, Marcus Perpenna,
proceeded to Liguria, and thence to Spain to join the Sertorians.

Pompeius Extorts the Command in Spain

The oligarchy was thus victorious over Lepidus; but it found itself
compelled by the dangerous turn of the Sertorian war to concessions,
which violated the letter as well as the spirit of the Sullan
constitution.  It was absolutely necessary to send a strong
army and an able general to Spain; and Pompeius indicated,
very plainly, that he desired, or rather demanded, this commission.
The pretension was bold.  It was already bad enough that they
had allowed this secret opponent again to attain an extraordinary
command in the pressure of the Lepidian revolution; but it was far
more hazardous, in disregard of all the rules instituted by Sulla
for the magisterial hierarchy, to invest a man who had hitherto
filled no civil office with one of the most important ordinary
provincial governorships, under circumstances in which the observance
of the legal term of a year was not to be thought of.
The oligarchy had thus, even apart from the respect due to their
general Metellus, good reason to oppose with all earnestness
this new attempt of the ambitious youth to perpetuate his exceptional
position.  But this was not easy.  In the first place, they had
not a single man fitted for the difficult post of general in Spain.
Neither of the consuls of the year showed any desire to measure
himself against Sertorius; and what Lucius Philippus said in a full
meeting of the senate had to be admitted as too true--that, among
all the senators of note, not one was able and willing to command
in a serious war.  Yet they might, perhaps, have got over this,
and after the manner of oligarchs, when they had no capable candidate,
have filled the place with some sort of makeshift, if Pompeius had
merely desired the command and had not demanded it at the head
of an army.  He had already lent a deaf ear to the injunctions
of Catulus that he should dismiss the army; it was at least doubtful
whether those of the senate would find a better reception,
and the consequences of a breach no one could calculate--
the scale of aristocracy might very easily mount up, if the sword
of a well-known general were thrown into the opposite scale.
So the majority resolved on concession.  Not from the people,
which constitutionally ought to have been consulted in a case
where a private man was to be invested with the supreme magisterial
power, but from the senate, Pompeius received proconsular authority
and the chief command in Hither Spain; and, forty days after he had
received it, crossed the Alps in the summer of 677.

Pompeius in Gaul

First of all the new general found employment in Gaul,
where no formal insurrection had broken out, but serious disturbances
of the peace had occurred at several places; in consequence
of which Pompeius deprived the cantons of the Volcae-Arecomici
and the Helvii of their independence, and placed them under Massilia.
He also laid out a new road over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre,(21)),
and so established a shorter communication between the valley
of the Po and Gaul.  Amidst this work the best season of the year
passed away; it was not till late in autumn that Pompeius crossed
the Pyrenees.

Appearance of Pompeius in Spain

Sertorius had meanwhile not been idle.  He had despatched
Hirtuleius into the Further province to keep Metellus in check,
and had himself endeavoured to follow up his complete victory
in the Hither province, and to prepare for the reception of Pompeius.
The isolated Celtiberian towns there, which still adhered to Rome,
were attacked and reduced one after another; at last, in the very
middle of winter, the strong Contrebia (south-east of Saragossa)
had fallen.  In vain the hard-pressed towns had sent message
after message to Pompeius; he would not be induced by any entreaties
to depart from his wonted rut of slowly advancing.  With the exception
of the maritime towns, which were defended by the Roman fleet,
and the districts of the Indigetes and Laletani in the north-east
corner of Spain, where Pompeius established himself after he had
at length crossed the Pyrenees, and made his raw troops bivouac
throughout the winter to inure them to hardships, the whole
of Hither Spain had at the end of 677 become by treaty or force
dependent on Sertorius, and the district on the upper and middle
Ebro thenceforth continued the main stay of his power.  Even
the apprehension, which the fresh Roman force and the celebrated name
of the general excited in the army of the insurgents, had a salutary
effect on it.  Marcus Perpenna, who hitherto as the equal
of Sertorius in rank had claimed an independent command over the force
which he had brought with him from Liguria, was, on the news
of the arrival of Pompeius in Spain, compelled by his soldiers
to place himself under the orders of his abler colleague.

For the campaign of 678 Sertorius again employed the corps
of Hirtuleius against Metellus, while Perpenna with a strong army
took up his position along the lower course of the Ebro to prevent
Pompeius from crossing the river, if he should march, as was
to be expected, in a southerly direction with the view of effecting
a junction with Metellus, and along the coast for the sake
of procuring supplies for his troops.  The corps of Gaius Herennius
was destined to the immediate support of Perpenna; farther inland
on the upper Ebro, Sertorius in person prosecuted meanwhile
the subjugation of several districts friendly to Rome, and held himself
at the same time ready to hasten according to circumstances
to the aid of Perpenna or Hirtuleius.  It was still his intention
to avoid any pitched battle, and to annoy the enemy by petty
conflicts and cutting off supplies.

Pompeius Defeated

Pompeius, however, forced the passage of the Ebro against Perpenna
and took up a position on the river Pallantias, near Saguntum,
whence, as we have already said, the Sertorians maintained their
communications with Italy and the east.  It was time that Sertorius
should appear in person, and throw the superiority of his numbers
and of his genius into the scale against the greater excellence
of the soldiers of his opponent.  For a considerable time the struggle
was concentrated around the town of Lauro (on the Xucar, south
of Valencia), which had declared for Pompeius and was on that account
besieged by Sertorius.  Pompeius exerted himself to the utmost
to relieve it; but, after several of his divisions had already been
assailed separately and cut to pieces, the great warrior found
himself--just when he thought that he had surrounded the Sertorians,
and when he had already invited the besieged to be spectators
of the capture of the besieging army--all of a sudden completely
outmanoeuvred; and in order that he might not be himself
surrounded, he had to look on from his camp at the capture
and reduction to ashes of the allied town and at the carrying off
of its inhabitants to Lusitania--an event which induced a number
of towns that had been wavering in middle and eastern Spain
to adhere anew to Sertorius.

Victories of Metellus

Meanwhile Metellus fought with better fortune.  In a sharp
engagement at Italica (not far from Seville), which Hirtuleius had
imprudently risked, and in which both generals fought hand to hand
and Hirtuleius was wounded, Metellus defeated him and compelled him
to evacuate the Roman territory proper, and to throw himself
into Lusitania.  This victory permitted Metellus to unite with Pompeius.
The two generals took up their winter-quarters in 678-79
at the Pyrenees, and in the next campaign in 679 they resolved
to make a joint attack on the enemy in his position near Valentia.
But while Metellus was advancing, Pompeius offered battle beforehand
to the main army of the enemy, with a view to wipe out the stain
of Lauro and to gain the expected laurels, if possible, alone.
With joy Sertorius embraced the opportunity of fighting with Pompeius
before Metellus arrived.

Battle on the Sucro

The armies met on the river Sucro (Xucar): after a sharp conflict
Pompeius was beaten on the right wing, and was himself carried
from the field severely wounded.  Afranius no doubt conquered
with the left and took the camp of the Sertorians, but during its pillage
he was suddenly assailed by Sertorius and compelled also to give way.
Had Sertorius been able to renew the battle on the following
day, the army of Pompeius would perhaps have been annihilated.
But meanwhile Metellus had come up, had overthrown the corps
of Perpenna ranged against him, and taken his camp: it was not
possible to resume the battle against the two armies united.  The
successes of Metellus, the junction of the hostile forces, the
sudden stagnation after the victory, diffused terror among the
Sertorians; and, as not unfrequently happened with Spanish armies,
in consequence of this turn of things the greater portion
of the Sertorian soldiers dispersed.  But the despondency passed away
as quickly as it had come; the white fawn, which represented
in the eyes of the multitude the military plans of the general,
was soon more popular than ever; in a short time Sertorius appeared
with a new army confronting the Romans in the level country
to the south of Saguntum (Murviedro), which firmly adhered to Rome,
while the Sertorian privateers impeded the Roman supplies by sea,
and scarcity was already making itself felt in the Roman camp.
Another battle took place in the plains of the river Turia
(Guadalaviar), and the struggle was long undecided.  Pompeius
with the cavalry was defeated by Sertorius, and his brother-in-law
and quaestor, the brave Lucius Memmius, was slain; on the other hand
Metellus vanquished Perpenna, and victoriously repelled the attack
of the enemy's main army directed against him, receiving himself
a wound in the conflict.  Once more the Sertorian army dispersed.
Valentia, which Gaius Herennius held for Sertorius, was taken
and razed to the ground.  The Romans, probably for a moment,
cherished a hope that they were done with their tough antagonist.
The Sertorian army had disappeared; the Roman troops, penetrating
far into the interior, besieged the general himself in the fortress
Clunia on the upper Douro.  But while they vainly invested
this rocky stronghold, the contingents of the insurgent communities
assembled elsewhere; Sertorius stole out of the fortress and even
before the expiry of the year stood once more as general
at the head of an army.

Again the Roman generals had to take up their winter quarters
with the cheerless prospect of an inevitable renewal of their Sisyphean
war-toils.  It was not even possible to choose quarters in the region
of Valentia, so important on account of the communication with Italy
and the east, but fearfully devastated by friend and foe;
Pompeius led his troops first into the territory of the Vascones(22)
(Biscay) and then spent the winter in the territory of the Vaccaei
(about Valladolid), and Metellus even in Gaul.

Indefinite and Perilous Character of the Sertorian War

For five years the Sertorian war thus continued, and still
there seemed no prospect of its termination.  The state suffered
from it beyond description.  The flower of the Italian youth perished
amid the exhausting fatigues of these campaigns.  The public treasury
was not only deprived of the Spanish revenues, but had annually
to send to Spain for the pay and maintenance of the Spanish armies
very considerable sums, which the government hardly knew how
to raise.  Spain was devastated and impoverished, and the Roman
civilization, which unfolded so fair a promise there, received
a severe shock; as was naturally to be expected in the case
ofan insurrectionary war waged with so much bitterness,
and but too often occasioning the destruction of whole communities.
Even the towns which adhered to the dominant party in Rome had countless
hardships to endure; those situated on the coast had to be provided
with necessaries by the Roman fleet, and the situation of the faithful
communities in the interior was almost desperate.  Gaul suffered
hardly less, partly from the requisitions for contingents
of infantry and cavalry, for grain and money, partly
from the oppressive burden of the winter-quarters, which rose
to an intolerable degree in consequence of the bad harvest of 680;
almost all the local treasuries were compelled to betake themselves
to the Roman bankers, and to burden themselves with a crushing load
of debt.  Generals and soldiers carried on the war with reluctance.
The generals had encountered an opponent far superior in talent,
a tough and protracted resistance, a warfare of very serious perils
and of successes difficult to be attained and far from brilliant;
it was asserted that Pompeius was scheming to get himself recalled
from Spain and entrusted with a more desirable command somewhere
else.  The soldiers, too, found little satisfaction in a campaign
in which not only was there nothing to be got save hard blows
and worthless booty, but their very pay was doled out to them
with extreme irregularity.  Pompeius reported to the senate, at the end
of 679, that the pay was two years in arrear, and that the army
was threatening to break up.  The Roman government might certainly
have obviated a considerable portion of these evils, if they could have
prevailed on themselves to carry on the Spanish war with less
remissness, to say nothing of better will.  In the main, however,
it was neither their fault nor the fault of their generals
that a genius so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on
this petty warfare year after year, despite of all numerical
and military superiority, on ground so thoroughly favourable
to insurrectionary and piratical warfare.  So little could its end
be foreseen, that the Sertorian insurrection seemed rather
as if it would become intermingled with other contemporary revolts
and thereby add to its dangerous character.  Just at that time
the Romans were contending on every sea with piratical fleets,
in Italy with the revolted slaves, in Macedonia with the tribes
on the lower Danube; and in the east Mithradates, partly induced
by the successes of the Spanish insurrection, resolved once more
to try the fortune of arms.  That Sertorius had formed connections
with the Italian and Macedonian enemies of Rome, cannot be distinctly
affirmed, although he certainly was in constant intercourse
with the Marians in Italy.  With the pirates, on the other hand,
he had previously formed an avowed league, and with the Pontic king--
with whom he had long maintained relations through the medium
of the Roman emigrants staying at his court--he now concluded
a formal treaty of alliance, in which Sertorius ceded to the king
the client-states of Asia Minor, but not the Roman province of Asia,
and promised, moreover, to send him an officer qualified to lead
his troops, and a number of soldiers, while the king, in turn,
bound himself to transmit to Sertorius forty ships and 3000 talents
(720,000 pounds).  The wise politicians in the capital were already
recalling the time when Italy found itself threatened by Philip
from the east and by Hannibal from the west; they conceived
that the new Hannibal, just like his predecessor, after having
by himself subdued Spain, could easily arrive with the forces
of Spain in Italy sooner than Pompeius, in order that,
like the Phoenician formerly, he might summon the Etruscans
and Samnites to arms against Rome.

Collapse of the Power of Sertorius

But this comparison was more ingenious than accurate.  Sertorius
was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise
of Hannibal.  He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes
were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people;
and even there he was more and more compelled to renounce
the offensive.  His admirable skill as a leader could not change
the nature of his troops.  The Spanish militia retained its character,
untrustworthy as the wave or the wind; now collected in masses
to the number of 150,000, now melting away again to a mere handful.
The Roman emigrants, likewise, continued insubordinate, arrogant,
and stubborn.  Those kinds of armed force which require that a corps
should keep together for a considerable time, such as cavalry
especially, were of course very inadequately represented
in his army.  The war gradually swept off his ablest officers
and the flower of his veterans; and even the most trustworthy
communities, weary of being harassed by the Romans and maltreated
by the Sertorian officers, began to show signs of impatience
and wavering allegiance.  It is remarkable that Sertorius,
in this respect also like Hannibal, never deceived himself
as to the hopelessness of his position; he allowed no opportunity
for bringing about a compromise to pass, and would have been ready
at any moment to lay down his staff of command on the assurance
of being allowed to live peacefully in his native land.
But political orthodoxy knows nothing of compromise and conciliation.
Sertorius might not recede or step aside; he was compelled inevitably
to move on along the path which he had once entered, however narrow
and giddy it might become.

The representations which Pompeius addressed to Rome, and which
derived emphasis from the behaviour of Mithradates in the east,
were successful.  He had the necessary supplies of money sent
to him by the senate and was reinforced by two fresh legions.
Thus the two generals went to work again in the spring of 680
and once more crossed the Ebro.  Eastern Spain was wrested
from the Sertorians in consequence of the battles on the Xucar
and Guadalaviar; the struggle thenceforth became concentrated
on the upper and middle Ebro around the chief strongholds
of the Sertorians--Calagurris, Osca, Ilerda.  As Metellus had done
best in the earlier campaigns, so too on this occasion he gained
the most important successes.  His old opponent Hirtuleius, who again
confronted him, was completely defeated and fell himself along with
his brother--an irreparable loss for the Sertorians.  Sertorius,
whom the unfortunate news reached just as he was on the point
of assailing the enemy opposed to him, cut down the messenger,
that the tidings might not discourage his troops; but the news
could not be long concealed.  One town after another surrendered,
Metellus occupied the Celtiberian towns of Segobriga (between Toledo
and Cuenca) and Bilbilis (near Calatayud).  Pompeius besieged
Pallantia (Palencia above Valladolid), but Sertorius relieved it,
and compelled Pompeius to fall back upon Metellus; in front
of Calagurris (Calahorra, on the upper Ebro), into which Sertorius
had thrown himself, they both suffered severe losses.  Nevertheless,
when they went into winter-quarters--Pompeius to Gaul, Metellus
to his own province--they were able to look back on considerable
results; a great portion of the insurgents had submitted or had
been subdued by arms.

In a similar way the campaign of the following year (681) ran
its course; in this case it was especially Pompeius who slowly
but steadily restricted the field of the insurrection.

Internal Dissension among the Sertorians

The discomfiture sustained by the arms of the insurgents failed
not to react on the tone of feeling in their camp.  The military
successes of Sertorius became like those of Hannibal, of necessity
less and less considerable; people began to call in question
his military talent: he was no longer, it was alleged,
what he had been; he spent the day in feasting or over his cups,
and squandered money as well as time.  The number of the deserters,
and of communities falling away, increased.  Soon projects formed
by the Roman emigrants against the life of the general were reported
to him; they sounded credible enough, especially as various officers
of the insurgent army, and Perpenna in particular, had submitted
with reluctance to the supremacy of Sertorius, and the Roman
governors had for long promised amnesty and a high reward to any
one who should kill him.  Sertorius, on hearing such allegations,
withdrew the charge of guarding his person from the Roman soldiers
and entrusted it to select Spaniards.  Against the suspected
themselves he proceeded with fearful but necessary severity,
and condemned various of the accused to death without resorting,
as in other cases, to the advice of his council; he was now
more dangerous--it was thereupon affirmed in the circles
of the malcontents--to his friends than to his foes.

Assassination of Sertorius

A second conspiracy was soon discovered, which had its seat
in his own staff; whoever was denounced had to take flight or die;
but all were not betrayed, and the remaining conspirators,
including especially Perpenna, found in the circumstances only
a new incentive to make haste.  They were in the headquarters
at Osca.  There, on the instigation of Perpenna, a brilliant victory
was reported to the general as having been achieved by his troops;
and at the festal banquet arranged by Perpenna to celebrate
this victory Sertorius accordingly appeared, attended, as was his wont,
by his Spanish retinue.  Contrary to former custom in the Sertorian
headquarters, the feast soon became a revel; wild words passed
at table, and it seemed as if some of the guests sought opportunity
to begin an altercation.  Sertorius threw himself back on his couch,
and seemed desirous not to hear the disturbance.  Then a wine-cup
was dashed on the floor; Perpenna had given the concerted sign.
Marcus Antonius, Sertorius' neighbour at table, dealt the first
blow against him, and when Sertorius turned round and attempted
to rise, the assassin flung himself upon him and held him down
till the other guests at table, all of them implicated
in the conspiracy, threw themselves on the struggling pair,
and stabbed he defenceless general while his arms were pinioned (682).
With him died his faithful attendants.  So ended one of the greatest
men, if not the very greatest man, that Rome had hitherto produced--
a man who under more fortunate circumstances would perhaps
have become the regenerator of his country--by the treason
of the wretched band of emigrants whom he was condemned to lead against
his native land.  History loves not the Coriolani; nor has she made
any exception even in the case of this the most magnanimous,
most gifted, most deserving to be regretted of them all.

Perpenna Succeeds Sertorius

The murderers thought to succeed to the heritage of the murdered.
After the death of Sertorius, Perpenna, as the highest among
the Roman officers of the Spanish army, laid claim to the chief
command.  The army submitted, but with mistrust and reluctance.
However men had murmured against Sertorius in his lifetime, death
reinstated the hero in his rights, and vehement was the indignation
of the soldiers when, on the publication of his testament, the name
of Perpenna was read forth among the heirs.  A part of the soldiers,
especially the Lusitanians, dispersed; the remainder had a presentiment
that with the death of Sertorius their spirit and their
fortune had departed.

Pompeius Puts an End to the Insurrection

Accordingly, at the first encounter with Pompeius, the wretchedly
led and despondent ranks of the insurgents were utterly broken,
and Perpenna, among other officers, was taken prisoner.  The wretch
sought to purchase his life by delivering up the correspondence
of Sertorius, which would have compromised numerous men of standing
in Italy; but Pompeius ordered the papers to be burnt unread,
and handed him, as well as the other chiefs of the insurgents,
overto the executioner.  The emigrants who had escaped dispersed;
and most of them went into the Mauretanian deserts or joined the pirates.
Soon afterwards the Plotian law, which was zealously supported
by the young Caesar in particular, opened up to a portion of them
the opportunity of returning home; but all those who had taken part
in the murder of Sertorius, with but a single exception, died
a violent death.  Osca, and most of the towns which had still adhered
to Sertorius in Hither Spain, now voluntarily opened their gates
to Pompeius; Uxama (Osma), Clunia, and Calagurris alone had to be
reduced by force.  The two provinces were regulated anew;
in the Further province, Metellus raised the annual tribute
of the most guilty communities; in the Hither, Pompeius dispensed
reward and punishment: Calagurris, for example, lost its independence
and was placed under Osca.  A band of Sertorian soldiers, which had
collected in the Pyrenees, was induced by Pompeius to surrender,
and was settled by him to the north of the Pyrenees near Lugudunum
(St.  Bertrand, in the department Haute-Garonne), as the community
of the "congregated" (-convenae-).  The Roman emblems of victory
were erected at the summit of the pass of the Pyrenees;
at the close of 683, Metellus and Pompeius marched with their armies
through the streets of the capital, to present the thanks
of the nation to Father Jovis at the Capitol for the conquest
of the Spaniards.  The good fortune of Sulla seemed still to be
with his creation after he had been laid in the grave, and to protect it
better than the incapable and negligent watchmen appointed to guard
it.  The opposition in Italy had broken down from the incapacity
and precipitation of its leader, and that of the emigrants
from dissension within their own ranks.  These defeats,
although far more the result of their own perverseness and discordance
than of the exertions of their opponents, were yet so many victories
for the oligarchy.  The curule chairs were rendered once more secure.




Chapter II

Rule of the Sullan Restoration

External Relations

When the suppression of the Cinnan revolution, which threatened
the very existence of the senate, rendered it possible for the restored
senatorial government to devote once more the requisite attention
to the internal and external security of the empire, there emerged
affairs enough, the settlement of which could not be postponed
without injuring the most important interests and allowing
present inconveniences to grow into future dangers.  Apart from
the very serious complications in Spain, it was absolutely necessary
effectually to check the barbarians in Thrace and the regions
of the Danube, whom Sulla on his march through Macedonia had only
been able superficially to chastise,(1) and to regulate, by military
intervention, the disorderly state of things along the northern
frontier of the Greek peninsula; thoroughly to suppress
the bands of pirates infesting the seas everywhere, but especially
the eastern waters; and lastly to introduce better order
into the unsettled relations of Asia Minor.  The peace which Sulla
had concluded in 670 with Mithradates, king of Pontus,(2)
and of which the treaty with Murena in 673(3) was essentially
a repetition, bore throughout the stamp of a provisional arrangement
to meet the exigencies of the moment; and the relations of the Romans
with Tigranes, king of Armenia, with whom they had de facto waged war,
remained wholly untouched in this peace.  Tigranes had with right
regarded this as a tacit permission to bring the Roman possessions
in Asia under his power.  If these were not to be abandoned, it
was necessary to come to terms amicably or by force with the new
great-king of Asia.

In the preceding chapter we have described the movements
in Italy and Spain connected with the proceedings of the democracy,
and their subjugation by the senatorial government.  In the present
chapter we shall review the external government, as the authorities
installed by Sulla conducted or failed to conduct it.

Dalmato-Macedonian Expeditions

We still recognize the vigorous hand of Sulla in the energetic measures
which, in the last period of his regency, the senate adopted almost
simultaneously against the Sertorians, the Dalmatians and Thracians,
and the Cilician pirates.

The expedition to the Graeco-Illyrian peninsula was designed partly
to reduce to subjection or at least to tame the barbarous tribes
who ranged over the whole interior from the Black Sea to the Adriatic,
and of whom the Bessi (in the great Balkan) especially were,
as it was then said, notorious as robbers even among a race
of robbers; partly to destroy the corsairs in their haunts,
especially along the Dalmatian coast.  As usual, the attack took
place simultaneously from Dalmatia and from Macedonia, in which
province an army of five legions was assembled for the purpose.
In Dalmatia the former praetor Gaius Cosconius held the command,
marched through the country in all directions, and took by storm
the fortress of Salona after a two years' siege.  In Macedonia
the proconsul Appius Claudius (676-678) first attempted along
the Macedono-Thracian frontier to make himself master of the mountain
districts on the left bank of the Karasu.  On both sides the war
was conducted with savage ferocity; the Thracians destroyed
the townships which they took and massacred their captives,
and the Romans returned like for like.  But no results of importance
were attained; the toilsome marches and the constant conflicts
with the numerous and brave inhabitants of the mountains decimated
the army to no purpose; the general himself sickened and died.
His successor, Gaius Scribonius Curio (679-681), was induced
by various obstacles, and particularly by a not inconsiderable
military revolt, to desist from the difficult expedition
against the Thracians, and to turn himself instead to the northern
frontier of Macedonia, where he subdued the weaker Dardani (in Servia)
and reached as far as the Danube.  The brave and able Marcus Lucullus
(682, 683) was the first who again advanced eastward, defeated the Bessi
in their mountains, took their capital Uscudama (Adrianople),
and compelled them to submit to the Roman supremacy.  Sadalas king
of the Odrysians, and the Greek towns on the east coast to the north
and south of the Balkan chain--Istropolis, Tomi, Callatis,
Odessus (near Varna), Mesembria, and others--became dependent
on the Romans.  Thrace, of which the Romans had hitherto held little
more than the Attalic possessions on the Chersonese, now became
a portion--though far from obedient--of the province of Macedonia.

Piracy

But the predatory raids of the Thracians and Dardani, confined
as they were to a small part of the empire, were far less injurious
to the state and to individuals than the evil of piracy,
which was continually spreading farther and acquiring
more solid organization.  The commerce of the whole Mediterranean
was in its power.  Italy could neither export its products nor import
grain from the provinces; in the former the people were starving,
in the latter the cultivation of the corn-fields ceased for want
of a vent for the produce.  No consignment of money, no traveller
was longer safe: the public treasury suffered most serious losses;
a great many Romans of standing were captured by the corsairs,
and compelled to pay heavy sums for their ransom, if it was not even
the pleasure of the pirates to execute on individuals the sentence
of death, which in that case was seasoned with a savage humour.
The merchants, and even the divisions of Roman troops destined
for the east, began to postpone their voyages chiefly to the unfavourable
season of the year, and to be less afraid of the winter storms
than of the piratical vessels, which indeed even at this season
did not wholly disappear from the sea.  But severely as the closing
of the sea was felt, it was more tolerable than the raids
made on the islands and coasts of Greece and Asia Minor.
Just as afterwards in the time of the Normans, piratical squadrons
ran up to the maritime towns, and either compelled them to buy
themselves off with large sums, or besieged and took them by storm.
When Samothrace, Clazomenae, Samos, Iassus were pillaged
by the pirates (670) under the eyes of Sulla after peace was concluded
with Mithradates, we may conceive how matters went where neither
a Roman army nor a Roman fleet was at hand.  All the old rich temples
along the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor were plundered
one after another; from Samothrace alone a treasure of 1000 talents
(240,000 pounds) is said to have been carried off.  Apollo, according
to a Roman poet of this period, was so impoverished by the pirates that,
when the swallow paid him a visit, he could no longer produce
to it out of all his treasures even a drachm of gold.  More than four
hundred townships were enumerated as having been taken or laid
under contribution by the pirates, including cities like Cnidus,
Samos, Colophon; from not a few places on islands or the coast,
which were previously flourishing, the whole population migrated,
that they might not be carried off by the pirates.  Even inland
districts were no longer safe from their attacks; there were instances
of their assailing townships distant one or two days' march
from the coast.  The fearful debt, under which subsequently
all the communities of the Greek east succumbed, proceeded
in great part from these fatal times.

Organization of Piracy

Piracy had totally changed its character.  The pirates
were no longer bold freebooters, who levied their tribute
from the large Italo-Oriental traffic in slaves and luxuries,
as it passed through the Cretan waters between Cyrene
and the Peloponnesus--in the language of the pirates the "golden sea";
no longer even armed slave-catchers, who prosecuted "war, trade,
and piracy" equally side by side; they formed now a piratical state,
with a peculiar esprit de corps, with a solid and very respectable
organization, with a home of their own and the germs of a symmachy,
and doubtless also with definite political designs.  The pirates
called themselves Cilicians; in fact their vessels were the rendezvous
of desperadoes and adventurers from all countries--discharged
mercenaries from the recruiting-grounds of Crete, burgesses
from the destroyed townships of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers
and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, in a word
the ruined men of all nations, the hunted refugees of all vanquished
parties, every one that was wretched and daring--and where was there not
misery and outrage in this unhappy age? It was no longer
a gang of robbers who had flocked together, but a compact soldier-
state, in which the freemasonry of exile and crime took the place
of nationality, and within which crime redeemed itself, as it so often
does in its own eyes, by displaying the most generous public spirit.
In an abandoned age, when cowardice and insubordination
had relaxed all the bonds of social order, the legitimate commonwealths
might have taken a pattern from this state--the mongrel offspring
of distress and violence--within which alone the inviolable
determination to stand side by side, the sense of comradeship,
respect for the pledged word and the self-chosen chiefs, valour
and adroitness seemed to have taken refuge.  If the banner of this state
was inscribed with vengeance against the civil society which,
rightly or wrongly, had ejected its members, it might be a question
whether this device was much worse than those of the Italian oligarchy
and the Oriental sultanship which seemed in the fair way of dividing
the world between them.  The corsairs at least felt themselves
on a level with any legitimate state; their robber-pride,
their robber-pomp, and their robber-humour are attested by many
a genuine pirate's tale of mad merriment and chivalrous bandittism:
they professed, and made it their boast, to live at righteous war
with all the world: what they gained in that warfare was designated
not as plunder, but as military spoil; and, while the captured corsair
was sure of the cross in every Roman seaport, they too claimed
the right of executing any of their captives.

Its Military-Political Power

Their military-political organization, especially since
the Mithradatic war, was compact.  Their ships, for the most part
-myopiarones-, that is, small open swift-sailing barks,
with a smaller proportion of biremes and triremes, now regularly sailed
associated in squadrons and under admirals, whose barges were wont
to glitter in gold and purple.  To a comrade in peril,
though he might be totally unknown, no pirate captain refused
the requested aid; an agreement concluded with any one of them
was absolutely recognized by the whole society, and any injury inflicted
on one was avenged by all.  Their true home was the sea from the pillars
of Hercules to the Syrian and Egyptian waters; the refuges
which they needed for themselves and their floating houses
on the mainland were readily furnished to them by the Mauretanian
and Dalmatian coasts, by the island of Crete, and, above all,
by the southern coast of Asia Minor, which abounded in headlands
and lurking-places, commanded the chief thoroughfare of the maritime
commerce of that age, and was virtually without a master.
The league of Lycian cities there, and the Pamphylian communities,
were of little importance; the Roman station, which had existed
in Cilicia since 652, was far from adequate to command the extensive
coast; the Syrian dominion over Cilicia had always been
but nominal, and had recently been superseded by the Armenian,
the holder of which, as a true great-king, gave himself no concern
at all about the sea and readily abandoned it to the pillage
of the Cilicians.  It was nothing wonderful, therefore,
that the corsairs flourished there as they had never done anywhere else.
Not only did they possess everywhere along the coast signal-places
and stations, but further inland--in the most remote recesses
of the impassable and mountainous interior of Lycia, Pamphylia,
and Cilicia--they had built their rock-castles, in which they concealed
their wives, children, and treasures during their own absence
at sea, and, doubtless, in times of danger found an asylum themselves.
Great numbers of such corsair-castles existed especially
in the Rough Cilicia, the forests of which at the same time furnished
the pirates with the most excellent timber for shipbuilding; and there,
accordingly, their principal dockyards and arsenals were situated.
It was not to be wondered at that this organized military state
gained a firm body of clients among the Greek maritime cities,
which were more or less left to themselves and managed their own
affairs: these cities entered into traffic with the pirates
as with a friendly power on the basis of definite treaties,
and did not comply with the summons of the Roman governors to furnish
vessels against them.  The not inconsiderable town of Side
in Pamphylia, for instance, allowed the pirates to build ships
on its quays, and to sell the free men whom they had captured
in its market.

Such a society of pirates was a political power; and as a political
power it gave itself out and was accepted from the time
when the Syrian king Tryphon first employed it as such and rested
his throne on its support.(4)  We find the pirates as allies of king
Mithradates of Pontus as well as of the Roman democratic emigrants;
we find them giving battle to the fleets of Sulla in the eastern
and in the western waters; we find individual pirate princes ruling
over a series of considerable coast towns.  We cannot tell how far
the internal political development of this floating state had
already advanced; but its arrangements undeniably contained
the germ of a sea-kingdom, which was already beginning to establish
itself, and out of which, under favourable circumstances,
a permanent state might have been developed.

Nullity of the Roman Marine Police

This state of matters clearly shows, as we have partly indicated
already,(5) how the Romans kept--or rather did not keep--order
on "their sea."  The protectorate of Rome over the provinces
consisted essentially in military guardianship; the provincials
paid tax or tribute to the Romans for their defence by sea and land,
which was concentrated in Roman hands.  But never, perhaps,
did a guardian more shamelessly defraud his ward than the Roman
oligarchy defrauded the subject communities.  Instead of Rome equipping
a general fleet for the empire and centralizing her marine police,
the senate permitted the unity of her maritime superintendence--
without which in this matter nothing could at all be done--to fall
into abeyance, and left it to each governor and each client state
to defend themselves against the pirates as each chose and was able.
Instead of Rome providing for the fleet, as she had bound herself
to do, exclusively with her own blood and treasure and with those
of the client states which had remained formally sovereign,
the senate allowed the Italian war-marine to fall into decay,
and learned to make shift with the vessels which the several
mercantile towns were required to furnish, or still more frequently
with the coast-guards everywhere organized--all the cost
and burden falling, in either case, on the subjects.  The provincials
might deem themselves fortunate, if their Roman governor applied
the requisitions which he raised for the defence of the coast
in reality solely to that object, and did not intercept them
for himself; or if they were not, as very frequently happened, called
on to pay ransom for some Roman of rank captured by the buccaneers.
Measures undertaken perhaps with judgment, such as the occupation
of Cilicia in 652, were sure to be spoilt in the execution.
Any Roman of this period, who was not wholly carried away
by the current intoxicating idea of the national greatness, must have
wished that the ships' beaks might be torn down from the orator's
platform in the Forum, that at least he might not be constantly
reminded by them of the naval victories achieved in better times.

Expedition to the South Coast of Asia Minor
Publius Servilius Isauricus
Zenicetes Vanquished
The Isaurians Subdued

Nevertheless Sulla, who in the war against Mithradates had
the opportunity of acquiring an adequate conviction of the dangers
which the neglect of the fleet involved, took various steps
seriously to check the evil.  It is true that the instructions
which he had left to the governors whom he appointed in Asia,
to equip in the maritime towns a fleet against the pirates, had borne
little fruit, for Murena preferred to begin war with Mithradates,
and Gnaeus Dolabella, the governor of Cilicia, proved wholly
incapable.  Accordingly the senate resolved in 675 to send one
of the consuls to Cilicia; the lot fell on the capable Publius
Servilius.  He defeated the piratical fleet in a bloody engagement,
and then applied himself to destroy those towns on the south coast
of Asia Minor which served them as anchorages and trading stations.
The fortresses of the powerful maritime prince Zenicetes--Olympus,
Corycus, Phaselis in eastern Lycia, Attalia in Pamphylia--
were reduced, and the prince himself met his death in the flames
of his stronghold Olympus.  A movement was next made against
the Isaurians, who in the north-west corner of the Rough Cilicia,
on the northern slope of Mount Taurus, inhabited a labyrinth
of steep mountain ridges, jagged rocks, and deeply-cut valleys,
covered with magnificent oak forests--a region which is even
at the present day filled with reminiscences of the old robber times.
To reduce these Isaurian fastnesses, the last and most secure retreats
ofthe freebooters, Servilius led the first Roman army over the Taurus,
and broke up the strongholds of the enemy, Oroanda, and above all
Isaura itself--the ideal of a robber-town, situated on the summit
of a scarcely accessible mountain-ridge, and completely overlooking
and commanding the wide plain of Iconium.  The war, not ended
till 679, from which Publius Servilius acquired for himself
and his descendants the surname of Isauricus, was not without fruit;
a great number of pirates and piratical vessels fell in consequence
of it into the power of the Romans; Lycia, Pamphylia, West Cilicia
were severely devastated, the territories of the destroyed towns
were confiscated, and the province of Cilicia was enlarged by their
addition to it.  But, in the nature of the case, piracy was far
from being suppressed by these measures; on the contrary, it simply
betook itself for the time to other regions, and particularly
to Crete, the oldest harbour for the corsairs of the Mediterranean.(6)
Nothing but repressive measures carried out on a large scale
and with unity of purpose--nothing, in fact, but the establishment
of a standing maritime police--could in such a case
afford thorough relief.

Asiatic Relations
Tigranes and the New Great-Kingdom of Armenia

The affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor were connected by various
relations with this maritime war.  The variance which existed
between Rome and the kings of Pontus and Armenia did not abate,
but increased more and more.  On the one hand Tigranes,
kingof Armenia, pursued his aggressive conquests in the most reckless
manner.  The Parthians, whose state was at this period torn
by internal dissensions and enfeebled, were by constant hostilities
driven farther and farther back into the interior of Asia.
Of the countries between Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Iran, the kingdoms
of Corduene (northern Kurdistan), and Media Atropatene (Azerbijan),
were converted from Parthian into Armenian fiefs, and the kingdom
of Nineveh (Mosul), or Adiabene, was likewise compelled, at least
temporarily, to become a dependency of Armenia.  In Mesopotamia,
too, particularly in and around Nisibis, the Armenian rule
was established; but the southern half, which was in great part desert,
seems not to have passed into the firm possession of the new great-
king, and Seleucia, on the Tigris, in particular, appears not to have
become subject to him.  The kingdom of Edessa or Osrhoene
he handed over to a tribe of wandering Arabs, which he transplanted
from southern Mesopotamia and settled in this region, with the view
of commanding by its means the passage of the Euphrates
and the great route of traffic.(7)

Cappadocia Armenian

But Tigranes by no means confined his conquests to the eastern
bank of the Euphrates.  Cappadocia especially was the object
of his attacks, and, defenceless as it was, suffered destructive
blows from its too potent neighbour.  Tigranes wrested the eastern
province Melitene from Cappadocia, and united it with the opposite
Armenian province Sophene, by which means he obtained command
of the passage of the Euphrates with the great thoroughfare
of traffic between Asia Minor and Armenia.  After the death of Sulla
the Armenians even advanced into Cappadocia proper, and carried off
to Armenia the inhabitants of the capital Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea)
and eleven other towns of Greek organization.

Syria under Tigranes

Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in full course
of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the new great-king.
Here the south from the Egyptian frontier to Straton's Tower
(Caesarea) was under the rule of the Jewish prince Alexander Jannaeus,
who extended and strengthened his dominion step by step
in conflict with his Syrian, Egyptian, and Arabic neighbours
and with the imperial cities.  The larger towns of Syria--Gaza,
Straton's Tower, Ptolemais, Beroea--attempted to maintain themselves
on their own footing, sometimes as free communities, sometimes
under so-called tyrants; the capital, Antioch, in particular,
was virtually independent.  Damascus and the valleys of Lebanon
had submitted to the Nabataean prince, Aretas of Petra.  Lastly,
in Cilicia the pirates or the Romans bore sway.  And for this crown
breaking into a thousand fragments the Seleucid princes continued
perseveringly to quarrel with each other, as though it were their object
to make royalty a jest and an offence to all; nay more,
while this family, doomed like the house of Laius to perpetual discord,
had its own subjects all in revolt, it even raised claims to the throne
of Egypt vacant by the decease of king Alexander II without heirs.
Accordingly king Tigranes set to work there without ceremony.
Eastern Cilicia was easily subdued by him, and the citizens of Soli
and other towns were carried off, just like the Cappadocians,
to Armenia.  In like manner the province of Upper Syria,
withthe exception of the bravely-defended town of Seleucia at the mouth
of the Orontes, and the greater part of Phoenicia were reduced
by force; Ptolemais was occupied by the Armenians about 680,
and the Jewish state was already seriously threatened by them.  Antioch,
the old capital of the Seleucids, became one of the residences
of the great-king.  Already from 671, the year following the peace
between Sulla and Mithradates, Tigranes is designated
in the Syrian annals as the sovereign of the country, and Cilicia
and Syria appear as an Armenian satrapy under Magadates,
the lieutenant of the great-king.  The age of the kings of Nineveh,
ofthe Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to be renewed; again oriental
despotism pressed heavily on the trading population of the Syrian
coast, as it did formerly on Tyre and Sidon; again great states
of the interior threw themselves on the provinces along
the Mediterranean; again Asiatic hosts, said to number
half a million combatants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts.
As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews
to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new
kingdom--from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia--
the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens
of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods
and chattels (under penalty of the confiscation of everything
that they left behind) in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities
proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness
of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates
on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new
grand sultan.  The new "city of Tigranes," Tigrano-certa, founded
on the borders of Armenia and Mesopotamia, and destined
as the capital of the territories newly acquired for Armenia, became
a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high,
and the appendages of palace, garden, and park that were appropriate
to sultanism.  In other respects, too, the new great-king proved
faithful to his part.  As amidst the perpetual childhood
of the east the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns
on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed
himselfin public, appeared in the state and the costume of a successor
of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple caftan, the half-white
half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban,
and the royal diadem--attended moreover and served in slavish fashion,
wherever he went or stood, by four "kings."

Mithradates

King Mithradates acted with greater moderation.  He refrained
from aggressions in Asia Minor, and contented himself with--
what no treaty forbade--placing his dominion along the Black Sea
ona firmer basis, and gradually bringing into more definite dependence
the regions which separated the Bosporan kingdom, now ruled
under his supremacy by his son Machares, from that of Pontus.
But he too applied every effort to render his fleet and army efficient,
and especially to arm and organize the latter after the Roman model;
in which the Roman emigrants, who sojourned in great numbers
at his court, rendered essential service.

Demeanor of the Romans in the East
Egypt not Annexed

The Romans had no desire to become further involved in Oriental
affairs than they were already.  This appears with striking
clearness in the fact, that the opportunity, which at this time
presented itself, of peacefully bringing the kingdom of Egypt
under the immediate dominion of Rome was spurned by the senate.
The legitimate descendants of Ptolemaeus son of Lagus had come
to an end, when the king installed by Sulla after the death of Ptolemaeus
Soter II Lathyrus--Alexander II, a son of Alexander I--was killed,
a few days after he had ascended the throne, on occasion of a tumult
in the capital (673).  This Alexander had in his testament(8) appointed
the Roman community his heir.  The genuineness of this document
was no doubt disputed; but the senate acknowledged it by assuming
in virtue of it the sums deposited in Tyre on account of the deceased king.
Nevertheless it allowed two notoriously illegitimate sons of king Lathyrus,
Ptolemaeus XI, who was styled the new Dionysos or the Flute-blower
(Auletes), and Ptolemaeus the Cyprian, to take practical possession
of Egypt and Cyprus respectively.  They were not indeed expressly
recognized by the senate, but no distinct summons to surrender
their kingdoms was addressed to them.  The reason why the senate allowed
this state of uncertainty to continue, and did not commit itself
to a definite renunciation of Egypt and Cyprus, was undoubtedly
the considerable rent which these kings, ruling as it were on sufferance,
regularly paid for the continuance of the uncertainty to the heads
of the Roman coteries.  But the motive for waiving that attractive
acquisition altogether was different.  Egypt, by its peculiar
position and its financial organization, placed in the hands
of any governor commanding it a pecuniary and naval power and generally
an independent authority, which were absolutely incompatible
with the suspicious and feeble government of the oligarchy:
in this point of view it was judicious to forgo the direct possession
of the country of the Nile.

Non-Intervention in Asia Minor and Syria

Less justifiable was the failure of the senate to interfere directly
in the affairs of Asia Minor and Syria.  The Roman government did not
indeed recognize the Armenian conqueror as king of Cappadocia
and Syria; but it did nothing to drive him back, although the war,
which under pressure of necessity it began in 676 against the pirates
in Cilicia, naturally suggested its interference more especially
in Syria.  In fact, by tolerating the loss of Cappadocia and Syria
without declaring war, the government abandoned not merely
those committed to its protection, but the most important
foundations of its own powerful position.  It adopted
a hazardous course, when it sacrificed the outworks of its dominion
in the Greek settlements and kingdoms on the Euphrates
and Tigris; but, when it allowed the Asiatics to establish
themselves on the Mediterranean which was the political
basis of its empire, this was not a proof of love of peace,
but a confession that the oligarchy had been rendered by the Sullan
restoration more oligarchical doubtless, but neither wiser
nor more energetic, and it was for Rome's place as a power
in the world the beginning of the end.

On the other side, too, there was no desire for war.  Tigranes
had no reason to wish it, when Rome even without war abandoned
to him all its allies.  Mithradates, who was no mere sultan and had
enjoyed opportunity enough, amidst good and bad fortune, of gaining
experience regarding friends and foes, knew very well that in a second
Roman war he would very probably stand quite as much alone
as in the first, and that he could follow no more prudent course
than to keep quiet and to strengthen his kingdom in the interior.
That he was in earnest with his peaceful declarations, he had
sufficiently proved in the conference with Murena.(9)  He continued
to avoid everything which would compel the Roman government
to abandon its passive attitude.

Apprehensions of Rome

But as the first Mithradatic war had arisen without any of the partie
properly desiring it, so now there grew out of the opposition
of interests mutual suspicion, and out of this suspicion
mutual preparations for defence; and these, by their very gravity,
ultimately led to an open breach.  That distrust of her own readiness
to fight and preparation for fighting, which had for long governed
the policy of Rome--a distrust, which the want of standing armies
and the far from exemplary character of the collegiate rule
render sufficiently intelligible--made it, as it were, an axiom
of her policy to pursue every war not merely to the vanquishing,
but to the annihilation of her opponent; in this point of view
the Romans were from the outset as little content with the peace
of Sulla, as they had formerly been with the terms which Scipio
Africanus had granted to the Carthaginians.  The apprehension often
expressed that a second attack by the Pontic king was imminent,
was in some measure justified by the singular resemblance between
the present circumstances and those which existed twelve years before.
Once more a dangerous civil war coincided with serious armaments
of Mithradates; once more the Thracians overran Macedonia,
and piratical fleets covered the Mediterranean; emissaries were coming
and going--as formerly between Mithradates and the Italians--
so now between the Roman emigrants in Spain and those at the court
of Sinope.  As early as the beginning of 677 it was declared
in the senate that the king was only waiting for the opportunity
of falling upon Roman Asia during the Italian civil war;
the Roman armies in Asia and Cilicia were reinforced
to meet possible emergencies.

Apprehensions of Mithradates
Bithynia Roman
Cyrene a Roman Province
Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

Mithradates on his part followed with growing apprehension
the development of the Roman policy.  He could not but feel
that a war between the Romans and Tigranes, however much
the feeble senate might dread it, was in the long run almost inevitable,
and that he would not be able to avoid taking part in it.  His attempt
to obtain from the Roman senate the documentary record of the terms
of peace, which was still wanting, had fallen amidst the disturbances
attending the revolution of Lepidus and remained without result;
Mithradates found in this an indication of the impending renewal
of the conflict.  The expedition against the pirates, which indirectly
concerned also the kings of the east whose allies they were,
seemed the preliminary to such a war.  Still more suspicious
were the claims which Rome held in suspense over Egypt and Cyprus:
it is significant that the king of Pontus betrothed his two daughters
Mithradatis and Nyssa to the two Ptolemies, to whom the senate
continued to refuse recognition.  The emigrants urged him
to strike: the position of Sertorius in Spain, as to which Mithradates
despatched envoys under convenient pretexts to the headquarters
of Pompeius to obtain information, and which was about this very time
really imposing, opened up to the king the prospect of fighting
not, as in the first Roman war, against both the Roman parties,
but in concert with the one against the other.  A more favourable
moment could hardly be hoped for, and after all it was always
better to declare war than to let it be declared against him.
In 679 Nicomedes III Philopator king of Bithynia, died, and as
the last of his race--for a son borne by Nysa was, or was said
to be, illegitimate--left his kingdom by testament to the Romans,
who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering
on the Roman province and long ago filled with Roman officials
and merchants.  At the same time Cyrene, which had been already
bequeathed to the Romans in 658,(10) was at length constituted
a province, and a Roman governor was sent thither (679).  These
measures, in connection with the attacks carried out about
the same time against the pirates on the south coast of Asia Minor,
must have excited apprehensions in the king; the annexation of Bithynia
in particular made the Romans immediate neighbours of the Pontic
kingdom; and this, it may be presumed, turned the scale.  The king
took the decisive step and declared war against the Romans
in the winter of 679-680.

Preparations of Mithradates

Gladly would Mithradates have avoided undertaking so arduous a work
singlehanded.  His nearest and natural ally was the great-king
Tigranes; but that shortsighted man declined the proposal of his
father-in-law.  So there remained only the insurgents and the pirates.
Mithradates was careful to place himself in communication
with both, by despatching strong squadrons to Spain and to Crete.
A formal treaty was concluded with Sertorius,(11) by which Rome
ceded to the king Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, and Cappadocia--
all of them, it is true, acquisitions which needed to be ratified
on the field of battle.  More important was the support
which the Spanish general gave to the king, by sending Roman officers
to lead his armies and fleets.  The most active of the emigrants
inthe east, Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, were appointed by Sertorius
as his representatives at the court of Sinope.  From the pirates
also came help; they flocked largely to the kingdom of Pontus,
and by their means especially the king seems to have succeeded
in forming a naval force imposing by the number as well as
by the quality of the ships.  His main support still lay in his
own forces, with which the king hoped, before the Romans should arrive
in Asia, to make himself master of their possessions there;
especially as the financial distress produced in the province
of Asia by the Sullan war-tribute, the aversion of Bithynia towards
the new Roman government, and the elements of combustion left
behind by the desolating war recently brought to a close in Cilicia
and Pamphylia, opened up favourable prospects to a Pontic invasion.
There was no lack of stores; 2,000,000 -medimni- of grain lay
in the royal granaries.  The fleet and the men were numerous and well
exercised, particularly the Bastarnian mercenaries, a select corps
which was a match even for Italian legionaries.  On this occasion
also it was the king who took the offensive.  A corps under Diophantus
advanced into Cappadocia, to occupy the fortresses there
and to close the way to the kingdom of Pontus against the Romans;
the leader sent by Sertorius, the propraetor Marcus Marius,
went in company with the Pontic officer Eumachus to Phrygia, with a view
to rouse the Roman province and the Taurus mountains to revolt;
the main army, above 100,000 men with 16,000 cavalry and 100
scythe-chariots, led by Taxiles and Hermocrates under the personal
superintendence of the king, and the war-fleet of 400 sail
commanded by Aristonicus, moved along the north coast of Asia Minor
to occupy Paphlagonia and Bithynia.

Roman Preparations

On the Roman side there was selected for the conduct of the war
in the first rank the consul of 680, Lucius Lucullus, who as governor
of Asia and Cilicia was placed at the head of the four legions
stationed in Asia Minor and of a fifth brought by him from Italy,
and was directed to penetrate with this army, amounting to 30,000
infantry and 1600 cavalry, through Phrygia into the kingdom
of Pontus.  His colleague Marcus Cotta proceeded with the fleet
and another Roman corps to the Propontis, to cover Asia and Bithynia.
Lastly, a general arming of the coasts and particularly
of the Thracian coast more immediately threatened by the Pontic fleet,
was enjoined; and the task of clearing all the seas and coasts
from the pirates and their Pontic allies was, by extraordinary decree,
entrusted to a single magistrate, the choice falling on the praetor
Marcus Antonius, the son of the man who thirty years before had
first chastised the Cilician corsairs.(12)  Moreover, the senate
placed at the disposal of Lucullus a sum of 72,000,000 sesterces
(700,000 pounds), in order to build a fleet; which, however,
Lucullus declined.  From all this we see that the Roman government
recognized the root of the evil in the neglect of their marine,
and showed earnestness in the matter at least so far as
their decrees reached.

Beginning of the War

Thus the war began in 680 at all points.  It was a misfortune
for Mithradates, that at the very moment of his declaring war
the Sertorian struggle reached its crisis, by which one of his
principal hopes was from the outset destroyed, and the Roman
government was enabled to apply its whole power to the maritime
and Asiatic contest.  In Asia Minor on the other hand Mithradates
reaped the advantages of the offensive, and of the great distance
of the Romans from the immediate seat of war.  A considerable
number of cities in Asia Minor opened their gates to the Sertorian
propraetor who was placed at the head of the Roman province,
and they massacred, as in 666, the Roman families settled among them:
the Pisidians, Isaurians, and Cilicians took up arms against Rome.
The Romans for the moment had no troops at the points threatened.
Individual energetic men attempted no doubt at their own hand
to check this mutiny of the provincials; thus on receiving accounts
of these events the young Gaius Caesar left Rhodes where he was staying
on account of his studies, and with a hastily-collected
band opposed himself to the insurgents; but not much could be
effected by such volunteer corps.  Had not Deiotarus, the brave
tetrarch of the Tolistobogii--a Celtic tribe settled around
Pessinus--embraced the side of the Romans and fought with success
against the Pontic generals, Lucullus would have had to begin with
recapturing the interior of the Roman province from the enemy.
But even as it was, he lost in pacifying the province and driving
back the enemy precious time, for which the slight successes
achieved by his cavalry were far from affording compensation.
Still more unfavourable than in Phrygia was the aspect of things
for the Romans on the north coast of Asia Minor.  Here the great
Pontic army and the fleet had completely mastered Bithynia,
and compelled the Roman consul Cotta to take shelter with his
far from numerous force and his ships within the walls
and port of Chalcedon, where Mithradates kept them blockaded.

The Romans Defeated at Chalcedon

This blockade, however, was so far a favourable event
for the Romans, as, if Cotta detained the Pontic army before Chalcedon
and Lucullus proceeded also thither, the whole Roman forces might unite
at Chalcedon and compel the decision of arms there rather than
in the distant and impassable region of Pontus.  Lucullus did take
the route for Chalcedon; but Cotta, with the view of executing a great
feat at his own hand before the arrival of his colleague, ordered
his admiral Publius Rutilius Nudus to make a sally, which not only
ended in a bloody defeat of the Romans, but also enabled the Pontic
force to attack the harbour, to break the chain which closed it,
and to burn all the Roman vessels of war which were there, nearly
seventy in number.  On the news of these misfortunes reaching
Lucullus at the river Sangarius, he accelerated his march
to the great discontent of his soldiers, in whose opinion Cotta
was of no moment, and who would far rather have plundered an undefended
country than have taught their comrades to conquer.  His arrival
made up in part for the misfortunes sustained: the king raised
the siege of Chalcedon, but did not retreat to Pontus; he went
southward into the old Roman province, where he spread his army
along the Propontis and the Hellespont, occupied Lampsacus,
and began to besiege the large and wealthy town of Cyzicus.
He thus entangled himself more and more deeply in the blind alley
which he had chosen to enter, instead of--which alone promised success
for him--bringing the wide distances into play against the Romans.

Mithradates Besieges Cyzicus

In few places had the old Hellenic adroitness and aptitude
preserved themselves so pure as in Cyzicus; its citizens, although
they had suffered great loss of ships and men in the unfortunate
double battle of Chalcedon, made the most resolute resistance.
Cyzicus lay on an island directly opposite the mainland
and connected with it by a bridge.  The besiegers possessed themselves
not only of the line of heights on the mainland terminating at the bridge
and of the suburb situated there, but also of the celebrated
Dindymene heights on the island itself; and alike on the mainland
and on the island the Greek engineers put forth all their art
to pave the way for an assault.  But the breach which they at length
made was closed again during the night by the besieged,
and the exertions of the royal army remained as fruitless as did
the barbarous threat of the king to put to death the captured Cyzicenes
before the walls, if the citizens still refused to surrender.
The Cyzicenes continued the defence with courage and success;
they fell little short of capturing the king himself
in the course of the siege.

Destruction of the Pontic Army

Meanwhile Lucullus had possessed himself of a very strong position
in rear of the Pontic army, which, although not permitting him
directly to relieve the hard-pressed city, gave him the means
of cutting off all supplies by land from the enemy.  Thus the enormous
army of Mithradates, estimated with the camp-followers at 300,000
persons, was not in a position either to fight or to march, firmly
wedged in between the impregnable city and the immoveable Roman
army, and dependent for all its supplies solely on the sea,
which fortunately for the Pontic troops was exclusively commanded
by their fleet.  But the bad season set in; a storm destroyed a great
part of the siege-works; the scarcity of provisions and above all
of fodder for the horses began to become intolerable.  The beasts
of burden and the baggage were sent off under convoy of the greater
portion of the Pontic cavalry, with orders to steal away or break
through at any cost; but at the river Rhyndacus, to the east
of Cyzicus, Lucullus overtook them and cut to pieces the whole body.
Another division of cavalry under Metrophanes and Lucius Fannius
was obliged, after wandering long in the west of Asia Minor,
to return to the camp before Cyzicus.  Famine and disease made
fearful ravages in the Pontic ranks.  When spring came on (681),
the besieged redoubled their exertions and took the trenches
constructed on Dindymon: nothing remained for the king but to raise
the siege and with the aid of his fleet to save what he could.
He went in person with the fleet to the Hellespont, but suffered
considerable loss partly at its departure, partly through storms
on the voyage.  The land army under Hermaeus and Marius likewise
set out thither, with the view of embarking at Lampsacus
under the protection of its walls.  They left behind their baggage
as well as the sick and wounded, who were all put to death
by the exasperated Cyzicenes.  Lucullus inflicted on them
very considerable loss by the way at the passage of the rivers
Aesepus and Granicus; but they attained their object.  The Pontic ships
carried off the remains of the great army and the citizens of Lampsacus
themselves beyond the reach of the Romans.

Maritime War
Mithradates Driven Back to Pontus

The consistent and discreet conduct of the war by Lucullus
had not only repaired the errors of his colleague, but had also
destroyed without a pitched battle the flower of the enemy's army--
it was said 200,000 soldiers.  Had he still possessed the fleet
which was burnt in the harbour of Chalcedon, he would have annihilated
the whole army of his opponent.  As it was, the work of destruction
continued incomplete; and while he was obliged to remain passive,
the Pontic fleet notwithstanding the disaster of Cyzicus took
its station in the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium were blockaded
by it on the European coast and Priapus pillaged on the Asiatic,
and the headquarters of the king were established in the Bithynian port
of Nicomedia.  In fact a select squadron of fifty sail,
which carried 10,000 select troops including Marcus Marius
and the flower of the Roman emigrants, sailed forth even into the Aegean;
the report went that it was destined to effect a landing in Italy
and there rekindle the civil war.  But the ships, which Lucullus
after the disaster off Chalcedon had demanded from the Asiatic
communities, began to appear, and a squadron ran forth in pursuit
of the enemy's fleet which had gone into the Aegean.  Lucullus himself,
 experienced as an admiral,(13) took the command.  Thirteen quinqueremes
of the enemy on their voyage to Lemnos, under Isidorus, were assailed
and sunk off the Achaean harbour in the waters between the Trojan coast
and the island of Tenedos.  At the small island of Neae, between Lemnos
and Scyros, at which little-frequented point the Pontic flotilla
of thirty-two sail lay drawn up on the shore, Lucullus found it,
immediately attacked the ships and the crews scattered over the island,
and possessed himself of the whole squadron.  Here Marcus Marius
and the ablest of the Roman emigrants met their death, either in conflict
or subsequently by the axe of the executioner.  The whole Aegean fleet
of the enemy was annihilated by Lucullus.  The war in Bithynia
was meanwhile continued by Cotta and by the legates of Lucullus,
Voconius, Gaius Valerius Triarius, and Barba, with the land army
reinforced by fresh arrivals from Italy, and a squadron collected
in Asia.  Barba captured in the interior Prusias on Olympus and Nicaea
while Triarius along the coast captured Apamea (formerly Myrlea)
and Prusias on the sea (formerly Cius).  They then united for a joint
attack on Mithradates himself in Nicomedia; but the king without
even attempting battle escaped to his ships and sailed homeward,
and in this he was successful only because the Roman admiral Voconius,
who was entrusted with the blockade of the port of Nicomedia,
arrived too late.  On the voyage the important Heraclea was indeed
betrayed to the king and occupied by him; but a storm in these waters
sank more than sixty of, his ships and dispersed the rest; the king
arrived almost alone at Sinope.  The offensive on the part of Mithradates
ended in a complete defeat--not at all honourable, least of all
for the supreme leader--of the Pontic forces by land and sea.

Invasion of Pontus by Lucullus

Lucullus now in turn proceeded to the aggressive.  Triarius
received the command of the fleet, with orders first of all
to blockade the Hellespont and lie in wait for the Pontic ships
returning from Crete and Spain; Cotta was charged with the siege
of Heraclea; the difficult task of providing supplies
was entrusted to the faithful and active princes of the Galatians
and to Ariobarzanes king of Cappadocia; Lucullus himself advanced
in the autumn of 681 into the favoured land of Pontus, which had long
been untrodden by an enemy.  Mithradates, now resolved to maintain
the strictest defensive, retired without giving battle from Sinope
to Amisus, and from Amisus to Cabira (afterwards Neocaesarea,
now Niksar) on the Lycus, a tributary of the Iris; he contented
himself with drawing the enemy after him farther and farther
into the interior, and obstructing their supplies and communications.
Lucullus rapidly followed; Sinope was passed by; the Halys, the old
boundary of the Roman dominion, was crossed and the considerable
towns of Amisus, Eupatoria (on the Iris), and Themiscyra (on
the Thermodon) were invested, till at length winter put an end
to the onward march, though not to the investments of the towns.
The soldiers of Lucullus murmured at the constant advance
which did not allow them to reap the fruits of their exertions,
and at the tedious and--amidst the severity of that season--
burdensome blockades.  But it was not the habit of Lucullus
to listen to such complaints: in the spring of 682 he immediately
advanced against Cabira, leaving behind two legions before Amisus
under Lucius Murena.  The king had made fresh attempts during the winter
to induce the great-king of Armenia to take part in the struggle;
they remained like the former ones fruitless, or led only
to empty promises.  Still less did the Parthians show any desire
to interfere in the forlorn cause.  Nevertheless a considerable army,
chiefly raised by enlistments in Scythia, had again assembled
under Diophantus and Taxiles at Cabira.  The Roman army,
which still numbered only three legions and was decidedly inferior
to the Pontic in cavalry, found itself compelled to avoid as far as
possible the plains, and arrived, not without toil and loss,
by difficult bypaths in the vicinity of Cabira, At this town
the two armies lay for a considerable period confronting each other.
The chief struggle was for supplies, which were on both sides scarce:
for this purpose Mithradates formed the flower of his cavalry
and a division of select infantry under Diophantus and Taxiles
into a flying corps, which was intended to scour the country between
the Lycus and the Halys and to seize the Roman convoys of provisions
coming from Cappadocia.  But the lieutenant of Lucullus, Marcus
Fabius Hadrianus, who escorted such a train, not only completely
defeated the band which lay in wait for him in the defile where it
expected to surprise him, but after being reinforced from the camp
defeated also the army of Diophantus and Taxiles itself, so that it
totally broke up.  It was an irreparable loss for the king,
when his cavalry, on which alone he relied, was thus overthrown.

Victory of Cabira

As soon as he received through the first fugitives that arrived
at Cabira from the field of battle--significantly enough, the beaten
generals themselves--the fatal news, earlier even than Lucullus
got tidings of the victory, he resolved on an immediate
farther retreat.  But the resolution taken by the king spread
with the rapidity of lightning among those immediately around him; and,
when the soldiers saw the confidants of the king packing in all haste,
they too were seized with a panic.  No one was willing to be
the hindmost in decamping; all, high and low, ran pell-mell
like startled deer; no authority, not even that of the king,
was longer heeded; and the king himself was carried away amidst
the wild tumult.  Lucullus, perceiving the confusion, made his attack,
and the Pontic troops allowed themselves to be massacred almost
without offering resistance.  Had the legions been able to maintain
discipline and to restrain their eagerness for spoil, hardly a man
would have escaped them, and the king himself would doubtless have
been taken.  With difficulty Mithradates escaped along with a few
attendants through the mountains to Comana (not far from Tocat
and the source of the Iris); from which, however, a Roman corps
under Marcus Pompeius soon scared him off and pursued him, till,
attended by not more than 2000 cavalry, he crossed the frontier
of his kingdom at Talaura in Lesser Armenia.  In the empire
of the great-king he found a refuge, but nothing more (end of 682).
Tigranes, it is true, ordered royal honours to be shown to his fugitive
father-in-law; but he did not even invite him to his court,
and detained him in the remote border-province to which he had come
in a sort of decorous captivity.

Pontus Becomes Roman
Sieges of the Pontic Cities

The Roman troops overran all Pontus and Lesser Armenia, and as
far as Trapezus the flat country submitted without resistance
to the conqueror.  The commanders of the royal treasure-houses also
surrendered after more or less delay, and delivered up their stores
of money.  The king ordered that the women of the royal harem--his
sisters, his numerous wives and concubines--as it was not possible
to secure their flight, should all be put to death by one of his
eunuchs at Pharnacea (Kerasunt).  The towns alone offered
obstinate resistance.  It is true that the few in the interior--
Cabira, Amasia, Eupatoria--were soon in the power of the Romans;
but the larger maritime towns, Amisus and Sinope in Pontus,
Amastris in Paphlagonia, Tius and the Pontic Heraclea in Bithynia,
defended themselves with desperation, partly animated by attachment
to the king and to their free Hellenic constitution which he had
protected, partly overawed by the bands of corsairs whom the king
had called to his aid.  Sinope and Heraclea even sent forth vessels
against the Romans; and the squadron of Sinope seized a Roman
flotilla which was bringing corn from the Tauric peninsula
for the army of Lucullus.  Heraclea did not succumb till after
a two years' siege, when the Roman fleet had cut off the city
from intercourse with the Greek towns on the Tauric peninsula and treason
had broken out in the ranks of the garrison.  When Amisus was reduced
to extremities, the garrison set fire to the town, and under cover
of the flames took to their ships.  In Sinope, where the daring
pirate-captain Seleucus and the royal eunuch Bacchides conducted
the defence, the garrison plundered the houses before it withdrew,
and set on fire the ships which it could not take along with it;
it is said that, although the greater portion of the defenders
were enabled to embark, 8000 corsairs were there put to death
by Lucullus.  These sieges of towns lasted for two whole years
and more after the battle of Cabira (682-684); Lucullus prosecuted
them in great part by means of his lieutenants, while he himself
regulated the affairs of the province of Asia, which demanded
and obtained a thorough reform.

Remarkable, in an historical point of view, as was that obstinate
resistance of the Pontic mercantile towns to the victorious Romans,
it was of little immediate use; the cause of Mithradates was none
the less lost.  The great-king had evidently, for the present
at least, no intention at all of restoring him to his kingdom.
The Roman emigrants in Asia had lost their best men by the destruction
of the Aegean fleet; of the survivors not a few, such as the active
leaders Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, had made their peace
with Lucullus; and with the death of Sertorius, who perished in the year
of the battle of Cabira, the last hope of the emigrants vanished.
Mithradates' own power was totally shattered, and one after another
his remaining supports gave way; his squadrons returning from Crete
and Spain, to the number of seventy sail, were attacked and destroyed
by Triarius at the island of Tenedos; even the governor
of the Bosporan kingdom, the king's own son Machares, deserted him,
and as independent prince of the Tauric Chersonese concluded
on his own behalf peace and friendship with the Romans (684).
The king himself, after a not too glorious resistance, was confined
in a remote Armenian mountain-stronghold, a fugitive from his kingdom
and almost a prisoner of his son-in-law.  Although the bands
of corsairs might still hold out in Crete, and such as had escaped
from Amisus and Sinope might make their way along the hardly-
accessible east coast of the Black Sea to the Sanigae and Lazi,
the skilful conduct of the war by Lucullus and his judicious
moderation, which did not disdain to remedy the just grievances
of the provincials and to employ the repentant emigrants as officers
in his army, had at a moderate sacrifice delivered Asia Minor
from the enemy and annihilated the Pontic kingdom, so that it might
be converted from a Roman client-state into a Roman province.
A commission of the senate was expected, to settle in concert
with the commander-in-chief the new provincial organization.

Beginning of the Armenian War

But the relations with Armenia were not yet settled.
Thata declaration of war by the Romans against Tigranes
was in itself justified and even demanded, we have already shown.
Lucullus, who looked at the state of affairs from a nearer point of view
and with a higher spirit than the senatorial college in Rome, perceived
clearly the necessity of confining Armenia to the other side
of the Tigris and of re-establishing the lost dominion of Rome over
the Mediterranean.  He showed himself in the conduct of Asiatic
affairs no unworthy successor of his instructor and friend Sulla.
A Philhellene above most Romans of his time, he was not insensible
to the obligation which Rome had come under when taking up
the heritage of Alexander--the obligation to be the shield and sword
of the Greeks in the east.  Personal motives--the wish to earn laurels
also beyond the Euphrates, irritation at the fact that the great-
king in a letter to him had omitted the title of Imperator--may
doubtless have partly influenced Lucullus; but it is unjust
to assume paltry and selfish motives for actions, which motives
of duty quite suffice to explain.  The Roman governing college
at any rate--timid, indolent, ill informed, and above all beset
by perpetual financial embarrassments--could never be expected,
without direct compulsion, to take the initiative in an expedition
so vast and costly.  About the year 682 the legitimate representatives
of the Seleucid dynasty, Antiochus called the Asiatic and his brother,
moved by the favourable turn of the Pontic war, had gone to Rome
to procure a Roman intervention in Syria, and at the same
time a recognition of their hereditary claims on Egypt.
If the latter demand might not be granted, there could not, at any rate,
be found a more favourable moment or occasion for beginning the war
which had long been necessary against Tigranes.  But the senate,
while it recognized the princes doubtless as the legitimate
kings of Syria, could not make up its mind to decree the armed
intervention.  If the favourable opportunity was to be employed,
and Armenia was to be dealt with in earnest, Lucullus had to begin
the war, without any proper orders from the senate, at his own hand
and his own risk; he found himself, just like Sulla, placed under
the necessity of executing what he did in the most manifest
interest of the existing government, not with its sanction,
but in spite of it.  His resolution was facilitated by the relations
of Rome towards Armenia, for long wavering in uncertainty between
peace and war, which screened in some measure the arbitrariness
of his proceedings, and failed not to suggest formal grounds for war.
The state of matters in Cappadocia and Syria afforded pretexts
enough; and already in the pursuit of the king of Pontus Roman
troops had violated the territory of the great-king.  As, however,
the commission of Lucullus related to the conduct of the war
against Mithradates and he wished to connect what he did
with that commission, he preferred to send one of his officers,
Appius Claudius, to the great-king at Antioch to demand the surrender
of Mithradates, which in fact could not but lead to war.

Difficulties to Be Encountered

The resolution was a grave one, especially considering
the condition of the Roman army.  It was indispensable during
the campaign in Armenia to keep the extensive territory of Pontus
strongly occupied, for otherwise the army stationed in Armenia
might lose its communications with home; and besides it might be
easily foreseen that Mithradates would attempt an inroad into his
former kingdom.  The army, at the head of which Lucullus had ended
the Mithradatic war, amounting to about 30,000 men, was obviously
inadequate for this double task.  Under ordinary circumstances
the general would have asked and obtained from his government
the despatch of a second army; but as Lucullus wished,
and was in some measure compelled, to take up the war over the head
of the government, he found himself necessitated to renounce
that plan and--although he himself incorporated the captured Thracian
mercenaries of the Pontic king with his troops--to carry the war
over the Euphrates with not more than two legions, or at most
15,000 men.  This was in itself hazardous; but the smallness
of the number might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour
of the army consisting throughout of veterans.  A far worse feature
was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high
aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed.  Lucullus
was an able general, and--according to the aristocratic standard--
an upright and kindly-disposed man, but very far from being
a favourite with his soldiers.  He was unpopular, as a decided
adherent of the oligarchy; unpopular, because he had vigorously
checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor;
unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted
on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded strict discipline
in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage
of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon
and many a camel to be laden with the treasures of the east for himself;
unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished,
haughty, Hellenizing, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever
it was possible, to ease and pleasure.  There was no trace in him
of the charm which weaves a personal bond between the general
and the soldier.  Moreover, a large portion of his ablest soldiers
had every reason to complain of the unmeasured prolongation of their
term of service.  His two best legions were the same which Flaccus
and Fimbria had led in 668 to the east;(14) notwithstanding
that shortly after the battle of Cabira they had been promised their
discharge well earned by thirteen campaigns, Lucullus now led them
beyond the Euphrates to face a new incalculable war--it seemed
as though the victors of Cabira were to be treated worse than
the vanquished of Cannae.(15)  It was in fact more than rash that,
with troops so weak and so much out of humour, a general should at his
own hand and, strictly speaking, at variance with the constitution,
undertake an expedition to a distant and unknown land, full of rapid
streams and snow-clad mountains--a land which from the very vastness
of its extent rendered any lightly-undertaken attack fraught
with danger.  The conduct of Lucullus was therefore much
and not unreasonably censured in Rome; only, amidst the censure
the fact should not have been concealed, that the perversity
of the government was the prime occasion of this venturesome
project of the general, and, if it did not justify it, rendered
it at least excusable.

Lucullus Crosses the Euphrates

The mission of Appius Claudius was designed not only to furnish
a diplomatic pretext for the war, but also to induce the princes
and cities of Syria especially to take arms against the great-king:
in the spring of 685 the formal attack began.  During the winter
the king of Cappadocia had silently provided vessels for transport;
with these the Euphrates was crossed at Melitene, and the further
march was directed by way of the Taurus-passes to the Tigris.
This too Lucullus crossed in the region of Amida (Diarbekr),
and advanced towards the road which connected the second capital
Tigranocerta,(16) recently founded on the south frontier of Armenia,
with the old metropolis Artaxata.  At the former was stationed
the great-king, who had shortly before returned from Syria,
after having temporarily deferred the prosecution of his plans
of conquest on the Mediterranean on account of the embroilment
with the Romans.  He was just projecting an inroad into Roman Asia
from Cilicia and Lycaonia, and was considering whether the Romans
would at once evacuate Asia or would previously give him battle,
possibly at Ephesus, when the news was brought to him of the advance
of Lucullus, which threatened to cut off his communications
with Artaxata.  He ordered the messenger to be hanged,
but the disagreeable reality remained unaltered; so he left
the new capital and resorted to the interior of Armenia, in order
there to raise a force--which had not yet been done--against the Romans.
Meanwhile Mithrobarzanes with the troops actually at his disposal
and in concert with the neighbouring Bedouin tribes, who were called out
in all haste, was to give employment to the Romans.  But the corps
of Mithrobarzanes was dispersed by the Roman vanguard, and the Arabs
by a detachment under Sextilius; Lucullus gained the road leading
from Tigranocerta to Artaxata, and, while on the right bank
of the Tigrisa Roman detachment pursued the great-king
retreating northwards, Lucullus himself crossed to the left
and marched forward to Tigranocerta.

Siege and Battle of Tigranocerta

The exhaustless showers of arrows which the garrison poured upon
the Roman army, and the setting fire to the besieging machines
by means of naphtha, initiated the Romans into the new dangers
of Iranian warfare; and the brave commandant Mancaeus maintained
the city, till at length the great royal army of relief had assembled
from all parts of the vast empire and the adjoining countries
that were open to Armenian recruiting officers, and had advanced
through the north-eastern passes to the relief of the capital.
The leader Taxiles, experienced in the wars of Mithradates,
advised Tigranes to avoid a battle, and to surround and starve out
the small Roman army by means of his cavalry.  But when the king saw
the Roman general, who had determined to give battle without raising
the siege, move out with not much more than 10,000 men against a force
twenty times superior, and boldly cross the river which separated
the two armies; when he surveyed on the one side this little band,
"too many for an embassy, too few for an army," and on the other
side his own immense host, in which the peoples from the Black Sea
and the Caspian met with those of the Mediterranean and of
the Persian Gulf, in which the dreaded iron-clad lancers alone
were more numerous than the whole army of Lucullus, and in which
even infantry armed after the Roman fashion were not wanting;
he resolved promptly to accept the battle desired by the enemy.
But while the Armenians were still forming their array, the quick
eye of Lucullus perceived that they had neglected to occupy a height
which commanded the whole position of their cavalry.  He hastened
to occupy it with two cohorts, while at the same time his weak
cavalry by a flank attack diverted the attention of the enemy
from this movement; and as soon as he had reached the height, he led
his little band against the rear of the enemy's cavalry.  They were
totally broken and threw themselves on the not yet fully formed
infantry, which fled without even striking a blow.  The bulletin
of the victor--that 100,000 Armenians and five Romans had fallen
and that the king, throwing away his turban and diadem, had galloped
off unrecognized with a few horsemen--is composed in the style
of his master Sulla.  Nevertheless the victory achieved on the 6th
October 685 before Tigranocerta remains one of the most brilliant
stars in the glorious history of Roman warfare; and it was not less
momentous than brilliant.

All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans

All the provinces wrested from the Parthians or Syrians
to the south of the Tigris were by this means strategically lost
to the Armenians, and passed, for the most part, without delay
into the possession of the victor.  The newly-built second capital
itselfset the example.  The Greeks, who had been forced in large numbers
to settle there, rose against the garrison and opened to the Roman
army the gates of the city, which was abandoned to the pillage
of the soldiers.  It had been created for the new great-kingdom,
and, like this, was effaced by the victor.  From Cilicia and Syria
all the troops had already been withdrawn by the Armenian satrap
Magadates to reinforce the relieving army before Tigranocerta.
Lucullus advanced into Commagene, the most northern province
of Syria, and stormed Samosata, the capital; he did not reach Syria
proper, but envoys arrived from the dynasts and communities as far
as the Red Sea--from Hellenes, Syrians, Jews, Arabs--to do homage
to the Romans as their sovereigns.  Even the prince of Corduene,
the province situated to the east of Tigranocerta, submitted;
while, on the other hand, Guras the brother of the great-king
maintained himself in Nisibis, and thereby in Mesopotamia.
Lucullus came forward throughout as the protector of the Hellenic
princes and municipalities: in Commagene he placed Antiochus,
a prince of the Seleucid house, on the throne; he recognized
Antiochus Asiaticus, who after the withdrawal of the Armenians had
returned to Antioch, as king of Syria; he sent the forced settlers
of Tigranocerta once more away to their homes.  The immense stores
and treasures of the great-king--the grain amounted to 30,000,000
-medimni-, the money in Tigranocerta alone to 8000 talents (nearly
2,000,000 pounds)--enabled Lucullus to defray the expenses of the war
without making any demand on the state-treasury, and to bestow
on each of his soldiers, besides the amplest maintenance, a present
of 800 -denarii- (33 pounds).

Tigranes and Mithradates

The great-king was deeply humbled.  He was of a feeble character,
arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted in adversity.  Probably
an agreement would have been come to between him and Lucullus--
an agreement which there was every reason that the great-king should
purchase by considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should
grant under tolerable conditions--had not the old Mithradates been
in existence.  The latter had taken no part in the conflicts around
Tigranocerta.  Liberated after twenty months' captivity about
the middle of 684 in consequence of the variance that had occurred
between the great-king and the Romans, he had been despatched
with 10,000 Armenian cavalry to his former kingdom, to threaten
the communications of the enemy.  Recalled even before he could
accomplish anything there, when the great-king summoned his whole
force to relieve the capital which he had built, Mithradates was met
on his arrival before Tigranocerta by the multitudes just fleeing
from the field of battle.  To every one, from the great-king
down to the common soldier, all seemed lost.  But if Tigranes
should now make peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last
chance of being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would
be beyond doubt the first condition of peace; and certainly
Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards him than Bocchus
had formerly acted towards Jugurtha.  The king accordingly staked
his whole personal weight to prevent things from taking this turn,
and to induce the Armenian court to continue the war, in which
he had nothing to lose and everything to gain; and, fugitive
and dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court
was not slight.  He was still a stately and powerful man, who,
although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted on horseback
in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict stood his ground
like the best.  Years and vicissitudes seemed to have steeled his spirit:
while in earlier times he sent forth generals to lead his armies
and took no direct part in war himself, we find him henceforth
as an old man commanding in person and fighting in person on the field
of battle.  To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had witnessed
so many unexampled changes of fortune, the cause of the great-king
appeared by no means lost through the defeat of Tigranocerta;
whereas the position of Lucullus was very difficult, and, if peace
should not now take place and the war should be judiciously continued,
even in a high degree precarious.

Renewal of the War

The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the great-king
almost as a father, and was now able to exercise a personal
influence over him, overpowered by his energy that weak man,
and induced him not only to resolve on the continuance of the war,
but also to entrust Mithradates with its political and military
management.  The war was now to be changed from a cabinet contest
into a national Asiatic struggle; the kings and peoples of Asia
were to unite for this purpose against the domineering and haughty
Occidentals.  The greatest exertions were made to reconcile
the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to induce them
to make common cause against Rome.  At the suggestion of Mithradates,
Tigranes offered to give back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who
had reigned since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians--
Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the "great valleys"--and to enter into friendship
and alliance with him.  But, after all that had previously taken place,
this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception;
Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates
by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans,
and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient
foreigner fought out their strife.  Greater success attended
the application of Mithradates to the peoples of the east
than to the kings.  It was not difficult to represent the war
as a national one of the east against the west, for such it was;
it might very well be made a religious war also, and the report
might be spread that the object aimed at by the army of Lucullus
was the temple of the Persian Nanaea or Anaitis in Elymais or the modern
Luristan, the most celebrated and the richest shrine in the whole
region of the Euphrates.(17) From far and near the Asiatics flocked
in crowds to the banner of the kings, who summoned them to protect
the east and its gods from the impious foreigners.  But facts had
shown not only that the mere assemblage of enormous hosts
was of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching
and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a mass rendered
useless and involved in the general ruin.  Mithradates sought
above all to develop the arm which was at once weakest among
the Occidentals and strongest among the Asiatics, the cavalry;
in the army newly formed by him half of the force was mounted.
For the ranks of the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass
of recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service,
and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic officers.  The considerable
army, however, which soon assembled under the banner of the great-
king was destined not to measure its strength with the Roman
veterans on the first chance field of battle, but to confine itself
to defence and petty warfare.  Mithradates had conducted
the last war in his empire on the system of constantly retreating
and avoiding battle; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion,
and Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war--the hereditary
land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the enemy, and excellently
adapted for this sort of warfare both by its physical character
and by the patriotism of its inhabitants.

Dissatisfaction with Lucullus in the Capital and in the Army

The year 686 found Lucullus in a position of difficulty,
which daily assumed a more dangerous aspect.  In spite of his brilliant
victories, people in Rome were not at all satisfied with him.
The senate felt the arbitrary nature of his conduct: the capitalist
party, sorely offended by him, set all means of intrigue
and corruption at work to effect his recall.  Daily the Forum
echoed with just and unjust complaints regarding the foolhardy,
the covetous, the un-Roman, the traitorous general.  The senate
so far yielded to the complaints regarding the union of such unlimited
power--two ordinary governorships and an important extraordinary
command--in the hands of such a man, as to assign the province
of Asia to one of the praetors, and the province of Cilicia
along with three newly-raised legions to the consul Quintus
Marcius Rex, and to restrict the general to the command
against Mithradates and Tigranes.

These accusations springing up against the general in Rome
found a dangerous echo in the soldiers' quarters on the Iris
andon the Tigris; and the more so that several officers including
the general's own brother-in-law, Publius Clodius, worked upon
the soldiers with this view.  The report beyond doubt designedly
circulated by these, that Lucullus now thought of combining
with the Pontic-Armenian war an expedition against the Parthians,
fed the exasperation of the troops.

Lucullus Advances into Armenia

But while the troublesome temper of the government and of the soldier
thus threatened the victorious general with recall and mutiny,
he himself continued like a desperate gambler to increase
his stake and his risk.  He did not indeed march against the Parthians
but when Tigranes showed himself neither ready to make peace
nor disposed, as Lucullus wished, to risk a second pitched
battle, Lucullus resolved to advance from Tigranocerta, through
the difficult mountain-country along the eastern shore of the lake
of Van, into the valley of the eastern Euphrates (or the Arsanias,
now Myrad-Chai), and thence into that of the Araxes, where,
on the northern slope of Ararat, lay Artaxata the capital of Armenia
proper, with the hereditary castle and the harem of the king.
He hoped, by threatening the king's hereditary residence,
to compel him to fight either on the way or at any rate before
Artaxata.  It was inevitably necessary to leave behind a division
at Tigranocerta; and, as the marching army could not possibly be
further reduced, no course was left but to weaken the position
in Pontus and to summon troops thence to Tigranocerta.  The main
difficulty, however, was the shortness of the Armenian summer,
so inconvenient for military enterprises.  On the tableland
of Armenia, which lies 5000 feet and more above the level of the sea,
the corn at Erzeroum only germinates in the beginning of June,
and the winter sets in with the harvest in September; Artaxata
had to be reached and the campaign had to be ended in four
months at the utmost.

At midsummer, 686, Lucullus set out from Tigranocerta,
and, marching doubtless through the pass of Bitlis and farther
to the westward along the lake of Van--arrived on the plateau of Musch
and at the Euphrates.  The march went on--amidst constant
and very troublesome skirmishing with the enemy's cavalry,
and especially with the mounted archers--slowly, but without material
hindrance; and the passage of the Euphrates, which was seriously
defended by the Armenian cavalry, was secured by a successful engagement;
the Armenian infantry showed itself, but the attempt to involve it
in the conflict did not succeed.  Thus the army reached the tableland,
properly so called, of Armenia, and continued its march
into the unknown country.  They had suffered no actual misfortune;
but the mere inevitable delaying of the march by the difficulties
of the ground and the horsemen of the enemy was itself a very serious
disadvantage.  Long before they had reached Artaxata, winter set
in; and when the Italian soldiers saw snow and ice around them,
the bow of military discipline that had been far too tightly
stretched gave way.

Lucullus Retreats to Mesopotamia
Capture of Nisibus

A formal mutiny compelled the general to order a retreat,
which he effected with his usual skill.  When he had safely reached
Mesopotamia where the season still permitted farther operations,
Lucullus crossed the Tigris, and threw himself with the mass of his
army on Nisibis, the last city that here remained to the Armenians.
The great-king, rendered wiser by the experience acquired before
Tigranocerta, left the city to itself: notwithstanding its brave
defence it was stormed in a dark, rainy night by the besiegers,
and the army of Lucullus found there booty not less rich and winter-
quarters not less comfortable than the year before in Tigranocerta.

Conflicts in Pontus and at Tigranocerta

But, meanwhile, the whole weight of the enemy's offensive fell
on the weak Roman divisions left behind in Pontus and in Armenia.
Tigranes compelled the Roman commander of the latter corps, Lucius
Fannius--the same who had formerly been the medium of communication
between Sertorius and Mithradates (18)--to throw himself
into a fortress, and kept him beleaguered there.  Mithradates
advanced into Pontus with 4000 Armenian horsemen and 4000 of his own,
and as liberator and avenger summoned the nation to rise against
the common foe.  All joined him; the scattered Roman soldiers
were everywhere seized and put to death: when Hadrianus, the Roman
commandant in Pontus,(19) led his troops against him, the former
mercenaries of the king and the numerous natives of Pontus
following the army as slaves made common cause with the enemy.
For two successive days the unequal conflict lasted; it was only
the circumstance that the king after receiving two wounds had
to be carried off from the field of battle, which gave the Roman
commander the opportunity of breaking off the virtually lost
battle, and throwing himself with the small remnant of his troops
into Cabira.  Another of Lucullus' lieutenants who accidentally
came into this region, the resolute Triarius, again gathered round
him a body of troops and fought a successful engagement
with the king; but he was much too weak to expel him afresh
from Pontic soil, and had to acquiesce while the king took up
winter-quarters in Comana.

Farther Retreat to Pontus

So the spring of 687 came on.  The reunion of the army in Nisibis,
the idleness of winter-quarters, the frequent absence of the general,
had meanwhile increased the insubordination of the troops;
not only did they vehemently demand to be led back, but it was already
tolerably evident that, if the general refused to lead them home,
they would break up of themselves.  The supplies were scanty;
Fannius and Triarius, in their distress, sent the most urgent
entreaties to the general to furnish aid.  With a heavy heart
Lucullus resolved to yield to necessity, to give up Nisibis
and Tigranocerta, and, renouncing all the brilliant hopes of his
Armenian expedition, to return to the right bank of the Euphrates.
Fannius was relieved; but in Pontus the help was too late.
Triarius, not strong enough to fight with Mithradates, had taken
up a strong position at Gaziura (Turksal on the Iris, to the west
of Tokat), while the baggage was left behind at Dadasa.
But when Mithradates laid siege to the latter place, the Roman soldiers,
apprehensive for their property, compelled their leader to leave
his secure position, and to give battle to the king between Gaziura
and Ziela (Zilleh) on the Scotian heights.

Defeat of the Romans in Pontus at Ziela

What Triarius had foreseen, occurred.  In spite of the stoutest
resistance the wing which the king commanded in person broke
the Roman line and huddled the infantry together into a clayey ravine,
where it could make neither a forward nor a lateral movement
and was cut to pieces without pity.  The king indeed was dangerously
wounded by a Roman centurion, who sacrificed his life for it;
but the defeat was not the less complete.  The Roman camp was taken;
the flower of the infantry, and almost all the staff and subaltern
officers, strewed the ground; the dead were left lying unburied
on the field of battle, and, when Lucullus arrived on the right bank
of the Euphrates, he learned the defeat not from his own soldiers,
but through the reports of the natives.

Mutiny of the Soldiers

Along with this defeat came the outbreak of the military conspiracy.
At this very time news arrived from Rome that the people had resolved
to grant a discharge to the soldiers whose legal term of service had
expired, to wit, to the Fimbrians, and to entrust the chief command
in Pontus and Bithynia to one of the consuls of the current year:
the successor of Lucullus, the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio,
had already landed in Asia Minor.  The disbanding of the bravest
and most turbulent legions and the recall of the commander-in-chief,
in connection with the impression produced by the defeat of Ziela,
dissolved all the bonds of authority in the army just when the general
had most urgent need of their aid.  Near Talaura in Lesser Armenia
he confronted the Pontic troops, at whose head Tigranes' son-in-law,
Mithradates of Media, had already engaged the Romans successfully
in a cavalry conflict; the main force of the great-king was advancing
to the same point from Armenia.  Lucullus sent to Quintus Marcius
the new governor of Cilicia, who had just arrived on the way
to his province with three legions in Lycaonia, to obtain help from him;
Marcius declared that his soldiers refused to march to Armenia.
He sent to Glabrio with the request that he would take up the supreme
command committed to him by the people; Glabrio showed still less
inclination to undertake this task, which had now become so difficult
and hazardous.  Lucullus, compelled to retain the command,
with the view of not being obliged to fight at Talaura against
the Armenian and the Pontic armies conjoined, ordered a movement
against the advancing Armenians.

Farther Retreat to Asia Minor

The soldiers obeyed the order to march; but, when they reached
the point where the routes to Armenia and Cappadocia diverged,
the bulk of the army took the latter, and proceeded to the province
of Asia.  There the Fimbrians demanded their immediate discharge;
and although they desisted from this at the urgent entreaty
of the commander-in-chief and the other corps, they yet persevered
in their purpose of disbanding if the winter should come on without
an enemy confronting them; which accordingly was the case.
Mithradates not only occupied once more almost his whole kingdom,
but his cavalry ranged over all Cappadocia and as far as Bithynia;
king Ariobarzanes sought help equally in vain from Quintus Marcius,
from Lucullus, and from Glabrio.  It was a strange, almost
incredible issue for a war conducted in a manner so glorious.
If we look merely to military achievements, hardly any other Roman
general accomplished so much with so trifling means as Lucullus;
the talent and the fortune of Sulla seemed to have devolved on this
his disciple.  That under the circumstances the Roman army should
have returned from Armenia to Asia Minor uninjured, is a military
miracle which, so far as we can judge, far excels the retreat
of Xenophon; and, although mainly doubtless to be explained
by the solidity of the Roman, and the inefficiency of the Oriental,
system of war, it at all events secures to the leader of this expedition
an honourable name in the foremost rank of men of military
capacity.  If the name of Lucullus is not usually included among these,
it is to all appearance simply owing to the fact that no narrative
of his campaigns which is in a military point of view even tolerable
has come down to us, and to the circumstance that in everything
and particularly in war, nothing is taken into account
but the final result; and this, in reality, was equivalent
to a complete defeat.  Through the last unfortunate turn of things,
and principally through the mutiny of the soldiers, all the results
of an eight years' war had been lost; in the winter of 687-688
the Romans again stood exactly at the same spot
as in the winter of 679-680.

War with the Pirates

The maritime war against the pirates, which began at the same time
with the continental war and was all along most closely connected
with it, yielded no better results.  It has been already mentioned
(20) that the senate in 680 adopted the judicious resolution
to entrust the task of clearing the seas from the corsairs
to a single admiral in supreme command, the praetor Marcus Antonius.
But at the very outset they had made an utter mistake in the choice
of the leader; or rather those, who had carried this measure
so appropriate in itself, had not taken into account that in the senate
all personal questions were decided by the influence of Cethegus(21)
and similar coterie-considerations.  They had moreover
neglected to furnish the admiral of their choice with money
and ships in a manner befitting his comprehensive task,
so that with his enormous requisitions he was almost as burdensome
to the provincials whom he befriended as were the corsairs.

Defeat of Antonius off Cydonia

The results were corresponding.  In the Campanian waters the fleet
of Antonius captured a number of piratical vessels.  But an engagement
took place with the Cretans, who had entered into friendship
and alliance with the pirates and abruptly rejected his demand
that they should desist from such fellowship; and the chains,
with which the foresight of Antonius had provided his vessels
for the purpose of placing the captive buccaneers in irons,
served to fasten the quaestor and the other Roman prisoners
to the masts of the captured Roman ships, when the Cretan generals
Lasthenes and Panares steered back in triumph to Cydonia
from the naval combat in which they had engaged the Romans
off their island.  Antonius, after having squandered immense sums
and accomplished not the slightest result by his inconsiderate mode
of warfare, died in 683 at Crete.  The ill success of his expedition,
the costliness of building a fleet, and the repugnance of the oligarchy
to confer any powers of a more comprehensive kind on the magistrates,
led them, after the practical termination of this enterprise
by Antonius' death, to make no farther nomination of an admiral-in-chief,
and to revert to the old system of leaving each governor to look
after the suppression of piracy in his own province: the fleet equipped
by Lucullus for instance(22) was actively employed for this purpose
in the Aegean sea.

Cretan War

So far however as the Cretans were concerned, a disgrace
like that endured off Cydonia seemed even to the degenerate Romans
of this age as if it could be answered only by a declaration of war.
Yet the Cretan envoys, who in the year 684 appeared in Rome
with the request that the prisoners might be taken back and the old
alliance reestablished, had almost obtained a favourable decree
of the senate; what the whole corporation termed a disgrace,
the individual senator was ready to sell for a substantial price.
It was not till a formal resolution of the senate rendered the loans
of the Cretan envoys among the Roman bankers non-actionable--
that is, not until the senate had incapacitated itself for undergoing
bribery--that a decree passed to the effect that the Cretan
communities, if they wished to avoid war, should hand over not only
the Roman deserters but the authors of the outrage perpetrated off
Cydonia--the leaders Lasthenes and Panares--to the Romans
for befitting punishment, should deliver up all ships and boats of four
or more oars, should furnish 400 hostages, and should pay a fine
of 4000 talents (975,000 pounds).  When the envoys declared that they
were not empowered to enter into such terms, one of the consuls
of the next year was appointed to depart on the expiry of his official
term for Crete, in order either to receive there what was demanded
or to begin the war.

Metellus Subdues Crete

Accordingly in 685 the proconsul Quintus Metellus appeared
in the Cretan waters.  The communities of the island, with the larger
towns Gortyna, Cnossus, Cydonia at their head, were resolved rather
to defend themselves in arms than to submit to those excessive
demands.  The Cretans were a nefarious and degenerate people,(23)
with whose public and private existence piracy was as intimately
associated as robbery with the commonwealth of the Aetolians;
but they resembled the Aetolians in valour as in many other respects,
and accordingly these two were the only Greek communities
that waged a courageous and honourable struggle for independence.
At Cydonia, where Metellus landed his three legions, a Cretan army
of 24,000 men under Lasthenes and Panares was ready to receive him;
a battle took place in the open field, in which the victory
after a hard struggle remained with the Romans.  Nevertheless
the towns bade defiance from behind their walls to the Roman general;
Metellus had to make up his mind to besiege them in succession.
First Cydonia, in which the remains of the beaten army had taken
refuge, was after a long siege surrendered by Panares in return
for the promise of a free departure for himself.  Lasthenes, who had
escaped from the town, had to be besieged a second time in Cnossus;
and, when this fortress also was on the point of falling,
he destroyed its treasures and escaped once more to places which still
continued their defence, such as Lyctus, Eleuthera, and others.
Two years (686, 687) elapsed, before Metellus became master
of the whole island and the last spot of free Greek soil thereby
passed under the control of the dominant Romans; the Cretan communities,
as they were the first of all Greek commonwealths to develop
the free urban constitution and the dominion of the sea, were also
to be the last of all those Greek maritime states that formerly filled
the Mediterranean to succumb to the Roman continental power.

The Pirates in the Mediterranean

All the legal conditions were fulfilled for celebrating another
of the usual pompous triumphs; the gens of the Metelli could add
to its Macedonian, Numidian, Dalmatian, Balearic titles with equal
right the new title of Creticus, and Rome possessed another name
of pride.  Nevertheless the power of the Romans in the Mediterranean
was never lower, that of the corsairs never higher, than in those
years.  Well might the Cilicians and Cretans of the seas, who are
said to have numbered at this time 1000 ships, mock the Isauricus
and the Creticus, and their empty victories.  With what effect
the pirates interfered in the Mithradatic war, and how the obstinate
resistance of the Pontic maritime towns derived its best resources
from the corsair-state, has been already related.  But that state
transacted business on a hardly less grand scale on its own behoof.
Almost under the eyes of the fleet of Lucullus, the pirate Athenodorus
surprised in 685 the island of Delos, destroyed its far-famed
shrines and temples, and carried off the whole population
into slavery.  The island Lipara near Sicily paid to the pirates
a fixed tribute annually, to remain exempt from like attacks.
Another pirate chief Heracleon destroyed in 682 the squadron
equipped in Sicily against him, and ventured with no more than four
open boats to sail into the harbour of Syracuse.  Two years later
his colleague Pyrganion even landed at the same port, established
himself there and sent forth flying parties into the island,
till the Roman governor at last compelled him to re-embark.
People grew at length quite accustomed to the fact that all
the provinces equipped squadrons and raised coastguards,
or were at any rate taxed for both; and yet the pirates appeared
to plunder the provinces with as much regularity as the Roman governors.
But even the sacred soil of Italy was now no longer respected
by the shameless transgressors: from Croton they carried off with them
the temple-treasures of the Lacinian Hera; they landed in Brundisium,
Misenum, Caieta, in the Etruscan ports, even in Ostia itself; they
seized the most eminent Roman officers as captives, among others
the admiral of the Cilician army and two praetors with their whole
retinue, with the dreaded -fasces- themselves and all the insignia
of their dignity; they carried away from a villa at Misenum
the very sister of the Roman admiral-in-chief Antonius, who was sent
forth to annihilate the pirates; they destroyed in the port
of Ostia the Roman war fleet equipped against them and commanded
by a consul.  The Latin husbandman, the traveller on the Appian highway,
the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae
were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single
moment; all traffic and all intercourse were suspended;
the most dreadful scarcity prevailed in Italy, and especially
in the capital, which subsisted on transmarine corn.  The contemporary
world and history indulge freely in complaints of insupportable
distress; in this case the epithet may have been appropriate.

Servile Disturbances

We have already described how the senate restored by Sulla carried
out its guardianship of the frontier in Macedonia, its discipline
over the client kings of Asia Minor, and lastly its marine police;
the results were nowhere satisfactory.  Nor did better success
attend the government in another and perhaps even more urgent
matter, the supervision of the provincial, and above all
of the Italian, proletariate.  The gangrene of a slave-proletariate
Gnawed at the vitals of all the states of antiquity, and the more so,
the more vigorously they had risen and prospered; for the power
and riches of the state regularly led, under the existing
circumstances, to a disproportionate increase of the body
of slaves.  Rome naturally suffered more severely from this cause
than any other state of antiquity.  Even the government of the sixth
century had been under the necessity of sending troops against
the gangs of runaway herdsmen and rural slaves.  The plantation-system,
spreading more and more among the Italian speculators
had infinitely increased the dangerous evil: in the time of
the Gracchan and Marian crises and in close connection with them
servile revolts had taken place at numerous points of the Roman
empire, and in Sicily had even grown into two bloody wars (619-622
and 652-654;(24)).  But the ten years of the rule of the restoration
after Sulla's death formed the golden age both for the buccaneers
at sea and for bands of a similar character on land, above all
in the Italian peninsula, which had hitherto been comparatively
well regulated.  The land could hardly be said any longer to enjoy
peace.  In the capital and the less populous districts of Italy
robberies were of everyday occurrence, murders were frequent.
A special decree of the people was issued--perhaps at this epoch--
against kidnapping of foreign slaves and of free men; a special
summary action was about this time introduced against violent
deprivation of landed property.  These crimes could not
but appear specially dangerous, because, while they were usually
perpetrated by the proletariate, the upper class were to a great
extent also concerned in them as moral originators and partakers
in the gain.  The abduction of men and of estates was very frequently
suggested by the overseers of the large estates and carried out
by the gangs of slaves, frequently armed, that were collected there:
and many a man even of high respectability did not disdain what
one of his officious slave-overseers thus acquired for him
as Mephistopheles acquired for Faust the lime trees of Philemon.
The state of things is shown by the aggravated punishment for outrages
on property committed by armed bands, which was introduced
by one of the better Optimates, Marcus Lucullus, as presiding over
the administration of justice in the capital about the year 676,(25)
with the express object of inducing the proprietors of large bands
of slaves to exercise a more strict superintendence over them
and thereby avoid the penalty of seeing them judicially condemned.
Where pillage and murder were thus carried on by order
of the world of quality, it was natural for these masses of slaves
and proletarians to prosecute the same business on their own account;
a spark was sufficient to set fire to so inflammable materials,
and to convert the proletariate into an insurrectionary army.
An occasion was soon found.

Outbreak of the Gladiatorial War in Italy
Spartacus

The gladiatorial games, which now held the first rank
among the popular amusements in Italy, had led to the institution
of numerous establishments, more especially in and around Capua,
designed partly for the custody, partly for the training
of those slaves who were destined to kill or be killed for the amusement
of the sovereign multitude.  These were naturally in great part
brave men captured in war, who had not forgotten that they had once
faced the Romans in the field.  A number of these desperadoes broke out
of one of the Capuan gladiatorial schools (681), and sought refuge
on Mount Vesuvius.  At their head were two Celts, who were designated
by their slave-names Crixus and Oenomaus, and the Thracian Spartacus.
The latter, perhaps a scion of the noble family of the Spartocids
which attained even to royal honours in its Thracian home
and in Panticapaeum, had served among the Thracian auxiliaries
in the Roman army, had deserted and gone as a brigand to the mountains,
and had been there recaptured and destined for the gladiatorial games.

The Insurrection Takes Shape

The inroads of this little band, numbering at first only seventy-four
persons, but rapidly swelling by concourse from the surrounding
country, soon became so troublesome to the inhabitants
of the rich region of Campania, that these, after having vainly
attempted themselves to repel them, sought help against them
from Rome.  A division of 3000 men hurriedly collected appeared
under the leadership of Clodius Glaber, and occupied the approaches
to Vesuvius with the view of starving out the slaves.
But the brigands in spite of their small number and their
defective armament had the boldness to scramble down steep declivities
and to fall upon the Roman posts; and when the wretched militia saw
the little band of desperadoes unexpectedly assail them, they took
to their heels and fled on all sides.  This first success procured
for the robbers arms and increased accessions to their ranks.
Although even now a great portion of them carried nothing
but pointed clubs, the new and stronger division of the militia--
two legions under the praetor Publius Varinius--which advanced
from Rome into Campania, found them encamped almost like a regular army
in the plain.  Varinius had a difficult position.  His militia,
compelled to bivouac opposite the enemy, were severely weakened
by the damp autumn weather and the diseases which it engendered;
and, worse than the epidemics, cowardice and insubordination thinned
the ranks.  At the very outset one of his divisions broke up entirely,
so that the fugitives did not fall back on the main corps, but went
straight home.  Thereupon, when the order was given to advance
against the enemy's entrenchments and attack them, the greater
portion of the troops refused to comply with it.  Nevertheless
Varinius set out with those who kept their ground against
the robber-band; but it was no longer to be found where he sought it.
It had broken up in the deepest silence and had turned to the south
towards Picentia (Vicenza near Amain), where Varinius overtook it
indeed, but could not prevent it from retiring over the Silarus
into the interior of Lucania, the chosen land of shepherds and robbers.
Varinius followed thither, and there at length the despised enemy
arrayed themselves for battle.  All the circumstances
under which the combat took place were to the disadvantage
of the Romans: the soldiers, vehemently as they had demanded
battle a little before, fought ill; Varinius was completely
vanquished; his horse and the insignia of his official
dignity fell with the Roman camp itself into the enemy's hand.
The south-Italian slaves, especially the brave half-savage herdsmen,
flocked in crowds to the banner of the deliverers who had
so unexpectedly appeared; according to the most moderate estimates
the number of armed insurgents rose to 40,000 men.  Campania,
just evacuated, was speedily reoccupied, and the Roman corps which was
left behind there under Gaius Thoranius, the quaestor of Varinius,
was broken and destroyed.  In the whole south and south-west
of Italy the open country was in the hands of the victorious bandit-
chiefs; even considerable towns, such as Consentia in the Bruttian
country, Thurii and Metapontum in Lucania, Nola and Nuceria
in Campania, were stormed by them, and suffered all the atrocities
which victorious barbarians could inflict on defenceless civilized
men, and unshackled slaves on their former masters.  That a conflict
like this should be altogether abnormal and more a massacre
than a war, was unhappily a matter of course: the masters
duly crucified every captured slave; the slaves naturally killed
their prisoners also, or with still more sarcastic retaliation
even compelled their Roman captives to slaughter each other
in gladiatorial sport; as was subsequently done with three hundred
of them at the obsequies of a robber-captain who had fallen in combat.

Great Victories of Spartacus

In Rome people were with reason apprehensive as to the destructive
conflagration which was daily spreading.  It was resolved next year
(682) to send both consuls against the formidable leaders
of the gang.  The praetor Quintus Arrius, a lieutenant of the consul
Lucius Gellius, actually succeeded in seizing and destroying
at Mount Garganus in Apulia the Celtic band, which under Crixus
had separated from the mass of the robber-army and was levying
contributions at its own hand.  But Spartacus achieved
all the more brilliant victories in the Apennines and in northern Italy,
where first the consul Gnaeus Lentulus who had thought to surround
and capture the robbers, then his colleague Gellius and the so recently
victorious praetor Arrius, and lastly at Mutina the governor
of Cisalpine Gaul Gaius Cassius (consul 681) and the praetor Gnaeus
Manlius, one after another succumbed to his blows.  The scarcely-
armed gangs of slaves were the terror of the legions; the series
of defeats recalled the first years of the Hannibalic war.

Internal Dissension among the Insurgents

What might have come of it, had the national kings
from the mountains of Auvergne or of the Balkan, and not runaway
gladiatorial slaves, been at the head of the victorious bands,
it is impossible to say; as it was, the movement remained
notwithstanding its brilliant victories a rising of robbers,
and succumbed less to the superior force of its opponents than
to internal discord and the want of definite plan.  The unity
in confronting the common foe, which was so remarkably conspicuous
in the earlier servile wars of Sicily, was wanting in this Italian
war--a difference probably due to the fact that, while the Sicilian
slaves found a quasi-national point of union in the common
Syrohellenism, the Italian slaves were separated into the two
bodies of Helleno-Barbarians and Celto-Germans.  The rupture
between the Celtic Crixus and the Thracian Spartacus--Oenomaus had
fallen in one of the earliest conflicts--and other similar quarrels
crippled them in turning to account the successes achieved,
and procured for the Romans several important victories.  But the want
of a definite plan and aim produced far more injurious effects
on the enterprise than the insubordination of the Celto-Germans.
Spartacus doubtless--to judge by the little which we learn
regarding that remarkable man--stood in this respect above his party.
Along with his strategic ability he displayed no ordinary
talent for organization, as indeed from the very outset
the uprightness, with which he presided over his band and distributed
the spoil, had directed the eyes of the multitude to him quite
as much at least as his valour.  To remedy the severely felt want
of cavalry and of arms, he tried with the help of the herds of horses
seized in Lower Italy to train and discipline a cavalry, and, so soon as
he got the port of Thurii into his hands, to procure from that quarter
iron and copper, doubtless through the medium of the pirates.
But in the main matters he was unable to induce the wild hordes
whom he led to pursue any fixed ulterior aims.  Gladly would
he have checked the frantic orgies of cruelty, in which the robbers
indulged on the capture of towns, and which formed the chief reason
why no Italian city voluntarily made common cause with the insurgents;
but the obedience which the bandit-chief found in the conflic
ceased with the victory, and his representations and entreaties
were in vain.  After the victories obtained in the Apennine
in 682 the slave army was free to move in any direction.
Spartacus himself is said to have intended to cross the Alps,
with a view to open to himself and his followers the means of return
to their Celtic or Thracian home: if the statement is well founded,
it shows how little the conqueror overrated his successes
and his power.  When his men refused so speedily to turn their backs
on the riches of Italy, Spartacus took the route for Rome, and is said
to have meditated blockading the capital.  The troops, however,
showed themselves also averse to this desperate but yet methodical
enterprise; they compelled their leader, when he was desirous
to be a general, to remain a mere captain of banditti and aimlessly
to wander about Italy in search of plunder.  Rome might think herself
fortunate that the matter took this turn; but even as it was,
the perplexity was great.  There was a want of trained soldiers
as of experienced generals; Quintus Metellus and Gnaeus Pompeius
were employed in Spain, Marcus Lucullus in Thrace, Lucius Lucullus
in Asia Minor; and none but raw militia and, at best, mediocre
officers were available.  The extraordinary supreme command
in Italy was given to the praetor Marcus Crassus, who was not
a general of much reputation, but had fought with honour under Sulla
and had at least character; and an army of eight legions, imposing
if not by its quality, at any rate by its numbers, was placed
at his disposal.  The new commander-in-chief began by treating
the first division, which again threw away its arms and fled before
the banditti, with all the severity of martial law, and causing every
tenth man in it to be executed; whereupon the legions in reality
grew somewhat more manly.  Spartacus, vanquished in the next
engagement, retreated and sought to reach Rhegium through Lucania.

Conflicts in the Bruttian Country

Just at that time the pirates commanded not merely the Sicilian
waters, but even the port of Syracuse;(26) with the help of their
boats Spartacus proposed to throw a corps into Sicily, where the slaves
only waited an impulse to break out a third time.  The march to Rhegium
was accomplished; but the corsairs, perhaps terrified by the coastguards
established in Sicily by the praetor Gaius Verres, perhaps also bribed
by the Romans, took from Spartacus the stipulated hire without performing
the service for which it was given.  Crassus meanwhile had followed
the robber-army nearly as far as the mouth, of the Crathis,
and, like Scipio before Numantia, ordered his soldiers,
seeing that they did not fight as they ought, to construct
an entrenched wall of the length of thirty-five miles,
which shut off the Bruttian peninsula from the rest of Italy,(27)
intercepted the insurgent army on the return from Rhegium,
and cut off its supplies.  But in a dark winter night Spartacus
broke through the lines of the enemy, and in the spring of 683(28)
was once more in Lucania.  The laborious work had thus been in vain.
Crassus began to despair of accomplishing his task and demanded
that the senate should for his support recall to Italy the armies
stationed in Macedonia under Marcus Lucullus and in Hither Spain
under Gnaeus Pompeius.

Disruption of the Rebels and Their Subjugation

This extreme step however was not needed; the disunion and the arrogance
of the robber-bands sufficed again to frustrate their successes.
Once more the Celts and Germans broke off from the league of which
the Thracian was the head and soul, in order that, under leaders
of their own nation Gannicus and Castus, they might separately
fall victims to the sword of the Romans.  Once, at the Lucanian
lake the opportune appearance of Spartacus saved them,
and thereupon they pitched their camp near to his; nevertheless
Crassus succeeded in giving employment to Spartacus by means
of the cavalry, and meanwhile surrounded the Celtic bands and compelled
them to a separate engagement, in which the whole body--numbering
it is said 12,300 combatants--fell fighting bravely all on the spot
and with their wounds in front.  Spartacus then attempted to throw
himself with his division into the mountains round Petelia (near
Strongoli in Calabria), and signally defeated the Roman vanguard,
which followed his retreat But this victory proved more injurious
to the victor than to the vanquished.  Intoxicated by success,
the robbers refused to retreat farther, and compelled their general
to lead them through Lucania towards Apulia to face the last decisive
struggle.  Before the battle Spartacus stabbed his horse:
as in prosperity and adversity he had faithfully kept by his men,
he now by that act showed them that the issue for him and for all
was victory or death.  In the battle also he fought with the courage
of a lion; two centurions fell by his hand; wounded and on his knees
he still wielded his spear against the advancing foes.
Thus the great robber-captain and with him the best of his comrades
died the death of free men and of honourable soldiers (683).
After the dearly-bought victory the troops who had achieved it,
and those of Pompeius that had meanwhile after conquering the Sertorians
arrived from Spain, instituted throughout Apulia and Lucania a manhunt,
such as there had never been before, to crush out the last sparks
of the mighty conflagration.  Although in the southern districts,
where for instance the little town of Tempsa was seized in 683
by a gang of robbers, and in Etruria, which was severely affected
by Sulla's evictions, there was by no means as yet a real public
tranquillity, peace was officially considered as re-established
in Italy.  At least the disgracefully lost eagles were recovered--
after the victory over the Celts alone five of them were brought
in; and along the road from Capua to Rome the six thousand crosses
bearing captured slaves testified to the re-establishment of order,
and to the renewed victory of acknowledged law over its living
property that had rebelled.

The Government of the Restoration as a Whole

Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten years
of the Sullan restoration.  No one of the movements, external
or internal, which occurred during this period--neither the insurrection
of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars
in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings
of the pirates and the slaves--constituted of itself a mighty danger
necessarily affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet
the state had in all these struggles well-nigh fought for its
very existence.  The reason was that the tasks were everywhere
left unperformed, so long as they might still have been performed
with ease; the neglect of the simplest precautionary measures produced
the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed
dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing
of equality.  The democracy and the servile insurrection
were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor
was neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them.
It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals
of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked
by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief
Sertorius and his Spanish guerillas, and that it was only
the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian war in favour
of the legitimate government.  As to the slaves, it was far less
an honour to have conquered them than a disgrace to have confronted
them in equal strife for years.  Little more than a century had
elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush
to the cheek of the honourable Roman, when he reflected
on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age.
Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans
of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before
the bludgeons of their runaway serfs.  Then every plain captain
acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success,
but always with honour; now it was difficult to find among
all the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency.
Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough
rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were
on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired,
merely that they might be able to defend themselves against
the insurgent slaves at home.  Spartacus too as well as Hannibal
had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian straits,
beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with blockade;
the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity
to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken
against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti.
Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories
over insurgents and robber-chiefs?

The external wars, however, had produced a result still less
gratifying.  It is true that the Thraco-Macedonian war had yielded
a result not directly unfavourable, although far from corresponding
to the considerable expenditure of men and money.  In the wars
in Asia Minor and with the pirates on the other hand, the government
had exhibited utter failure.  The former ended with the loss
of the whole conquests made in eight bloody campaigns, the latter
with the total driving of the Romans from "their own sea." Once Rome,
fully conscious of the irresistibleness of her power by land,
had transferred her superiority also to the other element;
now the mighty state was powerless at sea and, as it seemed,
on the point of also losing its dominion at least over the Asiatic
continent.  The material benefits which a state exists to confer--
security of frontier, undisturbed peaceful intercourse, legal protection,
and regulated administration--began all of them to vanish for the whole
of the nations united in the Roman state; the gods of blessing
seemed all to have mounted up to Olympus and to have left
the miserable earth at the mercy of the officially called or volunteer
plunderers and tormentors.  Nor was this decay of the state felt
as a public misfortune merely perhaps by such as had political rights
and public spirit; the insurrection of the proletariate,
and the brigandage and piracy which remind us of the times
of the Neapolitan Ferdinands, carried the sense of this decay
into the remotest valley and the humblest hut of Italy, and made
every one who pursued trade and commerce, or who bought
even a bushel of wheat, feel it as a personal calamity.

If inquiry was made as to the authors of this dreadful and unexampled
misery, it was not difficult to lay the blame of it with good
reason on many.  The slaveholders whose heart was in their
money-bags, the insubordinate soldiers, the generals cowardly,
incapable, or foolhardy, the demagogues of the market-place mostly
pursuing a mistaken aim, bore their share of the blame; or,
to speak more truly, who was there that did not share in it?
It was instinctively felt that this misery, this disgrace, this disorder
were too colossal to be the work of any one man.  As the greatness
of the Roman commonwealth was the work not of prominent individuals,
but rather of a soundly-organized burgess-body, so the decay
of this mighty structure was the result not of the destructive genius
of individuals, but of a general disorganization.  The great majority
of the burgesses were good for nothing, and every rotten stone
in the building helped to bring about the ruin of the whole; the whole
nation suffered for what was the whole nation's fault.  It was unjust
to hold the government, as the ultimate tangible organ of the state,
responsible for all its curable and incurable diseases; but it certainly
was true that the government contributed after a very grave fashion
to the general culpability.  In the Asiatic war, for example,
where no individual of the ruling lords conspicuously failed,
and Lucullus, in a military point of view at least, behaved with ability
and even glory, it was all the more clear that the blame of failure lay
in the system and in the government as such--primarily, so far
as that war was concerned, in the remissness with which Cappadocia
and Syria were at first abandoned, and in the awkward position
of the able general with reference to a governing college incapable
of any energetic resolution.  In maritime police likewise
the true idea which the senate had taken up as to a general hunting
out of the pirates was first spoilt by it in the execution
and then totally dropped, in order to revert to the old foolish system
of sending legions against the coursers of the sea.  The expeditions
of Servilius and Marcius to Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete,
were undertaken on this system; and in accordance with it Triarius
had the island of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against
the pirates.  Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas remind
us of that Persian great-king, who ordered the sea to be scourged
with rods to make it subject to him.  Doubtless therefore
the nation had good reason for laying the blame of its failure
primarily on the government of the restoration.  A similar misrule
had indeed always come along with the re-establishment
of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that
of Marius and Saturninus; yet never before had it shown such violence
and at the same time such laxity, never had it previously emerged
so corrupt and pernicious.  But, when a government cannot govern,
it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also
the right to overthrow it.  It is, no doubt, unhappily true
that an incapable and flagitious government may for a long period trample
under foot the welfare and honour of the land, before the men are
found who are able and willing to wield against that government
the formidable weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of
the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolution
which is in such a case legitimate.  But if the game attempted
with the fortunes of nations may be a merry one and may be played
perhaps for a long time without molestation, it is a treacherous
game, which in its own time entraps the players; and no one then
blames the axe, if it is laid to the root of the tree that bears
such fruits.  For the Roman oligarchy this time had now come.
The Pontic-Armenian war and the affair of the pirates became
the proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan constitution
and of the establishment of a revolutionary military dictatorship.




Chapter III

The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius

Continued Subsistence of the Sullan Constitution

The Sullan constitution still stood unshaken.  The assault,
which Lepidus and Sertorius had ventured to make on it,
had been repulsed with little loss.  The government had neglected,
it is true, to finish the half-completed building in the energetic
spirit of its author.  It is characteristic of the government,
that it neither distributed the lands which Sulla had destined
for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned
the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional
possession without regulating their title, and indeed even allowed
various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be
arbitrarily taken possession of by individuals according
to the old system of occupation, which was de jure and de facto
set aside by the Gracchan reforms.(1)  Whatever in the Sullan enactments
was indifferent or inconvenient for the Optimates, was without scruple
ignored or cancelled; for instance, the sentences under which whole
communities were deprived of the right of citizenship, the prohibition
against conjoining the new farms, and several of the privileges
conferred by Sulla on particular communities--of course, without
giving back to the communities the sums paid for these exemptions.
But though these violations of the ordinances of Sulla by the government
itself contributed to shake the foundations of his structure,
the Sempronian laws were substantially abolished and remained so.

Attacks of the Democracy
Corn-Laws
Attempts to Restore the Tribunician Power

There was no lack, indeed, of men who had in view the re-establishment
of the Gracchan constitution, or of projects to attain piecemeal
in the way of constitutional reform what Lepidus and Sertorius
had attempted by the path of revolution.  The government
had already under the pressure of the agitation of Lepidus
immediately after the death of Sulla consented to a limited revival
of the largesses of grain (676); and it did, moreover,
what it could to satisfy the proletariate of the capital in regard
to this vital question.  When, notwithstanding those distributions,
the high price of grain occasioned chiefly by piracy produced
so oppressive a dearth in Rome as to lead to a violent tumult
in the streets in 679, extraordinary purchases of Sicilian grain
on account of the government relieved for the time the most severe
distress; and a corn-law brought in by the consuls of 681 regulated
for the future the purchases of Sicilian grain and furnished
the government, although at the expense of the provincials,
with better means of obviating similar evils.  But the less material
points of difference also--the restoration of the tribunician power
in its old compass, and the setting aside of the senatorial tribunals--
ceased not to form subjects of popular agitation; and in their
case the government offered more decided resistance.  The dispute
regarding the tribunician magistracy was opened as early as 678,
immediately after the defeat of Lepidus, by the tribune of the people
Lucius Sicinius, perhaps a descendant of the man of the same
name who had first filled this office more than four hundred years
before; but it failed before the resistance offered to it
by the active consul Gaius Curio.  In 680 Lucius Quinctius resumed
the agitation, but was induced by the authority of the consul Lucius
Lucullus to desist from his purpose.  The matter was taken up
in the following year with greater zeal by Gaius Licinius Macer, who--
in a way characteristic of the period--carried his literary studies
into public life, and, just as he had read in the Annals,
counselled the burgesses to refuse the conscription.

Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals

Complaints also, only too well founded, prevailed respecting
the bad administration of justice by the senatorial jurymen.
The condemnation of a man of any influence could hardly be obtained.
Not only did colleague feel reasonable compassion for colleague,
those who had been or were likely to be accused for the poor sinner
under accusation at the moment; the sale also of the votes
of jurymen was hardly any longer exceptional.  Several senators
had been judicially convicted of this crime: men pointed
with the finger at others equally guilty; the most respected Optimates,
such as Quintus Catulus, granted in an open sitting of the senate
that the complaints were quite well founded; individual specially
striking cases compelled the senate on several occasions, e. g. in 680,
to deliberate on measures to check the venality of juries,
but only of course till the first outcry had subsided and the matter
could be allowed to slip out of sight.  The consequences
of this wretched administration of justice appeared especially
in a system of plundering and torturing the provincials, compared
with which even previous outrages seemed tolerable and moderate.
Stealing and robbing had been in some measure legitimized by custom;
the commission on extortions might be regarded as an institution
for taxing the senators returning from the provinces for the benefit
of their colleagues that remained at home.  But when an esteemed
Siceliot, because he had not been ready to help the governor
in a crime, was by the latter condemned to death in his absence
and unheard; when even Roman burgesses, if they were not equites
or senators, were in the provinces no longer safe from the rods
and axes of the Roman magistrate, and the oldest acquisition
of the Roman democracy--security of life and person--began to be
trodden under foot by the ruling oligarchy; then even the public
in the Forum at Rome had an ear for the complaints regarding
its magistrates in the provinces, and regarding the unjust judges
who morally shared the responsibility of such misdeeds.  The opposition
of course did not omit to assail its opponents in--what was almost
the only ground left to it--the tribunals.  The young Gaius Caesar,
who also, so far as his age allowed, took zealous part
in the agitation for the re-establishment of the tribunician power,
brought to trial in 677 one of the most respected partisans
of Sulla the consular Gnaeus Dolabella, and in the following year
another Sullan officer Gaius Antonius; and Marcus Cicero in 684
called to account Gaius Verres, one of the most wretched
of the creatures of Sulla, and one of the worst scourges
of the provincials.  Again and again were the pictures
of that dark period of the proscriptions, the fearful sufferings
of the provincials, the disgraceful state of Roman criminal justice,
unfolded before the assembled multitude with all the pomp
of Italian rhetoric, and with all the bitterness of Italian sarcasm,
and the mighty dead as well as his living instruments were unrelentingly
exposed to their wrath and scorn.  The re-establishment of the full
tribunician power, with the continuance of which the freedom,
might, and prosperity of the republic seemed bound up as by a charm
of primeval sacredness, the reintroduction of the "stern" equestrian
tribunals, the renewal of the censorship, which Sulla had set
aside, for the purifying of the supreme governing board
from its corrupt and pernicious elements, were daily demanded
with a loud voice by the orators of the popular party.

Want of Results from the Democratic Agitation

But with all this no progress was made.  There was scandal
and outcry enough, but no real result was attained by this exposure
of the government according to and beyond its deserts.  The material
power still lay, so long as there was no military interference,
in the hands of the burgesses of the capital; and the "people"
that thronged the streets of Rome and made magistrates and laws
in the Forum, was in fact nowise better than the governing senate.
The government no doubt had to come to terms with the multitude,
where its own immediate interest was at stake; this was the reason
for the renewal of the Sempronian corn-law.  But it was not
to be imagined that this populace would have displayed earnestness
on behalf of an idea or even of a judicious reform.  What Demosthenes
said of his Athenians was justly applied to the Romans
of this period--the people were very zealous for action, so long
as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms;
but when they went home, no one thought further of what he had
heard in the market-place.  However those democratic agitators might
stir the fire, it was to no purpose, for the inflammable material
was wanting.  The government knew this, and allowed no sort
of concession to be wrung from it on important questions
of principle; at the utmost it consented (about 682) to grant
amnesty to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus.
Any concessions that did take place, came not so much from the pressure
of the democracy as from the attempts at mediation of the moderate
aristocracy.  But of the two laws which the single still surviving
leader of this section Gaius Cotta carried in his consulate of 679,
that which concerned the tribunals was again set aside
in the very next year; and the second, which abolished the Sullan
enactment that those who had held the tribunate should be disqualified
for undertaking other magistracies, but allowed the other limitations
to continue, merely--like every half-measure--excited the displeasure
of both parties.

The party of conservatives friendly to reform which lost
its most notable head by the early death of Cotta occurring soon
after (about 681) dwindled away more and more--crushed between
the extremes, which were becoming daily more marked.  But of these
the party of the government, wretched and remiss as it was,
necessarily retained the advantage in presence of the equally
wretched and equally remiss opposition.

Quarrel between the Government and Their General Pompeius

But this state of matters so favourable to the government
was altered, when the differences became more distinctly developed
which subsisted between it and those of its partisans, whose hopes
aspired to higher objects than the seat of honour in the senate
and the aristocratic villa.  In the first rank of these stood Gnaeus
Pompeius.  He was doubtless a Sullan; but we have already shown(2)
how little he was at home among his own party, how his lineage,
his past history, his hopes separated him withal from the nobility
as whose protector and champion he was officially regarded.
The breach already apparent had been widened irreparably during
the Spanish campaigns of the general (677-683).  With reluctance
and semi-compulsion the government had associated him as colleague
with their true representative Quintus Metellus; and in turn he accused
the senate, probably not without ground, of having by its careless
or malicious neglect of the Spanish armies brought about their
defeats and placed the fortunes of the expedition in jeopardy.
Now he returned as victor over his open and his secret foes,
at the head of an army inured to war and wholly devoted to him,
desiring assignments of land for his soldiers, a triumph
and the consulship for himself.  The latter demands came into
collision with the law.  Pompeius, although several times invested
in an extraordinary way with supreme official authority, had not yet
administered any ordinary magistracy, not even the quaestorship,
and was still not a member of the senate; and none but one
who had passed through the round of lesser ordinary magistracies
could become consul, none but one who had been invested
with the ordinary supreme power could triumph.  The senate
was legally entitled, if he became a candidate for the consulship,
to bid him begin with the quaestorship; if he requested a triumph,
to remind him of the great Scipio, who under like circumstances
had renounced his triumph over conquered Spain.  Nor was Pompeius
less dependent constitutionally on the good will of the senate
as respected the lands promised to his soldiers.  But, although
the senate--as with its feebleness even in animosity
was very conceivable--should yield those points and concede
to the victorious general, in return for his executioner's service
against the democratic chiefs, the triumph, the consulate,
and the assignations of land, an honourable annihilation
in senatorial indolence among the long series of peaceful
senatorial Imperators was the most favourable lot which the oligarchy
was able to hold in readiness for the general of thirty-six.
That which his heart really longed for--the command
in the Mithradatic war--he could never expect to obtain
from the voluntary bestowal of the senate: in their own well-understood
interest the oligarchy could not permit him to add to his Africa
and European trophies those of a third continent; the laurels
which were to be plucked copiously and easily in the east were reserved
at all events for the pure aristocracy.  But if the celebrated general
did not find his account in the ruling oligarchy, there remained--
for neither was the time ripe, nor was the temperament of Pompeius
at all fitted, for a purely personal outspoken dynastic policy--
no alternative save to make common cause with the democratic party.
No interest of his own bound him to the Sullan constitution;
he could pursue his personal objects quite as well, if not better,
with one more democratic.  On the other hand he found all that he needed
in the democratic party.  Its active and adroit leaders were ready
and able to relieve the resourceless and somewhat wooden hero
of the trouble of political leadership, and yet much too insignificant
to be able or even wishful to dispute with the celebrated general
the first place and especially the supreme military control.  Even
Gaius Caesar, by far the most important of them, was simply a young
man whose daring exploits and fashionable debts far more than his
fiery democratic eloquence had gained him a name, and who could not
but feel himself greatly honoured when the world-renowned Imperator
allowed him to be his political adjutant.  That popularity,
to which men like Pompeius, with pretensions greater than their
abilities, usually attach more value than they are willing
to confess to themselves, could not but fall in the highest measure
to the lot of the young general whose accession gave victory
to the almost forlorn cause of the democracy.  The reward of victory
claimed by him for himself and his soldiers would then follow
of itself.  In general it seemed, if the oligarchy were overthrown,
that amidst the total want of other considerable chiefs
of the opposition it would depend solely on Pompeius himself
to determine his future position.  And of this much there could
hardly be a doubt, that the accession of the general of the army,
which had just returned victorious from Spain and still stood compact
and unbroken in Italy, to the party of opposition must have
as its consequence the fall of the existing order of things.
Government and opposition were equally powerless; so soon as
the latter no longer fought merely with the weapons of declamation,
but had the sword of a victorious general ready to back its demands,
the government would be in any case overcome, perhaps even
without a struggle.

Coalition of the Military Chiefs and the Democracy

Pompeius and the democrats thus found themselves urged
into coalition.  Personal dislikings were probably not wanting
on either side: it was not possible that the victorious general
could love the street orators, nor could these hail with pleasure
as their chief the executioner of Carbo and Brutus; but political
necessity outweighed at least for the moment all moral scruples.

The democrats and Pompeius, however, were not the sole parties
to the league.  Marcus Crassus was in a similar situation
with Pompeius.  Although a Sullan like the latter, his politics
were quite as in the case of Pompeius preeminently of a personal kind,
and by no means those of the ruling oligarchy; and he too was now
in Italy at the head of a large and victorious army, with which
he had just suppressed the rising of the slaves.  He had to choose
whether he would ally himself with the oligarchy against the coalition,
or enter that coalition: he chose the latter, which was doubtless
the safer course.  With his colossal wealth and his influence
on the clubs of the capital he was in any case a valuable
ally; but under the prevailing circumstances it was an incalculable
gain, when the only army, with which the senate could have met
the troops of Pompeius, joined the attacking force.  The democrats
moreover, who were probably somewhat uneasy at their alliance
with that too powerful general, were not displeased to see
a counterpoise and perhaps a future rival associated with him
in the person of Marcus Crassus.

Thus in the summer of 683 the first coalition took place between
the democracy on the one hand, and the two Sullan generals Gnaeus
Pompeius and Marcus Crassus on the other.  The generals adopted
the party-programme of the democracy; and they were promised
immediately in return the consulship for the coming year, while
Pompeius was to have also a triumph and the desired allotments
of land for his soldiers, and Crassus as the conqueror of Spartacus
at least the honour of a solemn entrance into the capital.

To the two Italian armies, the great capitalists,
and the democracy, which thus came forward in league for the overthrow
of the Sullan constitution, the senate had nothing to oppose save
perhaps the second Spanish army under Quintus Metellus Pius.
But Sulla had truly predicted that what he did would not be done
a second time; Metellus, by no means inclined to involve himself
in a civil war, had discharged his soldiers immediately after crossing
the Alps.  So nothing was left for the oligarchy but to submit
to what was inevitable.  The senate granted the dispensations
requisite for the consulship and triumph; Pompeius and Crassus
were, without opposition, elected consuls for 684, while their
armies, on pretext of awaiting their triumph, encamped before
the city.  Pompeius thereupon, even before entering on office,
gave his public and formal adherence to the democratic programme
in an assembly of the people held by the tribune Marcus Lollius
Palicanus.  The change of the constitution was thus
in principle decided.

Re-establishing of the Tribunician Power

They now went to work in all earnest to set aside the Sullan
institutions.  First of all the tribunician magistracy regained
its earlier authority.  Pompeius himself as consul introduced the law
which gave back to the tribunes of the people their time-honoured
prerogatives, and in particular the initiative of legislation--
a singular gift indeed from the hand of a man who had done more than
any one living to wrest from the community its ancient privileges.

New Arrangement as to Jurymen

With respect to the position of jurymen, the regulation of Sulla,
that the roll of the senators was to serve as the list of jurymen,
was no doubt abolished; but this by no means led to a simple
restoration of the Gracchan equestrian courts.  In future--so it
was enacted by the new Aurelian law--the colleges of jurymen
were to consist one-third of senators and two-thirds of men
of equestrian census, and of the latter the half must have rilled
the office of district-presidents, or so-called -tribuni aerarii-.
This last innovation was a farther concession made to the democrats,
inasmuch as according to it at least a third part of the criminal
jurymen were indirectly derived from the elections of the tribes.
The reason, again, why the senate was not totally excluded
from the courts is probably to be sought partly in the relations
of Crassus to the senate, partly in the accession of the senatorial
middle party to the coalition; with which is doubtless connected
the circumstance that this law was brought in by the praetor Lucius
Cotta, the brother of their lately deceased leader.

Renewal of the Asiatic Revenue-Farming

Not less important was the abolition of the arrangements
as to taxation established for Asia by Sulla,(3) which presumably
likewise fell to this year.  The governor of Asia at that time,
Lucius Lucullus, was directed to reestablish the system of farming
the revenue introduced by Gaius Gracchus; and thus this important
source of money and power was restored to the great capitalists.

Renewal of the Censorship

Lastly, the censorship was revived.  The elections for it,
which the new consuls fixed shortly after entering on their office,
fell, in evident mockery of the senate, on the two consuls of 682,
Gnaeus Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius, who had been removed
by the senate from their commands on account of their wretched
management of the war against Spartacus.(4)  It may readily be conceived
that these men put in motion all the means which their important
and grave office placed at their command, for the purpose of doing
homage to the new-holders of power and of annoying the senate.
At least an eighth part of the senate, sixty-four senators, a number
hitherto unparalleled, were deleted from the roll, including Gaius
Antonius, formerly impeached without success by Gaius Caesar,(5)
and Publius Lentulus Sura, the consul of 683, and presumably also
not a few of the most obnoxious creatures of Sulla.

The New Constitution

Thus in 684 they had reverted in the main to the arrangements
that subsisted before the Sullan restoration.

Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state-chest,
in other words by the provinces;(6) again the tribunician authority
gave to every demagogue a legal license to overturn the arrangements
of the state; again the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue
and possessed of the judicial control over the governors, raised their
heads alongside of the government as powerfully as ever; again the senate
trembled before the verdict of jurymen of the equestrian order and before
the censorial censure.  The system of Sulla, which had based the monopoly
of power by the nobility on the political annihilation of the mercantile
aristocracy and of demagogism, was thus completely overthrown.
Leaving out of view some subordinate enactments, the abolition
of which was not overtaken till afterwards, such as the restoration
of the right of self-completion to the priestly colleges,(7) nothing
of the general ordinances of Sulla survived except, on the one hand,
the concessions which he himself found it necessary to make
to the opposition, such as the recognition of the Roman franchise
of all the Italians, and, on the other hand, enactments without
any marked partisan tendency, and with which therefore even judicious
democrats found no fault--such as, among others, the restriction
of the freedmen, the regulation of the functional spheres
of the magistrates, and the material alterations in criminal law.

The coalition was more agreed regarding these questions
of principle than with respect to the personal questions which such
a political revolution raised.  As might be expected, the democrats
were not content with the general recognition of their programme;
but they too now demanded a restoration in their sense--revival
of the commemoration of their dead, punishment of the murderers,
recall of the proscribed from exile, removal of the political
disqualification that lay on their children, restoration
of the estates confiscated by Sulla, indemnification at the expense
of the heirs and assistants of the dictator.  These were certainly
the logical consequences which ensued from a pure victory
of the democracy; but the victory of the coalition of 683 was very far
from being such.  The democracy gave to it their name and their
programme, but it was the officers who had joined the movement,
and above all Pompeius, that gave to it power and completion; and these
could never yield their consent to a reaction which would not only
have shaken the existing state of things to its foundations,
but would have ultimately turned against themselves--men still had
a lively recollection who the men were whose blood Pompeius had shed,
and how Crassus had laid the foundation of his enormous fortune.
It was natural therefore, but at the same time significant
of the weakness of the democracy, that the coalition of 683 took
not the slightest step towards procuring for the democrats revenge
or even rehabilitation.  The supplementary collection of all
the purchase money still outstanding for confiscated estates
bought by auction, or even remitted to the purchasers by Sulla--
for which the censor Lentulus provided in a special law--
can hardly be regarded as an exception; for though not a few Sullans
were thereby severely affected in their personal interests,
yet the measure itself was essentially a confirmation
of the confiscations undertaken by Sulla.

Impending Miliatry Dictatorship of Pompeius

The work of Sulla was thus destroyed; but what the future order
of things was to be, was a question raised rather than decided by
that destruction.  The coalition, kept together solely by the common
object of setting aside the work of restoration, dissolved
of itself, if not formally, at any rate in reality, when that object
was attained; while the question, to what quarter the preponderance
of power was in the first instance to fall, seemed approaching
an equally speedy and violent solution.  The armies of Pompeius
and Crassus still lay before the gates of the city.  The former had
indeed promised to disband his soldiers after his triumph (last day
of Dec. 683); but he had at first omitted to do so, in order to let
the revolution in the state be completed without hindrance
under the pressure which the Spanish army in front of the capital
exercised over the city and the senate--a course, which in like manner
applied to the army of Crassus.  This reason now existed
no longer; but still the dissolution of the armies was postponed.
In the turn taken by matters it looked as if one of the two generals
allied with the democracy would seize the military dictatorship
and place oligarchs and democrats in the same chains.  And this one
could only be Pompeius.  From the first Crassus had played
a subordinate part in the coalition; he had been obliged to propose
himself, and owed even his election to the consulship mainly
to the proud intercession of Pompeius.  Far the stronger, Pompeius
was evidently master of the situation; if he availed himself of it,
it seemed as if he could not but become what the instinct
of the multitude even now designated him--the absolute ruler
of the mightiest state in the civilized world.  Already the whole mass
of the servile crowded around the future monarch.  Already his weaker
opponents were seeking their last resource in a new coalition;
Crassus, full of old and recent jealousy towards the younger rival
who so thoroughly outstripped him, made approaches to the senate
and attempted by unprecedented largesses to attach to himself
the multitude of the capital--as if the oligarchy which Crassus himself
had helped to break down, and the ever ungrateful multitude,
would have been able to afford any protection whatever against
the veterans of the Spanish army.  For a moment it seemed as if
the armies of Pompeius and Crassus would come to blows before
the gates of the capital.

Retirement of Pompeius

But the democrats averted this catastrophe by their sagacity
and their pliancy.  For their party too, as well as for the senate
and Crassus, it was all-important that Pompeius should not seize
the dictatorship; but with a truer discernment of their own weakness
and of the character of their powerful opponent their leaders tried
the method of conciliation.  Pompeius lacked no condition
for grasping at the crown except the first of all--proper kingly
courage.  We have already described the man--with his effort to be
at once loyal republican and master of Rome, with his vacillation
and indecision, with his pliancy that concealed itself
under the boasting of independent resolution.  This was the first
great trial to which destiny subjected him; and he failed to stand it.
The pretext under which Pompeius refused to dismiss the army was,
that he distrusted Crassus and therefore could not take the initiative
in disbanding the soldiers.  The democrats induced Crassus to make
gracious advances in the matter, and to offer the hand of peace
to his colleague before the eyes of all; in public and in private they
besought the latter that to the double merit of having vanquished
the enemy and reconciled the parties he would add the third and yet
greater service of preserving internal peace to his country,
and banishing the fearful spectre of civil war with which
they were threatened.  Whatever could tell on a vain, unskilful,
vacillating man--all the flattering arts of diplomacy, all the theatrical
apparatus of patriotic enthusiasm--was put in motion to obtain
the desired result; and--which was the main point--things had
by the well-timed compliance of Crassus assumed such a shape,
that Pompeius had no alternative but either to come forward openly
as tyrant of Rome or to retire.  So he at length yielded and consented
to disband the troops.  The command in the Mithradatic war,
which he doubtless hoped to obtain when he had allowed himself to be
chosen consul for 684, he could not now desire, since Lucullus
seemed to have practically ended that war with the campaign of 683.
He deemed it beneath his dignity to accept the consular province
assigned to him by the senate in accordance with the Sempronian
law, and Crassus in this followed his example.  Accordingly
when Pompeius after discharging his soldiers resigned his consulship
on the last day of 684, he retired for the time wholly from public
affairs, and declared that he wished thenceforth to live a life
of quiet leisure as a simple citizen.  He had taken up such a position
that he was obliged to grasp at the crown; and, seeing that he was
not willing to do so, no part was left to him but the empty one
of a candidate for a throne resigning his pretensions to it.

Senate, Equites, and Populares

The retirement of the man, to whom as things stood the first place
belonged, from the political stage reproduced in the first instance
nearly the same position of parties, which we found in the Gracchan
and Marian epochs.  Sulla had merely strengthened the senatorial
government, not created it; so, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla
had fallen, the government nevertheless remained primarily
with the senate, although, no doubt, the constitution with which
it governed--in the main the restored Gracchan constitution--
was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the oligarchy.  The democracy
had effected the re-establishment of the Gracchan constitution;
but without a new Gracchus it was a body without a head,
and that neither Pompeius nor Crassus could be permanently such a head,
was in itself clear and had been made still clearer by the recent
events.  So the democratic opposition, for want of a leader
who could have directly taken the helm, had to content itself
for the time being with hampering and annoying the government
at every step.  Between the oligarchy, however, and the democracy
there rose into new consideration the capitalist party,
which in the recent crisis had made common cause with the latter,
but which the oligarchs now zealously endeavoured to draw over
to their side, so as to acquire in it a counterpoise to the democracy.
Thus courted on both sides the moneyed lords did not neglect to turn
their advantageous position to profit, and to have the only one
of their former privileges which they had not yet regained--the fourteen
benches reserved for the equestrian order in the theatre--now (687)
restored to them by decree of the people.  On the whole, without
abruptly breaking with the democracy, they again drew closer
to the government.  The very relations of the senate to Crassus
and his clients point in this direction; but a better understanding
between the senate and the moneyed aristocracy seems to have been
chiefly brought about by the fact, that in 686 the senate withdrew
from Lucius Lucullus the ablest of the senatorial officers,
at the instance of the capitalists whom he had sorely annoyed,
the dministration of the province of Asia so important
for their purposes.(8)

The Events in the East, and Their Reaction on Rome

But while the factions of the capital were indulging in their
wonted mutual quarrels, which they were never able to bring
to any proper decision, events in the east followed their fatal course,
as we have already described; and it was these events that brought
the dilatory course of the politics of the capital to a crisis.
The war both by land and by sea had there taken a most unfavourable
turn.  In the beginning of 687 the Pontic army of the Romans
was destroyed, and their Armenian army was utterly breaking up
on its retreat; all their conquests were lost, the sea was exclusively
in the power of the pirates, and the price of grain in Italy
was thereby so raised that they were afraid of an actual famine.
No doubt, as we saw, the faults of the generals, especially
the utter incapacity of the admiral Marcus Antonius and the temerity
of the otherwise able Lucius Lucullus, were in part the occasion
of these calamities; no doubt also the democracy had by its
revolutionary agitations materially contributed to the breaking up
of the Armenian army.  But of course the government was now held
cumulatively responsible for all the mischief which itself
and others had occasioned, and the indignant hungry multitude
desired only an opportunity to settle accounts with the senate.

Reappearance of Pompeius

It was a decisive crisis.  The oligarchy, though degraded
and disarmed, was not yet overthrown, for the management of public
affairs was still in the hands of the senate; but it would fall,
if its opponents should appropriate to themselves that management,
and more especially the superintendence of military affairs;
and now this was possible.  If proposals for another and better
management of the war by land and sea were now submitted to the comitia,
the senate was obviously--looking to the temper of the burgesses--
not in a position to prevent their passing; and an interference
of the burgesses in these supreme questions of administration
was practically the deposition of the senate and the transference
of the conduct of the state to the leaders of opposition.  Once more
the concatenation of events brought the decision into the hands
of Pompeius.  For more than two years the famous general had lived
as a private citizen in the capital.  His voice was seldom heard
in the senate-house or in the Forum; in the former he was unwelcome
and without decisive influence, in the latter he was afraid
of the stormy proceedings of the parties.  But when he did show himself,
it was with the full retinue of his clients high and low,
and the very solemnity of his reserve imposed on the multitude.
If he, who was still surrounded with the full lustre of his extraordinary
successes, should now offer to go to the east, he would beyond
doubt be readily invested by the burgesses with all the plenitude
of military and political power which he might himself ask.
For the oligarchy, which saw in the political-military dictatorship
their certain ruin, and in Pompeius himself since the coalition
of 683 their most hated foe, this was an overwhelming blow;
but the democratic party also could have little comfort in the prospect.
However desirable the putting an end to the government of the senate
could not but be in itself, it was, if it took place in this way,
far less a victory for their party than a personal victory
for their over-powerful ally.  In the latter there might easily arise
a far more dangerous opponent to the democratic party than the senate
had been.  The danger fortunately avoided a few years before
by the disbanding of the Spanish army and the retirement of Pompeius
would recur in increased measure, if Pompeius should now be placed
at the head of the armies of the east.

Overthrow of the Senatorial Rule, and New Power of Pompeius

On this occasion, however, Pompeius acted or at least allowed
others to act in his behalf.  In 687 two projects of law
were introduced, one of which, besides decreeing the discharge--
long since demanded by the democracy--of the soldiers of the Asiatic
army who had served their term, decreed the recall of its
commander-in-chief Lucius Lucullus and the supplying of his place
by one of the consuls of the current year, Gaius Piso or Manius
Glabrio; while the second revived and extended the plan proposed
seven years before by the senate itself for clearing the seas
from the pirates.  A single general to be named by the senate
from the consulars was to be appointed, to hold by sea exclusive command
over the whole Mediterranean from the Pillars of Hercules to the coasts
of Pontus and Syria, and to exercise by land, concurrently
with the respective Roman governors, supreme command over the whole
coasts for fifty miles inland.  The office was secured to him
for three years.  He was surrounded by a staff, such as Rome
had never seen, of five-and-twenty lieutenants of senatorial rank,
all invested with praetorian insignia and praetorian powers,
and of two under-treasurers with quaestorian prerogatives, all of them
selected by the exclusive will of the general commanding-in-chief.
He was allowed to raise as many as 120,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry,
500 ships of war, and for this purpose to dispose absolutely
of the means of the provinces and client-states; moreover, the existing
vessels of war and a considerable number of troops were at once
handed over to him.  The treasures of the state in the capital
and in the provinces as well as those of the dependent communities
were to be placed absolutely at his command, and in spite of the severe
financial distress a sum of; 1,400,000 pounds (144,000,000 sesterces)
was at once to be paid to him from the state-chest.

Effect of the Projects of Law

It is clear that by these projects of law, especially
by that which related to the expedition against the pirates,
the government of the senate was set aside.  Doubtless the ordinary
supreme magistrates nominated by the burgesses were of themselves
the proper generals of the commonwealth, and the extraordinary
magistrates needed, at least according to strict law, confirmation
by the burgesses in order to act as generals; but in the appointment
to particular commands no influence constitutionally belonged
to the community, and it was only on the proposition of the senate,
or at any rate on that of a magistrate entitled in himself
to hold the office of general, that the comitia had hitherto
now and again interfered in this matter and conferred
such special functions.  In this field, ever since there had existed
a Roman free state, the practically decisive voice pertained
to the senate, and this its prerogative had in the course of time
obtained full recognition.  No doubt the democracy had already
assailed it; but even in the most doubtful of the cases which had
hitherto occurred--the transference of the African command
to Gaius Marius in 647(9)--it was only a magistrate constitutionally
entitled to hold the office of general that was entrusted
by the resolution of the burgesses with a definite expedition.

But now the burgesses were to invest any private man at their
pleasure not merely with the extraordinary authority of the supreme
magistracy, but also with a sphere of office definitely settled
by them.  That the senate had to choose this man from the ranks
of the consulars, was a mitigation only in form; for the selection
was left to it simply because there was really no choice,
and in presence of the vehemently excited multitude the senate
could entrust the chief command of the seas and coasts to no other
save Pompeius alone.  But more dangerous still than this negation
in principle of the senatorial control was its practical abolition
by the institution of an office of almost unlimited military
and financial powers.  While the office of general was formerly
restricted to a term of one year, to a definite province,
and to military and financial resources strictly measured out,
the new extraordinary office had from the outset a duration
of three years secured to it--which of course did not exclude
a farther prolongation; had the greater portion of all the provinces,
and even Italy itself which was formerly free from military
jurisdiction, subordinated to it; had the soldiers, ships,
treasures of the state placed almost without restriction
at its disposal.  Even the primitive fundamental principle
in the state-law of the Roman republic, which we have just mentioned--
that the highest military and civil authority could not be conferred
without the co-operation of the burgesses--was infringed in favour
of the new commander-in-chief.  Inasmuch as the law conferred beforehand
on the twenty-five adjutants whom he was to nominate praetorian
rank and praetorian prerogatives,(10) the highest office
of republican Rome became subordinate to a newly created office,
for which it was left to the future to find the fitting name,
but which in reality even now involved in it the monarchy.
It was a total revolution in the existing order of things,
for which the foundation was laid in this project of law.

Pompeius and the Gabinian Laws

These measures of a man who had just given so striking proofs
of his vacillation and weakness surprise us by their decisive energy.
Nevertheless the fact that Pompeius acted on this occasion
more resolutely than during his consulate is very capable of explanation.
The point at issue was not that he should come forward at once
as monarch, but only that he should prepare the way for the monarchy
by a military exceptional measure, which, revolutionary
as it was in its nature, could still be accomplished under the forms
of the existing constitution, and which in the first instance
carried Pompeius so far on the way towards the old object
of his wishes, the command against Mithradates and Tigranes.
Important reasons of expediency also might be urged for the emancipation
of the military power from the senate.  Pompeius could not
have forgotten that a plan designed on exactly similar
principles for the suppression of piracy had a few years before
failed through the mismanagement of the senate, and that the issue
of the Spanish war had been placed in extreme jeopardy by the neglect
of the armies on the part of the senate and its injudicious conduct
of the finances; he could not fail to see what were the feelings
with which the great majority of the aristocracy regarded
him as a renegade Sullan, and what fate was in store for him,
if he allowed himself to be sent as general of the government
with the usual powers to the east.  It was natural therefore
that he should indicate a position independent of the senate
as the first condition of his undertaking the command,
and that the burgesses should readily agree to it.  It is moreover
in a high degree probable that Pompeius was on this occasion urged
to more rapid action by those around him, who were, it may be presumed,
not a little indignant at his retirement two years before.  The projects
of law regarding the recall of Lucullus and the expedition against
the pirates were introduced by the tribune of the people Aulus
Gabinius, a man ruined in finances and morals, but a dexterous
negotiator, a bold orator, and a brave soldier.  Little as the assurance
of Pompeius, that he had no wish at all for the chief command
in the war with the pirates and only longed for domestic
repose, were meant in earnest, there was probably this much
of truth in them, that the bold and active client, who was
in confidential intercourse with Pompeius and his more immediate
circle and who completely saw through the situation and the men,
took the decision to a considerable extent out of the hands
of his shortsighted and resourceless patron.

The Parties in Relation to the Gabinian Laws

The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in secret,
could not well come publicly forward against the project of law.
It would, to all appearance, have been in no case able to hinder
the carrying of the law; but it would by opposition have openly
broken with Pompeius and thereby compelled him either to make
approaches to the oligarchy or regardlessly to pursue his personal
policy in the face of both parties.  No course was left
to the democrats but still even now to adhere to their alliance
with Pompeius, hollow as it was, and to embrace the present opportunity
of at least definitely overthrowing the senate and passing over
from opposition into government, leaving the ulterior issue
to the future and to the well-known weakness of Pompeius' character.
Accordingly their leaders--the praetor Lucius Quinctius, the same
who seven years before had exerted himself for the restoration
of the tribunician power,(11) and the former quaestor Gaius Caesar--
supported the Gabinian proposals.

The privileged classes were furious--not merely the nobility,
but also the mercantile aristocracy, which felt its exclusive
rights endangered by so thorough a state-revolution and once
more recognized its true patron in the senate.  When the tribune
Gabinius after the introduction of his proposals appeared
in the senate-house, the fathers of the city were almost on the point
of strangling him with their own hands, without considering in their
zeal how extremely disadvantageous for them this method of arguing
must have ultimately proved.  The tribune escaped to the Forum
and summoned the multitude to storm the senate-house, when just
at the right time the sitting terminated.  The consul Piso,
the champion of the oligarchy, who accidentally fell into the hands
of the multitude, would have certainly become a victim to popular fury,
had not Gabinius come up and, in order that his certain success
might not be endangered by unseasonable acts of violence, liberated
the consul.  Meanwhile the exasperation of the multitude remained
undiminished and constantly found fresh nourishment in the high
prices of grain and the numerous rumours more or less absurd
which were in circulation--such as that Lucius Lucullus had invested
the money entrusted to him for carrying on the war at interest in Rome,
or had attempted with its aid to make the praetor Quinctius withdraw
from the cause of the people; that the senate intended to prepare
for the "second Romulus," as they called Pompeius, the fate
of the first,(12) and other reports of a like character.

The Vote

Thereupon the day of voting arrived.  The multitude stood densely
packed in the Forum; all the buildings, whence the rostra could
be seen, were covered up to the roofs with men.  All the colleagues
of Gabinius had promised their veto to the senate; but in presence
of the surging masses all were silent except the single Lucius
Trebellius, who had sworn to himself and the senate rather
to die than yield.  When the latter exercised his veto,
Gabinius immediately interrupted the voting on his projects of law
and proposed to the assembled people to deal with his
refractory colleague, as Octavius had formerly been dealt with
on the proposition of Tiberius Gracchus,(13) namely, to depose him
immediately from office.  The vote was taken and the reading
out of the voting tablets began; when the first seventeen tribes,
which came to be read out, had declared for the proposal
and the next affirmative vote would give to it the majority,
Trebellius, forgetting his oath, pusillanimously withdrew his veto.
In vain the tribune Otho then endeavoured to procure that at least
the collegiate principle might be preserved, and two generals
elected instead of one; in vain the aged Quintus Catulus,
the most respected man in the senate, exerted his last energies
to secure that the lieutenant-generals should not be nominated
by the commander-in-chief, but chosen by the people.  Otho could
not even procure a hearing amidst the noise of the multitude;
the well-calculated complaisance of Gabinius procured a hearing
for Catulus, and in respectful silence the multitude listened
to the old man's words; but they were none the less thrown away.
The proposals were not merely converted into law with all the clauses
unaltered, but the supplementary requests in detail made by Pompeius
were instantaneously and completely agreed to.

Successes of Pompeius in the East

With high-strung hopes men saw the two generals Pompeius and Glabrio
depart for their places of destination.  The price of grain
had fallen immediately after the passing of the Gabinian laws
to the ordinary rates--an evidence of the hopes attached to the grand
expedition and its glorious leader.  These hopes were, as we shall
have afterwards to relate, not merely fulfilled, but surpassed:
in three months the clearing of the seas was completed.
Since the Hannibalic war the Roman government had displayed
no such energy in external action; as compared with the lax
and incapable administration of the oligarchy, the democratic--
military opposition had most brilliantly made good its title
to grasp and wield the reins of the state.  The equally unpatriotic
and unskilful attempts of the consul Piso to put paltry obstacles
in the way of the arrangements of Pompeius for the suppression of piracy
in Narbonese Gaul only increased the exasperation of the burgesses
against the oligarchy and their enthusiasm for Pompeius; it was nothing
but the personal intervention of the latter, that prevented the assembly
of the people from summarily removing the consul from his office.

Meanwhile the confusion on the Asiatic continent had become still
worse.  Glabrio, who was to take up in the stead of Lucullus
the chief command against Mithradates and Tigranes, had remained
stationary in the west of Asia Minor and, while instigating
the soldiers by various proclamations against Lucullus, had not entered
on the supreme command, so that Lucullus was forced to retain it.
Against Mithradates, of course, nothing was done; the Pontic
cavalry plundered fearlessly and with impunity in Bithynia
and Cappadocia.  Pompeius had been led by the piratical war to proceed
with his army to Asia Minor; nothing seemed more natural than
to invest him with the supreme command in the Pontic-Armenian war,
to which he himself had long aspired.  But the democratic party did
not, as may be readily conceived, share the wishes of its general,
and carefully avoided taking the initiative in the matter.
It is very probable that it had induced Gabinius not to entrust
both the war with Mithradates and that with the pirates from the outset
to Pompeius, but to entrust the former to Glabrio; upon no account
could it now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional
position of the already too-powerful general.  Pompeius himself
retained according to his custom a passive attitude; and perhaps
he would in reality have returned home after fulfilling the commission
which he had received, but for the occurrence of an incident
unexpected by all parties.

The Manillian Law

One Gaius Manilius, an utterly worthless and insignificant man
had when tribune of the people by his unskilful projects of legislation
lost favour both with the aristocracy and with the democracy.
In the hope of sheltering himself under the wing of the powerful
general, if he should procure for the latter what every one knew
that he eagerly desired but had not the boldness to ask, Manilius
proposed to the burgesses to recall the governors Glabrio
from Bithynia and Pontus and Marcius Rex from Cilicia, and to entrust
their offices as well as the conduct of the war in the east,
apparently without any fixed limit as to time and at any rate
with the freest authority to conclude peace and alliance,
to the proconsul of the seas and coasts in addition to his previous
office (beg. of 688).  This occurrence very clearly showed how
disorganized was the machinery of the Roman constitution,
whenthe power of legislation was placed as respected the initiative
inthe hands of any demagogue however insignificant, and as respected
the final determination in the hands of the incapable multitude,
while it at the same time was extended to the most important questions
of administration.  The Manilian proposal was acceptable to none of
the political parties; yet it scarcely anywhere encountered serious
resistance.  The democratic leaders, for the same reasons which had
forced them to acquiesce in the Gabinian law, could not venture
earnestly to oppose the Manilian; they kept their displeasure
and their fears to themselves and spoke in public for the general
of the democracy.  The moderate Optimates declared themselves
for the Manilian proposal, because after the Gabinian law resistance
in any case was vain, and far-seeing men already perceived
that the true policy for the senate was to make approaches
as far as possible to Pompeius and to draw him over to their side
on occasion of the breach which might be foreseen between him
and the democrats.  Lastly the trimmers blessed the day
when they too seemed to have an opinion and could come forward
decidedly without losing favour with either of the parties--
it is significant that Marcus Cicero first appeared as an orator
on the political platform in defence of the Manilian proposal.
The strict Optimates alone, with Quintus Catulus at their head,
showed at least their colours and spoke against the proposition.
Of course it was converted into law by a majority bordering on unanimity.
Pompeius thus obtained, in addition to his earlier extensive powers,
the administration of the most important provinces of Asia Minor--
so that there scarcely remained a spot of land within the wide Roman
bounds that had not to obey him--and the conduct of a war as to which,
like the expedition of Alexander, men could tell where and when
it began, but not where and when it might end.  Never since Rome
stood had such power been united in the hands of a single man.

The Democratic-Military Revolution

The Gabinio-Manilian proposals terminated the struggle between
the senate and the popular party, which the Sempronian laws had begun
sixty-seven years before.  As the Sempronian laws first constituted
the revolutionary party into a political opposition, the Gabinio-
Manilian first converted it from an opposition into the government;
and as it had been a great moment when the first breach
in the existing constitution was made by disregarding the veto
of Octavius, it was a moment no less full of significance
when the last bulwark of the senatorial rule fell with the withdrawal
of Trebellius.  This was felt on both sides and even the indolent
souls of the senators were convulsively roused by this death-
struggle; but yet the war as to the constitution terminated
in a very different and far more pitiful fashion than it had begun.
A youth in every sense noble had commenced the revolution;
it was concluded by pert intriguers and demagogues of the lowest type.
On the other hand, while the Optimates had begun the struggle
with a measured resistance and with a defence which earnestly held out
even at the forlorn posts, they ended with taking the initiative
in club-law, with grandiloquent weakness, and with pitiful perjury.
What had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained; the senate
had ceased to govern.  But when the few old men who had seen
the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi,
compared that time with the present they found that everything
had in the interval changed--countrymen and citizens, state-law
and military discipline, life and manners; and well might those
painfully smile, who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period
with their realization.  Such reflections however belonged
to the past.  For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall
of the aristocracy was an accomplished fact.  The oligarchs resembled
an army utterly broken up, whose scattered bands might serve
to reinforce another body of troops, but could no longer themselves
keep the field or risk a combat on their own account.  But as
the old struggle came to an end, a new one was simultaneously
beginning--the struggle between the two powers hitherto leagued
for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution, the civil-
democratic opposition and the military power daily aspiring
to greater ascendency.  The exceptional position of Pompeius
even under the Gabinian, and much more under the Manilian,
law was incompatible with a republican organization.  He had been
as even then his opponents urged with good reason, appointed
by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but as regent of the empire;
not unjustly was he designated by a Greek familiar with eastern
affairs "king of kings." If he should hereafter, on returning
from the east once more victorious and with increased glory,
with well-filled chests, and with troops ready for battle and devoted
to his cause, stretch forth his hand to seize the crown--who would
then arrest his arm?  Was the consular Quintus Catulus, forsooth,
to summon forth the senators against the first general of his time
and his experienced legions? or was the designated aedile Gaius Caesar
to call forth the civic multitude, whose eyes he had just feasted
on his three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators with their silver
equipments? Soon, exclaimed Catulus, it would be necessary once
more to flee to the rocks of the Capitol, in order to save liberty.
It was not the fault of the prophet, that the storm came not,
as he expected, from the east, but that on the contrary fate,
fulfilling his words more literally than he himself anticipated,
brought on the destroying tempest a few years later from Gaul.




Chapter IV

Pompeius and the East

Pompeius Suppresses Piracy

We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs
of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687
Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude of power, undertook
the conduct of the war against the pirates.  He began by dividing
the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts
and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants,
for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching
the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them
into the meshes of a colleague.  He himself went with the best part
of the ships of war that were available--among which on this occasion
also those of Rhodes were distinguished--early in the year to sea,
and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian
waters, with a view especially to re-establish the supply of grain
from these provinces to Italy.  His lieutenants meanwhile addressed
themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts.
It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted
from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate
of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province
of Narbo--an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same
time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against
the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared
in Rome.(1)  When at the end of forty days the navigation had been
everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean,
Pompeius proceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern
seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy,
the Lycian and Cilician waters.  On the news of the approach
of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere disappeared
from the open sea; and not only so, but even the strong Lycian fortresses
of Anticragus and Cragus surrendered without offering serious
resistance.  The well-calculated moderation of Pompeius helped
even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible
marine strongholds.  His predecessors had ordered every captured
freebooter to be nailed to the cross; without hesitation he gave
quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found
in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence.
The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain
at least their own waters by arms against the Romans; after having
placed their children and wives and their rich treasures for
security in the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited
the Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the offing
of Coracesium.  But here the ships of Pompeius, well manned and well
provided with all implements of war, achieved a complete victory.
Without farther hindrance he landed and began to storm and break up
the mountain-castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer
to themselves freedom and life as the price of submission.  Soon
the great multitude desisted from the continuance of a hopeless war
in their strongholds and mountains, and consented to surrender.
Forty-nine days after Pompeius had appeared in the eastern seas,
Cilicia was subdued and the war at an end.

The rapid suppression of piracy was a great relief, but not a grand
achievement; with the resources of the Roman state, which had been
called forth in lavish measure, the corsairs could as little cope
as the combined gangs of thieves in a great city can cope
with a well-organized police.  It was a naive proceeding to celebrate
such a razzia as a victory.  But when compared with the prolonged
continuance and the vast and daily increasing extent of the evil,
it was natural that the surprisingly rapid subjugation
of the dreaded pirates should make a most powerful impression
on the public; and the more so, that this was the first trial of rule
centralized in a single hand, and the parties were eagerly waiting
to see whether that hand would understand the art of ruling better
than the collegiate body had done.  Nearly 400 ships and boats,
including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either taken
by Pompeius or surrendered to him; in all about 1300 piratical vessels
are said to have been destroyed; besides which the richly-filled
arsenals and magazines of the buccaneers were burnt.
Of the pirates about 10,000 perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive
into the hands of the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral
of the Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other
individuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long believed
at home to be dead, obtained once more their freedom through
Pompeius.  In the summer of 687, three months after the beginning
of the campaign, commerce resumed its wonted course and instead
of the former famine abundance prevailed in Italy.

Dissensions between Pompeius and Metellus as to Crete

A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however,
disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the Roman arms.
There Quintus Metellus was stationed in the second year of his command,
and was employed in finishing the subjugation-already substantially
effected--of the island,(2) when Pompeius appeared in the eastern
waters.  A collision was natural, for according to the Gabinian law
the command of Pompeius extended concurrently with that of Metellus
over the whole island, which stretched to a great length but was
nowhere more than ninety miles broad;(3) but Pompeius was considerate
enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants.  The still resisting
Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen
taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned
on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit
of imposing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south
of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius.
He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment,
from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius
to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions
and to take over the towns.  This proceeding was, no doubt,
not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side
of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when,
utterly ignoring the convention of the cities with Pompeius,
he continued to treat them as hostile.  In vain Octavius protested;
in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned
from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there;
Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna,
besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person
was taken prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans
who were taken with him were consigned to the executioner.
Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna,
at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader's
death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been
commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war
in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna,
where both made a stand, was only subdued by Metellus
after the most obstinate resistance.

In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal
civil war at his own hand against the generalissimo of the democracy.
It shows the indescribable disorganization in the Roman state,
that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter
correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years
afterwards were sitting once more peacefully and even "amicably"
side by side in the senate.

Pompeius Takes the Supreme Command against Mithradates

Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing
for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans
or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal
which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs
of the mainland of Asia Minor.  The portion of the Lucullan army
that was still left after the losses which it had suffered
and the departure of the Fimbrian legions remained inactive
on the upper Halys in the country of the Trocmi bordering
on the Pontic territory.  Lucullus still held provisionally
the chief command, as his nominated successor Glabrio continued
to linger in the west of Asia Minor.  The three legions
commanded by Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive
in Cilicia.  The Pontic territory was again wholly in the power
of king Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities
that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria,
pay for their revolt with cruel severity.  The kings of the east
did not proceed to any serious offensive movement against the Romans,
either because it formed no part of their plan, or--as was asserted--
because the landing of Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates
and Tigranes to desist from advancing farther.  The Manilian law
realized the secretly-cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly
than he probably himself anticipated; Glabrio and Rex
were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia and Cilicia
with the troops stationed there, as well as the management
of the Pontic-Armenian war along with authority to make war, peace,
and alliance with the dynasts of the east at his own discretion,
were transferred to Pompeius.  Amidst the prospect of honours
and spoils so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising
of an ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty laurels;
he abandoned the expedition against Crete and the farther pursuit
of the corsairs, and destined his fleet also to support the attack
which he projected on the kings of Pontus and Armenia.  Yet amidst
this land-war he by no means wholly lost sight of piracy,
which was perpetually raising its head afresh.  Before he left Asia
(691) he caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against
the corsairs; on his proposal in the following year a similar measure
was resolved on for Italy, and the sum needed for the purpose
was granted by the senate.  They continued to protect the coasts
with guards of cavalry and small squadrons, and though
as the expeditions to be mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696
and Egypt in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet
after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes
and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its head
and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as it had done
under the government of the mouldering oligarchy.

War Preparations of Pompeius
Alliance with the Parthians
Variance between Mithradates and Tigranes

The few months which still remained before the commencement
of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed by the new commander-
in-chief with strenuous activity in diplomatic and military
preparations.  Envoys were sent to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre
than to attempt a serious mediation.  There was a hope at the Pontic
court that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by the recent
considerable successes which the allies had achieved over Rome
to enter into the Pontic-Armenian alliance.  To counteract this, Roman
envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles,
which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid.
A son of the great-king Tigranes, bearing the same name
had rebelled against his father, either because he was unwilling
to wait for the death of the old man, or because his father's
suspicion, which had already cost several of his brothers their
lives, led him to discern his only chance of safety in open
insurrection.  Vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge
with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid,
and intrigued against his father there.  It was partly due
to his exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward
which was offered to him by both sides for his accession--the secured
possession of Mesopotamia--from the hand of the Romans, renewed
with Pompeius the agreement concluded with Lucullus respecting
the boundary of the Euphrates,(4) and even consented to operate
in concert with the Romans against Armenia.  But the younger Tigranes
occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out of his
promoting the alliance between the Romans and the Parthians,
for his insurrection produced a variance between the kings
Tigranes and Mithradates themselves.  The great-king cherished
in secret the suspicion that Mithradates might have had a hand
in the insurrection of his grandson--Cleopatra the mother
of the younger Tigranes was the daughter of Mithradates--
and, though no open rupture took place, the good understanding
between the two monarchs was disturbed at the very moment
when it was most urgently needed.

At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike preparations
with energy.  The Asiatic allied and client communities were warned
to furnish the stipulated contingents.  Public notices summoned
the discharged veterans of the legions of Fimbria to return
to the standards as volunteers, and by great promises and the name
of Pompeius a considerable portion of them were induced in reality
to obey the call.  The whole force united under the orders
of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries,
to between 40,000 and 50,000 men.(5)

Pompeius and Lucullus

In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, to take
the chief command of the troops of Lucullus and to advance
with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Cilician legions
were directed to follow.  At Danala, a place belonging to the Trocmi,
the two generals met; but the reconciliation, which mutual friends
had hoped to effect, was not accomplished.  The preliminary
courtesies soon passed into bitter discussions, and these
into violent altercation: they parted in worse mood than they had met.
As Lucullus continued to make honorary gifts and to distribute
lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared
all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to
his own arrival null and void.  Formally he was in the right;
customary tactin the treatment of a meritorious and more than
sufficientlymortified opponent was not to be looked for from him.

Invasion of Pontus
Retreat of Mithradates

So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops crossed
the frontier of Pontus.  There they were opposed by king Mithradates
with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry.  Left in the lurch by his
allies and attacked by Rome with reinforced power and energy,
he made an attempt to procure peace; but he would hear nothing
of the unconditional submission which Pompeius demanded--what worse
could the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him? That he might
not expose his army, mostly archers and horsemen, to the formidable
shock of the Roman infantry of the line, he slowly retired before
the enemy, and compelled the Romans to follow him in his various
cross-marches; making a stand at the same time, wherever there was
opportunity, with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy,
and occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding
their supplies.  At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted
from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone,
proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates,
crossed it, and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire.
But Mithradates followed along the left bank of the Euphrates,
and when he had arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province,
he intercepted the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira,
which was strong and well provided with water, and from which
with his light troops he commanded the plain.  Pompeius,
still wanting the Cilician legions and not strong enough to maintain
himself in this position without them, had to retire over the Euphrates
and to seek protection from the cavalry and archers of the king
in the wooded ground of Pontic Armenia extensively intersected
by rocky ravines and deep valleys.  It was not till the troops
from Cilicia arrived and rendered it possible to resume the offensive
with a superiority of force, that Pompeius again advanced, invested
the camp of the king with a chain of posts of almost eighteen miles
in length, and kept him formally blockaded there, while the Roman
detachments scoured the country far and wide.  The distress in the Pontic
camp was great; the draught animals even had to be killed; at length
after remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick
and wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to leave
in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death by his own troops,
and departed during the night with the utmost secrecy towards
the east.  Cautiously Pompeius followed through the unknown land:
the march was now approaching the boundary which separated
the dominions of Mithradates and Tigranes.  When the Roman general
perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest
to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the enemy away
after him into the far distant regions of the east, he determined
not to permit this.

Battle at Nicopolis

The two armies lay close to each other.  During the rest at noon
the Roman army set out without the enemy observing the movement,
made a circuit, and occupied the heights, which lay in front
and commanded a defile to be passed by the enemy, on the southern bank
of the river Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Enderes,
at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built.  The following
morning the Pontic troops broke up in their usual manner,
and, supposing that the enemy was as hitherto behind them, after,
accomplishing the day's march they pitched their camp
in the very valley whose encircling heights the Romans had occupied.
Suddenly in the silence of the night there sounded all around them
the dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides
poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp-followers,
chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other; and amidst
the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness, not a missile
failed to take effect.  When the Romans had expended their darts,
they charged down from the heights on the masses which had now become
visible by the light of the newly-risen moon, and which were
abandoned to them almost defenceless; those that did not fall
by the steel of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful pressure
under the hoofs and wheels.  It was the last battle-field
on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans.  With three
attendants--two of his horsemen, and a concubine who was accustomed
to follow him in male attire and to fight bravely by his side--
he made his escape thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither
a portion of his trusty followers found their way to him.  He divided
among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents of gold
(1,400,000 pounds); furnished them and himself with poison;
and hastened with the band that was left to him up the Euphrates
to unite with his ally, the great-king of Armenia.

Tigranes Breaks with Mithradates
Mithradates Crosses the Phasis

This hope likewise was vain; the alliance, on the faith of which
Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already by that time
existed no longer.  During the conflicts between Mithradates
and Pompeius just narrated, the king of the Parthians, yielding
to the urgency of the Romans and above all of the exiled Armenian prince,
had invaded the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had
compelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains.
The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata;
but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure
with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered
the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led
by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom
Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little
inclined to fight with the freshly-victorious Romans, and least
of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates; whom he trusted less
than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son
intended to betake himself to his grandfather.  So he entered into
negotiations with the Romans for a separate peace; but he did not wait
for the conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance
which linked him to Mithradates.  The latter, when he had arrived
at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn that the great-king
Tigranes had set a price of 100 talents (24,000 pounds)
on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had delivered them
to the Romans.  King Mithradates saw his kingdom in the hands
of the enemy, and his allies on the point of coming to an agreement
with them; it was not possible to continue the war; he might deem
himself fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along
the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in perhaps
dislodging his son Machares--who had revolted and entered into
connection with the Romans(6)--once more from the Bosporan kingdom,
and in finding on the Maeotis a fresh soil for fresh projects.
So he turned northward.  When the king in his flight had crossed
the Phasis, the ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time
discontinued his pursuit; but instead of returning to the region
of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into the region
of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.

Pompeius at Artaxata
Peace with Tigranes

Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the region
of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his camp thirteen miles
from the city.  There he was met by the son of the great-king,
who hoped after the fall of his father to receive the Armenian diadem
from the hand of the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every
way to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father
and the Romans.  The great-king was only the more resolved to purchase
peace at any price.  On horseback and without his purple robe,
but adorned with the royal diadem and the royal turban, he appeared
at the gate of the Roman camp and desired to be conducted
to the presence of the Roman general.  After having given up
at the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman camp
required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself in barbarian
fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in token of unconditional
surrender placed the diadem and tiara in his hands.  Pompeius,
highly delighted at a victory which cost nothing, raised up
the humbled king of kings, invested him again with the insignia
of his dignity, and dictated the peace.  Besides a payment of;
1,400,000 pounds (6000 talents) to the war-chest and a present
to the soldiers, out of which each of them received 50 -denarii-
(2 pounds 2 shillings), the king ceded all the conquests which
he had made, not merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian
possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right bank
of the Euphrates; he was again restricted to Armenia proper,
and his position of great-king was, of course, at an end.
In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued the two mighty kings
of Pontus and Armenia.  At the beginning of 688 there was not a Roman
soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its
close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without
an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat
on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal
of Rome.  The whole domain of Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates
unconditionally obeyed the Romans; the victorious army took up
its winter-quarters to the east of that stream on Armenian soil,
in the country from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur,
from which the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.

The Tribes of the Caucasus
Iberians
Albanians

But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot, raised up
for them new conflicts.  The brave peoples of the middle and eastern
Caucasus saw with indignation the remote Occidentals encamping
on their territory.  There--in the fertile and well-watered tableland
of the modern Georgia--dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well-organized,
agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs
cultivated the soil according to the system of common possession,
without any separate ownership of the individual cultivators.  Army
and people were one; the people were headed partly by the ruler-
clans--out of which the eldest always presided over the whole
Iberian nation as king, and the next eldest as judge and leader
of the army--partly by special families of priests, on whom chiefly
devolved the duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties
concluded with other peoples and of watching over their observance.
The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the king.
Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans, who were settled
on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, were in a far lower
stage of culture.  Chiefly a pastoral people they tended, on foot
or on horseback, their numerous herds in the luxuriant meadows
of the modern Shirvan; their few tilled fields were still cultivated
with the old wooden plough without iron share.  Coined money
was unknown, and they did not count beyond a hundred.  Each of their
tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief and spoke its distinct
dialect.  Far superior in number to the Iberians, the Albanians
could not at all cope with them in bravery.  The mode of fighting
was on the whole the same with both nations; they fought chiefly
with arrows and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian
fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods
behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops of trees
on the foe; the Albanians had also numerous horsemen partly mailed
after the Medo-Armenian manner with heavy cuirasses and greaves.
Both nations lived on their lands and pastures in a complete
independence preserved from time immemorial.  Nature itself
as it were, seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and Asia
as a rampart against the tide of national movements; there the arms
of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly found their limit;
now the brave garrison of this partition-wall set themselves
to defend it also against the Romans.

Albanians Conquered by Pompeius
Iberians Conquered

Alarmed by the information that the Roman commander-in-chief
intended next spring to cross the mountains and to pursue
the Pontic king beyond the Caucasus--for Mithradates, they heard,
was passing the winter in Dioscurias (Iskuria between Suchum Kale
and Anaklia) on the Black Sea--the Albanians under their prince
Oroizes first crossed the Kur in the middle of the winter of 688-689
and threw themselves on the army, which was divided for the sake
of its supplies into three larger corps under Quintus Metellus Celer,
Lucius Flaccus, and Pompeius in person.  But Celer, on whom
the chief attack fell, made a brave stand, and Pompeius, after having
delivered himself from the division sent to attack him, pursued
the barbarians beaten at all points as far as the Kur.  Artoces
the king of the Iberians kept quiet and promised peace and friendship;
but Pompeius, informed that he was secretly arming so as to fall
upon the Romans on their march in the passes of the Caucasus,
advanced in the spring of 689, before resuming the pursuit
of Mithradates, to the two fortresses just two miles distant
from each other, Harmozica (Horum Ziche or Armazi) and Seusamora
(Tsumar) which a little above the modern Tiflis command the two valleys
of the river Kur and its tributary the Aragua, and with these
the only passes leading from Armenia to Iberia.  Artoces, surprised
by the enemy before he was aware of it, hastily burnt the bridge over
the Kur and retreated negotiating into the interior.  Pompeius occupied
the fortresses and followed the Iberians to the other bank
of the Kur; by which he hoped to induce them to immediate submission.
But Artoces retired farther and farther into the interior,
and, when at length he halted on the river Pelorus, he did so
not to surrender but to fight.  The Iberian archers however withstood
not for a moment the onset of the Roman legions, and, when Artoces
saw the Pelorus also crossed by the Romans, he submitted
at length to the conditions which the victor proposed, and sent
his children as hostages.

Pompeius Proceeds to Colchis

Pompeius now, agreeably to the plan which he had formerly projected,
marched through the Sarapana pass from the region of the Kur
to that of the Phasis and thence down that river to the Black Sea,
where on the Colchian coast the fleet under Servilius already
awaited him.  But it was for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost
unsubstantial, that the army and fleet were thus brought
to the richly fabled shores of Colchis.  The laborious march just
completed through unknown and mostly hostile nations was nothing
when compared with what still awaited them, and if they should
really succeed in conducting the force from the mouth of the Phasis
to the Crimea, through warlike and poor barbarian tribes,
on inhospitable and unknown waters, along a coast where
at certain places the mountains sink perpendicularly into the sea
and it would have been absolutely necessary to embark in the ships--
if such a march should be successfully accomplished, which was perhaps
more difficult than the campaigns of Alexander and Hannibal--
what was gained by it even at the best, corresponding at all to its toils
and dangers? The war doubtless was not ended, so long as the old
king was still among the living; but who could guarantee that they
would really succeed in catching the royal game for the sake of which
this unparalleled chase was to be instituted?  Was it not better
even at the risk of Mithradates once more throwing the torch
of war into Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised
so little gain and so many dangers? Doubtless numerous voices
in the army, and still more numerous voices in the capital,
urged the general to continue the pursuit incessantly and at any price;
but they were the voices partly of foolhardy Hotspurs,
partly of those perfidious friends, who would gladly at any price
have kept the too-powerful Imperator aloof from the capital
and entangled him amidst interminable undertakings in the east.
Pompeius was too experienced and too discreet an officer to stake
his fame and his army in obstinate adherence to so injudicious
an expedition; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the army
furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit
of the king and arranging its return.  The fleet received instructions
to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the northern coast of Asia
Minor against any hostile invasion, and strictly to blockade
the Cimmerian Bosporus under the threat of death to any trader
who should break the blockade.  Pompeius conducted the land troops
not without great hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory
to the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the stream,
into the Albanian plain.

Fresh Conflicts with the Albanians

For several days the Roman army had to march in the glowing heat
through this almost waterless flat country, without encountering
the enemy; it was only on the left bank of the Abas (probably
the river elsewhere named Alazonius, now Alasan) that the force
of the Albanians under the leadership of Coses, brother of the king
Oroizes, was drawn up against the Romans; they are said to have
amounted, including the contingent which had arrived
from the inhabitants of the Transcaucasian steppes, to 60,000 infantry
and 12,000 cavalry.  Yet they would hardly have risked the battle,
unless they had supposed that they had merely to fight with
the Roman cavalry; but the cavalry had only been placed in front,
and, on its retiring, the masses of Roman infantry showed themselves
from their concealment behind.  After a short conflict the army
of the barbarians was driven into the woods, which Pompeius
gave orders to invest and set on fire.  The Albanians thereupon
consented to make peace; and, following the example of the more
powerful peoples, all the tribes settled between the Kur and the Caspian
concluded a treaty with the Roman general.  The Albanians,
Iberians, and generally the peoples settled to the south along,
and at the foot of, the Caucasus, thus entered at least for the moment
into a relation of dependence on Rome.  When, on the other hand,
the peoples between the Phasis and the Maeotis--Colchians, Soani,
Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae--were inscribed
in the long list of the nations subdued by Pompeius, the notion
of subjugation was evidently employed in a manner very far from exact.
The Caucasus once more verified its significance in the history
of the world; the Roman conquest, like the Persian and the Hellenic,
found its limit there.

Mithradates Goes to Panticapaeum

Accordingly king Mithradates was left to himself and to destiny.
As formerly his ancestor, the founder of the Pontic state
had first entered his future kingdom as a fugitive from the executioners
of Antigonus and attended only by six horsemen, so had the grandson
now been compelled once more to cross the bounds of his kingdom
and to turn his back on his own and his fathers' conquests.
But for no one had the dice of fate turned up the highest gains
and the greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously
than for the old sultan of Sinope; and the fortunes of men
change rapidly and incalculably in the east.  Well might
Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new
vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn
paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only thing
constant was the perpetual change of fortune.  Inasmuch as
the Roman rule was intolerable for the Orientals at the very core
of their nature, and Mithradates himself was in good and in evil
a true prince of the east, amidst the laxity of the rule exercised
by the Roman senate over the provinces, and amidst the dissensions
of the political parties in Rome fermenting and ripening into civil
war, Mithradates might, if he was fortunate enough to bide
his time, doubtless re-establish his dominion yet a third time.
For this very reason--because he hoped and planned while still
there was life in him--he remained dangerous to the Romans so long as
he lived, as an aged refugee no less than when he had marched forth
with his hundred thousands to wrest Hellas and Macedonia
from the Romans.  The restless old man made his way in the year 689
from Dioscurias amidst unspeakable hardships partly by land partly
by sea to the kingdom of Panticapaeum, where by his reputation
and his numerous retainers he drove his renegade son Machares
from the throne and compelled him to put himself to death.
From this point he attempted once more to negotiate with the Romans;
he besought that his paternal kingdom might be restored to him,
and declared himself ready to recognize the supremacy of Rome
and to pay tribute as a vassal.  But Pompeius refused to grant
the king a position in which he would have begun the old game afresh,
and insisted on his personal submission.

His Last Preparations against Rome

Mithradates, however, had no thought of delivering himself into the hands
of the enemy, but was projecting new and still more extravagant plans.
Straining all the resources with which the treasures that he had saved
and the remnant of his states supplied him, he equipped a new army
of 36,000 men consisting partly of slaves which he armed and exercised
after the Roman fashion, and a war-fleet; according to rumour he designed
to march westward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Pannonia, to carry along
with him the Scythians in the Sarmatian steppes and the Celts on the Danube
as allies, and with this avalanche of peoples to throw himself
on Italy.  This has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war
of the Pontic king has been compared with the military march
of Hannibal; but the same project, which in a gifted man is a stroke
of genius, becomes folly in one who is wrong-headed.  This intended
invasion of Italy by the Orientals was simply ridiculous,
and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair.
Through the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans
were prevented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist
and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it
were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been
soon enough met at the foot of the Alps.

Revolt against Mithradates

In fact, while Pompeius, without troubling himself further
as to the threats of the impotent giant, was employed in organizing
the territory which he had gained, the destinies of the aged king
drew on to their fulfilment without Roman aid in the remote north.
His extravagant preparations had produced the most violent excitement
among the Bosporans, whose houses were torn down, and whose oxen
were taken from the plough and put to death, in order to procure
beams and sinews for constructing engines of war.  The soldiers
too were disinclined to enter on the hopeless Italian expedition.
Mithradates had constantly been surrounded by suspicion
and treason; he had not the gift of calling forth affection
and fidelity among those around him.  As in earlier years he had
compelled his distinguished general Archelaus to seek protection
in the Roman camp; as during the campaigns of Lucullus his most
trusted officers Diodes, Phoenix, and even the most notable of the Roman
emigrants had passed over to the enemy; so now, when his star
grew pale and the old, infirm, embittered sultan was accessible
to no one else save his eunuchs, desertion followed still more rapidly
on desertion.  Castor, the commandant of the fortress Phanagoria
(on the Asiatic coast opposite Kertch), first raised the standard
of revolt; he proclaimed the freedom of the town and delivered
the sons of Mithradates that were in the fortress into the hands
of the Romans.  While the insurrection spread among the Bosporan towns,
and Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), Theudosia (Kaffa),
and others joined the Phanagorites, the king allowed his suspicion
and his cruelty to have free course.  On the information of despicable
eunuchs his most confidential adherents were nailed to the cross;
the king's own sons were the least sure of their lives.  The son
who was his father's favourite and was probably destined by him
as his successor, Pharnaces, took his resolution and headed
the insurgents.  The servants whom Mithradates sent to arrest him,
and the troops despatched against him, passed over to his side;
the corps of Italian deserters, perhaps the most efficient among
the divisions of Mithradates' army, and for that very reason the least
inclined to share in the romantic--and for the deserters peculiarly
hazardous--expedition against Italy, declared itself en masse
for the prince; the other divisions of the army and the fleet followed
the example thus set.

Death of Mithadates

After the country and the army had abandoned the king, the capital
Panticapaeum at length opened its gates to the insurgents
and delivered over to them the old king enclosed in his palace.
From the high wall of his castle the latter besought his son at least
to grant him life and not imbrue his hands in his father's blood;
but the request came ill from the lips of a man whose own hands
were stained with the blood of his mother and with the recently-shed
blood of his innocent son Xiphares; and in heartless severity
and inhumanity Pharnaces even outstripped his father.  Seeing therefore
he had now to die, the sultan resolved at least to die as he had
lived; his wives, his concubines and his daughters, including
the youthful brides of the kings of Egypt and Cyprus, had all to suffer
the bitterness of death and drain the poisoned cup, before he too
took it, and then, when the draught did not take effect quickly
enough, presented his neck for the fatal stroke to a Celtic
mercenary Betuitus.  So died in 691 Mithradates Eupator,
in the sixty-eighth year of his life and the fifty-seventh of his reign,
twenty-six years after he had for the first time taken the field
against the Romans.  The dead body, which king Pharnaces sent
as a voucher of his merits and of his loyalty to Pompeius, was by order
of the latter laid in the royal sepulchre of Sinope.

The death of Mithradates was looked on by the Romans as equivalent
to a victory: the messengers who reported to the general
the catastrophe appeared crowned with laurel, as if they had a victory
to announce, in the Roman camp before Jericho.  In him a great
enemy was borne to the tomb, a greater than had ever yet withstood
the Romans in the indolent east.  Instinctively the multitude felt
this: as formerly Scipio had triumphed even more over Hannibal than
over Carthage, so the conquest of the numerous tribes of the east
and of the great-king himself was almost forgotten in the death
of Mithradates; and at the solemn entry of Pompeius nothing attracted
more the eyes of the multitude than the pictures, in which they saw
king Mithradates as a fugitive leading his horse by the rein
and thereafter sinking down in death between the dead bodies of his
daughters.  Whatever judgment may be formed as to the idiosyncrasy
of the king, he is a figure of great significance--in the full
sense of the expression--for the history of the world. He was not
a personage of genius, probably not even of rich endowments;
but he possessed the very respectable gift of hating,
and out of this hatred he sustained an unequal conflict
against superior foes throughout half a century, without success
doubtless, but with honour.  He became still more significant
through the position in which history had placed him
thanthrough his individual character.  As the forerunner
of the national reaction of the Orientals against the Occidentals,
he opened the new conflict of the east against the west;
and the feeling remained with the vanquished as with the victors,
that his death was not so much the end as the beginning.

Pompeius Proceeds to Syria

Meanwhile Pompeius, after his warfare in 689 with the peoples
of the Caucasus, had returned to the kingdom of Pontus,
and there reduced the last castles still offering resistance;
these were razed in order to check the evils of brigandage,
and the castle wells were rendered unserviceable by rolling blocks
of rock into them.  Thence he set out in the summer of 690 for Syria,
to regulate its affairs.

State of Syria

It is difficult to present a clear view of the state of disorganization
which then prevailed in the Syrian provinces.  It is true
that in consequence of the attacks of Lucullus the Armenian governor
Magadates had evacuated these provinces in 685,(7) and that the Ptolemies,
gladly as they would have renewed the attempts of their predecessors
to attach the Syrian coast to their kingdom, were yet afraid to provoke
the Roman government by the occupation of Syria; the more so,
as that government had not yet regulated their more than doubtful
legal title even in the case of Egypt, and had been several times
solicited by the Syrian princes to recognize them as the legitimate heirs
of the extinct house of the Lagids.  But, though the greater powers
all at the moment refrained from interference in the affairs
of Syria, the land suffered far more than it would have suffered amidst
a great war, through the endless and aimless feuds of the princes,
knights, and cities.

Arabian Princes

The actual masters in the Seleucid kingdom were at this time
the Bedouins, the Jews, and the Nabataeans.  The inhospitable
sandy steppe destitute of springs and trees, which, stretching
from the Arabianpeninsula up to and beyond the Euphrates, reaches
towards the west as far as the Syrian mountain-chain and its narrow belt
of coast, toward the east as far as the rich lowlands of the Tigris
and lower Euphrates--this Asiatic Sahara--was the primitive home
of the sons of Ishmael; from the commencement of tradition we find
the "Bedawi," the "son of the desert," pitching his tents there
and pasturing his camels, or mounting his swift horse in pursuit
now of the foe of his tribe, now of the travelling merchant.  Favoured
formerly by king Tigranes, who made use of them for his plans half
commercial half political,(8) and subsequently by the total absence
of any master in the Syrian land, these children of the desert
spread themselves over northern Syria.  Wellnigh the leading part
in a political point of view was enacted by those tribes,
which had appropriated the first rudiments of a settled existence
from the vicinity of the civilized Syrians.  The most noted
of these emirs were Abgarus, chief of the Arab tribe of the Mardani,
whom Tigranes had settled about Edessa and Carrhae in upper Mesopotamia;(9)
then to the west of the Euphrates Sampsiceramus, emir of the Arabs
of Hemesa (Homs) between Damascus and Antioch, and master
of the strong fortress Arethusa; Azizus the head of another horde
roaming in the same region; Alchaudonius, the prince of the Rhambaeans,
who had already put himself into communication with Lucullus;
and several others.

Robber-Chiefs

Alongside of these Bedouin princes there had everywhere appeared
bold cavaliers, who equalled or excelled the children of the desert
in the noble trade of waylaying.  Such was Ptolemaeus son
of Mennaeus, perhaps the most powerful among these Syrian robber-
chiefs and one of the richest men of this period, who ruled over
the territory of the Ityraeans--the modern Druses--in the valleys
of the Libanus as well as on the coast and over the plain
of Massyas to the northward with the cities of Heliopolis (Baalbec)
and Chalcis, and maintained 8000 horsemen at his own expense;
such were Dionysius and Cinyras, the masters of the maritime cities
Tripolis (Tarablus) and Byblus (between Tarablus and Beyrout);
such was the Jew Silas in Lysias, a fortress not far from Apamea
on the Orontes.

Jews

In the south of Syria, on the other hand, the race of the Jews
seemed as though it would about this time consolidate itself
into a political power.  Through the devout and bold defence
of the primitive Jewish national worship, which was imperilled
by the levelling Hellenism of the Syrian kings, the family
of the Hasmonaeans or the Makkabi had not only attained to their
hereditary principality and gradually to kingly honours;(10)
but these princely high-priests had also spread their conquests
to the north, east, and south.  When the brave Jannaeus Alexander
died (675), the Jewish kingdom stretched towards the south over
the whole Philistian territory as far as the frontier of Egypt, towards
the south-east as far as that of the Nabataean kingdom of Petra,
from which Jannaeus had wrested considerable tracts on the right
bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, towards the north over Samaria
and Decapolis up to the lake of Gennesareth; here he was already
making arrangements to occupy Ptolemais (Acco) and victoriously
to repel the aggressions of the Ityraeans.  The coast obeyed the Jews
from Mount Carmel as far as Rhinocorura, including the important
Gaza--Ascalon alone was still free; so that the territory
of the Jews, once almost cut off from the sea, could now be enumerated
among the asylums of piracy.  Now that the Armenian invasion, just
as it approached the borders of Judaea, was averted from that land
by the intervention of Lucullus,(11) the gifted rulers
of the Hasmonaean house would probably have carried their arms still
farther, had not the development of the power of that remarkable
conquering priestly state been nipped in the bud by internal divisions.

Pharisees
Sadducees

The spirit of religious independence, and the spirit of national
independence--the energetic union of which had called the Maccabee
state into life--speedily became once more dissociated and even
antagonistic.  The Jewish orthodoxy or Pharisaism, as it was called,
was content with the free exercise of religion, as it had
been asserted in defiance of the Syrian rulers; its practical aim
was a community of Jews, composed of the orthodox in the lands
of all rulers, essentially irrespective of the secular government--
a community which found its visible points of union in the tribute
for the temple at Jerusalem, which was obligatory on every
conscientious Jew, and in the schools of religion and spiritual
courts.  Overagainst this orthodoxy, which turned away
from political life and became more and more stiffened into theological
formalism and painful ceremonial service, were arrayed
the defenders of the national independence, invigorated amidst
successful struggles against foreign rule, and advancing towards
the ideal of a restoration of the Jewish state, the representatives
of the old great families--the so-called Sadducees--partly
on dogmatic grounds, in so far as they acknowledged only the sacred
books themselves and conceded authority merely, not canonicity,
to the "bequests of the scribes," that is, to canonical tradition;(12)
partly and especially on political grounds, in so far as, instead
of a fatalistic waiting for the strong arm of the Lord of Zebaoth,
they taught that the salvation of the nation was to be expected
from the weapons of this world, and from the inward and outward
strengthening of the kingdom of David as re-established
in the glorious times of the Maccabees.  Those partisans of orthodoxy
found their support in the priesthood and the multitude; they
contested with the Hasmonaeans the legitimacy of their high-
priesthood, and fought against the noxious heretics with all
the reckless implacability, with which the pious are often found
to contend for the possession of earthly goods.  The state-party
on the other hand relied for support on intelligence brought into
contact with the influences of Hellenism, on the army, in which
numerous Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries served, and on the abler
kings, who here strove with the ecclesiastical power much as
a thousand years later the Hohenstaufen strove with the Papacy.
Jannaeus had kept down the priesthood with a strong hand;
under his two sons there arose (685 et seq.) a civil and fraternal war,
since the Pharisees opposed the vigorous Aristobulus and attempted
to obtain their objects under the nominal rule of his brother,
the good-natured and indolent Hyrcanus.  This dissension not merely
put a stop to the Jewish conquests, but gave also foreign nations
opportunity to interfere and thereby obtain a commanding position
in southern Syria.

Nabataeans

This was the case first of all with the Nabataeans.  This remarkable
nation has often been confounded with its eastern neighbours,
the wandering Arabs, but it is more closely related to the Aramaean
branch than to the proper children of Ishmael.  This Aramaean or,
according to the designation of the Occidentals, Syrian stock
must have in very early times sent forth from its most ancient
settlements about Babylon a colony, probably for the sake of trade,
to the northern end of the Arabian gulf; these were the Nabataeans
on the Sinaitic peninsula, between the gulf of Suez and Aila,
and in the region of Petra (Wadi Mousa).  In their ports
the wares of the Mediterranean were exchanged for those of India;
the great southern caravan-route, which ran from Gaza to the mouth
of the Euphrates and the Persian gulf, passed through the capital
of the Nabataeans--Petra--whose still magnificent rock-palaces
and rock-tombs furnish clearer evidence of the Nabataean civilization
than does an almost extinct tradition.  The leaders of the Pharisees,
to whom after the manner of priests the victory of their faction
seemed not too dearly bought at the price of the independence
and integrity of their country, solicited Aretas the king
of the Nabataeans for aid against Aristobulus, in return for which
they promised to give back to him all the conquests wrested
from him by Jannaeus.  Thereupon Aretas had advanced with, it was
said, 50,000 men into Judaea and, reinforced by the adherents
of the Pharisees, he kept king Aristobulus besieged in his capital.

Syrian Cities

Amidst the system of violence and feud which thus prevailed
from one end of Syria to another, the larger cities were of course
the principal sufferers, such as Antioch, Seleucia, Damascus,
whose citizens found themselves paralysed in their husbandry
as well as in their maritime and caravan trade.  The citizens of Byblus
and Berytus (Beyrout) were unable to protect their fields
and their ships from the Ityraeans, who issuing from their mountain
and maritime strongholds rendered land and sea equally insecure.
Those of Damascus sought to ward off the attacks of the Ityraeans
and Ptolemaeus by handing themselves over to the more remote kings
of the Nabataeans or of the Jews.  In Antioch Sampsiceramus and Azizus
mingled in the internal feuds of the citizens, and the Hellenic
great city had wellnigh become even now the seat of an Arab emir.
The state of things reminds us of the kingless times of the German
middle ages, when Nuremberg and Augsburg found their protection
not in the king's law and the king's courts, but in their own walls
alone; impatiently the merchant-citizens of Syria awaited the strong
arm, which should restore to them peace and security of intercourse.

The Last Seleucids

There was no want, however, of a legitimate king in Syria;
there were even two or three of them.  A prince Antiochus
from the house of the Seleucids had been appointed by Lucullus
as ruler of the most northerly province in Syria, Commagene.(13)
Antiochus Asiaticus, whose claims on the Syrian throne had met
with recognition both from the senate and from Lucullus,(14)
had been received in Antioch after the retreat of the Armenians
and there acknowledged as king.  A third Seleucid prince Philippus
had immediately confronted him there as a rival; and the great
population of Antioch, excitable and delighting in opposition
almost like that of Alexandria, as well as one or two
of the neighbouring Arab emirs had interfered in the family strife
which now seemed inseparable from the rule of the Seleucids.
Was there any wonder that legitimacy became ridiculous and loathsome
to its subjects, and that the so-called rightful kings
were of even somewhat less importance in the land than the petty
princes and robber-chiefs?

Annexation of Syria

To create order amidst this chaos did not require either brilliance
of conception or a mighty display of force, but it required a clear
insight into the interests of Rome and of her subjects, and vigour
and consistency in establishing and maintaining the institutions
recognized as necessary.  The policy of the senate in support
of legitimacy had sufficiently degraded itself; the general,
whom the opposition had brought into power, was not to be guided
by dynastic considerations, but had only to see that the Syrian kingdom
should not be withdrawn from the clientship of Rome in future either
by the quarrels of pretenders or by the Covetousness of neighbours.
But to secure this end there was only one course; that the Roman
community should send a satrap to grasp with a vigorous hand
the reins of government, which had long since practically slipped
from the hands of the kings of the ruling house more even through
their own fault than through outward misfortunes.  This course Pompeius
took.  Antiochus the Asiatic, on requesting to be acknowledged
as the hereditary ruler of Syria, received the answer that Pompeius
would not give back the sovereignty to a king who knew neither how
to maintain nor how to govern his kingdom, even at the request
of his subjects, much less against their distinctly expressed wishes.
With this letter of the Roman proconsul the house of Seleucus
was ejected from the throne which it had occupied for two hundred
and fifty years.  Antiochus soon after lost his life through
the artifice of the emir Sampsiceramus, as whose client he played
the ruler in Antioch; thenceforth there is no further mention of these
mock-kings and their pretensions.

Military Pacification of Syria

But, to establish the new Roman government and introduce
any tolerable order into the confusion of affairs, it was further
necessary to advance into Syria with a military force and to terrify
or subdue all the disturbers of the peace, who had sprung
up during the many years of anarchy, by means of the Roman legions.
Already during the campaigns in the kingdom of Pontus and on the Caucasus
Pompeius had turned his attention to the affairs of Syria
and directed detached commissioners and corps to interfere,
where there was need.  Aulus Gabinius--the same who as tribune
of the people had sent Pompeius to the east--had in 689 marched
along the Tigris and then across Mesopotamia to Syria, to adjust
the complicated affairs of Judaea.  In like manner the severely pressed
Damascus had already been occupied by Lollius and Metellus.  Soon
afterwards another adjutant of Pompeius, Marcus Scaurus, arrived
in Judaea, to allay the feuds ever breaking out afresh there.
Lucius Afranius also, who during the expedition of Pompeius
to the Caucasus held the command of the Roman troops in Armenia,
had proceeded from Corduene (the northern Kurdistan) to upper
Mesopotamia, and, after he had successfully accomplished
the perilous march through the desert with the sympathizing help
of the Hellenes settled in Carrhae, brought the Arabs in Osrhoene
to submission.  Towards the end of 690 Pompeius in person arrived
in Syria,(15) and remained there till the summer of the following
year, resolutely interfering and regulating matters for the present
and the future.  He sought to restore the kingdom to its state
in the better times of the Seleucid rule; all usurped powers were set
aside, the robber-chiefs were summoned to give up their castles,
the Arab sheiks were again restricted to their desert domains,
the affairs of the several communities were definitely regulated.

The Robber-Chiefs Chastised

The legions stood ready to procure obedience to these stern orders,
and their interference proved especially necessary against
the audacious robber-chiefs.  Silas the ruler of Lysias, Dionysius
the ruler of Tripolis, Cinyras the ruler of Byblus were taken prisoners
in their fortresses and executed, the mountain and maritime strongholds
of the Ityraeans were broken up, Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus in Chalcis
was forced to purchase his freedom and his lordship with a ransom
of 1000 talents (240,000 pounds).  Elsewhere the commands
of the new master met for the most part with unresisting obedience.

Negotiations and Conflicts with the Jews

The Jews alone hesitated.  The mediators formerly sent by Pompeius,
Gabinius and Scaurus, had--both, as it was said, bribed
with considerable sums--in the dispute between the brothers
Hyrcanus and Aristobulus decided in favour of the latter, and had also
induced king Aretas to raise the siege of Jerusalem and to proceed
homeward, in doing which he sustained a defeat at the hands
of Aristobulus.  But, when Pompeius arrived in Syria, he cancelled
the orders of his subordinates and directed the Jews to resume their
old constitution under high-priests, as the senate had recognized
it about 593,(16) and to renounce along with the hereditary
principality itself all the conquests made by the Hasmonaean
princes.  It was the Pharisees, who had sent an embassy of two
hundred of their most respected men to the Roman general and procured
from him the overthrow of the kingdom; not to the advantage
of their own nation, but doubtless to that of the Romans,
who from the nature of the case could not but here revert
to the old rights of the Seleucids, and could not tolerate a conquering
power like that of Jannaeus within the limits of their empire.
Aristobulus was uncertain whether it was better patiently
to acquiesce in his inevitable doom or to meet his fate with arms
in hand; at one time he seemed on the point of submitting to Pompeius,
at another he seemed as though he would summon the national party
among the Jews to a struggle with the Romans.  When at length,
with the legions already at the gates, he yielded to the enemy,
the more resolute or more fanatical portion of his army refused
to comply with the orders of a king who was not free.  The capital
submitted; the steep temple-rock was defended by that fanatical band
for three months with an obstinacy ready to brave death, till at last
the besiegers effected an entrance while the besieged were resting
on the Sabbath, possessed themselves of the sanctuary, and handed over
the authors of that desperate resistance, so far as they had
not fallen under the sword of the Romans, to the axes of the lictors.
Thus ended the last resistance of the territories newly annexed
to the Roman state.

The New Relations of the Romans in the East

The work begun by Lucullus had been completed by Pompeius;
the hitherto formally independent states of Bithynia, Pontus,
and Syria were united with the Roman state; the exchange--which
had been recognized for more than a hundred years as necessary--
of the feeble system of a protectorate for that of direct sovereignty
over the more important dependent territories,(17) had at length
been realized, as soon as the senate had been overthrown and the Gracchan
party had come to the helm.  Rome had obtained in the east
new frontiers, new neighbours, new friendly and hostile relations.
There were now added to the indirect territories of Rome
the kingdom of Armenia and the principalities of the Caucasus,
and also the kingdom on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the small remnant
of the extensive conquests of Mithradates Eupator, now a client-state
of Rome under the government of his son and murderer Pharnaces;
the town of Phanagoria alone, whose commandant Castor had given
the signal for the revolt, was on that account recognized by the Romans
as free and independent.

Conflicts with the Nabataeans

No like successes could be boasted of against the Nabataeans.
King Aretas had indeed, yielding to the desire of the Romans,
evacuated Judaea; but Damascus was still in his hands,
and the Nabataean land had not yet been trodden by any Roman soldier.
To subdue that region or at least to show to their new neighbours
in Arabia that the Roman eagles were now dominant on the Orontes
and on the Jordan, and that the time had gone by when any one was free
to levy contributions in the Syrian lands as a domain without a master,
Pompeius began in 691 an expedition against Petra; but detained
by the revolt of the Jews, which broke out during this expedition,
he was not reluctant to leave to his successor Marcus Scaurus
the carrying out of the difficult enterprise against the Nabataean city
situated far off amidst the desert.(18)  In reality Scaurus also
soon found himself compelled to return without having accomplished
his object.  He had to content himself with making war
on the Nabataeans in the deserts on the left bank of the Jordan,
where he could lean for support on the Jews, but yet bore off only
very trifling successes.  Ultimately the adroit Jewish minister
Antipater from Idumaea persuaded Aretas to purchase a guarantee
for all his possessions, Damascus included, from the Roman governor
for a sum of money; and this is the peace celebrated on the coins
of Scaurus, where king Aretas appears--leading his camel--
as a suppliant offering the olive branch to the Roman.

Difficulty with the Parthians

Far more fraught with momentous effects than these new relations
of the Romans to the Armenians, Iberians, Bosporans, and Nabataeans
was the proximity into which through the occupation of Syria they
were brought with the Parthian state.  Complaisant as had been
the demeanour of Roman diplomacy towards Phraates while the Pontic
and Armenian states still subsisted, willingly as both Lucullus
and Pompeius had then conceded to him the possession of the regions
beyond the Euphrates,(19) the new neighbour now sternly took up
his position by the side of the Arsacids; and Phraates, if the royal
art of forgetting his own faults allowed him, might well recall now
the warning words of Mithradates that the Parthian by his alliance
with the Occidentals against the kingdoms of kindred race paved
the way first for their destruction and then for his own.
Romans and Parthians in league had brought Armenia to ruin;
when it was overthrown, Rome true to her old policy now reversed
the parts and favoured the humbled foe at the expense
of the powerful ally.  The singular preference, which the father
Tigranes experienced from Pompeius as contrasted with his son
the ally and son-in-law of the Parthian king, was already
part of this policy; it was a direct offence, when soon afterwards
by the orders of Pompeius the younger Tigranes and his family
were arrested and were not released even on Phraates interceding
with the friendly general for his daughter and his son-in-law.
But Pompeius paused not here.  The province of Corduene,
to which both Phraates and Tigranes laid claim, was at the command
of Pompeius occupied by Roman troops for the latter, and the Parthians
who were found in possession were driven beyond the frontier
and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene, without the government
of Ctesiphon having even been previously heard (689).
Far the most suspicious circumstance however was, that the Romans
seemed not at all inclined to respect the boundary of the Euphrates
fixed by treaty.  On several occasions Roman divisions
destined from Armenia for Syria marched across Mesopotamia;
the Arab emir Abgarus of Osrhoene was received under singularly
favourable conditions into Roman protection; nay, Oruros, situated
in Upper Mesopotamia somewhere between Nisibis and the Tigris 220
miles eastward from the Commagenian passage of the Euphrates,
was designated as the eastern limit of the Roman dominion--
presumably their indirect dominion, inasmuch as the larger
and more fertile northern half of Mesopotamia had been assigned
by the Romans in like manner with Corduene to the Armenian empire.
The boundary between Romans and Parthians thus became the great
Syro-Mesopotamian desert instead of the Euphrates; and this too
seemed only provisional.  To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist
on the maintenance of the agreements--which certainly, as it would
seem, were only concluded orally--respecting the Euphrates
boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous reply that the territory
of Rome extended as far as her rights.  The remarkable intercourse
between the Roman commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps
of the region of Media and even of the distant province Elymais
(between Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern Luristan) seemed
a commentary on this speech.(20)  The viceroys of this latter
mountainous, warlike, and remote land had always exerted themselves
to acquire a position independent of the great-king; it was
the more offensive and menacing to the Parthian government,
when Pompeius accepted the proffered homage of this dynast.
Not less significant was the fact that the title of "king of kings,"
which had been hitherto conceded to the Parthian king by the Romans
in official intercourse, was now all at once exchanged by them
for the simple title of king.  This was even more a threat than
a violation of etiquette.  Since Rome had entered on the heritage
of the Seleucids, it seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert
at a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran and Turan
were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet no Parthian empire
but merely a Parthian satrapy.  The court of Ctesiphon would thus
have had reason enough for going to war with Rome; it seemed
the prelude to its doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia
on account of the question of the frontier.  But Phraates had not
the courage to come to an open rupture with the Romans at a time
when the dreaded general with his strong army was on the borders
of the Parthian empire.  When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle
amicably the dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded
to the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in their
award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene and northern
Mesopotamia.  Soon afterwards his daughter with her son and her
husband adorned the triumph of the Roman general.  Even the Parthians
trembled before the superior power of Rome; and, if they had not,
like the inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the Roman
arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had not ventured
to stand the conflict.

Organization of the Provinces

There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating
the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and of removing
as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years' desolating war.
The work of organization begun in Asia Minor by Lucullus
and the commission associated with him, and in Crete by Metellus,
received its final conclusion from Pompeius.  The former province
of Asia, which embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was converted
from a frontier province into a central one.  The newly-erected
provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus, which was formed
out of the whole former kingdom of Nicomedes and the western half
of the former Pontic state as far as and beyond the Halys;
that of Cilicia, which indeed was older, but was now for the first
time enlarged and organized in a manner befitting its name,
and comprehended also Pamphylia and Isauria; that of Syria,
and that of Crete.  Much was no doubt wanting to render that mass
of countries capable of being regarded as the territorial possession
of Rome in the modern sense of the term.  The form and order
of the government remained substantially as they were; only the Roman
community came in place of the former monarchs.  Those Asiatic provinces
consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of domanial possessions,
urban territories de facto or de jure autonomous, lordships pertaining
to princes and priests, and kingdoms, all of which were as regards
internal administration more or less left to themselves,
and in other respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes
in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its proconsuls
very much as formerly on the great-king and his satraps.

Feudatory Kings
Cappadocia
Commagene
Galatia

The first place, in rank at least, among the dependent dynasts
was held by the king of Cappadocia, whose territory Lucullus had
already enlarged by investing him with the province of Melitene
(about Malatia) as far as the Euphrates, and to whom Pompeius
farther granted on the western frontier some districts taken off
Cilicia from Castabala as far as Derbe near Iconium, and on the eastern
frontier the province of Sophene situated on the left bank
of the Euphrates opposite Melitene and at first destined
for the Armenian prince Tigranes; so that the most important passage
of the Euphrates thus came wholly into the power of the Cappadocian
prince.  The small province of Commagene between Syria
and Cappadocia with its capital Samosata (Samsat) remained a dependent
kingdom in the hands of the already-named Seleucid Antiochus;(21)
to him too were assigned the important fortress of Seleucia (near
Biradjik) commanding the more southern passage of the Euphrates,
and the adjoining tracts on the left bank of that river; and thus
care was taken that the two chief passages of the Euphrates
with a corresponding territory on the eastern bank were left in the hands
of two dynasts wholly dependent on Rome.  Alongside of the kings
of Cappadocia and Commagene, and in real power far superior to them,
the new king Deiotarus ruled in Asia Minor.  One of the tetrarchs
of the Celtic stock of the Tolistobogii settled round Pessinus,
and summoned by Lucullus and Pompeius to render military service
with the other small Roman clients, Deiotarus had in these campaigns
so brilliantly proved his trustworthiness and his energy as contrasted
with all the indolent Orientals that the Roman generals conferred
upon him, in addition to his Galatian heritage and his possessions
in the rich country between Amisus and the mouth of the Halys,
the eastern half of the former Pontic empire with the maritime towns
of Pharnacia and Trapezus and the Pontic Armenia as far as
the frontier of Colchis and the Greater Armenia, to form the kingdom
of Lesser Armenia.  Soon afterwards he increased his already
considerable territory by the country of the Celtic Trocmi,
whose tetrarch he dispossessed.  Thus the petty feudatory became
one of the most powerful dynasts of Asia Minor, to whom might
be entrusted the guardianship of an important part of the frontier
of the empire.

Princes and Chiefs

Vassals of lesser importance were, the other numerous Galatian
tetrarchs, one of whom, Bogodiatarus prince of the Trocmi,
was on account of his tried valour in the Mithradatic war presented
by Pompeius with the formerly Pontic frontier-town of Mithradatium;
Attalus prince of Paphlagonia, who traced back his lineage
to the old ruling house of the Pylaemenids; Aristarchus and other petty
lords in the Colchian territory; Tarcondimotus who ruled in eastern
Cilicia in the mountain-valleys of the Amanus; Ptolemaeus son
of Mennaeus who continued to rule in Chalcis on the Libanus; Aretas
king of the Nabataeans as lord of Damascus; lastly, the Arabic
emirs in the countries on either side of the Euphrates, Abgarus
in Osrhoene, whom the Romans endeavoured in every way to draw over
to their interest with the view of using him as an advanced post
against the Parthians, Sampsiceramus in Hemesa, Alchaudonius
the Rhambaean, and another emir in Bostra.

Priestly Princes

To these fell to be added the spiritual lords who in the east
frequently ruled over land and people like secular dynasts,
and whose authority firmly established in that native home
of fanaticism the Romans prudently refrained from disturbing,
as they refrained from even robbing the temples of their treasures:
the high-priest of the Goddess Mother in Pessinus; the two high-priests
of the goddess Ma in the Cappadocian Comana (on the upper Sarus)
and in the Pontic city of the same name (Gumenek near Tocat),
both lords who were in their countries inferior only to the king
in power, and each of whom even at a much later period possessed
extensive estates with special jurisdiction and about six thousand
temple-slaves--Archelaus, son of the general of that name
who passed over from Mithradates to the Romans, was invested
by Pompeius with the Pontic high-priesthood--the high-priest
of the Venasian Zeus in the Cappadocian district of Morimene,
whose revenues amounted annually to 3600 pounds (15 talents);
the "archpriest and lord" of that territory in Cilicia Trachea,
where Teucer the son of Ajax had founded a temple to Zeus, over which
his descendants presided by virtue of hereditary right; the "arch-priest
and lord of the people" of the Jews, to whom Pompeius, after having
razed the walls of the capital and the royal treasuries and strongholds
in the land, gave back the presidency of the nation with a serious
admonition to keep the peace and no longer to aim at conquests.

Urban Communities

Alongside of these secular and spiritual potentates stood the urban
communities.  These were partly associated into larger unions
which rejoiced in a comparative independence, such as in particular
the league of the twenty-three Lycian cities, which was well organized
and constantly, for instance, kept aloof from participation
in the disorders of piracy; whereas the numerous detached communities,
even if they had self-government secured by charter,
were in practice wholly dependent on the Roman governors.

Elevation of Urban Life in Asia

The Romans failed not to see that with the task of representing
Hellenism and protecting and extending the domain of Alexander
in the east there devolved on them the primary duty of elevating
the urban system; for, while cities are everywhere the pillars
of civilization, the antagonism between Orientals and Occidentals
was especially and most sharply embodied in the contrast between
the Oriental, military-despotic, feudal hierarchy and the Helleno-
Italic urban commonwealth prosecuting trade and commerce.  Lucullus
and Pompeius, however little they in other respects aimed at
the reduction of things to one level in the east, and however much
the latter was disposed in questions of detail to censure and alter
the arrangements of his predecessor, were yet completely agreed
in the principle of promoting as far as they could an urban life in Asia
Minor and Syria.  Cyzicus, on whose vigorous resistance the first
violence of the last war had spent itself, received from Lucullus
a considerable extension of its domain.  The Pontic Heraclea,
energetically as it had resisted the Romans, yet recovered
its territory and its harbours; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against
the unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate.
Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had refused
him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus from devastation
by the Pontic soldiery and his own: he did at least what he could
to restore them, extended considerably their territories, peopled them
afresh--partly with the old inhabitants, who at his invitation
returned in troops to their beloved homes, partly with new settlers
of Hellenic descent--and provided for the reconstruction
of the buildings destroyed.  Pompeius acted in the same spirit
and on a greater scale.  Already after the subjugation of the pirates
he had, instead of following the example of his predecessors
and crucifying his prisoners, whose number exceeded 20,000, settled
them partly in the desolated cities of the Plain Cilicia,
such as Mallus, Adana, Epiphaneia, and especially in Soli,
which thenceforth bore the name of Pompeius' city (Pompeiupolis),
partly at Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum.  This colonizing
by means of pirates met with manifold censure,(22) as it seemed
in some measure to set a premium on crime; in reality it was,
politically and morally, well justified, for, as things then stood,
piracy was something different from robbery and the prisoners
might fairly be treated according to martial law.

New Towns Established

But Pompeius made it his business above all to promote urban life
in the new Roman provinces.  We have already observed how poorly
provided with towns the Pontic empire was:(23) most districts
of Cappadocia even a century after this had no towns, but merely
mountain fortresses as a refuge for the agricultural population
in war; the whole east of Asia Minor, apart from the sparse Greek
colonies on the coasts, must have been at this time in a similar
plight.  The number of towns newly established by Pompeius in these
provinces is, including the Cilician settlements, stated at thirty-
nine, several of which attained great prosperity.  The most notable
of these townships in the former kingdom of Pontus were Nicopolis,
the "city of victory," founded on the spot where Mithradates
sustained the last decisive defeat(24)--the fairest memorial
of a general rich in similar trophies; Megalopolis, named from Pompeius'
surname, on the frontier of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia,
the subsequent Sebasteia (now Siwas); Ziela, where the Romans fought
the unfortunate battle,(25) a township which had arisen round
the temple of Anaitis there and hitherto had belonged to its high-
priest, and to which Pompeius now gave the form and privileges
of a city; Diopolis, formerly Cabira, afterwards Neocaesarea (Niksar),
likewise one of the battle-fields of the late war; Magnopolis
or Pompeiupolis, the restored Eupatoria at the confluence of the Lycus
and the Iris, originally built by Mithradates, but again destroyed
by him on account of the defection of the city to the Romans;(26)
Neapolis, formerly Phazemon, between Amasia and the Halys.  Most
of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing
colonists from a distance, but by the suppression of villages
and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring-wall;
only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and veterans of his army,
who preferred to establish a home for themselves there at once
rather than afterwards in Italy.  But at other places also
there arose on the suggestion of the regent new centres of Hellenic
civilization.  In Paphlagonia a third Pompeiupolis marked the spot
where the army of Mithradates in 666 achieved the great victory
over the Bithynians.(27)  In Cappadocia, which perhaps had suffered
more than any other province by the war, the royal residence Mazaca
(afterwards Caesarea, now Kaisarieh) and seven other townships
were re-established by Pompeius and received urban institutions.
In Cilicia and Coelesyria there were enumerated twenty towns laid
out by Pompeius.  In the districts ceded by the Jews, Gadara
in the Decapolis rose from its ruins at the command of Pompeius,
and the city of Seleucis was founded.  By far the greatest portion
of the domain-land at his disposal on the Asiatic continent must have
been applied by Pompeius for his new settlements; whereas in Crete,
about which Pompeius troubled himself little or not at all,
the Roman domanial possessions seem to have continued tolerably extensive.

Pompeius was no less intent on regulating and elevating the existing
communities than on founding new townships.  The abuses and usurpations
which prevailed were done away with as far as lay in his power;
detailed ordinances drawn up carefully for the different provinces
regulated the particulars of the municipal system.  A number
of the most considerable cities had fresh privileges conferred on them.
Autonomy was bestowed on Antioch on the Orontes, the most important
city of Roman Asia and but little inferior to the Egyptian Alexandria
and to the Bagdad of antiquity, the city of Seleucia in the Parthian
empire; as also on the neighbour of Antioch, the Pierian Seleucia,
which was thus rewarded for its courageous resistance to Tigranes;
on Gaza and generally on all the towns liberated from the Jewish rule;
on Mytilene in the west of Asia Minor; and on Phanagoria
on the Black Sea.

Aggregate Results

Thus was completed the structure of the Roman state in Asia,
which with its feudatory kings and vassals, its priests made
into princes, and its series of free and half-free cities puts
us vividly in mind of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation.
It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties
overcome or as respects the consummation attained; nor was it made
so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality
lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise
of Pompeius.  Pompeius in particular consented to be praised,
and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might
almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was.
If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their deliverer
and founder, as the man who had as well by land as by sea terminated
the wars with which the world was filled, such a homage might
not seem too extravagant for the vanquisher of the pirates
and of the empires of the east.  But the Romans this time surpassed
the Greeks.  The triumphal inscriptions of Pompeius himself enumerated
12 millions of people as subjugated and 1538 cities and strongholds
as conquered--it seemed as if quantity was to make up for quality--
and made the circle of his victories extend from the Maeotic Sea
to the Caspian and from the latter to the Red Sea, when his eyes had
never seen any one of the three; nay farther, if he did not exactly
say so, he at any late induced the public to suppose that the annexation
of Syria, which in truth was no heroic deed, had added
the whole east as far as Bactria and India to the Roman empire--
so dim was the mist of distance, amidst which according to his
statements the boundary-line of his eastern conquests was lost.
The democratic servility, which has at all times rivalled
that of courts, readily entered into these insipid extravagances.
It was not satisfied by the pompous triumphal procession, which moved
through the streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept. 693--
the forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great--adorned, to say nothing
of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of Mithradates
and by the children of the three mightiest kings of Asia, Mithradates,
Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its general, who had conquered
twenty-two kings, with regal honours and bestowed on him the golden
chaplet and the insignia of the magistracy for life.  The coins struck
in his honour exhibit the globe itself placed amidst the triple
laurels brought home from the three continents, and surmounted
by the golden chaplet conferred by the burgesses on the man
who had triumphed over Africa, Spain, and Asia.  It need excite
no surprise, if in presence of such childish acts of homage voices
were heard of an opposite import.  Among the Roman world of quality
it was currently affirmed that the true merit of having subdued
the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only gone thither
to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around his own brow the laurels
which another hand had plucked.  Both statements were totally
erroneous: it was not Pompeius but Glabrio that was sent to Asia
to relieve Lucullus, and, bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was
a fact that, when Pompeius took the supreme command, the Romans
had forfeited all their earlier successes and had not a foot's breadth
of Pontic soil in their possession.  More pointed and effective
was the ridicule of the inhabitants of the capital, who failed not
to nickname the mighty conqueror of the globe after the great powers
which he had conquered, and saluted him now as "conqueror of Salem,"
now as "emir" (-Arabarches-), now as the Roman Sampsiceramus.

Lucullus and Pompeius as Administrators

The unprejudiced judge will not agree either with those exaggerations
or with these disparagements.  Lucullus and Pompeius, in subduing
and regulating Asia, showed themselves to be, not heroes
and state-creators, but sagacious and energetic army-leaders
and governors.  As general Lucullus displayed no common talents
and a self-confidence bordering on rashness, while Pompeius displayed
military judgment and a rare self-restraint; for hardly
has any general with such forces and a position so wholly free
ever acted so cautiously as Pompeius in the east.  The most brilliant
undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him on all sides;
he was free to start for the Cimmerian Bosporus and for the Red
Sea; he had opportunity of declaring war against the Parthians;
the revolted provinces of Egypt invited him to dethrone king
Ptolemaeus who was not recognized by the Romans, and to carry
out the testament of Alexander; but Pompeius marched neither
to Panticapaeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria;
throughout he gathered only those fruits which of themselves fell
to his hand.  In like manner he fought all his battles by sea
and land with a crushing superiority of force.  Had this moderation
proceeded from the strict observance of the instructions given
to him, as Pompeius was wont to profess, or even from a perception
that the conquests of Rome must somewhere find a limit and that
fresh accessions of territory were not advantageous to the state,
it would deserve a higher praise than history confers on the most
talented officer; but constituted as Pompeius was, his self-
restraint was beyond doubt solely the result of his peculiar want
of decision and of initiative--defects, indeed, which were in his
case far more useful to the state than the opposite excellences
of his predecessor.  Certainly very grave errors were perpetrated
both by Lucullus and by Pompeius.  Lucullus reaped their fruits himself,
when his imprudent conduct wrested from him all the results
of his victories; Pompeius left it to his successors to bear
the consequences of his false policy towards the Parthians.  He might
either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage
to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized,
as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid
for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted
to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood,
which the court of Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised,
impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing
the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation.
As administrator of Asia Lucullus acquired a more than princely
wealth; and Pompeius also received as reward for its organization
large sums in cash and still more considerable promissory notes
from the king of Cappadocia, from the rich city of Antioch,
and from other lords and communities.  But such exactions had become
almost a customary tax; and both generals showed themselves at any rate
to be not altogether venal in questions of greater importance,
and, if possible, got themselves paid by the party whose interests
coincided with those of Rome.  Looking to the state of the times,
this does not prevent us from characterizing the administration
of both as comparatively commendable and conducted primarily
in the interest of Rome, secondarily in that of the provincials.

The conversion of the clients into subjects, the better regulation
of the eastern frontier, the establishment of a single and strong
government, were full of blessing for the rulers as well as
for the ruled.  The financial gain acquired by Rome was immense;
the new property tax, which with the exception of some specially
exempted communities all those princes, priests, and cities had to pay
to Rome, raised the Roman state-revenues almost by a half above their
former amount.  Asia indeed suffered severely.  Pompeius brought
in money and jewels an amount of 2,000,000 pounds (200,000,000
sesterces) into the state-chest and distributed 3,900,000 pounds
(16,000 talents) among his officers and soldiers; if we add to this
the considerable sums brought home by Lucullus, the non-official
exactions of the Roman army, and the amount of the damage done
by the war, the financial exhaustion of the land may be readily
conceived.  The Roman taxation of Asia was perhaps in itself
not worse than that of its earlier rulers, but it formed a heavier
burden on the land, in so far as the taxes thenceforth went
out of the country and only the lesser portion of the proceeds
was again expended in Asia; and at any rate it was, in the old
as well as the newly-acquired provinces, based on a systematic plundering
of the provinces for the benefit of Rome.  But the responsibility
for this rests far less on the generals personally than on the parties
at home, whom these had to consider; Lucullus had even exerted himself
energetically to set limits to the usurious dealings of the Roman
capitalists in Asia, and this essentially contributed to bring
about his fall.  How much both men earnestly sought to revive
the prosperity of the reduced provinces, is shown by their action
in cases where no considerations of party policy tied their hands,
and especially in their care for the cities of Asia Minor.  Although
for centuries afterwards many an Asiatic village lying in ruins
recalled the times of the great war, Sinope might well begin a new
era with the date of its re-establishment by Lucullus, and almost
all the more considerable inland towns of the Pontic kingdom might
gratefully honour Pompeius as their founder.  The organization
of Roman Asia by Lucullus and Pompeius may with all its undeniable
defects be described as on the whole judicious and praiseworthy;
serious as were the evils that might still adhere to it,
it could not but be welcome to the sorely tormented Asiatics
for the very reason that it came attended by the inward
and outward peace, the absence of which had been so long
and so painfully felt.

The East after the Departure of Pompeius

Peace continued substantially in the east, till the idea--merely
indicated by Pompeius with his characteristic timidity--of joining
the regions eastward of the Euphrates to the Roman empire was taken
up again energetically but unsuccessfully by the new triumvirate
of Roman regents, and soon thereafter the civil war drew the eastern
provinces as well as all the rest into its fatal vortex.
In the interval the governors of Cilicia had to fight constantly
with the mountain-tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes
of the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins especially
many Roman troops were destroyed; but these movements had no farther
significance.  More remarkable was the obstinate resistance,
which the tough Jewish nation opposed to the conquerors.  Alexander,
son of the deposed king Aristobulus, and Aristobulus himself
who after some time succeeded in escaping from captivity,
excited during the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700)
three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which
the government of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently
succumbed.  It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance
of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them
to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous
of these revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army
of occupation in consequence of the Egyptian crisis furnished
the immediate impulse, began with the murder of the Romans
settled in Palestine.  It was not without difficulty
that the able governor succeeded in rescuing the few Romans,
who had escaped this fate and found a temporary refuge
on Mount Gerizim, from the insurgents who kept them blockaded there,
and in overpowering the revolt after several severely contested
battles and tedious sieges.  In consequence of this the monarchy
of the high-priests was abolished and the Jewish land was broken up
as Macedonia had formerly been, into five independent districts
administered by governing colleges with an Optimate organization;
Samaria and other townships razed by the Jews were re-established,
to form a counterpoise to Jerusalem; and lastly a heavier tribute
was imposed on the Jews than on the other Syrian subjects of Rome.

The Kingdom of Egypt

It still remains that we should glance at the kingdom of Egypt
along with the last dependency that remained to it of the extensive
acquisitions of the Lagids, the fair island of Cyprus.
Egypt was now the only state of the Hellenic east that was still
at least nominally independent; just as formerly, when the Persians
established themselves along the eastern half of the Mediterranean,
Egypt was their last conquest, so now the mighty conquerors
from the west long delayed the annexation of that opulent
and peculiar country.  The reason lay, as was already indicated,
neitherin any fear of the resistance of Egypt nor in the want
of a fitting occasion.  Egypt was just about as powerless as Syria,
and had already in 673 fallen in all due form of law to the Roman
community.(28)  The control exercised over the court of Alexandria
by the royal guard--which appointed and deposed ministers
and occasionally kings, took for itself what it pleased, and,
if it was refused a rise of pay, besieged the king in his palace--
was by no means liked in the country or rather in the capital (for
the country with its population of agricultural slaves was hardly taken
into account); and at least a party there wished for the annexation
of Egypt by Rome, and even took steps to procure it But the less
the kings of Egypt could think of contending in arms against Rome,
the more energetically Egyptian gold set itself to resist the Roman
plans of union; and in consequence of the peculiar despotico-
communistic centralization of the Egyptian finances the revenues
of the court of Alexandria were still nearly equal to the public
income of Rome even after its augmentation by Pompeius.
The suspicious jealousy of the oligarchy, which was chary of allowing
any individual either to conquer or to administer Egypt, operated
in the same direction.  So the de facto rulers of Egypt and Cyprus
were enabled by bribing the leading men in the senate not merely
to respite their tottering crowns, but even to fortify them afresh
and to purchase from the senate the confirmation of their royal title.
But with this they had not yet obtained their object.
Formal state-law required a decree of the Roman burgesses;
until this was issued, the Ptolemies were dependent on the caprice
of every democratic holder of power, and they had thus to commence
the warfare of bribery also against the other Roman party,
which as the more powerful stipulated for far higher prices.

Cyprus Annexed

The result in the two cases was different.  The annexation
of Cyprus was decreed in 696 by the people, that is, by the leaders
of the democracy, the support given to piracy by the Cypriots
being alleged as the official reason why that course should
now be adopted.  Marcus Cato, entrusted by his opponents
with the execution of this measure, came to the island without an army;
but he had no need of one.  The king took poison; the inhabitants
submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate,
and were placed under the governor of Cilicia.  The ample treasure
of nearly 7000 talents (1,700,000 pounds), which the equally
covetous and miserly king could not prevail on himself to apply
for the bribes requisite to save his crown, fell along with the latter
to the Romans, and filled after a desirable fashion the empty vaults
of their treasury.

Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized but Expelled by His Subjects

On the other hand the brother who reigned in Egypt succeeded
in purchasing his recognition by decree of the people from the new
masters of Rome in 695; the purchase-money is said to have amounted
to 6000 talents (1,460,000 pounds).  The citizens indeed, long
exasperated against their good flute-player and bad ruler,
and now reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus
and the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable
degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans (696),
chased him on that account out of the country.  When the king thereupon
applied, as if on account of his eviction from the estate which he
had purchased, to those who sold it, these were reasonable enough
to see that it was their duty as honest men of business to get back
his kingdom for Ptolemaeus; only the parties could not agree
as to the person to whom the important charge of occupying Egypt
by force along with the perquisites thence to be expected should
be assigned.  It was only when the triumvirate was confirmed anew
at the conference of Luca, that this affair was also arranged,
after Ptolemaeus had agreed to a further payment of 10,000 talents
(2,400,000 pounds); the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius,
now obtained orders from those in power to take the necessary steps
immediately for bringing back the king.  The citizens of Alexandria
had meanwhile placed the crown on the head of Berenice the eldest
daughter of the ejected king, and given to her a husband
in the person of one of the spiritual princes of Roman Asia,
Archelaus the high-priest of Comana,(29) who possessed ambition enough
to hazard his secure and respectable position in the hope of mounting
the throne of the Lagids.  His attempts to gain the Roman regents
to his interests remained without success; but he did not recoil
before the idea of being obliged to maintain his new kingdom
with arms in hand even against the Romans.

And Brought Back by Gabinius
A Roman Garrison Remains in Alexandria

Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war against Egypt
but directed to do so by the regents, made a pretext out of
the alleged furtherance of piracy by the Egyptians and the building
of a fleet by Archelaus, and started without delay for the Egyptian
frontier (699).  The march through the sandy desert between Gaza
and Pelusium, in which so many invasions previously directed
against Egypt had broken down, was on this occasion successfully
accomplished--a result especially due to the quick and skilful
leader of the cavalry Marcus Antonius.  The frontier fortress
of Pelusium also was surrendered without resistance by the Jewish
garrison stationed there.  In front of this city the Romans met
the Egyptians, defeated them--on which occasion Antonius again
distinguished himself--and arrived, as the first Roman army,
at the Nile.  Here the fleet and army of the Egyptians were drawn up
for the last decisive struggle; but the Romans once more conquered,
and Archelaus himself with many of his followers perished
in the combat.  Immediately after this battle the capital surrendered,
and therewith all resistance was at an end.  The unhappy land
was handed over to its legitimate oppressor; the hanging and beheading,
with which, but for the intervention of the chivalrous Antonius,
Ptolemaeus would have already in Pelusium begun to celebrate
the restoration of the legitimate government, now took its course
unhindered, and first of all the innocent daughter was sent
by her father to the scaffold.  The payment of the reward agreed
upon with the regents broke down through the absolute impossibility
of exacting from the exhausted land the enormous sums required,
although they took from the poor people the last penny; but care
was taken that the country should at least be kept quiet
by the garrison of Roman infantry and Celtic and German cavalry
left in the capital, which took the place of the native praetorians
and otherwise emulated them not unsuccessfully.  The previous hegemony
of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a direct military
occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy
was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double
burden imposed on it.




Chapter V

The Struggle of Parties During the Absence of Pompeius.

The Defeated Aristocracy

With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the capital
changed positions.  From the time that the elected general
of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his party,
or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance in the capital.
The nobility doubtless still stood in compact array, and still
as before there issued from the comitial machinery none but consuls,
who according to the expression of the democrats were already
designated to the consulate in their cradles; to command the elections
andbreak down the influence of the old families over them was beyond
the power even of the holders of power.  But unfortunately the consulate,
at the very moment when they had got the length of virtually excluding
the "new men" from it, began itself to grow pale before the newly-
risen star of the exceptional military power.  The aristocracy felt
this, though they did not exactly confess it; they gave themselves
up as lost.  Except Quintus Catulus, who with honourable firmness
persevered at his far from pleasant post as champion of a vanquished
party down to his death (694), no Optimate could be named
from the highest ranks of the nobility, who would have sustained
the interests of the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness.
Their very men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus
Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired,
so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas,
in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the senate-house
amidst their gardens and libraries, their aviaries and fish-ponds.
Still more, of course, was this the case with the younger generation
of the aristocracy, which was either wholly absorbed in luxury
and literature or turning towards the rising sun.

Cato

There was among the younger men a single exception; it was
Marcus Porcius Cato (born in 659), a man of the best intentions
and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most Quixotic
and one of the most cheerless phenomena in this age so abounding
in political caricatures.  Honourable and steadfast, earnest in purpose
and in action, full of attachment to his country and to its hereditary
constitution, but dull in intellect and sensuously as well as
morally destitute of passion, he might certainly have made
a tolerable state-accountant.  But unfortunately he fell early
under the power of formalism, and swayed partly by the phrases
of the Stoa, which in their abstract baldness and spiritless
isolation were current among the genteel world of that day, partly
by the example of his great-grandfather whom he deemed it his especial
task to reproduce, he began to walk about in the sinful capital
as a model burgess and mirror of virtue, to scold at the times
like the old Cato, to travel on foot instead of riding, to take
no interest, to decline badges of distinction as a soldier,
and to introduce the restoration of the good old days by going after
the precedent of king Romulus without a shirt.  A strange caricature
of his ancestor--the gray-haired farmer whom hatred and anger made
an orator, who wielded in masterly style the plough as well as
the sword, who with his narrow, but original and sound common sense
ordinarily hit the nail on the head--was this young unimpassioned
pedant from whose lips dropped scholastic wisdom and who was
everywhere seen sitting book in hand, this philosopher
who understood neither the art of war nor any other art whatever,
this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals.  Yet he attained
to moral and thereby even to political importance.  In an utterly
wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told
powerfully on the multitude; he even formed a school, and there were
individuals--it is true they were but few--who in their turn
copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher.
On the same cause depended also his political influence.
As he was the only conservative of note who possessed if not talent
and insight, at any rate integrity and courage, and was always ready
to throw himself into the breach whether it was necessary to do so
or not, he soon became the recognized champion of the Optimate party,
although neither his age nor his rank nor his intellect entitled
him to be so.  Where the perseverance of a single resolute man
could decide, he no doubt sometimes achieved a success,
and in questions of detail, more particularly of a financial character,
he often judiciously interfered, as indeed he was absent
from no meeting of the senate; his quaestorship in fact formed
an epoch, and as long as he lived he checked the details of the public
budget, regarding which he maintained of course a constant warfare
with the farmers of the taxes.  For the rest, he lacked simply
every ingredient of a statesman.  He was incapable of even
comprehending a political aim and of surveying political relations;
his whole tactics consisted in setting his face against every one
who deviated or seemed to him to deviate from the traditionary
moral and political catechism of the aristocracy, and thus
of course he worked as often into the hands of his opponents
as into those of his own party.  The Don Quixote of the aristocracy,
he proved by his character and his actions that at this time,
while there was certainly still an aristocracy in existence,
the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.

Democratic Attacks

To continue the conflict with this aristocracy brought little
honour.  Of course the attacks of the democracy on the vanquished
foe did not on that account cease.  The pack of the Populares threw
themselves on the broken ranks of the nobility like the sutlers
on a conquered camp, and the surface at least of politics
was by this agitation ruffled into high waves of foam.  The multitude
entered into the matter the more readily, as Gaius Caesar especially
kept them in good humour by the extravagant magnificence of his games
(689)--in which all the equipments, even the cages of the wild
beasts, appeared of massive silver--and generally by a liberality
which was all the more princely that it was based solely
on the contraction of debt.  The attacks on the nobility
were of the most varied kind.  The abuses of aristocratic rule afforded
copious materials; magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed
a liberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, Marcus Cicero,
continued systematically to unveil the most offensive and scandalous
aspects of the Optimate doings and to propose laws against them.
The senate was directed to give access to foreign envoys on set days,
with the view of preventing the usual postponement of audiences.
Loans raised by foreign ambassadors in Rome were declared non-actionable,
as this was the only means of seriously checking the corruptions
which formed the order of the day in the senate (687).  The right
of the senate to give dispensation in particular cases from the laws
was restricted (687); as was also the abuse whereby every Roman of rank,
who had private business to attend to in the provinces, got himself
invested by the senate with the character of a Roman envoy thither
(691).  They heightened the penalties against the purchase
of votes and electioneering intrigues (687, 691); which latter
were especially increased in a scandalous fashion by the attempts
of the individuals ejected from the senate(1) to get back
to it through re-election.

What had hitherto been simply understood as matter of course
was now expressly laid down as a law, that the praetors were bound
to administer justice in conformity with the rules set forth by them,
after the Roman fashion, at their entering on office (687).

Transpadanes
Freedmen

But, above all, efforts were made to complete the democratic
restoration and to realize the leading ideas of the Gracchan period
in a form suitable to the times.  The election of the priests
by the comitia, which Gnaeus Domitius had introduced(2) and Sulla
had again done away,(3) was established by a law of the tribune
of the people Titus Labienus in 691.  The democrats were fond
of pointing out how much was still wanting towards the restoration
of the Sempronian corn-laws in their full extent, and at the same
time passed over in silence the fact that under the altered
circumstances--with the straitened condition of the public finances
and the great increase in the number of fully-privileged Roman
citizens--that restoration was absolutely impracticable.
In the country between the Po and the Alps they zealously fostered
the agitation for political equality with the Italians.
As early as 686 Gaius Caesar travelled from place to place there
for this purpose; in 689 Marcus Crassus as censor made arrangements
to enrol the inhabitants directly in the burgess-roll--which was only
frustrated by the resistance of his colleague; in the following
censorships this attempt seems regularly to have been repeated.
As formerly Gracchus and Flaccus had been the patrons of the Latins,
so the present leaders of the democracy gave themselves forth
as protectors of the Transpadanes, and Gaius Piso (consul in 687)
had bitterly to regret that he had ventured to outrage
one of these clients of Caesar and Crassus.  On the other hand
the same leaders appeared by no means disposed to advocate
the political equalization of the freedmen; the tribune of the people
Gaius Manilius, who in a thinly attended assembly had procured
the renewal (31 Dec. 687) of the Sulpician law as to the suffrage
of freedmen,(4) was immediately disavowed by the leading men
of the democracy, and with their consent the law was cancelled
by the senate on the very day after its passing.  In the same spirit
all the strangers, who possessed neither Roman nor Latin burgess-
rights, were ejected from the capital by decree of the people
in 689.  It is obvious that the intrinsic inconsistency
of the Gracchan policy--in abetting at once the effort of the excluded
to obtain admission into the circle of the privileged, and the effort
of the privileged to maintain their distinctive rights--had passed
over to their successors; while Caesar and his friends on the one hand
held forth to the Transpadanes the prospect of the franchise,
they on the other hand gave their assent to the continuance
of the disabilities of the freedmen, and to the barbarous setting aside
of the rivalry which the industry and trading skill of the Hellenes
and Orientals maintained with the Italians in Italy itself.

Process against Rabirius

The mode in which the democracy dealt with the ancient criminal
jurisdiction of the comitia was characteristic.  It had not been
properly abolished by Sulla, but practically the jury-commissions
on high treason and murder had superseded it,(5) and no rational
man could think of seriously re-establishing the old procedure
which long before Sulla had been thoroughly unpractical.
But as the idea of the sovereignty of the people appeared to require
a recognition at least in principle of the penal jurisdiction
of the burgesses, the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 691
brought the old man, who thirty-eight years before had slain or was
alleged to have slain the tribune of the people Lucius Saturninus,(6)
before the same high court of criminal jurisdiction, by virtue of which,
if the annals reported truly, king Tullus had procured the acquittal
of the Horatius who had killed his sister.  The accused was one
Gaius Rabirius, who, if he had not killed Saturninus,
had at least paraded with his cut-off head at the tables
of men of rank, and who moreover was notorious among the Apulian
landholders for his kidnapping and his bloody deeds.  The object,
if not of the accuser himself, at any rate of the more sagacious men
who backed him, was not at all to make this pitiful wretch
die the death of the cross; they were not unwilling to acquiesce,
when first the form of the impeachment was materially modified
by the senate, and then the assembly of the people called to pronounce
sentence on the guilty was dissolved under some sort of pretext
by the opposite party--so that the whole procedure was set aside.
At all events by this process the two palladia of Roman freedom,
the right of the citizens to appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes
of the people, were once more established as practical rights,
and the legal basis on which the democracy rested was adjusted afresh.

Personal Attacks

The democratic reaction manifested still greater vehemence
in all personal questions, wherever it could and dared.
Prudence indeed enjoined it not to urge the restoration of the estates
confiscated by Sulla to their former owners, that it might not quarrel
with its own allies and at the same time fall into a conflict
with material interests, for which a policy with a set purpose
is rarelya match; the recall of the emigrants was too closely connected
with this question of property not to appear quite as unadvisable.
On the other hand great exertions were made to restore to the children
of the proscribed the political rights withdrawn from them (691),
and the heads of the senatorial party were incessantly subjected
to personal attacks.  Thus Gaius Memmius set on foot a process aimed
at Marcus Lucullus in 688.  Thus they allowed his more famous
brother to wait for three years before the gates of the capital
for his well-deserved triumph (688-691).  Quintus Rex and the conqueror
of Crete Quintus Metellus were similarly insulted.

It produced a still greater sensation, when the young leader
of the democracy Gaius Caesar in 691 not merely presumed to compete
with the two most distinguished men of the nobility, Quintus Catulus
and Publius Servilius the victor of Isaura, in the candidature
for the supreme pontificate, but even carried the day
among the burgesses.  The heirs of Sulla, especially his son Faustus,
found themselves constantly threatened with an action for the refunding
of the public moneys which, it was alleged, had been embezzled
by the regent.  They talked even of resuming the democratic
impeachments suspended in 664 on the basis of the Varian law.(7)
The individuals who had taken part in the Sullan executions were,
as may readily be conceived, judicially prosecuted with the utmost
zeal.  When the quaestor Marcus Cato, in his pedantic integrity,
himself made a beginning by demanding back from them the rewards
which they had received for murder as property illegally alienated
from the state (689), it can excite no surprise that in the following
year (690) Gaius Caesar, as president of the commission
regarding murder, summarily treated the clause in the Sullan
ordinance, which declared that a proscribed person might be
killed with impunity, as null and void, and caused the most
noted of Sulla's executioners, Lucius Catilina, Lucius Bellienus,
Lucius Luscius to be brought before his jurymen and, partially,
to be condemned.

Rehabilitation of Saturninus and Marius

Lastly, they did not hesitate now to name once more in public
the long-proscribed names of the heroes and martyrs of the democracy,
and to celebrate their memory.  We have already mentioned how
Saturninus was rehabilitated by the process directed against
his murderer.  But a different sound withal had the name of Gaius
Marius, at the mention of which all hearts once had throbbed;
and it happened that the man, to whom Italy owed her deliverance
from the northern barbarians, was at the same time the uncle
of the present leader of the democracy.  Loudly had the multitude
rejoiced, when in 686 Gaius Caesar ventured in spite of
the prohibitions publicly to show the honoured features of the hero
in the Forum at the interment of the widow of Marius.  But when,
three years afterwards (689), the emblems of victory, which Marius
had caused to be erected in the Capitol and Sulla had ordered to be
thrown down, one morning unexpectedly glittered afresh in gold
and marble at the old spot, the veterans from the African and Cimbrian
wars crowded, with tears in their eyes, around the statue of their
beloved general; and in presence of the rejoicing masses the senate
did not venture to seize the trophies which the same bold hand had
renewed in defiance of the laws.

Worthlessness of the Democratic Successes

But all these doings and disputes, however much noise they made,
were, politically considered, of but very subordinate importance.
The oligarchy was vanquished; the democracy had attained the helm.
That underlings of various grades should hasten to inflict
an additional kick on the prostrate foe; that the democrats also
should have their basis in law and their worship of principles;
that their doctrinaires should not rest till the whole privileges
of the community were in all particulars restored, and should
in that respect occasionally make themselves ridiculous,
as legitimists are wont to do--all this was just as much
to be expected as it was matter of indifference.  Taken as a whole,
the agitation was aimless; and we discern in it the perplexity
of its authors to find an object for their activity, for it
turned almost wholly on things already essentially settled
or on subordinate matters.

Impending Collision between the Democrats and Pompeius

It could not be otherwise.  In the struggle with the aristocracy
the democrats had remained victors; but they had not conquered
alone, and the fiery trial still awaited them--the reckoning
not with their former foe, but with their too powerful ally,
to whom in the struggle with the aristocracy they were substantially
indebted for victory, and to whose hands they had now entrusted
an unexampled military and political power, because they dared
not refuse it to him.  The general of the east and of the seas
was still employed in appointing and deposing kings.  How long time
he would take for that work, or when he would declare the business
of the war to be ended, no one could tell but himself;
since like everything else the time of his return to Italy,
or in other words the day of decision, was left in his own hands.
The parties in Rome meanwhile sat and waited.  The Optimates indeed
looked forward to the arrival of the dreaded general with comparative
calmness; by the rupture between Pompeius and the democracy, which they
saw to be approaching, they could not lose, but could only gain.
The democrats on the contrary waited with painful anxiety,
and sought, during the interval still allowed to them
by the absence of Pompeius, to lay a countermine against
the impending explosion.

Schemes for Appointing a Democratic Military Dictatorship

In this policy they again coincided with Crassus,
to whom no course was left for encountering his envied and hated rival
but that of allying himself afresh, and more closely than before,
with the democracy.  Already in the first coalition a special
approximation had taken place between Caesar and Crassus
as the two weaker parties; a common interest and a common danger
tightened yet more the bond which joined the richest
and the most insolvent of Romans in closest alliance.
While in public the democrats described the absent general
as the head and pride of their party and seemed to direct
all their arrows against the aristocracy, preparations
were secretly made against Pompeius; and these attempts
of the democracy to escape from the impending military dictatorship
have historically a far higher significance than the noisy agitation,
for the most part employed only as a mask, against the nobility.
It is true that they were carried on amidst a darkness, upon which
our tradition allows only some stray gleams of light to fall;
for not the present alone, but the succeeding age also
had its reasons for throwing a veil over the matter.  But in general
both the course and the object of these efforts are completely clear.
The military power could only be effectually checkmated by another
military power.  The design of the democrats was to possess
themselves of the reins of government after the example of Marius
and Cinna, then to entrust one of their leaders either with the conquest
of Egypt or with the governorship of Spain or some similar
ordinary or extraordinary office, and thus to find in him
and his military force a counterpoise to Pompeius and his army.
For this they required a revolution, which was directed immediately
against the nominal government, but in reality against Pompeius
as the designated monarch;(8) and, to effect this revolution,
there was from the passing of the Gabinio-Manilian laws down to
the return of Pompeius (688-692) perpetual conspiracy in Rome.
The capital was in anxious suspense; the depressed temper
of the capitalists, the suspensions of payment, the frequent bankruptcies
were heralds of the fermenting revolution, which seemed as though it must
at the same time produce a totally new position of parties.
The project of the democracy, which pointed beyond the senate
at Pompeius, suggested an approximation between that general
and the senate.  But the democracy in attempting to oppose
to the dictatorship of Pompeius that of a man more agreeable to it,
recognized, strictly speaking, on its part also the military government,
and in reality drove out Satan by Beelzebub; the question of principles
became in its hands a question of persons.

League of the Democrats and the Anarchists

The first step towards the revolution projected by the leaders
of the democracy was thus to be the overthrow of the existing
government by means of an insurrection primarily instigated
in Rome by democratic conspirators.  The moral condition of the lowest
as of the highest ranks of society in the capital presented
the materials for this purpose in lamentable abundance.  We need not
here repeat what was the character of the free and the servile
proletariate of the capital.  The significant saying was already
heard, that only the poor man was qualified to represent the poor;
the idea was thus suggested, that the mass of the poor might
constitute itself an independent power as well as the oligarchy
of the rich, and instead of allowing itself to be tyrannized over,
might perhaps in its own turn play the tyrant.  But even in the circles
of the young men of rank similar ideas found an echo.
The fashionable life of the capital shattered not merely the fortunes
of men, but also their vigour of body and mind.  That elegant world
of fragrant ringlets, of fashionable mustachios and ruffles--merry
as were its doings in the dance and with the harp, and early
and late at the wine-cup--yet concealed in its bosom an alarming abyss
of moral and economic ruin, of well or ill concealed despair,
and frantic or knavish resolves.  These circles sighed without
disguise for a return of the time of Cinna with its proscriptions
and confiscations and its annihilation of account-books for debt;
there were people enough, including not a few of no mean descent
and unusual abilities, who only waited the signal to fall
like a gang of robbers on civil society and to recruit by pillage
the fortune which they had squandered.  Where a band gathers,
leaders are not wanting; and in this case the men were soon found
who were fitted to be captains of banditti.

Catalina

The late praetor Lucius Catilina, and the quaestor Gnaeus Piso,
were distinguished among their fellows not merely by their genteel
birth and their superior rank.  They had broken down the bridge
completely behind them, and impressed their accomplices by their
dissoluteness quite as much as by their talents.  Catilina especially
was one of the most wicked men in that wicked age.  His villanies
belong to the records of crime, not to history; but his very outward
appearance--the pale countenance, the wild glance, the gait by turns
sluggish and hurried--betrayed his dismal past.  He possessed in a high
degree the qualities which are required in the leader of such a band--
the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of bearing all privations,
courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the energy of a felon,
and that horrible mastery of vice, which knows how to bring the weak
to fall and how to train the fallen to crime.

To form out of such elements a conspiracy for the overthrow
of the existing order of things could not be difficult to men
who possessed money and political influence.  Catilina, Piso,
and their fellows entered readily into any plan which gave the prospect
of proscriptions and cancelling of debtor-books; the former had
moreover special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed
the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for the consulship.
As he had formerly in the character of an executioner
of Sulla hunted the proscribed at the head of a band of Celts
and had killed among others his own aged father-in-law
with his own hand, he now readily consented to promise similar services
to the opposite party.  A secret league was formed.  The number
of individuals received into it is said to have exceeded 400; it
included associates in all the districts and urban communities
of Italy; besides which, as a matter of course, numerous recruits
would flock unbidden from the ranks of the dissolute youth
to an insurrection, which inscribed on its banner the seasonable
programme of wiping out debts.

Failure of the First Plans of Conspiracy

In December 688--so we are told--the leaders of the league thought
that they had found the fitting occasion for striking a blow.
The two consuls chosen for 689, Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius
Autronius Paetus, had recently been judicially convicted
of electoral bribery, and therefore had according to legal rule
forfeited their expectancy of the highest office.  Both thereupon
joined the league.  The conspirators resolved to procure
the consulship for them by force, and thereby to put themselves
in possession of the supreme power in the state.  On the day
when the new consuls should enter on their office--the 1st Jan. 689--
the senate-house was to be assailed by armed men, the new consuls
and the victims otherwise designated were to be put to death, and Sulla
and Paetus were to be proclaimed as consuls after the cancelling
of the judicial sentence which excluded them.  Crassus was then
to be invested with the dictatorship and Caesar with the mastership
of the horse, doubtless with a view to raise an imposing military
force, while Pompeius was employed afar off at the Caucasus.
Captains and common soldiers were hired and instructed; Catilina
waited on the appointed day in the neighbourhood of the senate-
house for the concerted signal, which was to be given him by Caesar
on a hint from Crassus.  But he waited in vain; Crassus was absent
from the decisive sitting of the senate, and for this time
the projected insurrection failed.  A similar still more comprehensive
plan of murder was then concerted for the 5th Feb.; but this too
was frustrated, because Catilina gave the signal too early,
before the bandits who were bespoken had all arrived.  Thereupon
the secret was divulged.  The government did not venture openly
to proceed against the conspiracy, but it assigned a guard
to the consuls who were primarily threatened, and it opposed to the band
of the conspirators a band paid by the government.  To remove Piso,
the proposal was made that he should be sent as quaestor
with praetorian powers to Hither Spain; to which Crassus consented,
in the hope of securing through him the resources of that important
province for the insurrection.  Proposals going farther
were prevented by the tribunes.

So runs the account that has come down to us, which evidently gives
the version current in the government circles, and the credibility
of which in detail must, in the absence of any means of checking
it, be left an open question.  As to the main matter--the participation
of Caesar and Crassus--the testimony of their political opponents
certainly cannot be regarded as sufficient evidence of it.  But their
notorious action at this epoch corresponds with striking exactness
to the secret action which this report ascribes to them.  The attempt
of Crassus, who in this year was censor, officially to enrol
the Transpadanes in the burgess-list(9) was of itself directly
a revolutionary enterprise.  It is still more remarkable,
that Crassus on the same occasion made preparations to enrol
Egypt and Cyprus in the list of Roman domains,(10) and that Caesar
about the same time (689 or 690) got a proposal submitted
by some tribunes to the burgesses to send him to Egypt,
in order to reinstate king Ptolemaeus whom the Alexandrians
had expelled.  These machinations suspiciously coincide
with the charges raised by their antagonists.  Certainty cannot be
attained on the point; but there is a great probability that Crassus
and Caesar had projected a plan to possess themselves of the military
dictatorship during the absence of Pompeius; that Egypt was selected
as the basis of this democratic military power; and that, in fine,
the insurrectionary attempt of 689 had been contrived to realize
these projects, and Catilina and Piso had thus been tools in the hands
of Crassus and Caesar.

Resumption of the Conspiracy

For a moment the conspiracy came to a standstill.  The elections
for 690 took place without Crassus and Caesar renewing their
attempt to get possession of the consulate; which may have been
partly owing to the fact that a relative of the leader
of the democracy, Lucius Caesar, a weak man who was not unfrequently
employed by his kinsman as a tool, was on this occasion a candidate
for the consulship.  But the reports from Asia urged them to make
haste.  The affairs of Asia Minor and Armenia were already
completely arranged.  However clearly democratic strategists showed
that the Mithradatic war could only be regarded as terminated
by the capture of the king, and that it was therefore necessary
to undertake the pursuit round the Black Sea, and above all things
to keep aloof from Syria(11)--Pompeius, not concerning himself
about such talk, had set out in the spring of 690 from Armenia
and marched towards Syria.  If Egypt was really selected
as the headquarters of the democracy, there was no time to be lost;
otherwise Pompeius might easily arrive in Egypt sooner than Caesar.
The conspiracy of 688, far from being broken up by the lax
and timid measures of repression, was again astir when the consular
elections for 691 approached.  The persons were, it may be
presumed, substantially the same, and the plan was but little
altered.  The leaders of the movement again kept in the background.
On this occasion they had set up as candidates for the consulship
Catilina himself and Gaius Antonius, the younger son of the orator
and a brother of the general who had an ill repute from Crete.
They were sure of Catilina; Antonius, originally a Sullan
like Catilina and like the latter brought to trial on that account
some years before by the democratic party and ejected
from the senate(12)--otherwise an indolent, insignificant man,
in no respect called to be a leader, and utterly bankrupt--
willingly lent himself as a tool to the democrats for the prize
of the consulship and the advantages attached to it.  Through these
consuls the heads of the conspiracy intended to seize the government,
to arrest the children of Pompeius, who remained behind in the capital,
as hostages, and to take up arms in Italy and the provinces
against Pompeius.  On the first news of the blow struck in the capital,
the governor Gnaeus Piso was to raise the banner of insurrection
in Hither Spain.  Communication could not be held with him by way
of the sea, since Pompeius commanded the seas.  For this purpose
they reckoned on the Transpadanes the old clients of the democracy--
among whom there was great agitation, and who would of course have
at once received the franchise--and, further, on different Celtic
tribes.(13)  The threads of this combination reached as far as
Mauretania.  One of the conspirators, the Roman speculator Publius
Sittius from Nuceria, compelled by financial embarrassments
to keep aloof from Italy, had armed a troop of desperadoes there
and in Spain, and with these wandered about as a leader of free-lances
in western Africa, where he had old commercial connections.

Consular Elections
Cicero Elected instead of Catalina

The party put forth all its energies for the struggle
of the election.  Crassus and Caesar staked their money--whether their
own or borrowed--and their connections to procure the consulship
for Catilina and Antonius; the comrades of Catilina strained every
nerve to bring to the helm the man who promised them the magistracies
and priesthoods, the palaces and country-estates of their opponents,
and above all deliverance from their debts, and who, they knew,
would keep his word.  The aristocracy was in great perplexity,
chiefly because it was not able even to start counter-candidates.
That such a candidate risked his head, was obvious; and the times
were past when the post of danger allured the burgess--now even
ambition was hushed in presence of fear.  Accordingly the nobility
contented themselves with making a feeble attempt to check
electioneering intrigues by issuing a new law respecting
the purchase of votes--which, however, was thwarted by the veto
of a tribune of the people--and with turning over their votes
to a candidate who, although not acceptable to them, was at least
inoffensive.  This was Marcus Cicero, notoriously a political
trimmer,(14) accustomed to flirt at times with the democrats,
at times with Pompeius, at times from a somewhat greater distance
with the aristocracy, and to lend his services as an advocate to every
influential man under impeachment without distinction of person
or party (he numbered even Catilina among his clients); belonging
properly to no party or--which was much the same--to the party
of material interests, which was dominant in the courts
and was pleased with the eloquent pleader and the courtly and witty
companion.  He had connections enough in the capital and the country
towns to have a chance alongside of the candidates proposed
by the democracy; and as the nobility, although with reluctance,
and the Pompeians voted for him, he was elected by a great
majority.  The two candidates of the democracy obtained almost
the same number of votes; but a few more fell to Antonius, whose family
was of more consideration than that of his fellow-candidate.
This accident frustrated the election of Catilina and saved Rome
from a second Cinna.  A little before this Piso had--it was said
at the instigation of his political and personal enemy Pompeius--
been put to death in Spain by his native escort.(15)  With the consul
Antonius alone nothing could be done; Cicero broke the loose bond
which attached him to the conspiracy, even before they entered
on their offices, inasmuch as he renounced his legal privilege
of having the consular provinces determined by lot, and handed over
to his deeply-embarrassed colleague the lucrative governorship
of Macedonia.  The essential preliminary conditions of this project
also had therefore miscarried.

New Projects of the Conspirators

Meanwhile the development of Oriental affairs grew daily
more perilous for the democracy.  The settlement of Syria rapidly
advanced; already invitations had been addressed to Pompeius
from Egypt to march thither and occupy the country for Rome;
they could not but be afraid that they would next hear of Pompeius
in person having taken possession of the valley of the Nile.
It was by this very apprehension probably that the attempt of Caesar
to get himself sent by the people to Egypt for the purpose of aiding
the king against his rebellious subjects(16) was called forth;
it failed, apparently, through the disinclination of great and small
to undertake anything whatever against the interest of Pompeius.
His return home, and the probable catastrophe which it involved,
were always drawing the nearer; often as the string of the bow
had been broken, it was necessary that there should be a fresh
attempt to bend it.  The city was in sullen ferment; frequent
conferences of the heads of the movement indicated that some
step was again contemplated.

The Servilian Agrarian Law

What they wished became manifest when the new tribunes
of the people entered on their office (10 Dec. 690), and one of them,
Publius Servilius Rullus, immediately proposed an agrarian law,
which was designed to procure for the leaders of the democrats
a position similar to that which Pompeius occupied in consequence
of 2the Gabinio-Manilian proposals.  The nominal object
was the founding of colonies in Italy.  The ground for these, however,
was not to be gained by dispossession; on the contrary all existing
private rights were guaranteed, and even the illegal occupations
of the most recent times(17) were converted into full property.
The leased Campanian domain alone was to be parcelled out
and colonized; in other cases the government was to acquire
the land destined for assignation by ordinary purchase.  To procure
the sums necessary for this purpose, the remaining Italian,
and more especially all the extra-Italian, domain-land was successively
to be brought to sale; which was understood to include the former
royal hunting domains in Macedonia, the Thracian Chersonese,
Bithynia, Pontus, Cyrene, and also the territories of the cities
acquired in full property by right of war in Spain, Africa, Sicily,
Hellas, and Cilicia.  Everything was likewise to be sold
which the state had acquired in moveable and immoveable property
since the year 666, and of which it had not previously disposed;
this was aimed chiefly at Egypt and Cyprus.  For the same purpose
all subject communities, with the exception of the towns with Latin
rights and the other free cities, were burdened with very high
rates of taxes and tithes.  Lastly there was likewise destined
for those purchases the produce of the new provincial revenues,
to be reckoned from 692, and the proceeds of the whole booty
not yet legally applied; which regulations had reference
to the new sources of taxation opened up by Pompeius in the east
and to the public moneys that might be found in the hands of Pompeius
and the heirs of Sulla.  For the execution of this measure decemvirs
with a special jurisdiction and special -imperium- were to be nominated,
who were to remain five years in office and to surround themselves
with 200 subalterns from the equestrian order; but in the election
of the decemvirs only those candidates who should personally
announce themselves were to be taken into account, and,
as in the elections of priests,(18) only seventeen tribes to be fixed
by lot out of the thirty-five were to make the election.  It needed
no great acuteness to discern that in this decemviral college it
was intended to create a power after the model of that of Pompeius,
only with somewhat less of a military and more of a democratic hue.
The jurisdiction was especially needed for the sake of deciding
the Egyptian question, the military power for the sake of arming
against Pompeius; the clause, which forbade the choice of an absent
person, excluded Pompeius; and the diminution of the tribes entitled
to vote as well as the manipulation of the balloting were designed
to facilitate the management of the election in accordance
with the views of the democracy.

But this attempt totally missed its aim.  The multitude, finding
it more agreeable to have their corn measured out to them
under the shade of Roman porticoes from the public magazines
than to cultivate it for themselves in the sweat of their brow,
received even the proposal in itself with complete indifference.
They soon came also to feel that Pompeius would never acquiesce
in such a resolution offensive to him in every respect, and that matters
could not stand well with a party which in its painful alarm
condescended to offers so extravagant.  Under such circumstances
it was not difficult for the government to frustrate the proposal;
the new consul Cicero perceived the opportunity of exhibiting
here too his talent for giving a finishing stroke to the beaten party;
even before the tribunes who stood ready exercised their veto,
the author himself withdrew his proposal (1 Jan. 691).
The democracy had gained nothing but the unpleasant lesson,
that the great multitude out of love or fear still continued
to adhere to Pompeius, and that every proposal was certain
to fail which the public perceived to be directed against him.

Preparations of the Anarchists in Etruria

Wearied by all this vain agitation and scheming without result,
Catilina determined to push the matter to a decision and make
an end of it once for all.  He took his measures in the course
of the summer to open the civil war.  Faesulae (Fiesole),
a very strong town situated in Etruria--which swarmed with
the impoverished and conspirators--and fifteen years before the centre
of the rising of Lepidus, was again selected as the headquarters
of the insurrection.  Thither were despatched the consignments
of money, for which especially the ladies of quality in the capital
implicated in the conspiracy furnished the means; there arms
and soldiers were collected; and there an old Sullan captain, Gaius
Manlius, as brave and as free from scruples of conscience
as was ever any soldier of fortune, took temporarily the chief command.
Similar though less extensive warlike preparations were made
at other points of Italy.  The Transpadanes were so excited
that they seemed only waiting for the signal to strike.  In the Bruttian
country, on the east coast of Italy, in Capua--wherever great
bodies of slaves were accumulated--a second slave insurrection
like that of Spartacus seemed on the eve of arising.  Even in the capital
there was something brewing; those who saw the haughty bearing
with which the summoned debtors appeared before the urban praetor,
could not but remember the scenes which had preceded the murder
of Asellio.(19)  The capitalists were in unutterable anxiety;
it seemed needful to enforce the prohibition of the export
of gold and silver, and to set a watch over the principal ports.
The plan of the conspirators was--on occasion of the consular
election for 692, for which Catilina had again announced himself--
summarily to put to death the consul conducting the election
as well as the inconvenient rival candidates, and to carry
the election of Catilina at any price; in case of necessity, even
to bring armed bands from Faesulae and the other rallying points
against the capital, and with their help to crush resistance.

Election of Catalina as Consul again Frustrated

Cicero, who was always quickly and completely informed by his
agents male and female of the transactions of the conspirators,
on the day fixed for the election (20 Oct.) denounced the conspiracy
in the full senate and in presence of its principal leaders.
Catilina did not condescend to deny it; he answered haughtily that,
if the election for consul should fall on him, the great headless
party would certainly no longer want a leader against the small
party led by wretched heads.  But as palpable evidences of the plot
were not before them, nothing farther was to be got from the timid
senate, except that it gave its previous sanction in the usual way
to the exceptional measures which the magistrates might deem
suitable (21 Oct.).  Thus the election battle approached--
on this occasion more a battle than an election; for Cicero too
had formed for himself an armed bodyguard out of the younger men,
more especially of the mercantile order; and it was his armed force
that covered and dominated the Campus Martius on the 28th October,
the day to which the election had been postponed by the senate.
The conspirators were not successful either in killing the consul
conducting the election, or in deciding the elections according
to their mind.

Outbreak of the Insurrection in Etruria
Repressive Measures of the Government

But meanwhile the civil war had begun.  On the 27th Oct.  Gaius
Manlius had planted at Faesulae the eagle round which the army
of the insurrection was to flock--it was one of the Marian eagles
from the Cimbrian war--and he had summoned the robbers
from the mountains as well as the country people to join him.
His proclamations, following the old traditions of the popular
party, demanded liberation from the oppressive load of debt
and a modification of the procedure in insolvency, which, if the amount
of the debt actually exceeded the estate, certainly still involved
in law the forfeiture of the debtor's freedom.  It seemed as though
the rabble of the capital, in coming forward as if it were
the legitimate successor of the old plebeian farmers and fighting
its battles under the glorious eagles of the Cimbrian war, wished
to cast a stain not only on the present but on the past of Rome.
This rising, however, remained isolated; at the other places
of rendezvous the conspiracy did not go beyond the collection of arms
and the institution of secret conferences, as resolute leaders
were everywhere wanting.  This was fortunate for the government;
for, although the impending civil war had been for a considerable time
openly announced, its own irresolution and the clumsiness
of the rusty machinery of administration had not allowed it to make
any military preparations whatever.  It was only now that the general
levy was called out, and superior officers were ordered to the several
regions of Italy that each might suppress the insurrection
in his own district; while at the same time the gladiatorial slaves
were ejected from the capital, and patrols were ordered on account
of the apprehension of incendiarism.

The Conspirators in Rome

Catilina was in a painful position.  According to his design
there should have been a simultaneous rising in the capital
and in Etruria on occasion of the consular elections; the failure
of the former and the outbreak of the latter movement endangered
his person as well as the whole success of his undertaking.
Now that his partisans at Faesulae had once risen in arms against
the government, he could no longer remain in the capital; and yet
not only did everything depend on his inducing the conspirators
of the capital now at least to strike quickly, but this had to be
done even before he left Rome--for he knew his helpmates too well
to rely on them for that matter.  The more considerable
of the conspirators--Publius Lentulus Sura consul in 683, afterwards
expelled from the senate and now, in order to get back into
the senate, praetor for the second time, and the two former praetors
Publius Autronius and Lucius Cassius--were incapable men; Lentulus
an ordinary aristocrat of big words and great pretensions, but slow
in conception and irresolute in action; Autronius distinguished
for nothing but his powerful screaming voice; while as to Lucius
Cassius no one comprehended how a man so corpulent and so simple
had fallen among the conspirators.  But Catilina could not venture
to place his abler partisans, such as the young senator Gaius
Cethegus and the equites Lucius Statilius and Publius Gabinius
Capito, at the head of the movement; for even among the conspirators
the traditional hierarchy of rank held its ground, and the very
anarchists thought that they should be unable to carry the day
unless a consular or at least a praetorian were at their head.
Therefore, however urgently the army of the insurrection might
long for its general, and however perilous it was for the latter
to remain longer at the seat of government after the outbreak
of the revolt, Catilina nevertheless resolved still to remain
for a time in Rome.  Accustomed to impose on his cowardly opponents
by his audacious insolence, he showed himself publicly in the Forum
and in the senate-house and replied to the threats which were
there addressed to him, that they should beware of pushing him
to extremities; that, if they should set the house on fire, he would
be compelled to extinguish the conflagration in ruins.  In reality
neither private persons nor officials ventured to lay hands
on the dangerous man; it was almost a matter of indifference
when a young nobleman brought him to trial on account of violence,
for long before the process could come to an end, the question could not
but be decided elsewhere.  But the projects of Catilina failed;
chiefly because the agents of the government had made their way
into the circle of the conspirators and kept it accurately informed
of every detail of the plot.  When, for instance, the conspirators
appeared before the strong Praeneste (1 Nov.), which they had hoped
to surprise by a -coup de main-, they found the inhabitants warned
and armed; and in a similar way everything miscarried.  Catilina
with all his temerity now found it advisable to fix his departure
for one of the ensuing days; but previously on his urgent exhortation,
at a last conference of the conspirators in the night between
the 6th and 7th Nov. it was resolved to assassinate the consul Cicero,
who was the principal director of the countermine, before the departure
of their leader, and, in order to obviate any treachery,
to carry the resolve at once into execution.  Early on the morning
of the 7th Nov., accordingly, the selected murderers knocked
at the house of the consul; but they found the guard reinforced
and themselves repulsed--on this occasion too the spies
of the government had outdone the conspirators.

Catalina Proceed to Etruria

On the following day (8 Nov.) Cicero convoked the senate.
Even now Catilina ventured to appear and to attempt a defence against
the indignant attacks of the consul, who unveiled before his face
the events of the last few days; but men no longer listened to him,
and in the neighbourhood of the place where he sat the benches became
empty.  He left the sitting, and proceeded, as he would doubtless
have done even apart from this incident, in accordance
with the agreement, to Etruria.  Here he proclaimed himself consul,
and assumed an attitude of waiting, in order to put his troops
in motion against the capital on the first announcement
of the outbreak of the insurrection there.  The government declared
the two leaders Catilina and Manlius, as well as those of their
comrades who should not have laid down their arms by a certain day,
to be outlaws, and called out new levies; but at the head
of the army destined against Catilina was placed the consul Gaius
Antonius, who was notoriously implicated in the conspiracy,
and with whose character it was wholly a matter of accident whether
he would lead his troops against Catilina or over to his side.
They seemed to have directly laid their plans towards converting
this Antonius into a second Lepidus.  As little were steps taken
against the leaders of the conspiracy who had remained behind
in the capital, although every one pointed the finger at them
and the insurrection in the capital was far from being abandoned
by the conspirators--on the contrary the plan of it had been settled
by Catilina himself before his departure from Rome.  A tribune
was to give the signal by calling an assembly of the people;
in the following night Cethegus was to despatch the consul Cicero;
Gabinius and Statilius were to set the city simultaneously
on fire at twelve places; and a communication was to be established
as speedily as possible with the army of Catilina, which should
have meanwhile advanced.  Had the urgent representations of Cethegus
borne fruit and had Lentulus, who after Catilina's departure
was placed at the head of the conspirators, resolved on rapidly
striking a blow, the conspiracy might even now have been successful.
But the conspirators were just as incapable and as cowardly as their
opponents; weeks elapsed and the matter came to no decisive issue.

Conviction and Arrest of the Conspirators in the Capital

At length the countermine brought about a decision.  Lentulus
in his tedious fashion, which sought to cover negligence in regard
to what was immediate and necessary by the projection of large
and distant plans, had entered into relations with the deputies
of a Celtic canton, the Allobroges, now present in Rome; had attempted
to implicate these--the representatives of a thoroughly disorganized
commonwealth and themselves deeply involved in debt--in the conspiracy;
and had given them on their departure messages and letters to his
confidants.  The Allobroges left Rome, but were arrested in the night
between 2nd and 3rd Dec. close to the gates by the Roman authorities,
and their papers were taken from them.  It was obvious
that the Allobrogian deputies had lent themselves as spies
to the Roman government, and had carried on the negotiations only
with a view to convey into the hands of the latter the desired proofs
implicating the ringleaders of the conspiracy.  On the following
morning orders were issued with the utmost secrecy by Cicero
for the arrest of the most dangerous leaders of the plot,
and executed in regard to Lentulus, Cethegus, Gabinius,
and Statilius, while some others escaped from seizure by flight.
The guilt of those arrested as well as of the fugitives
was completely evident.  Immediately after the arrest the letters seized,
the seals and handwriting of which the prisoners could not avoid
acknowledging, were laid before the senate, and the captives
and witnesses were heard; further confirmatory facts, deposits of arms
in the houses of the conspirators, threatening expressions
which they had employed, were presently forthcoming; the actual
subsistence of the conspiracy was fully and validly established,
and the most important documents were immediately on the suggestion
of Cicero published as news-sheets.

The indignation against the anarchist conspiracy was general.
Gladly would the oligarchic party have made use of the revelations
to settle accounts with the democracy generally and Caesar
in particular, but it was far too thoroughly broken to be able
to accomplish this, and to prepare for him the fate which it had
formerly prepared for the two Gracchi and Saturninus;
in this respect the matter went no farther than good will.
The multitude of the capital was especially shocked by the incendiary
schemes of the conspirators.  The merchants and the whole party
of material interests naturally perceived in this war of the debtors
against the creditors a struggle for their very existence; in tumultuous
excitement their youth crowded, with swords in their hands, round
the senate-house and brandished them against the open and secret
partisans of Catilina.  In fact, the conspiracy was for the moment
paralyzed; though its ultimate authors perhaps were still at liberty,
the whole staff entrusted with its execution were either captured
or had fled; the band assembled at Faesulae could not possibly
accomplish much, unless supported by an insurrection in the capital.

Discussions in the Senate as to the Execution of Those Arrested

In a tolerably well-ordered commonwealth the matter would now
have been politically at an end, and the military and the tribunals
would have undertaken the rest.  But in Rome matters had come
to such a pitch, that the government was not even in a position
to keep a couple of noblemen of note in safe custody.  The slaves
and freedmen of Lentulus and of the others arrested were stirring;
plans, it was alleged, were contrived to liberate them by force
from the private houses in which they were detained; there was no lack--
thanks to the anarchist doings of recent years--of ringleaders
in Rome who contracted at a certain rate for riots and deeds
of violence; Catilina, in fine, was informed of what had occurred,
and was near enough to attempt a coup de main with his bands.
How much of these rumours was true, we cannot tell; but there was ground
for apprehension, because, agreeably to the constitution, neither troops
nor even a respectable police force were at the command of the government
in the capital, and it was in reality left at the mercy of every gang
of banditti.  The idea was suggested of precluding all possible
attempts at liberation by the immediate execution of the prisoners.
Constitutionally, this was not possible.  According to the ancient
and sacred right of appeal, a sentence of death could only be
pronounced against the Roman burgess by the whole body of burgesses,
and not by any other authority; and, as the courts formed by the body
of burgesses had themselves become antiquated, a capital sentence
was no longer pronounced at all.  Cicero would gladly have rejected
the hazardous suggestion; indifferent as in itself the legal
question might be to the advocate, he knew well how very useful
it is to an advocate to be called liberal, and he showed
little desire to separate himself for ever from the democratic party
by shedding this blood.  But those around him, and particularly
his genteel wife, urged him to crown his services to his country
by this bold step; the consul like all cowards anxiously endeavouring
to avoid the appearance of cowardice, and yet trembling
before the formidable responsibility, in his distress
convoked the senate, and left it to that body to decide
as to the life or death of the four prisoners.  This indeed
had no meaning; for as the senate was constitutionally even less
entitled to act than the consul, all the responsibility still
devolved rightfully on the latter: but when was cowardice ever
consistent? Caesar made every exertion to save the prisoners,
and his speech, full of covert threats as to the future inevitable
vengeance of the democracy, made the deepest impression.  Although
all the consulars and the great majority of the senate had already
declared for the execution, most of them, with Cicero at their
head, seemed now once more inclined to keep within the limits
of the law.  But when Cato in pettifogging fashion brought
the champions of the milder view into suspicion of being accomplices
of the plot, and pointed to the preparations for liberating
the prisoners by a street-riot, he succeeded in throwing the waverers
into a fresh alarm, and in securing a majority for the immediate
execution of the transgressors.

Execution of the Catalinarians

The execution of the decree naturally devolved on the consul,
who had called it forth.  Late on the evening of the 5th of December
the prisoners were brought from their previous quarters, and conducted
across the market-place still densely crowded by men to the prison
in which criminals condemned to death were wont to be kept.
It was a subterranean vault, twelve feet deep, at the foot
of the Capitol, which formerly had served as a well-house.
The consul himself conducted Lentulus, and praetors the others,
all attended by strong guards; but the attempt at rescue,
which had been expected, did not take place.  No one knew whether
the prisoners were being conveyed to a secure place of custody
or to the scene of execution.  At the door of the prison they
were handed over to the -tresviri- who conducted the executions,
and were strangled in the subterranean vault by torchlight.  The consul
had waited before the door till the executions were accomplished,
and then with his loud well-known voice proclaimed over the Forum
to the multitude waiting in silence, "They are dead."  Till far
on in the night the crowds moved through the streets and exultingly
saluted the consul, to whom they believed that they owed
the security of their houses and their property.  The senate ordered
public festivals of gratitude, and the first men of the nobility,
Marcus Cato and Quintus Catulus, saluted the author of the sentence
of death with the name--now heard for the first time--of a "father
of his fatherland."

But it was a dreadful deed, and all the more dreadful that it
appeared to a whole people great and praiseworthy.  Never perhaps
has a commonwealth more lamentably declared itself bankrupt,
than did Rome through this resolution--adopted in cold blood
by the majority of the government and approved by public opinion--
to put to death in all haste a few political prisoners, who were
no doubt culpable according to the laws, but had not forfeited life;
because, forsooth, the security of the prisons was not to be
trusted, and there was no sufficient police.  It was the humorous
trait seldom wanting to a historical tragedy, that this act
of the most brutal tyranny had to be carried out by the most unstable
and timid of all Roman statesmen, and that the "first democratic
consul" was selected to destroy the palladium of the ancient
freedom of the Roman commonwealth, the right of -provocatio-.

Suppression of the Etruscan Insurrection

After the conspiracy had been thus stifled in the capital
even before it came to an outbreak, there remained the task of putting
an end to the insurrection in Etruria.  The army amounting to about
2000 men, which Catilina found on his arrival, had increased nearly
fivefold by the numerous recruits who flocked in, and already
formed two tolerably full legions, in which however only about
a fourth part of the men were sufficiently armed.  Catilina had
thrown himself with his force into the mountains and avoided
a battle with the troops of Antonius, with the view of completing
the organization of his bands and awaiting the outbreak
of the insurrection in Rome.  But the news of its failure broke up
the army of the insurgents; the mass of the less compromised thereupon
returned home.  The remnant of resolute, or rather desperate,
men that were left made an attempt to cut their way through
the Apennine passes into Gaul; but when the little band arrived
at the foot of the mountains near Pistoria (Pistoja), it found itself
here caught between two armies.  In front of it was the corps
of Quintus Metellus, which had come up from Ravenna and Ariminum
to occupy the northern slope of the Apennines; behind it was the army
of Antonius, who had at length yielded to the urgency of his officers
and agreed to a winter campaign.  Catilina was wedged in
on both sides, and his supplies came to an end; nothing was left
but to throw himself on the nearest foe, which was Antonius.
In a narrow valley enclosed by rocky mountains the conflict took place
between the insurgents and the troops of Antonius, which the latter,
in order not to be under the necessity of at least personally
performing execution on his former allies, had under a pretext
entrusted for this day to a brave officer who had grown gray
under arms, Marcus Petreius.  The superior strength of the government
army was of little account, owing to the nature of the field
of battle.  Both Catilina and Petreius placed their most trusty men
in the foremost ranks; quarter was neither given nor received.
The conflict lasted long, and many brave men fell on both sides;
Catilina, who before the beginning of the battle had sent back
his horse and those of all his officers, showed on this day
that nature had destined him for no ordinary things, and that he knew
at once how to command as a general and how to fight as a soldier.
At length Petreius with his guard broke the centre of the enemy,
and, after having overthrown this, attacked the two wings from within.
This decided the victory.  The corpses of the Catilinarians--there
were counted 3000 of them--covered, as it were in rank and file,
the ground where they had fought; the officers and the general
himself had, when all was lost, thrown themselves headlong
on the enemy and thus sought and found death (beginning of 692).
Antonius was on account of this victory stamped by the senate
with the title of Imperator, and new thanksgiving-festivals showed
that the government and the governed were beginning to become
accustomed to civil war.

Attitude of Crassus and Caesar toward the Anarchists

The anarchist plot had thus been suppressed in the capital as in Italy
with bloody violence; people were still reminded of it merely
by the criminal processes which in the Etruscan country towns
and in the capital thinned the ranks of those affiliated to the beaten
party, and by the large accessions to the robber-bands of Italy--
one of which, for instance, formed out of the remains of the armies
of Spartacus and Catilina, was destroyed by a military force in 694
in the territory of Thurii.  But it is important to keep in view
that the blow fell by no means merely on the anarchists proper,
who had conspired to set the capital on fire and had fought
at Pistoria, but on the whole democratic party.  That this party,
and in particular Crassus and Caesar, had a hand in the game
on the present occasion as well as in the plot of 688,
may be regarded--not in a juristic, but in a historical, point of view--
as an ascertained fact.  The circumstance, indeed, that Catulus
and the other heads of the senatorial party accused the leader
of the democrats of complicity in the anarchist plot,
and that the latter as senator spoke and voted against the brutal
judicial murder contemplated by the oligarchy, could only be urged
by partisan sophistry as any valid proof of his participation
in the plans of Catilina.  But a series of other facts is of more weight.
According to express and irrefragable testimonies it was especially
Crassus and Caesar that supported the candidature of Catilina
for the consulship.  When Caesar in 690 brought the executioners
of Sulla before the commission for murder(20) he allowed the rest
to be condemned, but the most guilty and infamous of all, Catilina,
to be acquitted.  In the revelations of the 3rd of December,
it is true, Cicero did not include among the names of the conspirators
of whom he had information those of the two influential men;
but it is notorious that the informers denounced not merely those
against whom subsequently investigation was directed, but "many innocent"
persons besides, whom the consul Cicero thought proper to erase
from the list; and in later years, when he had no reason to disguise
the truth, he expressly named Caesar among the accomplices.  An indirect
but very intelligible inculpation is implied also in the circumstance,
that of the four persons arrested on the 3rd of December the two least
dangerous, Statilius and Gabinius, were handed over to be guarded
by the senators Caesar and Crassus; it was manifestly intended that these
should either, if they allowed them to escape, be compromised in the view
of public opinion as accessories, or, if they really detained them,
be compromised in the view of their fellow-conspirators as renegades.

The following scene which occurred in the senate shows
significantlyhow matters stood.  Immediately after the arrest
of Lentulus and his comrades, a messenger despatched by the conspirators
in the capital to Catilina was seized by the agents of the government,
and, after having been assured of impunity, was induced
to make a comprehensive confession in a full meeting of the senate.
But when he came to the critical portions of his confession
and in particular named Crassus as having commissioned him,
he was interrupted by the senators, and on the suggestion
of Cicero it was resolved to cancel the whole statement without
farther inquiry, but to imprison its author notwithstanding
the amnesty assured to him, until such time as he should have
not merely retracted the statement, but should have also confessed
who had instigated him to give such false testimony! Here it is
abundantly clear, not merely that that man had a very accurate
knowledge of the state of matters who, when summoned to make
an attack upon Crassus, replied that he had no desire to provoke
the bull of the herd, but also that the majority of the senate
with Cicero at their head were agreed in not permitting the revelations
to go beyond a certain limit.  The public was not so nice; the young men,
who had taken up arms to ward off the incendiaries, were exasperated
against no one so much as against Caesar, on the 5th of December,
when he left the senate, they pointed their swords at his breast
and even now he narrowly escaped with his life on the same spot
where the fatal blow fell on him seventeen years afterwards;
he did not again for a considerable time enter the senate-house.
Any one who impartially considers the course of the conspiracy
will not be able to resist the suspicion that during all this time
Catilina was backed by more powerful men, who--relying on the want
of a legally complete chain of evidence and on the lukewarmness
and cowardice of the majority of the senate, which was but half-
initiated and greedily caught at any pretext for inaction--knew how
to hinder any serious interference with the conspiracy on the part
of the authorities, to procure free departure for the chief
of the insurgents, and even so to manage the declaration of war
and the sending of troops against the insurrection that it was almost
equivalent to the sending of an auxiliary army.  While the course
of the events themselves thus testifies that the threads
of the Catilinarian plot reached far higher than Lentulus and Catilina,
it deserves also to be noticed, that at a much later period,
when Caesar had got to the head of the state, he was in the closest
alliance with the only Catilinarian still surviving, Publius Sittius
the leader of the Mauretanian free bands, and that he modified
the law of debt quite in the sense that the proclamations
of Manlius demanded.

All these pieces of evidence speak clearly enough; but, even were
it not so, the desperate position of the democracy in presence
of the military power--which since the Gabinio-Manilian laws assumed
by its side an attitude more threatening than ever--renders it
almost a certainty that, as usually happens in such cases,
it sought a last resource in secret plots and in alliance
with anarchy.  The circumstances were very similar to those
of the Cinnan times.  While in the east Pompeius occupied a position
nearly such as Sulla then did, Crassus and Caesar sought to raise
over against him a power in Italy like that which Marius and Cinna
had possessed, with the view of employing it if possible better
than they had done.  The way to this result lay once more through
terrorism and anarchy, and to pave that way Catilina was certainly
the fitting man.  Naturally the more reputable leaders
of the democracy kept themselves as far as possible in the background,
and left to their unclean associates the execution of the unclean
work, the political results of which they hoped afterwards
to appropriate.  Still more naturally, when the enterprise had failed,
the partners of higher position applied every effort to conceal
their participation in it.  And at a later period, when the former
conspirator had himself become the target of political plots,
the veil was for that very reason drawn only the more closely
over those darker years in the life of the great man, and even
special apologies for him were written with that very object.(21)

Total Destruction of the Democratic Party

For five years Pompeius stood at the head of his armies and fleets
in the east; for five years the democracy at home conspired
to overthrow him.  The result was discouraging.  With unspeakable
exertions they had not merely attained nothing, but had suffered
morally as well as materially enormous loss.  Even the coalition
of 683 could not but be for democrats of pure water a scandal,
although the democracy at that time only coalesced with two
distinguished men of the opposite party and bound these
to its programme.

But now the democratic party had made common cause with a band
of murderers and bankrupts, who were almost all likewise deserters
from the camp of the aristocracy; and had at least for the time
being accepted their programme, that is to say, the terrorism
of Cinna.  The party of material interests, one of the chief elements
of the coalition of 683, was thereby estranged from the democracy,
and driven into the arms of the Optimates in the first instance,
or of any power at all which would and could give protection against
anarchy.  Even the multitude of the capital, who, although having
no objection to a street-riot, found it inconvenient to have
their houses set on fire over their heads, became in some measure
alarmed.  It is remarkable that in this very year (691) the full
re-establishment of the Sempronian corn-largesses took place,
and was effected by the senate on the proposal of Cato.  The league
of the democratic leaders with anarchy had obviously created a breach
between the former and the burgesses of the city; and the oligarchy
sought, not without at least momentary success, to enlarge
this chasm and to draw over the masses to their side.  Lastly,
Gnaeus Pompeius had been partly warned, partly exasperated,
by all these cabals; after all that had occurred, and after the democracy
had itself virtually torn asunder the ties which connected it
with Pompeius, it could no longer with propriety make the request--
which in 684 had had a certain amount of reason on its side--
that he should not himself destroy with the sword the democratic power
which he had raised, and which had raised him.

Thus the democracy was disgraced and weakened; but above all it had
become ridiculous through the merciless exposure of its perplexity
and weakness.  Where the humiliation of the overthrown government
and similar matters of little moment were concerned, it was great
and potent; but every one of its attempts to attain a real
political success had proved a downright failure.  Its relation
to Pompeius was as false as pitiful.  While it was loading him
with panegyrics and demonstrations of homage, it was concocting
against him one intrigue after another; and one after another,
like soap-bubbles, they burst of themselves.  The general of the east
and of the seas, far from standing on his defence against them,
appeared not even to observe all the busy agitation, and to obtain
his victories over the democracy as Herakles gained his over
the Pygmies, without being himself aware of it.  The attempt to kindle
civil war had miserably failed; if the anarchist section
had at least displayed some energy, the pure democracy, while knowing
doubtless how to hire conspirators, had not known how to lead
them or to save them or to die with them.  Even the old languid
oligarchy, strengthened by the masses passing over to it
from the ranks of the democracy and above all by the--in this affair
unmistakeable--identity of its interests and those of Pompeius,
had been enabled to suppress this attempt at revolution and thereby
to achieve yet a last victory over the democracy.  Meanwhile king
Mithradates was dead, Asia Minor and Syria were regulated,
and the return of Pompeius to Italy might be every moment expected.
The decision was not far off; but was there in fact still room
to speak of a decision between the general who returned more famous
and mightier than ever, and the democracy humbled beyond parallel
and utterly powerless? Crassus prepared to embark his family
and his gold and to seek an asylum somewhere in the east;
and even so elastic and so energetic a nature as that of Caesar seemed
on the point of giving up the game as lost.  In this year (691)
occurred his candidature for the place of -pontifex maximus-;(22)
when he left his dwelling on the morning of the election,
he declared that, if he should fail in this also, he would
never again cross the threshold of his house.




Chapter VI

Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders

Pompeius in the East

When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed
to his charge, again turned his eyes homeward, he found for the second
time the diadem at his feet.  For long the development of the Roman
commonwealth had been tending towards such a catastrophe;
it was evident to every unbiassed observer, and had been remarked
a thousand times, that, if the rule of the aristocracy
should be brought to an end, monarchy was inevitable.  The senate
had now been overthrown at once by the civic liberal opposition
and by the power of the soldiery; the only question remaining
was to settle the persons, names, and forms for the new order of things;
and these were already clearly enough indicated in the partly democratic,
partly military elements of the revolution.  The events of the last
five years had set, as it were, the final seal on this impending
transformation of the commonwealth.  In the newly-erected
Asiatic provinces, which gave regal honours to their organizer
as the successor of Alexander the Great, and already received
his favoured freedmen like princes, Pompeius had laid the foundations
of his dominion, and found at once the treasures, the army, and the halo
of glory which the future prince of the Roman state required.
The anarchist conspiracy, moreover, in the capital, and the civil
war connected with it, had made it palpably clear to every one
who studied political or even merely material interests,
that a government without authority and without military power,
such as that of the senate, exposed the state to the equally ludicrous
and formidable tyranny of political sharpers, and that a change
of constitution, which should connect the military power more closely
with the government, was an indispensable necessity if social order
was to be maintained.  So the ruler had arisen in the east,
the throne had been erected in Italy; to all appearance the year 692
was the last of the republic, the first of monarchy.

The Opponents of the Future Monarchy

This goal, it is true, was not to be reached without a struggle.
The constitution, which had endured for five hundred years,
and under which the insignificant town on the Tiber had risen
to unprecedented greatness and glory, had sunk its roots into the soil
to a depth beyond human ken, and no one could at all calculate
to what extent the attempt to overthrow it would penetrate
and convulse civil society.  Several rivals had been outrun by Pompeius
in the race towards the great goal, but had not been wholly set
aside.  It was not at all beyond reach of calculation that all
these elements might combine to overthrow the new holder of power,
and that Pompeius might find Quintus Catulus and Marcus Cato united
in opposition to him with Marcus Crassus, Gaius Caesar, and Titus
Labienus.  But the inevitable and undoubtedly serious struggle
could not well be undertaken under circumstances more favourable.
It was in a high degree probable that, under the fresh impression
of the Catilinarian revolt, a rule which promised order
and security, although at the price of freedom, would receive
the submission of the whole middle party--embracing especially
the merchants who concerned themselves only about their material
interests, but including also a great part of the aristocracy,
which, disorganized in itself and politically hopeless, had to rest
content with securing for itself riches, rank, and influence
by a timely compromise with the prince; perhaps even a portion
of the democracy, so sorely smitten by the recent blows, might submit
to hope for the realization of a portion of its demands
from a military chief raised to power by itself.  But, whatever might be
the position of party-relations, of what importance, in the first
instance at least, were the parties in Italy at all in presence
of Pompeius and his victorious army?  Twenty years previously Sulla,
after having concluded a temporary peace with Mithradates,
had with his five legions been able to carry a restoration
runningcounter to the natural development of things in the face
of the whole liberal party, which had been arming en masse for years,
from the moderate aristocrats and the liberal mercantile class down
to the anarchists.  The task of Pompeius was far less difficult.
He returned, after having fully and conscientiously performed
his different functions by sea and land.  He might expect to encounter
no other serious opposition save that of the various extreme
parties, each of which by itself could do nothing, and which even
when leagued together were no more than a coalition of factions
still vehemently hostile to each other and inwardly at thorough
variance.  Completely unarmed, they were without a military force
and without a head, without organization in Italy, without support
in the provinces, above all, without a general; there was in their
ranks hardly a soldier of note--to say nothing of an officer--who
could have ventured to call forth the burgesses to a conflict
with Pompeius.  The circumstance might further be taken into account,
that the volcano of revolution, which had been now incessantly
blazing for seventy years and feeding on its own flame, was visibly
burning out and verging of itself to extinction.  It was very doubtful
whether the attempt to arm the Italians for party interests
would now succeed, as it had succeeded with Cinna and Carbo.
If Pompeius exerted himself, how could he fail to effect
a revolution of the state, which was chalked out by a certain
necessity of nature in the organic development
of the Roman commonwealth?

Mission of Nepos to Rome

Pompeius had seized the right moment, when he undertook his mission
to the east; he seemed desirous to go forward.  In the autumn
of 691, Quintus Metellus Nepos arrived from the camp of Pompeius
in the capital, and came forward as a candidate for the tribuneship,
with the express design of employing that position to procure
for Pompeius the consulship for the year 693 and more immediately,
by special decree of the people, the conduct of the war against
Catilina.  The excitement in Rome was great.  It was not
to be doubted that Nepos was acting under the direct or indirect
commission of Pompeius; the desire of Pompeius to appear in Italy
as general at the head of his Asiatic legions, and to administer
simultaneously the supreme military and the supreme civil power
there, was conceived to be a farther step on the way to the throne,
and the mission of Nepos a semi-official proclamation of the monarchy.

Pompeius in Relation to the Parties

Everything turned on the attitude which the two great political parties
should assume towards these overtures; their future position
and the future of the nation depended on this. But the reception
which Nepos met with was itself in its turn determined
by the then existing relation of the parties to Pompeius, which was
of a very peculiar kind.  Pompeius had gone to the east as general
of the democracy.  He had reason enough to be discontented
with Caesar and his adherents, but no open rupture had taken place.
It is probable that Pompeius, who was at a great distance and occupied
with other things, and who besides was wholly destitute of the gift
of calculating his political bearings, by no means saw through,
at least at that time, the extent and mutual connection
of the democratic intrigues contrived against him; perhaps even
in his haughty and shortsighted manner he had a certain pride
in ignoring these underground proceedings.  Then there came the fact,
which with a character of the type of Pompeius had much weight,
that the democracy never lost sight of outward respect for the great man,
and even now (691) unsolicited (as he preferred it so) had granted
to him by a special decree of the people unprecedented honours
and decorations.(1)  But, even if all this had not been the case,
it lay in Pompeius' own well-understood interest to continue
his adherence, at least outwardly, to the popular party; democracy
and monarchy stand so closely related that Pompeius, in aspiring
to the crown, could scarcely do otherwise than call himself, as hitherto,
the champion of popular rights.  While personal and political
reasons, therefore, co-operated to keep Pompeius and the leaders
of the democracy, despite of all that had taken place, in their
previous connection, nothing was done on the opposite side to fill
up the chasm which separated him since his desertion to the camp
of the democracy from his Sullan partisans.  His personal quarrel
with Metellus and Lucullus transferred itself to their extensive
and influential coteries.  A paltry opposition of the senate--
but, to a character of so paltry a mould, all the more exasperating
by reason of its very paltriness--had attended him through his whole
career as a general.  He felt it keenly, that the senate had not taken
the smallest step to honour the extraordinary man according to
his desert, that is, by extraordinary means.  Lastly, it is not
to be forgotten, that the aristocracy was just then intoxicated
by its recent victory and the democracy deeply humbled,
and that the aristocracy was led by the pedantically stiff
and half-witless Cato, and the democracy by the supple master
of intrigue, Caesar.

Rupture between Pompeius and the Aristocracy

Such was the state of parties amidst which the emissary sent
by Pompeius appeared.  The aristocracy not only regarded the proposals
which he announced in favour of Pompeius as a declaration of war
against the existing constitution, but treated them openly as such,
and took not the slightest pains to conceal their alarm and their
indignation.  With the express design of combating these proposals,
Marcus Cato had himself elected as tribune of the people
along with Nepos, and abruptly repelled the repeated attempts of Pompeius
to approach him personally.  Nepos naturally after this found himself
under no inducement to spare the aristocracy, but attached himself
the more readily to the democrats, when these, pliant as ever,
submitted to what was inevitable and chose freely to concede
the office of general in Italy as well as the consulate
rather than let the concession be wrung from them by force of arms.
The cordial understanding soon showed itself.  Nepos publicly accepted
(Dec. 691) the democratic view of the executions recently decreed
by the majority of the senate, as unconstitutional judicial murders;
and that his lord and master looked on them in no other light,
was shown by his significant silence respecting the voluminous
vindication of them which Cicero had sent to him.  On the other
hand, the first act with which Caesar began his praetorship
was to call Quintus Catulus to account for the moneys alleged
to have been embezzled by him at the rebuilding of the Capitoline temple,
and to transfer the completion of the temple to Pompeius.  This was
a masterstroke.  Catulus had already been building at the temple
for fifteen years, and seemed very much disposed to die as he had lived
superintendent of the Capitoline buildings; an attack on this abuse
of a public commission--an abuse covered only by the reputation
of the noble commissioner--was in reality entirely justified
and in a high degree popular.  But when the prospect was simultaneously
opened up to Pompeius of being allowed to delete the name of Catulus
and engrave his own on this proudest spot of the first city
of the globe, there was offered to him the very thing which most
of all delighted him and did no harm to the democracy--abundant
but empty honour; while at the same time the aristocracy, which could
not possibly allow its best man to fall, was brought into the most
disagreeable collision with Pompeius.

Meanwhile Nepos had brought his proposals concerning Pompeius
before the burgesses.  On the day of voting Cato and his friend
and colleague, Quintus Minucius, interposed their veto.  When Nepos
did not regard this and continued the reading out, a formal conflict
took place; Cato and Minucius threw themselves on their colleague
and forced him to stop; an armed band liberated him, and drove
the aristocratic section from the Forum; but Cato and Minucius
returned, now supported likewise by armed bands, and ultimately
maintained the field of battle for the government.  Encouraged
by this victory of their bands over those of their antagonist,
the senate suspended the tribune Nepos as well as the praetor Caesar,
who had vigorously supported him in the bringing in of the law,
from their offices; their deposition, which was proposed in the senate,
was prevented by Cato, more, doubtless, because it was
unconstitutional than because it was injudicious.  Caesar did
not regard the decree, and continued his official functions till
the senate used violence against him.  As soon as this was known,
the multitude appeared before his house and placed itself at his
disposal; it was to depend solely on him whether the struggle
in the streets should begin, or whether at least the proposals made
by Metellus should now be resumed and the military command in Italy
desired by Pompeius should be procured for him; but this was not
in Caesar's interest, and so he induced the crowds to disperse,
whereupon the senate recalled the penalty decreed against him.
Nepos himself had, immediately after his suspension, left
the city and embarked for Asia, in order to report to Pompeius
the result of his mission.

Retirement of Pompeius

Pompeius had every reason to be content with the turn which things
had taken.  The way to the throne now lay necessarily through civil
war; and he owed it to Cato's incorrigible perversity that he could
begin this war with good reason.  After the illegal condemnation
of the adherents of Catilina, after the unparalleled acts of violence
against the tribune of the people Metellus, Pompeius might wage war
at once as defender of the two palladia of Roman public freedom--
the right of appeal and the inviolability of the tribunate
of the people--against the aristocracy, and as champion of the party
of order against the Catilinarian band.  It seemed almost impossible
that Pompeius should neglect this opportunity and with his eyes
open put himself a second time into the painful position, in which
the dismissal of his army in 684 had placed him, and from which
only the Gabinian law had released him.  But near as seemed
the opportunity of placing the white chaplet around his brow,
and much as his own soul longed after it, when the question of action
presented itself, his heart and his hand once more failed him.
This man, altogether ordinary in every respect excepting only
his pretensions, would doubtless gladly have placed himself beyond
the law, if only he could have done so without forsaking legal ground.
His very lingering in Asia betrayed a misgiving of this sort.
He might, had he wished, have very well arrived in January 692
with his fleet and army at the port of Brundisium, and have received
Nepos there.  His tarrying the whole winter of 691-692 in Asia had
proximately the injurious consequence, that the aristocracy,
which of course accelerated the campaign against Catilina as it best
could, had meanwhile got rid of his bands, and had thus set aside
the most feasible pretext for keeping together the Asiatic legions
in Italy.  For a man of the type of Pompeius, who for want of faith
in himself and in his star timidly clung in public life to formal
right, and with whom the pretext was nearly of as much importance
as the motive, this circumstance was of serious weight.  He probably
said to himself, moreover, that, even if he dismissed his army,
he did not let it wholly out of his hand, and could in case
of need still raise a force ready for battle sooner at any rate
than any other party-chief; that the democracy was waiting
in submissive attitude for his signal, and that he could deal
with the refractory senate even without soldiers; and such further
considerations as suggested themselves, in which there was exactly
enough of truth to make them appear plausible to one who wished
to deceive himself.  Once more the very peculiar temperament
of Pompeius naturally turned the scale.  He was one of those men
who are capable it may be of a crime, but not of insubordination;
in a good as in a bad sense, he was thoroughly a soldier.  Men of mark
respect the law as a moral necessity, ordinary men as a traditional
everyday rule; for this very reason military discipline, in which
more than anywhere else law takes the form of habit, fetters every
man not entirely self-reliant as with a magic spell.  It has often
been observed that the soldier, even where he has determined
to refuse obedience to those set over him, involuntarily
when that obedience is demanded resumes his place in the ranks.
It was this feeling that made Lafayette and Dumouriez hesitate
at the last moment before the breach of faith and break down;
and to this too Pompeius succumbed.

In the autumn of 692 Pompeius embarked for Italy.  While in the capital
all was being prepared for receiving the new monarch, news came
that Pompeius, when barely landed at Brundisium, had broken up
his legions and with a small escort had entered on his journey
to the capital.  If it is a piece of good fortune to gain a crown
without trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did
for Pompeius; but on those who lack courage the gods lavish every
favour and every gift in vain.

Pompeius without Influence

The parties breathed freely.  For the second time Pompeius had
abdicated; his already-vanquished competitors might once more begin
the race--in which doubtless the strangest thing was, that Pompeius
was again a rival runner.  In January 693 he came to Rome.
His position was an awkward one and vacillated with so much uncertainty
between the parties, that people gave him the nickname of Gnaeus
Cicero.  He had in fact lost favour with all.  The anarchists saw
in him an adversary, the democrats an inconvenient friend, Marcus
Crassus a rival, the wealthy class an untrustworthy protector,
the aristocracy a declared foe.(2)  He was still indeed the most
powerful man in the state; his military adherents scattered through
all Italy, his influence in the provinces, particularly those
of the east, his military fame, his enormous riches gave him a weight
such as no other possessed; but instead of the enthusiastic
reception on which he had counted, the reception which he met
with was more than cool, and still cooler was the treatment given
to the demands which he presented.  He requested for himself,
as he had already caused to be announced by Nepos, a second consulship;
demanding also, of course, a confirmation of the arrangements made
by him in the east and a fulfilment of the promise which he had
given to his soldiers to furnish them with lands.  Against these
demands a systematic opposition arose in the senate, the chief
elements of which were furnished by the personal exasperation
of Lucullus and Metellus Creticus, the old resentment of Crassus,
and the conscientious folly of Cato.  The desired second consulship
was at once and bluntly refused.  The very first request
which the returning general addressed to the senate, that the election
of the consuls for 693 might be put off till after his entry
into the capital, had been rejected; much less was there any likelihood
of obtaining from the senate the necessary dispensation from the law
of Sulla as to re-election.(3)  As to the arrangements which
he had made in the eastern provinces, Pompeius naturally asked
their confirmation as a whole; Lucullus carried a proposal
thatevery ordinance should be separately discussed and voted upon,
which opened the door for endless annoyances and a multitude of defeats
in detail.  The promise of a grant of land to the soldiers
of the Asiatic army was ratified indeed in general by the senate,
but was at the same time extended to the Cretan legions of Metellus;
and--what was worse--it was not executed, because the public chest
was empty and the senate was not disposed to meddle with the domains
for this purpose.  Pompeius, in despair of mastering the persistent
and spiteful opposition of the senate, turned to the burgesses.
But he understood still less how to conduct his movements
on this field.  The democratic leaders, although they did not
openly oppose him, had no cause at all to make his interests their own,
and so kept aloof.  Pompeius' own instruments--such as the consuls
elected by his influence and partly by his money, Marcus Pupius Piso
for 693 and Lucius Afranius for 694--showed themselves unskilful
and useless.  When at length the assignation of land for the veterans
of Pompeius was submitted to the burgesses by the tribune
of the people Lucius Flavius in the form of a general agrarian law,
the proposal, not supported by the democrats, openly combated
by the aristocrats, was left in a minority (beg. of 694).  The exalted
general now sued almost humbly for the favour of the masses,
for it was on his instigation that the Italian tolls were abolished
by a law introduced by the praetor Metellus Nepos (694).  But he played
the demagogue without skill and without success; his reputation
suffered from it, and he did not obtain what he desired.  He had
completely run himself into a noose.  One of his opponents summed
up his political position at that time by saying that he had
endeavoured "to conserve by silence his embroidered triumphal
mantle."  In fact nothing was left for him but to fret.

Rise of Caesar

Then a new combination offered itself.  The leader
of the democratic party had actively employed in his own interest
the political calm which had immediately followed on the retirement
of the previous holder of power.  When Pompeius returned from Asia,
Caesar had been little more than what Catilina was--the chief
of a political party which had dwindled almost into a club
of conspirators, and a bankrupt.  But since that event he had,
after administering the praetorship (692), been invested
with the governorship of Further Spain, and thereby had found means
partly to rid himself of his debts, partly to lay the foundation
for his military repute.  His old friend and ally Crassus had been
induced by the hope of finding the support against Pompeius,
which he had lost in Piso,(4) once more in Caesar, to relieve him
even before his departure to the province from the most oppressive
portion of his load of debt.  He himself had energetically employed
his brief sojourn there.  Returning from Spain in the year 694
with filled chests and as Imperator with well-founded claims
to a triumph, he came forward for the following year as a candidate
for the consulship; for the sake of which, as the senate refused
him permission to announce himself as a candidate for the consular
election in absence, he without hesitation abandoned the honour
of the triumph.  For years the democracy had striven to raise
one of its partisans to the possession of the supreme magistracy,
that by way of this bridge it might attain a military power of its own.
It had long been clear to discerning men of all shades that the strife
of parties could not be settled by civil conflict, but only
by military power; but the course of the coalition between
the democracy and the powerful military chiefs, through which the rule
of the senate had been terminated, showed with inexorable clearness
that every such alliance ultimately issued in a subordination
of the civil under the military elements, and that the popular party,
if it would really rule, must not ally itself with generals
properly foreign and even hostile to it, but must make generals
of its own leaders themselves.  The attempts made with this view
to carry the election of Catilina as consul, and to gain a military
support in Spain or Egypt, had failed; now a possibility presented
itself of procuring for their most important man the consulship
and the consular province in the usual constitutional way,
and of rendering themselves independent of their dubious and dangerous
ally Pompeius by the establishment, if we may so speak, of a home
power in their own democratic household.

Second Coalition of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar

But the more the democracy could not but desire to open up
for itself this path, which offered not so much the most favourable
as the only prospect of real successes, the more certainly it
might reckon on the resolute resistance of its political opponents.
Everything depended on whom it found opposed to it in this matter.
The aristocracy isolated was not formidable; but it had just been
rendered evident in the Catilinarian affair that it could certainly
still exert some influence, where it was more or less openly
supported by the men of material interests and by the adherents
of Pompeius.  It had several times frustrated Catilina's candidature
for the consulship, and that it would attempt the like against
Caesar was sufficiently certain.  But, even though Caesar should
perhaps be chosen in spite of it, his election alone did not suffice.
He needed at least some years of undisturbed working out of Italy,
in order to gain a firm military position; and the nobility
assuredly would leave no means untried to thwart his plans
during this time of preparation.  The idea naturally occurred,
whether the aristocracy might not be again successfully isolated
as in 683-684, and an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might
not be established between the democrats with their ally Crassus
on the one side and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other.
For Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide.
His weight hitherto in the state rested on the fact, that he was
the only party-leader who at the same time disposed of legions--
which, though now dissolved, were still in a certain sense
at his disposal.  The plan of the democracy was directed
to the very object of depriving him of this preponderance,
and of placing by his side in their own chief a military rival.
Never could he consent to this, and least of all personally help
to a post of supreme command a man like Caesar, who already
as a mere political agitator had given him trouble enough
and had just furnished the most brilliant proofs also of military
capacity in Spain.  But on the other hand, in consequence
of the cavilling opposition of the senate and the indifference
of the multitude to Pompeius and Pompeius' wishes, his position,
particularly with reference to his old soldiers, had become so painful
and so humiliating, that people might well expect from his character
to gain him for such a coalition at the price of releasing him
from that disagreeable situation.  And as to the so-called
equestrian party, it was to be found on whatever side the power lay;
and as a matter of course it would not let itself be long waited for,
if it saw Pompeius and the democracy combining anew in earnest.
It happened moreover, that on account of Cato's severity--
otherwise very laudable--towards the lessees of the taxes,
the great capitalists were just at this time once more
at vehement variance with the senate.

Change in the Position of Caesar

So the second coalition was concluded in the summer of 694.
Caesar was assured of the consulship for the following year
and a governorship in due course; to Pompeius was promised
the ratification of his arrangements made in the east,
and an assignation of lands for the soldiers of the Asiatic army;
to the equites Caesar likewise promised to procure for them
by means of the burgesses what the senate had refused; Crassus
in fine--the inevitable--was allowed at least to join the league,
although without obtaining definite promises for an accession
which he could not refuse.  It was exactly the same elements,
and indeed the same persons, who concluded the league with one another
in the autumn of 683 and in the summer of 694; but how entirely different
was the position of the parties then and now!  Then the democracy
was nothing but a political party, while its allies were victorious
generals at the head of their armies; now the leader of the democracy
was himself an Imperator crowned with victory and full
of magnificent military schemes, while his allies were retired
generals without any army.  Then the democracy conquered
in questions of principle, and in return for that victory conceded
the highest offices of state to its two confederates; now it had
become more practical and grasped the supreme civil and military
power for itself, while concessions were made to its allies only
in subordinate points and, significantly enough, not even the old
demand of Pompeius for a second consulship was attended to.  Then
the democracy sacrificed itself to its allies; now these had
to entrust themselves to it.  All the circumstances were completely
changed, most of all, however, the character of the democracy
itself.  No doubt it had, ever since it existed at all,
contained at its very core a monarchic element; but the ideal
of a constitution, which floated in more or less clear outline before
its best intellects, was always that of a civil commonwealth,
a Periclean organization of the state, in which the power
of the prince rested on the fact that he represented the burgesses
in the noblest and most accomplished manner, and the most accomplished
and noblest part of the burgesses recognized him as the man in whom
they thoroughly confided.  Caesar too set out with such views;
but they were simply ideals, which might have some influence
on realities, but could not be directly realized.  Neither the simple
civil power, as Gaius Gracchus possessed it, nor the arming
of the democratic party, such as Cinna though in a very inadequate
fashion had attempted, was able to maintain a permanent superiority
in the Roman commonwealth; the military machine fighting not for a party
but for a general, the rude force of the condottieri--after having
first appeared on the stage in the service of the restoration--soon
showed itself absolutely superior to all political parties.  Caesar
could not but acquire a conviction of this amidst the practical
workings of party, and accordingly he matured the momentous
resolution of making this military machine itself serviceable
to his ideals, and of erecting such a commonwealth, as he had
in his view, by the power of condottieri.  With this design
he concluded in 683 the league with the generals of the opposite party,
which, notwithstanding that they had accepted the democratic programme,
yet brought the democracy and Caesar himself to the brink
of destruction.  With the same design he himself came forward eleven
years afterwards as a condottiere.  It was done in both cases
with a certain naivete--with good faith in the possibility
of his being able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords
of others, at any rate by his own.  We perceive without difficulty
that this faith was fallacious, and that no one takes an evil spirit
into his service without becoming himself enslaved to it;
but the greatest men are not those who err the least.
If we still after so many centuries bow in reverence before what
Caesar willed and did, it is not because he desired and gained
a crown (to do which is, abstractly, as little of a great thing
as the crown itself) but because his mighty ideal--of a free commonwealth
under one ruler--never forsook him, and preserved him even when monarch
from sinking into vulgar royalty.

Caesar Consul

The election of Caesar as consul for 695 was carried without
difficulty by the united parties.  The aristocracy had to rest
content with giving to him--by means of a bribery, for which
the whole order of lords contributed the funds, and which excited
surprise even in that period of deepest corruption--a colleague
in the person of Marcus Bibulus, whose narrow-minded obstinacy
was regarded in their circles as conservative energy,
and whose good intentions at least were not at fault if the genteel
lords did not get a fit return for their patriotic expenditure.

Caesar's Agrarian Law

As consul Caesar first submitted to discussion the requests of his
confederates, among which the assignation of land to the veterans
of the Asiatic army was by far the most important.  The agrarian
law projected for this purpose by Caesar adhered in general
to the principles set forth in the project of law, which was introduced
in the previous year at the suggestion of Pompeius but not carried.(5)
There was destined for distribution only the Italian domain-land,
that is to say, substantially, the territory of Capua, and, if this
should not suffice, other Italian estates were to be purchased
out of the revenue of the new eastern provinces at the taxable value
recorded in the censorial rolls; all existing rights of property
and heritable possession thus remained unaffected.  The individual
allotments were small.  The receivers of land were to be poor
burgesses, fathers of at least three children; the dangerous
principle, that the rendering of military service gave a claim
to landed estate, was not laid down, but, as was reasonable and had
been done at all times, the old soldiers as well as the temporary
lessees to be ejected were simply recommended to the special
consideration of the land-distributors.  The execution of the measure
was entrusted to a commission of twenty men, into which Caesar
distinctly declared that he did not wish to be himself elected.

Opposition of the Aristocracy

The opposition had a difficult task in resisting this proposal.
It could not rationally be denied, that the state-finances ought
after the erection of the provinces of Pontus and Syria to be
in a position to dispense with the moneys from the Campanian leases;
that it was unwarrantable to withhold one of the finest districts
of Italy, and one peculiarly fitted for small holdings,
from private enterprise; and, lastly, that it was as unjust as it
was ridiculous, after the extension of the franchise to all Italy,
still to withhold municipal rights from the township of Capua.
The whole proposal bore the stamp of moderation, honesty, and solidity,
with which a democratic party-character was very dexterously
combined; for in substance it amounted to the re-establishment
of the Capuan colony founded in the time of Marius and again
done away by Sulla.(6)  In form too Caesar observed all possible
consideration.  He laid the project of the agrarian law, as well
as the proposal to ratify collectively the ordinances issued
by Pompeius in the east, and the petition of the farmers of the taxes
for remission of a third of the sums payable by them, in the first
instance before the senate for approval, and declared himself
ready to entertain and discuss proposals for alterations.
The corporation had now opportunity of convincing itself how foolishly
it had acted in driving Pompeius and the equites into the arms
of the adversary by refusing these requests.  Perhaps it was
the secret sense of this, that drove the high-born lords to the most
vehement opposition, which contrasted ill with the calm demeanour
of Caesar.  The agrarian law was rejected by them nakedly and even
without discussion.  The decree as to the arrangements of Pompeius
in Asia found quite as little favour in their eyes.  Cato attempted,
in accordance with the disreputable custom of Roman parliamentary
debate, to kill the proposal regarding the farmers of the taxes
by speaking, that is, to prolong his speech up to the legal hour
for closing the sitting; when Caesar threatened to have the stubborn
man arrested, this proposal too was at length rejected.

Proposals before the Burgesses

Of course all the proposals were now brought before the burgesses.
Without deviating far from the truth, Caesar could tell
the multitude that the senate had scornfully rejected most rational
and most necessary proposals submitted to it in the most respectful
form, simply because they came from the democratic consul.
When he added that the aristocrats had contrived a plot to procure
the rejection of the proposals, and summoned the burgesses,
and more especially Pompeius himself and his old soldiers, to stand
by him against fraud and force, this too was by no means a mere invention.
The aristocracy, with the obstinate weak creature Bibulus
and the unbending dogmatical fool Cato at their head, in reality
intended to push the matter to open violence.  Pompeius, instigated
by Caesar to proclaim his position with reference to the pending
question, declared bluntly, as was not his wont on other occasions,
that if any one should venture to draw the sword, he too would
grasp his, and in that case would not leave the shield at home;
Crassus expressed himself to the same effect The old soldiers
of Pompeius were directed to appear on the day of the vote--
which in fact primarily concerned them--in great numbers,
and with arms under their dress, at the place of voting.

The nobility however left no means untried to frustrate the proposals
of Caesar.  On each day when Caesar appeared before the people,
his colleague Bibulus instituted the well-known political observations
of the weather which interrupted all public business;(7) Caesar
did not trouble himself about the skies, but continued to prosecute
his terrestrial occupation.  The tribunician veto was interposed;
Caesar contented himself with disregarding it. Bibulus and Cato
sprang to the rostra, harangued the multitude, and instigated
the usual riot; Caesar ordered that they should be led away
by lictors from the Forum, and took care that otherwise no harm
should befall them--it was for his interest that the political
comedy should remain such as it was.

The Agrarian Law Carried
Passive Resistance of the Aristocracy

Notwithstanding all the chicanery and all the blustering
of the nobility, the agrarian law, the confirmation of the Asiatic
arrangements, and the remission to the lessees of taxes
were adopted by the burgesses; and the commission of twenty was elected
with Pompeius and Crassus at its head, and installed in office.
With all their exertions the aristocracy had gained nothing,
save that their blind and spiteful antagonism had drawn the bonds
of the coalition still tighter, and their energy, which they were soon
to need for matters more important, had exhausted itself
on these affairs that were at bottom indifferent.  They congratulated
each other on the heroic courage which they had displayed;
the declaration of Bibulus that he would rather die than yield,
the peroration which Cato still continued to deliver when in the hands
of the lictors, were great patriotic feats; otherwise they resigned
themselves to their fate.  The consul Bibulus shut himself up
for the remainder of the year in his house, while he at the same time
intimated by public placard that he had the pious intention
of watching the signs of the sky on all the days appropriate
for public assemblies during that year.  His colleagues once more
admired the great man who, as Ennius had said of the old Fabius,
"saved the state by wise delay," and they followed his example;
most of them, Cato included, no longer appeared in the senate,
but within their four walls helped their consul to fret over
the fact that the history of the world went on in spite of political
astronomy.  To the public this passive attitude of the consul
as well as of the aristocracy in general appeared, as it fairly might,
a political abdication; and the coalition were naturally very well
content that they were left to take their farther steps almost
undisturbed.

Caesar Governor of the Two Gauls

The most important of these steps was the regulating of the future
position of Caesar.  Constitutionally it devolved on the senate
to fix the functions of the second consular year of office before
the election of the consuls took place; accordingly it had, in prospect
of the election of Caesar, selected with that view for 696 two
provinces in which the governor should find no other employment
than the construction of roads and other such works of utility.
Of course the matter could not so remain; it was determined among
the confederates, that Caesar should obtain by decree of the people
an extraordinary command formed on the model of the Gabinio-Manilian
laws.  Caesar however had publicly declared that he would introduce
no proposal in his own favour; the tribune of the people Publius
Vatinius therefore undertook to submit the proposal to the burgesses,
who naturally gave their unconditional assent.  By this means
Caesar obtained the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul and the supreme
command of the three legions which were stationed there
and were already experienced in border warfare under Lucius Afranius,
along with the same rank of propraetor for his adjutants
which those of Pompeius had enjoyed; this office was secured to him
for five years--a longer period than had ever before been assigned
to any general whose appointment was limited to a definite time
at all.  The Transpadanes, who for years had in hope of the franchise
been the clients of the democratic party in Rome and of Caesar
in particular,(8) formed the main portion of his province.
His jurisdiction extended south as far as the Arnus and the Rubico,
and included Luca and Ravenna.  Subsequently there was added to Caesar's
official district the province of Narbo with the one legion
stationed there--a resolution adopted by the senate on the proposal
of Pompeius, that it might at least not see this command
also pass to Caesar by extraordinary decree of the burgesses.
What was wished was thus attained.  As no troops could constitutionally
be stationed in Italy proper,(9) the commander of the legions
of northern Italy and Gaul dominated at the same time Italy and Rome
for the next five years; and he who was master for five years
was master for life.  The consulship of Caesar had attained its object.
As a matter of course, the new holders of power did not neglect
withal to keep the multitude in good humour by games and amusements
of all sorts, and they embraced every opportunity of filling their
exchequer; in the case of the king of Egypt, for instance,
the decree of the people, which recognized him as legitimate ruler,(10)
was sold to him by the coalition at a high price, and in like manner
other dynasts and communities acquired charters and privileges
on this occasion.

Measures Adopted by the Allies for Their Security

The permanence of the arrangements made seemed also sufficiently
secured.  The consulship was, at least for the next year, entrusted
to safe hands.  The public believed at first, that it was destined
for Pompeius and Crassus themselves; the holders of power however
preferred to procure the election of two subordinate but trustworth
men of their party--Aulus Gabinius, the best among Pompeius' adjutants,
and Lucius Piso, who was less important but was Caesar's father-in-law--
as consuls for 696.  Pompeius personally undertook to watch over Italy,
where at the head of the commission of twenty he prosecuted the execution
of the agrarian law and furnished nearly 20,000 burgesses,
in great part old soldiers from his army, with land in the territory
of Capua.  Caesar's north-Italian legions served to back him
against the opposition in the capital.  There existed no prospect,
immediately at least, of a rupture among the holders of power themselves.
The laws issued by Caesar as consul, in the maintenance of which
Pompeius was at least as much interested as Caesar, formed
a guarantee for the continuance of the breach between Pompeius
and the aristocracy--whose heads, and Cato in particular,
continued to treat these laws as null--and thereby a guarantee
for the subsistence of the coalition.  Moreover, the personal bonds
of connection between its chiefs were drawn closer.  Caesar had
honestly and faithfully kept his word to his confederates
without curtailing or cheating them of what he had promised,
and in particular had fought to secure the agrarian law proposed
in the interest of Pompeius, just as if the case had been his own,
with dexterity and energy; Pompeius was not insensible to upright
dealing and good faith, and was kindly disposed towards the man
who had helped him to get quit at a blow of the sorry part
of a suppliant which he had been playing for three years.  Frequent
and familiar intercourse with a man of the irresistible amiableness
of Caesar did what was farther requisite to convert the alliance
of interests into an alliance of friendship.  The result
and the pledge of this friendship--at the same time, doubtless,
a public announcement which could hardly be misunderstood
of the newly established conjoint rule--was the marriage of Pompeius
with Caesar's only daughter, three-and-twenty years of age.
Julia, who had inherited the charm of her father, lived
in the happiest domestic relations with her husband, who was
nearly twice as old; and the burgesses longing for rest
and order after so many troubles and crises, saw in this nuptial
alliance the guarantee of a peaceful and prosperous future.

Situation of the Aristocracy

The more firmly and closely the alliance was thus cemented
between Pompeius and Caesar, the more hopeless grew the cause
of the aristocracy.  They felt the sword suspended over their head
and knew Caesar sufficiently to have no doubt that he would,
if necessary, use it without hesitation.  "On all sides," wrote
one of them, "we are checkmated; we have already through fear of death
or of banishment despaired of 'freedom'; every one sighs,
no one ventures to speak." More the confederates could not desire.
But though the majority of the aristocracy was in this desirable
frame of mind, there was, of course, no lack of Hotspurs among
this party.  Hardly had Caesar laid down the consulship, when some
of the most violent aristocrats, Lucius Domitius and Gaius Memmius,
proposed in a full senate the annulling of the Julian laws.
This indeed was simply a piece of folly, which redounded only
to the benefit of the coalition; for, when Caesar now himself
insisted that the senate should investigate the validity of the laws
assailed, the latter could not but formally recognize their
legality.  But, as may readily be conceived, the holders of power
found in this a new call to make an example of some of the most
notable and noisiest of their opponents, and thereby to assure
themselves that the remainder would adhere to that fitting policy
of sighing and silence.  At first there had been a hope
that the clause of the agrarian law, which as usual required
all the senators to take an oath to the new law on pain of forfeiting
their political rights, would induce its most vehement opponents
to banish themselves, after the example of Metellus Numidicus,(11)
by refusing the oath.  But these did not show themselves
so complaisant; even the rigid Cato submitted to the oath,
and his Sanchos followed him.  A second, far from honourable,
attempt to threaten the heads of the aristocracy with criminal
impeachments on account of an alleged plot for the murder of Pompeius,
and so to drive them into exile, was frustrated by the incapacity
of the instruments; the informer, one Vettius, exaggerated
and contradicted himself so grossly, and the tribune Vatinius,
who directed the foul scheme, showed his complicity with that Vettius
so clearly, that it was found advisable to strangle the latter
in prison and to let the whole matter drop.  On this occasion however
they had obtained sufficient evidence of the total disorganization
of the aristocracy and the boundless alarm of the genteel lords:
even a man like Lucius Lucullus had thrown himself in person
at Caesar's feet and publicly declared that he found himself compelled
by reason of his great age to withdraw from public life.

Cato and Cicero Removed

Ultimately therefore they were content with a few isolated victims.
It was of primary importance to remove Cato, who made no secret
of his conviction as to the nullity of all the Julian laws,
and who was a man to act as he thought.  Such a man Marcus Cicero
was certainly not, and they did not give themselves the trouble
to fear him.  But the democratic party, which played the leading part
in the coalition, could not possibly after its victory leave
unpunished the judicial murder of the 5th December 691, which it
had so loudly and so justly censured.  Had they wished to bring
to account the real authors of the fatal decree, they ought
to have seized not on the pusillanimous consul, but on the section
of the strict aristocracy which had urged the timorous man
to that execution.  But in formal law it was certainly not the advisers
of the consul, but the consul himself, that was responsible for it,
and it was above all the gentler course to call the consul alone
to account and to leave the senatorial college wholly out of the case;
for which reason in the grounds of the proposal directed against
Cicero the decree of the senate, in virtue of which he ordered
the execution, was directly described as supposititious.  Even against
Cicero the holders of power would gladly have avoided steps
that attracted attention; but he could not prevail on himself either
to give to those in power the guarantees which they required,
or to banish himself from Rome under one of the feasible pretexts
on several occasions offered to him, or even to keep silence.
With the utmost desire to avoid any offence and the most sincere alarm,
he yet had not self-control enough to be prudent; the word had
to come out, when a petulant witticism stung him, or when his self-
conceit almost rendered crazy by the praise of so many noble lords
gave vent to the well-cadenced periods of the plebeian advocate.

Clodius

The execution of the measures resolved on against Cato and Cicero
was committed to the loose and dissolute, but clever and pre-
eminently audacious Publius Clodius, who had lived for years
in the bitterest enmity with Cicero, and, with the view of satisfying
that enmity and playing a part as demagogue, had got himself converted
under the consulship of Caesar by a hasty adoption from a patrician
into a plebeian, and then chosen as tribune of the people
for the year 696.  To support Clodius, the proconsul Caesar remained
in the immediate vicinity of the capital till the blow was struck
against the two victims.  Agreeably to the instructions
which he had received, Clodius proposed to the burgesses to entrust
Cato with the regulation of the complicated municipal affairs
of the Byzantines and with the annexation of the kingdom of Cyprus,
which as well as Egypt had fallen to the Romans by the testament
of Alexander II, but had not like Egypt bought off the Roman
annexation, and the king of which, moreover, had formerly given
personal offence to Clodius.  As to Cicero, Clodius brought in
a project of law which characterized the execution of a burgess
without trial and sentence as a crime to be punished with banishment.
Cato was thus removed by an honourable mission, while Cicero
was visited at least with the gentlest possible punishment and,
besides, was not designated by name in the proposal.  But they did not
refuse themselves the pleasure, on the one hand, of punishing
a man notoriously timid and belonging to the class of political
weathercocks for the conservative energy which he displayed,
and, on the other hand, of investing the bitter opponent
of all interferences of the burgesses in administration
and of all extraordinary commands with such a command conferred
by decree of the burgesses themselves; and with similar humour
the proposal respecting Cato was based on the ground of the abnormal
virtue of the man, which made him appear pre-eminently qualified
to execute so delicate a commission, as was the confiscation
of the considerable crown treasure of Cyprus, without embezzlement.
Both proposals bear generally the same character of respectful
deference and cool irony, which marks throughout the bearing of Caesar
in reference to the senate.  They met with no resistance.
It was naturally of no avail, that the majority of the senate,
with the view of protesting in some way against the mockery
and censure of their decree in the matter of Catilina, publicly
put on mourning, and that Cicero himself, now when it was too late,
fell on his knees and besought mercy from Pompeius; he had to banish
himself even before the passing of the law which debarred him
from his native land (April 696).  Cato likewise did not venture
to provoke sharper measures by declining the commission
which he had received, but accepted itand embarked for the east.(12)
What was most immediately necessary was done; Caesar too
might leave Italy to devote himself to more serious tasks.




Chapter VII

The Subjugation of the West

The Romanizing of the West

When the course of history turns from the miserable monotony
of the political selfishness, which fought its battles
in the senate-house and in the streets of the capital, to matters
of greater importance than the question whether the first monarch
of Rome should be called Gnaeus, Gaius, or Marcus, we may well
be allowed--on the threshold of an event, the effects of which still
at the present day influence the destinies of the world--to look round us
for a moment, and to indicate the point of view under which the conquest
of what is now France by the Romans, and their first contact
with the inhabitants of Germany and of Great Britain, are to be
apprehended in their bearing on the general history of the world.

By virtue of the law, that a people which has grown into a state
absorbs its neighbours who are in political nonage, and a civilized
people absorbs its neighbours who are in intellectual nonage--
by virtue of this law, which is as universally valid and as much
a law of nature as the law of gravity--the Italian nation (the only
one in antiquity which was able to combine a superior political
development and a superior civilization, though it presented
the latter only in an imperfect and external manner) was entitled
to reduce to subjection the Greek states of the east which were ripe
for destruction, and to dispossess the peoples of lower grades
of culture in the west--Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Germans--by means
of its settlers; just as England with equal right has in Asia reduced
to subjection a civilization of rival standing but politically
impotent, and in America and Australia has marked and ennobled,
and still continues to mark and ennoble, extensive barbarian
countries with the impress of its nationality.  The Roman aristocracy
had accomplished the preliminary condition required for this task--
the union of Italy; the task itself it never solved, but always
regarded the extra-Italian conquests either as simply a necessary
evil, or as a fiscal possession virtually beyond the pale
of the state.  It is the imperishable glory of the Roman democracy
or monarchy--for the two coincide--to have correctly apprehended
and vigorously realized this its highest destination.  What
the irresistible force of circumstances had paved the way for,
through the senate establishing against its will the foundations
of the future Roman dominion in the west as in the east; what thereafter
the Roman emigration to the provinces--which came as a public
calamity, no doubt, but also in the western regions at any rate
as a pioneer of a higher culture--pursued as matter of instinct;
the creator of the Roman democracy, Gaius Gracchus, grasped
and began to carry out with statesmanlike clearness and decision.
The two fundamental ideas of the new policy--to reunite
the territories under the power of Rome, so far as they were Hellenic,
and to colonize them, so far as they were not Hellenic--had already
in the Gracchan age been practically recognized by the annexation
of the kingdom of Attalus and by the Transalpine conquests of Flaccus:
but the prevailing reaction once more arrested their application.
The Roman state remained a chaotic mass of countries without thorough
occupation and without proper limits.  Spain and the Graeco-Asiatic
possessions were separated from the mother country by wide
territories, of which barely the borders along the coast
were subject to the Romans; on the north coast of Africa the domains
of Carthage and Cyrene alone were occupied like oases; large tracts
even of the subject territory, especially in Spain, were but nominally
subject to the Romans.  Absolutely nothing was done on the part
of the government towards concentrating and rounding off
their dominion, and the decay of the fleet seemed at length
to dissolve the last bond of connection between the distant
possessions.  The democracy no doubt attempted, so soon as it
again raised its head, to shape its external policy in the spirit
of Gracchus--Marius in particular cherished such ideas--but as it
did not for any length of time attain the helm, its projects
were left unfulfilled.  It was not till the democracy practically took
in hand the government on the overthrow of the Sullan constitution
in 684, that a revolution in this respect occurred.  First of all
their sovereignty on the Mediterranean was restored--the most
vital question for a state like that of Rome.  Towards the east,
moreover, the boundary of the Euphrates was secured by the annexation
of the provinces of Pontus and Syria.  But there still remained beyond
the Alps the task of at once rounding off the Roman territory towards
the north and west, and of gaining a fresh virgin soil there
for Hellenic civilization and for the yet unbroken vigour
of the Italic race.

Historical Significance of the Conquests of Caesar

This task Gaius Caesar undertook.  It is more than an error,
it is an outrage upon the sacred spirit dominant in history,
to regard Gaul solely as the parade ground on which Caesar
exercised himself and his legions for the impending civil war.
Though the subjugation of the west was for Caesar so far a means
to an end that he laid the foundations of his later height of power
in the Transalpine wars, it is the especial privilege of a statesman
of genius that his means themselves are ends in their turn.  Caesar
needed no doubt for his party aims a military power, but he did not
conquer Gaul as a partisan.  There was a direct political necessity
for Rome to meet the perpetually threatened invasion of the Germans
thus early beyond the Alps, and to construct a rampart there
which should secure the peace of the Roman world.  But even this
important object was not the highest and ultimate reason for which Gaul
was conquered by Caesar.  When the old home had become too
narrow for the Roman burgesses and they were in danger of decay,
the senate's policy of Italian conquest saved them from ruin.
Now the Italian home had become in its turn too narrow; once more
the state languished under the same social evils repeating themselves
in similar fashion only on a greater scale.  It was a brilliant
idea, a grand hope, which led Caesar over the Alps--the idea
and the confident expectation that he should gain there for his
fellow-burgesses a new boundless home, and regenerate the state
a second time by placing it on a broader basis.

Caesar in Spain

The campaign which Caesar undertook in 693 in Further Spain, may
be in some sense included among the enterprises which aimed at
the subjugation of the west.  Long as Spain had obeyed the Romans,
its western shore had remained substantially independent of them
even after the expedition of Decimus Brutus against the Callaeci(1),
and they had not even set foot on the northern coast; while
the predatory raids, to which the subject provinces found
themselves continually exposed from those quarters, did no small
injury to the civilization and Romanizing of Spain.  Against these
the expedition of Caesar along the west coast was directed.
He crossed the chain of the Herminian mountains (Sierra de Estrella)
bounding the Tagus on the north; after having conquered their
inhabitants and transplanted them in part to the plain, he reduced
the country on both sides of the Douro and arrived at the northwest
point of the peninsula, where with the aid of a flotilla brought
up from Gades he occupied Brigantium (Corunna).  By this means
the peoples adjoining the Atlantic Ocean, Lusitanians and Callaecians,
were forced to acknowledge the Roman supremacy, while the conqueror
was at the same time careful to render the position of the subjects
generally more tolerable by reducing the tribute to be paid to Rome
and regulating the financial affairs of the communities.

But, although in this military and administrative debut of the great
general and statesman the same talents and the same leading ideas are
discernible which he afterwards evinced on a greater stage, his agency
in the Iberian peninsula was much too transient to have any deep effect;
the more especially as, owing to its physical and national peculiarities,
nothing but action steadily continued for a considerable time could
exert any durable influence there.

Gaul

A more important part in the Romanic development of the west
was reserved by destiny for the country which stretches between
the Pyrenees and the Rhine, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean,
and which since the Augustan age has been especially designated
by the name of the land of the Celts--Gallia--although strictly
speaking the land of the Celts was partly narrower, partly much
more extensive, and the country so called never formed a national
unity, and did not form a political unity before Augustus.
For this very reason it is not easy to present a clear picture
of the very heterogeneous state of things which Caesar encountered
on his arrival there in 696.

The Roman Province
Wars and Revolts There

In the region on the Mediterranean, which, embracing approximately
Languedoc on the west of the Rhone, on the east Dauphine and Provence,
had been for sixty years a Roman province, the Roman arms had seldom
been at rest since the Cimbrian invasion which had swept over it.
In 664 Gaius Caelius had fought with the Salyes about Aquae Sextiae,
and in 674 Gaius Flaccus,(2) on his march to Spain, with other
Celtic nations.  When in the Sertorian war the governor Lucius Manlius,
compelled to hasten to the aid of his colleagues beyond the Pyrenees,
returned defeated from Ilerda (Lerida) and on his way home
was vanquished a second time by the western neighbours
of the Roman province, the Aquitani (about 676;(3)), this seems
to have provoked a general rising of the provincials between
the Pyrenees and the Rhone, perhaps even of those between the Rhone
and Alps.  Pompeius had to make his way with the sword through
the insurgent Gaul to Spain,(4) and by way of penalty for their
rebellion gave the territories of the Volcae-Arecomici
and the Helvii (dep. Gard and Ardeche) over to the Massiliots;
the governor Manius Fonteius (678-680) carried out these arrangements
and restored tranquillity in the province by subduing the Vocontii
(dep.  Drome), protecting Massilia from the insurgents,
and liberating the Roman capital Narbo which they invested.
Despair, however, and the financial embarrassment which the participation
in the sufferings of the Spanish war(5) and generally the official
and non-official exactions of the Romans brought upon the Gallic
provinces, did not allow them to be tranquil; and in particular
the canton of the Allobroges, the most remote from Narbo,
was in a perpetual ferment, which was attested by the "pacification"
that Gaius Piso undertook there in 688 as well as by the behaviour
of the Allobrogian embassy in Rome on occasion of the anarchist plot
in 691,(6) and which soon afterwards (693) broke into open revolt
Catugnatus the leader of the Allobroges in this war of despair,
who had at first fought not unsuccessfully, was conquered at Solonium
after a glorious resistance by the governor Gaius Pomptinus.

Bounds
Relations to Rome

Notwithstanding all these conflicts the bounds of the Roman
territory were not materially advanced; Lugudunum Convenarum,
where Pompeius had settled the remnant of the Sertorian army,(7)
Tolosa, Vienna and Genava were still the most remote Roman townships
towards the west and north.  But at the same time the importance
of these Gallic possessions for the mother country was continually
on the increase.  The glorious climate, akin to that of Italy,
the favourable nature of the soil, the large and rich region lying
behind so advantageous for commerce with its mercantile routes
reaching as far as Britain, the easy intercourse by land and sea
with the mother country, rapidly gave to southern Gaul an economic
importance for Italy, which much older possessions, such as those
in Spain, had not acquired in the course of centuries; and as
the Romans who had suffered political shipwreck at this period sought
an asylum especially in Massilia, and there found once more Italian
culture and Italian luxury, voluntary emigrants from Italy also
were attracted more and more to the Rhone and the Garonne.
"The province of Gaul," it was said in a sketch drawn ten years
before Caesar's arrival, "is full of merchants; it swarms with Roman
burgesses.  No native of Gaul transacts a piece of business without
the intervention of a Roman; every penny, that passes from one hand
to another in Gaul, goes through the account books of the Roman
burgesses." From the same description it appears that in addition
to the colonists of Narbo there were Romans cultivating land
and rearing cattle, resident in great numbers in Gaul; as to which,
however, it must not be overlooked that most of the provincial land
possessed by Romans, just like the greater part of the English
possessions in the earliest times in America, was in the hands
of the high nobility living in Italy, and those farmers and graziers
consisted for the most part of their stewards--slaves or freedmen.

Incipient Romanizing

It is easy to understand how under such circumstances civilization
and Romanizing rapidly spread among the natives.  These Celts
were not fond of agriculture; but their new masters compelled them
to exchange the sword for the plough, and it is very credible
that the embittered resistance of the Allobroges was provoked in part
by some such injunctions.  In earlier times Hellenism had also
to a certain degree dominated those regions; the elements
of a higher culture, the stimulus to the cultivation of the vine
and the olive,(8) to the use of writing(9) and to the coining of money,
came to them from Massilia.  The Hellenic culture was in this case
far from being set aside by the Romans; Massilia gained through
them more influence than it lost; and even in the Roman period
Greek physicians and rhetoricians were publicly employed
in the Gallic cantons.  But, as may readily be conceived, Hellenism
in southern Gaul acquired through the agency of the Romans the same
character as in Italy; the distinctively Hellenic civilization
gave place to the Latino-Greek mixed culture, which soon made
proselytes here in great numbers.  The "Gauls in the breeches,"
as the inhabitants of southern Gaul were called by way of contrast
to the "Gauls in the toga" of northern Italy, were not indeed
like the latter already completely Romanized, but they were even now
very perceptibly distinguished from the "longhaired Gauls"
of the northern regions still unsubdued.  The semiculture becoming
naturalized among them furnished, doubtless, materials enough
for ridicule of their barbarous Latin, and people did not fail
to suggest to any one suspected of Celtic descent his "relationship
with the breeches"; but this bad Latin was yet sufficient
to enable even the remote Allobroges to transact business
with the Roman authorities, and even to give testimony in the Roman
courts without an interpreter.

While the Celtic and Ligurian population of these regions
was thus in the course of losing its nationality, and was languishing
and pining withal under a political and economic oppression,
the intolerable nature of which is sufficiently attested by their
hopeless insurrections, the decline of the native population here
went hand in hand with the naturalizing of the same higher culture
which we find at this period in Italy.  Aquae Sextiae and still
more Narbo were considerable townships, which might probably be
named by the side of Beneventum and Capua; and Massilia, the best
organized, most free, most capable of self-defence, and most
powerful of all the Greek cities dependent on Rome, under its
rigorous aristocratic government to which the Roman conservatives
probably pointed as the model of a good urban constitution,
in possession of an important territory which had been considerably
enlarged by the Romans and of an extensive trade, stood by the side
of those Latin towns as Rhegium and Neapolis stood in Italy
by the side of Beneventum and Capua.

Free Gaul

Matters wore a different aspect, when one crossed the Roman frontier.
The great Celtic nation, which in the southern districts already
began to be crushed by the Italian immigration, still moved
to the north of the Cevennes in its time-hallowed freedom.
It is not the first time that we meet it: the Italians had already
fought with the offsets and advanced posts of this vast stock
on the Tiber and on the Po, in the mountains of Castile and Carinthia,
and even in the heart of Asia Minor; but it was here that the main stock
was first assailed at its very core by their attacks.  The Celtic race
had on its settlement in central Europe diffused itself chiefly
over the rich river-valleys and the pleasant hill-country
of the present France, including the western districts of Germany
and Switzerland, and from thence had occupied at least the southern
part of England, perhaps even at this time all Great Britain
and Ireland;(10) it formed here more than anywhere else a broad,
geographically compact, mass of peoples.  In spite of
the differences in language and manners which naturally
were to be found within this wide territory, a close mutual intercourse,
an innate sense of fellowship, seems to have knit together
the tribes from the Rhone and Garonne to the Rhine and the Thames;
whereas, although these doubtless were in a certain measure locally
connected with the Celts in Spain and in the modern Austria,
the mighty mountain barriers of the Pyrenees and the Alps
on the one hand, and the encroachments of the Romans and the Germans
which also operated here on the other, interrupted the intercourse
and the intrinsic connection of the cognate peoples far otherwise
than the narrow arm of the sea interrupted the relations
of the continental and the British Celts.  Unhappily we are not
permitted to trace stage by stage the history of the internal development
of this remarkable people in these its chief seats; we must be content
with presenting at least some outline of its historical culture
and political con