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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Caesar: A Sketch, by James Anthony Froude
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Caesar: A Sketch
+
+Author: James Anthony Froude
+
+Posting Date: August 31, 2014 [EBook #8425]
+Release Date: July, 2005
+First Posted: July 9, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAESAR: A SKETCH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, Robert Connal and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Julius Caesar]
+
+
+CAESAR
+
+_A SKETCH_
+
+
+
+
+BY
+
+JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A.
+
+FORMERLY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD
+
+
+
+
+                   _"Pardon, gentles all
+  The flat unraised spirit that hath dared
+  On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
+  So great an object."_
+
+  --SHAKESPEARE, Henry V.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I have called this work a "sketch" because the materials do not exist
+for a portrait which shall be at once authentic and complete. The
+original authorities which are now extant for the life of Caesar are
+his own writings, the speeches and letters of Cicero, the eighth book
+of the "Commentaries" on the wars in Gaul and the history of the
+Alexandrian war, by Aulus Hirtius, the accounts of the African war and
+of the war in Spain, composed by persons who were unquestionably
+present in those two campaigns. To these must be added the "Leges
+Juliae" which are preserved in the Corpus Juris Civilis. Sallust
+contributes a speech, and Catullus a poem. A few hints can be gathered
+from the Epitome of Livy and the fragments of Varro; and here the
+contemporary sources which can be entirely depended upon are brought to
+an end.
+
+The secondary group of authorities from which the popular histories of
+the time have been chiefly taken are Appian, Plutarch, Suetonius, and
+Dion Cassius. Of these the first three were divided from the period
+which they describe by nearly a century and a half, Dion Cassius by
+more than two centuries. They had means of knowledge which no longer
+exist--the writings, for instance, of Asinius Pollio, who was one of
+Caesar's officers. But Asinius Pollio's accounts of Caesar's actions,
+as reported by Appian, cannot always be reconciled with the
+Commentaries; and all these four writers relate incidents as facts
+which are sometimes demonstrably false. Suetonius is apparently the
+most trustworthy. His narrative, like those of his contemporaries, was
+colored by tradition. His biographies of the earlier Caesars betray the
+same spirit of animosity against them which taints the credibility of
+Tacitus, and prevailed for so many years in aristocratic Roman society.
+But Suetonius shows nevertheless an effort at veracity, an antiquarian
+curiosity and diligence, and a serious anxiety to tell his story
+impartially. Suetonius, in the absence of evidence direct or
+presumptive to the contrary, I have felt myself able to follow. The
+other three writers I have trusted only when I have found them
+partially confirmed by evidence which is better to be relied upon.
+
+The picture which I have drawn will thus be found deficient in many
+details which have passed into general acceptance, and I have been
+unable to claim for it a higher title than that of an outline drawing.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Free Constitutions and Imperial Tendencies.--Instructiveness of Roman
+History.--Character of Historical Epochs.--The Age of
+Caesar.--Spiritual State of Rome.--Contrasts between Ancient and Modern
+Civilization.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Roman Constitution.--Moral Character of the Romans.--Roman
+Religion.--Morality and Intellect.--Expansion of Roman Power.--The
+Senate.--Roman Slavery.--Effects of Intercourse with Greece.--Patrician
+Degeneracy.--The Roman Noble.--Influence of Wealth.--Beginnings of
+Discontent.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Tiberius Gracchus.--Decay of the Italian Yeomanry.--Agrarian
+Law.--Success and Murder of Gracchus.--Land Commission.--Caius
+Gracchus.--Transfer of Judicial Functions from the Senate to the
+Equites.--Sempronian Laws.--Free Grants of Corn.--Plans for Extension
+of the Franchise.--New Colonies.--Reaction.--Murder of Caius Gracchus
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Victory of the Optimates.--The Moors.--History of Jugurtha.--The Senate
+corrupted.--Jugurthine War.--Defeat of the Romans.--Jugurtha comes to
+Rome.--Popular Agitation.--The War renewed.--Roman Defeats in Africa
+and Gaul.--Caecilius Metellus and Caius Marius.--Marriage of
+Marius.--The Caesars.--Marius Consul.--First Notice of Sylla.--Capture
+and Death of Jugurtha
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Birth of Cicero.--The Cimbri and Teutons.--German Immigration into
+Gaul.--Great Defeat of the Romans on the Rhone.--Wanderings of the
+Cimbri.--Attempted Invasion of Italy.--Battle of Aix.--Destruction of
+the Teutons.--Defeat of the Cimbri on the Po.--Reform in the Roman
+Army.--Popular Disturbances in Rome.--Murder of Memmius.--Murder of
+Saturninus and Glaucia
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Birth and Childhood of Julius Caesar.--Italian Franchise.--Discontent
+of the Italians.--Action of the Land Laws.--The Social War.--Partial
+Concessions.--Sylla and Marius.--Mithridates of Pontus.--First Mission
+of Sylla into Asia.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+War with Mithridates.--Massacre of Italians in Asia.--Invasion of
+Greece.--Impotence and Corruption of the Senate.--End of the Social
+War.--Sylla appointed to the Asiatic Command.--The Assembly transfer
+the Command to Marius.--Sylla marches on Rome.--Flight of
+Marius.--Change of the Constitution.--Sylla sails for the East.--Four
+Years' Absence.--Defeat of Mithridates.--Contemporary Incidents at
+Rome.--Counter Revolution.--Consulship of Cinna.--Return of
+Marius.--Capitulation of Rome.--Massacre of Patricians and
+Equites.--Triumph of Democracy.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The Young Caesar.--Connection with Marius.--Intimacy with the
+Ciceros.--Marriage of Caesar with the Daughter of
+Cinna.--Sertorius.--Death of Cinna.--Consulships of Norbanus and
+Scipio.--Sylla's Return.--First Appearance of Pompey.--Civil
+War.--Victory of Sylla.--The Dictatorship and the
+Proscription.--Destruction of the Popular Party and Murder of the
+Popular Leaders.--General Character of Aristocratic Revolutions.--The
+Constitution remodelled.--Concentration of Power in the
+Senate.--Sylla's General Policy.--The Army.--Flight of Sertorius to
+Spain.--Pompey and Sylla.--Caesar refuses to divorce his Wife at
+Sylla's Order.--Danger of Caesar.--His Pardon.--Growing Consequence of
+Cicero.--Defence of Roscius.--Sylla's Abdication and Death
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Sertorius in Spain.--Warning of Cicero to the Patricians.--Leading
+Aristocrats.--Caesar with the Army in the East.--Nicomedes of
+Bithynia.--The Bithynian Scandal.--Conspiracy of Lepidus.--Caesar
+returns to Rome.--Defeat of Lepidus.--Prosecution of Dolabella.--Caesar
+taken by Pirates.--Senatorial Corruption.--Universal Disorder.--Civil
+War in Spain.--Growth of Mediterranean Piracy.--Connivance of the
+Senate.--Provincial Administration.--Verres in Sicily.--Prosecuted by
+Cicero.--Second War with Mithridates.--First Success of
+Lucullus.--Failure of Lucullus, and the Cause of it.--Avarice of Roman
+Commanders.--The Gladiators.--The Servile War.--Results of the Change
+in the Constitution introduced by Sylla
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Caesar Military Tribune.--Becomes known as a Speaker.--Is made
+Quaestor.--Speech at his Aunt's Funeral.--Consulship of Pompey and
+Crassus.--Caesar marries Pompey's Cousin.--Mission to
+Spain.--Restoration of the Powers of the Tribunes.--The Equites and the
+Senate.--The Pirates.--Food Supplies cut off from Rome.--The Gabinian
+Law.--Resistance of the Patricians.--Suppression of the Pirates by
+Pompey.--The Manilian Law.--Speech of Cicero.--Recall of
+Lucullus.--Pompey sent to command in Asia.--Defeat and Death of
+Mithridates.--Conquest of Asia by Pompey
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+History of Catiline.--A Candidate for the Consulship.--Catiline and
+Cicero.--Cicero chosen Consul.--Attaches Himself to the Senatorial
+Party.--Caesar elected Aedile.--Conducts an Inquiry into the Syllan
+Proscriptions.--Prosecution of Rabirius.--Caesar becomes Pontifex
+Maximus--and Praetor.--Cicero's Conduct as Consul.--Proposed Agrarian
+Law.--Resisted by Cicero.--Catiline again stands for the
+Consulship.--Violent Language in the Senate.--Threatened
+Revolution.--Catiline again defeated.--The Conspiracy.--Warnings sent
+to Cicero.--Meeting at Catiline's House.--Speech of Cicero in the
+Senate.--Cataline joins an Army of Insurrection in Etruria.--His
+Fellow-conspirators.--Correspondence with the Allobroges.--Letters read
+in the Senate.--The Conspirators seized.--Debate upon their
+Fate.--Speech of Caesar.--Caesar on a Future State.--Speech of
+Cato--and of Cicero.--The Conspirators executed untried.--Death of
+Catiline.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Preparations for the Return of Pompey.--Scene in the Forum.--Cato and
+Metellus.--Caesar suspended from the Praetorship.--Caesar supports
+Pompey.--Scandals against Caesar's Private Life.--General Character of
+them.--Festival of the Bona Dea.--Publius Clodius enters Caesar's House
+dressed as a Woman.--Prosecution and Trial of Clodius.--His Acquittal,
+and the Reason of it.--Successes of Caesar as Propraetor in
+Spain.--Conquest of Lusitania.--Return of Pompey to Italy.--First
+Speech in the Senate.--Precarious Position of Cicero.--Cato and the
+Equites.--Caesar elected Consul.--Revival of the Democratic
+Party.--Anticipated Agrarian Law.--Uneasiness of Cicero.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The Consulship of Caesar.--Character of his Intended Legislation.--The
+Land Act first proposed in the Senate.--Violent Opposition.--Caesar
+appeals to the Assembly.--Interference of the Second Consul
+Bibulus.--The Land Act submitted to the People.--Pompey and Crassus
+support it.--Bibulus interposes, but without Success.--The Act
+carried--and other Laws.--The Senate no longer being
+Consulted.--General Purpose of the Leges Juliae.--Caesar appointed to
+Command in Gaul for Five Years.--His Object in accepting that
+Province.--Condition of Gaul, and the Dangers to be apprehended from
+it.--Alliance of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.--The
+Dynasts.--Indignation of the Aristocracy.--Threats to repeal Caesar's
+Laws.--Necessity of Controlling Cicero and Cato.--Clodius is made
+Tribune.--Prosecution of Cicero for Illegal Acts when Consul.--Cicero's
+Friends forsake him.--He flies, and is banished.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Caesar's Military Narrative.--Divisions of Gaul.--Distribution of
+Population.--The Celts.--Degree of Civilization.--Tribal System.--The
+Druids.--The AEdui and the Sequani.--Roman and German
+Parties.--Intended Migration of the Helvetii.--Composition of Caesar's
+Army.--He goes to Gaul.--Checks the Helvetii.--Returns to Italy for
+Larger Forces.--The Helvetii on the Saone.--Defeated, and sent back to
+Switzerland.--Invasion of Gaul by Ariovistus.--Caesar invites him to a
+Conference.--He refuses.--Alarm in the Roman Army.--Caesar marches
+against Ariovistus.--Interview between them.--Treachery of the Roman
+Senate.--Great Battle at Colmar.--Defeat and Annihilation of the
+Germans.--End of the First Campaign.--Confederacy among the
+Belgae.--Battle on the Aisne.--War with the Nervii.--Battle of
+Maubeuge.--Capture of Namur.--The Belgae conquered.--Submission of
+Brittany.--End of the Second Campaign.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Cicero and Clodius.--Position and Character of Clodius.--Cato sent to
+Cyprus.--Attempted Recall of Cicero defeated by Clodius.--Fight in the
+Forum.--Pardon and Return of Cicero.--Moderate Speech to the
+People.--Violence in the Senate.--Abuse of Piso and Gabinius.--Coldness
+of the Senate toward Cicero.--Restoration of Cicero's
+House.--Interfered with by Clodius.--Factions of Clodius and
+Milo.--Ptolemy Auletes expelled by his Subjects.--Appeals to Rome for
+Help.--Alexandrian Envoys assassinated.--Clodius elected aedile.--Fight
+in the Forum.--Parties in Rome.--Situation of Cicero.--Rally of the
+Aristocracy.--Attempt to repeal the Leges Juliae.--Conference at
+Lucca.--Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.--Cicero deserts the
+Senate.--Explains his Motives.--Confirmation of the Ordinances of
+Lucca.--Pompey and Crassus Consuls.--Caesar's Command prolonged for
+Five Additional Years.--Rejoicings in Rome.--Spectacle in the
+Amphitheater.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Revolt of the Veneti.--Fleet prepared in the Loire.--Sea-fight at
+Quiberon.--Reduction of Normandy and of Aquitaine.--Complete Conquest
+of Gaul.--Fresh Arrival of Germans over the Lower Rhine.--Caesar orders
+them to retire, and promises them Lands elsewhere.--They refuse to
+go--and are destroyed.--Bridge over the Rhine.--Caesar invades
+Germany.--Returns after a Short Inroad.--First Expedition into
+Britain.--Caesar lands at Deal, or Walmer.--Storm and Injury to the
+Fleet.--Approach of the Equinox.--Further Prosecution of the Enterprise
+postponed till the following Year.--Caesar goes to Italy for the
+Winter.--Large Naval Preparations.--Return of Spring.--Alarm on the
+Moselle.--Fleet collects at Boulogne.--Caesar sails for Britain a
+Second Time.--Lands at Deal.--Second and more Destructive Storm.--Ships
+repaired, and placed out of Danger.--Caesar marches through
+Kent.--Crosses the Thames, and reaches St. Albans.--Goes no further,
+and returns to Gaul.--Object of the Invasion of Britain.--Description
+of the Country and People.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Distribution of the Legions after the Return from Britain.--Conspiracy
+among the Gallic Chiefs.--Rising of the Eburones.--Destruction of
+Sabinus, and a Division of the Roman Army.--Danger of Quintus
+Cicero.--Relieved by Caesar in Person.--General Disturbance.--Labienus
+attacked at Lavacherie.--Defeats and kills Induciomarus.--Second
+Conquest of the Belgae.--Caesar again crosses the Rhine.--Quintus
+Cicero in Danger a Second Time.--Courage of a Roman
+Officer.--Punishment of the Revolted Chiefs.--Execution of Acco.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Correspondence of Cicero with Caesar.--Intimacy with Pompey and
+Crassus.--Attacks on Piso and Gabinius.---Cicero compelled to defend
+Gabinius--and Vatinius.--Dissatisfaction with his Position.--Corruption
+at the Consular Elections.--Public Scandal.--Caesar and Pompey.--Deaths
+of Aurelia and Julia.--Catastrophe in the East.--Overthrow and Death of
+Crassus.--Intrigue to detach Pompey from Caesar.---Milo a Candidate for
+the Consulship.--Murder of Clodius.--Burning of the
+Senate-house.--Trial and Exile of Milo.--Fresh Engagements with
+Caesar.--Promise of the Consulship at the End of his Term in Gaul.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Last Revolt of Gaul.--Massacre of Romans at
+Gien.--Vercingetorix.--Effect on the Celts of the Disturbances at
+Rome.--Caesar crosses the Cevennes.--Defeats the Arverni.--Joins his
+Army on the Seine.--Takes Gien, Nevers, and Bourges.--Fails at
+Gergovia.--Rapid March to Sens.--Labienus at Paris.--Battle of the
+Vingeanne.--Siege of Alesia.--Caesar's Double Lines.--Arrival of the
+Relieving Army of Gauls.--First Battle on the Plain.--Second
+Battle.--Great Defeat of the Gauls.--Surrender of Alesia.--Campaign
+against the Carnutes and the Bellovaci.--Rising on the
+Dordogne.--Capture of Uxellodunum.--Caesar at Arras.--Completion of the
+Conquest.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Bibulus in Syria.--Approaching Term of Caesar's Government.--Threats of
+Impeachment.--Caesar to be Consul or not to be Consul?--Caesar's
+Political Ambition.--Hatred felt toward him by the Aristocracy.--Two
+Legions taken from him on Pretense of Service against the
+Parthians.--Caesar to be recalled before the Expiration of his
+Government.--Senatorial Intrigues.--Curio deserts the Senate.--Labienus
+deserts Caesar.--Cicero in Cilicia.--Returns to Rome.--Pompey
+determined on War.--Cicero's Uncertainties.--Resolution of the Senate
+and Consuls.--Caesar recalled.--Alarm in Rome.--Alternative
+Schemes.--Letters of Cicero.--Caesar's Crime in the Eyes of the
+Optimates.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Caesar appeals to his Army.--The Tribunes join him at Rimini.--Panic
+and Flight of the Senate.--Incapacity of Pompey.--Fresh
+Negotiations.--Advance of Caesar.--The Country Districts refuse to arm
+against him.--Capture of Corfinium.--Release of the Prisoners.--Offers
+of Caesar.--Continued Hesitation of Cicero.--Advises Pompey to make
+Peace.--Pompey, with the Senate and Consuls, flies to Greece.--Cicero's
+Reflections.--Pompey to be another Sylla.--Caesar Mortal, and may die
+by more Means than one.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+Pompey's Army in Spain.--Caesar at Rome.--Departure for
+Spain.--Marseilles refuses to receive him.--Siege of
+Marseilles.--Defeat of Pompey's Lieutenants at Lerida.--The whole Army
+made Prisoners.--Surrender of Varro.--Marseilles taken.--Defeat of
+Curio by King Juba in Africa.--Caesar named Dictator.--Confusion in
+Rome.--Caesar at Brindisi.--Crosses to Greece in Midwinter.--Again
+offers Peace.--Pompey's Fleet in the Adriatic.--Death of
+Bibulus.--Failure of Negotiations.--Caelius and Milo killed.--Arrival
+of Antony in Greece with the Second Division of Caesar's Army.--Siege
+of Durazzo.--Defeat and Retreat of Caesar.--The Senate and
+Pompey.--Pursuit of Caesar.--Battle of Pharsalia.--Flight of
+Pompey.--The Camp taken.--Complete Overthrow of the Senatorial
+Faction.--Cicero on the Situation once more.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+Pompey flies to Egypt.--State of Parties in Egypt.--Murder of
+Pompey.--His Character.--Caesar follows him to Alexandria.--Rising in
+the City.--Caesar besieged in the Palace.--Desperate Fighting.--Arrival
+of Mithridates of Pergamus.--Battle near Cairo, and Death of the Young
+Ptolemy.--Cleopatra.--The Detention of Caesar enables the Optimates to
+rally.--Ill Conduct of Caesar's Officers in Spain.--War with
+Pharnaces.--Battle of Zela, and Settlement of Asia Minor.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+The Aristocracy raise an Army in Africa.--Supported by Juba.--Pharsalia
+not to end the War.--Caesar again in Rome.--Restores Order.--Mutiny in
+Caesar's Army.--The Mutineers submit.--Caesar lands in
+Africa.--Difficulties of the Campaign.--Battle of Thapsus.--No more
+Pardons.--Afranius and Faustus Sylla put to Death.--Cato kills himself
+at Utica.--Scipio killed.--Juba and Petreius die on each other's
+Swords.--A Scene in Caesar's Camp.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+Rejoicings in Rome.--Caesar Dictator for the Year.--Reforms the
+Constitution.--Reforms the Calendar--and the Criminal
+Law.--Dissatisfaction of Cicero.--Last Efforts in Spain of Labienus and
+the Young Pompeys.--Caesar goes thither in Person, accompanied by
+Octavius.--Caesar's Last Battle at Munda.--Death of Labienus.--Capture
+of Cordova.--Close of the Civil War.--General Reflections.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Caesar once more in Rome.--General Amnesty.--The Surviving Optimates
+pretend to submit.--Increase in the Number of Senators.--Introduction
+of Foreigners.--New Colonies.--Carthage.--Corinth.--Sumptuary
+Regulations.--Digest of the Law.--Intended Parthian War.--Honors heaped
+on Caesar.--The Object of them.--Caesar's Indifference.--Some
+Consolations.--Hears of Conspiracies, but disregards
+them.--Speculations of Cicero in the Last Stage of the War.--Speech in
+the Senate.--A Contrast, and the Meaning of it.--The Kingship.--Antony
+offers Caesar the Crown, which Caesar refuses.--The Assassins.--Who
+they were.--Brutus and Cassius.--Two Officers of Caesar's among
+them.--Warnings.--Meeting of the Conspirators.--Caesar's Last
+Evening.--The Ides of March.--The Senate-house.--Caesar killed.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+Consternation in Rome.--The Conspirators in the Capitol.--Unforeseen
+Difficulties.--Speech of Cicero.--Caesar's Funeral.--Speech of
+Antony.--Fury of the People.--The Funeral Pile in the Forum.--The King
+is dead, but the Monarchy survives.--Fruitlessness of the
+Murder.--Octavius and Antony.--Union of Octavius, Antony, and
+Lepidus.--Proscription of the Assassins.--Philippi, and the end of
+Brutus and Cassius.--Death of Cicero.--His Character.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+General Remarks on Caesar.--Mythological Tendencies.--Supposed
+Profligacy of Caesar.--Nature of the
+Evidence.--Servilia.--Cleopatra.--Personal Appearance of Caesar.--His
+Manners in Private Life.--Considerations upon him as a Politician, a
+Soldier, and a Man of Letters.--Practical Justice his Chief Aim as a
+Politician.--Universality of Military Genius.--Devotion of his Army to
+him, how deserved.--Art of reconciling Conquered Peoples.--General
+Scrupulousness and Leniency.--Oratorical and Literary Style.--Cicero's
+Description of it.--His Lost Works.--Cato's Judgment on the Civil
+War.--How Caesar should be estimated.--Legend of Charles V.--Spiritual
+Condition of the Age in which Caesar lived.--His Work on Earth to
+establish Order and Good Government, to make possible the Introduction
+of Christianity.--A Parallel.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CAESAR: A SKETCH
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+To the student of political history, and to the English student above
+all others, the conversion of the Roman Republic into a military empire
+commands a peculiar interest. Notwithstanding many differences, the
+English and the Romans essentially resemble one another. The early
+Romans possessed the faculty of self-government beyond any people of
+whom we have historical knowledge, with the one exception of ourselves.
+In virtue of their temporal freedom, they became the most powerful
+nation in the known world; and their liberties perished only when Rome
+became the mistress of conquered races, to whom she was unable or
+unwilling to extend her privileges. If England was similarly supreme,
+if all rival powers were eclipsed by her or laid under her feet, the
+Imperial tendencies, which are as strongly marked in us as our love of
+liberty, might lead us over the same course to the same end. If there
+be one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this, that free
+nations cannot govern subject provinces. If they are unable or
+unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution,
+the constitution itself will fall in pieces from mere incompetence for
+its duties.
+
+We talk often foolishly of the necessities of things, and we blame
+circumstances for the consequences of our own follies and vices; but
+there are faults which are not faults of will, but faults of mere
+inadequacy to some unforeseen position. Human nature is equal to much,
+but not to everything. It can rise to altitudes where it is alike
+unable to sustain itself or to retire from them to a safer elevation.
+Yet when the field is open it pushes forward, and moderation in the
+pursuit of greatness is never learnt and never will be learnt. Men of
+genius are governed by their instinct; they follow where instinct leads
+them; and the public life of a nation is but the life of successive
+generations of statesmen, whose horizon is bounded, and who act from
+day to day as immediate interests suggest. The popular leader of the
+hour sees some present difficulty or present opportunity of
+distinction. He deals with each question as it arises, leaving future
+consequences to those who are to come after him. The situation changes
+from period to period, and tendencies are generated with an
+accelerating force, which, when once established, can never be
+reversed. When the control of reason is once removed, the catastrophe
+is no longer distant, and then nations, like all organized creations,
+all forms of life, from the meanest flower to the highest human
+institution, pass through the inevitably recurring stages of growth and
+transformation and decay. A commonwealth, says Cicero, ought to be
+immortal, and for ever to renew its youth. Yet commonwealths have
+proved as unenduring as any other natural object:
+
+                    Everything that grows
+  Holds in perfection but a little moment,
+  And this huge state presenteth nought but shows,
+  Whereon the stars in silent influence comment.
+
+Nevertheless, "as the heavens are high above the earth, so is wisdom
+above folly." Goethe compares life to a game at whist, where the cards
+are dealt out by destiny, and the rules of the game are fixed: subject
+to these conditions, the players are left to win or lose, according to
+their skill or want of skill. The life of a nation, like the life of a
+man, may be prolonged in honor into the fulness of its time, or it may
+perish prematurely, for want of guidance, by violence or internal
+disorders. And thus the history of national revolutions is to
+statesmanship what the pathology of disease is to the art of medicine.
+The physician cannot arrest the coming on of age. Where disease has
+laid hold upon the constitution he cannot expel it. But he may check
+the progress of the evil if he can recognize the symptoms in time. He
+can save life at the cost of an unsound limb. He can tell us how to
+preserve our health when we have it; he can warn us of the conditions
+under which particular disorders will have us at disadvantage. And so
+with nations: amidst the endless variety of circumstances there are
+constant phenomena which give notice of approaching danger; there are
+courses of action which have uniformly produced the same results; and
+the wise politicians are those who have learnt from experience the real
+tendencies of things, unmisled by superficial differences, who can shun
+the rocks where others have been wrecked, or from foresight of what is
+coming can be cool when the peril is upon them.
+
+For these reasons, the fall of the Roman Republic is exceptionally
+instructive to us. A constitutional government the most enduring and
+the most powerful that ever existed was put on its trial, and found
+wanting. We see it in its growth; we see the causes which undermined
+its strength. We see attempts to check the growing mischief fail, and
+we see why they failed. And we see, finally, when nothing seemed so
+likely as complete dissolution, the whole system changed by a violent
+operation, and the dying patient's life protracted for further
+centuries of power and usefulness.
+
+Again, irrespective of the direct teaching which we may gather from
+them, particular epochs in history have the charm for us which dramas
+have--periods when the great actors on the stage of life stand before
+us with the distinctness with which they appear in the creations of a
+poet. There have not been many such periods; for to see the past, it is
+not enough for us to be able to look at it through the eyes of
+contemporaries; these contemporaries themselves must have been parties
+to the scenes which they describe. They must have had full
+opportunities of knowledge. They must have had eyes which could see
+things in their true proportions. They must have had, in addition, the
+rare literary powers which can convey to others through the medium of
+language an exact picture of their own minds; and such happy
+combinations occur but occasionally in thousands of years. Generation
+after generation passes by, and is crumbled into sand as rocks are
+crumbled by the sea. Each brought with it its heroes and its villains,
+its triumphs and its sorrows; but the history is formless legend,
+incredible and unintelligible; the figures of the actors are indistinct
+as the rude ballad or ruder inscription, which may be the only
+authentic record of them. We do not see the men and women, we see only
+the outlines of them which have been woven into tradition as they
+appeared to the loves or hatreds of passionate admirers or enemies. Of
+such times we know nothing, save the broad results as they are measured
+from century to century, with here and there some indestructible
+pebble, some law, some fragment of remarkable poetry which has resisted
+decomposition. These periods are the proper subject of the philosophic
+historian, and to him we leave them. But there are others, a few, at
+which intellectual activity was as great as it is now, with its written
+records surviving, in which the passions, the opinions, the ambitions
+of the age are all before us, where the actors in the great drama speak
+their own thoughts in their own words, where we hear their enemies
+denounce them and their friends praise them; where we are ourselves
+plunged amidst the hopes and fears of the hour, to feel the conflicting
+emotions and to sympathize in the struggles which again seem to live:
+and here philosophy is at fault. Philosophy, when we are face to face
+with real men, is as powerless as over the Iliad or King Lear. The
+overmastering human interest transcends explanation. We do not sit in
+judgment on the right or the wrong; we do not seek out causes to
+account for what takes place, feeling too conscious of the inadequacy
+of our analysis. We see human beings possessed by different impulses,
+and working out a pre-ordained result, as the subtle forces drive each
+along the path marked out for him; and history becomes the more
+impressive to us where it least immediately instructs.
+
+With such vividness, with such transparent clearness, the age stands
+before us of Cato and Pompey, of Cicero and Julius Caesar; the more
+distinctly because it was an age in so many ways the counterpart of our
+own, the blossoming period of the old civilization, when the intellect
+was trained to the highest point which it could reach, and on the great
+subjects of human interest, on morals and politics, on poetry and art,
+even on religion itself and the speculative problems of life, men
+thought as we think, doubted where we doubt, argued as we argue,
+aspired and struggled after the same objects. It was an age of material
+progress and material civilization; an age of civil liberty and
+intellectual culture; an age of pamphlets and epigrams, of salons and
+of dinner-parties, of senatorial majorities and electoral corruption.
+The highest offices of state were open in theory to the meanest
+citizen; they were confined, in fact, to those who had the longest
+purses, or the most ready use of the tongue on popular platforms.
+Distinctions of birth had been exchanged for distinctions of wealth.
+The struggles between plebeians and patricians for equality of
+privilege were over, and a new division had been formed between the
+party of property and a party who desired a change in the structure of
+society. The free cultivators were disappearing from the soil. Italy
+was being absorbed into vast estates, held by a few favored families
+and cultivated by slaves, while the old agricultural population was
+driven off the land, and was crowded into towns. The rich were
+extravagant, for life had ceased to have practical interest, except for
+its material pleasures; the occupation of the higher classes was to
+obtain money without labor, and to spend it in idle enjoyment.
+Patriotism survived on the lips, but patriotism meant the ascendency of
+the party which would maintain the existing order of things, or would
+overthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good things which
+alone were valued. Religion, once the foundation of the laws and rule
+of personal conduct, had subsided into opinion. The educated, in their
+hearts, disbelieved it. Temples were still built with increasing
+splendor; the established forms were scrupulously observed. Public men
+spoke conventionally of Providence, that they might throw on their
+opponents the odium of impiety; but of genuine belief that life had any
+serious meaning, there was none remaining beyond the circle of the
+silent, patient, ignorant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was
+saturated with cant--cant moral, cant political, cant religious; an
+affectation of high principle which had ceased to touch the conduct,
+and flowed on in an increasing volume of insincere and unreal speech.
+The truest thinkers were those who, like Lucretius, spoke frankly out
+their real convictions, declared that Providence was a dream, and that
+man and the world he lived in were material phenomena, generated by
+natural forces out of cosmic atoms, and into atoms to be again resolved.
+
+Tendencies now in operation may a few generations hence land modern
+society in similar conclusions, unless other convictions revive
+meanwhile and get the mastery of them; of which possibility no more
+need be said than this, that unless there be such a revival in some
+shape or other, the forces, whatever they be, which control the forms
+in which human things adjust themselves, will make an end again, as
+they made an end before, of what are called free institutions. Popular
+forms of government are possible only when individual men can govern
+their own lives on moral principles, and when duty is of more
+importance than pleasure, and justice than material expediency. Rome at
+any rate had grown ripe for judgment. The shape which the judgment
+assumed was due perhaps, in a measure, to a condition which has no
+longer a parallel among us. The men and women by whom the hard work of
+the world was done were chiefly slaves, and those who constitute the
+driving force of revolutions in modern Europe lay then outside society,
+unable and perhaps uncaring to affect its fate. No change then possible
+would much influence the prospects of the unhappy bondsmen. The triumph
+of the party of the constitution would bring no liberty to them. That
+their masters should fall like themselves under the authority of a
+higher master could not much distress them. Their sympathies, if they
+had any, would go with those nearest their own rank, the emancipated
+slaves and the sons of those who were emancipated; and they, and the
+poor free citizens everywhere, were to a man on the side which was
+considered and was called the side of "the people," and was, in fact,
+the side of despotism.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+The Roman Constitution had grown out of the character of the Roman
+nation. It was popular in form beyond all constitutions of which there
+is any record in history. The citizens assembled in the Comitia were
+the sovereign authority in the State, and they exercised their power
+immediately and not by representatives. The executive magistrates were
+chosen annually. The assembly was the supreme Court of Appeal; and
+without its sanction no freeman could be lawfully put to death. In the
+assembly also was the supreme power of legislation. Any consul, any
+praetor, any tribune, might propose a law from the Rostra to the
+people. The people if it pleased them might accept such law, and
+senators and public officers might be sworn to obey it under pains of
+treason. As a check on precipitate resolutions, a single consul or a
+single tribune might interpose his veto. But the veto was binding only
+so long as the year of office continued. If the people were in earnest,
+submission to their wishes could be made a condition at the next
+election, and thus no constitutional means existed of resisting them
+when these wishes showed themselves.
+
+In normal times the Senate was allowed the privilege of preconsidering
+intended acts of legislation, and refusing to recommend them if
+inexpedient, but the privilege was only converted into a right after
+violent convulsions, and was never able to maintain itself. That under
+such a system the functions of government could have been carried on at
+all was due entirely to the habits of self-restraint which the Romans
+had engraved into their nature. They were called a nation of kings,
+kings over their own appetites, passions, and inclinations. They were
+not imaginative, they were not intellectual; they had little national
+poetry, little art, little philosophy. They were moral and practical.
+In these two directions the force that was in them entirely ran. They
+were free politically, because freedom meant to them not freedom to do
+as they pleased, but freedom to do what was right; and every citizen,
+before he arrived at his civil privileges, had been schooled in the
+discipline of obedience. Each head of a household was absolute master
+of it, master over his children and servants, even to the extent of
+life and death. What the father was to the family, the gods were to the
+whole people, the awful lords and rulers at whose pleasure they lived
+and breathed. Unlike the Greeks, the reverential Romans invented no
+idle legends about the supernatural world. The gods to them were the
+guardians of the State, whose will in all things they were bound to
+seek and to obey. The forms in which they endeavored to learn what that
+will might be were childish or childlike. They looked to signs in the
+sky, to thunder-storms and comets and shooting stars. Birds, winged
+messengers, as they thought them, between earth and heaven, were
+celestial indicators of the gods' commands. But omens and auguries were
+but the outward symbols, and the Romans, like all serious peoples, went
+to their own hearts for their real guidance. They had a unique
+religious peculiarity, to which no race of men has produced anything
+like. They did not embody the elemental forces in personal forms; they
+did not fashion a theology out of the movements of the sun and stars or
+the changes of the seasons. Traces may be found among them of cosmic
+traditions and superstitions, which were common to all the world; but
+they added of their own this especial feature: that they built temples
+and offered sacrifices to the highest human excellences, to "Valor," to
+"Truth," to "Good Faith," to "Modesty," to "Charity," to "Concord." In
+these qualities lay all that raised man above the animals with which he
+had so much in common. In them, therefore, were to be found the link
+which connected him with the divine nature, and moral qualities were
+regarded as divine influences which gave his life its meaning and its
+worth. The "Virtues" were elevated into beings to whom disobedience
+could be punished as a crime, and the superstitious fears which run so
+often into mischievous idolatries were enlisted with conscience in the
+direct service of right action.
+
+On the same principle the Romans chose the heroes and heroines of their
+national history. The Manlii and Valerii were patterns of courage, the
+Lucretias and Virginias of purity, the Decii and Curtii of patriotic
+devotion, the Reguli and Fabricii of stainless truthfulness. On the
+same principle, too, they had a public officer whose functions
+resembled those of the Church courts in mediaeval Europe, a Censor
+Morum, an inquisitor who might examine into the habits of private
+families, rebuke extravagance, check luxury, punish vice and
+self-indulgence, nay, who could remove from the Senate, the great
+council of elders, persons whose moral conduct was a reproach to a body
+on whose reputation no shadow could be allowed to rest.
+
+Such the Romans were in the day when their dominion had not extended
+beyond the limits of Italy; and because they were such they were able
+to prosper under a constitution which to modern experience would
+promise only the most hopeless confusion.
+
+Morality thus engrained in the national character and grooved into
+habits of action creates strength, as nothing else creates it. The
+difficulty of conduct does not lie in knowing what it is right to do,
+but in doing it when known. Intellectual culture does not touch the
+conscience. It provides no motives to overcome the weakness of the
+will, and with wider knowledge it brings also new temptations. The
+sense of duty is present in each detail of life; the obligatory "must"
+which binds the will to the course which right principle has marked out
+for it produces a fibre like the fibre of the oak. The educated Greeks
+knew little of it. They had courage and genius and enthusiasm, but they
+had no horror of immorality as such. The Stoics saw what was wanting,
+and tried to supply it; but though they could provide a theory of
+action, they could not make the theory into a reality, and it is
+noticeable that Stoicism as a rule of life became important only when
+adopted by the Romans. The Catholic Church effected something in its
+better days when it had its courts which treated sins as crimes.
+Calvinism, while it was believed, produced characters nobler and
+grander than any which Republican Rome produced. But the Catholic
+Church turned its penances into money payments. Calvinism made demands
+on faith beyond what truth would bear; and when doubt had once entered,
+the spell of Calvinism was broken. The veracity of the Romans, and
+perhaps the happy accident that they had no inherited religious
+traditions, saved them for centuries from similar trials. They had hold
+of real truth unalloyed with baser metal; and truth had made them free
+and kept them so. When all else has passed away, when theologies have
+yielded up their real meaning, and creeds and symbols have become
+transparent, and man is again in contact with the hard facts of nature,
+it will be found that the "Virtues" which the Romans made into gods
+contain in them the essence of true religion, that in them lies the
+special characteristic which distinguishes human beings from the rest
+of animated things. Every other creature exists for itself, and cares
+for its own preservation. Nothing larger or better is expected from it
+or possible to it. To man it is said, you do not live for yourself. If
+you live for yourself you shall come to nothing. Be brave, be just, be
+pure, be true in word and deed; care not for your enjoyment, care not
+for your life; care only for what is right. So, and not otherwise, it
+shall be well with you. So the Maker of you has ordered, whom you will
+disobey at your peril.
+
+Thus and thus only are nations formed which are destined to endure; and
+as habits based on such convictions are slow in growing, so when grown
+to maturity they survive extraordinary trials. But nations are made up
+of many persons in circumstances of endless variety. In country
+districts, where the routine of life continues simple, the type of
+character remains unaffected; generation follows on generation exposed
+to the same influences and treading in the same steps. But the morality
+of habit, though the most important element in human conduct, is still
+but a part of it. Moral habits grow under given conditions. They
+correspond to a given degree of temptation. When men are removed into
+situations where the use and wont of their fathers no longer meets
+their necessities; where new opportunities are offered to them; where
+their opinions are broken in upon by new ideas; where pleasures tempt
+them on every side, and they have but to stretch out their hand to take
+them--moral habits yield under the strain, and they have no other
+resource to fall back upon. Intellectual cultivation brings with it
+rational interests. Knowledge, which looks before and after, acts as a
+restraining power, to help conscience when it flags. The sober and
+wholesome manners of life among the early Romans had given them
+vigorous minds in vigorous bodies. The animal nature had grown as
+strongly as the moral nature, and along with it the animal appetites;
+and when appetites burst their traditionary restraints, and man in
+himself has no other notion of enjoyment beyond bodily pleasure, he may
+pass by an easy transition into a mere powerful brute. And thus it
+happened with the higher classes at Rome after the destruction of
+Carthage. Italy had fallen to them by natural and wholesome expansion;
+but from being sovereigns of Italy, they became a race of imperial
+conquerors. Suddenly, and in comparatively a few years after the one
+power was gone which could resist them, they became the actual or
+virtual rulers of the entire circuit of the Mediterranean. The
+south-east of Spain, the coast of France from the Pyrenees to Nice, the
+north of Italy, Illyria and Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, and the Greek
+Islands, the southern and western shores of Asia Minor, were Roman
+provinces, governed directly under Roman magistrates. On the African
+side Mauritania (Morocco) was still free. Numidia (the modern Algeria)
+retained its native dynasty, but was a Roman dependency. The
+Carthaginian dominions, Tunis and Tripoli, had been annexed to the
+Empire. The interior of Asia Minor up to the Euphrates, with Syria and
+Egypt, were under sovereigns called Allies, but, like the native
+princes in India, subject to a Roman protectorate. Over this enormous
+territory, rich with the accumulated treasures of centuries, and
+inhabited by thriving, industrious races, the energetic Roman men of
+business had spread and settled themselves, gathering into their hands
+the trade, the financial administration, the entire commercial control
+of the Mediterranean basin. They had been trained in thrift and
+economy, in abhorrence of debt, in strictest habits of close and
+careful management. Their frugal education, their early lessons in the
+value of money, good and excellent as those lessons were, led them, as
+a matter of course, to turn to account their extraordinary
+opportunities. Governors with their staffs, permanent officials,
+contractors for the revenue, negotiators, bill-brokers, bankers,
+merchants, were scattered everywhere in thousands. Money poured in upon
+them in rolling streams of gold. The largest share of the spoils fell
+to the Senate and the senatorial families. The Senate was the permanent
+Council of State, and was the real administrator of the Empire. The
+Senate had the control of the treasury, conducted the public policy,
+appointed from its own ranks the governors of the provinces. It was
+patrician in sentiment, but not necessarily patrician in composition.
+The members of it had virtually been elected for life by the people,
+and were almost entirely those who had been quaestors, aediles,
+praetors, or consuls; and these offices had been long open to the
+plebeians. It was an aristocracy, in theory a real one, but tending to
+become, as civilization went forward, an aristocracy of the rich. How
+the senatorial privileges affected the management of the provinces will
+be seen more particularly as we go on. It is enough at present to say
+that the nobles and great commoners of Rome rapidly found themselves in
+possession of revenues which their fathers could not have imagined in
+their dreams, and money in the stage of progress at which Rome had
+arrived was convertible into power.
+
+The opportunities opened for men to advance their fortunes in other
+parts of the world drained Italy of many of its most enterprising
+citizens. The grandsons of the yeomen who had held at bay Pyrrhus and
+Hannibal sold their farms and went away. The small holdings merged
+rapidly into large estates bought up by the Roman capitalists. At the
+final settlement of Italy, some millions of acres had been reserved to
+the State as public property. The "public land," as the reserved
+portion was called, had been leased on easy terms to families with
+political influence, and by lapse of time, by connivance and right of
+occupation, these families were beginning to regard their tenures as
+their private property, and to treat them as lords of manors in England
+have treated the "commons." Thus everywhere the small farmers were
+disappearing, and the soil of Italy was fast passing into the hands of
+a few territorial magnates, who, unfortunately (for it tended to
+aggravate the mischief), were enabled by another cause to turn their
+vast possessions to advantage. The conquest of the world had turned the
+flower of the defeated nations into slaves. The prisoners taken either
+after a battle or when cities surrendered unconditionally were bought
+up steadily by contractors who followed in the rear of the Roman
+armies. They were not ignorant like the negroes, but trained, useful,
+and often educated men, Asiatics, Greeks, Thracians, Gauls, and
+Spaniards, able at once to turn their hands to some form of skilled
+labor, either as clerks, mechanics, or farm-servants. The great
+landowners might have paused in their purchases had the alternative
+lain before them of letting their lands lie idle or of having freemen
+to cultivate them. It was otherwise when a resource so convenient and
+so abundant was opened at their feet. The wealthy Romans bought slaves
+by thousands. Some they employed in their workshops in the capital.
+Some they spread over their plantations, covering the country, it might
+be, with olive gardens and vineyards, swelling further the plethoric
+figures of their owners' incomes. It was convenient for the few, but
+less convenient for the Commonwealth. The strength of Rome was in her
+free citizens. Where a family of slaves was settled down, a village of
+freemen had disappeared; the material for the legions diminished; the
+dregs of the free population which remained behind crowded into Rome,
+without occupation except in politics, and with no property save in
+their votes, of course to become the clients of the millionaires, and
+to sell themselves to the highest bidders. With all his wealth there
+were but two things which the Roman noble could buy, political power
+and luxury; and in these directions his whole resources were expended.
+The elections, once pure, became matters of annual bargain between
+himself and his supporters. The once hardy, abstemious mode of living
+degenerated into grossness and sensuality.
+
+And his character was assailed simultaneously on another side with
+equally mischievous effect. The conquest of Greece brought to Rome a
+taste for knowledge and culture; but the culture seldom passed below
+the surface, and knowledge bore but the old fruit which it had borne in
+Eden. The elder Cato used to say that the Romans were like their
+slaves--the less Greek they knew the better they were. They had
+believed in the gods with pious simplicity. The Greeks introduced them
+to an Olympus of divinities whom the practical Roman found that he must
+either abhor or deny to exist. The "Virtues" which he had been taught
+to reverence had no place among the graces of the new theology.
+Reverence Jupiter he could not, and it was easy to persuade him that
+Jupiter was an illusion; that all religions were but the creations of
+fancy, his own among them. Gods there might be, airy beings in the
+deeps of space, engaged like men with their own enjoyments; but to
+suppose that these high spirits fretted themselves with the affairs of
+the puny beings that crawled upon the earth was a delusion of vanity.
+Thus, while morality was assailed on one side by extraordinary
+temptations, the religious sanction of it was undermined on the other.
+The Romans ceased to believe, and in losing their faith they became as
+steel becomes when it is demagnetized; the spiritual quality was gone
+out of them, and the high society of Rome itself became a society of
+powerful animals with an enormous appetite for pleasure. Wealth poured
+in more and more, and luxury grew more unbounded. Palaces sprang up in
+the city, castles in the country, villas at pleasant places by the sea,
+and parks, and fish-ponds, and game-preserves, and gardens, and vast
+retinues of servants. When natural pleasures had been indulged in to
+satiety, pleasures which were against nature were imported from the
+East to stimulate the exhausted appetite. To make money--money by any
+means, lawful or unlawful--became the universal passion. Even the most
+cultivated patricians were coarse alike in their habits and their
+amusements. They cared for art as dilettanti, but no schools either of
+sculpture or painting were formed among themselves. They decorated
+their porticos and their saloons with the plunder of the East. The
+stage was never more than an artificial taste with them; their delight
+was the delight of barbarians, in spectacles, in athletic exercises, in
+horse-races and chariot-races, in the combats of wild animals in the
+circus, combats of men with beasts on choice occasions, and, as a rare
+excitement, in fights between men and men, when select slaves trained
+as gladiators were matched in pairs to kill each other. Moral habits
+are all-sufficient while they last; but with rude strong natures they
+are but chains which hold the passions prisoners. Let the chain break,
+and the released brute is but the more powerful for evil from the force
+which his constitution has inherited. Money! the cry was still
+money!--money was the one thought from the highest senator to the
+poorest wretch who sold his vote in the Comitia. For money judges gave
+unjust decrees and juries gave corrupt verdicts. Governors held their
+provinces for one, two, or three years; they went out bankrupt from
+extravagance, they returned with millions for fresh riot. To obtain a
+province was the first ambition of a Roman noble. The road to it lay
+through the praetorship and the consulship; these offices, therefore,
+became the prizes of the State; and being in the gift of the people,
+they were sought after by means which demoralized alike the givers and
+the receivers. The elections were managed by clubs and coteries; and,
+except on occasions of national danger or political excitement, those
+who spent most freely were most certain of success.
+
+Under these conditions the chief powers in the Commonwealth necessarily
+centred in the rich. There was no longer an aristocracy of birth, still
+less of virtue. The patrician families had the start in the race. Great
+names and great possessions came to them by inheritance. But the door
+of promotion was open to all who had the golden key. The great
+commoners bought their way into the magistracies. From the magistracies
+they passed into the Senate; and the Roman senator, though in Rome
+itself and in free debate among his colleagues he was handled as an
+ordinary man, when he travelled had the honors of a sovereign. The
+three hundred senators of Rome were three hundred princes. They moved
+about in other countries with the rights of legates, at the expense of
+the province, with their trains of slaves and horses. The proud
+privilege of Roman citizenship was still jealously reserved to Rome
+itself and to a few favored towns and colonies; and a mere subject
+could maintain no rights against a member of the haughty oligarchy
+which controlled the civilized world. Such generally the Roman Republic
+had become, or was tending to become, in the years which followed the
+fall of Carthage, B.C. 146. Public spirit in the masses was dead or
+sleeping; the Commonwealth was a plutocracy. The free forms of the
+constitution were themselves the instruments of corruption. The rich
+were happy in the possession of all that they could desire. The
+multitude was kept quiet by the morsels of meat which were flung to it
+when it threatened to be troublesome. The seven thousand in Israel, the
+few who in all states and in all times remained pure in the midst of
+evil, looked on with disgust, fearing that any remedy which they might
+try might be worse than the disease. All orders in a society may be
+wise and virtuous, but all cannot be rich. Wealth which is used only
+for idle luxury is always envied, and envy soon curdles into hate. It
+is easy to persuade the masses that the good things of this world are
+unjustly divided, especially when it happens to be the exact truth. It
+is not easy to set limits to an agitation once set on foot, however
+justly it may have been provoked, when the cry for change is at once
+stimulated by interest and can disguise its real character under the
+passionate language of patriotism. But it was not to be expected that
+men of noble natures, young men especially whose enthusiasm had not
+been cooled by experience, would sit calmly by while their country was
+going thus headlong to perdition. Redemption, if redemption was to be
+hoped for, could come only from free citizens in the country districts
+whose manners and whoso minds were still uncontaminated, in whom the
+ancient habits of life still survived, who still believed in the gods,
+who were contented to follow the wholesome round of honest labor. The
+numbers of such citizens were fast dwindling away before the omnivorous
+appetite of the rich for territorial aggrandizement. To rescue the land
+from the monopolists, to renovate the old independent yeomanry, to
+prevent the free population of Italy, out of which the legions had been
+formed which had built up the Empire, from being pushed out of their
+places and supplanted by foreign slaves, this, if it could be done,
+would restore the purity of the constituency, snatch the elections from
+the control of corruption, and rear up fresh generations of peasant
+soldiers to preserve the liberties and the glories which their fathers
+had won.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Tiberius Gracchus was born about the year 164 B.C. He was one of twelve
+children, nine of whom died in infancy, himself, his brother Caius, and
+his sister Cornelia being the only survivors. His family was plebeian,
+but of high antiquity, his ancestors for several generations having
+held the highest offices in the Republic. On the mother's side he was
+the grandson of Scipio Africanus. His father, after a distinguished
+career as a soldier in Spain and Sardinia, had attempted reforms at
+Rome. He had been censor, and in this capacity he had ejected
+disreputable senators from the Curia; he had degraded offending
+equites; he had rearranged and tried to purify the Comitia. But his
+connections were aristocratic. His wife was the daughter of the most
+illustrious of the Scipios. His own daughter was married to the second
+most famous of them, Scipio Africanus the Younger. He had been himself
+in antagonism with the tribunes, and had taken no part at any time in
+popular agitations.
+
+The father died when Tiberius was still a boy, and the two brothers
+grew up under the care of their mother, a noble and gifted lady. They
+displayed early remarkable talents. Tiberius, when old enough, went
+into the army, and served under his brother-in-law in the last
+Carthaginian campaign. He was first on the walls of the city in the
+final storm. Ten years later he went to Spain as Quaestor, where he
+carried on his father's popularity, and by taking the people's side in
+some questions fell into disagreement with his brother-in-law. His
+political views had perhaps already inclined to change. He was still of
+an age when indignation at oppression calls out a practical desire to
+resist it. On his journey home from Spain he witnessed scenes which
+confirmed his conviction and determined him to throw all his energies
+into the popular cause. His road lay through Tuscany, where he saw the
+large-estate system in full operation--the fields cultivated by the
+slave gangs, the free citizens of the Republic thrust away into the
+towns, aliens and outcasts in their own country, without a foot of soil
+which they could call their own. In Tuscany, too, the vast domains of
+the landlords had not even been fairly purchased. They were parcels of
+the _ager publicus_, land belonging to the State, which, in spite of a
+law forbidding it, the great lords and commoners had appropriated and
+divided among themselves. Five hundred acres of State land was the most
+which by statute any one lessee might be allowed to occupy. But the law
+was obsolete or sleeping, and avarice and vanity were awake and active.
+Young Gracchus, in indignant pity, resolved to rescue the people's
+patrimony. He was chosen tribune in the year 133. His brave mother and
+a few patricians of the old type encouraged him, and the battle of the
+revolution began. The Senate, as has been said, though without direct
+legislative authority, had been allowed the right of reviewing any new
+schemes which were to be submitted to the assembly. The constitutional
+means of preventing tribunes from carrying unwise or unwelcome measures
+lay in a consul's veto, or in the help of the College of Augurs, who
+could declare the auspices unfavorable, and so close all public
+business. These resources were so awkward that it had been found
+convenient to secure beforehand the Senate's approbation, and the
+encroachment, being long submitted to, was passing by custom into a
+rule. But the Senate, eager as it was, had not yet succeeded in
+engrafting the practice into the constitution. On the land question the
+leaders of the aristocracy were the principal offenders. Disregarding
+usage, and conscious that the best men of all ranks were with him,
+Tiberius Gracchus appealed directly to the people to revive the
+agrarian law. His proposals were not extravagant. That they should have
+been deemed extravagant was a proof of how much some measure of the
+kind was needed. Where lands had been enclosed and money laid out on
+them he was willing that the occupants should have compensation. But
+they had no right to the lands themselves. Gracchus persisted that the
+_ager publicus_ belonged to the people, and that the race of yeomen,
+for whose protection the law had been originally passed, must be
+re-established on their farms. No form of property gives to its owners
+so much consequence as land, and there is no point on which in every
+country an aristocracy is more sensitive. The large owners protested
+that they had purchased their interests on the faith that the law was
+obsolete. They had planted and built and watered with the sanction of
+the government, and to call their titles in question was to shake the
+foundations of society. The popular party pointed to the statute. The
+monopolists were entitled in justice to less than was offered them.
+They had no right to a compensation at all. Political passion awoke
+again after the sleep of a century. The oligarchy had doubtless
+connived at the accumulations. The suppression of the small holdings
+favored their supremacy, and placed the elections more completely in
+their control. Their military successes had given them so long a tenure
+of power that they had believed it to be theirs in perpetuity; and the
+new sedition, as they called it, threatened at once their privileges
+and their fortunes. The quarrel assumed the familiar form of a struggle
+between the rich and the poor, and at such times the mob of voters
+becomes less easy to corrupt. They go with their order, as the prospect
+of larger gain makes them indifferent to immediate bribes. It became
+clear that the majority of the citizens would support Tiberius
+Gracchus, but the constitutional forms of opposition might still be
+resorted to. Octavius Caecina, another of the tribunes, had himself
+large interests in the land question. He was the people's magistrate,
+one of the body appointed especially to defend their rights, but he
+went over to the Senate, and, using a power which undoubtedly belonged
+to him, he forbade the vote to be taken.
+
+There was no precedent for the removal of either consul, praetor, or
+tribune, except under circumstances very different from any which could
+as yet be said to have arisen. The magistrates held office for a year
+only, and the power of veto had been allowed them expressly to secure
+time for deliberation and to prevent passionate legislation. But
+Gracchus was young and enthusiastic. Precedent or no precedent, the
+citizens were omnipotent. He invited them to declare his colleague
+deposed. They had warmed to the fight, and complied. A more experienced
+statesman would have known that established constitutional bulwarks
+cannot be swept away by a momentary vote. He obtained his agrarian law.
+Three commissioners were appointed, himself, his younger brother, and
+his father-in-law, Appius Claudius, to carry it into effect; but the
+very names showed that he had alienated his few supporters in the
+higher circles, and that a single family was now contending against the
+united wealth and distinction of Rome. The issue was only too certain.
+Popular enthusiasm is but a fire of straw. In a year Tiberius Gracchus
+would be out of office. Other tribunes would be chosen more amenable to
+influence, and his work could then be undone. He evidently knew that
+those who would succeed him could not be relied on to carry on his
+policy. He had taken one revolutionary step already; he was driven on
+to another, and he offered himself illegally to the Comitia for
+re-election. It was to invite them to abolish the constitution and to
+make him virtual sovereign; and that a young man of thirty should have
+contemplated such a position for himself as possible is of itself a
+proof of his unfitness for it. The election-day came. The noble lords
+and gentlemen appeared in the Campus Martius with their retinues of
+armed servants and clients; hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain
+for demagogues, and meaning to read a lesson to sedition which it would
+not easily forget. Votes were given for Gracchus. Had the hustings been
+left to decide the matter, he would have been chosen; but as it began
+to appear how the polling would go, sticks were used and swords; a riot
+rose, the unarmed citizens were driven off, Tiberius Gracchus himself
+and three hundred of his friends were killed and their bodies were
+flung into the Tiber.
+
+Thus the first sparks of the coming revolution were trampled out. But
+though quenched and to be again quenched with fiercer struggles, it was
+to smoulder and smoke and burst out time after time, till its work was
+done. Revolution could not restore the ancient character of the Roman
+nation, but it could check the progress of decay by burning away the
+more corrupted parts of it. It could destroy the aristocracy and the
+constitution which they had depraved, and under other forms present for
+a few more centuries the Roman dominion. Scipio Africanus, when he
+heard in Spain of the end of his brother-in-law, exclaimed, "May all
+who act as he did perish like him!" There were to be victims enough and
+to spare before the bloody drama was played out. Quiet lasted for ten
+years, and then, precisely when he had reached his brother's age, Caius
+Gracchus came forward to avenge him, and carry the movement through
+another stage. Young Caius had been left one of the commissioners of
+the land law; and it is particularly noticeable that though the author
+of it had been killed, the law had survived him being too clearly right
+and politic in itself to be openly set aside. For two years the
+commissioners had continued to work, and in that time forty thousand
+families were settled on various parts of the _ager publicus_, which
+the patricians had been compelled to resign. This was all which they
+could do. The displacement of one set of inhabitants and the
+introduction of another could not be accomplished without quarrels,
+complaints, and perhaps some injustice. Those who were ejected were
+always exasperated. Those who entered on possession were not always
+satisfied. The commissioners became unpopular. When the cries against
+them became loud enough, they were suspended, and the law was then
+quietly repealed. The Senate had regained its hold over the assembly,
+and had a further opportunity of showing its recovered ascendency when,
+two years after the murder of Tiberius Gracchus, one of his friends
+introduced a bill to make the tribunes legally re-eligible. Caius
+Gracchus actively supported the change, but it had no success; and,
+waiting till times had altered, and till he had arrived himself at an
+age when he could carry weight, the young brother retired from
+politics, and spent the next few years with the army in Africa and
+Sardinia. He served with distinction; he made a name for himself both
+as a soldier and an administrator. Had the Senate left him alone, he
+might have been satisfied with a regular career, and have risen by the
+ordinary steps to the consulship. But the Senate saw in him the
+possibilities of a second Tiberius; the higher his reputation, the more
+formidable he became to them. They vexed him with petty prosecutions,
+charged him with crimes which had no existence, and at length by
+suspicion and injustice drove him into open war with them. Caius
+Gracchus had a broader intellect than his brother, and a character
+considerably less noble. The land question he perceived was but one of
+many questions. The true source of the disorders of the Commonwealth
+was the Senate itself. The administration of the Empire was in the
+hands of men totally unfit to be trusted with it, and there he thought
+the reform must commence. He threw himself on the people. He was chosen
+tribune in 123, ten years exactly after Tiberius. He had studied the
+disposition of parties. He had seen his brother fall because the
+equites and the senators, the great commoners and the nobles, were
+combined against him. He revived the agrarian law as a matter of
+course, but he disarmed the opposition to it by throwing an apple of
+discord between the two superior orders. The high judicial functions in
+the Commonwealth had been hitherto a senatorial monopoly. All cases of
+importance, civil or criminal, came before courts of sixty or seventy
+jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be necessarily senators. The
+privilege had been extremely lucrative. The corruption of justice was
+already notorious, though it had not yet reached the level of infamy
+which it attained in another generation. It was no secret that in
+ordinary causes jurymen had sold their verdicts; and, far short of
+taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many ways in
+which they could let themselves be approached and their favor
+purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in
+the sale of justice is alike hateful to those who abhor iniquity on
+principle and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But
+this was not the worst. The governors of the provinces, being chosen
+from those who had been consuls or praetors, were necessarily members
+of the Senate. Peculation and extortion in these high functions were
+offences in theory of the gravest kind; but the offender could only be
+tried before a limited number of his peers, and a governor who had
+plundered a subject state, sold justice, pillaged temples, and stolen
+all that he could lay hands on, was safe from punishment if he returned
+to Rome a millionaire and would admit others to a share in his spoils.
+The provincials might send deputations to complain, but these
+complaints came before men who had themselves governed provinces or
+else aspired to govern them. It had been proved in too many instances
+that the law which professed to protect them was a mere mockery.
+
+Caius Gracchus secured the affections of the knights to himself, and
+some slightly increased chance of an improvement in the provincial
+administration, by carrying a law in the assembly disabling the
+senators from sitting on juries of any kind from that day forward, and
+transferring the judicial functions to the equites. How bitterly must
+such a measure have been resented by the Senate, which at once robbed
+them of their protective and profitable privileges, handed them over to
+be tried by their rivals for their pleasant irregularities, and stamped
+them at the same time with the brand of dishonesty! How certainly must
+such a measure have been deserved when neither consul nor tribune could
+be found to interpose his veto! Supported by the grateful knights,
+Caius Gracchus was for the moment all-powerful. It was not enough to
+restore the agrarian law. He passed another, aimed at his brother's
+murderers, which was to bear fruit in later years, that no Roman
+citizen might be put to death by any person, however high in authority,
+without legal trial, and without appeal, if he chose to make it, to the
+sovereign people. A blow was thus struck against another right claimed
+by the Senate, of declaring the Republic in danger, and the temporary
+suspension of the constitution. These measures might be excused, and
+perhaps commended; but the younger Gracchus connected his name with
+another change less commendable, which was destined also to survive and
+bear fruit. He brought forward and carried through, with enthusiastic
+clapping of every pair of hands in Rome that were hardened with labor,
+a proposal that there should be public granaries in the city,
+maintained and filled at the cost of the State, and that corn should be
+sold at a rate artificially cheap to the poor free citizens. Such a law
+was purely socialistic. The privilege was confined to Rome, because in
+Rome the elections were held, and the Roman constituency was the one
+depositary of power. The effect was to gather into the city a mob of
+needy, unemployed voters, living on the charity of the State, to crowd
+the circus and to clamor at the elections, available no doubt
+immediately to strengthen the hands of the popular tribune, but certain
+in the long-run to sell themselves to those who could bid highest for
+their voices. Excuses could be found, no doubt, for this miserable
+expedient in the state of parties, in the unscrupulous violence of the
+aristocracy, in the general impoverishment of the peasantry through the
+land monopoly, and in the intrusion upon Italy of a gigantic system of
+slave labor. But none the less it was the deadliest blow which had yet
+been dealt to the constitution. Party government turns on the
+majorities at the polling-places, and it was difficult afterward to
+recall a privilege which once conceded appeared to be a right. The
+utmost that could be ventured in later times with any prospect of
+success was to limit an intolerable evil; and if one side was ever
+strong enough to make the attempt, their rivals had a bribe ready in
+their hands to buy back the popular support. Caius Gracchus, however,
+had his way, and carried all before him. He escaped the rock on which
+his brother had been wrecked. He was elected tribune a second time. He
+might have had a third term if he had been contented to be a mere
+demagogue. But he, too, like Tiberius, had honorable aims. The powers
+which he had played into the hands of the mob to obtain he desired to
+use for high purposes of statesmanship, and his instrument broke in his
+hands. He was too wise to suppose that a Roman mob, fed by bounties
+from the treasury, could permanently govern the world. He had schemes
+for scattering Roman colonies, with the Roman franchise, at various
+points of the Empire. Carthage was to be one of them. He thought of
+abolishing the distinction between Romans and Italians, and
+enfranchising the entire peninsula. These measures were good in
+themselves--essential, indeed, if the Roman conquests were to form a
+compact and permanent dominion. But the object was not attainable on
+the road on which Gracchus had entered. The vagabond part of the
+constituency was well contented with what it had obtained--a life in
+the city, supported at the public expense, with politics and games for
+its amusements. It had not the least inclination to be drafted off into
+settlements in Spain or Africa, where there would be work instead of
+pleasant idleness. Carthage was still a name of terror. To restore
+Carthage was no better than treason. Still less had the Roman citizens
+an inclination to share their privileges with Samnites and Etruscans,
+and see the value of their votes watered down. Political storms are
+always cyclones. The gale from the east to-day is a gale from the west
+to-morrow. Who and what were the Gracchi, then?--the sweet voices began
+to ask--ambitious intriguers, aiming at dictatorship or perhaps the
+crown. The aristocracy were right after all; a few things had gone
+wrong, but these had been amended. The Scipios and Metelli had
+conquered the world: the Scipios and Metelli were alone fit to govern
+it. Thus when the election time came round, the party of reform was
+reduced to a minority of irreconcilable radicals who were easily
+disposed of. Again, as ten years before, the noble lords armed their
+followers. Riots broke out and extended day after day. Caius Gracchus
+was at last killed, as his brother had been, and under cover of the
+disturbance three thousand of his friends were killed along with him.
+The power being again securely in their hands, the Senate proceeded at
+their leisure, and the surviving patriots who were in any way notorious
+or dangerous were hunted down in legal manner and put to death or
+banished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Caius Gracchus was killed at the close of the year 122. The storm was
+over. The Senate was once more master of the situation, and the
+optimates, "the best party in the State," as they were pleased to call
+themselves, smoothed their ruffled plumes and settled again into their
+places. There was no more talk of reform. Of the Gracchi there remained
+nothing but the forty thousand peasant-proprietors settled on the
+public lands; the jury law, which could not be at once repealed for
+fear of the equites; the corn grants, and the mob attracted by the
+bounty, which could be managed by improved manipulation; and the law
+protecting the lives of Roman citizens, which survived in the
+statute-book, although the Senate still claimed the right to set it
+aside when they held the State to be in danger. With these exceptions,
+the administration fell back into its old condition. The tribunes
+ceased to agitate. The consulships and the praetorships fell to the
+candidates whom the Senate supported. Whether the oligarchy had learnt
+any lessons of caution from the brief political earthquake which had
+shaken but not overthrown them remained to be seen. Six years after the
+murder of Caius Gracchus an opportunity was afforded to this
+distinguished body of showing on a conspicuous scale the material of
+which they were now composed.
+
+Along the south shore of the Mediterranean, west of the Roman province,
+extended the two kingdoms of the Numidians and the Moors. To what race
+these people belonged is not precisely known. They were not negroes.
+The negro tribes have never extended north of the Sahara. Nor were they
+Carthaginians or allied to the Carthaginians. The Carthaginian colony
+found them in possession on its arrival. Sallust says that they were
+Persians left behind by Hercules after his invasion of Spain. Sallust's
+evidence proves no more than that their appearance was Asiatic, and
+that tradition assigned them an Asiatic origin. They may be called
+generically Arabs, who at a very ancient time had spread along the
+coast from Egypt to Morocco. The Numidians at this period were
+civilized according to the manners of the age. They had walled towns;
+they had considerable wealth; their lands were extensively watered and
+cultivated; their great men had country houses and villas, the surest
+sign of a settled state of society. Among the equipments of their army
+they had numerous elephants (it may be presumed of the African breed),
+which they and the Carthaginians had certainly succeeded in
+domesticating. Masinissa, the king of this people, had been the ally of
+Rome in the last Carthaginian war; he had been afterward received as "a
+friend of the Republic," and was one of the protected sovereigns. He
+was succeeded by his son Micipsa, who in turn had two legitimate
+children, Hiempsal and Adherbal, and an illegitimate nephew Jugurtha,
+considerably older than his own boys, a young man of striking talent
+and promise. Micipsa, who was advanced in years, was afraid that if he
+died this brilliant youth might be a dangerous rival to his sons. He
+therefore sent him to serve under Scipio in Spain, with the hope, so
+his friends asserted, that he might there perhaps be killed. The Roman
+army was then engaged in the siege of Numantia. The camp was the
+lounging-place of the young patricians who were tired of Rome and
+wished for excitement. Discipline had fallen loose; the officers'
+quarters were the scene of extravagance and amusement. Jugurtha
+recommended himself on the one side to Scipio by activity and good
+service, while on the other he made acquaintances among the high-bred
+gentlemen in the mess-rooms. He found them in themselves dissolute and
+unscrupulous. He discovered, through communications which he was able
+with their assistance to open with their fathers and relatives at Rome,
+that a man with money might do what he pleased. Micipsa's treasury was
+well supplied, and Jugurtha hinted among his comrades that if he could
+be secure of countenance in seizing the kingdom, he would be in a
+position to show his gratitude in a substantial manner. Some of these
+conversations reached the ears of Scipio, who sent for Jugurtha and
+gave him a friendly warning. He dismissed him, however, with honor at
+the end of the campaign. The young prince returned to Africa loaded
+with distinctions, and the king, being now afraid to pass him over,
+named him as joint-heir with his children to a third part of Numidia.
+The Numidians perhaps objected to being partitioned. Micipsa died soon
+after. Jugurtha at once murdered Hiempsal, claimed the sovereignty, and
+attacked his other cousin. Adherbal, closely besieged in the town of
+Cirta, which remained faithful to him, appealed to Rome; but Jugurtha
+had already prepared his ground, and knew that he had nothing to fear.
+The Senate sent out commissioners. The commissioners received the
+bribes which they expected. They gave Jugurtha general instructions to
+leave his cousin in peace; but they did not wait to see their orders
+obeyed, and went quietly home. The natural results immediately
+followed. Jugurtha pressed the siege more resolutely. The town
+surrendered; Adherbal was taken, and was put to death after being
+savagely tortured; and there being no longer any competitor alive in
+whose behalf the Senate could be called on to interfere, he thought
+himself safe from further interference. Unfortunately in the capture of
+Citra a number of Romans who resided there had been killed after the
+surrender, and after a promise that their lives should be spared. An
+outcry was raised in Rome, and became so loud that the Senate was
+forced to promise investigation; but it went to work languidly, with
+reluctance so evident as to rouse suspicion. Notwithstanding the fate
+of the Gracchi and their friends, Memmius, a tribune, was found bold
+enough to tell the people that there were men in the Senate who had
+taken bribes.
+
+The Senate, conscious of its guilt, was now obliged to exert itself.
+War was declared against Jugurtha, and a consul was sent to Africa with
+an army. But the consul, too, had his fortune to make, and Micipsa's
+treasures were still unexpended. The consul took with him a staff of
+young patricians, whose families might be counted on to shield him in
+return for a share of the plunder. Jugurtha was as liberal as avarice
+could desire, and peace was granted to him on the easy conditions of a
+nominal fine, and the surrender of some elephants, which the consul
+privately restored.
+
+Public opinion was singularly patient. The massacre six years before
+had killed out the liberal leaders, and there was no desire on any side
+as yet to renew the struggle with the Senate. But it was possible to
+presume too far on popular acquiescence. Memmius came forward again,
+and in a passionate speech in the Forum exposed and denounced the
+scandalous transaction. The political sky began to blacken again. The
+Senate could not face another storm with so bad a cause, and Jugurtha
+was sent for to Rome. He came, with contemptuous confidence, loaded
+with gold. He could not corrupt Memmius, but he bought easily the rest
+of the tribunes. The leaders in the Curia could not quarrel with a
+client of such delightful liberality. He had an answer to every
+complaint, and a fee to silence the complainer. He would have gone back
+in triumph, had he not presumed a little too far. He had another cousin
+in the city who he feared might one day give him trouble, so he
+employed one of his suite to poison him. The murder was accomplished
+successfully; and for this too he might no doubt have secured his
+pardon by paying for it; but the price demanded was too high, and
+perhaps Jugurtha, villain as he was, came at last to disdain the
+wretches whom he might consider fairly to be worse than himself. He had
+come over under a safe-conduct, and he was not detained. The Senate
+ordered him to leave Italy; and he departed with the scornful phrase on
+his lips which has passed into history: "Venal city, and soon to perish
+if only it can find a purchaser." [1]
+
+A second army was sent across, to end the scandal. This time the Senate
+was in earnest, but the work was less easy than was expected. Army
+management had fallen into disorder. In earlier times each Roman
+citizen had provided his own equipments at his own expense. To be a
+soldier was part of the business of his life, and military training was
+an essential feature of his education. The old system had broken down;
+the peasantry, from whom the rank and file of the legions had been
+recruited, were no longer able to furnish their own arms. Caius
+Gracchus had intended that arms should be furnished by the government,
+that a special department should be constituted to take charge of the
+arsenals and to see to the distribution. But Gracchus was dead, and his
+project had died with him. When the legions were enrolled, the men were
+ill armed, undrilled, and unprovided--a mere mob, gathered hastily
+together and ignorant of the first elements of their duty. With the
+officers it was still worse. The subordinate commands fell to young
+patricians, carpet knights who went on campaigns with their families of
+slaves. The generals, when a movement was to be made, looked for
+instruction to their staff. It sometimes happened that a consul waited
+for his election to open for the first time a book of military history
+or a Greek manual of the art of war.[2]
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C 109.] An army so composed and so led was not likely to
+prosper. The Numidians were not very formidable enemies, but, after a
+month or two of manoeuvring, half the Romans were destroyed and the
+remainder were obliged to surrender. About the same time, and from
+similar causes, two Roman armies were cut to pieces on the Rhone. While
+the great men at Rome were building palaces, inventing new dishes, and
+hiring cooks at unheard-of salaries, the barbarians were at the gates
+of Italy. The passes of the Alps were open, and if a few tribes of
+Gauls had cared to pour through them, the Empire was at their mercy.
+Stung with these accumulating disgraces, and now really alarmed, the
+Senate sent Caecilius Metellus, the best man that they had and the
+consul for the year following to Africa. Metellus was an aristocrat,
+and he was advanced in years; but he was a man of honor and integrity.
+He understood the danger of further failure; and he looked about for
+the ablest soldier that he could find to go with him, irrespective of
+his political opinions.
+
+Caius Marius was at this time forty-eight years old. Two thirds of his
+life were over, and a name which was to sound throughout the world and
+be remembered through all ages had as yet been scarcely heard of beyond
+the army and the political clubs in Rome. He was born at Arpinum, a
+Latin township, seventy miles from the capital, in the year 157. His
+father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plough. He
+joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by his punctual
+discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was
+strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in
+the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha was there, and made himself
+especially useful to Scipio; he forced his way steadily upward, by his
+mere soldierlike qualities, to the rank of military tribune. Rome, too,
+had learned to know him, for he was chosen tribune of the people the
+year after the murder of Caius Gracchus. Being a self-made man, he
+belonged naturally to the popular party. While in office he gave
+offence in some way to the men in power, and was called before the
+Senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is
+likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could
+make nothing of their charges against him. He was not bidding at this
+time, however, for the support of the mob. He had the integrity and
+sense to oppose the largesses of corn; and he forfeited his popularity
+by trying to close the public granaries before the practice had passed
+into a system. He seemed as if made of a block of hard Roman oak,
+gnarled and knotted, but sound in all its fibres. His professional
+merit continued to recommend him. At the age of forty he became
+praetor, and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark again by the
+successful severity by which he cleared the province of banditti. He
+was a man neither given himself to talking nor much talked about in the
+world; but he was sought for wherever work was to be done, and he had
+made himself respected and valued in high circles, for after his return
+from the peninsula he had married into one of the most distinguished of
+the patrician families.
+
+The Caesars were a branch of the Gens Julia, which claimed descent from
+Iulus the son of Aeneas, and thus from the gods. Roman etymologists
+could arrive at no conclusion as to the origin of the name. Some
+derived it from an exploit on an elephant-hunt in Africa--Caesar
+meaning elephant in Moorish; some to the entrance into the world of the
+first eminent Caesar by the aid of a surgeon's knife;[3]some from the
+color of the eyes prevailing in the family. Be the explanation what it
+might, eight generations of Caesars had held prominent positions in the
+Commonwealth. They had been consuls, censors, praetors, aediles, and
+military tribunes, and in politics, as might be expected from their
+position, they had been moderate aristocrats. Like other families they
+had been subdivided, and the links connecting them cannot always be
+traced. The pedigree of the Dictator goes no further than to his
+grandfather, Caius Julius. In the middle of the second century before
+Christ, this Caius Julius, being otherwise unknown to history, married
+a lady named Marcia, supposed to be descended from Ancus Marcius, the
+fourth king of Rome. By her he had three children, Caius Julius, Sextus
+Julius, and a daughter named Julia. Caius Julius married Aurelia,
+perhaps a member of the consular family of the Cottas, and was the
+father of the Great Caesar. Julia became the wife of Caius Marius, a
+_mesalliance_ which implied the beginning of a political split in the
+Caesar family. The elder branches, like the Cromwells of Hinchinbrook,
+remained by their order. The younger attached itself for good or ill to
+the party of the people.
+
+Marius by this marriage became a person of social consideration. His
+father had been a client of the Metelli; and Caecilius Metellus, who
+must have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited
+him to go as second in command in the African campaign. He was
+moderately successful. Towns were taken; battles were won: Metellus was
+incorruptible, and the Numidians sued for peace. But Jugurtha wanted
+terms, and the consul demanded unconditional surrender. Jugurtha
+withdrew into the desert; the war dragged on; and Marius, perhaps
+ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general's want of vigor, began to
+think that he could make quicker work of it. The popular party were
+stirring again in Rome, the Senate having so notoriously disgraced
+itself. There was just irritation that a petty African prince could
+defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic
+consul had been unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to
+be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The
+law required that he must be present in person at the election, and he
+applied to his commander for leave of absence. Metellus laughed at his
+pretensions, and bade him wait another twenty years. Marius, however,
+persisted, and was allowed to go. The patricians strained their
+resources to defeat him, but he was chosen with enthusiasm. Metellus
+was recalled, and the conduct of the Numidian war was assigned to the
+new hero of the "populares."
+
+A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the senate-house when the
+determination of the people was known. A successful general could not
+be disposed of so easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately Marius was
+not a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier, and
+had a soldier's way of thinking on government and the methods of it.
+His first step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman
+legions had been no more than the citizens in arms, called for the
+moment from their various occupations, to return to them when the
+occasion for their services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer
+men, better trained and disciplined, could he made more effective and
+be more easily handled. He had studied war as a science. He had
+perceived that the present weakness need be no more than an accident,
+and that there was a latent force in the Roman State which needed only
+organization to resume its ascendency. "He enlisted," it was said, "the
+worst of the citizens," men, that is to say, who had no occupation and
+who became soldiers by profession; and as persons without property
+could not have furnished themselves at their own cost, he must have
+carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and equipped them at the
+expense of the State. His discipline was of the sternest. The
+experiment was new; and men of rank who had a taste for war in earnest,
+and did not wish that the popular party should have the whole benefit
+and credit of the improvements, were willing to go with him; among them
+a dissipated young patrician called Lucius Sylla, whose name also was
+destined to be memorable.
+
+By these methods and out of these materials an army was formed such as
+no Roman general had hitherto led. It performed extraordinary marches,
+carried its water-supplies with it in skins, and followed the enemy
+across sandy deserts hitherto found impassable. In less than two years
+the war was over. The Moors to whom Jugurtha had fled surrendered him
+to Sylla, and he was brought in chains to Rome, where he finished his
+life in a dungeon.
+
+So ended a curious episode in Roman history, where it holds a place
+beyond its intrinsic importance, from the light which it throws on the
+character of the Senate and on the practical working of the
+institutions which the Gracchi had perished in unsuccessfully
+attempting to reform.
+
+[1] "Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorem
+invenenit."--Sallust,
+    _De Bello Jugurthino_, c. 35. Livy's account of the business,
+    however, differs from Sallust's, and the expression is perhaps not
+    authentic.
+
+[2] "At ego scio, Quirites, qui, postquam consules facti sunt, acta
+    majorum, et Graecorum militaria praecepta legere coeperint. Homines
+    praeposteri!"--Speech of Marius, Sallust, _Jugurtha_, 85.
+
+[3] "Caesus ab utero matris."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The Jugurthine war ended in the year 106 B.C. At the same Arpinum which
+had produced Marius another actor in the approaching drama was in that
+year ushered into the world, Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Ciceros had
+made their names, and perhaps their fortunes, by their skill in raising
+_cicer_, or vetches. The present representative of the family was a
+country gentleman in good circumstances given to literature, residing
+habitually at his estate on the Liris and paying occasional visits to
+Rome. In that household was born Rome's most eloquent master of the art
+of using words, who was to carry that art as far, and to do as much
+with it, as any man who has ever appeared on the world's stage.
+
+Rome, however, was for the present in the face of enemies who had to be
+encountered with more material weapons. Marius had formed an army
+barely in time to save Italy from being totally overwhelmed. A vast
+migratory wave of population had been set in motion behind the Rhine
+and the Danube. The German forests were uncultivated. The hunting and
+pasture grounds were too strait for the numbers crowded into them, and
+two enormous hordes were rolling westward and southward in search of
+some new abiding-place. The Teutons came from the Baltic down across
+the Rhine into Luxemburg. The Cimbri crossed the Danube near its
+sources into Illyria. Both Teutons and Cimbri were Germans, and both
+were making for Gaul by different routes. The Celts of Gaul had had
+their day. In past generations they had held the German invaders at
+bay, and had even followed them into their own territories. But they
+had split among themselves. They no longer offered a common front to
+the enemy. They were ceasing to be able to maintain their own
+independence, and the question of the future was whether Gaul was to be
+the prey of Germany or to be a province of Rome.
+
+Events appeared already to have decided. The invasion of the Teutons
+and the Cimbri was like the pouring in of two great rivers. Each
+division consisted of hundreds of thousands. They travelled with their
+wives and children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians and
+with the modern South African Dutch, being at once their conveyance and
+their home. Gray-haired priestesses tramped along among them,
+barefooted, in white linen dresses, the knife at their girdle; northern
+Iphigenias, sacrificing prisoners as they were taken to the gods of
+Valhalla. On they swept, eating up the country, and the people flying
+before them. In 113 B.C. the skirts of the Cimbri had encountered a
+small Roman force near Trieste, and destroyed it. Four years later
+another attempt was made to stop them, but the Roman army was beaten
+and its camp taken. The Cimbrian host did not, however, turn at that
+time upon Italy. Their aim was the south of France. They made their way
+through the Alps into Switzerland, where the Helvetii joined them, and
+the united mass rolled over the Jura and down the bank of the Rhone.
+Roused at last into exertion, the Senate sent into Gaul the largest
+force which the Romans had ever brought into the field. They met the
+Cimbri at Orange, and were simply annihilated. Eighty thousand Romans
+and forty thousand camp-followers were said to have fallen. The numbers
+in such cases are generally exaggerated, but the extravagance of the
+report is a witness to the greatness of the overthrow. The Romans had
+received a worse blow than at Cannae. They were brave enough, but they
+were commanded by persons whose recommendations for command were birth
+or fortune; "preposterous men," as Marius termed them, who had waited
+for their appointment to open the military manuals.
+
+Had the Cimbri chosen at this moment to recross the Alps into Italy,
+they had only to go and take possession, and Alaric would have been
+antedated by five centuries. In great danger it was the Senate's
+business to suspend the constitution. The constitution was set aside
+now, but it was set aside by the people themselves, not by the Senate.
+One man only could save the country, and that man was Marius. His
+consulship was over, and custom forbade his re-election. The Senate
+might have appointed him dictator, but would not. The people, custom or
+no custom, chose him consul a second time--a significant acknowledgment
+that the Empire, which had been won by the sword, must be held by the
+sword, and that the sword itself must be held by the hand that was best
+fitted to use it. Marius first triumphed for his African victory, and,
+as an intimation to the Senate that the power for the moment was his
+and not theirs, he entered the Curia in his triumphal dress. He then
+prepared for the barbarians who, to the alarmed imagination of the
+city, were already knocking at its gates. Time was the important
+element in the matter. Had the Cimbri come at once after their victory
+at Orange, Italy had been theirs. But they did not come. With the
+unguided movements of some wild force of nature they swerved away
+through Aquitaine to the Pyrenees. They swept across the mountains into
+Spain. Thence, turning north, they passed up the Atlantic coast and
+round to the Seine, the Gauls flying before them; thence on to the
+Rhine, where the vast body of the Teutons joined them and fresh
+detachments of the Helvetii. It was as if some vast tide-wave had
+surged over the country and rolled through it, searching out the
+easiest passages. At length, in two divisions, the invaders moved
+definitely toward Italy, the Cimbri following their old tracks by the
+eastern Alps toward Aquileia and the Adriatic, the Teutons passing down
+through Provence and making for the road along the Mediterranean. Two
+years had been consumed in these wanderings, and Marius was by this
+time ready for them. The Senate had dropped the reins, and no longer
+governed or misgoverned; the popular party, represented by the army,
+was supreme. Marius was continued in office, and was a fourth time
+consul. He had completed his military reforms, and the army was now a
+professional service, with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were
+attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were thenceforward
+to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as much as with sword and
+javelin, and the soldiers learnt the use of tools as well as arms.
+Moral discipline was not forgotten. The foulest of human vices was
+growing fashionable in high society in the capital. It was not allowed
+to make its way into the army. An officer in one of the legions, a near
+relative of Marius, made filthy overtures to one of his men. The man
+replied with a thrust of his sword, and Marius publicly thanked and
+decorated him.
+
+The effect of the change was like enchantment. The delay of the Germans
+made it unnecessary to wait for them in Italy. Leaving Catulus, his
+colleague in the consulship, to check the Cimbri in Venetia, Marius
+went himself, taking Sylla with him, into the south of France. As the
+barbarian host came on, he occupied a fortified camp near Aix. He
+allowed the enormous procession to roll past him in their wagons toward
+the Alps. Then, following cautiously, he watched his opportunity to
+fall on them. The Teutons were brave, but they had no longer mere
+legionaries to fight with, but a powerful machine, and the entire mass
+of them, men, women, and children, in numbers which however uncertain
+were rather those of a nation than an army, were swept out of existence.
+
+The Teutons were destroyed on the 20th of July, 102. In the year
+following the same fate overtook their comrades. The Cimbri had forced
+the passes through the mountains. They had beaten the unscientific
+patrician Catulus, and had driven him back on the Po. But Marius came
+to his rescue. The Cimbri were cut to pieces near Mantua, in the summer
+of 101, and Italy was saved.
+
+The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Roman history. The legions
+were no longer the levy of the citizens in arms, who were themselves
+the State for which they fought. The legionaries were citizens still.
+They had votes, and they used them; but they were professional soldiers
+with the modes of thought which belong to soldiers, and beside the
+power of the hustings was now the power of the sword. The constitution
+remained to appearance intact, and means were devised sufficient to
+encounter, it might be supposed, the new danger. Standing armies were
+prohibited in Italy. Victorious generals returning from campaigns
+abroad were required to disband their legions on entering the sacred
+soil. But the materials of these legions remained a distinct order from
+the rest of the population, capable of instant combination, and in
+combination irresistible save by opposing combinations of the same
+kind. The Senate might continue to debate, the Comitia might elect the
+annual magistrates. The established institutions preserved the form and
+something of the reality of power in a people governed so much by habit
+as the Romans. There is a long twilight between the time when a god is
+first suspected to be an idol and his final overthrow. But the
+aristocracy had made the first inroad on the constitution by
+interfering at the elections with their armed followers and killing
+their antagonists. The example once set could not fail to be repeated,
+and the rule of an organized force was becoming the only possible
+protection against the rule of mobs, patrician or plebeian.
+
+The danger from the Germans was no sooner gone than political anarchy
+broke loose again. Marius, the man of the people, was the saviour of
+his country. He was made consul a fifth time and a sixth. The party
+which had given him his command shared, of course, in his pre-eminence.
+The elections could be no longer interfered with or the voters
+intimidated. The public offices were filled with the most violent
+agitators, who believed that the time had come to revenge the Gracchi
+and carry out the democratic revolution, to establish the ideal
+Republic and the direct rule of the citizen assembly. This, too, was a
+chimera. If the Roman Senate could not govern, far less could the Roman
+mob govern. Marius stood aside and let the voices rage. He could not be
+expected to support a system which had brought the country so near to
+ruin. He had no belief in the visions of the demagogues, but the time
+was not ripe to make an end of it all. Had he tried, the army would not
+have gone with him, so he sat still till faction had done its work. The
+popular heroes of the hour were the tribune Saturninus and the praetor
+Glaucia. They carried corn laws and land laws--whatever laws they
+pleased to propose. The administration remaining with the Senate, they
+carried a vote that every senator should take an oath to execute their
+laws under penalty of fine and expulsion. Marius did not like it, and
+even opposed it, but let it pass at last. The senators, cowed and
+humiliated, consented to take the oath, all but one, Marius's old
+friend and commander in Africa, Caecilius Metellus. No stain had ever
+rested on the name of Metellus. He had accepted no bribes. He had half
+beaten Jugurtha, for Marius to finish; and Marius himself stood in a
+semi-feudal relation to him. It was unlucky for the democrats that they
+had found so honorable an opponent. Metellus persisted in refusal.
+Saturninus sent a guard to the senate-house, dragged him out, and
+expelled him from the city. Aristocrats and their partisans were
+hustled and killed in the street. The patricians had spilt the first
+blood in the massacre in 121: now it was the turn of the mob.
+
+Marius was an indifferent politician. He perceived as well as any one
+that violence must not go on, but he hesitated to put it down. He knew
+that the aristocracy feared and hated him. Between them and the
+people's consul no alliance was possible. He did not care to alienate
+his friends, and there may have been other difficulties which we do not
+know in his way. The army itself was perhaps divided. On the popular
+side there were two parties: a moderate one, represented by Memmius,
+who, as tribune, had impeached the senators for the Jugurthine
+infamies; the other, the advanced radicals, led by Glaucia and
+Saturninus. Memmius and Glaucia were both candidates for the
+consulship; and as Memmius was likely to succeed, he was murdered.
+
+Revolutions proceed like the acts of a drama, and each act is divided
+into scenes which follow one another with singular uniformity. Ruling
+powers make themselves hated by tyranny and incapacity. An opposition
+is formed against them, composed of all sorts, lovers of order and
+lovers of disorder, reasonable men and fanatics, business-like men and
+men of theory. The opposition succeeds; the government is overthrown;
+the victors divide into a moderate party and an advanced party. The
+advanced party go to the front, till they discredit themselves with
+crime or folly. The wheel has then gone round, and the reaction sets
+in. The murder of Memmius alienated fatally the respectable citizens.
+Saturninus and Glaucia were declared public enemies. They seized the
+Capitol, and blockaded it. Patrician Rome turned out and besieged them,
+and Marius had to interfere. The demagogues and their friends
+surrendered, and were confined in the Curia Hostilia till they could be
+tried. The noble lords could not allow such detested enemies the chance
+of an acquittal. To them a radical was a foe of mankind, to be hunted
+down like a wolf, when a chance was offered to destroy him. By the law
+of Caius Gracchus no citizen could be put to death without a trial. The
+persons of Saturninus and Glaucia were doubly sacred, for one was
+tribune and the other praetor. But the patricians were satisfied that
+they deserved to be executed, and in such a frame of mind it seemed but
+virtue to execute them. They tore off the roof of the senate house, and
+pelted the miserable wretches to death with stones and tiles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Not far from the scene of the murder of Glaucia and Saturninus there
+was lying at this time in his cradle, or carried about in his nurse's
+arms, a child who, in his manhood, was to hold an inquiry into this
+business, and to bring one of the perpetrators to answer for himself.
+On the 12th of the preceding July, B.C. 100,[1] was born into the world
+Caius Julius Caesar, the only son of Caius Julius and Aurelia, and
+nephew of the then Consul Marius. His father had been praetor, but had
+held no higher office. Aurelia was a strict stately lady of the old
+school, uninfected by the lately imported fashions. She, or her
+husband, or both of them, were rich; but the habits of the household
+were simple and severe, and the connection with Marius indicates the
+political opinions which prevailed in the family.
+
+No anecdotes are preserved, of Caesar's childhood. He was taught Greek
+by Antonius Gnipho, an educated Gaul from the north of Italy. He wrote
+a poem when a boy in honor of Hercules. He composed a tragedy on the
+story of Oedipus. His passionate attachment to Aurelia in after-years
+shows that between mother and child the relations had been affectionate
+and happy. But there is nothing to indicate that there was any early
+precocity of talent; and leaving Caesar to his grammar and his
+exercises, we will proceed with the occurrences which he must have
+heard talked of in his father's house, or seen with his eyes when he
+began to open them. The society there was probably composed of his
+uncle's friends; soldiers and statesmen who had no sympathy with mobs,
+but detested the selfish and dangerous system on which the Senate had
+carried on the government, and dreaded its consequences. Above the
+tumults of the factions in the Capitol a cry rising into shrillness
+began to be heard from Italy. Caius Gracchus had wished to extend the
+Roman franchise to the Italian States, and the suggestion had cost him
+his popularity and his life. The Italian provinces had furnished their
+share of the armies which had beaten Jugurtha, and had destroyed the
+German invaders. They now demanded that they should have the position
+which Gracchus designed for them: that they should be allowed to
+legislate for themselves, and no longer lie at the mercy of others, who
+neither understood their necessities nor cared for their interests.
+They had no friends in the city, save a few far-sighted statesmen.
+Senate and mob had at least one point of agreement, that the spoils of
+the Empire should be fought for among themselves; and at the first
+mention of the invasion of their monopoly a law was passed making the
+very agitation of the subject punishable by death.
+
+Political convulsions work in a groove, the direction of which varies
+little in any age or country. Institutions once sufficient and salutary
+become unadapted to a change of circumstances. The traditionary holders
+of power see their interests threatened. They are jealous of
+innovations. They look on agitators for reform as felonious persons
+desiring to appropriate what does not belong to them. The complaining
+parties are conscious of suffering and rush blindly on the superficial
+causes of their immediate distress. The existing authority is their
+enemy; and their one remedy is a change in the system of government.
+They imagine that they see what the change should be, that they
+comprehend what they are doing, and know where they intend to arrive.
+They do not perceive that the visible disorders are no more than
+symptoms which no measures, repressive or revolutionary, can do more
+than palliate. The wave advances and the wave recedes. Neither party in
+the struggle can lift itself far enough above the passions of the
+moment to study the drift of the general current. Each is violent, each
+is one-sided, and each makes the most and the worst of the sins of its
+opponents. The one idea of the aggressors is to grasp all that they can
+reach. The one idea of the conservatives is to part with nothing,
+pretending that the stability of the State depends on adherence to the
+principles which have placed them in the position which they hold; and
+as various interests are threatened, and as various necessities arise,
+those who are one day enemies are frightened the next into unnatural
+coalitions, and the next after into more embittered dissensions.
+
+To an indifferent spectator, armed especially with the political
+experiences of twenty additional centuries, it seems difficult to
+understand how Italy could govern the world. That the world and Italy
+besides should continue subject to the population of a single city, of
+its limited Latin environs, and of a handful of townships exceptionally
+favored, might even then be seen to be plainly impossible. The Italians
+were Romans in every point, except in the possession of the franchise.
+They spoke the same language; they were subjects of the same dominion.
+They were as well educated, they were as wealthy, they were as capable
+as the inhabitants of the dominant State. They paid taxes, they fought
+in the armies; they were strong; they were less corrupt, politically
+and morally, as having fewer temptations and fewer opportunities of
+evil; and in their simple country life they approached incomparably
+nearer to the old Roman type than the patrician fops in the circus or
+the Forum, or the city mob which was fed in idleness on free grants of
+corn. When Samnium and Tuscany were conquered, a third of the lands had
+been confiscated to the Roman State, under the name of _Ager Publicus_.
+Samnite and Etruscan gentlemen had recovered part of it under lease,
+much as the descendants of the Irish chiefs held their ancestral
+domains as tenants of the Cromwellians. The land law of the Gracchi was
+well intended, but it bore hard on many of the leading provincials, who
+had seen their estates parcelled out, and their own property, as they
+deemed it, taken from them under the land commission. If they were to
+be governed by Roman laws, they naturally demanded to be consulted when
+the laws were made. They might have been content under a despotism to
+which Roman and Italian were subject alike. To be governed under the
+forms of a free constitution by men no better than themselves was
+naturally intolerable.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 95.] [Sidenote: B.C. 91.] The movement from without
+united the Romans for the instant in defence of their privileges. The
+aristocracy resisted change from instinct; the mob, loudly as they
+clamored for their own rights, cared nothing for the rights of others,
+and the answer to the petition of the Italians, five years after the
+defeat of the Cimbri, was a fierce refusal to permit the discussion of
+it. Livius Drusus, one of those unfortunately gifted men who can see
+that in a quarrel there is sometimes justice on both sides, made a vain
+attempt to secure the provincials a hearing, but he was murdered in his
+own house. To be murdered was the usual end of exceptionally
+distinguished Romans, in a State where the lives of citizens were
+theoretically sacred. His death was the signal for an insurrection,
+which began in the mountains of the Abruzzi and spread over the whole
+peninsula.
+
+The contrast of character between the two classes of population became
+at once uncomfortably evident. The provincials had been the right arm
+of the Empire. Rome, a city of rich men with families of slaves, and of
+a crowd of impoverished freemen without employment to keep them in
+health and strength, could no longer bring into the field a force which
+could hold its ground against the gentry and peasants of Samnium. The
+Senate enlisted Greeks, Numidians, any one whose services they could
+purchase. They had to encounter soldiers who had been trained and
+disciplined by Marius, and they were taught by defeat upon defeat that
+they had a worse enemy before them than the Germans. Marius himself had
+almost withdrawn from public life. He had no heart for the quarrel, and
+did not care greatly to exert himself. At the bottom, perhaps, he
+thought that the Italians were in the right. The Senate discovered that
+they were helpless, and must come to terms if they would escape
+destruction. They abandoned the original point of difference, and they
+offered to open the franchise to every Italian state south of the Po
+which had not taken arms or which returned immediately to its
+allegiance. The war had broken out for a definite cause. When the cause
+was removed no reason remained for its continuance. The Italians were
+closely connected with Rome. Italians were spread over the Roman world
+in active business. They had no wish to overthrow the Empire if they
+were allowed to share in its management. The greater part of them
+accepted the Senate's terms; and only those remained in the field who
+had gone to war in the hope of recovering the lost independence which
+their ancestors had so long heroically defended.
+
+The panting Senate was thus able to breathe again. The war continued,
+but under better auspices. Sound material could now be collected again
+for the army. Marius being in the background, the chosen knight of the
+aristocracy, Lucius Sylla, whose fame in the Cimbrian war had been only
+second to that of his commander's, came at once to the front.
+
+Sylla, or Sulla, as we are now taught to call him, was born in the year
+138 B.C. He was a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a
+moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank,
+lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a
+poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of
+an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither
+obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated
+man of fashion. His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person.
+He had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple,
+with the colors so ill-mixed that his face was compared to a mulberry
+sprinkled with flour. Ambition he appeared to have none; and when he
+exerted himself to be appointed quaestor to Marius on the African
+expedition, Marius was disinclined to take him as having no
+recommendation beyond qualifications which the consul of the plebeians
+disdained and disliked.
+
+Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Beneath his
+constitutional indolence Sylla was by nature a soldier, a statesman, a
+diplomatist. He had been too contemptuous of the common objects of
+politicians to concern himself with the intrigues of the Forum, but he
+had only to exert himself to rise with easy ascendency to the command
+of every situation in which he might be placed. He had entered with
+military instinct into Marius's reform of the army, and became the most
+active and useful of his officers. He endeared himself to the
+legionaries by a tolerance of vices which did not interfere with
+discipline; and to Sylla's combined adroitness and courage Marius owed
+the final capture of Jugurtha.
+
+Whether Marius became jealous of Sylla on this occasion must be decided
+by those who, while they have no better information than others as to
+the actions of men, possess, or claim to possess, the most intimate
+acquaintance with their motives. They again served together, however,
+against the Northern invaders, and Sylla a second time lent efficient
+help to give Marius a victory. Like Marius, he had no turn for platform
+oratory and little interest in election contests and intrigues. For
+eight years he kept aloof from politics, and his name and that of his
+rival were alike for all that time almost unheard of. He emerged into
+special notice only when he was praetor in the year 93 B.C., and when
+he characteristically distinguished his term of office by exhibiting a
+hundred lions in the arena matched against Numidian archers. There was
+no such road to popularity with the Roman multitude. It is possible
+that the little Caesar, then a child of seven, may have been among the
+spectators, making his small reflections on it all.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 120.] In 92 Sylla went as propraetor to Asia, where the
+incapacity of the Senate's administration was creating another enemy
+likely to be troublesome. Mithridates, "child of the sun," pretending
+to a descent from Darius Hystaspes, was king of Pontus, one of the
+semi-independent monarchies which had been allowed to stand in Asia
+Minor. The coast-line of Pontus extended from Sinope to Trebizond, and
+reached inland to the line of mountains where the rivers divide which
+flow into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The father of
+Mithridates was murdered when he was a child, and for some years he led
+a wandering life, meeting adventures which were as wild and perhaps as
+imaginary as those of Ulysses. In later life he became the idol of
+Eastern imagination, and legend made free with his history; but he was
+certainly an extraordinary man. He spoke the unnumbered dialects of the
+Asiatic tribes among whom he had travelled. He spoke Greek with ease
+and freedom. Placed, as he was, on the margin where the civilizations
+of the East and the West were brought in contact, he was at once a
+barbarian potentate and an ambitious European politician. He was well
+informed of the state of Rome, and saw reason, perhaps, as well he
+might, to doubt the durability of its power. At any rate, he was no
+sooner fixed on his own throne than he began to annex the territories
+of the adjoining princes. He advanced his sea frontier through Armenia
+to Batoum, and thence along the coast of Circassia. He occupied the
+Greek settlements on the Sea of Azof. He took Kertch and the Crimea,
+and with the help of pirates from the Mediterranean he formed a fleet
+which gave him complete command of the Black Sea. In Asia Minor no
+power but the Roman could venture to quarrel with him. The Romans ought
+in prudence to have interfered before Mithridates had grown to so large
+a bulk, but money judiciously distributed among the leading politicians
+had secured the Senate's connivance; and they opened their eyes at last
+only when Mithridates thought it unnecessary to subsidize them further,
+and directed his proceedings against Cappadocia, which was immediately
+under Roman protection. He invaded the country, killed the prince whom
+Rome had recognized, and placed on the throne a child of his own, with
+the evident intention of taking Cappadocia for himself.
+
+This was to go too far. Like Jugurtha, he had purchased many friends in
+the Senate, who, grateful for past favors and hoping for more,
+prevented the adoption of violent measures against him; but they sent a
+message to him that he must not have Cappadocia, and Mithridates,
+waiting for a better opportunity, thought proper to comply. Of this
+message the bearer was Lucius Sylla. He had time to study on the spot
+the problem of how to deal with Asia Minor. He accomplished his mission
+with his usual adroitness and apparent success, and he returned to Rome
+with new honors to finish the Social war.
+
+It was no easy work. The Samnites were tough and determined. For two
+years they continued to struggle, and the contest was not yet over when
+news came from the East appalling as the threatened Cimbrian invasion,
+which brought both parties to consent to suspend their differences by
+mutual concessions.
+
+[1] I follow the ordinary date, which has been fixed by the positive
+    statement that Caesar was fifty-six when he was killed, the date of
+    his death being March, B.C. 44. Mommsen, however, argues plausibly
+    for adding another two years to the beginning of Caesar's life, and
+    brings him into the world at the time of the battle at Aix.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Barbarian kings, who found Roman senators ready to take bribes from
+them, believed, not unnaturally, that the days of Roman dominion were
+numbered. When the news of the Social war reached Mithridates, he
+thought it needless to temporize longer, and he stretched out his hand
+to seize the prize of the dominion of the East. The Armenians, who were
+at his disposition, broke into Cappadocia and again overthrew the
+government, which was in dependence upon Rome. Mithridates himself
+invaded Bithynia, and replied to the remonstrances of the Roman
+authorities by a declaration of open war. He called under arms the
+whole force of which he could dispose; frightened rumor spoke of it as
+amounting to three hundred thousand men. His corsair fleets poured down
+through the Dardanelles into the archipelago; and so detested had the
+Roman governors made themselves by their extortion and injustice that
+not only all the islands, but the provinces on the continent, Ionia,
+Lydia, and Caria, rose in revolt. The rebellion was preconcerted and
+simultaneous. The Roman residents, merchants, bankers, farmers of the
+taxes, they and all their families, were set upon and murdered; a
+hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children were said to have
+been destroyed in a single day. If we divide by ten, as it is generally
+safe to do with historical round numbers, still beyond doubt the signal
+had been given in an appalling massacre to abolish out of Asia the
+Roman name and power. Swift as a thunderbolt Mithridates himself
+crossed the Bosphorus, and the next news that reached Rome was that
+northern Greece had risen also and was throwing itself into the arms of
+its deliverers.
+
+The defeat at Cannae had been received with dignified calm. Patricians
+and plebeians forgot their quarrels and thought only how to meet their
+common foe. The massacre in Asia and the invasion of Mithridates let
+loose a tempest of political frenzy. Never was indignation more
+deserved. The Senate had made no preparation. Such resources as they
+could command had been wasted in the wars with the Italians. They had
+no fleet, they had no armies available; nor, while the civil war was
+raging, could they raise an army. The garrisons in Greece were
+scattered or shut in within their lines and unable to move. The
+treasury was empty. Individuals were enormously rich and the State was
+bankrupt. Thousands of families had lost brothers, cousins, or friends
+in the massacre, and the manifest cause of the disaster was the
+inefficiency and worthlessness of the ruling classes. In Africa, in
+Gaul, in Italy, and now in Asia it had been the same story. The
+interests of the Commonwealth had been sacrificed to fill the purses of
+the few. Dominion, wealth, honors, all that had been won by the hardy
+virtues of earlier generations, seemed about to be engulfed forever.
+
+In their panic the Senate turned to Sylla, whom they had made consul.
+An imperfect peace was patched up with the Italians. Sylla was bidden
+to save the Republic and to prepare in haste for Greece. But Sylla was
+a bitter aristocrat, the very incarnation of the oligarchy, who were
+responsible for every disaster which had happened. The Senate had taken
+bribes from Jugurtha. The Senate had chosen the commanders whose
+blunders had thrown open the Alps to the Germans; and it was only
+because the people had snatched the power out of their hands and had
+trusted it to one of themselves that Italy had not been in flames.
+Again the oligarchy had recovered the administration, and again by
+following the old courses they had brought on this new catastrophe.
+They might have checked Mithridates while there was time. They had
+preferred to accept his money and look on. The people naturally thought
+that no successes could be looked for under such guidance, and that
+even were Sylla to be victorious, nothing was to be expected but the
+continuance of the same accursed system. Marius was the man. Marius
+after his sixth consulship had travelled in the East, and understood it
+as well as Sylla. Not Sylla but Marius must now go against Mithridates.
+Too late the democratic leaders repented of their folly in encouraging
+the Senate to refuse the franchise to the Italians. The Italians, they
+began to perceive, would be their surest political allies. Caius
+Gracchus had been right after all. The Roman democracy must make haste
+to offer the Italians more than all which the Senate was ready to
+concede to them. Together they could make an end of misrule and place
+Marius once more at their head.
+
+Much of this was perhaps the scheming passion of revolution; much of it
+was legitimate indignation, penitent for its errors and anxious to
+atone for them. Marius had his personal grievances. The aristocrats
+were stealing from him even his military reputation, and claiming for
+Sylla the capture of Jugurtha. He was willing, perhaps anxious, to take
+the Eastern command. Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the Senate and
+the most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people in the
+excitement. Rufus was chosen tribune, and at once proposed to
+enfranchise the remainder of Italy. He denounced the oligarchy. He
+insisted that the Senate must be purged of its corrupt members and
+better men be introduced, that the people must depose Sylla, and that
+Marius must take his place. The Empire was tottering, and the mob and
+its leaders were choosing an ill moment for a revolution. The tribune
+carried the assembly along with him. There were fights again in the
+Forum, the young nobles with their gangs once more breaking up the
+Comitia and driving the people from the voting-places. The voting,
+notwithstanding, was got through as Sulpicius Rufus recommended, and
+Sylla, so far as the assembly could do it, was superseded. But Sylla
+was not so easily got rid of. It was no time for nice considerations.
+He had formed an army in Campania out of the legions which had served
+against the Italians. He had made his soldiers devoted to him. They
+were ready to go anywhere and do anything which Sylla bade them. After
+so many murders and so many commotions, the constitution had lost its
+sacred character; a popular assembly was, of all conceivable bodies,
+the least fit to govern an empire; and in Sylla's eyes the Senate,
+whatever its deficiencies, was the only possible sovereign of Rome. The
+people were a rabble, and their voices the clamor of fools, who must be
+taught to know their masters. His reply to Sulpicius and to the vote
+for his recall was to march on the city. He led his troops within the
+circle which no legionary in arms was allowed to enter, and he lighted
+his watch-fires in the Forum itself. The people resisted; Sulpicius was
+killed; Marius, the saviour of his country, had to fly for his life,
+pursued by assassins, with a price set upon his head. Twelve of the
+prominent popular leaders were immediately executed without trial, and
+in hot haste swift decisive measures were taken which permanently, as
+Sylla hoped, or if not permanently at least for the moment, would lame
+the limbs of the democracy. The Senate, being below its numbers, was
+hastily filled up from the patrician families. The arrangements of the
+Comitia were readjusted to restore to wealth a decisive preponderance
+in the election of the magistrates. The tribunes of the people were
+stripped of half their power. Their veto was left to them, but the
+right of initiation was taken away, and no law or measure of any kind
+was thenceforth to be submitted to the popular assembly till it had
+been considered in the Curia and had received the Senate's sanction.
+
+Thus the snake was scotched, and it might be hoped would die of its
+wounds. Sulpicius and his brother demagogues were dead. Marius was
+exiled. Time pressed, and Sylla could not wait to see his reforms in
+operation. Signs became visible before he went that the crisis would
+not pass off so easily. Fresh consuls had to be elected. The changes in
+the method of voting were intended to secure the return of the Senate's
+candidates, and one of the consuls chosen, Cnaeus Octavius, was a man
+on whom Sylla could rely. His colleague, Lucius Cinna, though elected
+under the pressure of the legions, was of more doubtful temper. But
+Cinna was a patrician, though given to popular sentiments. Sylla was
+impatient to be gone; more important work was waiting for him than
+composing factions in Rome. He contented himself with obliging the new
+consuls to take an oath to maintain the constitution in the shape in
+which he left it, and he sailed from Brindisi in the winter of B.C. 88.
+
+The campaign of Sylla in the East does not fall to be described in this
+place. He was a second Coriolanus, a proud, imperious aristocrat,
+contemptuous, above all men living, of popular rights; but he was the
+first soldier of his age; he was himself, though he did not know it, an
+impersonation of the change which was passing over the Roman character.
+He took with him at most 30,000 men. He had no fleet. Had the corsair
+squadrons of Mithridates been on the alert, they might have destroyed
+him on his passage. Events at Rome left him almost immediately without
+support from Italy. He was impeached; he was summoned back. His troops
+were forbidden to obey him, and a democratic commander was sent out to
+supersede him. The army stood by their favorite commander. Sylla
+disregarded his orders from home. He found men and money as he could.
+He supported himself out of the countries which he occupied, without
+resources save in his own skill and in the fidelity and excellence of
+his legions. He defeated Mithridates, he drove him back out of Greece
+and pursued him into Asia. The interests of his party demanded his
+presence at Rome; the interests of the State required that he should
+not leave his work in the East unfinished, and he stood to it through
+four hard years till he brought Mithridates to sue for peace upon his
+knees. He had not the means to complete the conquest or completely to
+avenge the massacre with which the Prince of Pontus had commenced the
+war. He left Mithridates still in possession of his hereditary kingdom,
+but he left him bound, so far as treaties could bind so ambitious a
+spirit, to remain thenceforward within his own frontiers. He recovered
+Greece and the islands, and the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. He
+extorted an indemnity of five millions, and executed many of the
+wretches who had been active in the murders. He raised a fleet in
+Egypt, with which he drove the pirates out of the archipelago back into
+their own waters. He restored the shattered prestige of Roman
+authority, and he won for himself a reputation which his later
+cruelties might stain but could not efface.
+
+The merit of Sylla shows in more striking colors when we look to what
+was passing, during these four years of his absence, in the heart of
+the Empire. He was no sooner out of Italy than the democratic party
+rose, with Cinna at their head, to demand the restoration of the old
+constitution. Cinna had been sworn to maintain Sylla's reforms, but no
+oath could be held binding which was extorted at the sword's point. A
+fresh Sulpicius was found in Carbo, a popular tribune. A more valuable
+supporter was found in Quintus Sertorius, a soldier of fortune, but a
+man of real gifts, and even of genius. Disregarding the new obligation
+to obtain the previous consent of the Senate, Cinna called the assembly
+together to repeal the acts which Sylla had forced on them. Sylla, it
+is to be remembered, had as yet won no victories, nor was expected to
+win victories. He was the favorite of the Senate, and the Senate had
+become a byword for incapacity and failure. Again, as so many times
+before, the supremacy of the aristocrats had been accompanied with
+dishonor abroad and the lawless murder of political adversaries at
+home. No true lover of his country could be expected, in Cinna's
+opinion, to sit quiet under a tyranny which had robbed the people of
+their hereditary liberties.
+
+The patricians took up the challenge. Octavius, the other consul, came
+with an armed force into the Forum, and ordered the assembly to
+disperse. The crowd was unusually great. The country voters had come in
+large numbers to stand up for their rights. They did not obey, They
+were not called on to obey. But because they refused to disperse they
+were set upon with deliberate fury, and were hewn down in heaps where
+they stood. No accurate register was, of course, taken of the numbers
+killed; but the intention of the patricians was to make a bloody
+example, and such a scene of slaughter had never been witnessed in Rome
+since the first stone of the city was laid. It was an act of savage,
+ruthless ferocity, certain to be followed with a retribution as sharp
+and as indiscriminating. Men are not permitted to deal with their
+fellow-creatures in these methods. Cinna and the tribunes fled, but
+fled only to be received with open arms by the Italians. The wounds of
+the Social war were scarcely cicatrized, and the peace had left the
+allies imperfectly satisfied. Their dispersed armies gathered again
+about Cinna and Sertorius. Old Marius, who had been hunted through
+marsh and forest, and had been hiding with difficulty in Africa, came
+back at the news that Italy had risen again; and six thousand of his
+veterans flocked to him at the sound of his name. The Senate issued
+proclamations. The limitations on the Italian franchise left by Sylla
+were abandoned. Every privilege which had been asked for was conceded.
+It was too late. Concessions made in fear might be withdrawn on the
+return of safety. Marius and Cinna joined their forces. The few troops
+in the pay of the Senate deserted to them. They appeared together at
+the gate's of the city, and Rome capitulated.
+
+There was a bloody score to be wiped out. There would have been neither
+cruelty nor injustice in the most severe inquiry into the massacre in
+the Forum, and the most exemplary punishment of Octavius and his
+companions. But the blood of the people was up, and they had suffered
+too deeply to wait for the tardy processes of law. They had not been
+the aggressors. They had assembled lawfully, to assert their
+constitutional rights; they had been cut in pieces as if they had been
+insurgent slaves, and the assassins were not individuals, but a
+political party in the State.
+
+Marius bears the chief blame for the scenes which followed. Undoubtedly
+he was in no pleasant humor. A price had been set on his head, his
+house had been destroyed, his property had been confiscated, he himself
+had been chased like a wild beast, and he had not deserved such
+treatment. He had saved Italy when but for him it would have been
+wasted by the swords of the Germans. His power had afterward been
+absolute, but he had not abused it for party purposes. The Senate had
+no reason to complain of him. He had touched none of their privileges,
+incapable and dishonest as he knew them to be. His crime in their eyes
+had been his eminence. They had now shown themselves as cruel as they
+were worthless; and if public justice was disposed to make an end of
+them, he saw no cause for interference.
+
+Thus the familiar story repeated itself; wrong was punished by wrong,
+and another item was entered on the bloody account which was being
+scored up year after year. The noble lords and their friends had killed
+the people in the Forum. They were killed in turn by the soldiers of
+Marius. Fifty senators perished; not those who were specially guilty,
+but those who were most politically marked as patrician leaders. With
+them fell a thousand equites, commoners of fortune, who had thrown in
+their lot with the aristocracy. From retaliatory political revenge the
+transition was easy to pillage and wholesale murder, and for many days
+the wretched city was made a prey to robbers and cutthroats.
+
+So ended the year 87, the darkest and bloodiest which the guilty city
+had yet experienced. Marius and Cinna were chosen consuls for the year
+ensuing, and a witch's prophecy was fulfilled that Marius should have a
+seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun was
+already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a fortnight
+after his inauguration, and he died in his bed on the 13th of January,
+at the age of seventy-one.
+
+"The mother of the Gracchi," said Mirabeau, "cast the dust of her
+murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Caius Marius." The
+Gracchi were perhaps not forgotten in the retribution; but the crime
+which had been revenged by Marius was the massacre in the Forum by
+Octavius and his friends. The aristocracy found no mercy, because they
+had shown no mercy. They had been guilty of the most wantonly wicked
+cruelty which the Roman annals had yet recorded. They were not
+defending their country against a national danger. They were engaged in
+what has been called in later years "saving society;" that is to say,
+in saving their own privileges, their opportunities for plunder, their
+palaces, their estates, and their game-preserves. They had treated the
+people as if they were so many cattle grown troublesome to their
+masters, and the cattle were human beings with rights as real as their
+own.
+
+The democratic party were now masters of the situation, and so
+continued for almost four years. Cinna succeeded to the consulship term
+after term, nominating himself and his colleagues. The franchise was
+given to the Italians without reserve or qualification. Northern Italy
+was still excluded, being not called Italy, but Cisalpine Gaul. South
+of the Po distinctions of citizenship ceased to exist. The constitution
+became a rehearsal of the Empire, a democracy controlled and guided by
+a popular dictator. The aristocrats who had escaped massacre fled to
+Sylla in Asia, and for a brief interval Rome drew its breath in peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Revolutionary periods are painted in history in colors so dark that the
+reader wonders how, amidst such scenes, peaceful human beings could
+continue to exist. He forgets that the historian describes only the
+abnormal incidents which broke the current of ordinary life, and that
+between the spasms of violence there were long quiet intervals when the
+ordinary occupations of men went on as usual. Cinna's continuous
+consulship was uncomfortable to the upper classes, but the daily
+business of a great city pursued its beaten way. Tradesmen and
+merchants made money, and lawyers pleaded, and priests prayed in the
+temples, and "celebrated" on festival and holy day. And now for the
+first time we catch a personal view of young Julius Caesar. He was
+growing up, in his father's house, a tall, slight, handsome youth, with
+dark piercing eyes,[1] a sallow complexion, large nose, lips full,
+features refined and intellectual, neck sinewy and thick beyond what
+might have been expected from the generally slender figure. He was
+particular about his appearance, used the bath frequently, and attended
+carefully to his hair. His dress was arranged with studied negligence,
+and he had a loose mode of fastening his girdle so peculiar as to catch
+the eye.
+
+It may be supposed that he had witnessed Sylla's coming to Rome, the
+camp-fires in the Forum, the Octavian massacre, the return of his uncle
+and Cinna, and the bloody triumph of the party to which his father
+belonged. He was just at the age when such scenes make an indelible
+impression; and the connection of his family with Marius suggests
+easily the persons whom he must have most often seen, and the
+conversation to which he must have listened at his father's table. His
+most intimate companions were the younger Marius, the adopted son of
+his uncle; and, singularly enough, the two Ciceros, Marcus and his
+brother Quintus, who had been sent by their father to be educated at
+Rome. The connection of Marius with Arpinum was perhaps the origin of
+the intimacy. The great man may have heard of his fellow-townsman's
+children being in the city, and have taken notice of them. Certain, at
+any rate, it is that these boys grew up together on terms of close
+familiarity.[2]
+
+Marius had observed his nephew, and had marked him for promotion.
+During the brief fortnight of his seventh consulship he gave him an
+appointment which reminds us of the boy-bishops of the middle ages. He
+made him _flamen dialis_, or priest of Jupiter, and a member of the
+Sacred College, with a handsome income, when he was no more than
+fourteen. Two years later, during the rule of Cinna, his father
+arranged a marriage for him with a lady of fortune named Cossutia. But
+the young Caesar had more ambitious views for himself. His father died
+suddenly at Pisa, in B.C. 84; he used his freedom to break off his
+engagement, and instead of Cossutia he married Cornelia, the daughter
+of no less a person than the all-powerful Cinna himself. If the date
+commonly received for Caesar's birth is correct, he was still only in
+his seventeenth year. Such connections were rarely formed at an age so
+premature; and the doubt is increased by the birth of his daughter,
+Julia, in the year following. Be this as it may, a marriage into
+Cinna's family connected Caesar more closely than ever with the popular
+party. Thus early and thus definitively he committed himself to the
+politics of his uncle and his father-in-law; and the comparative quiet
+which Rome and Italy enjoyed under Cinna's administration may have left
+a permanent impression upon him.
+
+The quiet was not destined to be of long endurance. The time was come
+when Sylla was to demand a reckoning for all which had been done in his
+absence. No Roman general had deserved better of his country than
+Sylla. He had driven Mithridates out of Greece, and had restored Roman
+authority in Asia under conditions peculiarly difficult. He had clung
+resolutely to his work, while his friends at home were being trampled
+upon by the populace whom he despised. He perhaps knew that in subduing
+the enemies of the State by his own individual energy he was taking the
+surest road to regain his ascendency. His task was finished.
+Mithridates was once more a petty Asiatic prince existing upon
+sufferance, and Sylla announced his approaching return to Italy. By his
+victories he had restored confidence to the aristocracy, and had won
+the respect of millions of his countrymen. But the party in power knew
+well that if he gained a footing in Italy their day was over, and the
+danger to be expected from him was aggravated by his transcendent
+services. The Italians feared naturally that they would lose the
+liberties which they had won. The popular faction at Rome was combined
+and strong, and was led by men of weight and practical ability. No
+reconciliation was possible between Cinna and Sylla. They were the
+respective chiefs of heaven and hell, and which of the two represented
+the higher power and which the lower could be determined only when the
+sword had decided between them. In Cinna lay the presumed lawful
+authority. He represented the people as organized in the Comitia, and
+his colleague in the consulship when the crisis came was the popular
+tribune Carbo. Italy was ready with armies; and as leaders there were
+young Marius, already with a promise of greatness in him, and
+Sertorius, gifted, brilliant, unstained by crime, adored by his troops
+as passionately as Sylla himself, and destined to win a place for
+himself elsewhere in the Pantheon of Rome's most distinguished men.
+
+Sylla had measured the difficulty of the task which lay before him. But
+he had an army behind him accustomed to victory, and recruited by
+thousands of exiles who had fled from the rule of the democracy. He had
+now a fleet to cover his passage; and he was watching the movements of
+his enemies before deciding upon his own, when accident came suddenly
+to his help. Cinna had gone down to Brindisi, intending himself to
+carry his army into Greece, and to spare Italy the miseries of another
+civil war, by fighting it out elsewhere. The expedition was unpopular
+with the soldiers, and Cinna was killed in a mutiny. The democracy was
+thus left without a head, and the moderate party in the city who
+desired peace and compromise used the opportunity to elect two neutral
+consuls, Scipio and Norbanus. Sylla, perhaps supposing the change of
+feeling to be more complete than it really was, at once opened
+communications with them. But his terms were such as he might have
+dictated if the popular party were already under his feet. He intended
+to re-enter Rome with the glory of his conquests about him, for revenge
+and a counter-revolution. The consuls replied with refusing to treat
+with a rebel in arms, and with a command to disband his troops.
+
+Sylla had lingered at Athens, collecting paintings and statues and
+manuscripts, the rarest treasures on which he could lay his hands, to
+decorate his Roman palace. On receiving the consuls' answer, he sailed
+for Brindisi in the spring of 83, with forty thousand legionaries and a
+large fleet. The south of Italy made no resistance, and he secured a
+standing-ground where his friends could rally to him. They came in
+rapidly, some for the cause which he represented, some for private
+hopes or animosities, some as aspiring military adventurers, seeking
+the patronage of the greatest soldier of the age. Among these last came
+Cnaeus Pompey, afterward Pompey the Great, son of Pompey, surnamed
+Strabo, or the squint-eyed, either from some personal deformity or
+because he had trimmed between the two factions and was distrusted and
+hated by them both.
+
+Cnaeus Pompey had been born in the same year with Cicero, and was now
+twenty-three. He was a high--spirited ornamental youth, with soft
+melting eyes, as good as he was beautiful, and so delightful to women
+that it was said they all longed to bite him. The Pompeys had been
+hardly treated by Cinna. The father had been charged with embezzlement.
+The family house in Rome had been confiscated; the old Strabo had been
+killed; the son had retired to his family estate in Picenum,[3] where
+he was living when Sylla landed. To the young Roman chivalry Sylla was
+a hero of romance. Pompey raised a legion out of his friends and
+tenants, scattered the few companies that tried to stop him, and rushed
+to the side of the deliverer. Others came, like Sergius Catiline or
+Oppianicus of Larino,[4] men steeped in crime, stained with murder,
+incest, adultery, forgery, and meaning to secure the fruits of their
+villanies by well-timed service. They were all welcome, and Sylla was
+not particular. His progress was less rapid than it promised to be at
+the outset. He easily defeated Norbanus; and Scipio's troops, having an
+aristocratic leaven in them, deserted to him. But the Italians,
+especially the Samnites, fought most desperately. The war lasted for
+more than a year, Sylla slowly advancing. The Roman mob became furious.
+They believed their cause betrayed, and were savage from fear and
+disappointment. Suspected patricians were murdered: among them fell the
+Pontifex Maximus, the venerable Scaevola. At length the contest ended
+in a desperate fight under the walls of Rome itself on the 1st of
+November, B.C. 82. The battle began at four in the afternoon, and
+lasted through the night to the dawn of the following day. The popular
+army was at last cut to pieces; a few thousand prisoners were taken,
+but they were murdered afterward in cold blood. Young Marius killed
+himself, Sertorius fled to Spain, and Sylla and the aristocracy were
+masters of Rome and Italy. Such provincial towns as continued to resist
+were stormed and given up to pillage, every male inhabitant being put
+to the sword. At Norba, in Latium, the desperate citizens fired their
+own houses and perished by each other's hands.
+
+Sylla was under no illusions. He understood the problem which he had in
+hand. He knew that the aristocracy were detested by nine tenths of the
+people; he knew that they deserved to be detested; but they were at
+least gentlemen by birth and breeding. The democrats, on the other
+hand, were insolent upstarts, who, instead of being grateful for being
+allowed to live and work and pay taxes and serve in the army, had dared
+to claim a share in the government, had turned against their masters,
+and had set their feet upon their necks. The miserable multitude were
+least to blame. They were ignorant, and without leaders could be
+controlled easily. The guilt and the danger lay with the men of wealth
+and intellect, the country gentlemen, the minority of knights and
+patricians like Cinna, who had taken the popular side and had deserted
+their own order. Their motives mattered not; some might have acted from
+foolish enthusiasm, some from personal ambition; but such traitors,
+from the Gracchi onward, had caused all the mischief which had happened
+to the State. They were determined, they were persevering. No
+concessions had satisfied them, and one demand had been a prelude to
+another. There was no hope for an end of agitation till every one of
+these men had been rooted out, their estates taken from them, and their
+families destroyed.
+
+To this remarkable work Sylla addressed himself, unconscious that he
+was attempting an impossibility, that opinion could not be controlled
+by the sword, and that for every enemy to the oligarchy that he killed
+he would create twenty by his cruelty. Like Marius after the Octavian
+massacre, he did not attempt to distinguish between degrees of
+culpability. Guilt was not the question with him. His object was less
+to punish the past than to prevent a recurrence of it, and moderate
+opposition was as objectionable as fanaticism and frenzy. He had no
+intention of keeping power in his own hands. Personal supremacy might
+end with himself, and he intended to create institutions which would
+endure, in the form of a close senatorial monopoly. But for his purpose
+it would be necessary to remove out of the way every single person
+either in Rome or in the provinces who was in a position to offer
+active resistance, and therefore for the moment he required complete
+freedom of action. The Senate at his direction appointed him dictator,
+and in this capacity he became absolute master of the life and property
+of every man and woman in Italy. He might be impeached afterward and
+his policy reversed, but while his office lasted he could do what he
+pleased.
+
+He at once outlawed every magistrate, every public servant of any kind,
+civil or municipal, who had held office under the rule of Cinna. Lists
+were drawn for him of the persons of wealth and consequence all over
+Italy who belonged to the liberal party. He selected agents whom he
+could trust, or supposed he could trust, to enter the names for each
+district. He selected, for instance, Oppianicus of Larino, who
+inscribed individuals whom he had already murdered, and their relations
+whose prosecution he feared. It mattered little to Sylla who were
+included, if none escaped who were really dangerous to him; and an
+order was issued for the slaughter of the entire number, the
+confiscation of their property, and the division of it between the
+informers and Sylla's friends and soldiers. Private interest was thus
+called in to assist political animosity, and to stimulate the zeal for
+assassination a reward of L500 was offered for the head of any person
+whose name was in the schedule.
+
+It was one of those deliberate acts, carried out with method and order,
+which are possible only in countries in an advanced stage of
+civilization, and which show how thin is the film spread over human
+ferocity by what is called progress and culture. We read in every page
+of history of invasions of hostile armies, of towns and villages
+destroyed and countries wasted and populations perishing of misery; the
+simplest war brings a train of horrors behind it; but we bear them with
+comparative equanimity. Personal hatreds are not called out on such
+occasions. The actors in them are neither necessarily nor generally
+fiends. The grass grows again on the trampled fields. Peace returns,
+and we forget and forgive. The coldly ordered massacres of selected
+victims in political and spiritual struggles rise in a different order
+of feelings, and are remembered through all ages with indignation and
+shame. The victims perish as the champions of principles which survive
+through the changes of time. They are marked for the sacrifice on
+account of their advocacy of a cause which to half mankind is the cause
+of humanity. They are the martyrs of history, and the record of
+atrocity rises again in immortal witness against the opinions out of
+which it rose.
+
+Patricians and plebeians, aristocrats and democrats, have alike stained
+their hands with blood in the working out of the problem of politics.
+But impartial history declares also that the crimes of the popular
+party have in all ages been the lighter in degree, while in themselves
+they have more to excuse them; and if the violent acts of
+revolutionists have been held up more conspicuously for condemnation,
+it has been only because the fate of noblemen and gentlemen has been
+more impressive to the imagination than the fate of the peasant or the
+artisan. But the endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is
+the marvel of human society. When the people complain, said Mirabeau,
+the people are always right. The popular cause has been the cause of
+the laborer struggling for a right to live and breathe and think as a
+man. Aristocracies fight for wealth and power, wealth which they waste
+upon luxury, and power which they abuse for their own interests. Yet
+the cruelties of Marius were as far exceeded by the cruelties of Sylla
+as the insurrection of the beggars of Holland was exceeded by the
+bloody tribunal of the Duke of Alva, or as "the horrors of the French
+Revolution" were exceeded by the massacre of the Huguenots two hundred
+years before, for which the Revolution was the expiatory atonement.
+
+Four thousand seven hundred persons fell in the proscription of Sylla,
+all men of education and fortune. The real crime of many of them was
+the possession of an estate or a wife which a relative or a neighbor
+coveted. The crime alleged against all was the opinion that the people
+of Rome and Italy had rights which deserved consideration as well as
+the senators and nobles. The liberal party were extinguished in their
+own blood. Their estates were partitioned into a hundred and twenty
+thousand allotments, which were distributed among Sylla's friends, or
+soldiers, or freedmen. The land reform of the Gracchi was mockingly
+adopted to create a permanent aristocratic garrison. There were no
+trials, there were no pardons. Common report or private information was
+at once indictment and evidence, and accusation was in itself
+condemnation.
+
+The ground being thus cleared, the Dictator took up again his measures
+of political reform. He did not attempt a second time to take the
+franchise from the Italians. Romans and Italians he was ready to leave
+on the same level, but it was to be a level of impotence. Rome was to
+be ruled by the Senate, and as a first step, and to protect the
+Senate's dignity, he enfranchised ten thousand slaves who had belonged
+to the proscribed gentlemen, and formed them into a senatorial guard.
+Before departing for the East he had doubled the Senate's numbers out
+of the patrician order. Under Cinna the new members had not claimed
+their privilege, and had probably been absent from Italy. They were now
+installed in their places, and the power of the censors to revise the
+list and remove those who had proved unworthy was taken away. The
+senators were thus peers for life, peers in a single chamber which
+Sylla meant to make omnipotent. Vacancies were to be supplied as before
+from the retiring consuls, praetors, aediles, and quaestors. The form
+of a popular constitution would remain, since the road into the council
+of State lay through the popular elections. But to guard against
+popular favorites finding access to the consulship, a provision was
+made that no person who had been a tribune of the people could be
+chosen afterward to any other office.
+
+The Senate's power depended on the withdrawal from the assembly of
+citizens of the right of original legislation. So long as the citizens
+could act immediately at the invitation of either consul or tribune,
+they could repeal at their pleasure any arrangement which Sylla might
+prescribe. As a matter of course, therefore, he re-enacted the
+condition which restricted the initiation of laws to the Senate. The
+tribunes still retained their veto, but a penalty was attached to the
+abuse of the veto, the Senate being the judge in its own cause, and
+possessing a right to depose a tribune.
+
+In the Senate so reconstituted was thus centred a complete restrictive
+control over the legislation and the administration. And this was not
+all. The senators had been so corrupt in the use of their judicial
+functions that Gracchus had disabled them from sitting in the law
+courts, and had provided that the judges should be chosen in future
+from the equites. The knights had been exceptionally pure in their
+office. Cicero challenged his opponents on the trial of Verres[5] to
+find a single instance in which an equestrian court could be found to
+have given a corrupt verdict during the forty years for which their
+privilege survived. But their purity did not save them, nor, alas!
+those who were to suffer by a reversion to the old order. The
+equestrian courts were abolished: the senatorial courts were
+reinstated. It might be hoped that the senators had profited by their
+lesson, and for the future would be careful of their reputation.
+
+Changes were made also in the modes of election to office. The College
+of Priests had been originally a close corporation, which filled up its
+own numbers. Democracy had thrown it open to competition, and given the
+choice to the people. Sylla reverted to the old rule. Consuls like
+Marius and Cinna, who had the confidence of the people, had been
+re-elected year after year, and had been virtual kings. Sylla provided
+that ten years must elapse between a first consulship and a second. Nor
+was any one to be a consul who was not forty-three years old and had
+not passed already through the lower senatorial offices of praetor or
+quaestor.
+
+The assembly of the people had been shorn of its legislative powers.
+There was no longer, therefore, any excuse for its meeting, save on
+special occasions. To leave the tribunes power to call the citizens to
+the Forum was to leave them the means of creating inconvenient
+agitation. It was ordered, therefore, that the assembly should only
+come together at the Senate's invitation. The free grants of corn,
+which filled the city with idle vagrants, were abolished. Sylla never
+courted popularity, and never shrank from fear of clamor.
+
+The Senate was thus made omnipotent and irresponsible. It had the
+appointment of all the governors of the provinces. It was surrounded by
+its own body-guard. It had the administration completely in hand. The
+members could be tried only by their peers, and were themselves judges
+of every other order. No legal force was left anywhere to interfere
+with what it might please them to command. A senator was not
+necessarily a patrician, nor a patrician a senator. The Senate was,[6]
+or was to be as time wore on, a body composed of men of any order who
+had secured the suffrages of the people. But as the value of the prize
+became so vast, the way to the possession of it was open practically to
+those only who had wealth or interest. The elections came to be worked
+by organized committees, and except in extraordinary circumstances no
+candidate could expect success who had not the Senate's support, or who
+had not bought the services of the managers, at a cost within the reach
+only of the reckless spendthrift or the speculating millionaire.
+
+What human foresight could do to prevent democracy from regaining the
+ascendency, Sylla had thus accomplished. He had destroyed the
+opposition; he had reorganized the constitution on the most strictly
+conservative lines. He had built the fortress, as he said; it was now
+the Senate's part to provide a garrison; and here it was, as Caesar
+said afterward, that Sylla had made his great mistake. His arrangements
+were ingenious, and many of them excellent; but the narrower the body
+to whose care the government was entrusted, the more important became
+the question of the composition of this body. The theory of election
+implied that they would be the best that the Republic possessed; but
+Sylla must have been himself conscious that fact and theory might be
+very far from corresponding.
+
+The key of the situation was the army. As before, no troops were to be
+maintained in Italy; but beyond the frontiers the provinces were held
+by military force, and the only power which could rule the Empire was
+the power which the army would obey. It was not for the Senate's sake
+that Sylla's troops had followed him from Greece. It was from their
+personal devotion to himself. What charm was there in this new
+constructed aristocratic oligarchy, that distant legions should defer
+to it--more than Sylla's legions had deferred to orders from Cinna and
+Carbo? Symptoms of the danger from this quarter were already growing
+even under the Dictator's own eyes, and at the height of his authority.
+Sertorius had escaped the proscription. After wandering in Africa he
+made his way into Spain, where, by his genius as a statesman and a
+soldier, he rose into a position to defy the Senate and assert his
+independence. He organized the peninsula after the Roman model; he
+raised armies, and defeated commander after commander who was sent to
+reduce him. He revived in the Spaniards a national enthusiasm for
+freedom. The Roman legionaries had their own opinions, and those whose
+friends Sylla had murdered preferred Sertorius and liberty to Rome and
+an aristocratic Senate. Unconquerable by honorable means, Sertorius was
+poisoned at last. But his singular history suggests a doubt whether, if
+the Syllan constitution had survived, other Sertoriuses might not have
+sprung up in every province, and the Empire of Rome have gone to pieces
+like the Macedonian. The one condition of the continuance of the Roman
+dominion was the existence of a central authority which the army as a
+profession could respect, and the traditionary reverence which attached
+to the Roman Senate would scarcely have secured their disinterested
+attachment to five hundred elderly rich men who had bought their way
+into pre-eminence.
+
+Sylla did not live to see the significance of the Sertorian revolt. He
+experienced, however, himself, in a milder form, an explosion of
+military sauciness. Young Pompey had been sent, after the occupation of
+Rome, to settle Sicily and Africa. He did his work well and rapidly,
+and when it was over he received orders from the Senate to dismiss his
+troops. An order from Sylla Pompey would have obeyed; but what was the
+Senate, that an ambitious brilliant youth with arms in his hands should
+send away an army devoted to him and step back into common life? Sylla
+himself had to smooth the ruffled plumes of his aspiring follower. He
+liked Pompey, he was under obligations to him, and Pompey had not acted
+after all in a manner so very unlike his own. He summoned him home, but
+he gave him a triumph for his African conquests, and allowed him to
+call himself by the title of "_Magnus_," or "_The Great_." Pompey was a
+promising soldier, without political ambition, and was worth an effort
+to secure. To prevent the risk of a second act of insubordination,
+Sylla made personal arrangements to attach Pompey directly to himself.
+He had a step-daughter, named Aemilia. She was already married, and was
+pregnant. Pompey too was married to Antistia, a lady of good family;
+but domestic ties were not allowed to stand in the way of higher
+objects. Nor did it matter that Antistia's father had been murdered by
+the Roman populace for taking Sylla's side, or that her mother had gone
+mad and destroyed herself, on her husband's horrible death. Late
+Republican Rome was not troubled with sentiment. Sylla invited Pompey
+to divorce Antistia and marry Aemilia. Pompey complied. Antistia was
+sent away. Aemilia was divorced from her husband, and was brought into
+Pompey's house, where she immediately died.
+
+In another young man of high rank, whom Sylla attempted to attach to
+himself by similar means, he found less complaisance. Caesar was now
+eighteen, his daughter Julia having been lately born. He had seen his
+party ruined, his father-in-law and young Marius killed, and his
+nearest friends dispersed or murdered. He had himself for a time
+escaped proscription; but the Dictator had his eye on him, and Sylla
+had seen something in "the youth with the loose girdle" which struck
+him as remarkable. Closely connected though Caesar was both with Cinna
+and Marius, Sylla did not wish to kill him if he could help it. There
+was a cool calculation in his cruelties. The existing generation of
+democrats was incurable, but he knew that the stability of the new
+constitution must depend on his being able to conciliate the intellect
+and energy of the next. Making a favor perhaps of his clemency, he
+proposed to Caesar to break with his liberal associates, divorce
+Cinna's daughter, and take such a wife as he would himself provide. If
+Pompey had complied, who had made a position of his own, much more
+might it be expected that Caesar would comply. Yet Caesar answered with
+a distinct and unhesitating refusal. The terrible Sylla, in the fulness
+of his strength, after desolating half the homes in Italy, after
+revolutionizing all Roman society, from the peasant's cottage in the
+Apennines to the senate-house itself, was defied by a mere boy!
+Throughout his career Caesar displayed always a singular indifference
+to life. He had no sentimental passion about him, no Byronic
+mock-heroics. He had not much belief either in God or the gods. On all
+such questions he observed from first to last a profound silence. But
+one conviction he had. He intended, if he was to live at all, to live
+master of himself in matters which belonged to himself. Sylla might
+kill him if he so pleased. It was better to die than to put away a wife
+who was the mother of his child, and to marry some other woman at a
+dictator's bidding. Life on such terms was not worth keeping.
+
+So proud a bearing may have commanded Sylla's admiration, but it taught
+him, also, that a young man capable of assuming an attitude so bold
+might be dangerous to the rickety institutions which he had constructed
+so carefully. He tried coercion. He deprived Caesar of his priesthood.
+He took his wife's dowry from him, and confiscated the estate which he
+had inherited from his father. When this produced no effect, the
+rebellious youth was made over to the assassins, and a price was set
+upon his head. He fled into concealment. He was discovered once, and
+escaped only by bribing Sylla's satellites. His fate would soon have
+overtaken him, but he had powerful relations, whom Sylla did not care
+to offend. Aurelius Cotta, who was perhaps his mother's brother,
+Mamercus Aemilius, a distinguished patrician, and singularly also the
+College of the Vestal Virgins, interceded for his pardon. The Dictator
+consented at last, but with prophetic reluctance. "Take him," he said
+at length, "since you will have it so--but I would have you know that
+the youth for whom you are so earnest will one day overthrow the
+aristocracy, for whom you and I have fought so hardly; in this young
+Caesar there are many Mariuses." [7] Caesar, not trusting too much to
+Sylla's forbearance, at once left Italy, and joined the army in Asia.
+The little party of young men who had grown up together now separated,
+to meet in the future on altered terms. Caesar held to his inherited
+convictions, remaining constant through good and evil to the cause of
+his uncle Marius. His companion Cicero, now ripening into manhood,
+chose the other side. With his talents for his inheritance, and
+confident in the consciousness of power, but with weak health and a
+neck as thin as a woman's, Cicero felt that he had a future before him,
+but that his successes must be won by other weapons than arms. He chose
+the bar for his profession; he resolved to make his way into popularity
+as a pleader before the Senate courts and in the Forum. He looked to
+the Senate itself as the ultimate object of his ambition. There alone
+he could hope to be distinguished, if distinguished he was to be.
+
+Cicero, however, was no more inclined than Caesar to be subservient to
+Sylla, as he took an early opportunity of showing. It was to the cause
+of the constitution, and not to the person of the Dictator, that Cicero
+had attached himself, and he, too, ventured to give free expression to
+his thoughts when free speech was still dangerous.
+
+Sylla's career was drawing to its close, and the end was not the least
+remarkable feature of it. On him had fallen the odium of the
+proscription and the stain of the massacres. The sooner the senators
+could be detached from the soldier who had saved them from destruction,
+the better chance they would have of conciliating quiet people on whose
+support they must eventually rely. Sylla himself felt the position; and
+having completed what he had undertaken, with a half-pitying,
+half-contemptuous self-abandonment he executed what from the first he
+had intended--he resigned the dictatorship, and became a private
+citizen again, amusing the leisure of his age, as he had abused the
+leisure of his youth, with theatres and actresses and dinner-parties.
+He too, like so many of the great Romans, was indifferent to life; of
+power for the sake of power he was entirely careless; and if his
+retirement had been more dangerous to him than it really was, he
+probably would not have postponed it. He was a person of singular
+character, and not without many qualities which were really admirable.
+He was free from any touch of charlatanry. He was true, simple, and
+unaffected, and even without ambition in the mean and personal sense.
+His fault, which he would have denied to be a fault, was that he had a
+patrician disdain of mobs and suffrages and the cant of popular
+liberty. The type repeats itself era after era. Sylla was but Graham of
+Claverhouse in a Roman dress and with an ampler stage. His courage in
+laying down his authority has been often commented on, but the risk
+which he incurred was insignificant. There was in Rome neither soldier
+nor statesman who could for a moment be placed in competition with
+Sylla, and he was so passionately loved by the army, he was so sure of
+the support of his comrades, whom he had quartered on the proscribed
+lands, and who, for their own interest's sake, would resist attempts at
+counter-revolution, that he knew that if an emergency arose he had but
+to lift his finger to reinstate himself in command. Of assassination he
+was in no greater danger than when dictator, while the temptation to
+assassinate him was less. His influence was practically undiminished,
+and as long as he lived he remained, and could not but remain, the
+first person in the Republic.
+
+Some license of speech he was, of course, prepared for, but it required
+no small courage to make a public attack either on himself or his
+dependants, and it was therefore most creditable to Cicero that his
+first speech of importance was directed against the Dictator's
+immediate friends, and was an exposure of the iniquities of the
+proscription. Cicero no doubt knew that there would be no surer road to
+favor with the Roman multitude than by denouncing Sylla's followers,
+and that, young and unknown as he was, his insignificance might protect
+him, however far he ventured. But he had taken the Senate's side. From
+first to last he had approved of the reactionary constitution, and had
+only condemned the ruthless methods by which it had been established.
+He never sought the popularity of a demagogue, or appealed to popular
+passions, or attempted to create a prejudice against the aristocracy,
+into whose ranks he intended to make his way. He expressed the opinions
+of the respectable middle classes, who had no sympathy with
+revolutionists, but who dreaded soldiers and military rule and
+confiscations of property.
+
+The occasion on which Cicero came forward was characteristic of the
+time. Sextus Roscius was a country gentleman of good position, residing
+near Ameria, in Umbria. He had been assassinated when on a visit to
+Rome by two of his relations, who wished to get possession of his
+estate. The proscription was over, and the list had been closed; but
+Roscius's name was surreptitiously entered upon it, with the help of
+Sylla's favorite freedman, Chrysogonus. The assassins obtained an
+acknowledgment of their claims, and they and Chrysogonus divided the
+spoils. Sextus Roscius was entirely innocent. He had taken no part in
+politics at all. He had left a son who was his natural heir, and the
+township of Ameria sent up a petition to Sylla remonstrating against so
+iniquitous a robbery. The conspirators, finding themselves in danger of
+losing the reward of their crime, shifted their ground. They denied
+that they had themselves killed Sextus Roscius. They said that the son
+had done it, and they charged him with parricide. Witnesses were easily
+provided. No influential pleader, it was justly supposed, would venture
+into antagonism with Sylla's favorite and appear for the defence.
+Cicero heard of the case, however, and used the opportunity to bring
+himself into notice. He advocated young Roscius's cause with skill and
+courage. He told the whole story in court without disguise. He did not
+blame Sylla. He compared Sylla to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, who was
+sovereign of the universe, and on the whole a good sovereign, but with
+so much business on his hands that he had not time to look into
+details. But Cicero denounced Chrysogonus as an accomplice in an act of
+atrocious villainy. The court took the same view, and the rising orator
+had the honor of clearing the reputation of the injured youth, and of
+recovering his property for him.
+
+Sylla showed no resentment, and probably felt none. He lived for a year
+after his retirement, and died 78 B.C., being occupied at the moment in
+writing his memoirs, which have been unfortunately lost. He was buried
+gorgeously in the Campus Martius, among the old kings of Rome. The
+aristocrats breathed freely when delivered from his overpowering
+presence, and the constitution which he had set upon its feet was now
+to be tried.
+
+[1] "Nigris vegetisque oculis."--Suetonius.
+
+[2] "Ac primum illud tempus familiaritatis et consuetudinis, quae mihi cum
+    illo, quae fratri meo, quae Caio Varroni, consobrino nostro, ab omnium
+    nostrum adolescentia fuit, praetermitto."--Cicero, _De Provinciis
+    Consularibus_, 17. Cicero was certainly speaking of a time which
+    preceded Sylla's dictatorship, for Caesar left Rome immediately after
+    it, and when he came back he attached himself to the political party
+    to which Cicero was most opposed.
+
+[3] On the Adriatic, between Anconia and Pescara.
+
+[4] See, for the story of Oppianicus, the remarkable speech of Cicero,
+    _Pro Cluentio_.
+
+[5] Appian, on the other hand, says that the courts of the equites had
+    been more corrupt than the senatorial courts.--_De Bello Civili,
+    i_. 22. Cicero was perhaps prejudiced in favor of his own order,
+    but a contemporary statement thus publicly made is far more likely to
+    be trustworthy.
+
+[6] Sylla had himself nominated a large number of senators.
+
+[7] So says Suetonius, reporting the traditions of the following century;
+    but the authority is doubtful, and the story, like so many others, is
+    perhaps apocryphal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The able men of the democracy had fallen in the proscription.
+Sertorius, the only eminent surviving soldier belonging to them, was
+away, making himself independent in Spain. The rest were all killed.
+But the Senate, too, had lost in Sylla the single statesman that they
+possessed. They were a body of mediocrities, left with absolute power
+in their hands, secure as they supposed from further interference, and
+able to return to those pleasant occupations which for a time had been
+so rudely interrupted. Sertorius was an awkward problem with which
+Pompey might perhaps be entrusted to deal. No one knew as yet what
+stuff might be in Pompey. He was for the present sunning himself in his
+military splendors; too young to come forward as a politician, and
+destitute, so far as appeared, of political ambition. If Pompey
+promised to be docile, he might be turned to use at a proper time; but
+the aristocracy had seen too much of successful military commanders,
+and were in no hurry to give opportunities of distinction to a youth
+who had so saucily defied them. Sertorius was far off, and could be
+dealt with at leisure.
+
+In his defence of Roscius, Cicero had given an admonition to the noble
+lords that unless they mended their ways they could not look for any
+long continuance.[1] They regarded Cicero perhaps, if they heard what
+he said of them, as an inexperienced young man, who would understand
+better by and by of what materials the world was made. There had been
+excitement and anxiety enough. Conservatism was in power again. Fine
+gentlemen could once more lounge in their clubs, amuse themselves with
+their fish-ponds and horses and mistresses, devise new and ever new
+means of getting money and spending it, and leave the Roman Empire for
+the present to govern itself.
+
+The leading public men belonging to the party in power had all served
+in some capacity or other with Sylla or under him. Of those whose names
+deserve particular mention there were at most five.
+
+Licinius Lucullus had been a special favorite of Sylla. The Dictator
+left him his executor, with the charge of his manuscripts. Lucullus was
+a commoner, but of consular family, and a thorough-bred aristocrat. He
+had endeared himself to Sylla by a languid talent which could rouse
+itself when necessary into brilliant activity, by the easy culture of a
+polished man of rank, and by a genius for luxury which his admirers
+followed at a distance, imitating their master but hopeless of
+overtaking him.
+
+Caecilius Metellus, son of the Metellus whom Marius had superseded in
+Africa, had been consul with Sylla in 80 B.C. He was now serving in
+Spain against Sertorius, and was being gradually driven out of the
+peninsula.
+
+Lutatius Catulus was a proud but honest patrician, with the conceit of
+his order, but without their vices. His father, who had been Marius's
+colleague, and had been defeated by the Cimbri, had killed himself
+during the Marian revolution. The son had escaped, and was one of the
+consuls at the time of Sylla's death.
+
+More noticeable than either of these was Marcus Crassus, a figure
+singularly representative, of plebeian family, but a family long
+adopted into the closest circle of the aristocracy, the leader and
+impersonation of the great moneyed classes in Rome. Wealth had for
+several generations been the characteristic of the Crassi. They had the
+instinct and the temperament which in civilized ages take to
+money-making as a natural occupation. In politics they aimed at being
+on the successful side; but living as they did in an era of
+revolutions, they were surprised occasionally in unpleasant situations.
+Crassus the rich, father of Marcus, had committed himself against
+Marius, and had been allowed the privilege of being his own
+executioner. Marcus himself, who was a little older than Cicero, took
+refuge in Sylla's camp. He made himself useful to the Dictator by his
+genius for finance, and in return he was enabled to amass an enormous
+fortune for himself out of the proscriptions. His eye for business
+reached over the whole Roman Empire. He was banker, speculator,
+contractor, merchant. He lent money to the spendthrift young lords, but
+with sound securities and at usurious interest. He had an army of
+slaves, but these slaves were not ignorant field-hands; they were
+skilled workmen in all arts and trades, whose labors he turned to
+profit in building streets and palaces. Thus all that he touched turned
+to gold. He was the wealthiest single individual in the whole Empire,
+the acknowledged head of the business world of Rome.
+
+The last person who need be noted was Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the
+father of the future colleague of Augustus and Antony. Lepidus, too,
+had been an officer of Sylla's. He had been rewarded for his services
+by the government of Sicily, and when Sylla died was the second consul
+with Catulus. It was said against him that, like so many other
+governors, he had enriched himself by tyrannizing over his Sicilian
+subjects. His extortions had been notorious; he was threatened with
+prosecution as soon as his consulship should expire; and the adventure
+to which he was about to commit himself was undertaken, so the
+aristocrats afterward maintained, in despair of an acquittal. Lepidus's
+side of the story was never told, but another side it certainly had.
+Though one of Sylla's generals, he had married the daughter of the
+tribune Saturninus. He had been elected consul by a very large majority
+against the wishes of the Senate, and was suspected of holding popular
+opinions. It may be that the prosecution was an after-thought of
+revenge, and that Lepidus was to have been tried before a senatorial
+jury already determined to find him guilty.
+
+Among these men lay the fortunes of Rome when the departure of their
+chief left the aristocrats masters of their own destiny.
+
+During this time Caesar had been serving his apprenticeship as a
+soldier. The motley forces which Mithridates had commanded had not all
+submitted on the king's surrender to Sylla. Squadrons of pirates hung
+yet about the smaller islands in the Aegean. Lesbos was occupied by
+adventurers who were fighting for their own hand, and the praetor
+Minucius Thermus had been sent to clear the seas and extirpate these
+nests of brigands. To Thermus Caesar had attached himself. The praetor,
+finding that his fleet was not strong enough for the work, found it
+necessary to apply to Nicomedes, the allied sovereign of the adjoining
+kingdom of Bithynia, to supply him with a few additional vessels; and
+Caesar, soon after his arrival, was despatched on this commission to
+the Bithynian court.
+
+Long afterward, when Roman cultivated society had come to hate Caesar,
+and any scandal was welcome to them which would make him odious, it was
+reported that on this occasion he entered into certain relations with
+Nicomedes of a kind indisputably common at the time in the highest
+patrician circles. The value of such a charge in political controversy
+was considerable, for whether true or false it was certain to be
+believed; and similar accusations were flung indiscriminately, so
+Cicero says, at the reputation of every eminent person whom it was
+desirable to stain, if his personal appearance gave the story any air
+of probability.[2]
+
+The disposition to believe evil of men who have risen a few degrees
+above their contemporaries is a feature of human nature as common as it
+is base; and when to envy there are added fear and hatred, malicious
+anecdotes spring like mushrooms in a forcing-pit. But gossip is not
+evidence, nor does it become evidence because it is in Latin and has
+been repeated through many generations. The strength of a chain is no
+greater than the strength of its first link, and the adhesive character
+of calumny proves only that the inclination of average men to believe
+the worst of great men is the same in all ages. This particular
+accusation against Caesar gains, perhaps, a certain credibility from
+the admission that it was the only occasion on which anything of the
+kind could be alleged against him. On the other hand, it was unheard of
+for near a quarter of a century. It was produced in Rome in the midst
+of a furious political contest. No witnesses were forthcoming; no one
+who had been at Bithynia at the time; no one who ever pretended to have
+original knowledge of the truth of the story. Caesar himself passed it
+by with disdain, or alluded to it, if forced upon his notice, with
+contemptuous disgust.
+
+The Bithynian mission was otherwise successful. He brought the ships to
+Thermus. He distinguished himself personally in the storming of
+Mitylene, and won the oak-wreath, the Victoria Cross of the Roman army.
+Still pursuing the same career, Caesar next accompanied Servilius
+Isauricus in a campaign against the horde of pirates, afterwards so
+famous, that was forming itself among the creeks and river-mouths of
+Cilicia. The advantages which Servilius obtained over them were
+considerable enough to deserve a triumph, but were barren of result.
+The news that Sylla was dead reached the army while still in the field;
+and the danger of appearing in Rome being over, Caesar at once left
+Cilicia and went back to his family. Other causes are said to have
+contributed to hasten his return. A plot had been formed, with the
+consul Lepidus at its head, to undo Sylla's laws and restore the
+constitution of the Gracchi. Caesar had been urged by letter to take
+part in the movement, and he may have hurried home either to examine
+the prospects of success or perhaps to prevent an attempt which, under
+the circumstances, he might think criminal and useless. Lepidus was not
+a wise man, though he may have been an honest one. The aristocracy had
+not yet proved that they were incapable of reform. It might be that
+they would digest their lesson after all, and that for a generation to
+come no more revolutions would be necessary.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 77. Caesar aet. 23.] Caesar at all events declined to
+connect himself with this new adventure. He came to Rome, looked at
+what was going on, and refused to have anything to do with it. The
+experiment was tried without him. Young Cinna, his brother-in-law,
+joined Lepidus. Together they raised a force in Etruria, and marched on
+Rome. They made their way into the city, but were met in the Campus
+Martius by Pompey and other consul, Catulus, at the head of some of
+Sylla's old troops; and an abortive enterprise, which, if it had
+succeeded, would probably have been mischievous, was ended almost as
+soon as it began. The two leaders escaped. Cinna joined Sertorius in
+Spain. Lepidus made his way to Sardinia, where in the next year he
+died, leaving a son to play the game of democracy under more brilliant
+auspices.
+
+[Sidenote: Caesar aet. 24.] Caesar meanwhile felt his way, as Cicero
+was doing in the law-courts, attacking the practical abuses which the
+Roman administration was generating everywhere. Cornelius Dolabella had
+been placed by Sylla in command of Macedonia. His father had been a
+friend of Saturninus, and had fallen at his side. The son had gone over
+to the aristocracy, and for this reason was perhaps an object of
+aversion to the younger liberals. The Macedonians pursued him, when his
+government had expired, with a list of grievances of the usual kind.
+Young Caesar took up their cause, and prosecuted him. Dolabella was a
+favorite of the Senate; he had been allowed a triumph for his services,
+and the aristocracy adopted his cause as their own. The unpractised
+orator was opposed at the trial by his kinsman Aurelius Cotta and the
+most celebrated pleaders in Rome. To have crossed swords with such
+opponents was a dangerous honor for him; success against them was not
+to be expected, and Caesar was not yet master of his art. Dolabella was
+acquitted. Party feeling had perhaps entered into the accusation.
+Caesar found it prudent to retire again from the scene. There were but
+two roads to eminence in Rome--oratory and service in the army. He had
+no prospect of public employment from the present administration, and
+the platform alone was open to him. Plain words with a plain meaning in
+them no longer carried weight with a people who expected an orator to
+delight as well as instruct them. The use of the tongue had become a
+special branch of a statesman's education, and Caesar, feeling his
+deficiency, used his leisure to put himself in training and to go to
+school at Rhodes with the then celebrated Apollonius Molo. He had
+recovered his property and his priesthood, and was evidently in no want
+of money. He travelled with the retinue of a man of rank, and on his
+way to Rhodes he fell in with an adventure which may be something more
+than legend. When he was crossing the Aegean his vessel is said to have
+been taken by pirates. They carried him to Pharmacusa,[3] an island off
+the Carian coast, which was then in their possession, and there he was
+detained for six weeks with three of his attendants, while the rest of
+his servants were sent to the nearest Roman station to raise his
+ransom. The pirates treated him with politeness. He joined in their
+sports, played games with them, looked into their habits, and amused
+himself with them as well as he could, frankly telling them at the same
+time that they would all be hanged.
+
+The ransom, a very large one, about L10,000, was brought and paid.
+Caesar was set upon the mainland near Miletus, where, without a
+moment's delay, he collected some armed vessels, returned to the
+island, seized the whole crew while they were dividing their plunder,
+and took them away to Pergamus, the seat of government in the Asiatic
+province, where they were convicted and crucified. Clemency was not a
+Roman characteristic. It was therefore noted with some surprise that
+Caesar interceded to mitigate the severity of the punishment. The poor
+wretches were strangled before they were stretched on their crosses,
+and were spared the prolongation of their torture. The pirate business
+being disposed of, he resumed his journey to Rhodes, and there he
+continued for two years practising gesture and expression under the
+tuition of the great master.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 78-72] During this time the government of Rome was
+making progress in again demonstrating its unfitness for the duties
+which were laid upon it, and sowing the seeds which in a few years were
+to ripen into a harvest so remarkable. Two alternatives only lay before
+the Roman dominion--either disruption or the abolition of the
+constitution. If the aristocracy could not govern, still less could the
+mob govern. The Latin race was scattered over the basin of the
+Mediterranean, no longer bound by any special ties to Rome or Italy,
+each man of it individually vigorous and  energetic, and bent before
+all things on making his own fortune. If no tolerable administration
+was provided from home, their obvious course could only be to identify
+themselves with local interests and nationalities and make themselves
+severally independent, as Sertorius was doing in Spain. Sertorius was
+at last disposed of, but by methods promising ill for the future. He
+beat Metellus till Metellus could do no more against him. The
+all-victorious Pompey was sent at last to win victories and gain
+nothing by them. Six campaigns led to no result and the difficulty was
+only removed at last by treachery and assassination.
+
+A more extraordinary and more disgraceful phenomenon was the growth of
+piracy, with the skirts of which Caesar had come in contact at
+Pharmacusa. The Romans had become masters of the world, only that the
+sea from one end of their dominions to the other should be patrolled by
+organized rovers. For many years, as Roman commerce extended, the
+Mediterranean had become a profitable field of enterprise for those
+gentry. From every country which they had overrun or occupied the
+conquests of the Romans had let loose swarms of restless patriots who,
+if they could not save the liberties of their own countries, could prey
+upon the oppressor. Illyrians from the Adriatic, Greeks from the
+islands and the Asiatic ports, Syrians, Egyptians, Africans, Spaniards,
+Gauls, and disaffected Italians, trained many of them to the sea from
+their childhood, took to the water in their light galleys with all the
+world before them. Under most circumstances society is protected
+against thieves by their inability to combine. But the pirates of the
+Mediterranean had learnt from the Romans the advantage of union, and
+had drifted into a vast confederation. Cilicia was their head-quarters.
+Servilius had checked them for a time, but the Roman Senate was too
+eager for a revenue, and the Roman governors and farmers of the taxes
+were too bent upon filling their private purses, to allow fleets to be
+maintained in the provincial harbors adequate to keep the peace. When
+Servilius retired, the pirates reoccupied their old haunts. The
+Cilician forests furnished them with ship timber. The mountain gorges
+provided inaccessible storehouses for plunder. Crete was completely in
+their hands also, and they had secret friends along the entire
+Mediterranean shores. They grew at last into a thousand sail, divided
+into squadrons under separate commanders. They were admirably armed.
+They roved over the waters at their pleasure, attacking islands or
+commercial ports, plundering temples and warehouses, arresting every
+trading vessel they encountered, till at last no Roman could go abroad
+on business save during the winter storms, when the sea was
+comparatively clear. They flaunted their sails in front of Ostia
+itself; they landed in their boats at the villas on the Italian coast,
+carrying off lords and ladies, and holding them to ransom. They levied
+black-mail at their pleasure. The wretched provincials had paid their
+taxes to Rome in exchange for promised defence, and no defence was
+provided.[4] The revenue which ought to have been spent on the
+protection of the Empire a few patricians were dividing among
+themselves. The pirates had even marts in different islands, where
+their prisoners were sold to the slave-dealers; and for fifteen years
+nothing was done or even attempted to put an end to so preposterous an
+enormity. The ease with which these buccaneers of the old world were
+eventually suppressed proved conclusively that they existed by
+connivance. It was discovered at last that large sums had been sent
+regularly from Crete to some of the most distinguished members of the
+aristocracy. The Senate was again the same body which it was found by
+Jugurtha, and the present generation were happier than their fathers in
+that larger and richer fields were now open to their operation.
+
+While the pirates were at work on the extremities, the senators in the
+provinces were working systematically, squeezing the people as one
+might squeeze a sponge of all the wealth that could be drained out of
+them. After the failure of Lepidus the elections in Rome were wholely
+in the Senate's hands. Such independence as had not been crushed was
+corrupted. The aristocracy divided the consulships, praetorships, and
+quaestorships among themselves, and after the year of office the
+provincial prizes were then distributed. Of the nature of their
+government a picture has been left by Cicero, himself one of the
+senatorial party, and certainly not to be suspected of having
+represented it as worse than it was in the famous prosecution of
+Verres. There is nothing to show that Verres was worse than the rest of
+his order. Piso, Gabinius, and many others equalled or perhaps excelled
+him in villainy. But historical fate required a victim, and the
+unfortunate wretch has been selected out of the crowd individually to
+illustrate his class.
+
+By family he was connected with Sylla. His father was noted as an
+election manager at the Comitia. The son had been attached to Carbo
+when the democrats were in power, but he had deserted them on Sylla's
+return. He had made himself useful in the proscriptions, and had
+scraped together a considerable fortune. He was employed afterward in
+Greece and Asia, where he distinguished himself by fresh rapacity and
+by the gross brutality with which he abused an innocent lady. With the
+wealth which he had extorted or stolen he bought his way into the
+praetorship, probably with his father's help; he then became a senator,
+and was sent to govern Sicily--a place which had already suffered, so
+the Senate said, from the malpractices of Lepidus, and needing,
+therefore, to be generously dealt with.
+
+Verres held his province for three years. He was supreme judge in all
+civil and criminal cases. He negotiated with the parties to every suit
+which was brought before him, and then sold his decisions. He
+confiscated estates on fictitious accusations. The island was rich in
+works of art. Verres had a taste for such things, and seized without
+scruple the finest productions of Praxiteles or Zeuxis. If those who
+were wronged dared to complain, they were sent to forced labor at the
+quarries, or, as dead men tell no tales, were put out of the world. He
+had an understanding with the pirates, which throws light upon the
+secret of their impunity. A shipful of them were brought into Messina
+as prisoners, and were sentenced to be executed. A handsome bribe was
+paid to Verres, and a number of Sicilians whom he wished out of the way
+were brought out, veiled and gagged that they might not be recognized,
+and were hanged as the pirates' substitutes. By these methods Verres
+was accused of having gathered out of Sicily three quarters of a
+million of our money. Two thirds he calculated on having to spend in
+corrupting the consuls and the court before which he might be
+prosecuted. The rest he would be able to save, and with the help of it
+to follow his career of greatness through the highest offices of state.
+Thus he had gone on upon his way, secure, as he supposed, of impunity.
+One of the consuls for the year and the consuls for the year which was
+to come next were pledged to support him. The judges would be
+exclusively senators, each of whom might require assistance in a
+similar situation. The chance of justice on these occasions was so
+desperate that the provincials preferred usually to bear their wrongs
+in silence rather than expose themselves to expense and danger for
+almost certain failure. But, as Cicero said, the whole world inside the
+ocean was ringing with the infamy of the Roman senatorial tribunals.
+
+Cicero, whose honest wish was to save the Senate from itself,
+determined to make use of Verres's conduct to shame the courts into
+honesty. Every difficulty was thrown in his way. He went in person to
+Sicily to procure evidence. He was browbeaten and threatened with
+violence. The witnesses were intimidated, and in some instances were
+murdered. The technical ingenuities of Roman law were exhausted to
+shield the culprit. The accident that the second consul had a
+conscience alone enabled Cicero to force the criminal to the bar. But
+the picture which Cicero drew and laid before the people, proved as it
+was to every detail, and admitting of no answer save that other
+governors had been equally iniquitous and had escaped unpunished,
+created a storm which the Senate dared not encounter. Verres dropped
+his defence and fled, and part of his spoils was recovered. There was
+no shame in the aristocracy to prevent them from committing crimes:
+there was enough to make them abandon a comrade who was so unfortunate
+as to be detected and brought to justice.
+
+This was the state of the Roman dominion under the constitution as
+reformed by Sylla: the Spanish Peninsula recovered by murder to
+temporary submission; the sea abandoned to buccaneers; decent
+industrious people in the provinces given over to have their fortunes
+stolen from them, their daughters dishonored, and themselves beaten or
+killed if they complained, by a set of wolves calling themselves Roman
+senators--and these scenes not localized to any one unhappy district,
+but extending through the entire civilized part of mankind. There was
+no hope for these unhappy people, for they were under the tyranny of a
+dead hand. A bad king is like a bad season. The next may bring
+improvement, or if his rule is wholly intolerable he can be deposed.
+Under a bad constitution no such change is possible. It can be ended
+only by a revolution. Republican Rome had become an Imperial State--she
+had taken upon herself the guardianship of every country in the world
+where the human race was industrious and prosperous, and she was
+discharging her great trust by sacrificing them to the luxury and
+ambition of a few hundred scandalous politicians.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 74.] The nature of man is so constructed that a
+constitution so administered must collapse. It generates faction
+within, it invites enemies from without. While Sertorius was defying
+the Senate in Spain and the pirates were buying its connivance in the
+Mediterranean, Mithridates started into life again in Pontus. Sylla had
+beaten him into submission; but Sylla was gone, and no one was left to
+take Sylla's place. The watchful barbarian had his correspondents in
+Rome, and knew everything that was passing there. He saw that he had
+little to fear by trying the issue with the Romans once more. He made
+himself master of Armenia. In the corsair fleet he had an ally ready
+made. The Roman province in Asia Minor, driven to despair by the
+villainy of its governors, was ripe for revolt. Mithridates rose, and
+but for the young Caesar would a second time have driven the Romans out
+of Asia. Caesar, in the midst of his rhetorical studies at Rhodes,
+heard the mutterings of the coming storm. Deserting Apollonius's
+lecture-room, he crossed over to the continent, raised a corps of
+volunteers, and held Caria to its allegiance; but Mithridates possessed
+himself easily of the interior kingdoms and of the whole valley of the
+Euphrates to the Persian Gulf. The Black Sea was again covered with his
+ships. He defeated Cotta in a naval battle, drove him through the
+Bosphorus, and destroyed the Roman squadron. The Senate exerted itself
+at last. Lucullus, Sylla's friend, the only moderately able man that
+the aristocracy had among them, was sent to encounter him. Lucullus had
+been trained in a good school, and the superiority of the drilled Roman
+legions when tolerably led again easily asserted itself. Mithridates
+was forced back into the Armenian hills. The Black Sea was swept clear,
+and eight thousand of the buccaneers were killed at Sinope. Lucullus
+pursued the retreating prince across the Euphrates, won victories, took
+cities and pillaged them. He reached Lake Van, he marched round Mount
+Ararat and advanced to Artaxata. But Asia was a scene of dangerous
+temptation for a Roman commander. Cicero, though he did not name
+Lucullus, was transparently alluding to him when he told the assembly
+in the Forum that Rome had made herself abhorred throughout the world
+by the violence and avarice of her generals. No temple had been so
+sacred, no city so venerable, no houses so well protected, as to be
+secure from their voracity. Occasions of war had been caught at with
+rich communities where plunder was the only object. The proconsuls
+could win battles, but they could not keep their hands from off the
+treasures of their allies and subjects.[5]
+
+Lucullus was splendid in his rapacity, and amidst his victories he had
+amassed the largest fortune which had yet belonged to patrician or
+commoner, except Crassus. Nothing came amiss to him. He had sold the
+commissions in his army. He had taken money out of the treasury for the
+expenses of the campaign. Part he had spent in bribing the
+administration to prolong his command beyond the usual time; the rest
+he had left in the city to accumulate for himself at interest.[6] He
+lived on the plunder of friend and foe, and the defeat of Mithridates
+was never more than a second object to him. The one steady purpose in
+which he never varied was to pile up gold and jewels.
+
+An army so organized and so employed soon loses efficiency and
+coherence. The legions, perhaps considering that they were not allowed
+a fair share of the spoil, mutinied. The disaffection was headed by
+young Publius Clodius, whose sister Lucullus had married. The campaign
+which had opened brilliantly ended ignominiously. The Romans had to
+fall back behind Pontus, closely pursued by Mithridates. Lucullus stood
+on the defensive till he was recalled, and he then returned to Rome to
+lounge away the remainder of his days in voluptuous magnificence.
+
+While Lucullus was making his fortune in the East, a spurt of
+insurrectionary fire had broken out in Italy. The agrarian laws and
+Sylla's proscriptions and confiscations had restored the numbers of the
+small proprietors, but the statesmen who had been so eager for their
+reinstatement were fighting against tendencies too strong for them.
+Life on the farm, like life in the city, was growing yearly more
+extravagant. [7] The small peasants fell into debt. Sylla's soldiers
+were expensive, and became embarrassed. Thus the small properties
+artificially re-established were falling rapidly again into the market.
+The great landowners bought them up, and Italy was once more lapsing to
+territorial magnates cultivating their estates by slaves.
+
+Vast gangs of slave laborers were thus still dispersed over the
+peninsula, while others in large numbers were purchased and trained for
+the amusement of the metropolis. Society in Rome, enervated as it was
+by vicious pleasures, craved continually for new excitements.
+Sensuality is a near relation of cruelty; and the more savage the
+entertainments, the more delightful they were to the curled and scented
+patricians who had lost the taste for finer enjoyments. Combats of wild
+beasts were at first sufficient for them, but to see men kill each
+other gave a keener delight; and out of the thousands of youths who
+were sent over annually by the provincial governors, or were purchased
+from the pirates by the slave-dealers, the most promising were selected
+for the arena. Each great noble had his training establishment of
+gladiators, and was as vain of their prowess as of his race-horses. The
+schools of Capua were the most celebrated; and nothing so recommended a
+candidate for the consulship to the electors as the production of a few
+pairs of Capuan swords-men in the circus.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 72-70.] These young men had hitherto performed their
+duties with more submissiveness than might have been expected, and had
+slaughtered one another in the most approved methods. But the horse
+knows by the hand on his rein whether he has a fool for his rider. The
+gladiators in the schools and the slaves on the plantations could not
+be kept wholly ignorant of the character of their rulers. They were
+aware that the seas were held by their friends the pirates, and that
+their masters were again being beaten out of Asia, from which many of
+themselves had been carried off. They began to ask themselves why men
+who could use their swords should be slaves when their comrades and
+kindred were up and fighting for freedom. They found a leader in a
+young Thracian robber chief, named Spartacus, who was destined for the
+amphitheatre, and who preferred meeting his masters in the field to
+killing his friends to make a Roman holiday. Spartacus, with two
+hundred of his companions, burst out from the Capuan "stable," seized
+their arms, and made their way into the crater of Vesuvius, which was
+then, after the long sleep of the volcano, a dense jungle of wild
+vines. The slaves from the adjoining plantations deserted and joined
+them. The fire spread, Spartacus proclaimed universal emancipation, and
+in a few weeks was at the head of an army with which he overran Italy
+to the foot of the Alps, defeated consuls and praetors, captured the
+eagles of the legions, wasted the farms of the noble lords, and for two
+years held his ground against all that Rome could do.
+
+Of all the illustrations of the Senate's incapacity, the slave
+insurrection was perhaps the worst. It was put down at last after
+desperate exertions by Crassus and Pompey. Spartacus was killed, and
+six thousand of his followers were impaled at various points on the
+sides of the high-roads, that the slaves might have before their eyes
+examples of the effect of disobedience. The immediate peril was over;
+but another symptom had appeared of the social disease which would soon
+end in death unless some remedy could be found. The nation was still
+strong. There was power and worth in the undegenerate Italian race,
+which needed only to be organized and ruled. But what remedy was
+possible? The practical choice of politicians lay between the Senate
+and the democracy. Both were alike bloody and unscrupulous; and the
+rule of the Senate meant corruption and imbecility, and the rule of the
+democracy meant anarchy.
+
+[1] "Unum hoc dico: nostri isti nobiles, nisi vigilantes et boni et fortes
+    et misericordes erunt, iis hominibus in quibus haec erunt, ornamenta
+    sua concedant necesse est."--_Pro Roscio Amerino_, sec. 48.
+
+[2] "Sunt enim ista maledicta pervulgata in omnes, quorum in adolescentia
+    forma et species fuit liberalis."--_Oratio pro Marca Caelio_.
+
+[3] Now Fermaco.
+
+[4] "Videbat enim populum Romanum non locupletari quotannis pecunia
+    publica praeter paucos: neque eos quidquam aliud assequi classium
+    nomine, nisi ut, detrimentis accipiendis majore affici turpitudine
+    videremur."--Cicero, _Pro Lege Manilia_, 23.
+
+[5] "Difficile est dictu, Quirites, quanto in odio simus apud exteras
+    nationes, propter eorum, quos ad eas per hos annos cum imperio
+    misimus, injurias ac libidines. Quod enim fanum putatis in illis
+    terris nostris magistratibus religiosum, quam civitatem sanctam, quam
+    domum satis clausam ac munitam fuisse? Urbes jam locupletes ac
+    copiosae requiruntur, quibus causa belli propter diripiendi
+    cupiditatem inferatur.... Quare etiamsi quem habetis, qui collatis
+    signis exercitus regios superare posse videatur, tamen, nisi erit
+    idem, qui se a pecuniis sociorum, qui ab eorum conjugibus ac liberis,
+    qui ab ornamentis fanorum atque oppidorum, qui ab auro gazaque regia
+    manus, oculos, animum cohibere possit, non erit idoneus, qui ad
+    bellum Asiaticum regiumque mittatur."--_Pro Lege Manilia_, 22,
+    23.
+
+[6] "Quem possumus imperatorem aliquo in numero putare, cujus in exercitu
+    veneant centuriatus atque venierint? Quid hunc hominem magnum aut
+    amplum de republica cogitare, qui pecuniam ex aerario depromtam ad
+    bellum administrandum, aut propter cupiditatem provinciae
+    magistratibus diviserit aut propter avaritiam Romae in quaestu
+    reliquerit? Vestra admurmuratio facit, Quirites, ut agnoscere
+    videamini qui haec fecerint: ego autem neminem nomino."--_Pro Lege
+    Manilia_, 13.
+
+[7] Varro mentions curious instances of the change in country manners. He
+    makes an old man say that when he was a boy, a farmer's wife used to
+    be content with a jaunt in a cart once or twice a year, the farmer not
+    taking out the covered wagon (the more luxurious vehicle) at all
+    unless he pleased. The farmer used to shave only once a week,
+    etc.--_M. Ter. Varronis Reliquiae_, ed. Alexander Riese, pp. 139,
+    140.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Caesar, having done his small piece of independent service in Caria,
+and having finished his course with Apollonius, now came again to Rome
+and re-entered practical life. He lived with his wife and his mother
+Aurelia in a modest house, attracting no particular notice. But his
+defiance of Sylla, his prosecution of Dolabella, and his known
+political sympathies made him early a favorite with the people. The
+growing disorders at home and abroad, with the exposures on the trial
+of Verres, were weakening daily the influence of the Senate. Caesar was
+elected military tribune as a reward for his services in Asia, and he
+assisted in recovering part of the privileges so dear to the citizens
+which Sylla had taken from the tribunes of the people. They were again
+enabled to call the assembly together, and though they were still
+unable to propose laws without the Senate's sanction, yet they regained
+the privilege of consulting directly with the nation on public affairs.
+Caesar now spoke well enough to command the admiration of even
+Cicero--without ornament, but directly to the purpose. Among the first
+uses to which he addressed his influence was to obtain the pardon of
+his brother-in-law, the younger Cinna, who had been exiled since the
+failure of the attempt of Lepidus. In B.C. 68, being then thirty-two,
+he gained his first step on the ladder of high office. He was made
+quaestor, which gave him a place in the Senate.
+
+Soon after his election, his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius, died. It
+was usual on the death of eminent persons for a near relation to make
+an oration at the funeral. Caesar spoke on this occasion. It was
+observed that he dwelt with some pride on the lady's ancestry,
+descending on one side from the gods, on another from the kings of
+Rome. More noticeably he introduced into the burial procession the
+insignia and images of Marius himself, whose name for some years it had
+been unsafe to mention.[1]
+
+Pompey, after Sertorius's death, had pacified Spain. He had assisted
+Crassus in extinguishing Spartacus. The Senate had employed him, but
+had never liked him or trusted him. The Senate, however, was no longer
+omnipotent, and in the year 70 he and Crassus had been consuls. Pompey
+was no politician, but he was honorable and straightforward. Like every
+true Roman, he was awake to the dangers and disgrace of the existing
+mal-administration, and he and Caesar began to know each other, and to
+find their interest in working together. Pompey was the elder of the
+two by six years. He was already a great man, covered with
+distinctions, and perhaps he supposed that he was finding in Caesar a
+useful subordinate. Caesar naturally liked Pompey, as a really
+distinguished soldier and an upright disinterested man. They became
+connected by marriage. Cornelia dying, Caesar took for his second wife
+Pompey's cousin, Pompeia; and, no doubt at Pompey's instance, he was
+sent into Spain to complete Pompey's work and settle the finances of
+that distracted country. His reputation as belonging to the party of
+Marius and Sertorius secured him the confidence of Sertorius's friends.
+He accomplished his mission completely and easily. On his way back he
+passed through northern Italy, and took occasion to say there that he
+considered the time to have come for the franchise, which now stopped
+at the Po, to be extended to the foot of the Alps.
+
+The consulship of Pompey and Crassus had brought many changes with it,
+all tending in the same direction. The tribunes were restored to their
+old functions, the censorship was re-established, and the Senate was at
+once weeded of many of its disreputable members. Cicero, conservative
+as he was, had looked upon these measures if not approvingly yet
+without active opposition. To another change he had himself contributed
+by his speeches on the Verres prosecution. The exclusive judicial
+powers which the Senate had abused so scandalously were again taken
+from them. The courts of the equites were remembered in contrast, and a
+law was passed that for the future the courts were to be composed two
+thirds of knights and one third only of senators. Cicero's hope of
+resisting democracy lay in the fusion of the great commoners with the
+Senate. It was no longer possible for the aristocracy to rule alone.
+The few equites who, since Sylla's time, had made their way into the
+Senate had yielded to patrician ascendency. Cicero aimed at a reunion
+of the orders; and the consulship of Crassus, little as Cicero liked
+Crassus personally, was a sign of a growing tendency in this direction.
+At all costs the knights must be prevented from identifying themselves
+with the democrats, and therefore all possible compliments and all
+possible concessions to their interests were made to them.
+
+They recovered their position in the law-courts; and, which was of more
+importance to them, the system of farming the taxes, in which so many
+of them had made their fortunes, and which Sylla had abolished, was
+once again reverted to. It was not a good system, but it was better
+than a state of things in which little of the revenue had reached the
+public treasury at all, but had been intercepted and parcelled out
+among the oligarchy.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 67.] With recovered vitality a keener apprehension
+began to be felt of the pirate scandal. The buccaneers, encouraged by
+the Senate's connivance, were more daring than ever. They had become a
+sea community, led by high-born adventurers, who maintained out of
+their plunder a show of wild magnificence. The oars of the galleys of
+their commanders were plated with silver; their cabins were hung with
+gorgeous tapestry. They had bands of music to play at their triumphs.
+They had a religion of their own, an oriental medley called the
+Mysteries of Mithras. They had captured and pillaged four hundred
+considerable towns, and had spoiled the temples of the Grecian gods.
+They had maintained and extended their depots where they disposed of
+their prisoners to the slave-dealers. Roman citizens who could not
+ransom themselves, and could not conveniently be sold, were informed
+that they might go where they pleased; they were led to a plank
+projecting over some vessel's side, and were bidden depart--into the
+sea. Not contented with insulting Ostia by their presence outside, they
+had ventured into the harbor itself, and had burnt the ships there.
+They held complete possession of the Italian waters. Rome, depending on
+Sicily and Sardinia and Africa for her supplies of corn, was starving
+for want of food, and the foreign trade on which so many of the middle
+classes were engaged was totally destroyed. The return of the commoners
+to power was a signal for an active movement to put an end to the
+disgrace. No one questioned that it could be done if there was a will
+to do it. But the work could be accomplished only by persons who would
+be proof against corruption. There was but one man in high position who
+could be trusted, and that was Pompey. The general to be selected must
+have unrestricted and therefore unconstitutional authority. But Pompey
+was at once capable and honest. Pompey could not be bribed by the
+pirates, and Pompey could be depended on not to abuse his opportunities
+to the prejudice of the Commonwealth.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 67.] The natural course, therefore, would have been to
+declare Pompey dictator; but Sylla had made the name unpopular; the
+right to appoint a dictator lay with the Senate, with whom Pompey had
+never been a favorite, and the aristocracy had disliked and feared him
+more than ever since his consulship. From that quarter no help was to
+be looked for, and a method was devised to give him the reality of
+power without the title. Unity of command was the one
+essential--command untrammelled by orders from committees of weak and
+treacherous noblemen, who cared only for the interest of their class.
+The established forms were scrupulously observed, and the plan designed
+was brought forward first, according to rule, in the Senate. A tribune,
+Aulus Gabinius, introduced a proposition there that one person of
+consular rank should have absolute jurisdiction during three years over
+the whole Mediterranean, and over all Roman territory for fifty miles
+inland from the coast; that the money in the treasury should be at his
+disposition; that he should have power to raise 500 ships of war and to
+collect and organize 130,000 men. No such command for such a time had
+ever been committed to any one man since the abolition of the monarchy.
+It was equivalent to a suspension of the Senate itself, and of all
+constitutional government. The proposal was received with a burst of
+fury. Every one knew that the person intended was Pompey. The decorum
+of the old days was forgotten. The noble lords started from their
+seats, flew at Gabinius, and almost strangled him: but he had friends
+outside the house ready to defend their champion; the country people
+had flocked in for the occasion; the city was thronged with multitudes
+such as had not been seen there since the days of the Gracchi. The
+tribune freed himself from the hands that were at his throat; he rushed
+out into the Forum, closely pursued by the consul Piso, who would have
+been torn in pieces in turn had not Gabinius interposed to save him.
+Senate or no Senate, it was decided that Gabinius's proposition should
+be submitted to the assembly, and the aristocrats were driven to their
+old remedy of bribing other members of the college of tribunes to
+interfere. Two renegades were thus secured, and when the voting-day
+came, Trebellius, who was one of them, put in a veto; the other,
+Roscius, said that the power intended for Pompey was too considerable
+to be trusted to a single person, and proposed two commanders instead
+of one. The mob was packed so thick that the house-tops were covered. A
+yell rose from tens of thousands of throats so piercing that it was
+said a crow flying over the Forum dropped dead at the sound of it. The
+old patrician Catulus tried to speak, but the people would not hear
+him. The vote passed by acclamation, and Pompey was for three years
+sovereign of the Roman world.
+
+It now appeared how strong the Romans were when a fair chance was
+allowed them. Pompey had no extraordinary talents, but not in three
+years, but in three months, the pirates were extinguished. He divided
+the Mediterranean into thirteen districts, and allotted a squadron to
+each, under officers on whom he could thoroughly rely. Ships and seamen
+were found in abundance lying idle from the suspension of trade. In
+forty days he had cleared the seas between Gibraltar and Italy. He had
+captured entire corsair fleets, and had sent the rest flying into the
+Cilician creeks. There, in defence of their plunder and their families,
+they fought one desperate engagement, and when defeated, they
+surrendered without a further blow. Of real strength they had possessed
+none from the first. They had subsisted only through the guilty
+complicity of the Roman authorities, and they fell at the first stroke
+which was aimed at them in earnest. Thirteen hundred pirate ships were
+burnt. Their docks and arsenals were destroyed, and their fortresses
+were razed. Twenty-two thousand prisoners fell into the hands of
+Pompey. To the astonishment of mankind, Pompey neither impaled them, as
+the Senate had impaled the followers of Spartacus, nor even sold them
+for slaves. He was contented to scatter them among inland colonies,
+where they could no longer be dangerous.
+
+The suppression of the buccaneers was really a brilliant piece of work,
+and the ease with which it was accomplished brought fresh disgrace on
+the Senate and fresh glory on the hero of the hour. Cicero, with his
+thoughts fixed on saving the constitution, considered that Pompey might
+be the man to save it; or, at all events, that it would be unsafe to
+leave him to the democrats who had given him power and were triumphing
+in his success. On political grounds Cicero thought that Pompey ought
+to be recognized by the moderate party which he intended to form; and a
+person like himself who hoped to rise by the popular votes could not
+otherwise afford to seem cold amidst the universal enthusiasm. The
+pirates were abolished. Mithridates was still undisposed of. Lucullus,
+the hope of the aristocracy, was lying helpless within the Roman
+frontier, with a disorganized and mutinous army. His victories were
+forgotten. He was regarded as the impersonation of every fault which
+had made the rule of the Senate so hateful. Pompey, the people's
+general, after a splendid success, had come home with clean hands;
+Lucullus had sacrificed his country to his avarice. The contrast set
+off his failures in colors perhaps darker than really belonged to them,
+and the cry naturally rose that Lucullus must be called back, and the
+all-victorious Pompey must be sent for the reconquest of Asia. Another
+tribune, Manilius, brought the question forward, this time directly
+before the assembly, the Senate's consent not being any more asked for.
+Caesar again brought his influence to bear on Pompey's side; but Caesar
+found support in a quarter where it might not have been looked for. The
+Senate was furious as before, but by far the most gifted person in the
+conservative party now openly turned against them. Cicero was praetor
+this year, and was thus himself a senator. A seat in the Senate had
+been the supreme object of his ambition. He was vain of the honor which
+he had won, and delighted with the high company into which he had been
+received; but he was too shrewd to go along with them upon a road which
+could lead only to their overthrow; and for their own sake, and for the
+sake of the institution itself of which he meant to be an illustrious
+ornament, he not only supported the Manilian proposition, but supported
+it in a speech more effective than the wildest outpourings of
+democratic rhetoric.
+
+Asia Minor, he said, was of all the Roman provinces the most important,
+because it was the most wealthy.[2] So rich it was and fertile that,
+for the productiveness of its soil, the variety of its fruits, the
+extent of its pastures, and the multitude of its exports, there was no
+country in the world to be compared with it; yet Asia was in danger of
+being utterly lost through the worthlessnesss of the governors and
+military commanders charged with the care of it. "Who does not know,"
+Cicero asked, "that the avarice of our generals has been the cause of
+the misfortunes of our armies? You can see for yourselves how they act
+here at home in Italy; and what will they not venture far away in
+distant countries? Officers who cannot restrain their own appetites can
+never maintain discipline in their troops. Pompey has been victorious
+because he does not loiter about the towns for plunder or pleasure, or
+making collections of statues and pictures. Asia is a land of
+temptations. Send no one thither who cannot resist gold and jewels and
+shrines and pretty women. Pompey is upright and pure-sighted. Pompey
+knows that the State has been impoverished because the revenue flows
+into the coffers of a few individuals. Our fleets and armies have
+availed only to bring the more disgrace upon us through our defeats and
+losses." [3]
+
+After passing a deserved panegyric on the suppression of the pirates,
+Cicero urged with all the power of his oratory that Manilius's measures
+should be adopted, and that the same general who had done so well
+already should be sent against Mithridates.
+
+This was perhaps the only occasion on which Cicero ever addressed the
+assembly in favor of the proposals of a popular tribune. Well would it
+have been for him and well for Rome if he could have held on upon a
+course into which he had been led by real patriotism. He was now in his
+proper place, where his better mind must have told him that he ought to
+have continued, working by the side of Caesar and Pompey. It was
+observed that more than once in his speech he mentioned with high honor
+the name of Marius. He appeared to have seen clearly that the Senate
+was bringing the State to perdition; and that unless the Republic was
+to end in dissolution, or in mob rule and despotism, the wise course
+was to recognize the legitimate tendencies of popular sentiment, and to
+lend the constant weight of his authority to those who were acting in
+harmony with it. But Cicero could never wholly forget his own
+consequence, or bring himself to persist in any policy where he could
+play but a secondary part.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 66-63.] The Manilian law was carried. In addition to
+his present extraordinary command, Pompey was entrusted with the
+conduct of the war in Asia, and he was left unfettered to act at his
+own discretion. He crossed the Bosphorus with fifty thousand men; he
+invaded Pontus; he inflicted a decisive defeat on Mithridates, and
+broke up his army; he drove the Armenians back into their own
+mountains, and extorted out of them a heavy war indemnity. The
+barbarian king who had so long defied the Roman power was beaten down
+at last, and fled across the Black Sea to Kertch, where his sons turned
+against him. He was sixty-eight years old, and could not wait till the
+wheel should make another turn. Broken down at last, he took leave of a
+world in which for him there was no longer a place. His women poisoned
+themselves successfully. He, too fortified by antidotes to end as they
+ended, sought a surer death, and fell like Saul by the sword of a
+slave. Rome had put out her real strength, and at once, as before, all
+opposition went down before her. Asia was completely conquered up to
+the line of the Euphrates. The Black Sea was held securely by a Roman
+fleet. Pompey passed down into Syria. Antioch surrendered without
+resistance. Tyre and Damascus followed. Jerusalem was taken by storm,
+and the Roman general entered the Holy of Holies. Of all the countries
+bordering on the Mediterranean Egypt only was left independent, and of
+all the islands only Cyprus. A triumphal inscription in Rome declared
+that Pompey, the people's general, had in three years captured fifteen
+hundred cities, and had slain, taken, or reduced to submission twelve
+million human beings. He justified what Cicero had foretold of his
+moral uprightness. In the midst of opportunities such as had fallen to
+no commander since Alexander, he outraged no woman's honor, and he kept
+his hands clean from "the accursed thing." When he returned to Rome, he
+returned, as he went, personally poor, but he filled the treasury to
+overflowing. His campaign was not a marauding raid, like the march of
+Lucullus on Artaxata. His conquests were permanent. The East, which was
+then thickly inhabited by an industrious civilized Graeco-Oriental
+race, became incorporated in the Roman dominion, and the annual revenue
+of the State rose to twice what it had been. Pompey's success had been
+dazzlingly rapid. Envy and hatred, as he well knew, were waiting for
+him at home, and he was in no haste to present himself there. He
+lingered in Asia, organizing the administration and consolidating his
+work, while at Rome the constitution was rushing on upon its old
+courses among the broken waters, with the roar of the not distant
+cataract growing every moment louder.
+
+[1] The name of Marius, it is to be observed, remained so popular in
+    Rome that Cicero after this always spoke of him with respect.
+
+[2] "Asia vero tam opima est et fertilis, ut et ubertate agrorum et
+    varietate fructuum et magnitudine pastionis, et multitudine earum
+    rerum, quae exportentur, facile omnibus terris antecellat."--_Pro
+    Lege Manilia_. Cicero's expressions are worth notice at a time when
+    Asia Minor has become of importance to England.
+
+[3] _Pro Lege Manilia_. abridged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 64.] Among the patricians who were rising through the
+lower magistracies and were aspiring to the consulship was Lucius
+Sergius Catiline. Catiline, now in middle life, had when young been a
+fervent admirer of Sylla, and, as has been already said, had been an
+active agent in the proscription. He had murdered his brother-in-law,
+and perhaps his brother, under political pretences. In an age when
+licentiousness of the grossest kind was too common to attract
+attention, Catiline had achieved a notoriety for infamy. Ho had
+intrigued with a Vestal virgin, the sister of Cicero's wife, Terentia.
+If Cicero is to be believed, he had made away with his own wife, that
+he might marry Aurelia Orestilla, a woman as wicked as she was
+beautiful, and he had killed his child also because Aurelia had
+objected to be encumbered with a step-son. But this, too, was common in
+high society in those days. Adultery and incest had become familiar
+excitements. Boys of ten years old had learnt the art of poisoning
+their fathers,[1] and the story of Aurelia Orestilla and Catiline had
+been rehearsed a few years before by Sassia and Oppianicus at
+Larino.[2] Other enormities Catiline had been guilty of which Cicero
+declined to mention, lest he should show too openly what crimes might
+go unpunished under the senatorial administration. But villainy,
+however notorious, did not interfere with advancement in the public
+service. Catiline was adroit, bold, and even captivating. He made his
+way into high office along the usual gradations. He was praetor in B.C.
+68. He went as governor to Africa in the year following, and he
+returned with money enough, as he reasonably hoped, to purchase the
+last step to the consulship. He was impeached when he came back for
+extortion and oppression, under one of the many laws which were made to
+be laughed at. Till his trial was over he was disqualified from
+presenting himself as a candidate, and the election for the year 65 was
+carried by Autronius Paetus and Cornelius Sylla. Two other patricians,
+Aurelius Cotta and Manlius Torquatus, had stood against them. The
+successful competitors were unseated for bribery; Cotta and Torquatus
+took their places, and, apparently as a natural resource in the
+existing contempt into which the constitution had fallen, the
+disappointed candidates formed a plot to kill their rivals and their
+rivals' friends in the Senate, and to make a revolution. Cneius Piso, a
+young nobleman of the bluest blood, joined in the conspiracy. Catiline
+threw himself into it as his natural element, and aristocratic
+tradition said in later years that Caesar and Crassus were implicated
+also. Some desperate scheme there certainly was, but the accounts of it
+are confused: one authority says that it failed because Catiline gave
+the signal prematurely; others that Caesar was to have given the
+signal, and did not do it; others that Crassus's heart failed him;
+others that the consuls had secret notice given to them and took
+precautions. Cicero, who was in Rome at the time, declares that he
+never heard of the conspiracy.[3] When evidence is inconclusive,
+probability becomes argument. Nothing can be less likely than that a
+cautious capitalist of vast wealth like Crassus should have connected
+himself with a party of dissolute adventurers. Had Caesar committed
+himself, jealously watched as he was by the aristocrats, some proofs of
+his complicity would have been forthcoming. The aristocracy under the
+empire revenged themselves for their ruin by charging Caesar with a
+share in every combination that had been formed against them, from
+Sylla's time downwards. Be the truth what it may, nothing came of this
+project. Piso went to Spain, where he was killed. The prosecution of
+Catiline for his African misgovernment was continued, and, strange to
+say, Cicero undertook his defence. He was under no uncertainty as to
+Catiline's general character, or his particular guilt in the charge
+brought against him. It was plain as the sun at midday.[4] But Cicero
+was about to stand himself for the consulship, the object of his most
+passionate desire. He had several competitors; and as he thought well
+of Catiline's prospects, he intended to coalesce with him.[5] Catiline
+was acquitted, apparently through a special selection of the judges,
+with the connivance of the prosecutor. The canvass was violent, and the
+corruption flagrant. [6]Cicero did not bribe himself, but if Catiline's
+voters would give him a help, he was not so scrupulous as to be above
+taking advantage of it. Catiline's humor or the circumstances of the
+time provided him with a more honorable support. He required a more
+manageable colleague than he could have found in Cicero. Among the
+candidates was one of Sylla's officers, Caius Antonius, the uncle of
+Marc Antony, the triumvir. This Antonius had been prosecuted by Caesar
+for ill-usage of the Macedonians. He had been expelled by the censors
+from the Senate for general worthlessness; but public disgrace seems to
+have had no effect whatever on the chances of a candidate for the
+consulship in this singular age. Antonius was weak and vicious, and
+Catiline could mould him as he pleased. He had made himself popular by
+his profusion when aedile in providing shows for the mob. The feeling
+against the Senate was so bitter that the aristocracy had no chance of
+carrying a candidate of their own, and the competition was reduced at
+last to Catiline, Antonius and Cicero. Antonius was certain of his
+election, and the contest lay between Catiline and Cicero. Each of them
+tried to gain the support of Antonius and his friends. Catiline
+promised Antonius a revolution, in which they were to share the world
+between them. Cicero promised his influence to obtain some lucrative
+province for Antonius to misgovern. Catiline would probably have
+succeeded, when the aristocracy, knowing what to expect if so
+scandalous a pair came into office, threw their weight on Cicero's side
+and turned the scale. Cicero was liked among the people for his
+prosecution of Verres, for his support of the Manilian law, and for the
+boldness with which he had exposed patrician delinquencies. With the
+Senate for him also, he was returned at the head of the poll. The proud
+Roman nobility had selected a self-made lawyer as their representative.
+Cicero was consul, and Antonius with him. Catiline had failed. It was
+the turning-point of Cicero's life. Before his consulship he had not
+irrevocably taken a side. No public speaker had more eloquently shown
+the necessity for reform; no one had denounced with keener sarcasm the
+infamies and follies of senatorial favorites. Conscience and patriotism
+should have alike held him to the reforming party; and political
+instinct, if vanity had left him the use of his perception, would have
+led him in the same direction. Possibly before he received the votes of
+the patricians and their clients he had bound himself with certain
+engagements to them. Possibly he held the Senate's intellect cheap, and
+saw the position which he could arrive at among the aristocracy if he
+offered them his services. The strongest intellect was with the
+reformers, and first on that side he could never be. First among the
+Conservatives[7] he could easily be; and he might prefer being at the
+head of a party which at heart he despised, to working at the side of
+persons who must stand inevitably above him. We may regret that gifted
+men should be influenced by personal considerations, but under party
+government it is a fact that they are so influenced, and will be as
+long as it continues. Caesar and Pompey were soldiers. The army was
+democratic, and the triumph of the democracy meant the rule of a
+popular general. Cicero was a civilian, and a man of speech. In the
+forum and in the Curia he knew that he could reign supreme.
+
+Cicero had thus reached the highest step in the scale of promotion by
+trimming between the rival factions. Caesar was rising simultaneously
+behind him on lines of his own. In the year B.C. 65 he had been aedile,
+having for his colleague Bibulus, his future companion on the
+successive grades of ascent. Bibulus was a rich plebeian, whose delight
+in office was the introduction which it gave him into the society of
+the great; and in his politics he outdid his aristocratic patrons. The
+aediles had charge of the public buildings and the games and
+exhibitions in the capital. The aedileship was a magistracy through
+which it was ordinarily necessary to pass in order to reach the
+consulship; and as the aediles were expected to bear their own
+expenses, the consulship was thus restricted to those who could afford
+an extravagant outlay. They were expected to decorate the city with new
+ornaments, and to entertain the people with magnificent spectacles. If
+they fell short of public expectation, they need look no further for
+the suffrages of their many-headed master. Cicero had slipped through
+the aedileship, without ruin to himself. He was a self-raised man,
+known to be dependent upon his own exertions, and liked from the
+willingness with which he gave his help to accused persons on their
+trials. Thus no great demands had been made upon him. Caesar, either
+more ambitious or less confident in his services, raised a new and
+costly row of columns in front of the Capitol. He built a temple to the
+Dioscuri, and he charmed the populace with a show of gladiators
+unusually extensive. Personally he cared nothing for these sanguinary
+exhibitions, and he displayed his indifference ostentatiously by
+reading or writing while the butchery was going forward.[8] But he
+required the favor of the multitude, and then, as always, took the road
+which led most directly to his end. The noble lords watched him
+suspiciously, and their uneasiness was not diminished when, not content
+with having produced the insignia of Marius at his aunt's funeral, he
+restored the trophies for the victories over the Cimbri and Teutons,
+which had been removed by Sylla. The name of Marius was growing every
+day more dear to the popular party. They forgave, if they had ever
+resented, his credulities. His veterans who had fought with him through
+his campaigns came forward in tears to salute the honored relics of
+their once glorious commander.
+
+As he felt the ground stronger under his feet, Caesar now began to
+assume an attitude more peremptorily marked. He had won a reputation in
+the Forum; he had spoken in the Senate; he had warmly advocated the
+appointment of Pompey to his high commands; and he was regarded as a
+prominent democratic leader. But he had not aspired to the tribunate;
+he had not thrown himself into politics with any absorbing passion. His
+exertions had been intermittent, and he was chiefly known as a
+brilliant member of fashionable society, a peculiar favorite with
+women, and remarkable for his abstinence from the coarse debauchery
+which disgraced his patrician contemporaries. He was now playing for a
+higher stake, and the oligarchy had occasion to be reminded of Sylla's
+prophecy. In carrying out the proscription, Sylla had employed
+professional assassins, and payments had been made out of the treasury
+to wretches who came to him with bloody trophies in their hands to
+demand the promised fees. The time had come when these doings were to
+be looked into; hundreds of men had been murdered, their estates
+confiscated, and their families ruined, who had not been even
+ostensibly guilty of any public crime. At Caesar's instance an inquiry
+was ordered. He himself was appointed Judex Quaestionis, or chairman of
+a committee of investigation; and Catiline, among others, was called to
+answer for himself--a curious commentary on Caesar's supposed
+connection with him.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 63.] Nor did the inquisition stop with Sylla. Titus
+Labienus, afterward so famous and so infamous, was then tribune of the
+people. His father had been killed at the side of Saturninus and
+Glaucia thirty-seven years before, when the young lords of Rome had
+unroofed the senate-house, and had pelted them and their companions to
+death with tiles. One of the actors in the scene, Caius Rabirius, now a
+very old man, was still alive. Labienus prosecuted him before Caesar.
+Rabirius was condemned, and appealed to the people; and Cicero, who had
+just been made consul, spoke in his defence. On this occasion Cicero
+for the first time came actively in collision with Caesar. His language
+contrasted remarkably with the tone of his speeches against Verres and
+for the Manilian law. It was adroit, for he charged Marius with having
+shared the guilt, if guilt there had been, in the death of those men;
+but the burden of what he said was to defend enthusiastically the
+conservative aristocracy, and to censure with all his bitterness the
+democratic reformers. Rabirius was acquitted, perhaps justly. It was a
+hard thing to revive the memory of a political crime which had been
+shared by the whole patrician order after so long an interval. But
+Cicero had shown his new colors; no help, it was evident, was
+thenceforward to be expected from him in the direction of reform. The
+popular party replied in a singular manner. The office of Pontifex
+Maximus was the most coveted of all the honors to which a Roman citizen
+could aspire. It was held for life, it was splendidly endowed, and
+there still hung about the pontificate the traditionary dignity
+attaching to the chief of the once sincerely believed Roman religion.
+Like other objects of ambition, the nomination had fallen, with the
+growth of democracy, to the people, but the position had always been
+held by some member of the old aristocracy; and Sylla, to secure them
+in the possession of it, had reverted to the ancient constitution, and
+had restored to the Sacred College the privilege of choosing their
+head. Under the impulse which the popular party had received from
+Pompey's successes, Labienus carried a vote in the assembly, by which
+the people resumed the nomination to the pontificate themselves. In the
+same year it fell vacant by the death of the aged Metullus Pius. Two
+patricians, Quintus Catulus and Caesar's old general Servilius
+Isauricus, were the Senate's candidates, and vast sums were subscribed
+and spent to secure the success of one or other of the two. Caesar came
+forward to oppose them. Caesar aspired to be Pontifex Maximus--Pope of
+Rome--he who of all men living was the least given to illusion; he who
+was the most frank in his confession of entire disbelief in the legends
+which, though few credited them any more, yet almost all thought it
+decent to pretend to credit. Among the phenomena of the time this was
+surely the most singular. Yet Caesar had been a priest from his
+boyhood, and why should he not be Pope? He offered himself to the
+Comitia. Committed as he was to a contest with the richest men in Rome,
+he spent money freely. He was in debt already for his expenses as
+aedile. He engaged his credit still deeper for this new competition.
+The story ran that when his mother kissed him as he was leaving his
+home for the Forum on the morning of the election, he told her that he
+would return as pontiff, or she would never see him more. He was chosen
+by an overwhelming majority, the votes given for him being larger than
+the collective numbers of the votes entered for his opponents.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 63.] The election for the pontificate was on the 6th of
+March, and soon after Caesar received a further evidence of popular
+favor on being chosen praetor for the next year. As the liberal party
+was growing in courage and definiteness, Cicero showed himself more
+decidedly on the other side. Now was the time for him, highly placed as
+he was, to prevent a repetition of the scandals which he had so
+eloquently denounced, to pass laws which no future Verres or Lucullus
+could dare to defy. Now was his opportunity to take the wind out of the
+reformers' sails, and to grapple himself with the thousand forms of
+patrician villainy which he well knew to be destroying the
+Commonwealth. Not one such measure, save an ineffectual attempt to
+check election bribery, distinguished the consulship of Cicero. His
+entire efforts were directed to the combination in a solid phalanx of
+the equestrian and patrician orders. The danger to society, he had come
+to think, was an approaching war against property, and his hope was to
+unite the rich of both classes in defence against the landless and
+moneyless multitudes.[9] The land question had become again as pressing
+as in the time of the Gracchi. The peasant proprietors were melting
+away as fast as ever, and Rome was becoming choked with impoverished
+citizens, who ought to have been farmers and fathers of families, but
+were degenerating into a rabble fed upon the corn grants, and occupied
+with nothing but spectacles and politics. The agrarian laws in the past
+had been violent, and might reasonably be complained of; but a remedy
+could now be found for this fast-increasing mischief without injury to
+anyone. Pompey's victories had filled the public treasury. Vast
+territories abroad had lapsed to the possession of the State; and
+Rullus, one of the tribunes, proposed that part of these territories
+should be sold, and that out of the proceeds, and out of the money
+which Pompey had sent home, farms should be purchased in Italy and poor
+citizens settled upon them. Rullus's scheme might have been crude, and
+the details of it objectionable; but to attempt the problem was better
+than to sit still and let the evil go unchecked. If the bill was
+impracticable in its existing form, it might have been amended; and so
+far as the immediate effect of such a law was concerned, it was against
+the interests of the democrats. The popular vote depended for its
+strength on the masses of poor who were crowded into Rome; and the
+tribune was proposing to weaken his own army. But the very name of an
+agrarian law set patrician households in a flutter, and Cicero stooped
+to be their advocate. He attacked Rullus with brutal sarcasm. He
+insulted his appearance; he ridiculed his dress, his hair, and his
+beard. He mocked at his bad enunciation and bad grammar. No one more
+despised the mob than Cicero; but because Rullus had said that the city
+rabble was dangerously powerful, and ought to be "drawn off" to some
+wholesome employment, the eloquent consul condescended to quote the
+words, to score a point against his opponent; and he told the crowd
+that their tribune had described a number of excellent citizens to the
+Senate as no better than the contents of a cesspool.[10]
+
+By these methods Cicero caught the people's voices. The plan came to
+nothing, and his consulship would have waned away, undistinguished by
+any act which his country would have cared to remember, but for an
+accident which raised him for a moment into a position of real
+consequence, and impressed on his own mind a conviction that he was a
+second Romulus.
+
+Revolutionary conspiracies are only formidable when the government
+against which they are directed is already despised and detested. As
+long as an administration is endurable the majority of citizens prefer
+to bear with it, and will assist in repressing violent attempts at its
+overthrow. Their patience, however, may be exhausted, and the disgust
+may rise to a point when any change may seem an improvement. Authority
+is no longer shielded by the majesty with which it ought to be
+surrounded. It has made public its own degradation; and the most
+worthless adventurer knows that he has no moral indignation to fear if
+he tries to snatch the reins out of hands which are at least no more
+pure than his own. If he can dress his endeavors in the livery of
+patriotism, if he can put himself forward as the champion of an injured
+people, he can cover the scandals of his own character and appear as a
+hero and a liberator. Catiline had missed the consulship, and was a
+ruined man. He had calculated on succeeding to a province where he
+might gather a golden harvest and come home to live in splendor, like
+Lucullus. He had failed, defeated by a mere plebeian whom his
+brother-patricians had stooped to prefer to him. Were the secret
+history known of the contest for the consulship, much might be
+discovered there to explain Cicero's and Catiline's hatred of each
+other. Cicero had once thought of coalescing with Catiline,
+notwithstanding his knowledge of his previous crimes: Catiline had
+perhaps hoped to dupe Cicero, and had been himself outwitted. He
+intended to stand again for the year 62, but evidently on a different
+footing from that on which he had presented himself before. That such a
+man should have been able to offer himself at all, and that such a
+person as Cicero should have entered into any kind of amicable
+relations with him, was a sign by itself that the Commonwealth was
+already sickening for death.
+
+Catiline was surrounded by men of high birth, whose fortunes were
+desperate as his own. There was Lentulus, who had been consul a few
+years before, and had been expelled from the Senate by the censors.
+There was Cethegus, staggering under a mountain of debts. There was
+Autronius, who had been unseated for bribery when chosen consul in 65.
+There was Manlius, once a distinguished officer in Sylla's army, and
+now a beggar. Besides these were a number of senators, knights,
+gentlemen, and dissolute young patricians, whose theory of the world
+was that it had been created for them to take their pleasure in, and
+who found their pleasures shortened by emptiness of purse. To them, as
+to their betters, the Empire was but a large dish out of which they
+considered that they had a right to feed themselves. They were
+defrauded of their proper share, and Catiline was the person who would
+help them to it.
+
+Etruria was full of Sylla's disbanded soldiers, who had squandered
+their allotments, and were hanging about, unoccupied and starving.
+Catiline sent down Manlius, their old officer, to collect as many as he
+could of them without attracting notice. He himself, as the election
+day approached, and Cicero's year of office was drawing to an end, took
+up the character of an aristocratic demagogue, and asked for the
+suffrages of the people as the champion of the poor against the rich,
+as the friend of the wretched and oppressed; and those who thought
+themselves wretched and oppressed in Rome were so large a body, and so
+bitterly hostile were they all to the prosperous classes, that his
+election was anticipated as a certainty. In the Senate the consulship
+of Catiline was regarded as no less than an impending national
+calamity. Marcus Cato, great-grandson of the censor, then growing into
+fame by his acrid tongue and narrow republican fanaticism, who had
+sneered at Pompey's victories as triumphs over women, and had not
+spared even Cicero himself, threatened Catiline in the Curia. Catiline
+answered, in a fully attended house, that if any agitation was kindled
+against him he would put it out, not with water, but with revolution.
+His language became so audacious that, on the eve of the election day,
+Cicero moved for a postponement, that the Senate might take his
+language into consideration. Catiline's conduct was brought on for
+debate, and the consul called on him to explain himself. There was no
+concealment in Catiline. Then and always Cicero admits he was perfectly
+frank. He made no excuses. He admitted the truth of what had been
+reported of him. The State, he said, had two bodies, one weak (the
+aristocracy), with a weak leader (Cicero); the other, the great mass of
+the citizens--strong in themselves, but without a head, and he himself
+intended to be that head.[11] A groan was heard in the house, but less
+loud than in Cicero's opinion it ought to have been; and Catiline
+sailed out in triumph, leaving the noble lords looking in each other's
+faces.
+
+[Sidenote: October, B.C. 63.] Both Cicero and the Senate were evidently
+in the greatest alarm that Catiline would succeed constitutionally in
+being chosen consul, and they strained every sinew to prevent so
+terrible a catastrophe. When the Comitia came on, Cicero admits that he
+occupied the voting place in the Campus Martius with a guard of men who
+could be depended on. He was violating the law, which forbade the
+presence of an armed force on those occasions. He excused himself by
+pretending that Catiline's party intended violence, and he appeared
+ostentatiously in a breastplate as if his own life was aimed at. The
+result was that Catiline failed once more, and was rejected by a small
+majority. Cicero attributes his defeat to the moral effect produced by
+the breastplate. But from the time of the Gracchi downwards the
+aristocracy had not hesitated to lay pressure on the elections when
+they could safely do it; and the story must be taken with reservation,
+in the absence of a more impartial account than we possess of the
+purpose to which Cicero's guard was applied. Undoubtedly it was
+desirable to strain the usual rules to keep a wretch like Catiline from
+the consulship; but as certainly, both before the election and after
+it, Catiline had the sympathies of a very large part of the resident
+inhabitants of the city, and these sympathies must be taken into
+account if we are to understand the long train of incidents of which
+this occasion was the beginning.
+
+Two strict aristocrats, Decimus Silanus and Lucius Murena,[12] were
+declared elected. Pompey was on his way home, but had not yet reached
+Italy. There were no regular troops in the whole peninsula, and the
+nearest approach to an army was the body of Syllans, whom Manlius had
+quietly collected at Fiesole. Cicero's colleague Antonius was secretly
+in communication with Catiline, evidently thinking it likely that he
+would succeed. Catiline determined to wait no longer, and to raise an
+insurrection in the capital, with slave emancipation and a cancelling
+of debt for a cry. Manlius was to march on Rome, and the Senate, it was
+expected, would fall without a blow. Caesar and Crassus sent a warning
+to Cicero to be on his guard. Caesar had called Catiline to account for
+his doings at the time of the proscription, and knew his nature too
+well to expect benefit to the people from a revolution conducted under
+the auspices of bankrupt patrician adventurers. No citizen had more to
+lose than Crassus from a crusade of the poor against the rich. But they
+had both been suspected two years before, and in the excited temper of
+men's minds they took precautions for their own reputation's sake, as
+well as for the safety of the State. Quintus Curius, a senator, who was
+one of the conspirators, was meanwhile betraying his accomplices, and
+gave daily notice to the consuls of each step which was contemplated.
+But so weak was authority and so dangerous the temper of the people
+that the difficulty was to know what to do. Secret information was
+scarcely needed. Catiline, as Cicero said, was "_apertissimus_," most
+frank in the declaration of his intentions. Manlius's army at Fiesole
+was an open fact, and any day might bring news that he was on the march
+to Rome. The Senate, as usual in extreme emergencies, declared the
+State in danger, and gave the consuls unlimited powers to provide for
+public security. So scornfully confident was Catiline that he offered
+to place himself under surveillance at the house of any senator whom
+Cicero might name, or to reside with Cicero himself, if the consul
+preferred to keep a personal eye upon him. Cicero answered that he
+dared not trust himself with so perilous a guest.
+
+[Sidenote: November, B.C. 63.] So for a few days matters hung in
+suspense, Manlius expecting an order to advance, Catiline waiting
+apparently for a spontaneous insurrection in the city before he gave
+the word. Intended attempts at various points had been baffled by
+Cicero's precautions. At last, finding that the people remained quiet,
+Catiline called a meeting of his friends one stormy night at the
+beginning of November, and it was agreed that two of the party should
+go the next morning at dawn to Cicero's house, demand to see him on
+important business, and kill him in his bed. Curius, who was present,
+immediately furnished Cicero with an account of what had passed. When
+his morning visitors arrived they were told that they could not be
+admitted; and a summons was sent round to the senators to assemble
+immediately at the Temple of Jupiter Stator, one of the strongest
+positions in the city.[13] The audacious Catiline attended, and took
+his usual seat; every one shrank from him, and he was left alone on the
+bench. Then Cicero rose. In the Senate, where to speak was the first
+duty of man, he was in his proper element, and had abundant courage. He
+addressed himself personally to the principal conspirator. He exposed,
+if exposure be the fitting word when half the persons present knew as
+much as he could tell them, the history of Catiline's proceedings. He
+described in detail the meeting of the past evening, looking round
+perhaps in the faces of the senators who he was aware had been present
+at it. He spoke of the visit designed to himself in the morning, which
+had been baffled by his precautions. He went back over the history of
+the preceding half-century. Fresh from the defence of Rabirius, he
+showed how dangerous citizens, the Gracchi, Saturninus, Glaucia, had
+been satisfactorily killed when they were meditating mischief. He did
+not see that a constitution was already doomed when the ruling powers
+were driven to assassinate their opponents, because a trial with the
+forms of law would have ended in their acquittal. He told Catiline that
+under the powers which the Senate had conferred on him he might order
+his instant execution. He detailed Catiline's past enormities, which he
+had forgotten when he sought his friendship, and he ended in bidding
+him leave the city, go and join Manlius and his army.
+
+Never had Cicero been greater, and never did oratory end in a more
+absurd conclusion. He dared not arrest Catiline. He confessed that he
+dared not. There was not a doubt that Catiline was meditating a
+revolution--but a revolution was precisely what half the world was
+wishing for. Rightly read, those sounding paragraphs, those moral
+denunciations, those appeals to history and patriotic sentiment, were
+the funeral knell of the Roman Commonwealth.
+
+Let Catiline go into open war, Cicero said, and then there would no
+longer be a doubt. Then all the world would admit his treason. Catiline
+went; and what was to follow next? Antonius, the second consul, was
+notoriously not to be relied on. The other conspirators, senators who
+sat listening while Cicero poured out his eloquent indignation,
+remained still in the city with the threads of insurrection in their
+hands, and were encouraged to persevere by the evident helplessness of
+the government. The imperfect record of history retains for us only the
+actions of a few individuals whom special talent or special
+circumstances distinguished, and such information is only fragmentary.
+We lose sight of the unnamed seething multitudes by whose desires and
+by whose hatreds the stream of events was truly guided. The party of
+revolution was as various as it was wide. Powerful wealthy men belonged
+to it, who were politically dissatisfied; ambitious men of rank, whose
+money embarrassments weighted them in the race against their
+competitors; old officers and soldiers of Sylla, who had spent the
+fortunes which they had won by violence, and were now trying to bring
+him back from the dead to renew their lease of plunder; ruined wretches
+without number, broken down with fines and proscriptions, and debts and
+the accumulation of usurious interest. Add to these "the dangerous
+classes," the natural enemies of all governments--parricides,
+adulterers, thieves, forgers, escaped slaves, brigands, and pirates who
+had lost their occupation; and, finally, Catiline's own chosen
+comrades, the smooth-faced patrician youths with curled hair and
+redolent with perfumes, as yet beardless or with the first down upon
+their chins, wearing scarves and veils and sleeved tunics reaching to
+their ankles, industrious but only with the dice-box, night-watchers
+but in the supper-rooms, in the small hours before dawn, immodest,
+dissolute boys, whose education had been in learning to love and to be
+loved, to sing and to dance naked at the midnight orgies, and along
+with it to handle poniards and mix poisoned bowls.[14]
+
+[Sidenote: November, B.C. 64.] Well might Cicero be alarmed at such a
+combination; well might he say that if a generation of such youths
+lived to manhood there would be a commonwealth of Catilines. But what
+was to be thought of the prospects of a society in which such phenomena
+were developing themselves? Cicero bade them all go--follow their chief
+into the war, and perish in the snow of the Apennines. But how if they
+would not go? How if from the soil of Rome, under the rule of his
+friends the Senate, fresh crops of such youths would rise perennially?
+The Commonwealth needed more drastic medicine than eloquent
+exhortations, however true the picture might be.
+
+[Sidenote: November, B.C. 63.] None of the promising young gentlemen
+took Cicero's advice. Catiline went alone and joined Manlius, and had
+he come on at once he might perhaps have taken Rome. The army was to
+support an insurrection, and the insurrection was to support the army.
+Catiline waited for a signal from his friends in the city, and
+Lentulus, Cethegus, Autronius, and the rest of the leaders waited for
+Catiline to arrive. Conspirators never think that they have taken
+precautions enough or have gained allies enough; and in endeavoring to
+secure fresh support they made a fatal mistake. An embassy of
+Allobroges was in the city, a frontier tribe on the borders of the
+Roman province in Gaul, who were allies of Rome, though not as yet
+subjects. The Gauls were the one foreign nation whom the Romans really
+feared. The passes of the Alps alone protected Italy from the hordes of
+German or Gallic barbarians, whose numbers being unknown were supposed
+to be exhaustless. Middle-aged men could still remember the panic at
+the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutons, and it was the chief pride of
+the democrats that the State had then been saved by their own Marius.
+At the critical moment it was discovered that the conspirators had
+entered into a correspondence with these Allobroges, and had actually
+proposed to them to make a fresh inroad over the Alps. The suspicion of
+such an intention at once alienated from Catiline the respectable part
+of the democratic party. The fact of the communication was betrayed to
+Cicero. He intercepted the letters; he produced them in the Senate with
+the seals unbroken, that no suspicion might rest upon himself. Lentulus
+and Cethegus were sent for, and could not deny their hands. The letters
+were then opened and read, and no shadow of uncertainty any longer
+remained that they had really designed to bring in an army of Gauls.
+Such of the conspirators as were known and were still within reach were
+instantly seized.
+
+[Sidenote: December 5, B.C. 63.] Cicero, with a pardonable laudation of
+himself and of the Divine Providence of which he professed to regard
+himself as the minister, congratulated his country on its escape from
+so genuine a danger; and he then invited the Senate to say what was to
+be done with these apostates from their order, whose treason was now
+demonstrated. A plot for a mere change of government, for the
+deposition of the aristocrats and the return to power of the popular
+party, it might be impolitic, perhaps impossible, severely to punish;
+but Catiline and his friends had planned the betrayal of the State to
+the barbarians; and with persons who had committed themselves to
+national treason there was no occasion to hesitate. Cicero produced the
+list of those whom he considered guilty, and there were some among his
+friends who thought the opportunity might be used to get rid of
+dangerous enemies, after the fashion of Sylla, especially of Crassus
+and Caesar. The name of Crassus was first mentioned, some said by
+secret friends of Catiline, who hoped to alarm the Senate into inaction
+by showing with whom they would have to deal. Crassus, it is possible,
+knew more than he had told the consul. Catiline's success had, at one
+moment, seemed assured; and great capitalists are apt to insure against
+contingencies. But Cicero moved and carried a resolution that the
+charge against him was a wicked invention. The attempt against Caesar
+was more determined. Old Catulus, whom Caesar had defeated in the
+contest for the pontificate, and Caius Calpurnius Piso,[15] a bitter
+aristocrat, whom Caesar had prosecuted for misgovernment in Gaul, urged
+Cicero to include his name. But Cicero was too honorable to lend
+himself to an accusation which he knew to be false. Some of the young
+lords in their disappointment threatened Caesar at the senate-house
+door with their swords; but the attack missed its mark, and served only
+to show how dreaded Caesar already was, and how eager a desire there
+was to make an end of him.
+
+The list submitted for judgment contained the names of none but those
+who were indisputably guilty. The Senate voted at once that they were
+traitors to the State. The next question was of the nature of their
+punishment. In the first place the persons of public officers were
+sacred, and Lentulus was at the time a praetor. And next the Sempronian
+law forbade distinctly that any Roman citizen should be put to death
+without a trial, and without the right of appeal to the assembly.[16]
+It did not mean simply that Roman citizens were not to be murdered, or
+that at any time it had been supposed that they might. The object was
+to restrain the extraordinary power claimed by the Senate of setting
+the laws aside on exceptional occasions. Silanus, the consul-elect for
+the following year, was, according to usage, asked to give his opinion
+first. He voted for immediate death. One after the other the voices
+were the same, till the turn came of Tiberius Nero, the
+great-grandfather of Nero the Emperor. Tiberius was against haste. He
+advised that the prisoners should be kept in confinement till Catiline
+was taken or killed, and that the whole affair should then be carefully
+investigated. Investigation was perhaps what many senators were most
+anxious to avoid. When Tiberius had done, Caesar rose. The speech which
+Sallust places in his mouth was not an imaginary sketch of what Sallust
+supposed him likely to have said, but the version generally received of
+what he actually did say, and the most important passages of it are
+certainly authentic. For the first time we see through the surface of
+Caesar's outward actions into his real mind. During the three quarters
+of a century which had passed since the death of the elder Gracchus one
+political murder had followed upon another. Every conspicuous democrat
+had been killed by the aristocrats in some convenient disturbance. No
+constitution could survive when the law was habitually set aside by
+violence; and disdaining the suspicion with which he knew that his
+words would be regarded, Caesar warned the Senate against another act
+of precipitate anger which would be unlawful in itself, unworthy of
+their dignity, and likely in the future to throw a doubt upon the guilt
+of the men upon whose fate they were deliberating. He did not
+extenuate, he rather emphasized, the criminality of Catiline and his
+confederates; but for that reason and because for the present no
+reasonable person felt the slightest uncertainty about it, he advised
+them to keep within the lines which the law had marked out for them. He
+spoke with respect of Silanus. He did not suppose him to be influenced
+by feelings of party animosity. Silanus had recommended the execution
+of the prisoners, either because he thought their lives incompatible
+with the safety of the State, or because no milder punishment seemed
+adequate to the enormity of their conduct. But the safety of the State,
+he said, with a compliment to Cicero, had been sufficiently provided
+for by the diligence of the consul. As to punishment, none could be too
+severe; but with that remarkable adherence to _fact_, which always
+distinguished Caesar, that repudiation of illusion and sincere
+utterance of his real belief, whatever that might be, he contended that
+death was not a punishment at all. Death was the end of human
+suffering. In the grave there was neither joy nor sorrow. When a man
+was dead he ceased to be.[17]He became as he had been before he was
+born. Probably almost every one in the Senate thought like Caesar on
+this subject. Cicero certainly did. The only difference was that
+plausible statesmen affected a respect for the popular superstition,
+and pretended to believe what they did not believe. Caesar spoke his
+convictions out. There was no longer any solemnity in an execution. It
+was merely the removal out of the way of troublesome persons; and
+convenient as such a method might be, it was of graver consequence that
+the Senate of Rome, the guardians of the law, should not set an example
+of violating the law. Illegality, Caesar told them, would be followed
+by greater illegalities. He reminded them how they had applauded Sylla,
+how they had rejoiced when they saw their political enemies summarily
+despatched; and yet the proscription, as they well knew, had been
+perverted to the license of avarice and private revenge. They might
+feel sure that no such consequence need be feared under their present
+consul: but times might change. The worst crimes which had been
+committed in Rome in the past century had risen out of the imitation of
+precedents, which at the moment seemed defensible. The laws had
+prescribed a definite punishment for treason. Those laws had been
+gravely considered; they had been enacted by the great men who had
+built up the Roman dominion, and were not to be set aside in impatient
+haste. Caesar therefore recommended that the estates of the
+conspirators should be confiscated, that they themselves should be kept
+in strict and solitary confinement dispersed in various places, and
+that a resolution should be passed forbidding an application for their
+pardon either to Senate or people.
+
+The speech was weighty in substance and weightily delivered, and it
+produced its effect.[18] Silanus withdrew his opinion. Quintus Cicero,
+the consul's brother, followed, and a clear majority of the Senate went
+with them, till it came to the turn of a young man who in that year had
+taken his place in the house for the first time, who was destined to
+make a reputation which could be set in competition with that of the
+gods themselves, and whose moral opinion could be held superior to that
+of the gods.[19]
+
+Marcus Porcius Cato was born in the year 95, and was thus five years
+younger than Caesar and eleven years younger than Cicero. He was the
+great-grandson, as was said above, of the stern rugged censor who hated
+Greek, preferred the teaching of the plough-tail and the Twelve Tables
+to the philosophy of Aristotle, disbelieved in progress, and held by
+the maxims of his father--the last, he of the Romans of the old type.
+The young Marcus affected to take his ancestor for a pattern. He
+resembled him as nearly as a modern Anglican monk resembles St. Francis
+or St. Bernard. He could reproduce the form, but it was the form with
+the life gone out of it. He was immeasurably superior to the men around
+him. He was virtuous, if it be virtue to abstain from sin. He never
+lied. No one ever suspected him of dishonesty or corruption. But his
+excellences were not of the retiring sort. He carried them written upon
+him in letters for all to read, as a testimony to a wicked generation.
+His opinions were as pedantic as his life was abstemious, and no one
+was permitted to differ from him without being held guilty rather of a
+crime than of a mistake. He was an aristocratic pedant, to whom the
+living forces of humanity seemed but irrational impulses of which he
+and such as he were the appointed school-masters. To such a temperament
+a man of genius is instinctively hateful. Cato had spoken often in the
+Senate, though so young a member of it, denouncing the immoral habits
+of the age. He now rose to match himself against Caesar; and with
+passionate vehemence he insisted that the wretches who had plotted the
+overthrow of the State should be immediately killed. He noticed
+Caesar's objections only to irritate the suspicion in which he probably
+shared, that Caesar himself was one of Catiline's accomplices. That
+Caesar had urged as a reason for moderation the absence of immediate
+danger, was in Cato's opinion an argument the more for anxiety.
+Naturally, too, he did not miss the opportunity of striking at the
+scepticism which questioned future retribution. Whether Cato believed
+himself in a future life mattered little, if Caesar's frank avowal
+could be turned to his prejudice.
+
+Cato spoke to an audience well disposed to go with him. Silanus went
+round to his first view, and the mass of senators followed him. Caesar
+attempted to reply; but so fierce were the passions that had been
+roused, that again he was in danger of violence. The young knights who
+were present as a senatorial guard rushed at him with their drawn
+swords. A few friends protected him with their cloaks, and he left the
+Curia not to enter it again for the rest of the year. When Caesar was
+gone, Cicero rose to finish the debate. He too glanced at Caesar's
+infidelity, and as Caesar had spoken of the wisdom of past generations,
+he observed that in the same generations there had been a pious belief
+that the grave was not the end of human existence. With an ironical
+compliment to the prudence of Caesar's advice, he said that his own
+interest would lead him to follow it; he would have the less to fear
+from the irritation of the people. The Senate, he observed, must have
+heard with pleasure that Caesar condemned the conspiracy. Caesar was
+the leader of the popular party, and from him at least they now knew
+that they had nothing to fear. The punishment which Caesar recommended
+was, in fact, Cicero admitted, more severe than death. He trusted,
+therefore, that if the conspirators were executed, and he had to answer
+to the people for the sentence to be passed upon them, Caesar himself
+would defend him against the charge of cruelty. Meanwhile he said that
+he had the ineffable satisfaction of knowing that he had saved the
+State. The Senate might adopt such resolutions as might seem good to
+them without alarm for the consequences. The conspiracy was disarmed.
+He had made enemies among the bad citizens; but he had deserved and he
+had won the gratitude of the good, and he stood secure behind the
+impregnable bulwark of his country's love.
+
+So Cicero, in the first effusion of self-admiration with which he never
+ceased to regard his conduct on this occasion. No doubt he had acted
+bravely, and he had shown as much adroitness as courage. But the whole
+truth was never told. The Senate's anxiety to execute the prisoners
+arose from a fear that the people would be against them if an appeal to
+the assembly was allowed. The Senate was contending for the privilege
+of suspending the laws by its own independent will; and the privilege,
+if it was ever constitutional, had become so odious by the abuse of it,
+that to a large section of Roman citizens a conspiracy against the
+oligarchy had ceased to be looked on as treason at all. Cicero and Cato
+had their way. Lentulus, Cethegus, Autronius and their companions were
+strangled in their cells, on the afternoon of the debate upon their
+fate. A few weeks later Catiline's army was cut to pieces, and he
+himself was killed. So desperately his haggard bands had fought that
+they fell in their ranks where they stood, and never Roman commander
+gained a victory that cost him more dear. So furious a resistance
+implied a motive and a purpose beyond any which Cicero or Sallust
+records, and the commission of inquiry suggested by Tiberius Nero in
+the Senate might have led to curious revelations. The Senate perhaps
+had its own reasons for fearing such revelations, and for wishing the
+voices closed which could have made them.
+
+[1] "Nunc quis patrem decem annorum natus non modo aufert sed tollit
+    nisi veneno?"--_Varronis Fragmenta_, ed. Alexander Riese, p. 216.
+
+[2] See the story in Cicero, _Pro Cluentio_.
+
+[3] _Pro P. Sulla_, 4.
+
+[4] "Catilina, si judicatum erit, meridie non lucere, certus erit
+    competitor."--_Epist. ad Atticum_, i. 1.
+
+[5] "Hoc tempore Catilinam, competitorem nostrum, defendere cogitamus.
+    Judices habemus, quos volumus, summa accusatoris voluntate. Spero, si
+    absolutus erit, conjunctiorem illum nobis fore in ratione
+    petitionis."--_Ib_., i. 2.
+
+[6] "Scito nihil tam exercitum nunc esse Romae quam candidatos omnibus
+    iniquitatibus."--_Ib_., i. 11.
+
+[7] I use a word apparently modern, but Cicero himself gave the name of
+    Conservatores Reipublicae to the party to which he belonged.
+
+[8] Suetonius, speaking of Augustus, says: "Quoties adesset, nihil
+    praeterea agebat, seu vitandi rumoris causa, quo patrem Caesarem vulgo
+    reprehensum commemorabat, quod inter spectandum epistolis libellisque
+    legendis aut rescribendis vacaret; seu studio spectandi et voluptate,"
+    etc.--_Vita Octavii_, 45.
+
+[9] Writing three years later to Atticus, he says: "Confirmabam omnium
+    privatorum possessiones, is enim est noster exercitus, ut tute scis
+    locupletium."--_To Atticus_, i. 19. Pomponius Atticus, Cicero's
+    most intimate correspondent, was a Roman knight, who inheriting a
+    large estate from his father, increased it by contracts, banking,
+    money-lending, and slave-dealing, in which he was deeply engaged.
+    He was an accomplished, cultivated man, a shrewd observer of the
+    times, and careful of committing himself on any side. His acquaintance
+    with Cicero rested on similarity of temperament, with a solid
+    financial basis at the bottom of it. They were mutually useful to
+    each other.
+
+[10] "Et nimium istud est, quod ab hoc tribuno plebis dictum est in
+    senatu: urbanam plebem nimium in republica posse: exhauriendam esse:
+    hoc enim verbo est usus; quasi de aliqua sentina, ac non de optimorum
+    civium genere loqueretur."--_Contra Rullum_, ii. 26.
+
+[11] Cicero, _Pro Murena_, 25.
+
+[12] Murena was afterward prosecuted for bribery at this election. Cicero
+    defended him; but even Cato, aristocrat as he was, affected to be
+    shocked at the virtuous consul's undertaking so bad a case. It is
+    observable that in his speech for Murena, Cicero found as many virtues
+    in Lucullus as in his speech on the Manilian law he had found vices.
+    It was another symptom of his change of attitude.
+
+[13] "In loco munitissimo."
+
+[14] This description of the young Roman aristocracy is given by Cicero in
+    his most powerful vein: "Postremum autem genus est, non solum numero,
+    verum etiam genere ipso atque vita, quod proprium est Catilinae, de
+    ejus delectu, immo vero de complexu ejus ac sinu: quos pexo capillo,
+    nitidos, aut imberbes, aut bene barbatos, videtis, manicatis et
+    talaribus tunicis; velis amictos, non togis: quorum omnis industria
+    vitae et vigilandi labor in antelucanis coenis expromitur. In his
+    gregibus omnes aleatores, omnes adulteri, omnes impuri impudicique
+    versantur. Hi pueri tam lepidi ac delicati non solum amare et amari
+    neque cantare et saltare, sed etiam sicas vibrare et spargere venena
+    didicerunt.... Nudi in conviviis saltare didicerunt."--_In
+    Catilinam_, ii. 10. Compare _In Pisonem_, 10.
+
+    The Romans shaved their beards at full maturity, and therefore
+    "benebarbatos" does not mean grown men, but youths on the edge of
+    manhood.
+
+[15] Not to be confounded with Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was Caesar's
+    father-in-law.
+
+[16] "Injussu populi."
+
+[17] The real opinion of educated Romans on this subject was expressed in
+    the well-known lines of Lucretius, which were probably written near
+    this very time:
+
+     "Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
+     Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur:
+     Et, velut ante acto nil tempore sensimus aegri,
+     Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis;
+     Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu,
+     Horrida, contremuere sub altis aetheris auris;
+     In dubioque fuit sub utrorum regna cadendum
+     Omnibus humanis esset, terraque, marique:
+     Sic, ubi non erimus, cum corporis atque animai
+     Discidium fuerit, quibus e sumus uniter apti,
+     Scilicet haud nobis quicquam, qui non erimus tum,
+     Accidere omnino poterit, sensumque movere:
+     Non, si terra mari miscebitur, et mare coelo."
+
+     LUCRETIUS, lib. iii. 11. 842-854.
+
+[18] In the following century when Caesar's life had become mythic, a
+    story was current that when Caesar was speaking on this occasion a
+    note was brought in to him, and Cato, suspecting that it referred to
+    the conspiracy, insisted that it should be read. Caesar handed it to
+    Cato, and it proved to be a love letter from Cato's sister, Servilia,
+    the mother of Brutus. More will be said of the supposed liaison
+    between Caesar and Servilia hereafter. For the present it is enough to
+    say that there is no contemporary evidence for the story at all; and
+    that if it be true that a note of some kind from Servilia was given to
+    Caesar, it is more consistent with probability and the other
+    circumstances of the case, that it was an innocent note of business.
+    Ladies do not send in compromising letters to their lovers when they
+    are on their feet in Parliament; nor, if such an accident should
+    happen, do the lovers pass them over to be read by the ladies'
+    brothers.
+
+[19] "Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."--LUCAN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 62.] The execution of Lentulus and Cethegus was
+received in Rome with the feeling which Caesar had anticipated. There
+was no active sympathy with the conspiracy, but the conspiracy was
+forgotten in indignation at the lawless action of the consul and the
+Senate. It was still violence--always violence. Was law, men asked,
+never to resume its authority?--was the Senate to deal at its pleasure
+with the lives and properties of citizens?--criminals though they might
+be, what right had Cicero to strangle citizens in dungeons without
+trial? If this was to be allowed, the constitution was at an end; Rome
+was no longer a republic, but an arbitrary oligarchy. Pompey's name was
+on every tongue. When would Pompey come? Pompey, the friend of the
+people, the terror of the aristocracy! Pompey, who had cleared the sea
+of pirates, and doubled the area of the Roman dominions! Let Pompey
+return and bring his army with him, and give to Rome the same peace and
+order which he had already given to the world.
+
+A Roman commander, on landing in Italy after foreign service, was
+expected to disband his legions, and relapse into the position of a
+private person. A popular and successful general was an object of
+instinctive fear to the politicians who held the reins of government.
+The Senate was never pleased to see any individual too much an object
+of popular idolatry; and in the case of Pompey their suspicion was the
+greater on account of the greatness of his achievements, and because
+his command had been forced upon them by the people, against their
+will. In the absence of a garrison, the city was at the mercy of the
+patricians and their clients. That the noble lords were unscrupulous in
+removing persons whom they disliked they had shown in a hundred
+instances, and Pompey naturally enough hesitated to trust himself among
+them without security. He required the protection of office, and he had
+sent forward one of his most distinguished officers, Metellus Nepos, to
+prepare the way and demand the consulship for him. Metellus, to
+strengthen his hands, had stood for the tribuneship; and, in spite of
+the utmost efforts of the aristocracy, had been elected. It fell to
+Metellus to be the first to give expression to the general indignation
+in a way peculiarly wounding to the illustrious consul. Cicero imagined
+that the world looked upon him as its saviour. In his own eyes he was
+another Romulus, a second founder of Rome. The world, unfortunately,
+had formed an entirely different estimate of him. The prisoners had
+been killed on the 5th of December. On the last day of the year it was
+usual for the outgoing consuls to review the events of their term of
+office before the Senate; and Cicero had prepared a speech in which he
+had gilded his own performances with all his eloquence. Metellus
+commenced his tribunate with forbidding Cicero to deliver his oration,
+and forbidding him on the special ground that a man who had put Roman
+citizens to death without allowing them a hearing did not himself
+deserve to be heard. In the midst of the confusion and uproar which
+followed, Cicero could only shriek that he had saved his country: a
+declaration which could have been dispensed with, since he had so often
+insisted upon it already without producing the assent which he desired.
+
+Notwithstanding his many fine qualities, Cicero was wanting in dignity.
+His vanity was wounded in its tenderest point, and he attacked Metellus
+a day or two after, in one of those violently abusive outpourings of
+which so many specimens of his own survive, and which happily so few
+other statesmen attempted to imitate. Metellus retorted with a threat
+of impeaching Cicero, and the grave Roman Curia became no better than a
+kennel of mad dogs. For days the storm raged on with no symptom of
+abatement. At last Metellus turned to the people and proposed in the
+assembly that Pompey should be recalled with his army to restore law
+and order.
+
+Caesar, who was now praetor, warmly supported Metellus. To him, if to
+no one else, it was clear as the sun at noonday, that unless some
+better government could be provided than could be furnished by five
+hundred such gentlemen as the Roman senators, the State was drifting on
+to destruction. Resolutions to be submitted to the people were
+generally first drawn in writing, and were read from the Rostra. When
+Metellus produced his proposal, Cato, who was a tribune also, sprang to
+his side, ordered him to be silent, and snatched the scroll out of his
+hands. Metellus went on, speaking from memory Cato's friends shut his
+mouth by force. The patricians present drew their swords and cleared
+the Forum; and the Senate, in the exercise of another right to which
+they pretended, declared Caesar and Metullus degraded from their
+offices. Metullus, probably at Caesar's advice, withdrew and went off
+to Asia, to describe what had passed to Pompey. Caesar remained, and,
+quietly disregarding the Senate's sentence, continued to sit and hear
+cases as praetor. His court was forcibly closed. He yielded to violence
+and retired under protest, being escorted to the door of his house by
+an enormous multitude. There he dismissed his lictors and laid aside
+his official dress, that he might furnish no excuse for a charge
+against him of resisting the established authorities. The mob refused
+to be comforted. They gathered day after day. They clustered about the
+pontifical palace. They cried to Caesar to place himself at their head,
+that they might tear down the senate-house, and turn the caitiffs into
+the street. Caesar neither then nor ever lent himself to popular
+excesses. He reminded the citizens that if others broke the law, they
+must themselves set an example of obeying it, and he bade them return
+to their homes.
+
+Terrified at the state of the city, and penitent for their injustice to
+Caesar, the Senate hurriedly revoked their decree of deposition, sent a
+deputation to him to apologize, and invited him to resume his place
+among them. The extreme patrician section remained irreconcilable.
+Caesar complied, but only to find himself denounced again with
+passionate pertinacity as having been an accomplice of Catiline.
+Witnesses were produced, who swore to having seen his signature to a
+treasonable bond. Curius, Cicero's spy, declared that Catiline himself
+had told him that Caesar was one of the conspirators. Caesar treated
+the charge with indignant disdain. He appealed to Cicero's conscience,
+and Cicero was obliged to say that he had derived his earliest and most
+important information from Caesar himself. The most violent of his
+accusers were placed under arrest. The informers, after a near escape
+from being massacred by the crowd, were thrown into prison, and for the
+moment the furious heats were able to cool.
+
+All eyes were now turned to Pompey. The war in Asia was over. Pompey,
+it was clear, must now return to receive the thanks of his countrymen;
+and as he had triumphed in spite of the aristocracy, and as his
+victories could neither be denied nor undone, the best hope of the
+Senate was to win him over from the people, and to prevent a union
+between him and Caesar. Through all the recent dissensions Caesar had
+thrown his weight on Pompey's side. He, with Cicero, had urged Pompey's
+appointment to his successive commands. When Cicero went over to the
+patricians, Caesar had stood by Pompey's officers against the fury of
+the Senate. Caesar had the people behind him, and Pompey the army.
+Unless in some way an apple of discord could be thrown between them,
+the two favorites would overshadow the State, and the Senate's
+authority would be gone. Nothing could be done for the moment
+politically. Pompey owed his position to the democracy, and he was too
+great as yet to fear Caesar as a rival in the Commonwealth. On the
+personal side there was better hope. Caesar was as much admired in the
+world of fashion as he was detested in the Curia. He had no taste for
+the brutal entertainments and more brutal vices of male patrician
+society. He preferred the companionship of cultivated women, and the
+noble lords had the fresh provocation of finding their hated antagonist
+an object of adoration to their wives and daughters. Here, at any rate,
+scandal had the field to itself. Caesar was accused of criminal
+intimacy with many ladies of the highest rank, and Pompey was privately
+informed that his friend had taken advantage of his absence to seduce
+his wife, Mucia. Pompey was Agamemnon; Caesar had been Aegisthus; and
+Pompey was so far persuaded that Mucia had been unfaithful to him, that
+he divorced her before his return.
+
+Charges of this kind have the peculiar advantage that even when
+disproved or shown to be manifestly absurd, they leave a stain behind
+them. Careless equally of probability and decency, the leaders of the
+Senate sacrificed without scruple the reputation of their own relatives
+if only they could make Caesar odious. The name of Servilia has been
+mentioned already. Servilia was the sister of Marcus Cato and the
+mother of Marcus Brutus. She was a woman of remarkable ability and
+character, and between her and Caesar there was undoubtedly a close
+acquaintance and a strong mutual affection. The world discovered that
+she was Caesar's mistress, and that Brutus was his son. It might be
+enough to say that when Brutus was born Caesar was scarcely fifteen
+years old, and that, if a later intimacy existed between them, Brutus
+knew nothing of it or cared nothing for it. When he stabbed Caesar at
+last it was not as a Hamlet or an Orestes, but as a patriot sacrificing
+his dearest friend to his country. The same doubt extends to the other
+supposed victims of Caesar's seductiveness. Names were mentioned in the
+following century, but no particulars were given. For the most part his
+alleged mistresses were the wives of men who remained closely attached
+to him notwithstanding. The report of his intrigue with Mucia answered
+its immediate purpose, in producing a temporary coldness on Pompey's
+part toward Caesar; but Pompey must either have discovered the story to
+be false or else have condoned it, for soon afterward he married
+Caesar's daughter. Two points may be remarked about these legends:
+first, that on no single occasion does Caesar appear to have been
+involved in any trouble or quarrel on account of his love affairs; and
+secondly, that, with the exception of Brutus and of Cleopatra's
+Caesarion, whose claims to be Caesar's son were denied and disproved,
+there is no record of any illegitimate children as the result of these
+amours--a strange thing if Caesar was as liberal of his favors as
+popular scandal pretended. It would be idle to affect a belief that
+Caesar was particularly virtuous. He was a man of the world, living in
+an age as corrupt as has been ever known. It would be equally idle to
+assume that all the ink blots thrown upon him were certainly deserved,
+because we find them in books which we call classical. Proof deserving
+to be called proof there is none; and the only real evidence is the
+town talk of a society which feared and hated Caesar, and was glad of
+every pretext to injure him when alive, or to discredit him after his
+death. Similar stories have been spread, are spread, and will be spread
+of every man who raises himself a few inches above the level of his
+fellows. We know how it is with our contemporaries. A single seed of
+fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies, and
+sensible men pass such things by, and pay no attention to them. With
+history we are less careful or less charitable. An accusation of
+immorality is accepted without examination when brought against eminent
+persons who can no longer defend themselves, and to raise a doubt of
+its truth passes as a sign of a weak understanding. So let it be. It is
+certain that Caesar's contemporaries spread rumors of a variety of
+intrigues, in which they said that he was concerned. It is probable
+that some were well founded. It is possible that all were well founded.
+But it is no less indubitable that they rest on evidence which is not
+evidence at all, and that the most innocent intimacies would not have
+escaped misrepresentation from the venomous tongues of Roman society.
+Caesar comes into court with a fairer character than those whose
+virtues are thought to overshadow him. Marriage, which under the
+ancient Romans was the most sacred of ties, had become the lightest and
+the loosest. Cicero divorced Tereutia when she was old and
+ill-tempered, and married a young woman. Cato made over his Marcia, the
+mother of his children, to his friend Hortensius, and took her back as
+a wealthy widow when Hortensius died. Pompey put away his first wife at
+Sylla's bidding, and took a second who was already the wife of another
+man. Caesar, when little more than a boy, dared the Dictator's
+displeasure rather than condescend to a similar compliance. His worst
+enemies admitted that from the gluttony, the drunkenness, and the viler
+forms of sensuality, which were then so common, he was totally free.
+For the rest, it is certain that no friend ever permanently quarrelled
+with him on any question of domestic injury; and either there was a
+general indifference on such subjects, which lightens the character of
+the sin, or popular scandals in old Rome were of no sounder material
+than we find them composed of in other countries and in other times.
+
+Turning from scandal to reality, we come now to a curious incident,
+which occasioned a fresh political convulsion, where Caesar appears,
+not as an actor in an affair of gallantry, but as a sufferer.
+
+Pompey was still absent. Caesar had resumed his duties as praetor, and
+was living in the official house of the Pontifex Maximus, with his
+mother Aurelia and his wife Pompeia. The age was fertile of new
+religions. The worship of the Bona Dea, a foreign goddess of unknown
+origin, had recently been introduced into Rome, and an annual festival
+was held in her honor in the house of one or other of the principal
+magistrates. The Vestal virgins officiated at the ceremonies, and women
+only were permitted to be present. This year the pontifical palace was
+selected for the occasion, and Caesar's wife Pompeia was to preside.
+
+The reader may remember a certain youth named Clodius, who had been
+with Lucullus in Asia, and had been a chief instigator of the mutiny in
+his army. He was Lucullus's brother-in-law, a member of the Claudian
+family, a patrician of the patricians, and connected by blood and
+marriage with the proudest members of the Senate. If Cicero is to be
+believed, he had graduated even while a boy in every form of vice,
+natural and unnatural. He was bold, clever, unprincipled, and
+unscrupulous, with a slender diminutive figure and a delicate woman's
+face. His name was Clodius Pulcher. Cicero played upon it and called
+him Pulchellus Puer, "the pretty boy." Between this promising young man
+and Caesar's wife Pompeia there had sprung up an acquaintance, which
+Clodius was anxious to press to further extremes. Pompeia was difficult
+of access, her mother-in-law Aurelia keeping a strict watch over her;
+and Clodius, who was afraid of nothing, took advantage of the Bona Dea
+festival to make his way into Caesar's house dressed as a woman.
+Unfortunately for him, his disguise was detected. The insulted Vestals
+and the other ladies who were present flew upon him like the dogs of
+Actaeon, tore his borrowed garments from him, and drove him into the
+street naked and wounded. The adventure became known. It was mentioned
+in the Senate, and the College of Priests was ordered to hold an
+inquiry. The college found that Clodius had committed sacrilege, and
+the regular course in such cases was to send the offender to trial.
+There was general unwillingness, however, to treat this matter
+seriously. Clodius had many friends in the house, and even Cicero, who
+was inclined at first to be severe, took on reflection a more lenient
+view. Clodius had a sister, a light lady who, weary of her conquests
+over her fashionable admirers, had tried her fascinations on the great
+orator. He had escaped complete subjugation, but he had been flattered
+by the attention of the seductive beauty, and was ready to help her
+brother out of his difficulty. Clodius was not yet the dangerous
+desperado which he afterward became; and immorality, though seasoned
+with impiety, might easily, it was thought, be made too much of. Caesar
+himself did not press for punishment. As president of the college, he
+had acquiesced in their decision, and he divorced the unfortunate
+Pompeia; but he expressed no opinion as to the extent of her
+criminality, and he gave as his reason for separating from her, not
+that she was guilty, but that Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.
+
+Cato, however, insisted on a prosecution. Messala, one of the consuls,
+was equally peremptory. The hesitation was regarded by the stricter
+senators as a scandal to the order; and in spite of the efforts of the
+second consul Piso, who was a friend of Clodius, it was decided that a
+bill for his indictment should be submitted to the assembly in the
+Forum. Clodius, it seems, was generally popular. No political question
+was raised by the proceedings against him; for the present his offence
+was merely a personal one; the wreck of Catiline's companions, the
+dissolute young aristocrats, the loose members of all ranks and
+classes, took up the cause, and gathered to support their favorite,
+with young Curio, whom Cicero called in mockery _Filiola_, at their
+head. The approaches to the Forum were occupied by them. Piso, by whom
+the bill was introduced, himself advised the people to reject it. Cato
+flew to the Rostra and railed at the consul. Hortensius, the orator,
+and many others spoke on the same side. It appeared at last that the
+people were divided, and would consent to the bill being passed, if it
+was recommended to them by both the consuls. Again, therefore, the
+matter was referred to the Senate. One of the tribunes introduced
+Clodius, that he might speak for himself. Cicero had now altered his
+mind, and was in favor of the prosecution.
+
+[Sidenote: February, B.C. 61.] The "pretty youth" was alternately
+humble and violent, begging pardon, and then bursting into abuse of his
+brother-in-law, Lucullus, and more particularly of Cicero, whom he
+suspected of being the chief promoter of the proceedings against him.
+When it came to a division, the Senate voted by a majority of four
+hundred to fifteen that the consuls must recommend the bill. Piso gave
+way, and the tribune also who had been in Clodius's favor. The people
+were satisfied, and a court of fifty-six judges was appointed, before
+whom the trial was to take place. It seemed that a conviction must
+necessarily follow, for there was no question about the facts, which
+were all admitted. There was some manoeuvring, however, in the
+constitution of the court, which raised Cicero's suspicions. The
+judges, instead of being selected by the praetor, were chosen by lot,
+and the prisoner was allowed to challenge as many names as he pleased.
+The result was that in Cicero's opinion a more scandalous set of
+persons than those who were finally sworn were never collected round a
+gaming table--"disgraced senators, bankrupt knights, disreputable
+tribunes of the treasury, the few honest men that were left appearing
+to be ashamed of their company"--and Cicero considered that it would
+have been better if Hortensius, who was prosecuting, had withdrawn, and
+had left Clodius to be condemned by the general sense of respectable
+people, rather than risk the credit of Roman justice before so
+scandalous a tribunal.[1] Still the case as it proceeded appeared so
+clear as to leave no hope of an acquittal. Clodius's friends were in
+despair, and were meditating an appeal to the mob. The judges, on the
+evening of the first day of the trial, as if they had already decided
+on a verdict of guilty, applied for a guard to protect them while they
+delivered it. The Senate complimented them in giving their consent.
+With a firm expectation present in all men's minds the second morning
+dawned. Even in Rome, accustomed as it was to mockeries of justice,
+public opinion was shocked when the confident anticipation was
+disappointed. According to Cicero, Marcus Crassus, for reasons known to
+himself, had been interested in Clodius. During the night he sent for
+the judges one by one. He gave them money. What else he either gave or
+promised them, must continue veiled in Cicero's Latin.[2] Before these
+influences the resolution of the judges melted away, and when the time
+came, thirty-one out of fifty-six high-born Roman peers and gentlemen
+declared Clodius innocent.
+
+The original cause was nothing. That a profligate young man should
+escape punishment for a licentious frolic was comparatively of no
+consequence; but the trial acquired a notoriety of infamy which shook
+once more the already tottering constitution.
+
+"Why did you ask for a guard?" old Catulus growled to the judges: "was
+it that the money you have received might not be taken from you?"
+
+"Such is the history of this affair," Cicero wrote to his friend
+Atticus. "We thought that the foundation of the Commonwealth had been
+surely re-established in my consulship, all orders of good men being
+happily united. You gave the praise to me and I to the gods; and now
+unless some god looks favorably on us, all is lost in this single
+judgment. Thirty Romans have been found to trample justice under foot
+for a bribe, and to declare an act not to have been committed, about
+which not only not a man, but not a beast of the field, can entertain
+the smallest doubt."
+
+Cato threatened the judges with impeachment; Cicero stormed in the
+Senate, rebuked the consul Piso, and lectured Clodius in a speech which
+he himself admired exceedingly. The "pretty boy" in reply taunted
+Cicero with wishing to make himself a king. Cicero rejoined with asking
+Clodius about a man named "King," whose estates he had appropriated,
+and reminded him of a misadventure among the pirates, from which he had
+come off with nameless ignominy. Neither antagonist very honorably
+distinguished himself in this encounter of wit. The Senate voted at
+last for an inquiry into the judges' conduct; but an inquiry only added
+to Cicero's vexation, for his special triumph had been, as he
+conceived, the union of the Senate with the equites; and the equites
+took the resolution as directed against themselves, and refused to be
+consoled.[3]
+
+Caesar had been absent during these scenes. His term of office having
+expired, he had been despatched as propraetor to Spain, where the ashes
+of the Sertorian rebellion were still smouldering; and he had started
+for his province while the question of Clodius's trial was still
+pending. Portugal and Gallicia were still unsubdued. Bands of robbers
+lay everywhere in the fastnesses of the mountain ranges. Caesar was
+already favorably known in Spain for his service as quaestor. He now
+completed the conquest of the peninsula. He put down the banditti. He
+reorganized the administration with the rapid skill which always so
+remarkably distinguished him. He sent home large sums of money to the
+treasury. His work was done quickly, but it was done completely. He
+nowhere left an unsound spot unprobed. He never contented himself with
+the superficial healing of a wound which would break out again when he
+was gone. What he began he finished, and left it in need of no further
+surgery. As his reward, he looked for a triumph, and the consulship,
+one or both; and the consulship he knew could not well be refused to
+him, unwelcome as it would be to the Senate.
+
+Pompey meanwhile was at last coming back. All lesser luminaries shone
+faint before the sun of Pompey, the subduer of the pirates, the
+conqueror of Asia, the glory of the Roman name. Even Cicero had feared
+that the fame of the saviour of his country might pale before the
+lustre of the great Pompey. "I used to be in alarm," he confessed with
+naive simplicity, "that six hundred years hence the merits of
+Sampsiceramus[4] might seem to have been more than mine." [5] But how
+would Pompey appear? Would he come at the head of his army, like Sylla,
+the armed soldier of the democracy, to avenge the affront upon his
+officers, to reform the State, to punish the Senate for the murder of
+the Catiline conspirators? Pompey had no such views, and no capacity
+for such ambitious operations. The ground had been prepared beforehand.
+The Mucia story had perhaps done its work, and the Senate and the great
+commander were willing to meet each other, at least with outward
+friendliness.
+
+His successes had been brilliant; but they were due rather to his
+honesty than to his military genius. He had encountered no real
+resistance, and Cato had sneered at his exploits as victories over
+women. He had put down the buccaneers, because he had refused to be
+bribed by them. He had overthrown Mithridates and had annexed Asia
+Minor and Syria to the Roman dominions. Lucullus could have done it as
+easily as his successor, if he could have turned his back upon
+temptations to increase his own fortune or gratify his own passions.
+The wealth of the East had lain at Pompey's feet, and he had not
+touched it. He had brought millions into the treasury. He returned, as
+he had gone out, himself moderately provided for, and had added nothing
+to his private income. He understood, and practised strictly, the
+common rules of morality. He detested dishonesty and injustice. But he
+had no political insight; and if he was ambitious, it was with the
+innocent vanity which desires, and is content with, admiration. In the
+time of the Scipios he would have lived in an atmosphere of universal
+applause, and would have died in honor with an unblemished name. In the
+age of Clodius and Catiline he was the easy dupe of men of stronger
+intellect than his own, who played upon his unsuspicious integrity. His
+delay in coming back had arisen chiefly from anxiety for his personal
+safety. He was eager to be reconciled to the Senate, yet without
+deserting the people. While in Asia, he had reassured Cicero that
+nothing was to be feared from him.[6] His hope was to find friends on
+all sides and in all parties, and he thought that he had deserved their
+friendship.
+
+[Sidenote: December, B.C. 62.] Thus when Pompey landed at Brindisi his
+dreaded legions were disbanded, and he proceeded to the Capitol, with a
+train of captive princes, as the symbols of his victories, and wagons
+loaded with treasure as an offering to his country. He was received as
+he advanced with the shouts of applauding multitudes. He entered Rome
+in a galaxy of glory. A splendid column commemorated the cities which
+he had taken, the twelve million human beings whom he had slain or
+subjected. His triumph was the most magnificent which the Roman
+citizens had ever witnessed, and by special vote he was permitted to
+wear his triumphal robe in the Senate as often and as long as might
+please him. The fireworks over, and with the aureole of glory about his
+brow, the great Pompey, like another Samson shorn of his locks, dropped
+into impotence and insignificance. In February, 61, during the debate
+on the Clodius affair, he made his first speech in the Senate. Cicero,
+listening with malicious satisfaction, reported that "Pompey gave no
+pleasure to the wretched; to the bad he seemed without backbone; he was
+not agreeable to the well-to-do; the wise and good found him wanting in
+substance;" [7] in short, the speech was a failure. Pompey applied for
+a second consulship. He was reminded that he had been consul eight
+years previously, and that the ten years' interval prescribed by Sylla,
+between the first and the second term, had not expired. He asked for
+lands for his soldiers, and for the ratification of his acts in Asia.
+Cato opposed the first request, as likely to lead to another agrarian
+law. Lucullus, who was jealous of him, raised difficulties about the
+second, and thwarted him with continual delays.
+
+[Sidenote: February 1, B.C. 60.] Pompey, being a poor speaker, thus
+found himself entirely helpless in the new field. Cicero, being
+relieved of fear from him as a rival, was wise enough to see that the
+collapse might not continue, and that his real qualities might again
+bring him to the front. The Clodius business had been a frightful
+scandal, and, smooth as the surface might seem, ugly cracks were
+opening all round the constitution. The disbanded legions were
+impatient for their farms. The knights, who were already offended with
+the Senate for having thrown the disgrace of the Clodius trial upon
+them, had a fresh and more substantial grievance. The leaders of the
+order had contracted to farm the revenues in Asia. They found that the
+terms which they had offered were too high, and they claimed an
+abatement, which the Senate refused to allow. The Catiline conspiracy
+should have taught the necessity of a vigorous administration.
+Caecilius Metellus and Lucius Afranius, who had been chosen consuls for
+the year 60, were mere nothings. Metellus was a vacant aristocrat,[8]
+to be depended on for resisting popular demands, but without insight
+otherwise; the second, Afranius, was a person "on whom only a
+philosopher could look without a groan;" [9] and one year more might
+witness the consulship of Caesar. "I have not a friend," Cicero wrote,
+"to whom I can express my real thoughts. Things cannot long stand as
+they are. I have been vehement: I have put out all my strength in the
+hope of mending matters and healing our disorders, but we will not
+endure the necessary medicine. The seat of justice has been publicly
+debauched. Resolutions are introduced against corruption, but no law
+can be carried. The knights are alienated. The Senate has lost its
+authority. The concord of the orders is gone, and the pillars of the
+Commonwealth which I set up are overthrown. We have not a statesman, or
+the shadow of one. My friend Pompey, who might have done something,
+sits silent, admiring his fine clothes.[10] Crassus will say nothing to
+make himself unpopular, and the rest are such idiots as to hope that
+although the constitution fall they will save their own fish-ponds.[11]
+Cato, the best man that we have, is more honest than wise. For these
+three months he has been worrying the revenue farmers, and will not let
+the Senate satisfy them." [12]
+
+It was time for Cicero to look about him. The Catiline affair was not
+forgotten. He might still be called to answer for the executions, and
+he felt that he required some stronger support than an aristocracy, who
+would learn nothing and seemed to be bent on destroying themselves. In
+letter after letter he pours out his contempt for his friends "of the
+fish-ponds," as he called them, who would neither mend their ways nor
+let others mend them. He would not desert them altogether, but he
+provided for contingencies. The tribunes had taken up the cause of
+Pompey's legionaries. Agrarian laws were threatened, and Pompey himself
+was most eager to see his soldiers satisfied. Cicero, who had hitherto
+opposed an agrarian law with all his violence, discovered now that
+something might be said in favor of draining "the sink of the city"
+[13] and repeopling Italy. Besides the public advantage, he felt that
+he would please the mortified but still popular Pompey; and he lent his
+help in the Senate to improving a bill introduced by the tribunes, and
+endeavoring, though unsuccessfully, to push it through.
+
+[Sidenote: July, B.C. 60.] So grateful was Pompey for Cicero's support
+that he called him, in the Senate, "the saviour of the world."
+[14]Cicero was delighted with the phrase, and began to look to Pompey
+as a convenient ally. He thought that he could control and guide him
+and use his popularity for moderate measures. Nay, even in his despair
+of the aristocracy, he began to regard as not impossible a coalition
+with Caesar. "You caution me about Pompey," he wrote to Atticus in the
+following July. "Do not suppose that I am attaching myself to him for
+my own protection; but the state of things is such, that if we two
+disagree the worst misfortunes may be feared. I make no concessions to
+him, I seek to make him better, and to cure him of his popular levity;
+and now he speaks more highly by far of my actions than of his own. He
+has merely done well, he says, while I have saved the State. However
+this may affect me, it is certainly good for the Commonwealth. What if
+I can make Caesar better also, who is now coming on with wind and tide?
+Will that be so bad a thing? Even if I had no enemies, if I was
+supported as universally as I ought to be, still a medicine which will
+cure the diseased parts of the State is better than the surgery which
+would amputate them. The knights have fallen off from the Senate. The
+noble lords think they are in heaven when they have barbel in their
+ponds that will eat out of their hands, and they leave the rest to
+fate. You cannot love Cato more than I love him, but he does harm with
+the best intentions. He speaks as if he was in Plato's Republic,
+instead of being in the dregs of that of Romulus. Most true that
+corrupt judges ought to be punished! Cato proposed it, the Senate
+agreed; but the knights have declared war upon the Senate. Most
+insolent of the revenue farmers to throw up their contract! Cato
+resisted them, and carried his point; but now when seditions break out,
+the knights will not lift a finger to repress them. Are we to hire
+mercenaries? Are we to depend on our slaves and freedmen?.... But
+enough."[15]
+
+[Sidenote: October, B.C. 60.] [Sidenote: November, B.C. 60.] Cicero
+might well despair of a Senate who had taken Cato to lead them. Pompey
+had come home in the best of dispositions. The Senate had offended
+Pompey, and, more than that, had offended his legionaries. They had
+quarrelled with the knights. They had quarrelled with the moneyed
+interests. They now added an entirely gratuitous affront to Caesar. His
+Spanish administration was admitted by every one to have been
+admirable. He was coming to stand for the consulship, which could not
+be refused; but he asked for a triumph also, and as the rule stood
+there was a difficulty, for if he was to have a triumph, he must remain
+outside the walls till the day fixed for it, and if he was a candidate
+for office, he must be present in person on the day of the election.
+The custom, though convenient in itself, had been more than once set
+aside. Caesar applied to the Senate for a dispensation, which would
+enable him to be a candidate in his absence; and Cato, either from mere
+dislike of Caesar or from a hope that he might prefer vanity to
+ambition, and that the dreaded consulship might be escaped, persuaded
+the Senate to refuse. If this was the expectation, it was disappointed.
+Caesar dropped his triumph, came home, and went through the usual
+forms, and it at once appeared that his election was certain, and that
+every powerful influence in the State was combined in his favor. From
+Pompey he met the warmest reception. The Mucia bubble had burst. Pompey
+saw in Caesar only the friend who had stood by him in every step of his
+later career, and had braved the fury of the Senate at the side of his
+officer Metellus Nepos. Equally certain it was that Caesar, as a
+soldier, would interest himself for Pompey's legionaries, and that they
+could be mutually useful to each other. Caesar had the people at his
+back, and Pompey had the army. The third great power in Rome was that
+of the capitalists, and about the attitude of these there was at first
+some uncertainty. Crassus, who was the impersonation of them, was a
+friend of Caesar, but had been on bad terms with Pompey. Caesar,
+however, contrived to reconcile them; and thus all parties outside the
+patrician circle were combined for a common purpose. Could Cicero have
+taken his place frankly at their side, as his better knowledge told him
+to do, the inevitable revolution might have been accomplished without
+bloodshed, and the course of history have been different. Caesar wished
+it. But it was not so to be. Cicero perhaps found that he would have to
+be content with a humbler position than he had anticipated, that in
+such a combination he would have to follow rather than to lead. He was
+tempted. He saw a promise of peace, safety, influence, if not absolute,
+yet considerable. But he could not bring himself to sacrifice the proud
+position which he had won for himself in his consulship, as leader of
+the Conservatives; and he still hoped to reign in the Senate, while
+using the protection of the popular chiefs as a shelter in time of
+storms. Caesar was chosen consul without opposition. His party was so
+powerful that it seemed at one time as if he could name his colleague,
+but the Senate succeeded with desperate efforts in securing the second
+place. They subscribed money profusely, the immaculate Cato prominent
+among them. The machinery of corruption was well in order. The great
+nobles commanded the votes of their _clientele_, and they succeeded in
+giving Caesar the same companion who had accompanied him through the
+aedileship and the praetorship, Marcus Bibulus, a dull, obstinate fool,
+who could be relied on, if for nothing else, yet for dogged resistance
+to every step which the Senate disapproved. For the moment they
+appeared to have thought that with Bibulus's help they might defy
+Caesar and reduce his office to a nullity. Immediately on the election
+of the consuls, it was usual to determine the provinces to which they
+were to be appointed when their consulate should expire. The regulation
+lay with the Senate, and, either in mere spleen or to prevent Caesar
+from having the command of an army, they allotted him the department of
+the "Woods and Forests." [16] A very few weeks had to pass before they
+discovered that they had to do with a man who was not to be turned
+aside so slightingly.
+
+Hitherto Caesar had been feared and hated, but his powers were rather
+suspected than understood. As the nephew of Marius and the son-in-law
+of Cinna, he was the natural chief of the party which had once governed
+Rome and had been trampled under the hoof of Sylla. He had shown on
+many occasions that he had inherited his uncle's principles, and could
+be daring and skilful in asserting them. But he had held carefully
+within the constitutional lines; he had kept himself clear of
+conspiracies; he had never, like the Gracchi, put himself forward as a
+tribune or attempted the part of a popular agitator. When he had
+exerted himself in the political world of Rome, it had been to maintain
+the law against violence, to resist and punish encroachments of
+arbitrary power, or to rescue the Empire from being gambled away by
+incapable or profligate aristocrats. Thus he had gathered for himself
+the animosity of the fashionable upper classes and the confidence of
+the body of the people. But what he would do in power, or what it was
+in him to do, was as yet merely conjectural.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 50.] At all events, after an interval of a generation
+there was again a popular consul, and on every side there was a harvest
+of iniquities ready for the sickle. Sixty years had passed since the
+death of the younger Gracchus; revolution after revolution had swept
+over the Commonwealth, and Italy was still as Tiberius Gracchus had
+found it. The Gracchan colonists had disappeared. The Syllan military
+proprietors had disappeared--one by one they had fallen to beggary, and
+had sold their holdings, and again the country was parcelled into
+enormous estates cultivated by slave-gangs. The Italians had been
+emancipated, but the process had gone no further. The libertini, the
+sons of the freedmen, still waited for equality of rights. The rich and
+prosperous provinces beyond the Po remained unenfranchised, while the
+value of the franchise itself was daily diminishing as the Senate
+resumed its control over the initiative of legislation. Each year the
+elections became more corrupt. The Clodius judgment had been the most
+frightful instance which had yet occurred of the depravity of the law
+courts; while, by Cicero's own admission, not a single measure could
+pass beyond discussion into act which threatened the interests of the
+oligarchy. The consulship of Caesar was looked to with hope from the
+respectable part of the citizens, with alarm from the high-born
+delinquents as a period of genuine reform. The new consuls were to
+enter office on the 1st of January. In December it was known that an
+agrarian law would be at once proposed under plea of providing for
+Pompey's troops; and Cicero had to decide whether he would act in
+earnest in the spirit which he had begun to show when the tribunes'
+bill was under discussion, or would fall back upon resistance with the
+rest of his party, or evade the difficult dilemma by going on foreign
+service, or else would simply absent himself from Rome while the
+struggle was going on. "I may either resist," he said, "and there will
+be an honorable fight; or I may do nothing, and withdraw into the
+country, which will be honorable also; or I may give active help, which
+I am told Caesar expects of me. His friend, Cornelius Balbus, who was
+with me lately, affirms that Caesar will be guided in everything by my
+advice and Pompey's, and will use his endeavor to bring Pompey and
+Crassus together. Such a course has its advantages; it will draw me
+closely to Pompey and, if I please, to Caesar. I shall have no more to
+fear from my enemies. I shall be at peace with the people. I can look
+to quiet in my old age. But the lines still move me which conclude the
+third book (of my Poem on my consulship): 'Hold to the track on which
+thou enteredst in thy early youth, which thou pursuedst as consul so
+valorously and bravely. Increase thy fame, and seek the praise of the
+good.'" [17]
+
+It had been proposed to send Cicero on a mission to Egypt. "I should
+like well, and I have long wished," he said, "to see Alexandria and the
+rest of that country. They have had enough of me here at present, and
+they may wish for me when I am away. But to go now, and to go on a
+commission from Caesar and Pompey!
+
+                                I should blush
+  To face the men and long-robed dames of Troy.[18]
+
+What will our optimates say, if we have any optimates left? Polydamas
+will throw in my teeth that I have been bribed by the opposition--I
+mean Cato, who is one out of a hundred thousand to me. What will
+history say of me six hundred years hence? I am more afraid of that
+than of the chatter of my contemporaries."[19]
+
+So Cicero meditated, thinking as usual of himself first and of his duty
+afterward--the fatalest of all courses then and always.
+
+
+[1] "Si causam quaeris absolutionis, egestas judicum fuit et turpitudo....
+    Non vidit (Hortensius) satius esse illum in infamia relinqui ac
+    sordibus quam infirmo judicio committi."--_To Atticus_, i. 16.
+
+[2] "Jam vero, oh Dii Boni! rem perditam! etiam noctes certarum mulierum,
+    atque _adolescentulorum nobilium_ introductiones nonnullis
+    judicibus pro mercedis cumulo fuerunt."--_Ad Atticum_, i. 16.
+
+[3] "Nos hic in republica infirma, misera commutabilique versamur. Credo
+    enim te audisse, nostros equites paene a senatu esse disjunctos; qui
+    primum illud valde graviter tulerund, promulgatum ex senatus consulto
+    fuisse, ut de iis, qui ob judicaudum pecuniam accepissent queareretur.
+    Qua in re decernenda cum ego casu non affuissem, sensissemque id
+    equestrem ordinem ferre moleste, neque aperte dicere: objurgavi
+    senatum, ut mihi visus sum, summa cum auctoritate, et in causa non
+    verecunda admodum gravis et copiosus fui."--_To Atticus_, i. 17.
+
+[4] A nickname under which Cicero often speaks of Pompey.
+
+[5] "Solebat enim me pungere, ne Sampsicerami merita in patriam ad annos
+    DC majora viderentur, quam nostra."--_To Atticus_, ii. 17.
+
+[6] "Pompeius nobis amicissimus esse constat."--_To Atticus_, i. 13.
+
+[7] "Non jucunda miseris, inanis improbis, beatis non grata, bonis non
+    gravis. Itaque frigebat."--_To Atticus_, i. 14.
+
+[8] "Metellus non homo, sed litus atque aer, et solitudo mera."--_To
+    Atticus_, i. 18.
+
+[9] "Consul est impositus is nobis, quem nemo, praeter nos philosophos,
+    aspicere sine suspiratu potest."--_Ib_. i. 18.
+
+[10] "Pompeius togulam illam pictam silentio tuetur suam."--_Ib_.
+    The "picta togula" means the triumphal robe which Pompey was allowed
+    to wear.
+
+[11] "Ceteros jam nosti; qui ita sunt stulti, ut amissa republica piscinas
+    suas fore salvas sperare videantur."--_Ib_.
+
+[12] _Ib_., abridged.
+
+[13] "Sentinam urbis," a worse word than he had blamed in Rullus three
+    years before.--_To Atticus_, i. 19.
+
+[14] "Pompeium adduxi in eam voluntatem, ut in Senatu non semel, sed
+    saepe, multisque verbis, hujus mihi salutem imperii atque orbis
+    terrarum adjudicarit."--_ib_.
+
+[15] _To Atticus_, ii. 1, abridged.
+
+[16] _Silvae Callesque_--to which "woods and forests" is a near
+    equivalent.
+
+[17] "Interea cursus, quos prima a parte juventae,
+    Quosque ideo consul virtute animoque petisti,
+    Hos retine atquae auge famam laudesque bonorum."
+    _To Atticus_, ii. 3.
+
+[18] Iliad, vi. 442. Lord Derby's translation.
+
+[19] _To Atticus_, ii. 5.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The consulship of Caesar was the last chance for the Roman aristocracy.
+He was not a revolutionist. Revolutions are the last desperate remedy
+when all else has failed. They may create as many evils as they cure,
+and wise men always hate them. But if revolution was to be escaped,
+reform was inevitable, and it was for the Senate to choose between the
+alternatives. Could the noble lords have known then, in that their day,
+the things that belonged to their peace--could they have forgotten
+their fish-ponds and their game-preserves, and have remembered that, as
+the rulers of the civilized world, they had duties which the eternal
+order of nature would exact at their hands--the shaken constitution
+might again have regained its stability, and the forms and even the
+reality of the Republic might have continued for another century. It
+was not to be. Had the Senate been capable of using the opportunity,
+they would long before have undertaken a reformation for themselves.
+Even had their eyes been opened, there were disintegrating forces at
+work which the highest political wisdom could do no more than arrest;
+and little good is really effected by prolonging artificially the lives
+of either constitutions or individuals beyond their natural period.
+From the time when Rome became an empire, mistress of provinces to
+which she was unable to extend her own liberties, the days of her
+self-government were numbered. A homogeneous and vigorous people may
+manage their own affairs under a popular constitution so long as their
+personal characters remain undegenerate. Parliaments and Senates may
+represent the general will of the community, and may pass laws and
+administer them as public sentiment approves. But such bodies can
+preside successfully only among subjects who are directly represented
+in them. They are too ignorant, too selfish, too divided, to govern
+others; and imperial aspirations draw after them, by obvious necessity,
+an imperial rule. Caesar may have known this in his heart, yet the most
+far-seeing statesman will not so trust his own misgivings as to refuse
+to hope for the regeneration of the institutions into which he is born.
+He will determine that justice shall be done. Justice is the essence of
+government, and without justice all forms, democratic or monarchic, are
+tyrannies alike. But he will work with the existing methods till the
+inadequacy of them has been proved beyond dispute. Constitutions are
+never overthrown till they have pronounced sentence on themselves.
+
+Caesar accordingly commenced office by an endeavor to conciliate. The
+army and the moneyed interests, represented by Pompey and Crassus, were
+already with him; and he used his endeavors, as has been seen, to gain
+Cicero, who might bring with him such part of the landed aristocracy as
+were not hopelessly incorrigible. With Cicero he but partially
+succeeded. The great orator solved the problem of the situation by
+going away into the country and remaining there for the greater part of
+the year, and Caesar had to do without an assistance which, in the
+speaking department, would have been invaluable to him. His first step
+was to order the publication of the "Acta Diurna," a daily journal of
+the doings of the Senate. The light of day being thrown in upon that
+august body might prevent honorable members from laying hands on each
+other as they had lately done, and might enable the people to know what
+was going on among them--on a better authority than rumor. He then
+introduced his agrarian law, the rough draft of which had been already
+discussed, and had been supported by Cicero in the preceding year. Had
+he meant to be defiant, like the Gracchi, he might have offered it at
+once to the people. Instead of doing so, he laid it before the Senate,
+inviting them to amend his suggestions, and promising any reasonable
+concessions if they would co-operate. No wrong was to be done to any
+existing occupiers. No right of property was to be violated which was
+any real right at all. Large tracts in Campania which belonged to the
+State were now held on the usual easy terms by great landed patricians.
+These Caesar proposed to buy out, and to settle on the ground twenty
+thousand of Pompey's veterans. There was money enough and to spare in
+the treasury, which they had themselves brought home. Out of the large
+funds which would still remain land might be purchased in other parts
+of Italy for the rest, and for a few thousand of the unemployed
+population which was crowded into Rome. The measure in itself was
+admitted to be a moderate one. Every pains had been taken to spare the
+interests and to avoid hurting the susceptibilities of the aristocrats.
+But, as Cicero said, the very name of an agrarian law was intolerable
+to them. It meant in the end spoliation and division of property, and
+the first step would bring others after it. The public lands they had
+shared conveniently among themselves from immemorial time. The public
+treasure was their treasure, to be laid out as they might think proper.
+Cato headed the opposition. He stormed for an entire day, and was so
+violent that Caesar threatened him with arrest. The Senate groaned and
+foamed; no progress was made or was likely to be made; and Caesar, as
+much in earnest as they were, had to tell them that if they would not
+help him he must appeal to the assembly. "I invited you to revise the
+law," he said; "I was willing that if any clause displeased you it
+should be expunged. You will not touch it. Well, then, the people must
+decide."
+
+The Senate had made up their minds to fight the battle. If Caesar went
+to the assembly, Bibulus, their second consul, might stop the
+proceedings. If this seemed too extreme a step, custom provided other
+impediments to which recourse might be had. Bibulus might survey the
+heavens, watch the birds, or the clouds, or the direction of the wind,
+and declare the aspects unfavorable; or he might proclaim day after day
+to be holy, and on holy days no legislation was permitted. Should these
+religious cobwebs be brushed away, the Senate had provided a further
+resource in three of the tribunes whom they had bribed. Thus they held
+themselves secure, and dared Caesar to do his worst. Caesar on his side
+was equally determined. The assembly was convoked. The Forum was choked
+to overflowing. Caesar and Pompey stood on the steps of the Temple of
+Castor, and Bibulus and his tribunes were at hand ready with their
+interpellations. Such passions had not been roused in Rome since the
+days of Cinna and Octavius, and many a young lord was doubtless hoping
+that the day would not close without another lesson to ambitious
+demagogues and howling mobs. In their eyes the one reform which Rome
+needed was another Sylla.
+
+Caesar read his law from the tablet on which it was inscribed; and,
+still courteous to his antagonist, he turned to Bibulus and asked him
+if he had any fault to find. Bibulus said sullenly that he wanted no
+revolutions, and that while he was consul there should be none. The
+people hissed; and he then added in a rage, "You shall not have your
+law this year though every man of you demand it." Caesar answered
+nothing, but Pompey and Crassus stood forward. They were not officials,
+but they were real forces. Pompey was the idol of every soldier in the
+State, and at Caesar's invitation he addressed the assembly. He spoke
+for his veterans. He spoke for the poor citizens. He said that he
+approved the law to the last letter of it.
+
+"Will you then," asked Caesar, "support the law if it be illegally
+opposed?" "Since," replied Pompey, "you consul, and you my
+fellow-citizens, ask aid of me, a poor individual without office and
+without authority, who nevertheless has done some service to the State,
+I say that I will bear the shield if others draw the sword." Applause
+rang out from a hundred thousand throats. Crassus followed to the same
+purpose, and was received with the same wild delight. A few senators,
+who retained their senses, saw the uselessness of the opposition, and
+retired. Bibulus was of duller and tougher metal. As the vote was about
+to be taken, he and his tribunes rushed to the rostra. The tribunes
+pronounced their veto. Bibulus said that he had consulted the sky; the
+gods forbade further action being taken that day, and he declared the
+assembly dissolved. Nay, as if a man like Caesar could be stopped by a
+shadow, he proposed to sanctify the whole remainder of the year, that
+no further business might be transacted in it. Yells drowned his voice.
+The mob rushed upon the steps; Bibulus was thrown down, and the rods of
+the lictors were broken; the tribunes who had betrayed their order were
+beaten. Cato held his ground, and stormed at Caesar till he was led off
+by the police, raving and gesticulating. The law was then passed, and a
+resolution besides that every senator should take an oath to obey it.
+
+So in ignominy the Senate's resistance collapsed: the Caesar whom they
+had thought to put off with their "woods and forests" had proved
+stronger than the whole of them; and, prostrate at the first round of
+the battle, they did not attempt another. They met the following
+morning. Bibulus told his story and appealed for support. Had the
+Senate complied, they would probably have ceased to exist. The oath was
+unpalatable, but they made the best of it. Metellus Celer, Cato, and
+Favonius, a senator whom men called Cato's ape, struggled against their
+fate, but, "swearing they would ne'er consent, consented." The
+unwelcome formula was swallowed by the whole of them; and Bibulus, who
+had done his part and had been beaten and kicked and trampled upon, and
+now found his employers afraid to stand by him, went off sulkily to his
+house, shut himself up there, and refused to act as consul further
+during the remainder of the year.
+
+There was no further active opposition. A commission was appointed by
+Caesar to carry out the land act, composed of twenty of the best men
+that could be found, one of them being Atius Balbus, the husband of
+Caesar's only sister, and grandfather of a little child now three years
+old, who was known afterward to the world as Augustus. Cicero was
+offered a place, but declined. The land question having been disposed
+of, Caesar then proceeded with the remaining measures by which his
+consulship was immortalized. He had redeemed his promise to Pompey by
+providing for his soldiers. He gratified Crassus by giving the desired
+relief to the farmers of the taxes. He confirmed Pompey's arrangements
+for the government of Asia, which the Senate had left in suspense. The
+Senate was now itself suspended. The consul acted directly with the
+assembly, without obstruction and without remonstrance, Bibulus only
+from time to time sending out monotonous admonitions from within doors
+that the season was consecrated, and that Caesar's acts had no
+validity. Still more remarkably, and as the distinguishing feature of
+his term of office, Caesar carried, with the help of the people, the
+body of admirable laws which are known to jurists as the "Leges
+Juliae," and mark an epoch in Roman history. They were laws as
+unwelcome to the aristocracy as they were essential to the continued
+existence of the Roman State, laws which had been talked of in the
+Senate, but which could never pass through the preliminary stage of
+resolutions, and were now enacted over the Senate's head by the will of
+Caesar and the sovereign power of the nation. A mere outline can alone
+be attempted here. There was a law declaring the inviolability of the
+persons of magistrates during their term of authority, reflecting back
+on the murder of Saturninus, and touching by implication the killing of
+Lentulus and his companions. There was a law for the punishment of
+adultery, most disinterestedly singular if the popular accounts of
+Caesar's habits had any grain of truth in them. There were laws for the
+protection of the subject from violence, public or private; and laws
+disabling persons who had laid hands illegally on Roman citizens from
+holding office in the Commonwealth. There was a law, intended at last
+to be effective, to deal with judges who allowed themselves to be
+bribed. There were laws against defrauders of the revenue; laws against
+debasing the coin; laws against sacrilege; laws against corrupt State
+contracts; laws against bribery at elections. Finally, there was a law,
+carefully framed, _De repetundis_, to exact retribution from proconsuls
+or propraetors of the type of Verres who had plundered the provinces.
+All governors were required, on relinquishing office, to make a double
+return of their accounts, one to remain for inspection among the
+archives of the province, and one to be sent to Rome; and where
+peculation or injustice could be proved, the offender's estate was made
+answerable to the last sesterce.[1]
+
+Such laws were words only without the will to execute them; but they
+affirmed the principles on which Roman or any other society could alone
+continue. It was for the officials of the constitution to adopt them,
+and save themselves and the Republic, or to ignore them as they had
+ignored the laws which already existed, and see it perish as it
+deserved. All that man could do for the preservation of his country
+from revolution Caesar had accomplished. Sylla had re-established the
+rule of the aristocracy, and it had failed grossly and disgracefully.
+Cinna and Marius had tried democracy, and that had failed. Caesar was
+trying what law would do, and the result remained to be seen. Bibulus,
+as each measure was passed, croaked that it was null and void. The
+leaders of the Senate threatened between their teeth that all should be
+undone when Caesar's term was over. Cato, when he mentioned the "Leges
+Juliae," spoke of them as enactments, but refused them their author's
+name. But the excellence of these laws was so clearly recognized that
+they survived the irregularity of their introduction; and the "Lex de
+Repetundis" especially remained a terror to evil-doers, with a promise
+of better days to the miserable and pillaged subjects of the Roman
+Empire.
+
+So the year of Caesar's consulship passed away. What was to happen when
+it had expired? The Senate had provided "the woods and forests" for
+him. But the Senate's provision in such a matter could not be expected
+to hold. He asked for nothing, but he was known to desire an
+opportunity of distinguished service. Caesar was now forty-three. His
+life was ebbing away, and, with the exception of his two years in
+Spain, it had been spent in struggling with the base elements of Roman
+faction. Great men will bear such sordid work when it is laid on them,
+but they loathe it notwithstanding, and for the present there was
+nothing more to be done. A new point of departure had been taken.
+Principles had been laid down for the Senate and people to act on, if
+they could and would. Caesar could only wish for a long absence in some
+new sphere of usefulness, where he could achieve something really great
+which his country would remember.
+
+And on one side only was such a sphere open to him. The East was Roman
+to the Euphrates. No second Mithridates could loosen the grasp with
+which the legions now held the civilized parts of Asia. Parthians might
+disturb the frontier, but could not seriously threaten the Eastern
+dominions; and no advantage was promised by following on the steps of
+Alexander and annexing countries too poor to bear the cost of their
+maintenance. To the west it was different. Beyond the Alps there was
+still a territory of unknown extent, stretching away to the undefined
+ocean, a territory peopled with warlike races, some of whom in ages
+long past had swept over Italy and taken Rome, and had left their
+descendants and their name in the northern province, which was now
+called Cisalpine Gaul. With these races the Romans had as yet no clear
+relations, and from them alone could any serious danger threaten the
+State. The Gauls had for some centuries ceased their wanderings, had
+settled down in fixed localities. They had built towns and bridges;
+they had cultivated the soil, and had become wealthy and partly
+civilized. With the tribes adjoining Provence the Romans had alliances
+more or less precarious, and had established a kind of protectorate
+over them. But even here the inhabitants were uneasy for their
+independence, and troubles were continually arising with them; while
+into these districts and into the rest of Gaul a fresh and stormy
+element was now being introduced. In earlier times the Gauls had been
+stronger than the Germans, and not only could they protect their own
+frontier, but they had formed settlements beyond the Rhine. These
+relations were being changed. The Gauls, as they grew in wealth,
+declined in vigor. The Germans, still roving and migratory, were
+throwing covetous eyes out of their forests on the fields and vineyards
+of their neighbors, and enormous numbers of them were crossing the
+Rhine and Danube, looking for new homes. How feeble a barrier either
+the Alps or the Gauls themselves might prove against such invaders had
+been but too recently experienced. Men who were of middle age at the
+time of Caesar's consulship could still remember the terrors which had
+been caused by the invasion of the Cimbri and Teutons. Marius had saved
+Italy then from destruction, as it were, by the hair of its head. The
+annihilation of those hordes had given Rome a passing respite. But
+fresh generations had grown up. Fresh multitudes were streaming out of
+the North. Germans in hundreds of thousands were again passing the
+Upper Rhine, rooting themselves in Burgundy, and coming in collision
+with tribes which Rome protected. There were uneasy movements among the
+Gauls themselves, whole nations of them breaking up from their homes
+and again adrift upon the world. Gaul and Germany were like a volcano
+giving signs of approaching eruption; and at any moment, and hardly
+with warning, another lava-stream might be pouring down into Venetia
+and Lombardy.
+
+To deal with this danger was the work marked out for Caesar. It is the
+fashion to say that he sought a military command that he might have an
+army behind him to overthrow the constitution. If this was his object,
+ambition never chose a more dangerous or less promising route for
+itself. Men of genius who accomplish great things in this world do not
+trouble themselves with remote and visionary aims. They encounter
+emergencies as they rise, and leave the future to shape itself as it
+may. It would seem that at first the defence of Italy was all that was
+thought of. "The woods and forests" were set aside, and Caesar, by a
+vote of the people, was given the command of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria
+for five years; but either he himself desired, or especial
+circumstances which were taking place beyond the mountains recommended,
+that a wider scope should be allowed him. The Senate, finding that the
+people would act without them if they hesitated, gave him in addition
+Gallia Comata, the land of the Gauls with the long hair, the
+governorship of the Roman province beyond the Alps, with untrammelled
+liberty to act as he might think good throughout the country which is
+now known as France and Switzerland and the Rhine provinces of Germany.
+
+He was to start early in the approaching year. It was necessary before
+he went to make some provision for the quiet government of the capital.
+The alliance with Pompey and Crassus gave temporary security. Pompey
+had less stability of character than could have been wished, but he
+became attached to Caesar's daughter Julia; and a fresh link of
+marriage was formed to hold them together. Caesar himself married
+Calpurnia, the daughter of Calpurnius Piso. The Senate having
+temporarily abdicated, he was able to guide the elections; and Piso and
+Pompey's friend Gabinius, who had obtained the command of the pirate
+war for him, were chosen consuls for the year 58. Neither of them, if
+we can believe a tithe of Cicero's invective, was good for much; but
+they were stanch partisans, and were to be relied on to resist any
+efforts which might be made to repeal the "Leges Juliae." These matters
+being arranged, and his own term having expired, Caesar withdrew,
+according to custom, to the suburbs beyond the walls to collect troops
+and prepare for his departure. Strange things, however, had yet to
+happen before he was gone.
+
+[Sidenote: B. C. 58.] It is easy to conceive how the Senate felt at
+these transactions, how ill they bore to find themselves superseded and
+the State managed over their heads. Fashionable society was equally
+furious, and the three allies went by the name of Dynasts, or "Reges
+Superbi." After resistance had been abandoned, Cicero came back to Rome
+to make cynical remarks from which all parties suffered equally. His
+special grievance was the want of consideration which he conceived to
+have been shown for himself. He mocked at the Senate; he mocked at
+Bibulus, whom he particularly abominated; he mocked at Pompey and the
+agrarian law. Mockery turned to indignation when he thought of the
+ingratitude of the Senate, and his chief consolation in their
+discomfiture was that it had fallen on them through the neglect of
+their most distinguished member. "I could have saved them if they would
+have let me," he said. "I could save them still if I were to try; but I
+will go study philosophy in my own family." [2] "Freedom is gone," he
+wrote to Atticus; "and if we are to be worse enslaved, we shall bear
+it. Our lives and properties are more to us than liberty. We sigh, and
+we do not even remonstrate." [3]
+
+Cato, in the desperation of passion, called Pompey a dictator in the
+assembly, and barely escaped being killed for his pains.[4] The
+patricians revenged themselves in private by savage speeches and plots
+and purposes. Fashionable society gathered in the theatres and hissed
+the popular leaders. Lines were introduced into the plays reflecting on
+Pompey, and were encored a thousand times. Bibulus from his closet
+continued to issue venomous placards, reporting scandals about Caesar's
+life, and now for the first time bringing up the story of Nicomedes.
+The streets were impassable where these papers were pasted up, from the
+crowds of loungers which were gathered to read them, and Bibulus for
+the moment was the hero of patrician saloons. Some malicious comfort
+Cicero gathered out of these manifestations of feeling. He had no
+belief in the noble lords, and small expectations from them. Bibulus
+was, on the whole, a fit representative for the gentry of the
+fish-ponds. But the Dynasts were at least heartily detested in quarters
+which had once been powerful, and might be powerful again; and he
+flattered himself, though he affected to regret it, that the animosity
+against them was spreading. To all parties there is attached a draggled
+trail of disreputables, who hold themselves entitled to benefits when
+their side is in power, and are angry when they are passed over.
+
+"The State," Cicero wrote in the autumn of 59 to Atticus, "is in a
+worse condition than when you left us; then we thought that we had
+fallen under a power which pleased the people, and which, though
+abhorrent to the good, yet was not totally destructive to them. Now all
+hate it equally, and we are in terror as to where the exasperation may
+break out. We had experienced the ill-temper and irritation of those
+who in their anger with Cato had brought ruin on us; but the poison
+worked so slowly that it seemed we might die without pain. I hoped, as
+I often told you, that the wheel of the constitution was so turning
+that we should scarcely hear a sound or see any visible track; and so
+it would have been could men have waited for the tempest to pass over
+them. But the secret sighs turned to groans, and the groans to
+universal clamor; and thus our friend Pompey, who so lately swam in
+glory and never heard an evil word of himself, is broken-hearted and
+knows not whither to turn. A precipice is before him, and to retreat is
+dangerous. The good are against him; the bad are not his friends. I
+could scarce help weeping the other day when I heard him complaining in
+the Forum of the publication of Bibulus. He who but a short time since
+bore himself so proudly there, with the people in raptures with him,
+and with the world on his side, was now so humble and abject as to
+disgust even himself, not to say his hearers. Crassus enjoyed the
+scene, but no one else. Pompey had fallen down out of the stars--not by
+a gradual descent, but in a single plunge; and as Apelles if he had
+seen his Venus, or Protogenes his Ialysus, all daubed with mud, would
+have been vexed and annoyed, so was I grieved to the very heart to see
+one whom I had painted out in the choicest colors of art thus suddenly
+defaced.[5] Pompey is sick with irritation at the placards of Bibulus.
+I am sorry about them. They give such excessive annoyance to a man whom
+I have always liked; and Pompey is so prompt with his sword, and so
+unaccustomed to insult, that I fear what he may do. What the future may
+have in store for Bibulus I know not. At present he is the admired of
+all." [6]
+
+"Sampsiceramus," Cicero wrote a few days later, "is greatly penitent.
+He would gladly be restored to the eminence from which he has fallen.
+Sometimes he imparts his griefs to me, and asks me what he should do,
+which I cannot tell him." [7]
+
+Unfortunate Cicero, who knew what was right, but was too proud to do
+it! Unfortunate Pompey, who still did what was right, but was too
+sensitive to bear the reproach of it, who would so gladly not leave his
+duty unperformed, and yet keep the "sweet voices" whose applause had
+grown so delicious to him! Bibulus was in no danger. Pompey was too
+good-natured to hurt him; and Caesar let fools say what they pleased,
+as long as they were fools without teeth, who would bark but could not
+bite. The risk was to Cicero himself, little as he seemed to be aware
+of it. Caesar was to be long absent from Rome, and he knew that as soon
+as he was engaged in Gaul the extreme oligarchic faction would make an
+effort to set aside his land commission and undo his legislation. When
+he had a clear purpose in view, and was satisfied that it was a good
+purpose, he was never scrupulous about his instruments. It was said of
+him that when he wanted any work done he chose the persons best able to
+do it, let their general character be what it might. The rank and file
+of the patricians, proud, idle, vicious, and self-indulgent, might be
+left to their mistresses and their gaming-tables. They could do no
+mischief unless they had leaders at their head who could use their
+resources more effectively than they could do themselves. There were
+two men only in Rome with whose help they could be really
+dangerous--Cato, because he was a fanatic, impregnable to argument, and
+not to be influenced by temptation of advantage to himself; Cicero, on
+account of his extreme ability, his personal ambition, and his total
+want of political principle. Cato he knew to be impracticable. Cicero
+he had tried to gain; but Cicero, who had played a first part as
+consul, could not bring himself to play a second, and, if the chance
+offered, had both power and will to be troublesome. Some means had to
+be found to get rid of these two, or at least to tie their hands and to
+keep them in order. There would be Pompey and Crassus still at hand.
+But Pompey was weak, and Crassus understood nothing beyond the art of
+manipulating money. Gabinius and Piso, the next consuls, had an
+indifferent reputation and narrow abilities, and at best they would
+have but their one year of authority. Politics, like love, makes
+strange bedfellows. In this difficulty accident threw in Cesar's way a
+convenient but most unexpected ally.
+
+Young Clodius, after his escape from prosecution by the marvellous
+methods which Crassus had provided for him, was more popular than ever.
+He had been the occasion of a scandal which had brought infamy on the
+detested Senate. His offence in itself seemed slight in so loose an
+age, and was as nothing compared with the enormity of his judges. He
+had come out of his trial with a determination to be revenged on the
+persons from whose tongues he had suffered most severely in the
+senatorial debates. Of these Cato had been the most savage; but Cicero
+had been the most exasperating, from his sarcasms, his airs of
+patronage, and perhaps his intimacy with his sister. The noble youth
+had exhausted the common forms of pleasure. He wanted a new excitement,
+and politics and vengeance might be combined. He was as clever as he
+was dissolute, and, as clever men are fortunately rare in the
+licentious part, of society, they are always idolized, because they
+make vice respectable by connecting it with intellect. Clodius was a
+second, an abler Catiline, equally unprincipled and far more dexterous
+and prudent. In times of revolution there is always a disreputable wing
+to the radical party, composed of men who are the natural enemies of
+established authority, and these all rallied about their new leader
+with devout enthusiasm. Clodius was not without political experience.
+His first public appearance had been as leader of a mutiny. He was
+already quaestor, and so a senator; but he was too young to aspire to
+the higher magistracies which were open to him as a patrician. He
+declared his intention of renouncing his order, becoming a plebeian,
+and standing for the tribuneship of the people. There were precedents
+for such a step, but they were rare. The abdicating noble had to be
+adopted into a plebeian family, and the consent was required of the
+consuls and of the Pontifical College. With the growth of political
+equality the aristocracy had become more insistent upon the privilege
+of birth, which could not be taken from them; and for a Claudius to
+descend among the canaille was as if a Howard were to seek adoption
+from a shopkeeper in the Strand.
+
+At first there was universal amazement. Cicero had used the intrigue
+with Pompeia as a text for a sermon on the immoralities of the age. The
+aspirations of Clodius to be a tribune he ridiculed as an illustration
+of its follies, and after scourging him in the Senate, he laughed at
+him and jested with him in private.[8] Cicero did not understand with
+how venomous a snake he was playing. He even thought Clodius likely to
+turn against the Dynasts, and to become a serviceable member of the
+conservative party. Gradually he was forced to open his eyes. Speeches
+were reported to him as coming from Clodius or his allies threatening
+an inquiry into the death of the Catilinarians. At first he pushed his
+alarms aside, as unworthy of him. What had so great a man as he to fear
+from a young reprobate like "the pretty boy"? The "pretty boy,"
+however, found favor where it was least looked for. Pompey supported
+his adventure for the tribuneship. Caesar, though it was Caesar's house
+which he had violated, did not oppose. Bibulus refused consent, but
+Bibulus had virtually abdicated and went for nothing. The legal forms
+were complied with. Clodius found a commoner younger than himself who
+was willing to adopt him, and who, the day after the ceremony, released
+him from the new paternal authority. He was now a plebeian, and free.
+He remained a senator in virtue of his quaestorship, and he was chosen
+tribune of the people for the year 58.
+
+Cicero was at last startled out of his security. So long as the
+consuls, or one of them, could be depended on, a tribune's power was
+insignificant. When the consuls were of his own way of thinking, a
+tribune was a very important personage indeed. Atticus was alarmed for
+his friend, and cautioned him to look to himself. Warnings came from
+all quarters that mischief was in the wind. Still it was impossible to
+believe the peril to be a real one. Cicero, to whom Rome owed its
+existence, to be struck at by a Clodius! It could not be. As little
+could a wasp hurt an elephant.
+
+There can be little doubt that Caesar knew what Clodius had in his
+mind; or that, if the design was not his own, he had purposely allowed
+it to go forward. Caesar did not wish to hurt Cicero. He wished well to
+him, and admired him; but he did not mean to leave him free in Rome to
+lead a senatorial reaction. A prosecution for the execution of the
+prisoners was now distinctly announced. Cicero as consul had put to
+death Roman citizens without a trial. Cicero was to be called to answer
+for the illegality before the sovereign people. The danger was
+unmistakable; and Caesar, who was still in the suburbs making his
+preparations, invited Cicero to avoid it, by accompanying him as second
+in command into Gaul. The offer was made in unquestionable sincerity.
+Caesar may himself have created the situation to lay Cicero under a
+pressure, but he desired nothing so much as to take him as his
+companion, and to attach him to himself. Cicero felt the compliment and
+hesitated to refuse, but his pride again came in his way. Pompey
+assured him that not a hair of his head should be touched. Why Pompey
+gave him this encouragement Cicero could never afterwards understand.
+The scenes in the theatres had also combined to mislead him, and he
+misread the disposition of the great body of citizens. He imagined that
+they would all start up in his defence, Senate, aristocracy, knights,
+commoners, and tradesmen. The world, he thought, looked back upon his
+consulship with as much admiration as he did himself, and was always
+contrasting him with his successors. Never was mistake more profound.
+The Senate, who had envied his talents and resented his assumption, now
+despised him as a trimmer. His sarcasms had made him enemies among
+those who acted with him politically. He had held aloof at the crisis
+of Caesar's election and in the debates which followed, and therefore
+all sides distrusted him; while throughout the body of the people there
+was, as Caesar had foretold, a real and sustained resentment at the
+conduct of the Catiline affair. The final opinion of Rome was that the
+prisoners ought to have been tried; and that they were not tried was
+attributed not unnaturally to a desire, on the part of the Senate, to
+silence an inquiry which might have proved inconvenient.
+
+Thus suddenly out of a clear sky the thunder-clouds gathered over
+Cicero's head. "Clodius," says Dion Cassius, "had discovered that among
+the senators Cicero was more feared than loved. There were few of them
+who had not been hit by his irony, or irritated by his presumption."
+Those who most agreed in what he had done were not ashamed to shuffle
+off upon him their responsibilities. Clodius, now omnipotent with the
+assembly at his back, cleared the way by a really useful step; he
+carried a law abolishing the impious form of declaring the heavens
+unfavorable when an inconvenient measure was to be stopped or delayed.
+Probably it formed a part of his engagement with Caesar. The law may
+have been meant to act retrospectively, to prevent a question being
+raised on the interpellations of Bibulus. This done, and without paying
+the Senate the respect of first consulting it, he gave notice that he
+would propose a vote to the assembly, to the effect that any person who
+had put to death a Roman citizen without trial, and without allowing
+him an appeal to the people, had violated the constitution of the
+State. Cicero was not named directly; every senator who had voted for
+the execution of Cethegus and Lentulus and their companions was as
+guilty as he; but it was known immediately that Cicero was the mark
+that was being aimed at; and Caesar at once renewed the offer, which he
+made before, to take Cicero with him. Cicero, now frightened in
+earnest, still could not bring himself to owe his escape to Caesar. The
+Senate, ungrateful as they had been, put on mourning with an
+affectation of dismay. The knights petitioned the consuls to interfere
+for Cicero's protection. The consuls declined to receive their request.
+Caesar outside the city gave no further sign. A meeting of the citizens
+was held in the camp. Caesar's opinion was invited. He said that he had
+not changed his sentiments. He had remonstrated at the time against the
+execution. He disapproved of it still, but he did not directly advise
+legislation upon acts that were past. Yet, though he did not encourage
+Clodius, he did not interfere. He left the matter to the consuls, and
+one of them was his own father-in-law, and the other was Gabinius, once
+Pompey's favorite officer. Gabinius, Cicero thought, would respect
+Pompey's promise to him. To Piso he made a personal appeal. He found
+him, he said afterwards,[9] at eleven in the morning, in his slippers,
+at a low tavern. Piso came out, reeking with wine, and excused himself
+by saying that his health required a morning draught. Cicero attempted
+to receive his apology, and he stood for a while at the tavern door,
+till he could no longer bear the smell and the foul language and
+expectorations of the consul. Hope in that quarter there was none. Two
+days later the assembly was called to consider Clodius's proposal. Piso
+was asked to say what he thought of the treatment of the conspirators;
+he answered gravely, and, as Cicero described him, with one eye in his
+forehead, that he disapproved of cruelty. Neither Pompey nor his
+friends came to help. What was Cicero to do? Resist by force? The young
+knights rallied about him eager for a fight, if he would but give the
+word. Sometimes as he looked back in after-years he blamed himself for
+declining their services, sometimes he took credit to himself for
+refusing to be the occasion of bloodshed.[10]
+
+"I was too timid," he said once; "I had the country with me, and I
+should have stood firm. I had to do with a band of villains only, with
+two monsters of consuls, and with the male harlot of rich buffoons, the
+seducer of his sister, the high-priest of adultery, a poisoner, a
+forger, an assassin, a thief. The best and bravest citizens implored me
+to stand up to him. But I reflected that this Fury asserted that he was
+supported by Pompey and Crassus and Caesar. Caesar had an army at the
+gates. The other two could raise another army when they pleased; and
+when they knew that their names were thus made use of, they remained
+silent. They were alarmed perhaps, because the laws which they had
+carried in the preceding year were challenged by the new praetors, and
+were held by the Senate to be invalid; and they were unwilling to
+alienate a popular tribune."[11]
+
+And again elsewhere: "When I saw that the faction of Catiline was in
+power, that the party which I had led, some from envy of myself, some
+from fear for their own lives, had betrayed and deserted me; when the
+two consuls had been purchased by promises of provinces, and had gone
+over to my enemies, and the condition of the bargain was that I was to
+be delivered over, tied and bound, to my enemies; when the Senate and
+knights were in mourning, but were not allowed to bring my cause before
+the people; when my blood had been made the seal of the arrangement
+under which the State had been disposed of; when I saw all this,
+although 'the good' were ready to fight for me, and were willing to die
+for me, I would not consent, because I saw that victory or defeat would
+alike bring ruin to the Commonwealth. The Senate was powerless. The
+Forum was ruled by violence. In such a city there was no place for me."
+[12]
+
+So Cicero, as he looked back afterwards, described the struggle in his
+own mind. His friends had then rallied; Caesar was far away; and he
+could tell his own story, and could pile his invectives on those who
+had injured him. His matchless literary power has given him exclusive
+command over the history of his time. His enemies' characters have been
+accepted from his pen as correct portraits. If we allow his description
+of Clodius and the two consuls to be true to the facts, what harder
+condemnation can be pronounced against a political condition in which
+such men as these could be raised to the first position in the
+State?[13] Dion says that Cicero's resolution to yield did not wholly
+proceed from his own prudence, but was assisted by advice from Cato and
+Hortensius the orator. Anyway, the blow fell, and he went down before
+the stroke. His immortal consulship, in praise of which he had written
+a poem, brought after it the swift retribution which Caesar had
+foretold. When the vote proposed by Clodius was carried, he fled to
+Sicily, with a tacit confession that he dared not abide his trial,
+which would immediately have followed. Sentence was pronounced upon him
+in his absence. His property was confiscated. His houses in town and
+country were razed. The site of his palace in Rome was dedicated to the
+Goddess of Liberty, and he himself was exiled. He was forbidden to
+reside within four hundred miles of Rome, with a threat of death if he
+returned; and he retired to Macedonia, to pour out his sorrows and his
+resentments in lamentations unworthy of a woman.
+
+
+[1] See a list of the Leges Juliae in the 48th Book of the Corpus Juris
+    Civilis.
+
+[2] _To Atticus_, ii. 16.
+
+[3] "Tenemur undique, neque jam, quo minus serviamus, recusamus, sed
+    mortem et ejectionem quasi majora timemus, quae multo sunt minora.
+    Atque hic status, qui una voce omnium gemitur neque verbo cujusdam
+    sublevatur."--_To Atticus_, ii. 18.
+
+[4] "In concionem ascendit et Pompeium privatus dictatorem appellavit.
+    Propius nihil est factum quam ut occideretur."--Cicero, _Ad Quintum
+    Fratrem_, i. 2.
+
+[5] _To Athens_, ii, 21. In this comparison Cicero betrays his naive
+    conviction that Pompey was indebted to him and to his praises for his
+    reputation. Here, as always, Cicero was himself the centre round
+    which all else revolved or ought to revolve.
+
+[6] _Ib_.
+
+[7] To Atticus, ii. 22.
+
+[8] "Jam familiariter cum illo etiam cavillor ac jocor."--_To
+    Atticus_, ii. 1.
+
+[9] _Oratio in L. Pisonem_.
+
+[10] He seems to have even thought of suicide.--_To Atticus_, iii. 9.
+
+[11] Abridged from the _Oratio pro P. Sextio_.
+
+[12] _Oratio post reditum ad Quirites_.
+
+[13] In a letter to his brother Quintus, written at a time when he did
+    not know the real feelings of Caesar and Pompey, and had supposed
+    that he had only to deal with Clodius, Cicero announced a distinct
+    intention of resisting by force. He expected that the whole of Italy
+    would be at his side. He said: "Si diem nobis Clodius dixerit, tota
+    Italia concurret, ut multiplicata gloria discedamus. Sin autem vi
+    agere conabitur, spero fore, studiis non solum amicorum, sedetiam
+    alienorum, ut vi resistamus. Omnes et se et suos liberos, amicos,
+    clientes, libertos, servos, pecunias denique suas pollicentur. Nostra
+    antiqua manus bonorum ardet studio nostri atque amore. Si qui antea
+    aut alieniores fuerant, ant languidiores, nunc horum regum odio se
+    cum bonis conjungunt. Pompeius omnia pollicetur et Caesar, do quibus
+    ita credo, ut nihil de mea comparatione deminuam."--_Ad Quintum
+    Fratrem_, i. 2.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+From the fermentation of Roman politics, the passions of the Forum and
+Senate, the corrupt tribunals, the poisoned centre of the Empire, the
+story passes beyond the frontier of Italy. We no longer depend for our
+account of Caesar on the caricatures of rival statesmen. He now becomes
+himself our guide. We see him in his actions and in the picture of his
+personal character which he has unconsciously drawn. Like all real
+great men, he rarely speaks of himself. He tells us little or nothing
+of, his own feelings or his own purposes. Cicero never forgets his
+individuality. In every line that he wrote Cicero was attitudinizing
+for posterity, or reflecting on the effect of his conduct upon his
+interests or his reputation. Caesar is lost in his work; his
+personality is scarcely more visible than Shakespeare's. He was now
+forty-three years old. His abstemious habits had left his health
+unshaken. He was in the fullest vigor of mind and body, and it was well
+for him that his strength had not been undermined. He was going on an
+expedition which would make extraordinary demands upon his energies.
+That he had not contemplated operations so extended as those which were
+forced upon him is evident from the nature of his preparations. His
+command in Further Gaul had been an afterthought, occasioned probably
+by news which had been received of movements in progress there during
+his consulship. Of the four legions which were allowed to him, one only
+was beyond the Alps; three were at Aquileia. It was late in life for
+him to begin the trade of a soldier; and as yet, with the exception of
+his early service in Asia and a brief and limited campaign in Spain
+when propraetor, he had no military experience at all. His ambition
+hitherto had not pointed in that direction; nor is it likely that a
+person of so strong an understanding would have contemplated beforehand
+the deliberate undertaking of the gigantic war into which circumstances
+immediately forced him. Yet he must have known that he had to deal with
+a problem of growing difficulty. The danger to Italy from inroads
+across the Alps was perpetually before the minds of thoughtful Roman
+statesmen. Events were at that moment taking place among the Gallic
+tribes which gave point to the general uneasiness. And unwilling as the
+Romans were to extend their frontiers and their responsibilities in a
+direction so unknown and so unpromising, yet some interference either
+by arms or by authority beyond those existing limits was being pressed
+upon them in self-defence.
+
+The Transalpine Gaul of Caesar was the country included between the
+Rhine, the ocean, the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and the Alps. Within
+these limits, including Switzerland, there was at this time a
+population vaguely estimated at six or seven millions. The Roman
+Province stretched along the coast to the Spanish border; it was
+bounded on the north by the Cevennes mountains, and for some
+generations by the Isere; but it had been found necessary lately[1] to
+annex the territory of the Allobroges (Dauphine and Savoy), and the
+proconsular authority was now extended to within a few miles of Geneva.
+The rest was divided into three sections, inhabited by races which, if
+allied, were distinctly different in language, laws, and institutions.
+The Aquitani, who were connected with the Spaniards or perhaps the
+Basques, held the country between the Pyrenees and the Garonne. The
+Belgae, whom Caesar believed to have been originally Germans, extended
+from the mouth of the Seine to the mouth of the Rhine, and inland to
+the Marne and Moselle. The people whom the Romans meant especially when
+they spoke of Gauls occupied all the remainder. At one time the Celts
+had probably been masters of the whole of France, but had gradually
+yielded to encroachment. According to the Druids, they came out of
+darkness, _ab Dite Patre_; they called themselves Children of Night,
+counting time by nights instead of days, as we say fortnight and
+sennight. Comparison of language has taught us that they were a branch
+of the great Aryan race, one of the first which rolled westward into
+Europe, before Greeks or Latins had been heard of.
+
+This once magnificent people was now in a state of change and
+decomposition. On Aquitaine and Belgium Roman civilization had as yet
+produced no effect. The severe habits of earlier generations remained
+unchanged. The Gauls proper had yielded to contact with the Province
+and to intercourse with Italian traders. They had built towns and
+villages. They had covered the land with farms and homesteads. They had
+made roads. They had bridged their rivers, even such rivers as the
+Rhone and the Loire. They had amassed wealth, and had adopted habits of
+comparative luxury, which, if it had not abated their disposition to
+fight, had diminished their capacity for fighting. Their political and
+perhaps their spiritual system was passing through analogous
+transformations. The ancient forms remained, but an altered spirit was
+working under them. From the earliest antiquity they had been divided
+into tribes and sub-tribes: each tribe and sub-tribe being practically
+independent, or united only by common objects and a common sentiment of
+race. The rule was the rule of the strong, under the rudest forms of
+tribal organization. The chief was either hereditary or elected, or won
+his command by the sword. The mass of the people were serfs. The best
+fighters were self-made nobles, under the chief's authority. Every man
+in the tribe was the chief's absolute subject; the chief, in turn, was
+bound to protect the meanest of them against injury from without. War,
+on a large scale or a small, had been the occupation of their lives.
+The son was not admitted into his father's presence till he was old
+enough to be a soldier. When the call to arms went out, every man of
+the required age was expected at the muster, and the last comer was
+tortured to death in the presence of his comrades as a lesson against
+backwardness.
+
+As the secular side of things bore a rude resemblance to feudalism, so
+on the religious there was a similar anticipation of the mediaeval
+Catholic Church. The Druids were not a special family, like the
+Levites, or in any way born into the priesthood. They were an order
+composed of persons selected, when young, out of the higher ranks of
+the community, either for speciality of intellect, or from disposition,
+or by the will of their parents, or from a desire to avoid military
+service, from which the Druids were exempt. There were no tribal
+distinctions among them. Their head-quarters were in Britain, to which
+those who aspired to initiation in the more profound mysteries repaired
+for instruction; but they were spread universally over Gaul and the
+British Islands. They were the ministers of public worship, the
+depositaries of knowledge, and the guardians of public morality. Young
+men repaired to the Druids for education. They taught theology; they
+taught the movements of the stars. They presided in the civil courts
+and determined questions of disputed inheritance. They heard criminal
+cases and delivered judgment; and, as with the Church, their heaviest
+and most dreaded punishment was excommunication. The excommunicated
+person lost his civil rights. He became an outlaw from society, and he
+was excluded from participation in the sacrifices. In the religious
+services the victims most acceptable to the gods were human
+beings--criminals, if such could be had; if not, then innocent persons,
+who were burnt to death in huge towers of wicker. In the Quemadero at
+Seville, as in our own Smithfield, the prisoners of the Church were
+fastened to stakes, and the sticks with which they were consumed were
+tied into fagots, instead of being plaited into basket-work. So slight
+a difference does not materially affect the likeness.
+
+The tribal chieftainship and the religious organization of the Druids
+were both of them inherited from antiquity. They were institutions
+descending from the time when the Gauls had been a great people; but
+both had outlived the age to which they were adapted, and one at least
+was approaching its end. To Caesar's eye, coming new upon them, the
+Druids were an established fact, presenting no sign of decay; but in
+Gaul, infected with Roman manners, they existed merely by habit,
+exercising no influence any longer over the hearts of the people. In
+the great struggle which was approaching we find no Druids among the
+national leaders, no spirit of religion inspiring and consecrating the
+efforts of patriotism. So far as can be seen, the Druids were on the
+Roman side, or the Romans had the skill to conciliate them. In half a
+century they were suppressed by Augustus, and they and their
+excommunications, and their flaming wicker-works, had to be sought for
+in distant Britain or in the still more distant Ireland. The active and
+secular leadership could not disappear so easily. Leaders of some kind
+were still required and inevitably found, but the method of selection
+in the times which had arrived was silently changing. While the Gallic
+nation retained, or desired to retain, a kind of unity, some one of the
+many tribes had always been allowed a hegemony. The first place had
+rested generally with the aedui, a considerable people who occupied the
+central parts of France, between the Upper Loire and the Saone. The
+Romans, anxious naturally to extend their influence in the country
+without direct interference, had taken the aedui under their
+protectorate. The aedui again had their clients in the inferior tribes;
+and a Romano-aeduan authority of a shadowy kind had thus penetrated
+through the whole nation.
+
+But the aeduans had rivals and competitors in the Sequani, another
+powerful body in Burgundy and Franche-Comte. If the Romans feared, the
+Gauls, the Gauls in turn feared the Romans; and a national party had
+formed itself everywhere, especially among the younger men, who were
+proud of their independence, impatient of foreign control, and
+determined to maintain the liberties which had descended to them. To
+these the Sequani offered themselves as champions. Among the aedui too
+there were fiery spirits who cherished the old traditions, and saw in
+the Roman alliance a prelude to annexation. And thus it was that when
+Caesar was appointed to Gaul, in every tribe and every sub-tribe, in
+every village and every family, there were two factions,[2] each under
+its own captain, each struggling for supremacy, each conspiring and
+fighting among themselves, and each seeking or leaning upon external
+support. In many, if not in all, of the tribes there was a senate, or
+counsel of elders, and these appear almost everywhere to have been
+aeduan and Roman in their sympathies. The Sequani, as the
+representatives of nationalism, knowing that they could not stand
+alone, had looked for friends elsewhere.
+
+The Germans had long turned covetous eyes upon the rich cornfields and
+pastures from which the Rhine divided them. The Cimbri and Teutons had
+been but the vanguard of a multitude who were eager to follow. The fate
+of these invaders had checked the impulse for half a century, but the
+lesson was now forgotten. Ariovistus, a Bavarian prince, who spoke
+Gaelic like a native, and had probably long meditated conquest, came
+over into Franche-Comte at the invitation of the Sequani, bringing his
+people with him. The few thousand families which were first introduced
+had been followed by fresh detachments; they had attacked and beaten
+the aedui, out of whose territories they intended to carve a settlement
+for themselves. They had taken hostages from them, and had broken down
+their authority, and the faction of the Sequani was now everywhere in
+the ascendant. The aedui, three years before Caesar came, had appealed
+to Rome for assistance, and the Senate had promised that the Governor
+of Gaul should support them. The Romans, hoping to temporize with the
+danger, had endeavored to conciliate Ariovistus, and in the year of
+Caesar's consulship had declared him a friend of the Roman people.
+Ariovistus, in turn, had pressed the aedui still harder, and had forced
+them to renounce the Roman alliance. Among the aedui, and throughout
+the country, the patriots were in the ascendant, and Ariovistus and his
+Germans were welcomed as friends and deliverers. Thoughtful persons in
+Rome had heard of these doings with uneasiness; an old aeduan chief had
+gone in person thither, to awaken the Senate to the growing peril; but
+the Senate had been too much occupied with its fears of Caesar, and
+agrarian laws, and dangers to the fish-ponds, to attend; and now
+another great movement had begun, equally alarming and still closer to
+the Roman border.
+
+The Helvetii were old enemies. They were a branch of the Celtic race,
+who occupied modern Switzerland, hardy, bold mountaineers, and seasoned
+in constant war with their German neighbors. On them, too, the tide of
+migration from the north had pressed continuously. They had hitherto
+defended themselves successfully, but they were growing weary of these
+constant efforts. Their numbers were increasing, and their narrow
+valleys were too strait for them. They also had heard of fertile,
+scantily peopled lands in other parts, of which they could possess
+themselves by force or treaty, and they had already shown signs of
+restlessness. Many thousands of them had broken out at the time of the
+Cimbrian invasion. They had defeated Cassius Longinus, who was then
+consul, near their own border, and had annihilated his army. They had
+carried fire and sword down the left bank of the Rhone. They had united
+themselves with the Teutons, and had intended to accompany them into
+Italy. Their first enterprise failed. They perished in the great battle
+at Aix, and the parent tribe had remained quiet for forty years till a
+new generation had grown to manhood. Once more their ambition had
+revived. Like the Germans, they had formed friendships among the Gallic
+factions. Their reputation as warriors made them welcome to the
+patriots. In a fight for independence they would form a valuable
+addition to the forces of their countrymen. They had allies among the
+Sequani; they had allies in the anti-Roman party which had risen among
+the Aedui; and a plan had been formed in concert with their friends for
+a migration to the shores of the Bay of Biscay between the mouths of
+the Garonne and the Loire. The Cimbri and Teutons had passed away, but
+the ease with which the Cimbri had made the circuit of these districts
+had shown how slight resistance could be expected from the inhabitants.
+Perhaps their coming had been anticipated and prepared for. The older
+men among the Helvetii had discouraged the project when it was first
+mooted, but they had yielded to eagerness and enthusiasm, and it had
+taken at last a practical form. Double harvests had been raised;
+provision had been made of food and transport for a long march; and a
+complete exodus of the entire tribe with their wives and families had
+been finally resolved on.
+
+If the Helvetii deserted Switzerland, the cantons would be immediately
+occupied by Germans, and a road would be opened into the province for
+the enemy whom the Romans had most reason to dread. The distinction
+between Germans and Gauls was not accurately known at Rome. They were
+confounded under the common name of Celts[3] or Barbarians. But they
+formed together an ominous cloud charged with forces of uncertain
+magnitude, but of the reality of which Italy had already terrible
+experience. Divitiacus, chief of the Aedui, who had carried to Rome the
+news of the inroads of Ariovistus, brought again in person thither the
+account of this fresh peril. Every large movement of population
+suggested the possibility of a fresh rush across the Alps. Little
+energy was to be expected from the Senate. But the body of the citizens
+were still sound at heart. Their lives and properties were at stake,
+and they could feel for the dignity of the Empire. The people had sent
+Pompey to crush the pirates and conquer Mithridates. The people now
+looked to Caesar, and instead of the "woods and forests" which the
+Senate designed for him, they had given him a five years' command on
+their western frontier.
+
+The details of the problem before him Caesar had yet to learn, but with
+its general nature he must have intimately acquainted himself. Of
+course he had seen and spoken with Divitiacus. He was consul when
+Ariovistus was made "a friend of the Roman people." He must have been
+aware, therefore, of the introduction of the Germans over the Rhine. He
+could not tell what he might have first to do. There were other
+unpleasant symptoms on the side of Illyria and the Danube. From either
+quarter the storm might break upon him. No Roman general was ever sent
+upon an enterprise so fraught with complicated possibilities, and few
+with less experience of the realities of war.
+
+The points in his favor were these. He was the ablest Roman then
+living, and he had the power of attracting and attaching the ablest men
+to his service. He had five years in which to look about him and to act
+at leisure--as much time as had been given to Pompey for the East. Like
+Pompey, too, he was left perfectly free. No senatorial officials could
+encumber him with orders from home. The people had given him his
+command, and to the people alone he was responsible. Lastly, and beyond
+everything, he could rely with certainty on the material with which he
+had to work. The Roman legionaries were no longer yeomen taken from the
+plough or shopkeepers from the street. They were men more completely
+trained in every variety of accomplishment than have perhaps ever
+followed a general into the field before or since. It was not enough
+that they could use sword and lance. The campaign on which Caesar was
+about to enter was fought with spade and pick and axe and hatchet.
+Corps of engineers he may have had; but if the engineers designed the
+work, the execution lay with the army. No limited department would have
+been equal to the tasks which every day demanded. On each evening after
+a march, a fortified camp was to be formed, with mound and trench,
+capable of resisting surprises, and demanding the labor of every single
+hand. Bridges had to be thrown over rivers. Ships and barges had to be
+built or repaired, capable of service against an enemy, on a scale
+equal to the requirements of an army, and in a haste which permitted no
+delay. A transport service there must have been organized to
+perfection; but there were no stores sent from Italy to supply the
+daily waste of material. The men had to mend and perhaps make their own
+clothes and shoes, and repair their own arms. Skill in the use of tools
+was not enough without the tools themselves. Had the spades and
+mattocks been supplied by contract, had the axes been of soft iron,
+fair to the eye and failing to the stroke, not a man in Caesar's army
+would have returned to Rome to tell the tale of its destruction. How
+the legionaries acquired these various arts, whether the Italian
+peasantry were generally educated in such occupations, or whether on
+this occasion there was a special selection of the best, of this we
+have no information. Certain only it was that men and instruments were
+as excellent in their kind as honesty and skill could make them; and,
+however degenerate the patricians and corrupt the legislature, there
+was sound stuff somewhere in the Roman constitution. No exertion, no
+forethought on the part of a commander could have extemporized such a
+variety of qualities. Universal practical accomplishments must have
+formed part of the training of the free Roman citizens. Admirable
+workmanship was still to be had in each department of manufacture, and
+every article with which Caesar was provided must have been the best of
+its kind.
+
+The first quarter of the year 58 was consumed in preparations. Caesar's
+antagonists in the Senate were still raving against the acts of his
+consulship, threatening him with impeachment for neglecting Bibulus's
+interpellations, charging him with impiety for disregarding the
+weather, and clamoring for the suppression of his command. But Cicero's
+banishment damped the ardor of these gentlemen; after a few vicious
+efforts, they subsided into sullenness, and trusted to Ariovistus or
+the Helvetii to relieve them of their detested enemy. Caesar himself
+selected his officers. Cicero having declined to go as his lieutenant,
+he had chosen Labienus, who had acted with him, when tribune, in the
+prosecution of Rabirius, and had procured him the pontificate by giving
+the election to the people. Young men of rank in large numbers had
+forgotten party feeling, and had attached themselves to the expedition
+as volunteers to learn military experience. His own equipments were of
+the simplest. No common soldier was more careless of hardships than
+Caesar. His chief luxury was a favorite horse, which would allow no one
+but Caesar to mount him; a horse which had been bred in his own
+stables, and, from the peculiarity of a divided hoof, had led the
+augurs to foretell wonders for the rider of it. His arrangements were
+barely completed when news came in the middle of March that the
+Helvetii were burning their towns and villages, gathering their
+families into their wagons, and were upon the point of commencing their
+emigration. Their numbers, according to a register which was found
+afterward, were 368,000, of whom 92,000 were fighting men. They were
+bound for the West; and there were two roads, by one or other of which
+alone they could leave their country. One was on the right bank of the
+Rhone by the Pas de l'Ecluse, a pass between the Jura mountains and the
+river, so narrow that but two carts could go abreast along it; the
+other, and easier, was through Savoy, which was now Roman.
+
+Under any aspect the transit of so vast a body through Roman territory
+could not but be dangerous. Savoy was the very ground on which Longinus
+had been destroyed. Yet it was in this direction that the Helvetii were
+preparing to pass, and would pass unless they were prevented; while in
+the whole Transalpine province there was but a single legion to oppose
+them. Caesar started on the instant. He reached Marseilles in a few
+days, joined his legion, collected a few levies in the Province, and
+hurried to Geneva. Where the river leaves the lake there was a bridge
+which the Helvetii had neglected to occupy. Caesar broke it, and thus
+secured a breathing time. The Helvetii, who were already on the move
+and were assembling in force a few miles off, sent to demand a passage.
+If it was refused, there was more than one spot between the lake and
+the Pas de l'Ecluse where the river could be forded. The Roman force
+was small, and Caesar postponed his reply.
+
+It was the 1st of April; he promised an answer on the 15th. In the
+interval he threw up forts, dug trenches, and raised walls at every
+point where a passage could be attempted; and when the time was
+expired, he declined to permit them to enter the Province. They tried
+to ford; they tried boats; but at every point they were driven back. It
+remained for them to go by the Pas de l'Ecluse. For this route they
+required the consent of the Sequani; and, however willing the Sequani
+might be to see them in their neighbors' territories, they might object
+to the presence in their own of such a flight of devouring locusts.
+Evidently, however, there was some general scheme, of which the entry
+of the Helvetii into Gaul was the essential part; and through the
+mediation of Dumnorix, an Aeduan and an ardent patriot, the Sequani
+were induced to agree.
+
+The Province had been saved, but the exodus of the enormous multitude
+could no longer be prevented. If such waves of population were allowed
+to wander at pleasure, it was inevitable that sooner or later they
+would overflow the borders of the Empire. Caesar determined to show, at
+once and peremptorily, that these movements would not be permitted
+without the Romans' consent. Leaving Labienus to guard the forts on the
+Rhone, he hurried back to Italy, gathered up his three legions at
+Aquileia, raised two more at Turin with extreme rapidity, and returned
+with them by the shortest route over the Mont Genevre. The mountain
+tribes attacked him, but could not even delay his march. In seven days
+he had surmounted the passes, and was again with Labienus.
+
+The Helvetii, meanwhile, had gone through the Pas de l'Ecluse, and were
+now among the Aedui, laying waste the country. It was early in the
+summer. The corn was green, the hay was still uncut, and the crops were
+being eaten off the ground. The Aedui threw themselves on the promised
+protection of Rome. Caesar crossed the Rhone above Lyons, and came up
+with the marauding hosts as they were leisurely passing in boats over
+the Saone. They had been twenty days upon the river, transporting their
+wagons and their families. Three quarters of them were on the other
+side. The Tigurini from Zurich, the most warlike of their tribes, were
+still on the left bank. The Tigurini had destroyed the army of
+Longinus, and on them the first retribution fell. Caesar cut them to
+pieces. A single day sufficed to throw a bridge over the Saone, and the
+Helvetii, who had looked for nothing less than to be pursued by six
+Roman legions, begged for peace. They were willing, they said, to go to
+any part of the country which Caesar would assign to them; and they
+reminded him that they might be dangerous if pushed to extremities.
+Caesar knew that they were dangerous. He had followed them because he
+knew it. He said that they must return the way that they had come. They
+must pay for the injuries which they had inflicted on the Aedui, and
+they must give him hostages for their obedience. The fierce
+mountaineers replied that they had been more used to demand hostages
+than to give them; and confident in their numbers, and in their secret
+allies among the Gauls, they marched on through the Aeduan territories
+up the level banks of the Saone, thence striking west toward Autun.
+
+Caesar had no cavalry; but every Gaul could ride, and he raised a few
+thousand horse among his supposed allies. These he meant to employ to
+harass the Helvetian march; but they were secret traitors, under the
+influence of Dumnorix, and they fled at the first encounter. The
+Helvetii had thus the country at their mercy, and they laid it waste as
+they went, a day's march in advance of the Romans. So long as they kept
+by the river, Caesar's stores accompanied him in barges. He did not
+choose to let the Helvetii out of his sight, and when they left the
+Saone, and when he was obliged to follow, his provisions ran short. He
+applied to the Aeduan chiefs, who promised to furnish him, but they
+failed to do it. Ten days passed, and no supplies came in. He
+ascertained at last that there was treachery. Dumnorix and other Aeduan
+leaders were in correspondence with the enemy. The cavalry defeat and
+the other failures were thus explained. Caesar, who trusted much to
+gentleness and to personal influence, was unwilling to add the Aeduii
+to his open enemies. Dumnorix was the brother of Divitiacus, the
+reigning chief, whom Caesar had known in Rome. Divitiacus was sent for,
+confessed with tears his brother's misdeeds, and begged that he might
+be forgiven. Dumnorix was brought in. Caesar showed that he was aware
+of his conduct; but spoke kindly to him, and cautioned him for the
+future. The corn-carts, however, did not appear; supplies could not be
+dispensed with; and the Romans, leaving the Helvetii, struck off to
+Bibracte, on Mont Beauvray, the principal Aeduan town in the highlands
+of Nivernais. Unfortunately for themselves, the Helvetii thought the
+Romans were flying, and became in turn the pursuers. They gave Caesar
+an opportunity, and a single battle ended them and their migrations.
+The engagement lasted from noon till night. The Helvetii fought
+gallantly, and in numbers were enormously superior; but the contest was
+between skill and courage, sturdy discipline and wild valor; and it
+concluded as such contests always must. In these hand-to-hand
+engagements there were no wounded. Half the fighting men of the Swiss
+were killed; their camp was stormed; the survivors, with the remnant of
+the women and children, or such of them as were capable of moving (for
+thousands had perished, and little more than a third remained of those
+who had left Switzerland), straggled on to Langres, where they
+surrendered. Caesar treated the poor creatures with kindness and care.
+A few were settled in Gaul, where they afterward did valuable service.
+The rest were sent back to their own cantons, lest the Germans should
+take possession of their lands; and lest they should starve in the
+homes which they had desolated before their departure, they were
+provided with food out of the Province till their next crops were grown.
+
+A victory so complete and so unexpected astonished the whole country.
+The peace party recovered the ascendency. Envoys came from all the
+Gaulish tribes to congratulate, and a diet of chiefs was held under
+Caesar's presidency, where Gaul and Roman seemed to promise one another
+eternal friendship. As yet, however, half the mischief only had been
+dealt with, and that the lighter part. The Helvetii were disposed of,
+but the Germans remained; and till Ariovistus was back across the
+Rhone, no permanent peace was possible. Hitherto Caesar had only
+received vague information about Ariovistus. When the diet was over,
+such of the chiefs as were sincere in their professions came to him
+privately and explained what the Germans were about. A hundred and
+twenty thousand of them were now settled near Belfort, and between the
+Vosges and the Rhine, with the connivance of the Sequani. More were
+coming, and in a short time Gaul would be full of them. They had made
+war on the Aedui; they were in correspondence with the anti-Roman
+factions; their object was the permanent occupation of the country.
+
+Two months still remained of summer. Caesar was now conveniently near
+to the German positions. His army was in high spirits from its victory,
+and he himself was prompt in forming resolutions and swift in executing
+them. An injury to the Aedui could be treated as an injury to the
+Romans, which it would be dishonor to pass over. If the Germans were
+allowed to overrun Gaul, they might soon be seen again in Italy.
+
+Ariovistus was a "friend of Rome." Caesar had been himself a party to
+the conferring this distinction upon him. As a friend, therefore, he
+was in the first instance to be approached. Caesar sent to invite him
+to a conference. Ariovistus, it seemed, set small value upon his
+honors. He replied that if he needed anything from Caesar, he would go
+to Caesar and ask for it. If Caesar required anything from him, Caesar
+might do the same. Meanwhile Caesar was approaching a part of Gaul
+which belonged to himself by right of conquest, and he wished to know
+the meaning of the presence of a Roman army there.
+
+After such an answer, politeness ceased to be necessary. Caesar
+rejoined that since Ariovistus estimated so lightly his friendship with
+the Romans as to refuse an amicable meeting, he would inform him
+briefly of his demands upon him. The influx of Germans on the Rhine
+must cease: no more must come in. He must restore the hostages which he
+had taken from the Aedui, and do them no further hurt. If Ariovistus
+complied, the Romans would continue on good terms with him. If not, he
+said that by a decree of the Senate the Governor of Gaul was ordered to
+protect the Aedui, and he intended to do it.
+
+Ariovistus answered that he had not interfered with the Romans; and the
+Romans had no right to interfere with him. Conquerors treated their
+subjects as they pleased. The Aedui had begun the quarrel with him.
+They had been defeated, and were now his vassals. If Caesar chose to
+come between him and his subjects, he would have an opportunity of
+seeing how Germans could fight who had not for fourteen years slept
+under a roof.
+
+It was reported that a large body of Suevi were coming over the Rhine
+to swell Ariovistus's force, and that Ariovistus was on the point of
+advancing to seize Besancon. Besancon was a position naturally strong,
+being surrounded on three sides by the Doubs. It was full of military
+stores, and was otherwise important for the control of the Sequani.
+Caesar advanced swiftly and took possession of the place, and announced
+that he meant to go and look for Ariovistus.
+
+The army so far had gained brilliant successes, but the men were not
+yet fully acquainted with the nature of their commander. They had never
+yet looked Germans in the face, and imagination magnifies the unknown.
+Roman merchants and the Gauls of the neighborhood brought stories of
+the gigantic size and strength of these northern warriors. The glare of
+their eyes was reported to be so fierce that it could not be borne.
+They were wild, wonderful, and dreadful. Young officers, patricians and
+knights, who had followed Caesar for a little mild experience, began to
+dislike the notion of these new enemies. Some applied for leave of
+absence; others, though ashamed to ask to be allowed to leave the army,
+cowered in their tents with sinking hearts, made their wills, and
+composed last messages for their friends. The centurions caught the
+alarm from their superiors, and the legionaries from the centurions. To
+conceal their fear of the Germans, the men discovered that, if they
+advanced farther, it would be through regions where provisions could
+not follow them, and that they would be starved in the forests. At
+length, Caesar was informed that if he gave the order to march, the
+army would refuse to move.
+
+Confident in himself, Caesar had the power, so indispensable for a
+soldier, of inspiring confidence in others as soon as they came to know
+what he was. He called his officers together. He summoned the
+centurions, and rebuked them sharply for questioning his purposes. The
+German king, he said, had been received at his own request into
+alliance with the Romans, and there was no reason to suppose that he
+meant to break with them. Most likely he would do what was required of
+him. If not, was it to be conceived that they were afraid? Marius had
+beaten these same Germans. Even the Swiss had beaten them. They were no
+more formidable than other barbarians. They might trust their commander
+for the commissariat. The harvest was ripe, and the difficulties were
+nothing. As to the refusal to march, he did not believe in it. Romans
+never mutinied, save through the rapacity or incompetence of their
+general. His life was a witness that he was not rapacious, and his
+victory over the Helvetii that as yet he had made no mistake. He should
+order the advance on the next evening, and it would then be seen
+whether sense of duty or cowardice was the stronger. If others
+declined, Caesar said that he should go forward alone with the legion
+which he knew would follow him, the 10th, which was already his
+favorite.
+
+The speech was received with enthusiasm. The 10th thanked Caesar for
+his compliment to them. The rest, officers and men, declared their
+willingness to follow wherever he might lead them. He started with
+Divitiacus for a guide; and, passing Belfort, came in seven days to
+Cernay or to some point near it. Ariovistus was now but four-and-twenty
+miles from him. Since Caesar had come so far, Ariovistus said that he
+was willing to meet him. Day and place were named, the conditions being
+that the armies should remain in their ranks, and that Caesar and he
+might each bring a guard of horse to the interview. He expected that
+Caesar would be contented with an escort of the Aeduan cavalry. Caesar,
+knowing better than to trust himself with Gauls, mounted his 10th
+legion, and with them proceeded to the spot which Ariovistus had
+chosen. It was a tumulus, in the centre of a large plain equidistant
+from the two camps. The guard on either side remained two hundred paces
+in the rear. The German prince and the Roman general met on horseback
+at the mound, each accompanied by ten of his followers. Caesar spoke
+first and fairly. He reminded Ariovistus of his obligations to the
+Romans. The Aedui, he said, had from immemorial time been the leading
+tribe in Gaul. The Romans had an alliance with them of old standing,
+and never deserted their friends. He required Ariovistas to desist from
+attacking them, and to return their hostages. He consented that the
+Germans already across the Rhine might remain in Gaul, but he demanded
+a promise that no more should be brought over.
+
+Ariovistus haughtily answered that he was a great king; that he had
+come into Gaul by the invitation of the Gauls themselves; that the
+territory which he occupied was a gift from them; and that the hostages
+of which Caesar spoke had remained with him with their free consent.
+The Aedui, he said, had begun the war, and, being defeated, were made
+justly to pay forfeit. He had sought the friendship of the Romans,
+expecting to profit by it. If friendship meant the taking away his
+subjects from him, he desired no more of such friendship. The Romans
+had their Province. It was enough for them, and they might remain there
+unmolested. But Caesar's presence so far beyond his own borders was a
+menace to his own independence, and his independence he intended to
+maintain. Caesar must go away out of those parts, or he and his Germans
+would know how to deal with him.
+
+Then, speaking perhaps more privately, he told Caesar that he knew
+something of Rome and of the Roman Senate, and had learnt how the great
+people there stood affected toward the Governor of Gaul. Certain
+members of the Roman aristocracy had sent him messages to say that if
+he killed Caesar they would hold it a good service done,[4] and would
+hold him their friend forever. He did not wish, he said, to bind
+himself to these noble persons. He would prefer Caesar rather; and
+would fight Caesar's battles for him anywhere in the world if Caesar
+would but retire and leave him. Ariovistus was misled, not unnaturally,
+by these strange communications from the sovereign rulers of the
+Empire. He did not know, he could not know, that the genius of Rome and
+the true chief of Rome were not in the treacherous Senate, but were
+before him there on the field in the persons of Caesar and his legions.
+
+More might have passed between them; but Ariovistus thought to end the
+conference by a stroke of treachery. His German guard had stolen round
+to where the Romans stood, and, supposing that they had Gauls to deal
+with, were trying to surround and disarm them. The men of the 10th
+legion stood firm; Caesar fell back and joined them, and, contenting
+themselves with simply driving off the enemy, they rode back to the
+camp.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 57.] The army was now passionate for an engagement.
+Ariovistus affected a desire for further communication, and two
+officers were despatched to hear what he had to say; but they were
+immediately seized and put in chains, and the Germans advanced to
+within a few miles of the Roman outposts. The Romans lay entrenched
+near Cernay. The Germans were at Colmar. Caesar offered battle, which
+Ariovistus declined. Cavalry fights happened daily which led to
+nothing. Caesar then formed a second camp, smaller but strongly
+fortified, within sight of the enemy, and threw two legions into it.
+Ariovistus attacked them, but he was beaten back with loss. The "wise
+women" advised him to try no more till the new moon. But Caesar would
+not wait for the moon, and forced an engagement. The wives and
+daughters of the Germans rushed about their camp, with streaming hair,
+adjuring their countrymen to save them from slavery. The Germans fought
+like heroes; but they could not stand against the short sword and
+hand-to-hand grapple of the legionaries. Better arms and better
+discipline again asserted the superiority; and in a few hours the
+invaders were flying wildly to the Rhine. Young Publius Crassus, the
+son of the millionaire, pursued with the cavalry. A few swam the river;
+a few, Ariovistus among them, escaped in boats; all the rest, men and
+women alike, were cut down and killed. The Suevi, who were already on
+the Rhine, preparing to cross, turned back into their forests; and the
+two immediate perils which threatened the peace of Gaul had been
+encountered and trampled out in a single summer. The first campaign was
+thus ended. The legions were distributed in winter quarters among the
+Sequani, the contrivers of the mischief; and Labienus was left in
+charge of them. Caesar went back over the Alps to the Cisalpine
+division of the Province to look into the administration and to
+communicate with his friends in Rome.
+
+In Gaul there was outward quiet; but the news of the Roman victories
+penetrated the farthest tribes and agitated the most distant households
+on the shores of the North Sea. The wintering of the legions beyond the
+province was taken to indicate an intention of permanent conquest. The
+Gauls proper were divided and overawed; but the Belgians of the north
+were not prepared to part so easily with their liberty. The Belgians
+considered that they too were menaced, and that now or never was the
+time to strike for their independence. They had not been infected with
+Roman manners. They had kept the merchants from their borders with
+their foreign luxuries. The Nervii, the fiercest of them, as the
+abstemious Caesar marks with approbation, were water-drinkers, and
+forbade wine to be brought among them, as injurious to their sinews and
+their courage. Caesar learnt while in Italy from Labienus that the
+Belgae were mustering and combining. A second vast horde of Germans
+were in Flanders and Artois; men of the same race with the Belgae and
+in active confederacy with them. They might have been left in peace,
+far off as they were, had they sat still; but the notes of their
+preparations were sounding through the country and feeding the restless
+spirit which was stunned but not subdued.
+
+Caesar, on his own responsibility, raised two more legions and sent
+them across the Alps in the spring. When the grass began to grow he
+followed himself. Suddenly, before any one looked for him, he was on
+the Marne with his army. The Remi (people of Rheims), startled by his
+unexpected appearance, sent envoys with their submission and offers of
+hostages. The other Belgian tribes, they said, were determined upon
+war, and were calling all their warriors under arms. Their united
+forces were reported to amount to 300,000. The Bellovaci from the mouth
+of the Seine had sent 60,000; the Suessiones from Soissons 50,000; the
+Nervii, between the Sambre and the Scheldt, 50,000; Arras and Amiens,
+25,000; the coast tribes, 36,000; and the tribes between the Ardennes
+and the Rhine, called collectively Germani, 40,000 more. This irregular
+host was gathered in the forests between Laon and Soissons.
+
+Caesar did not wait for them to move. He advanced at once to Rheims,
+where he called the Senate together and encouraged them to be constant
+to the Roman alliance. He sent a party of Aedui down the Seine to
+harass the territory of the Bellovaci and recall them to their own
+defence; and he went on himself to the Aisne, which he crossed by a
+bridge already existing at Berry-au-Bac. There, with the bridge and
+river at his back, he formed an entrenched camp of extraordinary
+strength, with a wall 12 feet high and a fosse 22 feet deep. Against an
+attack with modern artillery such defences would, of course, be idle.
+As the art of war then stood, they were impregnable. In this position
+Caesar waited, leaving six cohorts on the left bank to guard the other
+end of the bridge. The Belgae came forward and encamped in his front.
+Their watch-fires at night were seen stretching along a line eight
+miles wide. Caesar, after feeling his way with his cavalry, found a
+rounded ridge projecting like a promontory into the plain where the
+Belgian host was lying. On this he advanced his legions, protecting his
+flanks with continuous trenches and earthworks, on which were placed
+heavy cross-bows, the ancient predecessors of cannon. Between these
+lines, if he attacked the enemy and failed, he had a secure retreat. A
+marsh lay between the armies; and each waited for the other to cross.
+The Belgians, impatient of delay, flung themselves suddenly on one side
+and began to pour across the river, intending to destroy the cohorts on
+the other bank, to cut the bridge, and burn and plunder among the Remi.
+Caesar calmly sent back his cavalry and his archers and slingers. They
+caught the enemy in the water or struggling out of it in confusion; all
+who had got over were killed; multitudes were slaughtered in the river;
+others, trying to cross on the bodies of their comrades, were driven
+back. The confederates, shattered at a single defeat, broke up like an
+exploded shell. Their provisions had run short. They melted away and
+dispersed to their homes, Labienus pursuing and cutting down all that
+he could overtake.
+
+The Roman loss was insignificant in this battle. The most remarkable
+feature in Caesar's campaigns, and that which indicates most clearly
+his greatness as a commander, was the smallness of the number of men
+that he ever lost, either by the sword or by wear and tear. No general
+was ever so careful of his soldiers' lives.
+
+Soissons, a fortified Belgian town, surrendered the next day. From
+Soissons Caesar marched on Breteuil and thence on Amiens, which
+surrendered also. The Bellovaci sent in their submission, the leaders
+of the war party having fled to Britain. Caesar treated them all with
+scrupulous forbearance, demanding nothing but hostages for their future
+good behavior. His intention at this time was apparently not to annex
+any of these tribes to Rome, but to settle the country in a
+quasi-independence under an Aeduan hegemony.
+
+But the strongest member of the confederacy was still unsubdued. The
+hardy, brave, and water-drinking Nervii remained defiant. The Nervii
+would send no envoys; they would listen to no terms of peace.[5] Caesar
+learnt that they were expecting to be joined by the Aduatuci, a tribe
+of pure Germans, who had been left behind near Liege at the time of the
+invasion of the Teutons. Preferring to engage them separately, he
+marched from Amiens through Cambray, and sent forward some officers and
+pioneers to choose a spot for a camp on the Sambre. Certain Gauls, who
+had observed his habits on march, deserted to the Nervii, and informed
+them that usually a single legion went in advance, the baggage-wagons
+followed, and the rest of the army came in the rear. By a sudden attack
+in front they could overwhelm the advanced troops, plunder the carts,
+and escape before they could be overtaken. It happened that on this
+occasion the order was reversed. The country was enclosed with thick
+fences, which required to be cut through. Six legions marched in front,
+clearing a road; the carts came next, and two legions behind. The site
+selected by the officers was on the left bank of the Sambre at
+Maubeuge, fifty miles above Namur. The ground sloped easily down to the
+river, which was there about a yard in depth. There was a corresponding
+rise on the other side, which was densely covered with wood. In this
+wood the whole force of the Nervii lay concealed, a few only showing
+themselves on the water side. Caesar's light horse which had gone
+forward, seeing a mere handful of stragglers, rode through the stream
+and skirmished with them; but the enemy retired under cover; the horse
+did not pursue; the six legions came up, and, not dreaming of the
+nearness of the enemy, laid aside their arms and went to work
+intrenching with spade and mattock. The baggage-wagons began presently
+to appear at the crest of the hill, the signal for which the Nervii had
+waited; and in a moment all along the river sixty thousand of them
+rushed out of the forest, sent the cavalry flying, and came on so
+impetuously that, as Caesar said, they seemed to be in the wood, in the
+water, and up the opposite bank at sword's point with the legions at
+the same moment. The surprise was complete: the Roman army was in
+confusion. Many of the soldiers were scattered at a distance, cutting
+turf. None were in their ranks, and none were armed. Never in all his
+campaigns was Caesar in greater danger. He could himself give no
+general orders which there was time to observe. Two points only, he
+said, were in his favor. The men themselves were intelligent and
+experienced, and knew what they had to do; and the officers were all
+present, because he had directed that none of them should leave their
+companies till the camp was completed. The troops were spread loosely
+in their legions along the brow of the ridge. Caesar joined the 10th on
+his right wing, and had but time to tell the men to be cool and not to
+agitate themselves, when the enemy were upon them. So sudden was the
+onslaught that they could neither put their helmets on, nor strip the
+coverings from their shields, nor find their places in the ranks. They
+fought where they stood among thick hedges which obstructed the sight
+of what was passing elsewhere. Though the Aduatuci had not come up, the
+Nervii had allies with them from Arras and the Somme. The allies
+encountered the 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th legions, and were driven
+rapidly back down the hill through the river. The Romans, led by
+Labienus, crossed in pursuit, followed them into the forest, and took
+their camp. The Nervii meanwhile flung themselves with all their force
+on the two legions on the left, the 12th and 7th, enveloped them with
+their numbers, penetrated behind them, and fell upon the
+baggage-wagons. The light troops and the camp-followers fled in all
+directions. The legionaries, crowded together in confusion, were
+fighting at disadvantage, and were falling thick and fast. A party of
+horse from Treves, who had come to treat with Caesar, thought that all
+was lost, and rode off to tell their countrymen that the Romans were
+destroyed.
+
+Caesar, who was in the other wing, learning late what was going on,
+hurried to the scene. He found the standards huddled together, the men
+packed so close that they could not use their swords, almost all the
+officers killed or wounded, and one of the best of them, Sextius
+Baculus (Caesar always paused in his narrative to note any one who
+specially distinguished himself), scarce able to stand. Caesar had come
+up unarmed. He snatched a shield from a soldier, and, bareheaded, flew
+to the front. He was known; he addressed the centurions by their names.
+He bade them open their ranks and give the men room to strike. His
+presence and his calmness gave them back their confidence. In the worst
+extremities he observes that soldiers will fight well under their
+commander's eye. The cohorts formed into order. The enemy was checked.
+The two legions from the rear, who had learnt the danger from the
+flying camp-followers, came up. Labienus, from the opposite hill, saw
+what had happened, and sent the 10th legion back. All was now changed.
+The fugitives, ashamed of their cowardice, rallied, and were eager to
+atone for it. The Nervii fought with a courage which filled Caesar with
+admiration--men of greater spirit he said that he had never seen. As
+their first ranks fell, they piled the bodies of their comrades into
+heaps, and from the top of them hurled back the Roman javelins. They
+would not fly; they dropped where they stood; and the battle ended only
+with their extermination. Out of 600 senators there survived but three;
+out of 60,000 men able to bear arms, only 500. The aged of the tribe,
+and the women and children, who had been left in the morasses for
+security, sent in their surrender, their warriors being all dead. They
+professed to fear lest they might be destroyed by neighboring clans who
+were on bad terms with them. Caesar received them and protected them,
+and gave severe injunctions that they should suffer no injury.
+
+By the victory over the Nervii the Belgian confederacy was almost
+extinguished. The German Aduatuci remained only to be brought to
+submission. They had been on their way to join their countrymen; they
+were too late for the battle, and returned and shut themselves up in
+Namur, the strongest position in the Low Countries. Caesar, after a
+short rest, pushed on and came under their walls. The Aduatuci were a
+race of giants, and were at first defiant. When they saw the Romans'
+siege-towers in preparation, they could not believe that men so small
+could move such vast machines. When the towers began to approach, they
+lost heart and sued for terms. Caesar promised to spare their lives and
+properties if they surrendered immediately, but he refused to grant
+conditions. They had prayed to be allowed to keep their arms; affecting
+to believe, like the Nervii, that they would be in danger from the
+Gauls if they were unable to defend themselves. Caesar undertook that
+they should have no hurt, but he insisted that their arms must be given
+up. They affected obedience. They flung their swords and lances over
+the walls till the ditch was filled with them. They opened their gates;
+the Romans occupied them, but were forbidden to enter, that there might
+be no plundering. It seems that there was a desperate faction among the
+Aduatuci who had been for fighting to extremity. A third part of the
+arms had been secretly reserved, and after midnight the tribe sallied
+with all their force, hoping to catch the Romans sleeping. Caesar was
+not to be surprised a second time. Expecting that some such attempt
+might be made, he had prepared piles of fagots in convenient places.
+These bonfires were set blazing in an instant. By their red light the
+legions formed; and, after a desperate but unequal combat, the Germans
+were driven into the town again, leaving 4,000 dead. In the morning the
+gates were broken down, and Namur was taken without more resistance.
+Caesar's usual practice was gentleness. He honored brave men, and never
+punished bold and open opposition. Of treachery he made a severe
+example. Namur was condemned. The Aduatuci within its walls were sold
+into slavery, and the contractors who followed the army returned the
+number of prisoners whom they had purchased at 53,000. Such captives
+were the most valuable form of spoil.
+
+The Belgae were thus crushed as completely as the Gauls had been
+crushed in the previous year. Publius Crassus had meanwhile made a
+circuit of Brittany, and had received the surrender of the maritime
+tribes. So great was the impression made by these two campaigns, that
+the Germans beyond the Rhine sent envoys with offers of submission. The
+second season was over. Caesar left the legions in quarters about
+Chartres, Orleans, and Blois. He himself returned to Italy again, where
+his presence was imperatively required. The Senate, on the news of his
+successes, had been compelled, by public sentiment, to order an
+extraordinary thanksgiving; but there were men who were anxious to
+prevent Caesar from achieving any further victories since Ariovistus
+had failed to destroy him.
+
+
+[1] Perhaps in consequence of the Catiline conspiracy.
+
+[2] "In Gallia non solum in omnibus civitatibus atque in omnibus pagis
+    partibusque sed paene etiam in singulis domibus factiones sunt,
+    earumque factionum principes sunt qui summam auctoritatem eorum
+    judicio habere existimantur.... Haec est ratio in summa totius
+    Galliae, namque omnes civitates in partes divisae sunt duas. Cum
+    Caesar in Galliam venit, alterius factionis principes erant Haedui,
+    alterius Sequani."--_De Bello Gallico_, lib. vi. capp. 11, 12.
+
+[3] Even Dion Cassius speaks of the Germans as _Keltoi_.
+
+[4] "Id se ab ipsis per eorum nuntios compertum habere, quorum omnium
+    gratiam atque amicitiam ejus morte redimere posset."--_De Bell.
+    Gall_., i. 44.
+
+[5] Caesar thus records his admiration of the Nervian character: "Quorum
+    de natura moribusque Caesar cum quaereret sic reperiebat, nullum
+    aditum esse ad eos mercatoribus; nihil pati vini reliquarumque rerum
+    ad luxuriam pertinentium inferri, quod iis rebus relanguescere animos
+    eorum et remitti virtutem existimarent: esse homines feros magnaeque
+    virtutis; increpitare atque incusare reliquos Belgas qui se populo
+    Romano dedidissent patriamque virtutem projecissent; confirmare sese
+    neque legatos missuros neque ullam conditionem pacis
+    accepturos."--_De Bell. Gall_., ii. 15.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+[Sidenote B.C.58] Before his own catastrophe, and before he could
+believe that he was in danger, Cicero had discerned clearly the perils
+which threatened the State. The Empire was growing more extensive. The
+"Tritons of the fish-ponds" still held the reins; and believed their
+own supreme duty was to divide the spoils among themselves. The pyramid
+was standing on its point. The mass which rested on it was becoming
+more portentous and unwieldy. The Senate was the official power; the
+armies were the real power; and the imagination of the Senate was that
+after each conquest the soldiers would be dismissed back into humble
+life unrewarded, while the noble lords took possession of the new
+acquisitions, and added new millions to their fortunes. All this Cicero
+knew, and yet he had persuaded himself that it could continue without
+bringing on a catastrophe. He saw his fellow-senators openly bribed; he
+saw the elections become a mere matter of money. He saw adventurers
+pushing themselves into office by steeping themselves in debt, and
+paying their debts by robbing the provincials. He saw these high-born
+scoundrels coming home loaded with treasure, buying lands and building
+palaces, and, when brought to trial, purchasing the consciences of
+their judges. Yet he had considered such phenomena as the temporary
+accidents of a constitution which was still the best that could be
+conceived, and every one that doubted the excellence of it he had come
+to regard as an enemy of mankind. So long as there was free speech in
+Senate and platform for orators like himself, all would soon be well
+again. Had not he, a mere country gentleman's son, risen under it to
+wealth and consideration? and was not his own rise a sufficient
+evidence that there was no real injustice? Party struggles were over,
+or had no excuse for continuance. Sylla's constitution had been too
+narrowly aristocratic. But Sylla's invidious laws had been softened by
+compromise. The tribunes had recovered their old privileges. The
+highest offices of State were open to the meanest citizen who was
+qualified for them. Individuals of merit might have been kept back for
+a time by jealousy; the Senate had too long objected to the promotion
+of Pompey; but their opposition had been overcome by purely
+constitutional means. The great general had obtained his command by
+land and sea; he, Cicero, having by eloquent speech proved to the
+people that he ought to be nominated. What could any one wish for more?
+And yet Senate and Forum were still filled with faction, quarrel, and
+discontent! One interpretation only Cicero had been able to place on
+such a phenomenon. In Rome, as in all great communities, there were
+multitudes of dissolute, ruined wretches, the natural enemies of
+property and order. Bankrupt members of the aristocracy had lent
+themselves to these people as their leaders, and had been the cause of
+all the trouble of the past years. If such renegades to their order
+could be properly discouraged or extinguished, Cicero had thought that
+there would be nothing more to desire. Catiline he had himself made an
+end of to his own immortal glory, but now Catiline had revived in
+Clodius; and Clodius, so far from being discouraged, was petted and
+encouraged by responsible statesmen who ought to have known better.
+Caesar had employed him; Crassus had employed him; even Pompey had
+stooped to connect himself with the scandalous young incendiary, and
+had threatened to call in the army if the Senate attempted to repeal
+Caesar's iniquitous laws.[1] Still more inexplicable was the
+ingratitude of the aristocracy and their friends, the "boni" or
+good--the "Conservatives of the State," [2]  as Cicero still continued
+to call Caesar's opponents. He respected them; he loved them; he had
+done more for their cause than any single man in the Empire; and yet
+they had never recognized his services by word or deed. He had felt
+tempted to throw up public life in disgust, and retire to privacy and
+philosophy.
+
+So Cicero had construed the situation before his exile, and he had
+construed it ill. If he had wished to retire he could not. He had been
+called to account for the part of his conduct for which he most admired
+himself. The ungracious Senate, as guilty as he, if guilt there had
+been, had left him to bear the blame of it, and he saw himself driven
+into banishment by an insolent reprobate, a patrician turned Radical
+and demagogue, Publius Clodius. Indignity could be carried no farther.
+
+Clodius is the most extraordinary figure in this extraordinary period.
+He had no character. He had no distinguished talent save for speech; he
+had no policy; he was ready to adopt any cause or person which for the
+moment was convenient to him; and yet for five years this man was the
+omnipotent leader of the Roman mob. He could defy justice, insult the
+consuls, beat the tribunes, parade the streets with a gang of armed
+slaves, killing persons disagreeable to him; and in the Senate itself
+he had his high friends and connections who threw a shield over him
+when his audacity had gone beyond endurance. We know Clodius only from
+Cicero; and a picture of him from a second hand might have made his
+position more intelligible, if not more reputable. Even in Rome it is
+scarcely credible that the Clodius of Cicero could have played such a
+part, or that the death of such a man should have been regarded as a
+national calamity. Cicero says that Clodius revived Catiline's faction;
+but what was Catiline's faction? or how came Catiline to have a faction
+which survived him?
+
+Be this as it may, Clodius had banished Cicero, and had driven him away
+over the seas to Greece, there, for sixteen months, to weary Heaven and
+his friends with his lamentations. Cicero had refused Caesar's offered
+friendship; Caesar had not cared to leave so powerful a person free to
+support the intended attacks on his legislation, and had permitted,
+perhaps had encouraged, the prosecution. Cicero out of the way, the
+second person whose presence in Rome Caesar thought might be
+inconvenient, Marcus Cato, had been got rid of by a process still more
+ingenious. The aristocracy pretended that the acts of Caesar's
+consulship had been invalid through disregard of the interdictions of
+Bibulus; and one of those acts had been the reduction of Clodius to the
+order of plebeians. If none of them were valid, Clodius was not legally
+tribune, and no commission which Clodius might confer through the
+people would have validity. A service was discovered by which Cato was
+tempted, and which he was induced to accept at Clodius's hands. Thus he
+was at once removed from the city, and it was no longer open to him to
+deny that Caesar's laws had been properly passed. The work on which he
+was sent deserves a few words. The kingdom of Cyprus had long been
+attached to the crown of Egypt. Ptolemy Alexander, dying in the year
+80, had bequeathed both Egypt and Cyprus to Rome; but the Senate had
+delayed to enter on their bequest, preferring to share the fines which
+Ptolemy's natural heirs were required to pay for being spared. One of
+these heirs, Ptolemy Auletes, or "the Piper," father of the famous
+Cleopatra, was now reigning in Egypt, and was on the point of being
+expelled by his subjects. He had been driven to extortion to raise a
+subsidy for the senators, and he had made himself universally abhorred.
+Ptolemy of Cyprus had been a better sovereign, but a less prudent
+client. He had not overtaxed his people; he had kept his money.
+Clodius, if Cicero's story is true, had a private grudge against him.
+Clodius had fallen among Cyprian pirates. Ptolemy had not exerted
+himself for his release, and he had suffered unmentionable indignities.
+At all events, the unfortunate king was rich, and was unwilling to give
+what was expected of him. Clodius, on the plea that the King of Cyprus
+protected pirates, persuaded the Assembly to vote the annexation of the
+island; and Cato, of all men, was prevailed on by the mocking tribune
+to carry out the resolution. He was well pleased with his mission,
+though he wished it to appear to be forced upon him. Ptolemy poisoned
+himself; Cato earned the glory of adding a new province to the Empire,
+and did not return for two years, when he brought 7,000 talents--a
+million and a half of English money--to the Roman treasury.
+
+Cicero and Cato being thus put out of the way--Caesar being absent in
+Gaul, and Pompey looking on without interfering--Clodius had amused
+himself with legislation. He gratified his corrupt friends in the
+Senate by again abolishing the censor's power to expel them. He
+restored cheap corn establishments in the city--the most demoralizing
+of all the measures which the democracy had introduced to swell their
+numbers. He re-established the political clubs, which were hot-beds of
+distinctive radicalism. He took away the right of separate magistrates
+to lay their vetoes on the votes of the sovereign people, and he took
+from the Senate such power as they still possessed of regulating the
+government of the provinces, and passed it over to the Assembly. These
+resolutions, which reduced the administration to a chaos, he induced
+the people to decree by irresistible majorities. One measure only he
+passed which deserved commendation, though Clodius deserved none for
+introducing it. He put an end to the impious pretence of "observing the
+heavens," of which conservative officials had availed themselves to
+obstruct unwelcome motions. Some means were, no doubt, necessary to
+check the precipitate passions of the mob; but not means which turned
+into mockery the slight surviving remnants of ancient Roman reverence.
+
+In general politics the young tribune had no definite predilections. He
+had threatened at one time to repeal Caesar's laws himself. He attacked
+alternately the chiefs of the army and of the Senate, and the people
+let him do what he pleased without withdrawing their confidence from
+him. He went everywhere spreading terror with his body-guard of slaves.
+He quarrelled with the consuls, beat their lictors, and wounded
+Gabinius himself. Pompey professed to be in alarm for his life, and to
+be unable to appear in the streets. The state of Rome at this time has
+been well described by a modern historian as a "Walpurgis dance of
+political witches." [3]
+
+Clodius was a licensed libertine; but license has its limits. He had
+been useful so far; but a rein was wanted for him, and Pompey decided
+at last that Cicero might now be recalled. Clodius's term of office ran
+out. The tribunes for the new year were well disposed to Cicero. The
+new consuls were Lentulus, a moderate aristocrat, and Cicero's personal
+friend, and Metellus Nepos, who would do what Pompey told him. Caesar
+had been consulted by letter and had given his assent. Cicero, it might
+be thought, had learnt his lesson, and there was no desire of
+protracting his penance. There were still difficulties, however.
+Cicero, smarting from wrath and mortification, was more angry with the
+aristocrats, who had deserted him, than with his open enemies. His most
+intimate companions, he bitterly said, had been false to him. He was
+looking regretfully on Caesar's offers,[4] and cursing his folly for
+having rejected them. The people, too, would not sacrifice their
+convictions at the first bidding for the convenience of their leaders;
+and had neither forgotten nor forgiven the killing of the Catiline
+conspirators; while Cicero, aware of the efforts which were being made,
+had looked for new allies in an imprudent quarter. His chosen friend on
+the conservative side was now Annius Milo, one of the new tribunes, a
+man as disreputable as Clodius himself; deep in debt and looking for a
+province to indemnify himself--famous hitherto in the schools of
+gladiators, in whose arts he was a proficient, and whose services were
+at his disposal for any lawless purpose.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 57.] A decree of banishment could only be recalled by
+the people who had pronounced it. Clodius, though no longer in office,
+was still the idol of the mob; and two of the tribunes, who were at
+first well inclined to Cicero, had been gained over by him. As early as
+possible, on the first day of the new year, Lentulus Spinther brought
+Cicero's case before the Senate. A tribune reminded him of a clause,
+attached to the sentence of exile, that no citizen should in future
+move for its repeal. The Senate hesitated, perhaps catching at the
+excuse; but at length, after repeated adjournments, they voted that the
+question should be proposed to the Assembly. The day fixed was the 25th
+of January. In anticipation of a riot the temples on the Forum were
+occupied with guards. The Forum itself and the senate-house were in
+possession of Clodius and his gang. Clodius maintained that the
+proposal to be submitted to the people was itself illegal, and ought to
+be resisted by force. Fabricius, one of the tribunes, had been selected
+to introduce it. When Fabricius presented himself on the Rostra, there
+was a general rush to throw him down. The Forum was in theory still a
+sacred spot, where the carrying of arms was forbidden; but the new age
+had forgotten such obsolete superstitions. The guards issued out of the
+temples with drawn swords. The people were desperate and determined.
+Hundreds were killed on both sides; Quintus Cicero, who was present for
+his brother, narrowly escaping with life. The Tiber, Cicero
+says--perhaps with some exaggeration--was covered with floating bodies;
+the sewers were choked; the bloody area of the Forum had to be washed
+with sponges. Such a day had not been seen in Rome since the fight
+between Cinna and Octavius.[5] The mob remained masters of the field,
+and Cicero's cause had to wait for better times. Milo had been active
+in the combat, and Clodius led his victorious bands to Milo's house to
+destroy it. Milo brought an action against him for violence; but
+Clodius was charmed even against forms of law. There was no censor as
+yet chosen, and without a censor the praetors pretended that they could
+not entertain the prosecution. Finding law powerless, Milo imitated his
+antagonist. He, too, had his band of gladiators about him; and the
+streets of the Capital were entertained daily by fights between the
+factions of Clodius and Milo. The Commonwealth of the Scipios, the laws
+and institutions of the mistress of the civilized world, had become the
+football of ruffians. Time and reflection brought some repentance at
+last. Toward the summer "the cause of order" rallied. The consuls and
+Pompey exerted themselves to reconcile the more respectable citizens to
+Cicero's return; and, with the ground better prepared, the attempt was
+renewed with more success. In July the recall was again proposed in the
+Senate, and Clodius was alone in opposing it. When it was laid before
+the Assembly, Clodius made another effort; but voters had been brought
+up from other parts of Italy who outnumbered the city rabble; Milo and
+his gladiators were in force to prevent another burst of violence; and
+the great orator and statesman was given back to his country. Sixteen
+months he had been lamenting himself in Greece, bewailing his personal
+ill-treatment. He was the single object of his own reflections. In his
+own most sincere convictions he was the centre on which the destinies
+of Rome revolved. He landed at Brindisi on the 5th of August. His
+pardon had not yet been decreed, though he knew that it was coming. The
+happy news arrived in a day or two, and he set out in triumph for Rome.
+The citizens of Brindisi paid him their compliments; deputations came
+to congratulate from all parts of Italy. Outside the city every man of
+note of all the orders, save a few of his declared enemies, were
+waiting to receive him. The roofs and steps of the temples were
+thronged with spectators. Crowds attended him to the Capitol, where he
+went to pour out his gratitude to the gods, and welcomed him home with
+shouts of applause.
+
+Had he been wise he would have seen that the rejoicing was from the
+lips outward; that fine words were not gold; that Rome and its factions
+were just where he had left them, or had descended one step lower. But
+Cicero was credulous of flattery when it echoed his own opinions about
+himself. The citizens, he persuaded himself, were penitent for their
+ingratitude to the most illustrious of their countrymen. The
+acclamations filled him with the delighted belief that he was to resume
+his place at the head of the State; and, as he could not forgive his
+disgrace, his first object in the midst of his triumph was to revenge
+himself on those who had caused it. Speeches of acknowledgment he had
+naturally to make both to the Senate and the Assembly. In addressing
+the people he was moderately prudent; he glanced at the treachery of
+his friends, but he did not make too much of it. He praised his own
+good qualities, but not extravagantly. He described Pompey as "the
+wisest, best, and greatest of all men that had been, were, or ever
+would be." Himself he compared to Marius returning also from undeserved
+exile, and he delicately spoke in honor of a name most dear to the
+Roman plebs, But he, he said, unlike Marius, had no enemies but the
+enemies of his country. He had no retaliation to demand for his own
+wrongs. If he punished bad citizens, it would be by doing well himself;
+if he punished false friends, it would be by never again trusting them.
+His first and his last object would be to show his gratitude to his
+fellow-citizens.[6]
+
+Such language was rational and moderate. He understood his audience,
+and he kept his tongue under a bridle. But his heart was burning in
+him; and what he could not say in the Forum he thought he might venture
+on with impunity in the Senate, which might be called his own dunghill.
+His chief wrath was at the late consuls. They were both powerful men.
+Gabinius was Pompey's chief supporter. Calpurnius Piso was Caesar's
+father-in-law. Both had been named to the government of important
+provinces; and, if authority was not to be brought into contempt, they
+deserved at least a show of outward respect. Cicero lived to desire
+their friendship, to affect a value for them, and to regret his
+violence; but they had consented to his exile; and careless of decency,
+and oblivious of the chances of the future, he used his opportunity to
+burst out upon them in language in which the foulest ruffian in the
+streets would have scarcely spoken of the first magistrates of the
+Republic. Piso and Gabinius, he said, were thieves, not consuls. They
+had been friends of Catiline, and had been enemies to himself, because
+he had baffled the conspiracy. Piso could not pardon the death of
+Cethegus. Gabinius regretted in Catiline himself the loss of his
+lover.[7] Gabinius, he said, had been licentious in his youth; he had
+ruined his fortune; he had supplied his extravagance by pimping; and
+had escaped his creditors only by becoming tribune. "Behold him,"
+Cicero said, "as he appeared when consul at a meeting called by the
+arch-thief Clodius, full of wine, and sleep, and fornication, his hair
+moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid, and declaring, with a voice
+thick with drink, that he disapproved of putting citizens to death
+without trial." [8] As to Piso, his best recommendation was a cunning
+gravity of demeanor, concealing mere vacuity. Piso knew
+nothing--neither law, nor rhetoric, nor war, nor his fellow-men. "His
+face was the face of some half-human brute." "He was like a negro, a
+thing [_negotium_] without sense or savor, a Cappadocian picked out of
+a drove in the slave-market." [9]
+
+Cicero was not taking the best means to regain his influence in the
+Senate by stooping to vulgar brutality. He cannot be excused by the
+manners of the age; his violence was the violence of a fluent orator
+whose temper ran away with him, and who never resisted the temptation
+to insult an opponent. It did not answer with him; he thought he was to
+be chief of the Senate, and the most honored person in the State again;
+he found that he had been allowed to return only to be surrounded by
+mosquitoes whose delight was to sting him, while the Senate listened
+with indifference or secret amusement. He had been promised the
+restoration of his property; but he had a suit to prosecute before he
+could get it. Clodius had thought to make sure of his Roman palace by
+dedicating it to "Liberty." Cicero challenged the consecration. It was
+referred to the College of Priests, and the College returned a judgment
+in Cicero's favor. The Senate voted for the restoration. They voted
+sums for the rebuilding both of the palace on the Palatine Hill and of
+the other villas, at the public expense. But the grant in Cicero's
+opinion was a stingy one. He saw too painfully that those "who had
+clipped his wings did not mean them to grow again." [10] Milo and his
+gladiators were not sufficient support, and if he meant to recover his
+old power he found that he must look for stronger allies. Pompey had
+not used him well; Pompey had promised to defend him from Clodius, and
+Pompey had left him to his fate. But by going with Pompey he could at
+least gall the Senate. An opportunity offered, and he caught at it.
+There was a corn famine in Rome. Clodius had promised the people cheap
+bread, but there was no bread to be had. The hungry mob howled about
+the senate-house, threatening fire and massacre. The great capitalists
+and contractors were believed to be at their old work. There was a cry,
+as in the "pirate" days, for some strong man to see to them and their
+misdoings. Pompey was needed again. He had been too much forgotten, and
+with Cicero's help a decree was carried which gave Pompey control over
+the whole corn trade of the Empire for five years.
+
+This was something, and Pompey was gratified; but without an army
+Pompey could do little against the roughs in the streets, and Cicero's
+house became the next battle-ground. The Senate had voted it to its
+owner again, and the masons and carpenters were set to work; but the
+sovereign people had not been consulted. Clodius was now but a private
+citizen; but private citizens might resist sacrilege if the magistrates
+forgot their duty. He marched to the Palatine with his gang. He drove
+out the workmen, broke down the walls, and wrecked the adjoining house,
+which belonged to Cicero's brother Quintus. The next day he set on
+Cicero himself in the Via Sacra, and nearly murdered him, and he
+afterward tried to burn the house of Milo. Consuls and tribunes did not
+interfere. They were, perhaps, frightened. The Senate professed regret,
+and it was proposed to prosecute Clodius; but his friends were too
+strong, and it could not be done. Could Cicero have wrung his neck, as
+he had wrung the necks of Lentulus and Cethegus, Rome and he would have
+had a good deliverance. Failing this, he might wisely have waited for
+the law, which in time must have helped him. But he let himself down to
+Clodius's level. He railed at him in the Curia as he had railed at
+Gabinius and Piso. He ran over his history; he taunted him with incest
+with his sister, and with filthy relations with vulgar millionaires. He
+accused him of having sold himself to Catiline, of having forged wills,
+murdered the heirs of estates and stolen their property, of having
+murdered officers of the treasury and seized the public money, of
+having outraged gods and men, decency, equity, and law; of having
+suffered every abomination and committed every crime of which human
+nature was capable. So Cicero spoke in Clodius's own hearing and in the
+hearing of his friends. It never occurred to him that if half these
+crimes could be proved, a commonwealth in which such a monster could
+rise to consequence was not a commonwealth at all, but a frightful
+mockery which he and every honest man were called on to abhor. Instead
+of scolding and flinging impotent filth, he should have withdrawn out
+of public life when he could only remain in it among such companions,
+or should have attached himself with all his soul to those who had will
+and power to mend it.
+
+Clodius was at this moment the popular candidate for the aedileship,
+the second step on the road to the consulship. He was the favorite of
+the mob. He was supported by his brother Appius Claudius, the praetor,
+and the _clientele_ of the great Claudian family; and Cicero's
+denunciations of him had not affected in the least his chances of
+success. If Clodius was to be defeated, other means were needed than a
+statement in the Senate that the aspirant to public honors was a wretch
+unfit to live. The election was fixed for the 18th of November, and was
+to be held in the Campus Martius. Milo and his gladiators took
+possession of the polling-place in the night, and the votes could not
+be taken. The Assembly met the next day in the Forum, but was broken up
+by violence, and Clodius had still to wait. The political witch-dance
+was at its height and Cicero was in his glory. "The elections," he
+wrote to Atticus, "will not, I think, be held; and Clodius will be
+prosecuted by Milo unless he is first killed. Milo will kill him if he
+falls in with him. He is not afraid to do it, and he says openly that
+he will do it. He is not frightened at the misfortune which fell on me.
+He is not the man to listen to traitorous friends or to trust indolent
+patricians." [11]
+
+With recovered spirits the Senate began again to attack the laws of
+Caesar and Clodius as irregular; but they were met with the difficulty
+which Clodius had provided. Cato had come back from Cyprus, delighted
+with his exploit and with himself, and bringing a ship-load of money
+with him for the public treasury. If the laws were invalidated by the
+disregard of Bibulus and the signs of the sky, then the Cyprus mission
+had been invalid also, and Cato's fine performance void. Caesar's grand
+victories, the news of which was now coming in, made it inopportune to
+press the matter farther; and just then another subject rose, on which
+the optimates ran off like hounds upon a fresh scent.
+
+Ptolemy of Cyprus had been disposed of. Ptolemy Auletes had been
+preserved on the throne of Egypt by subsidies to the chiefs of the
+Senate. But his subjects had been hardly taxed to raise the money. The
+Cyprus affair had further exasperated them, and when Ptolemy laid on
+fresh impositions the Alexandrians mutinied and drove him out. His
+misfortunes being due to his friends at Rome, he came thither to beg
+the Romans to replace him. The Senate agreed unanimously that he must
+be restored to his throne. But then the question rose, who should be
+the happy person who was to be the instrument of his reinstatement?
+Alexandria was rich. An enormous fine could be exacted for the
+rebellion, besides what might be demanded from Ptolemy's gratitude. No
+prize so splendid had yet been offered to Roman avarice, and the
+patricians quarrelled over it like jackals over a bone. Lentulus
+Spinther, the late consul, was now Governor of Cilicia; Gabinius was
+Governor of Syria; and each of these had their advocates. Cicero and
+the respectable conservatives were for Spinther; Pompey was for
+Gabinius. Others wished Pompey himself to go; others wished for Crassus.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 56.] Meanwhile, the poor Egyptians themselves claimed a
+right to be heard in protest against the reimposition upon them of a
+sovereign who had made himself abhorred. Why was Ptolemy to be forced
+on them? A hundred of the principal Alexandrians came to Italy with a
+remonstrance; and had they brought money with them they might have had
+a respectful hearing. But they had brought none or not enough, and
+Ptolemy, secure of his patrons' support, hired a party of banditti, who
+set on the deputation when it landed, and killed the greater part of
+its members. Dion, the leader of the embassy, escaped for a time. There
+was still a small party among the aristocracy (Cato and Cato's
+followers) who had a conscience in such things; and Favonius, one of
+them, took up Dion's cause. Envoys and allied sovereigns or provinces,
+he said, were continually being murdered. Noble lords received
+hush-money, and there had been no inquiry. Such things happened too
+often, and ought to be stopped. The Senate voted decently to send for
+Dion and examine him. But Favonius was privately laughed at as "Cato's
+ape;" the unfortunate Dion was made away with, and Pompey took Ptolemy
+into his own house and openly entertained him there. Pompey would
+himself perhaps have undertaken the restoration, but the Senate was
+jealous. His own future was growing uncertain; and eventually, without
+asking for a consent which the Senate would have refused to give, he
+sent his guest to Syria with a charge to his friend Gabinius to take
+him back on his own responsibility.[12]
+
+The killing of envoys and the taking of hush-money by senators were, as
+Favonius had said, too common to attract much notice; but the affair of
+Ptolemy, like that of Jugurtha, had obtained an infamous notoriety. The
+Senate was execrated. Pompey himself fell in public esteem. His
+overseership of the granaries had as yet brought in no corn. He had
+been too busy over the Egyptian matter to attend to it. Clearly enough
+there would now have been a revolution in Rome, but for the physical
+force of the upper classes with their bands of slaves and clients.
+
+The year of Milo's tribunate being over, Clodius was chosen aedile
+without further trouble; and, instead of being the victim of a
+prosecution, he at once impeached Milo for the interruption of the
+Comitia on the 18th of November. Milo appeared to answer on the 2d of
+February; but there was another riot, and the meeting was broken up. On
+the 6th the court was again held. The crowd was enormous. Cicero
+happily has left a minute account of the scene. The people were
+starving, the corn question was pressing. Milo presented himself, and
+Pompey came forward on the Rostra to speak. He was received with howls
+and curses from Clodius's hired ruffians, and his voice could not be
+heard for the noise. Pompey held on undaunted, and commanded occasional
+silence by the weight of his presence. Clodius rose when Pompey had
+done, and rival yells went up from the Milonians. Yells were not
+enough; filthy verses were sung in chorus about Clodius and Clodia,
+ribald bestiality, delightful to the ears of "Tully." Clodius, pale
+with anger, called out, "Who is murdering the people with famine?" A
+thousand throats answered, "Pompey!" "Who wants to go to Alexandria?"
+"Pompey!" they shouted again. "And whom do you want to go?" "Crassus!"
+they cried. Passion had risen too high for words. The Clodians began to
+spit on the Milonians. The Milonians drew swords and cut the heads of
+the Clodians. The working men, being unarmed, got the worst of the
+conflict; and Clodius was flung from the Rostra. The Senate was
+summoned to call Pompey to account. Cicero went off home, wishing to
+defend Pompey, but wishing also not to offend the "good" party, who
+were clamorous against him. That evening nothing could be done. Two
+days after the Senate met again; Cato abused Pompey, and praised Cicero
+much against Cicero's will, who was anxious to stand well with Pompey.
+Pompey accused Cato and Crassus of a conspiracy to murder him. In fact,
+as Cicero said, Pompey had just then no friend in any party. The mob
+was estranged from him, the noble lords hated him, the Senate did not
+like him, the patrician youth insulted him, and he was driven to bring
+up friends from the country to protect his life. All sides were
+mustering their forces in view of an impending fight.[13]
+
+It would be wasted labor to trace minutely the particulars of so
+miserable a scene, or the motives of the principal actors in
+it--Pompey, bound to Caesar by engagement and conviction, yet jealous
+of his growing fame, without political conviction of his own, and only
+conscious that his weight in the State no longer corresponded to his
+own estimate of his merits--Clodius at the head of the starving mob,
+representing mere anarchy, and nourishing an implacable hate against
+Cicero--Cicero, anxious for his own safety, knowing now that he had
+made enemies of half the Senate, watching how the balance of factions
+would go, and dimly conscious that the sword would have to decide it,
+clinging, therefore, to Pompey, whose military abilities his civilian
+ignorance considered supereminent--Cato, a virtuous fanatic, narrow,
+passionate, with a vein of vanity, regarding all ways as wrong but his
+own, and thinking all men who would not walk as he prescribed wicked as
+well as mistaken--the rest of the aristocracy scuffling for the plunder
+of Egypt, or engaged in other enterprises not more creditable--the
+streets given over to the factions--the elections the alternate prize
+of bribery or violence, and consulates and praetorships falling to men
+more than half of whom, if Cicero can be but moderately believed,
+deserved to be crucified. Cicero's main affection was for Titus Annius
+Milo, to whom he clung as a woman will cling to a man whose strength
+she hopes will support her weakness. Milo, at least, would revenge his
+wrongs upon Clodius. Clodius, Cicero said even in the Senate, was
+Milo's predestined victim.[14] Titus Annius knew how an armed citizen
+who burnt temples and honest men's houses ought to be dealt with. Titus
+Annius was born to extinguish that pest of the Commonwealth.[15]
+
+Still smarting over his exile, Cicero went one day with Milo and his
+gladiators to the Capitol when Clodius was absent, and carried off the
+brass tablet on which the decree of his exile had been engraved. It was
+some solace to his poor vanity to destroy the record of his misfortune.
+But it was in vain. All was going wrong. Caesar's growing glories came
+thick to trouble his peace. He, after all, then, was not to be the
+greatest man in Rome. How would these splendid successes affect
+parties? How would they affect Pompey? How would, they affect the
+Senate? What should he do himself?
+
+The Senate distrusted him; the people distrusted him. In his perplexity
+he tried to rouse the aristocracy to a sense of their danger, and
+hinted that his was the name which yet might save them.
+
+Sextius, who had been a tribune with Milo in the past year, was under
+prosecution for one of the innumerable acts of violence which had
+disgraced the city. Cicero defended him, and spoke at length on the
+state of affairs as he wished the world to believe that he regarded it.
+
+"In the Commonwealth," he said, "there have always been two
+parties--the populares and the optimates. The populares say and do what
+will please the mob. The optimates say and do what will please the best
+men. And who are the best men? They are of all ranks and infinite in
+number--senators, municipals, farmers, men of business, even libertini.
+The type is distinct. They are the well-to-do, the sound, the honest,
+who do no wrong to any man. The object at which they aim is quiet with
+honor. [16] They are the conservatives of the State. Religion and good
+government, the Senate's authority, the laws and customs of our
+ancestors, public faith, integrity, sound administration--these are the
+principles on which they rest, and these they will maintain with their
+lives. Their path is perilous. The foes of the State are stronger than
+its defenders; they are bold and desperate, and go with a will to the
+work of destruction; while the good, I know not why, are languid, and
+will not rouse themselves unless compelled. They would have quiet
+without honor, and so lose both quiet and honor. Some are triflers,
+some are timid, only a few stand firm. But it is not now as it was in
+the days of the Gracchi. There have been great reforms. The people are
+conservative at heart; the demagogues cannot rouse them, and are forced
+to pack the Assembly with hired gangs. Take away these gangs, stop
+corruption at the elections, and we shall be all of one mind. The
+people will be on our side. The citizens of Rome are not populares.
+They hate the populares, and prefer honorable men. How did they weep in
+the theatres where they heard the news that I was exiled! How did they
+cheer my name! 'Tully, the preserver of our liberties!' was repeated a
+thousand times. Attend to me," he said, turning paternally to the
+high-born youths who were listening to him, "attend to me when I bid
+you walk in the ways of your forefathers. Would you have praise and
+honor, would you have the esteem of the wise and good, value the
+constitution under which you live. Our ancestors, impatient of kings,
+appointed annual magistrates, and for the administration they nominated
+a Senate chosen from the whole people into which the road is open for
+the poorest citizen." [17]
+
+So Cicero, trying to persuade others, and perhaps half persuading
+himself, that all might yet be well, and that the Roman Constitution
+would roll on upon its old lines in the face of the scandal of Ptolemy
+and the greater scandals of Clodius and Milo.
+
+Cicero might make speeches; but events followed their inexorable
+course. The patricians had forgotten nothing and had learnt nothing.
+The Senate had voted thanksgivings for Caesar's victories; but in their
+hearts they hated him more for them, because they feared him more. Milo
+and his gladiators gave them courage. The bitterest of the aristocrats,
+Domitius Ahenobarbus, Cato's brother-in-law and praetor for the year,
+was a candidate for the consulship. His enormous wealth made his
+success almost certain, and he announced in the Senate that he meant to
+recall Caesar and repeal his laws. In April a motion was introduced in
+the Senate to revise Caesar's land act. Suspicions had gone abroad that
+Cicero believed Caesar's star to be in the ascendant, and that he was
+again wavering. To clear himself he spoke as passionately as Domitius
+could himself have wished, and declared that he honored more the
+resistance of Bibulus than all the triumphs in the world. It was time
+to come to an end with these gentlemen. Pompey was deeply committed to
+Caesar's agrarian law, for it had been passed primarily to provide for
+his own disbanded soldiers. He was the only man in Rome who retained
+any real authority; and touched, as for a moment he might have been,
+with jealousy, he felt that honor, duty, every principle of prudence or
+patriotism, required him at so perilous a crisis to give Caesar his
+firm support. Clodius was made in some way to understand that, if he
+intended to retain his influence, he must conform to the wishes of the
+army. His brother, Appius, crossed the Alps to see Caesar himself; and
+Caesar, after the troops were in their winter quarters, came over to
+the north of Italy. Here an interview was arranged between the chiefs
+of the popular party. The place of meeting was Lucca, on the frontier
+of Caesar's province. Pompey, who had gone upon a tour along the coast
+and through the Mediterranean islands on his corn business, attended
+without concealment or mystery. Crassus was present, and more than a
+hundred senators. The talking power of the State was in Rome. The
+practical and real power was in the Lucca conference. Pompey, Caesar,
+and Crassus were irresistible when heartily united, and a complete
+scheme was arranged between them for the government of the Empire.
+There was to be no Domitius Ahenobarbus for a consul, or aristocratic
+_coups d'etat_. Pompey and Crassus were to be consuls for the ensuing
+year. The consulship over, Pompey was to have Spain for a province for
+five years, with an adequate army. Crassus, who was ambitious also of
+military distinction, was to have Syria. Caesar's command in Gaul was
+to be extended for five years further in addition to his present term.
+The consent of the Assembly was to be secured, if difficulty arose, by
+the votes of the army. The elections being in the winter, Caesar's
+soldiers were to be allowed to go to Rome on furlough.
+
+In a personal interview Caesar easily asserted his ascendency. Pompey
+allowed himself to be guided, and the arrangement was probably dictated
+by Caesar's own prudence. He did not mean to leave Gaul half conquered,
+to see his work undone, and himself made into a plaything by men who
+had incited Ariovistus to destroy him. The senators who were present at
+Lucca implied by their co-operation that they too were weary of
+anarchy, and would sustain the army in a remodelling of the State if
+milder measures failed.
+
+Thus, for the moment, Domitius and Cato were baffled. Domitius was not
+to be consul. Caesar was not to be recalled, or his laws repealed.
+There was no hope for them or for the reaction, till Pompey and Caesar
+could be divided; and their alliance was closer now than ever. The
+aristocratic party could but chafe in impotent rage. The effect on
+Cicero was curious. He had expected that the conservative movement
+would succeed, and he had humiliated himself before the Senate, in the
+idle hope of winning back their favor. The conference at Lucca opened
+his eyes. For a time at least he perceived that Caesar's was the
+winning side, and he excused himself for going over to it by laying the
+blame on the Senate's folly and ingratitude to himself. Some private
+correspondence preceded his change of sides. He consulted Atticus, and
+had received characteristic and cautious advice from him. He described
+in reply his internal struggles, the resolution at which he had
+arrived, and the conclusion which he had formed upon his own past
+conduct.
+
+"I am chewing what I have to swallow," he said. "Recantation does not
+seem very creditable; but adieu to straightforward, honest counsels.
+You would not believe the perfidy of these chiefs; as they wish to be,
+and what they might be if they had any faith in them. I had felt, I had
+known, that I was being led on by them, and then deserted and cast off;
+and yet I thought of making common cause with them. They were the same
+which they had always been. You made me see the truth at last. You will
+say you warned me. You advised what I should do, and you told me not to
+write to Caesar. By Hercules! I wished to put myself in a position
+where I should be obliged to enter into this new coalition, and where
+it would not be possible for me, even if I desired it, to go with those
+who ought to pity me, and, instead of pity, give me grudging and envy.
+I have been moderate in what I have written. I shall be more full if
+Caesar meets me graciously; and then those gentlemen who are so jealous
+that I should have a decent house to live in will make a wry face....
+Enough of this. Since those who have no power will not be my friends, I
+must endeavor to make friends with those who have. You will say you
+wished this long ago. I know that you wished it, and that I have been a
+mere ass;[18] but it is time for me to be loved by myself, since I can
+get no love from them." [19]
+
+Pompey, after leaving Lucca, sent Cicero a message, through his
+brother, complaining of his speech on the land act, but assuring him of
+his own and Caesar's friendship if he would now be true to them. In an
+apologetic letter to Lentulus Spinther, Cicero explained and justified
+what he meant to do.
+
+"Pompey," he said, "did not let me know that he was offended. He went
+off to Sardinia, and on his way saw Caesar at Lucca. Caesar was angry
+with me; he had seen Crassus, and Crassus had prejudiced him. Pompey,
+too, was himself displeased. He met my brother a few days after, and
+told him to use his influence with me. He reminded him of his exertions
+in my behalf; he swore that those exertions had been made with Caesar's
+consent, and he begged particularly that, if I could not support
+Caesar, I would not go against him. I reflected. I debated the matter
+as if with the Commonwealth. I had suffered much and done much for the
+Commonwealth. I had now to think of myself. I had been a good citizen;
+I must now be a good man. Expressions came round to me that had been
+used by certain persons whom even you do not like. They were delighted
+to think that I had offended Pompey, and had made Caesar my mortal
+enemy. This was annoying enough. But the same persons embraced and
+kissed even in my presence my worst foe--the foe of law, order, peace,
+country, and every good man [20].... They meant to irritate me, but I
+had not spirit to be angry. I surveyed my situation. I cast up my
+accounts; and I came to a conclusion, which was briefly this. If the
+State was in the hands of bad men, as in my time I have known it to be,
+I would not join them though they loaded me with favors; but when the
+first person in the Commonwealth was Pompey, whose services had been so
+eminent, whose advancement I had myself furthered, and who stood by me
+in my difficulties, I was not inconsistent if I modified some of my
+opinions, and conformed to the wishes of one who has deserved so well
+of me. If I went with Pompey, I must go with Caesar too; and here the
+old friendship came to bear between Caesar, my brother, and myself, as
+well as Caesar's kindness to me, of which I had seen evidence in word
+and deed.... Public interest, too, moved me. A quarrel with these men
+would be most inexpedient, especially after what Caesar has done.... If
+the persons who assisted in bringing me back had been my friends
+afterward, they would have recovered their power when they had me to
+help them. The 'good' had gained heart when you were consul. Pompey was
+then won to the 'good' cause. Even Caesar, after being decorated by the
+Senate for his victories, might have been brought to a better judgment,
+and wicked citizens would have had no opening to make disturbances. But
+what happened? These very men protected Clodius, who cared no more for
+the Bona Dea than for the Three Sisters. They allowed my monument to be
+engraved with a hostile record....[21] The good party are not as you
+left them. Those who ought to have been staunch have fallen away. You
+see it in their faces. You see it in the words and votes of those whom
+we called 'optimates;' so that wise citizens, one of whom I wish to be
+and to be thought, must change their course. 'Persuade your countrymen,
+if you can,' said Plato; 'but use no violence.' Plato found that he
+could no longer persuade the Athenians, and therefore he withdrew from
+public life. Advice could not move them, and he held force to be
+unlawful. My case was different. I was not called on to undertake
+public responsibilities. I was content to further my own interests, and
+to defend honest men's causes. Caesar's goodness to me and to my
+brother would have bound me to him whatever had been his fortunes. Now
+after so much glory and victory I should speak nobly of him though I
+owed him nothing." [22]
+
+Happy it would have been for Cicero, and happy for Rome, had he
+persevered in the course which he now seemed really to have chosen.
+Cicero and Caesar united might have restored the authority of the laws,
+punished corruption and misgovernment, made their country the mother as
+well as the mistress of the world; and the Republic, modified to suit
+the change of times, might have survived for many generations. But
+under such a modification, Cicero would have no longer been the first
+person in the Commonwealth. The talkers would have ceased to rule, and
+Cicero was a talker only. He could not bear to be subordinate. He was
+persuaded that he, and not Caesar, was the world's real great man; and
+so he held on, leaning now to one faction and now to another, waiting
+for the chance which was to put him at last in his true place. For the
+moment, however, he saved himself from the degradation into which the
+Senate precipitated itself. The arrangements at Lucca were the work of
+the army. The conservative majority refused to let the army dictate to
+them. Domitius intended still to be consul, let the army say what it
+pleased. Pompey and Crassus returned to Rome for the elections; the
+consuls for the year, Marcellinus and Philip, declined to take their
+names. The consuls and the Senate appealed to the Assembly, the Senate
+marching into the Forum in state, as if calling on the genius of the
+nation to defend the outraged constitution. In vain. The people would
+not listen. The consuls were groaned down. No genius of Rome presided
+in those meetings, but the genius of revolution in the person of
+Clodius. The senators were driven back into the Curia, and Clodius
+followed them there. The officers forbade his entrance. Furious young
+aristocrats flew upon him, seized him, and would have murdered him in
+their rage. Clodius shrieked for help. His rascal followers rushed in
+with lighted torches, swearing to burn house and Senate if a hair of
+Clodius's head were hurt. They bore their idol off in triumph; and the
+wretched senators sat gazing at each other, or storming at Pompey, and
+inquiring scornfully if he and Crassus intended to appoint themselves
+consuls. Pompey answered that they had no desire for office, but
+anarchy must be brought to an end.
+
+Still the consuls of the year stubbornly refused to take the names of
+the Lucca nominees. The year ran out, and no election had been held. In
+such a difficulty, the constitution had provided for the appointment of
+an _Interrex_ till fresh consuls could be chosen. Pompey and Crassus
+were then nominated, with a foregone conclusion. Domitius still
+persisted in standing; and, had it been safe to try the usual methods,
+the patricians would have occupied the voting-places as before with
+their retinues, and returned him by force. But young Publius Crassus
+was in Rome with thousands of Caesar's soldiers, who had come up to
+vote from the north of Italy. With these it was not safe to venture on
+a conflict, and the consulships fell as the Lucca conference had
+ordered.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 55.] The consent of the Assembly to the other
+arrangements remained to be obtained. Caesar was to have five
+additional years in Gaul; Pompey and Crassus were to have Spain and
+Syria, also for five years each, as soon as their year of office should
+be over. The defenders of the constitution fought to the last. Cato
+foamed on the Rostra. When the two hours allowed him to speak were
+expired, he refused to sit down, and was removed by a guard. The
+meeting was adjourned to the next day. Publius Gallus, another
+irreconcilable, passed the night in the senate-house, that he might be
+in his place at dawn. Cato and Favonius were again at their posts. The
+familiar cry was raised that the signs of the sky were unfavorable. The
+excuse had ceased to be legal. The tribunes ordered the voting to go
+forward. The last resource was then tried. A riot began, but to no
+purpose. The aristocrats and their clients were beaten back, and the
+several commands were ratified. As the people were dispersing, their
+opponents rallied back, filled the Forum, and were voting Caesar's
+recall, when Pompey came on them and swept them out. Gallus was carried
+off covered with blood; and, to prevent further question, the vote for
+Caesar was taken a second time.
+
+The immediate future was thus assured. Time had been obtained for the
+completion of the work in Gaul. Pompey dedicated a new theatre, and
+delighted the mob with games and races. Five hundred lions were
+consumed in five days of combat. As a special novelty eighteen
+elephants were made to fight with soldiers; and, as a yet more
+extraordinary phenomenon, the sanguinary Roman spectators showed signs
+of compunction at their sufferings. The poor beasts were quiet and
+harmless. When wounded with the lances, they turned away, threw up
+their trunks, and trotted round the circus, crying, as if in protest
+against wanton cruelty. The story went that they were half human; that
+they had been seduced on board the African transports by a promise that
+they should not be ill-used, and they were supposed to be appealing to
+the gods.[23]Cicero alludes to the scene in a letter to one of his
+friends. Mentioning Pompey's exhibitions with evident contempt, he
+adds: "There remained the hunts, which lasted five days. All say that
+they were very fine. But what pleasure can a sensible person find in
+seeing a clumsy performer torn by a wild beast, or a noble animal
+pierced with a hunting-spear? The last day was given to the elephants;
+not interesting to me, however delightful to the rabble. A certain pity
+was felt for them, as if the elephants had some affinity with man." [24]
+
+[1] _To Atticus_, ii. 16.
+
+[2] "Conservatores Reipublicae."--_Pro Sextio_.
+
+[3] Mommsen.
+
+[4] "Omnia sunt mea culpa commissa, qui ab his me amari putabam qui
+    invidebant: eos non sequebar qui petebant."--_Ad Familiares_,
+    xiv. 1. "Nullum est meum peccatum nisi quod iis credidi a quibus
+    nefas putabam esse me decipi.... Intimus proximus familiarissimus
+    quisque aut sibi pertimuit aut mihi invidit."--_Ad Quintum
+    Fratrem_, i. 4.
+
+[5] "Meministis tum, judices, corporibus civium Tiberim compleri, cloacas
+    referciri, e foro spongiis effingi sanguinem.... Caedem tantam, tantos
+    acervos corporum extruetos, nisi forte illo Cinnano atque Octaviano
+    die, quis unquam in foro vidit?"--_Oratio prov P. Sextio_,
+    xxxv. 36.
+
+[6] _Ad Quirites post Reditum_.
+
+[7] "Ejus vir Catilina."
+
+[8] "Cum in Circo Flaminio non a tribuno plebis consul in concionem sed a
+    latrone archipirata productus esset, primum processit qua auctoritate
+    vir. Vini, somni, stupri plenus, madenti coma, gravibus oculis,
+    fluentibus buccis, pressa voce et temulenta, quod in cives indemnatos
+    esset animadversum, id sibi dixit gravis auctor vehementissime
+    displicere."--_Post Reditum in Senatu_, 6.
+
+[9] Cicero could never leave Gabinius and Piso alone. Again and again he
+    returned upon them railing like a fishwife. In his oration for Sextius
+    he scoffed at Gabinius's pomatum and curled hair, and taunted him with
+    unmentionable sins; but he specially entertained himself with his
+    description of Piso:
+
+    "For Piso!" he said: "O gods, how unwashed, how stern he looked--a
+    pillar of antiquity, like one of the old bearded consuls; his dress
+    plain plebeian purple, his hair tangled, his brow a very pledge for
+    the Commonwealth! Such solemnity in his eye, such wrinkling of his
+    forehead, that you would have said the State was resting on his head
+    like the sky on Atlas. Here we thought we had a refuge. Here was the
+    man to oppose the filth of Gabinius; his very face would be enough.
+    People congratulated us on having one friend to save us from the
+    tribune. Alas! I was deceived," etc. etc.
+
+    Piso afterward called Cicero to account in the Senate, and brought out
+    a still more choice explosion of invectives. Beast, filth, polluted
+    monster, and such like, were the lightest of the names which Cicero
+    hurled back at one of the oldest members of the Roman aristocracy. A
+    single specimen may serve to illustrate the cataract of nastiness
+    which he poured alike on Piso and Clodius and Gabinius: "When all the
+    good were hiding themselves in tears," he said to Piso, "when the
+    temples were groaning and the very houses in the city were mourning
+    (over my exile), you, heartless madman that you are, took up the cause
+    of that pernicious animal, that clotted mass of incests and civil
+    blood, of villanies intended and impurity of crimes committed [he was
+    alluding to Clodius, who was in the Senate probably listening to him].
+    Need I speak of your feasting, your laughter, and handshakings--your
+    drunken orgies with the filthy companions of your potations? Who in
+    those days saw you ever sober, or doing anything that a citizen need
+    not be ashamed of? While your colleague's house was sounding with
+    songs and cymbals, and he himself was dancing naked at a supper-party
+    ["cumque ipse nudus in convivio saltaret,"] you, you coarse glutton,
+    with less taste for music, were lying in a stew of Greek boys and wine
+    in a feast of the Centaurs and Lapithae, where one cannot say whether
+    you drank most, or vomited most, or spilt most."--_In L.
+    Pisonem_,10. The manners of the times do not excuse language of
+    this kind, for there was probably not another member of the Senate
+    who indulged in it. If Cicero was disliked and despised, he had his
+    own tongue to thank for it.
+
+[10] _To Atticus_, iv. 2.
+
+[11] _To Atticus_, iv. 3.
+
+[12] For the details of this story see Dion Cassius, lib. xxxix. capp.
+    12-16. Compare _Cicero ad Familiares_, lib. i. Epist. 1-2.
+    Curious subterranean influences seem to have been at work to save the
+    Senate from the infamy of restoring Ptolemy. Verses were discovered in
+    the Sibylline Books directing that if an Egyptian king came to Rome as
+    a suppliant, he was to be entertained hospitably, but was to have no
+    active help. Perhaps Cicero was concerned in this.
+
+[13] _Ad Quintum Fratrem_, ii. 3.
+
+[14] "Tito Annio devota et constituta hostia esse videtur."--_De
+    Haruspicum responsis_.
+
+[15] Ibid.
+
+[16] "Otium cum dignitate."
+
+[17] Abridged from the _Oratio pro Sextio_.
+
+[18] "Me germanum asinum fuisse." Perhaps "own brother to an ass" would
+    be a more proper rendering.
+
+[19] _To Atticus_, iv. 5.
+
+[20] Clodius.
+
+[21] Here follows much about himself and his own merits.
+
+[22] To Lentulus Spinther, _Ad Familiares_, i. 9. The length of this
+    remarkable letter obliges me to give but an imperfect summary of it.
+    The letter itself should be studied carefully by those who would
+    understand Cicero's conduct.
+
+[23] Dion Cassius.
+
+[24] _Ad Familiares_, vii. 1.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 56.] While Caesar was struggling with the Senate for
+leave to complete the conquest of Gaul, fresh work was preparing for
+him there. Young Publius Crassus, before he went to Italy, had wintered
+with the seventh legion in Brittany. The Breton tribes had nominally
+made their submission, and Crassus had desired them to supply his
+commissariat. They had given hostages for their good behavior, and most
+of them were ready to obey. The Veneti, the most important of the coast
+clans, refused. They induced the rest to join them. They seized the
+Roman officers whom Crassus had sent among them, and they then offered
+to exchange their prisoners for their countrymen whom the Romans held
+in pledge. The legions might be irresistible on land; but the Veneti
+believed that their position was impregnable to an attack on the land
+side. Their homes were on the Bay of Quiberon and on the creeks and
+estuaries between the mouth of the Loire and Brest. Their villages were
+built on promontories, cut off at high tide from the mainland,
+approachable only by water, and not by water except in shallow vessels
+of small draught which could be grounded safely on the mud. The
+population were sailors and fishermen. They were ingenious and
+industrious, and they carried on a considerable trade in the Bay of
+Biscay and in the British Channel. They had ships capable of facing the
+heavy seas which rolled in from the Atlantic, flat-bottomed, with high
+bow and stern, built solidly of oak, with timbers a foot thick,
+fastened with large iron nails. They had iron chains for cables. Their
+sails--either because sailcloth was scarce, or because they thought
+canvas too weak for the strain of the winter storms--were manufactured
+out of leather. Such vessels were unwieldy, but had been found
+available for voyages even to Britain. Their crews were accustomed to
+handle them, and knew all the rocks and shoals and currents of the
+intricate and difficult harbors. They looked on the Romans as mere
+landsmen, and naturally enough they supposed that they had as little to
+fear from an attack by water as from the shore. At the worst they could
+take to their ships and find a refuge in the islands.
+
+Crassus, when he went to Rome, carried the report to Caesar of the
+revolt of the Veneti, and Caesar felt that unless they were promptly
+punished, all Gaul might be again in flame. They had broken faith. They
+had imprisoned Roman officers who had gone on a peaceful mission among
+them. It was necessary to teach a people so restless, so hardly
+conquered, and so impatient of foreign dominion, that there was no
+situation which the Roman arm was unable to reach.
+
+While the Lucca conference was going on, a fleet of Roman galleys was
+built by his order in the Loire. Rowers, seamen, and pilots were
+brought across from Marseilles. When the season was sufficiently
+advanced for active operations, Caesar came himself and rejoined his
+army. Titus Labienus was sent with three legions to Treves to check the
+Germans on the Rhine, and prevent disturbances among the Belgae.
+Titurius Sabinus, with three more, was stationed in Normandy. To
+Brittany Caesar went in person to reduce the rebellious Veneti. The
+weather was too unsettled for his fleet to be able as yet to join him.
+Without its help he found the problem as difficult as the Veneti
+expected. Each village required a siege; when it was reduced, the
+inhabitants took to their boats, and defied him again in a new
+position. Many weeks were thus fruitlessly wasted. The fine weather at
+length set in. The galleys from the Loire came out, accompanied by
+others from Rochelle and the mouth of the Garonne. The command at sea
+was given to Decimus Brutus, a cousin of the afterward famous Marcus, a
+clever, able, and so far loyal officer.
+
+The Veneti had collected every ship that they or their allies possessed
+to defend themselves. They had 220 sail in all--a force, considering
+its character, extremely formidable. Their vessels were too strong to
+be run down. The galleys carried turrets; but the bows and sterns of
+the Veneti were still too lofty to be reached effectively by the Roman
+javelins. The Romans had the advantage in speed; but that was all. They
+too, however, had their ingenuities. They had studied the construction
+of the Breton ships. They had provided sickles with long handles, with
+which they proposed to catch the halyards which held the weight of the
+heavy leather sails. It was not difficult to do, if, as is probable,
+the halyards were made fast, not to the mast, but to the gunwale.
+Sweeping rapidly alongside they could easily cut them; the sails would
+fall, and the vessels would be unmanageable.
+
+A sea battle of this singular kind was thus fought off the eastern
+promontory of the Bay of Quiberon, Caesar and his army looking on from
+the shore. The sickles answered well; ship after ship was disabled; the
+galleys closed with them, and they were taken by boarding. The Veneti
+then tried to retreat; but a calm came on, and they could not move. The
+fight lasted from ten in the morning till sunset, when the entire
+Breton fleet was taken or sunk.
+
+After this defeat the Veneti gave up the struggle. Their ships were all
+gone. Their best men were on board, and had been killed. They had no
+power of resistance left. Caesar was constitutionally lenient, and
+admired rather than resented a valiant fight for freedom. But the
+Veneti had been treacherous. They had laid hands on the sacred persons
+of Roman ambassadors, and he considered it expedient on this one
+occasion to use severity. The council who had contrived the
+insurrection were put to death. The rest of the tribe were treated as
+the Aduatuci had been, and were sold into slavery.
+
+Sabinus, meanwhile, had been in difficulties in Normandy. The people
+there had risen and killed their chiefs, who tried to keep them quiet;
+vagabonds from other parts had joined them, and Sabinus, who wanted
+enterprise, allowed the disturbances to become dangerous. He ended them
+at last, however, successfully, and Caesar would not allow his caution
+to be blamed. During the same months, Publius Crassus had made a
+brilliant campaign in Aquitaine. The Aquitani had not long before
+overthrown two Roman armies. Determined not to submit to Caesar, they
+had allied themselves with the Spaniards of the Pyrenees, and had
+officers among them who had been trained by Sertorius. Crassus stormed
+their camp with a skill and courage which called out Caesar's highest
+approbation, and completely subdued the whole country.
+
+In all France there now remained only a few unimportant tribes on the
+coast between Calais and the Scheldt which had not formally submitted.
+The summer being nearly over, Caesar contented himself with a hasty
+survey of their frontier. The weather broke up earlier than usual, and
+the troops were redistributed in their quarters. Again there had been a
+year of unbroken success. The Romans were masters of Gaul, and the
+admirable care of their commander had preserved the numbers in his
+legions almost undiminished. The smallness of the loss with which all
+these wonders were accomplished is perhaps the most extraordinary
+feature of the story. Not till a year later is there any notice of
+fresh recruits being brought from Italy.
+
+The winter which followed brought with it another of the dangerous
+waves of German immigration. The powerful Suevi, a nation of warriors
+who cultivated no lands, who wore no clothes but a deer or sheep skin,
+who lived by hunting and pasture, despised the restraints of stationary
+life, and roved at pleasure into their neighbors' territories, were
+pressing on the weaker tribes and forcing them down into the Low
+Countries. The Belgians, hoping for their help against the Romans, had
+invited these tribes over the Rhine; and, untaught by the fate of
+Ariovistus, they were crossing over and collecting in enormous numbers
+above the junction of the Rhine and the Meuse. Into a half-peopled
+country, large portions of which are lying waste, it might be barbarous
+to forbid an immigration of harmless and persecuted strangers; but if
+these Germans were persecuted, they were certainly not harmless; they
+had come at the instance of the party in Gaul which was determined to
+resist the Roman conquest, and unless the conquest was to be abandoned,
+necessity required that the immigration must be prohibited. When the
+advance of spring allowed the troops to move, Caesar called a council
+of Gallic chiefs. He said nothing of the information which had reached
+him respecting their correspondence with these new invaders, but with
+his usual swiftness of decision he made up his mind to act without
+waiting for disaffection to show itself. He advanced at once to the
+Ardennes, where he was met by envoys from the German camp. They said
+that they had been expelled from their country, and had come to Gaul in
+search of a home; they did not wish to quarrel with the Romans; if
+Caesar would protect them and give them lands, they promised to be
+useful to him; if he refused their alliance, they declared that they
+would defend themselves. They had fled before the Sueves, for the
+Sueves were the first nation in the world; the immortal gods were not a
+match for the Sueves; but they were afraid of no one else, and Caesar
+might choose whether he would have them for friends or foes.
+
+Caesar replied that they must not stay in Gaul. There were no
+unoccupied lands in Gaul which could receive so vast a multitude. The
+Ubii[1] on their own side of the Rhine were allies of the Romans; the
+Ubii, he was willing to undertake, would provide for them; meanwhile
+they must go back; he would listen to no other conditions. The envoys
+departed with their answer, begging Caesar to advance no farther till
+he had again heard from them. This could not be granted. The interval
+would be employed in communicating with the Gauls. Caesar pushed on,
+crossed the Meuse at Maestricht, and descended the river to Venloo,
+where he was but twelve miles distant from the German head-quarters.
+Again messengers came, asking for time--time, at least, till they could
+learn whether the Ubii would receive them. If the Ubii were favorable,
+they said that they were ready to go; but they could not decide without
+a knowledge of what was to become of them. They asked for a respite, if
+only for three days.
+
+Three days meant only leisure to collect their scattered detachments,
+that they might make a better fight. Caesar gave them twenty-four hours.
+
+The two armies were so near that their front lines were in sight of
+each other. Caesar had given orders to his officers not to meddle with
+the Germans. But the Germans, being undisciplined and hot-blooded, were
+less easy to be restrained. A large body of them flung themselves on
+the Roman advanced guard, and drove it in with considerable loss;
+seventy-four Roman knights fell, and two Aquitanian noblemen, brothers,
+serving under Caesar, were killed in defending each other.
+
+Caesar was not sorry for an excuse to refuse further parley. The
+Germans were now scattered. In a day or two they would be united again.
+He knew the effect which would be produced on the restless minds of the
+Gauls by the news of a reverse however slight; and if he delayed
+longer, he feared that the country might be on fire in his rear. On the
+morning which followed the first action, the principal German chiefs
+appeared to apologize and to ask for a truce. They had come in of their
+own accord. They had not applied for a safe conduct, and war had been
+begun by their own people. They were detained as prisoners; and,
+marching rapidly over the short space which divided the camps, Caesar
+flung himself on the unfortunate people when they were entirely
+unprepared for the attack. Their chiefs were gone. They were lying
+about in confusion beside their wagons, women and children dispersed
+among the men; hundreds of thousands of human creatures, ignorant where
+to turn for orders, and uncertain whether to fight or fly. In this
+condition the legions burst in on them, furious at what they called the
+treachery of the previous day, and merciless in their vengeance. The
+poor Germans stood bravely defending themselves as they could; but the
+sight of their women flying in shrieking crowds, pursued by the Roman
+horse, was too much for them, and the whole host were soon rushing in
+despairing wreck down the narrowing isthmus between the Meuse and the
+Rhine. They came to the junction at last, and then they could go no
+further. Multitudes were slaughtered; multitudes threw themselves into
+the water and were drowned. Caesar, who was not given to exaggeration,
+says that their original number was 430,000. The only survivors, of
+whom any clear record remains, were the detachments who were absent
+from the battle, and the few chiefs who had come into Caesar's camp and
+continued with him at their own request from fear of being murdered by
+the Gauls.
+
+This affair was much spoken of at the time, as well it might be.
+Questions were raised upon it in the Senate. Cato insisted that Caesar
+had massacred a defenceless people in a time of truce, that he had
+broken the law of nations, and that he ought to be given up to the
+Germans. The sweeping off the earth in such a manner of a quarter of a
+million human creatures, even in those unscrupulous times, could not be
+heard of without a shudder. The irritation in the Senate can hardly be
+taken as disinterested. Men who had intrigued with Ariovistus for
+Caesar's destruction, needed not to be credited with feelings of pure
+humanity when they made the most of the opportunity. But an opportunity
+had undoubtedly been offered them. The rights of war have their limits.
+No living man in ordinary circumstances recognized those limits more
+than Caesar did. No commander was more habitually merciful in victory.
+In this case the limits had been ruthlessly exceeded. The Germans were
+not indeed defending their own country; they were the invaders of
+another; but they were a fine brave race, overtaken by fate when doing
+no more than their forefathers had done for unknown generations. The
+excuse for their extermination was simply this: that Caesar had
+undertaken the conquest of Gaul for the defence of Italy. A powerful
+party among the Gauls themselves were content to be annexed to the
+Roman Empire. The patriots looked to the Germans to help them in
+driving out the Romans. The Germanizing of Gaul would lead with
+certainty to fresh invasions of Italy; and it seemed permissible, and
+even necessary, to put a stop to these immigrations once for all, and
+to show Gauls and Germans equally that they were not to be.
+
+It was not enough to have driven the Germans out of Gaul. Caesar
+respected their character. He admired their abstinence from wine, their
+courage, their frugal habits, and their pure morality. But their
+virtues made them only more dangerous; and he desired to show them that
+the Roman arm was long and could reach them even in their own homes.
+Parties of the late invaders had returned over the Rhine, and were
+protected by the Sigambri in Westphalia. Caesar had demanded their
+surrender, and the Sigambri had answered that Roman authority did not
+reach across the river; if Caesar forbade Germans to cross into Gaul,
+the Germans would not allow the Romans to dictate to them in their own
+country. The Ubii were growing anxious. They were threatened by the
+Sueves for deserting the national cause. They begged Caesar to show
+himself among them, though his stay might be but short, as a proof that
+he had power and will to protect them; and they offered him boats and
+barges to carry his army over. Caesar decided to go, but to go with
+more ostentation. The object was to impress the German imagination; and
+boats and barges which might not always be obtainable would, if they
+seemed essential, diminish the effect. The legions were skilled
+workmen, able to turn their hand to anything. He determined to make a
+bridge, and he chose Bonn for the site of it. The river was broad,
+deep, and rapid. The materials were still standing in the forest; yet
+in ten days from the first stroke that was delivered by an axe, a
+bridge had been made standing firmly on rows of piles with a road over
+it forty feet wide. A strong guard was left at each end. Caesar marched
+across with the legions, and from all sides deputations from the
+astonished people poured in to beg for peace. The Sigambri had fled to
+their woods. The Suevi fell back into the Thuringian forests. He burnt
+the villages of the Sigambri, to leave the print of his presence. He
+paid the Ubii a long visit; and after remaining eighteen days beyond
+the river, he considered that his purpose had been gained, and he
+returned to Gaul, destroying the bridge behind him.
+
+It was now about the beginning of August. A few weeks only of possible
+fine weather remained. Gaul was quiet, not a tribe was stirring. The
+people were stunned by Caesar's extraordinary performances. West of the
+channel which washed the shores of the Belgae lay an island where the
+enemies of Rome had found shelter, and from which help had been sent to
+the rebellious Bretons. Caesar, the most skilful and prudent of
+generals, was yet adventurous as a knight-errant. There was still time
+for a short expedition into Britain. As yet nothing was known of that
+country, save the white cliffs which could be seen from Calais; Roman
+merchants occasionally touched there, but they had never ventured into
+the interior; they could give no information as to the size of the
+island, the qualities of the harbors, the character or habits of the
+inhabitants. Complete ignorance of such near neighbors was undesirable
+and inconvenient; and Caesar wished to look at them with his own eyes.
+The fleet which had been used in the war with the Veneti was sent round
+into the channel. He directed Caius Volusenus, an officer whom he could
+trust, to take a galley and make a survey of the opposite coast, and he
+himself followed to Boulogne, where his vessels were waiting for him.
+The gathering of the flotilla and its object had been reported to
+Britain, and envoys from various tribes were waiting there with offers
+of hostages and humble protestations. Caesar received them graciously,
+and sent back with them a Gaul, named Commius, whom he had made chief
+of the Atrebates, to tell the people that he was coming over as a
+friend, and that they had nothing to fear.
+
+Volusenus returned after five days' absence, having been unable to
+gather anything of importance. The ships which had come in were able
+only to take across two legions, probably at less than their full
+complement--or at most ten thousand men; but for Caesar's present
+purpose these were sufficient. Leaving Sabinus and Cotta in charge of
+the rest of the army, he sailed on a calm evening, and was off Dover in
+the morning. The cliffs were lined with painted warriors, and hung so
+close over the water that if he attempted to land there stones and
+lances could reach the boats from the edge of the precipice. He called
+his officers about him while his fleet collected, and said a few
+encouraging words to them; he then moved up the coast with the tide,
+apparently as far as Walmer or Deal. Here the beach was open and the
+water deep near the land. The Britons had followed by the brow of the
+cliff, scrambling along with their cars and horses. The shore was
+covered with them, and they evidently meant to fight. The transports
+anchored where the water was still up to the men's shoulders. They were
+encumbered with their arms, and did not like the look of what was
+before them. Seeing them hesitate, Caesar sent his armed galleys filled
+with archers and crossbow-men to clear the approach; and as the
+legionaries still hesitated, an officer who carried the eagle of the
+10th leapt into the sea and bade his comrades follow if they wished to
+save their standard. They sprang overboard with a general cheer. The
+Britons rode their horses into the waves to meet them; and for a few
+minutes the Romans could make no progress. Boats came to their help,
+which kept back the most active of their opponents, and once on land
+they were in their own element. The Britons galloped off, and Caesar
+had no cavalry.
+
+A camp was then formed. Some of the ships were left at anchor, others
+were brought on shore, and were hauled up to the usual high-water mark.
+Commius came in with deputations, and peace was satisfactorily
+arranged. All went well till the fourth day, when the full moon brought
+the spring tide, of which the Romans had no experience and had not
+provided for it. Heavy weather came up along with it. The galleys on
+the beach were floated off; the transports at anchor parted their
+cables; some were driven on shore, some out into the channel. Caesar
+was in real anxiety. He had no means of procuring a second fleet. He
+had made no preparations for wintering in Britain. The legions had come
+light, without tents or baggage, as he meant to stay no longer than he
+had done in Germany, two or three weeks at most. Skill and energy
+repaired the damage. The vessels which had gone astray were recovered.
+Those which were least injured were repaired with the materials of the
+rest. Twelve only were lost, the others were made seaworthy.
+
+The Britons, as Caesar expected, had taken heart at the disaster. They
+broke their agreement, and fell upon his outposts. Seeing the small
+number of Romans, they collected in force, in the hope that if they
+could destroy the first comers no more such unwelcome visitors would
+ever arrive to trouble them. A sharp action taught them their mistake;
+and after many of the poor creatures had been killed, they brought in
+hostages, and again begged for peace. The equinox was now coming on.
+The weather was again threatening. Postponing, therefore, further
+inquiries into the nature of the British and their country, Caesar used
+the first favorable opportunity, and returned, without further
+adventure, to Boulogne. The legions were distributed among the Belgae;
+and Caesar himself, who could have no rest, hastened over the Alps, to
+deal with other disturbances which had broken out in Illyria.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 54.] The bridge over the Rhine and the invasion of a
+country so remote that it was scarcely believed to exist, roused the
+enthusiasm at Rome beyond the point which it had hitherto reached. The
+Roman populace was accustomed to victories, but these were portents
+like the achievements of the old demigods. The humbled Senate voted
+twenty days of thanksgiving; and faction, controlled by Pompey, was
+obliged to be silent.
+
+The Illyrian troubles were composed without fighting, and the interval
+of winter was spent in preparations for a renewal of the expedition
+into Britain on a larger scale. Orders had been left with the officers
+in command to prepare as many transports as the time would allow,
+broader and lower in the side for greater convenience in loading and
+unloading. In April, Caesar returned. He visited the different
+stations, and he found that his expert legionaries, working
+incessantly, had built six hundred transports and twenty-eight armed
+galleys. All these were finished and ready to be launched. He directed
+that they should collect at Boulogne as before; and in the interval he
+paid a visit to the north of Gaul, where there were rumors of fresh
+correspondence with the Germans. Danger, if danger there was, was
+threatened by the Treveri, a powerful tribe still unbroken on the
+Moselle. Caesar, however, had contrived to attach the leading chiefs to
+the Roman interest. He found nothing to alarm him, and once more went
+down to the sea. In his first venture he had been embarrassed by want
+of cavalry. He was by this time personally acquainted with the most
+influential of the Gallic nobles. He had requested them to attend him
+into Britain with their mounted retinues, both for service in the
+field, and that he might keep these restless chiefs under his eye.
+Among the rest he had not overlooked the Aeduan prince, Dumnorix, whose
+intrigues had brought the Helvetii out of Switzerland, and whose
+treachery had created difficulty and nearly disaster in the first
+campaign. Dumnorix had not forgotten his ambition. He had affected
+penitence, and he had been treated with kindness. He had availed
+himself of the favor which had been shown to him to pretend to his
+countrymen that Caesar had promised him the chieftainship. He had
+petitioned earnestly to be excused from accompanying the expedition,
+and, Caesar having for this reason probably the more insisted upon it,
+he had persuaded the other chiefs that Caesar meant to destroy them,
+and that if they went to Britain they would never return. These
+whisperings were reported to Caesar. Dumnorix had come to Boulogne with
+the rest, and he ordered him to be watched. A long westerly wind had
+prevented Caesar from embarking as soon as he had wished. The weather
+changed at last, and the troops were ordered on board. Dumnorix slipped
+away in the confusion with a party of Aeduan horse, and it was now
+certain that he had sinister intentions. The embarkation was suspended.
+A detachment of cavalry was sent in pursuit, with directions to bring
+Dumnorix back dead or alive. Dumnorix resisted, and was killed.
+
+No disturbance followed on his death. The remaining chiefs were loyal,
+or wished to appear loyal, and further delay was unnecessary. Labienus,
+whom Caesar thoroughly trusted, remained behind with three legions and
+two thousand horse to watch over Gaul; and on a fine summer evening,
+with a light air from the south, Caesar sailed at sunset on the 20th of
+July. He had five legions with him. He had as many cavalry as he had
+left with Labienus. His flotilla, swollen by volunteers, amounted to
+eight hundred vessels, small and great. At sunrise they were in
+midchannel, lying in a dead calm, with the cliffs of Britain plainly
+visible on their left hand. The tide was flowing. Oars were out; the
+legionaries worked with such enthusiasm that the transports kept
+abreast of the war-galleys. At noon they had reached the beach at Deal,
+where this time they found no enemy to oppose their landing; the
+Britons had been terrified at the multitude of ships and boats in which
+the power of Rome was descending on them, and had fled into the
+interior. The water was smooth, the disembarkation easy. A camp was
+drawn out and intrenched, and six thousand men, with a few hundred
+horse, were told off to guard it. The fleet was left riding quietly at
+anchor, the pilots ignorant of the meaning of the treacherous southern
+air which had been so welcome to them; and Caesar advanced inland as
+far as the Stour. The Britons, after an unsuccessful stand to prevent
+the Romans from crossing the river, retired into the woods, where they
+had made themselves a fortress with felled trees. The weak defence was
+easily stormed; the Britons were flying; the Romans were preparing to
+follow; when an express came from Deal to tell Caesar that a gale had
+risen again and the fleet was lying wrecked upon the shore. A second
+accident of the same kind might have seemed an omen of evil, but Caesar
+did not believe in omens. The even temperament of his mind was never
+discomposed, and at each moment he was able always to decide, and to
+do, what the moment required. The army was halted. He rode back himself
+to the camp, to find that forty of his vessels only were entirely
+ruined. The rest were injured, but not irreparably. They were hauled up
+within the lines of the camp. He selected the best mechanics out of the
+legions; he sent across to Labienus for more, and directed him to build
+fresh transports in the yards at Boulogne. The men worked night and
+day, and in little more than a week Caesar was able to rejoin his
+troops and renew his march.
+
+The object of the invasion had been rather to secure the quiet of Gaul
+than the annexation of new subjects and further territory. But it could
+not be obtained till the Romans had measured themselves against the
+Britons, and had asserted their military superiority. The Britons had
+already shown themselves a fearless race, who could not be despised.
+They fought bravely from their cars and horses, retreated rapidly when
+overmatched, and were found dangerous when pursued. Encouraged by the
+report of the disaster to the fleet, Cassibelaunus, chief of the Cassi,
+whose head-quarters were at St. Albans, had collected a considerable
+army from both sides of the Thames, and was found in strength in
+Caesar's front when he again began to move. They attacked his foraging
+parties. They set on his flanking detachments. They left their cars,
+and fought on foot when they could catch an advantage; and remounted
+and were swiftly out of the reach of the heavily armed Roman infantry.
+The Gaulish horse pursued, but did not know the country, and suffered
+more harm than they inflicted. Thus the British gave Caesar
+considerable trouble, which he recorded to their credit. Not a word can
+be found in his Commentaries to the disparagement of brave and open
+adversaries. At length he forced them into a battle, where their best
+warriors were killed. The confederacy of tribes dissolved and never
+rallied again, and he pursued his march thenceforward with little
+molestation. He crossed the Medway, and reached the Thames seemingly at
+Sunbury. There was a ford there, but the river was still deep, the
+ground was staked, and Cassibelaunus with his own people was on the
+other side. The legions, however, paid small attention to
+Cassibelaunus; they plunged through with the water at their necks. The
+Britons dispersed, driving off their cattle, and watching his march
+from a distance. The tribes from the eastern counties made their
+submission, and at Caesar's orders supplied him with corn. Caesar
+marched on to St. Albans itself, then lying in the midst of forests and
+marshes, where the cattle, the Cassi's only wealth, had been collected
+for security. St. Albans and the cattle were taken; Cassibelaunus sued
+for peace; the days were drawing in; and Caesar, having no intention of
+wintering in Britain, considered he had done enough and need go no
+farther. He returned as he had come. The Kentish men had attacked the
+camp in his absence, but had been beaten off with heavy loss. The
+Romans had sallied out upon them, killed as many as they could catch,
+and taken one of their chiefs. Thenceforward they had been left in
+quiet. A nominal tribute, which was never paid, was assigned to the
+tribes who had submitted. The fleet was in order, and all was ready for
+departure. The only, but unhappily too valuable, booty which they had
+carried off consisted of some thousands of prisoners. These, when
+landed in Gaul, were disposed of to contractors, to be carried to Italy
+and sold as slaves. Two trips were required to transport the increased
+numbers; but the passage was accomplished without accident, and the
+whole army was again at Boulogne.
+
+Thus ended the expedition into Britain. It had been undertaken rather
+for effect than for material advantage; and everything which had been
+aimed at had been gained. The Gauls looked no more across the Channel
+for support of insurrections; the Romans talked with admiration for a
+century of the far land to which Caesar had borne the eagles; and no
+exploit gave him more fame with his contemporaries. Nor was it without
+use to have solved a geographical problem, and to have discovered with
+certainty what the country was, the white cliffs of which were visible
+from the shores which were now Roman territory. Caesar during his stay
+in Britain had acquired a fairly accurate notion of it. He knew that it
+was an island, and he knew its dimensions and shape. He knew that
+Ireland lay to the west of it, and Ireland, he had been told, was about
+half its size. He had heard of the Isle of Man, and how it was
+situated. To the extreme north above Britain he had ascertained that
+there were other islands, where in winter the sun scarcely rose above
+the horizon; and he had observed through accurate measurement by
+water-clocks that the midsummer nights in Britain were shorter than in
+the south of France and Italy. He had inquired into the natural
+products of the country. There were tin mines, he found, in parts of
+the island, and iron in small quantities; but copper was imported from
+the Continent. The vegetation resembled that of France, save that he
+saw no beech and no spruce pine. Of more consequence were the people
+and the distribution of them. The Britons of the interior he conceived
+to be indigenous. The coast was chiefly occupied by immigrants from
+Belgium, as could be traced in the nomenclature of places. The country
+seemed thickly inhabited. The flocks and herds were large; and farm
+buildings were frequent, resembling those in Gaul. In Kent especially,
+civilization was as far advanced as on the opposite continent. The
+Britons proper from the interior showed fewer signs of progress. They
+did not break the ground for corn; they had no manufactures; they lived
+on meat and milk, and were dressed in leather. They dyed their skins
+blue that they might look more terrible. They wore their hair long, and
+had long mustaches. In their habits they had not risen out of the
+lowest order of savagery. They had wives in common, and brothers and
+sisters, parents and children, lived together with promiscuous
+unrestraint. From such a country not much was to be gained in the way
+of spoil; nor had much been expected. Since Cicero's conversion, his
+brother Quintus had joined Caesar, and was now attending him as one of
+his lieutenant-generals. The brothers were in intimate correspondence.
+Cicero, though he watched the British expedition with interest,
+anticipated that Quintus would bring nothing of value back with him but
+slaves; and he warned his friend Atticus, who dealt extensively in such
+commodities, that the slaves from Britain would not be found of
+superior quality.[2]
+
+[1] Nassau and Darmstadt.
+
+[2] "Britannici belli exitus exspectatur. Constat enim, aditus insulae
+    esse munitos mirificis molibus. Etiam illud jam cognitum est, neque
+    argenti scrupulum esse ullum in illa insula, neque ullam spem praedae,
+    nisi ex mancipiis: ex quibus nullos puto te litteris aut musicis
+    eruditos exspectare."--_Ad Atticum_, iv. 16. It does not appear
+    what Cicero meant by the "mirificae moles" which guarded the
+    approaches to Britain, whether Dover Cliff or the masses of sand
+    under water at the Goodwins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The summer had passed off gloriously for the Roman arms. The expedition
+to Britain had produced all the effects which Caesar expected from it,
+and Gaul was outwardly calm. Below the smooth appearance the elements
+of disquiet were silently working, and the winter was about to produce
+the most serious disaster and the sharpest trials which Caesar had yet
+experienced. On his return from Britain he held a council at Amiens.
+The harvest had been bad, and it was found expedient, for their better
+provision, to disperse the troops over a broader area than usual. There
+were in all eight legions, with part of another to be disposed of, and
+they were distributed in the following order. Lucius Roscius was placed
+at Seex, in Normandy; Quintus Cicero at Charleroy, not far from the
+scene of the battle with the Nervii. Cicero had chosen this position
+for himself as peculiarly advantageous; and his brother speaks of
+Caesar's acquiescence in the arrangement as a special mark of favor to
+himself. Labienus was at Lavacherie, on the Ourthe, about seventy miles
+to the south-east of Cicero; and Sabinus and Cotta were at Tongres,
+among the Aduatuci, not far from Liege, an equal distance from him to
+the north-east. Caius Fabius had a legion at St. Pol, between Calais
+and Arras; Trebonius one at Amiens; Marcus Crassus one at Montdidier;
+Munatius Plancus one across the Oise, near Compiegne. Roscius was far
+off, but in a comparatively quiet country. The other camps lay within a
+circle, two hundred miles in diameter, of which Bavay was the centre.
+Amiens was at one point on the circumference. Tongres, on the opposite
+side of it, to the north-east. Sabinus, being the most exposed, had, in
+addition to his legion, a few cohorts lately raised in Italy. Caesar,
+having no particular business to take him over the Alps, remained, with
+Trebonius attending to general business. His dispositions had been
+carefully watched by the Gauls. Caesar, they supposed, would go away as
+usual; they even believed that he had gone; and a conspiracy was formed
+in the north to destroy the legions in detail.
+
+The instigator of the movement was Induciomarus, the leader of the
+patriot party among the Treveri, whose intrigues had taken Caesar to
+the Moselle before the first visit to Britain. At that time
+Induciomarus had been able to do nothing; but a fairer opportunity had
+arrived. The overthrow of the great German horde had affected
+powerfully the semi-Teutonic populations on the left bank of the Rhine.
+The Eburones, a large tribe of German race occupying the country
+between Liege and Cologne, had given in their submission; but their
+strength was still undiminished, and Induciomarus prevailed on their
+two chiefs, Ambiorix and Catavoleus, to attack Sabinus and Cotta. It
+was midwinter. The camp at Tongres was isolated. The nearest support
+was seventy miles distant. If one Roman camp was taken, Induciomarus
+calculated that the country would rise; the others could be separately
+surrounded, and Gaul would be free. The plot was well laid. An
+entrenched camp being difficult to storm, the confederates decided to
+begin by treachery. Ambiorix was personally known to many of the Roman
+officers. He sent to Sabiuus to say that he wished to communicate with
+him on a matter of the greatest consequence. An interview being
+granted, he stated that a general conspiracy had been formed through
+the whole of Gaul to surprise and destroy the legions. Each station was
+to be attacked on the same day, that they might be unable to support
+each other. He pretended himself to have remonstrated; but his tribe,
+he said, had been carried away by the general enthusiasm for liberty,
+and he could not keep them back. Vast bodies of Germans had crossed the
+Rhine to join in the war. In two days at the furthest they would
+arrive. He was under private obligations to Caesar, who had rescued his
+son and nephew in the fight with the Aduatuci, and out of gratitude he
+wished to save Sabinus from destruction, which was otherwise
+inevitable. He urged him to escape while there was still time, and to
+join either Labienus or Cicero, giving a solemn promise that he should
+not be molested on the road.
+
+A council of officers was held on the receipt of this unwelcome
+information. It was thought unlikely that the Eburones would rise by
+themselves. It was probable enough, therefore, that the conspiracy was
+more extensive. Cotta, who was second in command, was of opinion that
+it would be rash and wrong to leave the camp without Caesar's orders.
+They had abundant provisions. They could hold their own lines against
+any force which the Germans could bring upon them, and help would not
+be long in reaching them. It would be preposterous to take so grave a
+step on the advice of an enemy. Sabinus unfortunately thought
+differently. He had been over-cautious in Brittany, though he had
+afterward redeemed his fault. Caesar, he persuaded himself, had left
+the country; each commander therefore must act on his own
+responsibility. The story told by Ambiorix was likely in itself. The
+Germans were known to be furious at the passage of the Rhine, the
+destruction of Ariovistus, and their other defeats. Gaul resented the
+loss of its independence. Ambiorix was acting like a true friend, and
+it would be madness to refuse his offer. Two days' march would bring
+them to their friends. If the alarm was false, they could return. If
+there was to be a general insurrection, the legions could not be too
+speedily brought together. If they waited, as Cotta advised, they would
+be surrounded, and in the end would be starved into surrender.
+
+Cotta was not convinced, and the majority of officers supported him.
+The first duty of a Roman army, he said, was obedience to orders. Their
+business was to hold the post which had been committed to them, till
+they were otherwise directed. The officers were consulting in the midst
+of the camp, surrounded by the legionaries. "Have it as you wish,"
+Sabinus exclaimed, in a tone which the men could hear; "I am not afraid
+of being killed. If things go amiss, the troops will understand where
+to lay the blame. If you allowed it, they might in forty-eight hours be
+at the next quarters, facing the chances of war with their comrades,
+instead of perishing here alone by sword or hunger."
+
+Neither party would give way. The troops joined in the discussion. They
+were willing either to go or to stay, if their commanders would agree;
+but they said that it must be one thing or the other; disputes would be
+certain ruin. The discussion lasted till midnight. Sabinus was
+obstinate, Cotta at last withdrew his opposition, and the fatal
+resolution was formed to march at dawn. The remaining hours of the
+night were passed by the men in collecting such valuables as they
+wished to take with them. Everything seemed ingeniously done to
+increase the difficulty of remaining, and to add to the perils of the
+march by the exhaustion of the troops. The Meuse lay between them and
+Labienus, so they had selected to go to Cicero at Charleroy. Their
+course lay up the left bank of the little river _Geer_. Trusting to the
+promises of Ambiorix, they started in loose order, followed by a long
+train of carts and wagons. The Eburones lay, waiting for them, in a
+large valley, two miles from the camp. When most of the cohorts were
+entangled in the middle of the hollow, the enemy appeared suddenly,
+some in front, some on both sides of the valley, some behind
+threatening the baggage. Wise men, as Caesar says, anticipate possible
+difficulties, and decide beforehand what they will do if occasions
+arise. Sabinus had foreseen nothing and arranged nothing. Cotta, who
+had expected what might happen, was better prepared, and did the best
+that was possible. The men had scattered among the wagons, each to save
+or protect what he could. Cotta ordered them back, bade them leave the
+carts to their fate, and form together in a ring. He did right, Caesar
+thought; but the effect was unfortunate. The troops lost heart, and the
+enemy was encouraged, knowing that the baggage would only be abandoned
+when the position was desperate. The Eburones were under good command.
+They did not, as might have been expected, fly upon the plunder. They
+stood to their work, well aware that the carts would not escape them.
+They were not in great numbers. Caesar specially says that the Romans
+were as numerous as they. But everything else was against the Romans.
+Sabinus could give no directions. They were in a narrow meadow, with
+wooded hills on each side of them filled with enemies whom they could
+not reach. When they charged, the light-footed barbarians ran back;
+when they retired, they closed in upon them again, and not a dart, an
+arrow, or a stone missed its mark among the crowded cohorts. Bravely as
+the Romans fought, they were in a trap where their courage was useless
+to them. The battle lasted from dawn till the afternoon, and though
+they were falling fast, there was no flinching and no cowardice.
+Caesar, who inquired particularly into the minutest circumstances of
+the disaster, records by name the officers who distinguished
+themselves; he mentions one whose courage he had marked before, who was
+struck down with a lance through his thighs, and another who was killed
+in rescuing his son. The brave Cotta was hit in the mouth by a stone as
+he was cheering on his men. The end came at last. Sabinus, helpless and
+distracted, caught sight of Ambiorix in the confusion, and sent an
+interpreter to implore him to spare the remainder of the army. Ambiorix
+answered that Sabinus might come to him, if he pleased; he hoped he
+might persuade his tribe to be merciful; he promised that Sabinus
+himself should suffer no injury. Sabinus asked Cotta to accompany him.
+Cotta said he would never surrender to an armed enemy; and, wounded as
+he was, he stayed with the legion. Sabinus, followed by the rest of the
+surviving officers whom he ordered to attend him, proceeded to the spot
+where the chief was standing. They were commanded to lay down their
+arms. They obeyed, and were immediately killed; and with one wild yell
+the barbarians then rushed in a mass on the deserted cohorts. Cotta
+fell, and most of the others with him. The survivors, with the eagle of
+the legion, which they had still faithfully guarded, struggled back in
+the dusk to their deserted camp. The standard-bearer, surrounded by
+enemies, reached the fosse, flung the eagle over the rampart, and fell
+with the last effort. Those that were left fought on till night, and
+then, seeing that hope was gone, died like Romans on each other's
+swords--a signal illustration of the Roman greatness of mind, which had
+died out among the degenerate patricians, but was living in all its
+force in Caesar's legions. A few stragglers, who had been cut off
+during the battle from their comrades, escaped in the night through the
+woods, and carried the news to Labienus. Cicero, at Charleroy, was left
+in ignorance. The roads were beset, and no messenger could reach him.
+
+Induciomarus understood his countrymen. The conspiracy with which he
+had frightened Sabinus had not as yet extended beyond a few northern
+chiefs, hut the success of Ambiorix produced the effect which he
+desired. As soon as it was known that two Roman generals had been cut
+off, the remnants of the Aduatuci and the Nervii were in arms for their
+own revenge. The smaller tribes along the Meuse and Sambre rose with
+them; and Cicero, taken by surprise, found himself surrounded before he
+had a thought of danger. The Gauls, knowing that their chances depended
+on the capture of the second camp before assistance could arrive, flung
+themselves so desperately on the entrenchments that the legionaries
+were barely able to repel the first assault. The assailants were driven
+back at last, and Cicero despatched messengers to Caesar to Amiens, to
+give him notice of the rising; but not a man was able to penetrate
+through the multitude of enemies which now swarmed in the woods. The
+troops worked gallantly, strengthening the weak points of their
+fortifications. In one night they raised a hundred and twenty towers on
+their walls. Again the Gauls tried a storm, and, though they failed a
+second time, they left the garrison no rest either by day or night.
+There was no leisure for sleep; not a hand could be spared from the
+lines to care for the sick or wounded. Cicero was in bad health, but he
+clung to his work till the men carried him by force to his tent and
+obliged him to lie down. The first surprise not having succeeded, the
+Nervian chiefs, who knew Cicero, desired a parley. They told the same
+story which Ambiorix had told, that the Germans had crossed the Rhine,
+and that all Gaul was in arms. They informed him of the destruction of
+Sabinus; they warned him that the same fate was hanging over himself,
+and that his only hope was in surrender. They did not wish, they said,
+to hurt either him or the Roman people; he and his troops would be free
+to go where they pleased, but they were determined to prevent the
+legions from quartering themselves permanently in their country.
+
+There was but one Sabinus in the Roman army. Cicero answered, with a
+spirit worthy of his country, that Romans accepted no conditions from
+enemies in arms. The Gauls might, if they pleased, send a deputation to
+Caesar, and hear what he would say to them. For himself, he had no
+authority to listen to them. Force and treachery being alike
+unavailing, they resolved to starve Cicero out. They had watched the
+Roman strategy. They had seen and felt the value of the entrenchments.
+They made a bank and ditch all round the camp, and, though they had no
+tools but their swords with which to dig turf and cut trees, so many
+there were of them that the work was completed in three hours.[1]
+Having thus pinned the Romans in, they slung red-hot balls and flung
+darts carrying lighted straw over the ramparts of the camp on the
+thatched roofs of the soldiers' huts. The wind was high, the fire
+spread, and amidst the smoke and the blaze the Gauls again rushed on
+from all sides to the assault. Roman discipline was never more severely
+tried, and never showed its excellence more signally. The houses and
+stores of the soldiers were in flames behind them. The enemy were
+pressing on the walls in front, covered by a storm of javelins and
+stones and arrows, but not a man left his post to save his property or
+to extinguish the fire. They fought as they stood, striking down rank
+after rank of the Gauls, who still crowded on, trampling on the bodies
+of their companions, as the foremost lines fell dead into the ditch.
+Such as reached the wall never left it alive, for they were driven
+forward by the throng behind on the swords of the legionaries.
+Thousands of them had fallen, before, in desperation, they drew back at
+last.
+
+But Cicero's situation was almost desperate too. The huts were
+destroyed. The majority of the men were wounded, and those able to bear
+arms were daily growing weaker in number. Caesar was 120 miles distant,
+and no word had reached him of the danger. Messengers were again sent
+off, but they were caught one after another, and were tortured to death
+in front of the ramparts, and the boldest men shrank from risking their
+lives on so hopeless an enterprise. At length a Nervian slave was found
+to make another adventure. He was a Gaul, and could easily disguise
+himself. A letter to Caesar was enclosed in the shaft of his javelin.
+He glided out of the camp in the dark, passed undetected among the
+enemies as one of themselves, and, escaping from their lines, made his
+way to Amiens.
+
+Swiftness of movement was Caesar's distinguishing excellence. The
+legions were kept ready to march at an hour's notice. He sent an order
+to Crassus to join him instantly from Montdidier. He sent to Fabius at
+St. Pol to meet him at Arras. He wrote to Labienus, telling him the
+situation, and leaving him to his discretion to advance or to remain on
+his guard at Lavacherie, as might seem most prudent. Not caring to wait
+for the rest of his army, and leaving Crassus to take care of Amiens,
+he started himself, the morning after the information reached him, with
+Trebonius's legion to Cicero's relief. Fabius joined him, as he had
+been directed, at Arras. He had hoped for Labienus's presence also; but
+Labienus sent to say that he was surrounded by the Treveri, and dared
+not stir. Caesar approved his hesitation, and with but two legions,
+amounting in all to only 7,000 men, he hurried forward to the Nervian
+border. Learning that Cicero was still holding out, he wrote a letter
+to him in Greek, that it might be unintelligible if intercepted, to
+tell him that help was near. A Gaul carried the letter, and fastened it
+by a line to his javelin, which he flung over Cicero's rampart. The
+javelin stuck in the side of one of the towers and was unobserved for
+several days. The besiegers were better informed. They learnt that
+Caesar was at hand, that he had but a handful of men with him. By that
+time their own numbers had risen to 60,000, and, leaving Cicero to be
+dealt with at leisure, they moved off to envelop and destroy their
+great enemy. Caesar was well served by spies. He knew that Cicero was
+no longer in immediate danger, and there was thus no occasion for him
+to risk a battle at a disadvantage to relieve him. When he found the
+Gauls near him, he encamped, drawing his lines as narrowly as he could,
+that from the small show which he made they might imagine his troops to
+be even fewer than they were. He invited attack by an ostentation of
+timidity, and having tempted the Gauls to become the assailants, he
+flung open his gates, rushed out upon them with his whole force, and
+all but annihilated them. The patriot army was broken to pieces, and
+the unfortunate Nervii and Aduatuci never rallied from this second
+blow. Caesar could then go at his leisure to Cicero and his comrades,
+who had fought so nobly against such desperate odds. In every ten men
+he found that there was but one unwounded. He inquired with minute
+curiosity into every detail of the siege. In a general address he
+thanked Cicero and the whole legion. He thanked the officers man by man
+for their gallantry and fidelity. Now for the first time (and that he
+could have remained ignorant of it so long speaks for the passionate
+unanimity with which the Gauls had risen) he learnt from prisoners the
+fate of Sabinus. He did not underrate the greatness of the catastrophe.
+The soldiers in the army he treated always as friends and comrades in
+arms, and the loss of so many of them was as personally grievous to him
+as the effects of it might be politically mischievous. He made it the
+subject of a second speech to his own and to Cicero's troops, but he
+spoke to encourage and to console. A serious misfortune had happened,
+he said, through the fault of one of his generals, but it must be borne
+with equanimity, and had already been heroically expiated. The meeting
+with Cicero must have been an interesting one. He and the two Ciceros
+had been friends and companions in youth. It would have been well if
+Marcus Tullius could have remembered in the coming years the personal
+exertion with which Caesar had rescued a brother to whom he was so
+warmly attached.
+
+Communications among the Gauls were feverishly rapid. While the Nervii
+were attacking Cicero, Induciomarus and the Treveri had surrounded
+Labienus at Lavacherie. Caesar had entered Cicero's camp at three
+o'clock in the afternoon. The news reached Induciomarus before
+midnight, and he had disappeared by the morning. Caesar returned to
+Amiens, but the whole country was now in a state of excitement. He had
+intended to go to Italy, but he abandoned all thoughts of departure.
+Rumors came of messengers hurrying to and fro, of meetings at night in
+lonely places, of confederacies among the patriots. Even Brittany was
+growing uneasy; a force had been collected to attack Roscius, though it
+had dispersed after the relief of Cicero. Caesar again summoned the
+chiefs to come to him, and between threats and encouragements succeeded
+in preventing a general rising. But the tribes on the upper Seine broke
+into disturbance. The Aedui and the Remi alone remained really loyal;
+and it was evident that only a leader was wanted to raise the whole of
+Gaul. Caesar himself admitted that nothing could be more natural. The
+more high-spirited of the Gauls were miserable to see that their
+countrymen had so lost conceit of themselves as to submit willingly to
+the Roman rule.
+
+Induciomarus was busy all the winter soliciting help from the Germans,
+and promising money and lands. The Germans had had enough of fighting
+the Romans, and, as long as their own independence was not threatened,
+were disinclined to move; but Induciomarus, nothing daunted, gathered
+volunteers on all sides. His camp became a rallying point for
+disaffection. Envoys came privately to him from distant tribes. He,
+too, held his rival council, and a fresh attack on the camp of Labienus
+was to be the first step in a general war. Labienus, well informed of
+what was going on, watched him quietly from his entrenchments. When the
+Gauls approached, he affected fear, as Caesar had done, and he secretly
+formed a body of cavalry, of whose existence they had no suspicion.
+Induciomarus became careless. Day after day he rode round the
+entrenchments, insulting the Romans as cowards, and his men flinging
+their javelins over the walls. Labienus remained passive, till one
+evening, when, after one of these displays, the loose bands of the
+Gauls had scattered, he sent his horse out suddenly with orders to
+fight neither with small nor great, save with Induciomarus only, and
+promising a reward for his head. Fortune favored him. Induciomarus was
+overtaken and killed in a ford of the Ourthe, and for the moment the
+agitation was cooled down. But the impression which had been excited by
+the destruction of Sabinus was still telling through the country.
+Caesar expected fresh trouble in the coming summer, and spent the rest
+of the winter and spring in preparing for a new struggle. Future peace
+depended on convincing the Gauls of the inexhaustible resources of
+Italy; on showing them that any loss which might be inflicted could be
+immediately repaired, and that the army could and would be maintained
+in whatever strength might be necessary to coerce them. He raised two
+fresh legions in his own province. Pompey had formed a legion in the
+north of Italy, within Caesar's boundaries, for service in Spain.
+Caesar requested Pompey to lend him this legion for immediate purposes;
+and Pompey, who was still on good terms with Caesar, recognized the
+importance of the occasion, and consented without difficulty.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 53.] Thus amply reinforced, Caesar, before the grass
+had begun to grow, took the field against the tribes which were openly
+disaffected. The first business was to punish the Belgians, who had
+attacked Cicero. He fell suddenly on the Nervii with four legions,
+seized their cattle, wasted their country, and carried off thousands of
+them to be sold into slavery. Returning to Amiens, he again called the
+chiefs about him, and, the Seine tribes refusing to put in an
+appearance, he transferred the council to Paris, and, advancing by
+rapid marches, he brought the Senones and Carnutes to pray for
+pardon.[2] He then turned on the Treveri and their allies, who, under
+Ambiorix, had destroyed Sabinus. Leaving Labienus with the additional
+legions to check the Treveri, he went himself into Flanders, where
+Ambiorix was hiding among the rivers and marshes. He threw bridges over
+the dikes, burnt the villages, and carried off an enormous spoil, of
+cattle and, alas! of men. To favor and enrich the tribes that submitted
+after a first defeat, to depopulate the determinately rebellious by
+seizing and selling as slaves those who had forfeited a right to his
+protection, was his uniform and, as the event proved, entirely
+successful policy. The persuasions of the Treveri had failed with the
+nearer German tribes; but some of the Suevi, who had never seen the
+Romans, were tempted to adventure over and try their fortunes; and the
+Treveri were waiting for them, to set on Labienus, in Caesar's absence.
+Labienus went in search of the Treveri, tempted them into an engagement
+by a feigned flight, killed many of them, and filled his camp with
+prisoners. Their German allies retreated again across the river, and
+the patriot chiefs, who had gone with Induciomarus, concealed
+themselves in the forests of Westphalia. Caesar thought it desirable to
+renew the admonition which he had given the Germans two years before,
+and again threw a bridge over the Rhine at the same place where he had
+made the first, but a little higher up the stream. Experience made the
+construction more easy. The bridge was begun and finished in a few
+days, but this time the labor was thrown away. The operation itself
+lost its impressiveness by repetition, and the barrenness of practical
+results was more evident than before. The Sueves, who had gone home,
+were far away in the interior. To lead the heavily armed legions in
+pursuit of wild light-footed marauders, who had not a town which could
+be burned, or a field of corn which could be cut for food, was to waste
+their strength to no purpose, and to prove still more plainly that in
+their own forests they were beyond the reach of vengeance. Caesar drew
+back again, after a brief visit to his allies the Ubii, cut two hundred
+feet of the bridge on the German side, and leaving the rest standing
+with a guard to defend it, he went in search of Ambiorix, who had as
+yet eluded him, in the Ardennes. Ambiorix had added treachery to
+insurrection, and as long as he was free and unpunished the massacred
+legion had not been fully avenged. Caesar was particularly anxious to
+catch him, and once had found the nest warm which Ambiorix had left but
+a few moments before.
+
+In the pursuit he came again to Tongres, to the fatal camp which
+Sabinus had deserted and in which the last of the legionaries had
+killed each other, rather than degrade the Roman name by allowing
+themselves to be captured. The spot was fated, and narrowly escaped
+being the scene of a second catastrophe as frightful as the first. The
+entrenchments were standing as they were left, ready to be occupied.
+Caesar, finding himself encumbered by his heavy baggage in the pursuit
+of Ambiorix, decided to leave it there with Quintus Cicero and the 14th
+legion. He was going himself to scour Brabant and East Flanders as far
+as the Scheldt. In seven days he promised to return, and meanwhile he
+gave Cicero strict directions to keep the legion within the lines, and
+not to allow any of the men to stray. It happened that after Caesar
+recrossed the Rhine two thousand German horse had followed in bravado,
+and were then plundering between Tongres and the river. Hearing that
+there was a rich booty in the camp, that Caesar was away, and only a
+small party had been left to guard it, they decided to try to take the
+place by a sudden stroke. Cicero, seeing no sign of an enemy, had
+permitted his men to disperse in foraging parties. The Germans were on
+them before they could recover their entrenchments, and they had to
+form at a distance and defend themselves as they could. The gates of
+the camp were open, and the enemy were actually inside before the few
+maniples who were left there were able to collect and resist them.
+Fortunately Sextius Bacillus, the same officer who had so brilliantly
+distinguished himself in the battle with the Nervii, and had since been
+badly wounded, was lying sick in his tent, where he had been for five
+days, unable to touch food. Hearing the disturbance, Bacillus sprang
+out, snatched a sword, rallied such men as he could find, and checked
+the attack for a few minutes. Other officers rushed to his help, and
+the legionaries having their centurions with them recovered their
+steadiness. Sextius Bacillus was again severely hurt, and fainted, but
+he was carried off in safety. Some of the cohorts who were outside, and
+had been for a time cut off, made their way into the camp to join the
+defenders, and the Germans, who had come without any fixed purpose,
+merely for plunder, gave way and galloped off again. They left the
+Romans, however, still in the utmost consternation. The scene and the
+associations of it suggested the most gloomy anticipations. They
+thought that German cavalry could never be so far from the Rhine,
+unless their countrymen were invading in force behind them. Caesar, it
+was supposed, must have been surprised and destroyed, and they and
+every Roman in Gaul would soon share the same fate. Brave as they were,
+the Roman soldiers seem to have been curiously liable to panics of this
+kind. The faith with which they relied upon their general avenged
+itself through the completeness with which they were accustomed to
+depend upon him. He returned on the day which he had fixed, and not
+unnaturally was displeased at the disregard of his orders. He did not,
+or does not in his Commentaries, professedly blame Cicero. But the
+Ciceros perhaps resented the loss of confidence which one of them had
+brought upon himself. Quintus Cicero cooled in his zeal, and afterward
+amused the leisure of his winter quarters with composing worthless
+dramas.
+
+Ambiorix had again escaped, and was never taken. The punishment fell on
+his tribe. The Eburones were completely rooted out. The turn of the
+Carnutes and Senones came next. The people themselves were spared; but
+their leader, a chief named Acco, who was found to have instigated the
+revolt, was arrested and executed. Again the whole of Gaul settled into
+seeming quiet; and Caesar went to Italy, where the political frenzy was
+now boiling over.
+
+[1] Caesar says their trenches were fifteen miles long. This is, perhaps,
+    a mistake of the transcriber. A Roman camp did not usually cover more
+    than a few acres.
+
+[2] People about Sens, Melun, and Chartres.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 55.] The conference at Lucca and the Senate's
+indifference had determined Cicero to throw in his lot with the
+trimmers. He had remonstrated with Pompey on the imprudence of
+prolonging Caesar's command. Pompey, he thought, would find out in time
+that he had made Caesar too strong for him; but Pompey had refused to
+listen, and Cicero had concluded that he must consider his own
+interests. His brother Quintus joined the army in Gaul to take part in
+the invasion of Britain, and to share the dangers and the honors of the
+winter which followed it. Cicero himself began a warm correspondence
+with Caesar, and through Quintus sent continued messages to him.
+Literature was a neutral ground on which he could approach his
+political enemy without too open discredit, and he courted eagerly the
+approval of a critic whose literary genius he esteemed as highly as his
+own. Men of genuine ability are rarely vain of what they can do really
+well. Cicero admired himself as a statesman with the most unbounded
+enthusiasm. He was proud of his verses, which were hopelessly
+commonplace. In the art in which he was without a rival he was modest
+and diffident. He sent his various writings for Caesar's judgment.
+"Like the traveller who has overslept himself," he said, "yet by
+extraordinary exertions reaches his goal sooner than if he had been
+earlier on the road, I will follow your advice and court this man. I
+have been asleep too long. I will correct my slowness with my speed;
+and as you say he approves my verses, I shall travel not with a common
+carriage, but with a four-in-hand of poetry." [1]
+
+"What does Caesar say of my poems?" he wrote again. "He tells me in one
+of his letters that he has never read better Greek. At one place he
+writes [Greek: rathumotera] [somewhat careless]. This is his word. Tell
+me the truth, Was it the matter which did not please him, or the
+style?" "Do not be afraid," he added with candid simplicity; "I shall
+not think a hair the worse of myself." [2]
+
+His affairs were still in disorder. Caesar had now large sums at his
+disposition. Cicero gave the highest proof of the sincerity of his
+conversion by accepting money from him. "You say," he observed in
+another letter, "that Caesar shows every day more marks of his
+affection for you. It gives me infinite pleasure. I can have no second
+thoughts in Caesar's affairs. I act on conviction, and am doing but my
+duty; but I am inflamed with love for him." [3]
+
+With Pompey and Crassus Cicero seemed equally familiar. When their
+consulship was over, their provinces were assigned as had been
+determined. Pompey had Spain, with six legions. He remained himself at
+Rome, sending lieutenants in charge of them. Crassus aspired to equal
+the glory of his colleagues in the open field. He had gained some
+successes in the war with the slaves which persuaded him that he too
+could be a conqueror; and knowing as much of foreign campaigning as the
+clerks in his factories, he intended to use Syria as a base of
+operations against the Parthians, and to extend the frontier to the
+Indus. The Senate had murmured, but Cicero had passionately defended
+Crassus;[4] and as if to show publicly how entirely he had now devoted
+himself to the cause of the "Dynasts," he invited Crassus to dine with
+him the day before his departure for the East.
+
+The position was not wholly pleasant to Cicero. "Self-respect in
+speech, liberty in choosing the course which we will pursue, is all
+gone," he wrote to Lentulus Spinther--"gone not more from me than from
+us all. We must assent, as a matter of course, to what a few men say,
+or we must differ from them to no purpose.--The relations of the
+Senate, of the courts of justice, nay, of the whole Commonwealth are
+changed.--The consular dignity of a firm and courageous statesman can
+no longer be thought of. It has been lost by the folly of those who
+estranged from the Senate the compact order of the equites and a very
+distinguished man [Caesar]." [5] And again: "We must go with the times.
+Those who have played a great part in public life have never been able
+to adhere to the same views on all occasions. The art of navigation
+lies in trimming to the storm. When you can reach your harbor by
+altering your course, it is a folly to persevere in struggling against
+the wind. Were I entirely free I should still act as I am doing; and
+when I am invited to my present attitude by the kindness of one set of
+men, and am driven to it by the injurious conduct of the other, I am
+content to do what I conceive will conduce at once to my own advantage
+and the welfare of the State.--Caesar's influence is enormous. His
+wealth is vast. I have the use of both, as if they were my own. Nor
+could I have crushed the conspiracy of a set of villains to ruin me,
+unless, in addition to the defences which I always possessed, I had
+secured the goodwill of the men in power." [6]
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 54.] Cicero's conscience could not have been easy when
+he was driven to such laborious apologies. He spoke often of intending
+to withdraw into his family, and devoting his time entirely to
+literature; but he could not bring himself to leave the political
+ferment; and he was possessed besides with a passionate desire to
+revenge himself on those who had injured him. An opportunity seemed to
+present itself. The persons whom he hated most, after Clodius, were the
+two consuls Gabinius and Piso, who had permitted his exile. They had
+both conducted themselves abominably in the provinces, which they had
+bought, he said, at the price of his blood. Piso had been sent to
+Macedonia, where he had allowed his army to perish by disease and
+neglect. The frontiers had been overrun with brigands, and the outcries
+of his subjects had been audible even in Rome against his tyranny and
+incapacity. Gabinius, in Syria, had been more ambitious, and had
+exposed himself to an indignation more violent because more interested.
+At a hint from Pompey, he had restored Ptolemy to Egypt on his own
+authority and without waiting for the Senate's sanction, and he had
+snatched for himself the prize for which the chiefs of the Senate had
+been contending. He had broken the law by leading his legions over the
+frontier. He had defeated the feeble Alexandrians, and the gratified
+Ptolemy had rewarded him with the prodigious sum of ten thousand
+talents--a million and a half of English money. While he thus enriched
+himself he had irritated the knights, who might otherwise have
+supported him, by quarrelling with the Syrian revenue farmers, and,
+according to popular scandal, he had plundered the province worse than
+it had been plundered even by the pirates.
+
+When so fair a chance was thrown in his way, Cicero would have been
+more than human if he had not availed himself of it. He moved in the
+Senate for the recall of the two offenders, and in the finest of his
+speeches he laid bare their reputed iniquities. His position was a
+delicate one, because the senatorial party, could they have had their
+way, would have recalled Caesar also. Gabinius was Pompey's favorite,
+and Piso was Caesar's father-in-law. Cicero had no intention of
+quarrelling with Caesar; between his invectives, therefore, he was
+careful to interweave the most elaborate compliments to the conqueror
+of Gaul. He dwelt with extraordinary clearness on the value of Caesar's
+achievements. The conquest of Gaul, he said, was not the annexation of
+a province. It was the dispersion of a cloud which had threatened Italy
+from the days of Brennus. To recall Caesar would be madness. He wished
+to remain only to complete his work; the more honor to him that he was
+willing to let the laurels fade which were waiting for him at Rome,
+before he returned to wear them. There were persons who would bring him
+back, because they did not love him. They would bring him back only to
+enjoy a triumph. Gaul had been the single danger to the Empire. Nature
+had fortified Italy by the Alps. The mountain-barrier alone had allowed
+Rome to grow to its present greatness, but the Alps might now sink into
+the earth, Italy had no more to fear.[7]
+
+The orator perhaps hoped that so splendid a vindication of Caesar in
+the midst of his worst enemies might have purchased pardon for his
+onslaught on the baser members of the "Dynastic" faction. He found
+himself mistaken. His eagerness to revenge his personal wrongs
+compelled him to drink the bitterest cup of humiliation which had yet
+been offered to him. He gained his immediate purpose. The two governors
+were recalled in disgrace, and Gabinius was impeached under the new
+Julian law for having restored Ptolemy without orders, and for the
+corrupt administration of his province. Cicero would naturally have
+conducted the prosecution; but pressure of some kind was laid on, which
+compelled him to stand aside. The result of the trial on the first of
+the two indictments was another of those mockeries of justice which
+made the Roman law-courts the jest of mankind. Pompey threw his shield
+over his instrument. He used his influence freely. The Egyptian spoils
+furnished a fund to corrupt the judges. The speech for the prosecution
+was so weak as to invite a failure, and Gabinius was acquitted by a
+majority of purchased votes. "You ask me how I endure such things,"
+Cicero bitterly wrote, in telling the story to Atticus; "well enough,
+by Hercules, and I am entirely pleased with myself. We have lost, my
+friend, not only the juice and blood, but even the color and shape, of
+a commonwealth. No decent constitution exists in which I can take a
+part. How can you put up with such a state of things? you will say.
+Excellently well. I recollect how public affairs went awhile ago, when
+I was myself in office, and how grateful people were to me. I am not
+distressed now, that the power is with a single man. Those are
+miserable who could not bear to see me successful. I find much to
+console me." [8] "Gabinius is acquitted," he wrote to his
+brother.--"The verdict is so infamous that it is thought he will be
+convicted on the other charge; but, as you perceive, the constitution,
+the Senate, the courts, are all nought. There is no honor in any one of
+us.--Some persons, Sallust among them, say that I ought to have
+prosecuted him. I to risk my credit with such a jury! what if I had
+acted, and he had escaped then! but other motives influenced me. Pompey
+would have made a personal quarrel of it with me. He would have come
+into the city.[9]--He would have taken up with Clodius again. I know
+that I was wise, and I hope that you agree with me. I owe Pompey
+nothing, and he owes much to me; but in public matters (not to put it
+more strongly) he has not allowed me to oppose him; and when I was
+flourishing and he was less powerful than he is now, he let me see what
+he could do. Now when I am not even ambitious of power, and the
+constitution is broken down, and Pompey is omnipotent, why should I
+contend with him? Then, says Sallust, I ought to have pleased Pompey by
+defending Gabinius, as he was anxious that I should. A nice friend
+Sallust, who would have me push myself into dangerous quarrels, or
+cover myself with eternal infamy!" [10]
+
+Unhappy Cicero, wishing to act honorably, but without manliness to face
+the consequences! He knew that it would be infamous for him to defend
+Gabinius, yet at the second trial Cicero, who had led the attack on him
+in the Senate, and had heaped invectives on him, the most bitter which
+he ever uttered against man, nevertheless actually did defend Gabinius.
+Perhaps he consoled himself with the certainty that his eloquence would
+be in vain, and that his extraordinary client this time could not
+escape conviction. Any way, he appeared at the bar as Gabinius's
+counsel. The Syrian revenue farmers were present, open-mouthed with
+their accusations. Gabinius was condemned, stripped of his spoils, and
+sent into banishment. Cicero was left with his shame. Nor was this the
+worst. There were still some dregs in the cup, which he was forced to
+drain. Publius Vatinius was a prominent leader of the military
+democratic party, and had often come in collision with Cicero. He had
+been tribune when Caesar was consul, and had stood by him against the
+Senate and Bibulus. He had served in Gaul in Caesar's first campaigns,
+and had returned to Rome, at Caesar's instance, to enter for higher
+office. He had carried the praetorship against Cato; and Cicero in one
+of his speeches had painted him as another Clodius or Catiline. When
+the praetorship was expired, he was prosecuted for corruption; and
+Cicero was once more compelled to appear on the other side, and defend
+him, as he had done Gabinius. Caesar and Pompey, wishing perhaps to
+break completely into harness the brilliant but still half unmanageable
+orator, had so ordered, and Cicero had complied. He was ashamed, but he
+had still his points of satisfaction. It was a matter of course that,
+as an advocate, he must praise the man whom, a year before, he had
+spattered with ignominy; but he had the pleasure of feeling that he was
+revenging himself on his conservative allies, who led the prosecution.
+"Why I praised Vatinius," he wrote to Lentulus, "I must beg you not to
+ask either in the case of this or of any other criminal. I put it to
+the judges that since certain noble lords, my good friends, were too
+fond of my adversary [Clodius], and in the Senate would go apart with
+him under my own eyes, and would treat him with warmest affection, they
+must allow me to have my Publius [Vatinius], since they had theirs
+[Clodius], and give them a gentle stab in return for their cuts at me."
+[11] Vatinius was acquitted. Cicero was very miserable. "Gods and men
+approved," he said; but his own conscience condemned him, and at this
+time his one consolation, real or pretended, was the friendship of
+Caesar. "Caesar's affectionate letters," he told his brother, "are my
+only pleasure; I attach little consequence to his promises; I do not
+thirst for honors, or regret my past glory. I value more the
+continuance of his good-will than the prospect of anything which he may
+do for me. I am withdrawing from public affairs, and giving myself to
+literature. But I am broken-hearted, my dear brother;--I am
+broken-hearted that the constitution is gone, that the courts of law
+are naught; and that now at my time of life, when I ought to be leading
+with authority in the Senate, I must be either busy in the Forum
+pleading, or occupying myself with my books at home. The ambition of my
+boyhood--
+
+    Aye to be first, and chief among my peers--
+
+is all departed. Of my enemies, I have left some unassailed, and some I
+even defend. Not only I may not think as I like, but I may not hate as
+I like,[12] and Caesar is the only person who loves me as I should wish
+to be loved, or, as some think, who desires to love me." [13]
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 53.] The position was the more piteous, because Cicero
+could not tell how events would fall out after all. Crassus was in the
+East, with uncertain prospects there. Caesar was in the midst of a
+dangerous war, and might be killed or might die. Pompey was but a weak
+vessel; a distinguished soldier, perhaps, but without the intellect or
+the resolution to control a proud, resentful, and supremely
+unscrupulous aristocracy. In spite of Caesar's victories, his most
+envenomed enemy, Domitius Ahenobarbus, had succeeded after all in
+carrying one of the consulships for the year 54. The popular party had
+secured the other, indeed; but they had returned Appius Claudius,
+Clodius's brother, and this was but a poor consolation. In the year
+that was to follow, the conservatives had bribed to an extent which
+astonished the most cynical observers. Each season the elections were
+growing more corrupt; but the proceedings on both sides in the fall of
+54 were the most audacious that had ever been known, the two reigning
+consuls taking part, and encouraging and assisting in scandalous
+bargains. "All the candidates have bribed," wrote Cicero; "but they
+will be all acquitted, and no one will ever be found guilty again. The
+two consuls are branded with infamy." Memmius, the popular competitor,
+at Pompey's instance, exposed in the Senate an arrangement which the
+consuls had entered into to secure the returns. The names and
+signatures were produced. The scandal was monstrous, and could not be
+denied. The better kind of men began to speak of a dictatorship as the
+only remedy; and although the two conservative candidates were declared
+elected for 53, and were allowed to enter on their offices, there was a
+general feeling that a crisis had arrived, and that a great catastrophe
+could not be very far off. The form which it might assume was the
+problem of the hour.
+
+Cicero, speaking two years before on the broad conditions of his time,
+had used these remarkable words: "No issue can be anticipated from
+discords among the leading men, except either universal ruin, or the
+rule of a conqueror, or a monarchy. There exists at present an
+unconcealed hatred implanted and fastened into the minds of our leading
+politicians. They are at issue among themselves. Opportunities are
+caught for mutual injury. Those who are in the second rank watch for
+the chances of the time. Those who might do better are afraid of the
+words and designs of their enemies." [14]
+
+The discord had been suspended, and the intrigues temporarily checked,
+by the combination of Caesar and Pompey with Crassus, the chief of the
+moneyed commoners. Two men of equal military reputation, and one of
+them from his greater age and older services expecting and claiming
+precedency, do not easily work together. For Pompey to witness the
+rising glory of Caesar, and to feel in his own person the superior
+ascendency of Caesar's character, without an emotion of jealousy, would
+have demanded a degree of virtue which few men have ever possessed.
+They had been united so far by identity of conviction, by a military
+detestation of anarchy, by a common interest in wringing justice from
+the Senate for the army and people, by a pride in the greatness of
+their country, which they were determined to uphold. These motives,
+however, might not long have borne the strain but for other ties, which
+had cemented their union. Pompey had married Caesar's daughter, to whom
+he was passionately attached; and the personal competition between them
+was neutralized by the third element of the capitalist party
+represented by Crassus, which if they quarrelled would secure the
+supremacy of the faction to which Crassus attached himself. There was
+no jealousy on Caesar's part. There was no occasion for it. Caesar's
+fame was rising. Pompey had added nothing to his past distinctions, and
+the glory pales which does not grow in lustre. No man who had once been
+the single object of admiration, who had tasted the delight of being
+the first in the eyes of his countrymen, could find himself compelled
+to share their applause with a younger rival without experiencing a
+pang. So far Pompey had borne the trial well. He was on the whole,
+notwithstanding the Egyptian scandal, honorable and constitutionally
+disinterested. He was immeasurably superior to the fanatic Cato, to the
+shifty Cicero, or the proud and worthless leaders of the senatorial
+oligarchy. Had the circumstances remained unchanged, the severity of
+the situation might have been overcome. But two misfortunes coming near
+upon one another broke the ties of family connection, and by destroying
+the balance of parties laid Pompey open to the temptation of patrician
+intrigue. In the year 54 Caesar's great mother Aurelia, and his sister
+Julia, Pompey's wife, both died. A child which Julia had borne to
+Pompey died also, and the powerful if silent influence of two
+remarkable women, and the joint interest in an infant, who would have
+been Caesar's heir as well as Pompey's, were swept away together.
+
+The political link was broken immediately after by a public disaster
+unequalled since the last consular army was overthrown by the Gauls on
+the Rhone; and the capitalists, left without a leader, drifted away to
+their natural allies in the Senate. Crassus had taken the field in the
+East, with a wild ambition of becoming in his turn a great conqueror.
+At first all had gone well with him. He had raised a vast treasure. He
+had plundered the wealthy temples in Phoenicia and Palestine to fill
+his military chest. He had able officers with him; not the least among
+them his son Publius Crassus, who had served with such distinction
+under Caesar. He crossed the Euphrates at the head of a magnificent
+army, expecting to carry all before him with the ease of an Alexander.
+Relying on his own idle judgment, he was tempted in the midst of a
+burning summer into the waterless plains of Mesopotamia; and on the
+15th of June the great Roman millionaire met his miserable end, the
+whole force, with the exception of a few scattered cohorts, being
+totally annihilated.
+
+The catastrophe in itself was terrible. The Parthians had not provoked
+the war. The East was left defenceless; and the natural expectation was
+that, in their just revenge, they might carry fire and sword through
+Asia Minor and Syria. It is not the least remarkable sign of the times
+that the danger failed to touch the patriotism of the wretched factions
+in Rome. The one thought of the leaders of the Senate was to turn the
+opportunity to advantage, wrest the constitution free from military
+dictation, shake off the detested laws of Caesar, and revenge
+themselves on the author of them. Their hope was in Pompey. If Pompey
+could be won over from Caesar, the army would be divided. Pompey, they
+well knew, unless he had a stronger head than his own to guide him,
+could be used till the victory was won, and then be thrust aside. It
+was but too easy to persuade him that he was the greatest man in the
+Empire; and that as the chief of a constitutional government, and with
+the Senate at his side, he would inscribe his name in the annals of his
+country as the restorer of Roman liberty.
+
+The intrigue could not be matured immediately. The aristocracy had
+first to overcome their own animosities against Pompey, and Pompey
+himself was generous, and did not yield to the first efforts of
+seduction. The smaller passions were still at work among the baser
+senatorial chiefs, and the appetite for provinces and pillage. The
+Senate, even while Crassus was alive, had carried the consulships for
+53 by the most infamous corruption. They meant now to attack Caesar in
+earnest, and their energies were addressed to controlling the elections
+for the next year. Milo was one of the candidates; and Cicero, who was
+watching the political current, reverted to his old friendship for him,
+and became active in the canvass. Milo was not a creditable ally. He
+already owed half a million of money, and Cicero, who was anxious for
+his reputation, endeavored to keep him within the bounds of decency.
+But Milo's mind was fastened on the province which was to redeem his
+fortunes, and he flung into bribery what was left of his wrecked credit
+with the desperation of a gambler. He had not been praetor, and thus
+was not legally eligible for the consulate. This, however, was
+forgiven. He had been aedile in 54, and as aedile he had already been
+magnificent in prodigality. But to secure the larger prize, he gave as
+a private citizen the most gorgeous entertainment which even in that
+monstrous age the city had yet wondered at. "Doubly, trebly foolish of
+him," thought Cicero, "for he was not called on to go to such expense,
+and he has not the means." "Milo makes me very anxious," he wrote to
+his brother. "I hope all will be made right by his consulship. I shall
+exert myself for him as much as I did for myself;[15] but he is quite
+mad," Cicero added; "he has spent L30,000 on his games." Mad, but
+still, in Cicero's opinion, well fitted for the consulship, and likely
+to get it. All the "good," in common with himself, were most anxious
+for Milo's success. The people would vote for him as a reward for the
+spectacles, and the young and influential for his efforts to secure
+their favor.[16]
+
+The reappearance of the "Boni," the "Good," in Cicero's letters marks
+the turn of the tide again in his own mind. The "Good," or the
+senatorial party, were once more the objects of his admiration. The
+affection for Caesar was passing off.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 52.] A more objectionable candidate than Milo could
+hardly have been found. He was no better than a patrician gladiator,
+and the choice of such a man was a sufficient indication of the
+Senate's intentions. The popular party led by the tribunes made a
+sturdy resistance. There were storms in the Curia, tribunes imprisoning
+senators, and the Senate tribunes. Army officers suggested the election
+of military tribunes (lieutenant-generals), instead of consuls; and
+when they failed, they invited Pompey to declare himself Dictator. The
+Senate put on mourning, as a sign of approaching calamity. Pompey
+calmed their fears by declining so ambitious a position. But as it was
+obvious that Milo's chief object was a province which he might
+misgovern, Pompey forced the Senate to pass a resolution that consuls
+and praetors must wait five years from their term of office before a
+province was to be allotted to them. The temptation to corruption might
+thus in some degree be diminished. But senatorial resolutions did not
+pass for much, and what a vote had enacted a vote could repeal. The
+agitation continued. The tribunes, when the time came, forbade the
+elections. The year expired. The old magistrates went out of office,
+and Rome was left again without legitimate functionaries to carry on
+the government. All the offices fell vacant together.
+
+Now once more Clodius was reappearing on the scene. He had been silent
+for two years, content or constrained to leave the control of the
+democracy to the three chiefs. One of them was now gone. The more
+advanced section of the party was beginning to distrust Pompey.
+Clodius, their favorite representative, had been put forward for the
+praetorship, while Milo was aspiring to be made consul, and Clodius had
+prepared a fresh batch of laws to be submitted to the sovereign people;
+one of which (if Cicero did not misrepresent it to inflame the
+aristocracy) was a measure of some kind for the enfranchisement of the
+slaves, or perhaps of the sons of slaves.[17] He was as popular as
+ever. He claimed to be acting for Caesar, and was held certain of
+success; if he was actually praetor, such was his extraordinary
+influence, and such was the condition of things in the city, that if
+Milo was out of the way he could secure consuls of his own way of
+thinking, and thus have the whole constitutional power in his hands.[18]
+
+Thus both sides had reason for fearing and postponing the elections.
+Authority, which had been weak before, was now extinct. Rome was in a
+state of formal anarchy, and the factions of Milo and Clodius fought
+daily, as before, in the streets, with no one to interfere with them.
+
+Violent humors come naturally to a violent end. Milo had long before
+threatened to kill Clodius. Cicero had openly boasted of his friend's
+intention to do it, and had spoken of Clodius in the Senate itself as
+Milo's predestined victim. On the evening of the 13th January, while
+the uncertainty about the elections was at its height, Clodius was
+returning from his country house, which was a few miles from Rome on
+"the Appian Way." Milo happened to be travelling accidentally down the
+same road, on his way to Lanuvium (Civita Indovina), and the two rivals
+and their escorts met. Milo's party was the largest. The leaders passed
+one another, evidently not intending a collision, but their followers,
+who were continually at sword's point, came naturally to blows. Clodius
+rode back to see what was going on; he was attacked and wounded, and
+took refuge in a house on the roadside. The temptation to make an end
+of his enemy was too strong for Milo to resist. To have hurt Clodius
+would, he thought, be as dangerous as to have made an end of him. His
+blood was up. The "predestined victim," who had thwarted him for so
+many years, was within his reach. The house was forced open. Clodius
+was dragged out bleeding, and was despatched, and the body was left
+lying where he fell, where a senator, named Sextus Tedius, who was
+passing an hour or two after, found it, and carried it the same night
+to Rome. The little which is known of Clodius comes only through
+Cicero's denunciations, which formed or colored later Roman traditions;
+and it is thus difficult to comprehend the affection which the people
+felt for him; but of the fact there can be no doubt at all; he was the
+representative of their political opinions, the embodiment, next to
+Caesar, of their practical hopes; and his murder was accepted as a
+declaration of an aristocratic war upon them, and the first blow in
+another massacre. On the following day, in the winter morning, the
+tribunes brought the body into the Forum. A vast crowd had collected to
+see it, and it was easy to lash them into fury. They dashed in the
+doors of the adjoining senate-house, they carried in the bier, made a
+pile of chairs and benches and tables, and burnt all that remained of
+Clodius in the ashes of the senate-house itself. The adjoining temples
+were consumed in the conflagration. The Senate collected elsewhere.
+They put on a bold front, they talked of naming an interrex--which they
+ought to have done before--and of holding the elections instantly, now
+that Clodius was gone. Milo still hoped, and the aristocracy still
+hoped for Milo. But the storm was too furious. Pompey came in with a
+body of troops, restored order, and took command of the city. The
+preparations for the election were quashed. Pompey still declined the
+dictatorship, but he was named, or he named himself, sole consul, and
+at once appointed a commission to inquire into the circumstances of
+Milo's canvass, and the corruption which had gone along with it. Milo
+himself was arrested and put on his trial for the murder. Judges were
+chosen who could be trusted, and to prevent intimidation the court was
+occupied by soldiers. Cicero undertook his friend's defence, but was
+unnerved by the stern, grim faces with which he was surrounded. The
+eloquent tongue forgot its office. He stammered, blundered, and sat
+down.[19] The consul expectant was found guilty and banished, to return
+a few years after like a hungry wolf in the civil war, and to perish as
+he deserved. Pompey's justice was even-handed. He punished Milo, but
+the senate-house and temples were not to be destroyed without
+retribution equally severe. The tribunes who had led on the mob were
+deposed, and suffered various penalties. Pompey acted with a soldier's
+abhorrence of disorder, and, so far, he did what Caesar approved and
+would himself have done in Pompey's place.
+
+But there followed symptoms which showed that there were secret
+influences at work with Pompey, and that he was not the man which he
+had been. He had taken the consulate alone; but a single consul was an
+anomaly; as soon as order was restored it was understood that he meant
+to choose a colleague; and Senate and people were watching to see whom
+he would select as an indication of his future attitude. Half the world
+expected that he would name Caesar, but half the world was
+disappointed. He took Metellus Scipio, who had been the Senate's second
+candidate by the side of Milo, and had been as deeply concerned in
+bribery as Milo himself; shortly after, and with still more
+significance, he replaced Julia by Metellus Scipio's daughter, the
+widow of young Publius Crassus, who had fallen with his father.
+
+Pompey, however, did not break with Caesar, and did not appear to
+intend to break with him. Communications passed between them on the
+matter of the consulship. The tribunes had pressed him as Pompey's
+colleague. Caesar himself, being then in the north of Italy, had
+desired, on being consulted, that the demand might not be insisted on.
+He had work still before him in Gaul which he could not leave
+unfinished; but he made a request himself that must be noticed, since
+the civil war formally grew out of it, and Pompey gave a definite
+pledge, which was afterwards broken.
+
+One of the engagements at Lucca had been that, when Caesar's command
+should have expired, he was to be again consul. His term had still
+three years to run; but many things might happen in three years. A
+party in the Senate were bent on his recall. They might succeed in
+persuading the people to consent to it. And Caesar felt, as Pompey had
+felt before him, that, in the unscrupulous humor of his enemies at Rome
+he might be impeached or killed on his return, as Clodius had been, if
+he came back a private citizen unprotected by office to sue for his
+election. Therefore he had stipulated at Lucca that his name might be
+taken and that votes might be given for him while he was still with his
+army. On Pompey's taking the power into his hands, Caesar, while
+abandoning any present claim to share it, reminded him of this
+understanding, and required at the same time that it should be renewed
+in some authoritative form. The Senate, glad to escape on any terms
+from the present conjunction of the men whom they hoped to divide,
+appeared to consent. Cicero himself made a journey to Ravenna to see
+Caesar about it and make a positive arrangement with him. Pompey
+submitted the condition to the assembly of the people, by whom it was
+solemnly ratified. Every precaution was observed which would give the
+promise, that Caesar might be elected consul in his absence, the
+character of a binding engagement.[20]
+
+It was observed with some surprise that Pompey, not long after,
+proposed and carried a law forbidding elections of this irregular kind,
+and insisting freshly on the presence of the candidates in person.
+Caesar's case was not reserved as an exception or in any way alluded
+to. And when a question was asked on the subject, the excuse given was
+that it had been overlooked by accident. Such accidents require to be
+interpreted by the use which is made of them.
+
+
+[1] _Ad Quintum Fratrem_, ii. 15.
+
+[2] "Ego enim ne pilo quidem minus me amabo."--_Ibid_., ii. 16. Other
+    editions read "te."
+
+[3] "Videor id judicio facere: jam enim debeo: sed amore sum
+    incensus."--_Ad Quintum Fratrem_, iii. 1.
+
+[4] Ad Crassum. _Ad Familiares_, v. 8.
+
+[5] Ad Lentulum. _Ad Fam_., i. 8.
+
+[6] _Ibid_., i. 9.
+
+[7] _De Provinciis Consularibus_.
+
+[8] _To Atticus_, iv. 16.
+
+[9] Pompey, as proconsul with a province, was residing outside the
+    walls.
+
+[10] _Ad Quintum fratrem_, iii. 4.
+
+[11] _Ad Familiares_, i. 9.
+
+[12] "Meum non modo animum, sed ne odium quidem esse liberum."--_Ad
+    Quintum Fratrem_, iii. 5.
+
+[13] See the story in a letter to Atticus, lib. iv. 16-17.
+
+[14] _De Haruspicum Responsis_.
+
+[15] "Angit unus Milo. Sed velim finem afferat consulatus: in quo enitar
+    non minus, quam sum enisus in nostro."--_Ad Quintum Fratrem_,
+    iii. 9.
+
+[16] _Ad Familiares_, ii. 6.
+
+[17] "Incidebantur jam domi leges quae nos nostris servis addicerent....
+    Oppressisset omnia, possideret, teneret lege nova, quae est inventa
+    apud eum cum reliquis legibus Clodianis. Servos nostros libertos suos
+    fecisset."--_Pro Milone_, 32, 33. These strong expressions can
+    hardly refer to a proposed enfranchisement of the libertini, or sons
+    of freedmen, like Horace's father.
+
+[18] "Caesaris potentiam suam esse dicebat.... An consules in praetore
+    coercendo fortes fuissent? Primum, Milone occiso habuisset suos
+    consules."--_Pro Milone_, 33.
+
+[19] The _Oratio pro Milone_, published afterwards by Cicero, was the
+    speech which he intended to deliver and did not.
+
+[20] Suetonius, _De Vita Julii Caesaris_. Cicero again and again
+    acknowledges in his letters to Atticus that the engagement had really
+    been made. Writing to Atticus (vii. 1), Cicero says: "Non est locus ad
+    tergiversandum. Contra Caesarem? Ubi illae sunt densae dexterae? Nam
+    ut illi hoc liceret adjuvi rogatus ab ipso Ravennae de Caelio tribuno
+    plebis. Ab ipso autem? Etiam a Cnaeo nostro in illo divino tertio
+    consulatu. Aliter sensero?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The conquest of Gaul had been an exploit of extraordinary military
+difficulty. The intricacy of the problem had been enhanced by the venom
+of a domestic faction, to which the victories of a democratic general
+were more unwelcome than national disgrace. The discomfiture of Crassus
+had been more pleasant news to the Senate than the defeat of
+Ariovistus, and the passionate hope of the aristocracy had been for
+some opportunity which would enable them to check Caesar in his career
+of conquest and bring him home to dishonor and perhaps impeachment.
+They had failed. The efforts of the Gauls to maintain or recover their
+independence had been successively beaten down, and at the close of the
+summer of 53 Caesar had returned to the north of Italy, believing that
+the organization of the province which he had added to the Empire was
+all that remained to be accomplished. But Roman civilians had followed
+in the van of the armies. Roman traders had penetrated into the towns
+on the Seine and the Loire, and the curious Celts had learnt from them
+the distractions of their new rulers. Caesar's situation was as well
+understood among the Aedui and the Sequani as in the clubs and coteries
+of the capital of the Empire, and the turn of events was watched with
+equal anxiety. The victory over Sabinus, sharply avenged as it had
+been, kept alive the hope that their independence might yet be
+recovered. The disaffection of the preceding summer had been trampled
+out, but the ashes of it were still smouldering; and when it became
+known that Clodius, who was regarded as Caesar's tribune, had been
+killed, that the Senate was in power again, and that Italy was
+threatened with civil convulsions, their passionate patriotism kindled
+once more into flame. Sudden in their resolutions, they did not pause
+to watch how the balance would incline. Caesar was across the Alps.
+Either he would be deposed, or civil war would detain him in Italy. His
+legions were scattered between Treves, Auxerre, and Sens, far from the
+Roman frontier. A simultaneous rising would cut them off from support,
+and they could be starved out or overwhelmed in detail, as Sabinus had
+been at Tongres and Cicero had almost been at Charleroy. Intelligence
+was swiftly exchanged. The chiefs of all the tribes established
+communications with each other. They had been deeply affected by the
+execution of Acco, the patriotic leader of the Carnutes. The death of
+Acco was an intimation that they were Roman subjects, and were to be
+punished as traitors if they disobeyed a Roman command. They buried
+their own dissensions. Except among the Aedui there was no longer a
+Roman faction and a patriot faction. The whole nation was inspired by a
+simultaneous impulse to snatch the opportunity, and unite in a single
+effort to assert their freedom. The understanding was complete. A day
+was fixed for a universal rising. The Carnutes began by a massacre
+which would cut off possibility of retreat, and, in revenge for Acco,
+slaughtered a party of Roman civilians who were engaged in business at
+_Gien_.[1] A system of signals had been quietly arranged. The massacre
+at Gien was known in a few hours in the south, and the Auvergne
+country, which had hitherto been entirely peaceful, rose in reply,
+under a young high-born chief named Vercingetorix. Gergovia, the
+principal town of the Arverni, was for the moment undecided.[2] The
+elder men there, who had known the Romans long, were against immediate
+action; but Vercingetorix carried the people away with him. His name
+had not appeared in the earlier campaigns, but his father had been a
+man of note beyond the boundaries of Auvergne; and he must himself have
+had a wide reputation among the Gauls, for everywhere, from the Seine
+to the Garonne, he was accepted as chief of the national confederacy.
+Vercingetorix had high ability and real organizing powers. He laid out
+a plan for the general campaign. He fixed a contingent of men and arms
+which each tribe was to supply, and failure brought instantaneous
+punishment. Mild offences were visited with the loss of eyes or ears;
+neglect of a more serious sort with death by fire in the wicker tower.
+Between enthusiasm and terror he had soon an army at his command, which
+he could increase indefinitely at his need. Part he left to watch the
+Roman province and prevent Caesar, if he should arrive, from passing
+through. With part he went himself to watch the Aedui, the great
+central race, where Roman authority had hitherto prevailed unshaken,
+but among whom, as he well knew, he had the mass of the people on his
+side. The Aedui were hesitating. They called their levies under arms,
+as if to oppose him, but they withdrew them again; and to waver at such
+a moment was to yield to the stream.
+
+The Gauls had not calculated without reason on Caesar's embarrassments.
+The death of Clodius had been followed by the burning of the
+senate-house and by many weeks of anarchy. To leave Italy at such a
+moment might be to leave it a prey to faction or civil war. His anxiety
+was relieved at last by hearing that Pompey had acted, and that order
+was restored; and seeing no occasion for his own interference, and
+postponing the agitation for his second consulship, he hurried back to
+encounter the final and convulsive effort of the Celtic race to
+preserve their liberties. The legions were as yet in no danger. They
+were dispersed in the north of France, far from the scene of the
+present rising, and the northern tribes had suffered too desperately in
+the past years to be in a condition to stir without assistance. But how
+was Caesar to join them? The garrisons in the province could not be
+moved. If he sent for the army to come across to him, Vercingetorix
+would attack them on the march, and he could not feel confident of the
+result; while the line of the old frontier of the province was in the
+hands of the insurgents, or of tribes who could not be trusted to
+resist the temptation, if he passed through himself without more force
+than the province could supply. But Caesar had a resource which never
+failed him in the daring swiftness of his own movements. He sent for
+the troops which were left beyond the Alps. He had a few levies with
+him to fill the gaps in the old legions, and after a rapid survey of
+the stations on the provincial frontier he threw himself upon the
+passes of the Cevennes. It was still winter. The snow lay six feet
+thick on the mountains, and the roads at that season were considered
+impracticable even for single travellers. The Auvergne rebels dreamt of
+nothing so little as of Caesar's coming upon them at such a time and
+from such a quarter. He forced his way. He fell on them while they were
+lying in imagined security, Vercingetorix and his army being absent
+watching the Aedui, and, letting loose his cavalry, he laid their
+country waste. But Vercingetorix, he knew, would fly back at the news
+of his arrival; and he had already made his further plans. He formed a
+strong entrenched camp, where he left Decimus Brutus in charge, telling
+him that he would return as quickly as possible; and, unknown to any
+one, lest the troops should lose courage at parting with him, he flew
+across through an enemy's country with a handful of attendants to
+Vienne, on the Rhone, where some cavalry from the province had been
+sent to wait for him. Vercingetorix, supposing him still to be in the
+Auvergne, thought only of the camp of Brutus; and Caesar, riding day
+and night through the doubtful territories of the Aedui, reached the
+two legions which were quartered near Auxerre. Thence he sent for the
+rest to join him, and he was at the head of his army before
+Vercingetorix knew that only Brutus was in front of him. The Aedui, he
+trusted, would now remain faithful. But the problem before him was
+still most intricate. The grass had not begun to grow. Rapid movement
+was essential to prevent the rebel confederacy from consolidating
+itself; but rapid movements with a large force required supplies; and
+whence were the supplies to come? Some risks had to be run, but to
+delay was the most dangerous of all. On the defeat of the Helvetii,
+Caesar had planted a colony of them at Gorgobines, near Nevers, on the
+Loire. These colonists, called Boii, had refused to take part in the
+rising; and Vercingetorix, turning in contempt from Brutus, had gone
+off to punish them. Caesar ordered the Aedui to furnish his
+commissariat, sent word to the Boii that he was coming to their relief,
+swept through the Senones, that he might leave no enemy in his rear,
+and then advanced on Gien, where the Roman traders had been murdered,
+and which the Carnutes still occupied in force. There was a bridge
+there over the Loire, by which they tried to escape in the night.
+Caesar had beset the passage. He took the whole of them prisoners,
+plundered and burnt the town, gave the spoil to his troops, and then
+crossed the river and went up to help the Boii. He took Nevers.
+Vercingetorix, who was hastening to its relief, ventured his first
+battle with him; but the cavalry, on which the Gauls most depended,
+were scattered by Caesar's German horse. He was entirely beaten, and
+Caesar turned next to Avaricum (Bourges), a rich and strongly fortified
+town of the Bituriges. From past experience Caesar had gathered that
+the Gauls were easily excited and as easily discouraged. If he could
+reduce Bourges, he hoped that this part of the country would return to
+its allegiance. Perhaps he thought that Vercingetorix himself would
+give up the struggle. But he had to deal with a spirit and with a man
+different from any which he had hitherto encountered. Disappointed in
+his political expectations, baffled in strategy, and now defeated in
+open fight, the young chief of the Arverni had only learnt that he had
+taken a wrong mode of carrying on the war, and that he was wasting his
+real advantages. Battles in the field he saw that he would lose. But
+the Roman numbers were limited, and his were infinite. Tens of
+thousands of gallant young men, with their light, active horses, were
+eager for any work on which he might set them. They could scour the
+country far and wide. They could cut off Caesar's supplies. They could
+turn the fields into a blackened wilderness before him on whichever
+side he might turn. The hearts of the people were with him. They
+consented to a universal sacrifice. They burnt their farmsteads. They
+burnt their villages. Twenty towns (so called) of the Bituriges were
+consumed in a single day. The tribes adjoining caught the enthusiasm.
+The horizon at night was a ring of blazing fires. Vercingetorix was for
+burning Bourges also; but it was the sacred home of the Bituriges, the
+one spot which they implored to be allowed to save, the most beautiful
+city in all Gaul. Rivers defended it on three sides, and on the fourth
+there were swamps and marshes which could be passed only by a narrow
+ridge. Within the walls the people had placed the best of their
+property, and Vercingetorix, against his judgment, consented, in pity
+for their entreaties, that Avaricum should be defended. A strong
+garrison was left inside. Vercingetorix entrenched himself in the
+forests sixteen miles distant, keeping watch over Caesar's
+communications. The place could only be taken by regular approaches,
+during which the army had to be fed. The Aedui were growing negligent.
+The feeble Boii, grateful, it seemed, for Caesar's treatment of them,
+exerted themselves to the utmost, but their small resources were soon
+exhausted. For many days the legions were without bread. The cattle had
+been driven into the woods. It came at last to actual famine.[3] "But
+not one word was heard from them," says Caesar, "unworthy of the
+majesty of the Roman people or their own earlier victories." He told
+them that if the distress became unbearable he would raise the siege.
+With one voice they entreated him to persevere. They had served many
+years with him, they said, and had never abandoned any enterprise which
+they had undertaken. They were ready to endure any degree of hardship
+before they would leave unavenged their countrymen who had been
+murdered at Gien.
+
+Vercingetorix, knowing that the Romans were in difficulties, ventured
+nearer. Caesar surveyed his position. It had been well chosen behind a
+deep morass. The legions clamored to be allowed to advance and attack
+him, but a victory, he saw, would be dearly purchased. No condemnation
+could be too severe for him, he said, if he did not hold the lives of
+his soldiers dearer than his own interest,[4] and he led them back
+without indulging their eagerness.
+
+The siege work was unexpectedly difficult. The inhabitants of the Loire
+country were skilled artisans, trained in mines and iron works. The
+walls, built of alternate layers of stone and timber, were forty feet
+in thickness, and could neither be burnt nor driven in with the ram.
+The town could be taken only with the help of an agger--a bank of turf
+and fagots raised against the wall of sufficient height to overtop the
+fortifications. The weather was cold and wet, but the legions worked
+with such a will that in twenty-five days they had raised their bank at
+last, a hundred yards in width and eighty feet high. As the work drew
+near its end Caesar himself lay out all night among the men,
+encouraging them. One morning at daybreak he observed that the agger
+was smoking. The ingenious Gauls had undermined it and set it on fire.
+At the same moment they appeared along the walls with pitch-balls,
+torches, fagots, which they hurled in to feed the flames. There was an
+instant of confusion, but Caesar uniformly had two legions under arms
+while the rest were working. The Gauls fought with a courage which
+called out his warm admiration. He watched them at the points of
+greatest danger falling under the shots from the scorpions, and others
+stepping undaunted into their places to fall in the same way. Their
+valor was unavailing. They were driven in, and the flames were
+extinguished; the agger was level with the walls, and defence was no
+longer possible. The garrison intended to slip away at night through
+the ruins to join their friends outside. The wailing of the women was
+heard in the Roman camp, and escape was made impossible. The morning
+after, in a tempest of rain and wind, the place was stormed. The
+legionaries, excited by the remembrance of Gien and the long
+resistance, slew every human being that they found, men, women, and
+children all alike. Out of forty thousand who were within the walls,
+eight hundred only, that had fled at the first sound of the attack,
+made their way to the camp of Vercingetorix.
+
+Undismayed by the calamity, Vercingetorix made use of it to sustain the
+determination of his followers. He pointed out to them that he had
+himself opposed the defence. The Romans had defeated them, not by
+superior courage, but by superior science. The heart of the whole
+nation was united to force the Romans out of Gaul, and they had only to
+persevere in a course of action where science would be useless, to be
+sure of success in the end. He fell back upon his own country, taking
+special care of the poor creatures who had escaped from the carnage;
+and the effect of the storming of Bourges was to make the national
+enthusiasm hotter and fiercer than before.
+
+The Romans found in the town large magazines of corn and other
+provisions, which had been laid in for the siege, and Caesar remained
+there some days to refresh his troops. The winter was now over. The
+Aedui were giving him anxiety, and as soon as he could he moved to
+Decize, a frontier town belonging to them on the Loire, almost in the
+very centre of France. The anti-Roman faction were growing in
+influence. He called a council of the principal persons, and, to secure
+the fidelity of so important a tribe, he deposed the reigning chief and
+appointed another who had been nominated by the Druids.[5] He lectured
+the Aedui on their duty, bade them furnish him with ten thousand men,
+who were to take charge of the commissariat, and then divided his army.
+Labienus, with four legions, was sent to compose the country between
+Sens and Paris. He himself, with the remaining six legions, ascended
+the right bank of the Allier towards Gergovia in search of
+Vercingetorix. The bridges on the Allier were broken, but Caesar seized
+and repaired one of them and carried his army over.
+
+The town of Gergovia stood on a high plateau, where the rivers rise
+which run into the Loire on one side and into the Dordogne on the
+other. The sides of the hill are steep, and only accessible at a very
+few places, and the surrounding neighborhood is broken with rocky
+valleys. Vercingetorix lay in force outside, but in a situation where
+he could not be attacked except at disadvantage, and with his
+communication with the fortress secured. He was departing again from
+his general plan for the campaign in allowing Gergovia to be defended;
+but it was the central home of his own tribe, and the result showed
+that he was right in believing it to be impregnable. Caesar saw that it
+was too strong to be stormed, and that it could only be taken after
+long operations. After a few skirmishes he seized a spur of the plateau
+which cut off the garrison from their readiest water-supply, and he
+formed an entrenched camp upon it. He was studying the rest of the
+problem when bad news came that the Aedui were unsteady again. The ten
+thousand men had been raised as he had ordered, but on their way to
+join him they had murdered the Roman officers in charge of them, and
+were preparing to go over to Vercingetorix. Leaving two legions to
+guard his works, he intercepted the Aeduan contingent, took them
+prisoners, and protected their lives. In his absence Vercingetorix had
+attacked the camp with determined fury. The fighting had been
+desperate, and Caesar only returned in time to save it. The reports
+from the Aedui were worse and worse. The patriotic faction had the
+upper hand, and with the same passionate determination to commit
+themselves irrevocably, which had been shown before at Gien, they had
+massacred every Roman in their territory. It was no time for delaying
+over a tedious siege: Caesar was on the point of raising it, when
+accident brought on a battle under the walls. An opportunity seemed to
+offer itself of capturing the place by escalade, which part of the army
+attempted contrary to orders. They fought with more than their usual
+gallantry. The whole scene was visible from the adjoining hills, the
+Celtic women, with long streaming hair, wildly gesticulating on the
+walls. The Romans were driven back with worse loss than they had yet
+met with in Gaul. Forty-six officers and seven hundred men had been
+killed.
+
+Caesar was never more calm than under a reverse. He addressed the
+legions the next day. He complimented their courage, but he said it was
+for the general and not for them to judge when assaults should be
+tried. He saw the facts of the situation exactly as they were. His army
+was divided. Labienus was far away with a separate command. The whole
+of Gaul was in flames. To persevere at Gergovia would only be
+obstinacy, and he accepted the single military failure which he met
+with when present in person through the whole of his Gallic campaign.
+
+Difficulties of all kinds were now thickening. Caesar had placed
+magazines in Nevers, and had trusted them to an Aeduan garrison. The
+Aeduans burnt the town and carried the stores over the Loire to their
+own strongest fortress, Bibracte (Mont Beauvray). The river had risen
+from the melting of the snows, and could not be crossed without danger;
+and to feed the army in its present position was no longer possible. To
+retreat upon the province would be a confession of defeat. The passes
+of the Cevennes would be swarming with enemies, and Labienus with his
+four legions in the west might be cut off. With swift decision he
+marched day and night to the Loire. He found a ford where the troops
+could cross with the water at their armpits. He sent his horse over and
+cleared the banks. The army passed safely. Food enough and in plenty
+was found in the Aeduans' country, and without waiting he pressed on
+toward Sens to reunite his forces. He understood the Gauls, and foresaw
+what must have happened.
+
+Labienus, when sent on his separate command, had made Sens his
+head-quarters. All down the Seine the country was in insurrection.
+Leaving the new Italian levies at the station, he went with his
+experienced troops down the left bank of the river till he came to the
+Essonne. He found the Gauls entrenched on the other side, and, without
+attempting to force the passage, he marched back to Melun, where he
+repaired a bridge which the Gauls had broken, crossed over, and
+descended without interruption to Paris. The town had been burnt, and
+the enemy were watching him from the further bank. At this moment he
+heard of the retreat from Gergovia, and of the rebellion of the Aedui.
+Such news, he understood at once, would be followed by a rising in
+Belgium. Report had said that Caesar was falling back on the province.
+He did not believe it. Caesar, he knew, would not desert him. His own
+duty, therefore, was to make his way back to Sens. But to leave the
+army of Gauls to accompany his retreat across the Seine, with the
+tribes rising on all sides, was to expose himself to the certainty of
+being intercepted. "In these sudden difficulties," says Caesar, "he
+took counsel from the valor of his mind." [6] He had brought a fleet of
+barges with him from Melun. These he sent down unperceived to a point
+at the bend of the river four miles below Paris, and directed them to
+wait for him there. When night fell he detached a few cohorts with
+orders to go up the river with boats as if they were retreating,
+splashing their oars, and making as much noise as possible. He himself
+with three legions stole silently in the darkness to his barges, and
+passed over without being observed. The Gauls, supposing the whole army
+to be in flight for Sens, were breaking up their camp to follow in
+boisterous confusion. Labienus fell upon them, telling the Romans to
+fight as if Caesar was present in person; and the courage with which
+the Gauls fought in their surprise only made the overthrow more
+complete. The insurrection in the north-west was for the moment
+paralysed, and Labienus, secured by his ingenious and brilliant
+victory, returned to his quarters without further accident. There
+Caesar came to him as he expected, and the army was once more together.
+
+Meanwhile the failure at Gergovia had kindled the enthusiasm of the
+central districts into white-heat. The Aedui, the most powerful of all
+the tribes, were now at one with their countrymen, and Bibracte became
+the focus of the national army. The young Vercingetorix was elected
+sole commander, and his plan, as before, was to starve the Romans out.
+Flying bodies harassed the borders of the province, so that no
+reinforcements could reach them from the south. Caesar, however, amidst
+his conquests had the art of making staunch friends. What the province
+could not supply he obtained from his allies across the Rhine, and he
+furnished himself with bodies of German cavalry, which when mounted on
+Roman horses proved invaluable. In the new form which the insurrection
+had assumed the Aedui were the first to be attended to. Caesar advanced
+leisurely upon them, through the high country at the rise of the Seine
+and the Marne, toward Alesia, or Alice St. Reine. Vercingetorix watched
+him at ten miles' distance. He supposed him to be making for the
+province, and his intention was that Caesar should never reach it. The
+Celts at all times have been fond of emphatic protestations. The young
+heroes swore a solemn oath that they would not see wife or children or
+parents more till they had ridden twice through the Roman army. In this
+mood they encountered Caesar in the valley of the Vingeanne, a river
+which falls into the Saone, and they met the fate which necessarily
+befell them when their ungovernable multitudes engaged the legions in
+the open field. They were defeated with enormous loss: not they riding
+through the Roman army, but themselves ridden over and hewn down by the
+German horsemen and sent flying for fifty miles over the hills into
+Alice St. Reine. Caesar followed close behind, driving Vercingetorix
+under the lines of the fortress; and the siege of Alesia, one of the
+most remarkable exploits in all military history, was at once
+undertaken.
+
+Alesia, like Gergovia, is on a hill sloping off all round, with steep
+and, in places, precipitous sides. It lies between two small rivers,
+the Ose and the Oserain, both of which fall into the Brenne, and thence
+into the Seine. Into this peninsula, with the rivers on each side of
+him, Vercingetorix had thrown himself with eighty thousand men. Alesia
+as a position was impregnable except to famine. The water-supply was
+secure. The position was of extraordinary strength. The rivers formed
+natural trenches. Below the town to the east they ran parallel for
+three miles through an open alluvial plain before they reached Brenne.
+In every other direction rose rocky hills of equal height with the
+central plateau, originally perhaps one wide table-land, through which
+the water had ploughed out the valleys. To attack Vercingetorix where
+he had placed himself was out of the question; but to blockade him
+there, to capture the leader of the insurrection and his whole army,
+and so in one blow make an end with it, on a survey of the situation
+seemed not impossible. The Gauls had thought of nothing less than of
+being besieged. The provisions laid in could not be considerable, and
+so enormous a multitude could not hold out many days.
+
+At once the legions were set to work cutting trenches or building walls
+as the form of the ground allowed. Camps were formed at different
+spots, and twenty-three strong block-houses at the points which were
+least defensible. The lines where the circuit was completed were eleven
+miles long. The part most exposed was the broad level meadow which
+spread out to the west toward the Brenne river. Vercingetorix had
+looked on for a time, not understanding what was happening to him. When
+he did understand it, he made desperate efforts on his side to break
+the net before it closed about him. But he could do nothing. The Gauls
+could not be brought to face the Roman entrenchments. Their cavalry
+were cut to pieces by the German horse. The only hope was in help from
+without, and before the lines were entirely finished horsemen were sent
+out with orders to ride for their lives into every district in Gaul and
+raise the entire nation. The crisis had come. If the countrymen of
+Vercingetorix were worthy of their fathers, if the enthusiasm with
+which they had risen for freedom was not a mere emotion, but the
+expression of a real purpose, their young leader called on them to come
+now, every man of them, and seize Caesar in the trap into which he had
+betrayed himself. If, on the other hand, they were careless, if they
+allowed him and his eighty thousand men to perish without an effort to
+save them, the independence which they had ceased to deserve would be
+lost forever. He had food, he bade the messengers say, for thirty days;
+by thrifty management it might be made to last a few days longer. In
+thirty days he should look for relief.
+
+The horsemen sped away like the bearers of the fiery cross. Caesar
+learnt from deserters that they had gone out, and understood the
+message which they carried. Already he was besieging an army far
+outnumbering his own. If he persevered, he knew that he might count
+with certainty on being attacked by a second army immeasurably larger.
+But the time allowed for the collection of so many men might serve also
+to prepare for their reception. Vercingetorix said rightly that the
+Romans won their victories, not by superior courage, but by superior
+science. The same power of measuring the exact facts of the situation
+which determined Caesar to raise the siege of Gergovia decided him to
+hold on at Alesia. He knew exactly, to begin with, how long
+Vercingetorix could hold out. It was easy for him to collect provisions
+within his lines which would feed his own army a few days longer.
+Fortifications the same in kind as those which prevented the besieged
+from breaking out would serve equally to keep the assailants off. His
+plan was to make a second line of works--an exterior line as well as an
+interior line; and as the extent to be defended would thus be doubled,
+he made them of a peculiar construction, to enable one man to do the
+work of two. There is no occasion to describe the rows of ditches, dry
+and wet; the staked pitfalls; the cervi, pronged instruments like the
+branching horns of a stag; the stimuli, barbed spikes treacherously
+concealed to impale the unwary and hold him fast when caught, with
+which the ground was sown in irregular rows; the vallus and the lorica,
+and all the varied contrivances of Roman engineering genius. Military
+students will read the particulars for themselves in Caesar's own
+language. Enough that the work was done within the time, with the
+legions in perfect good humor, and giving jesting names to the new
+instruments of torture as Caesar invented them. Vercingetorix now and
+then burst out on the working parties, but produced no effect. They
+knew what they were to expect when the thirty days were out; but they
+knew their commander, and had absolute confidence in his judgment.
+
+Meanwhile, on all sides, the Gauls were responding to the call. From
+every quarter, even from far-off parts of Belgium, horse and foot were
+streaming along the roads. Commius of Arras, Caesar's old friend, who
+had gone with him to Britain, was caught with the same frenzy, and was
+hastening among the rest to help to end him. At last two hundred and
+fifty thousand of the best fighting men that Gaul could produce had
+collected at the appointed rendezvous, and advanced with the easy
+conviction that the mere impulse of so mighty a force would sweep
+Caesar off the earth. They were late in arriving. The thirty days had
+passed, and there were no signs of the coming deliverers. Eager eyes
+were straining from the heights of the plateau; but nothing was seen
+save the tents of the legions or the busy units of men at work on the
+walls and trenches. Anxious debates were held among the beleaguered
+chiefs. The faint-hearted wished to surrender before they were starved.
+Others were in favor of a desperate effort to cut their way through or
+die. One speech Caesar preserves for its remarkable and frightful
+ferocity. A prince of Auvergne said that the Romans conquered to
+enslave and beat down the laws and liberties of free nations under the
+lictors' axes, and he proposed that sooner than yield they should kill
+and eat those who were useless for fighting.
+
+Vercingetorix was of noble nature. To prevent the adoption of so
+horrible an expedient, he ordered the peaceful inhabitants, with their
+wives and children, to leave the town. Caesar forbade them to pass his
+lines. Cruel--but war is cruel; and where a garrison is to be reduced
+by famine the laws of it are inexorable.
+
+But the day of expected deliverance dawned at last. Five miles beyond
+the Brenne the dust-clouds of the approaching host were seen, and then
+the glitter of their lances and their waving pennons. They swam the
+river. They filled the plain below the town. From the heights of Alesia
+the whole scene lay spread under the feet of the besieged.
+Vercingetorix came down on the slope to the edge of the first trench,
+prepared to cross when the turn of battle should give him a chance to
+strike. Caesar sent out his German horse, and stood himself watching
+from the spur of an adjoining hill. The Gauls had brought innumerable
+archers with them. The horse flinched slightly under the showers of
+arrows, and shouts of triumph rose from the lines of the town; but the
+Germans rallied again, sent the cavalry of the Gauls flying, and hewed
+down the unprotected archers. Vercingetorix fell back sadly to his camp
+on the hill, and then for a day there was a pause. The relieving army
+had little food with them, and, if they acted at all, must act quickly.
+They spread over the country collecting faggots to fill the trenches,
+and making ladders to storm the walls. At midnight they began their
+assault on the lines in the plain; and Vercingetorix, hearing by the
+cries that the work had begun, gave his own signal for a general sally.
+The Roman arrangements had been completed long before. Every man knew
+his post. The slings, the crossbows, the scorpions were all at hand and
+in order. Mark Antony and Caius Trebonius had each a flying division
+under them to carry help where the pressure was most severe. The Gauls
+were caught on the cervi, impaled on the stimuli, and fell in heaps
+under the bolts and balls which were poured from the walls. They could
+make no impression, and fell back at daybreak beaten and dispirited.
+Vercingetorix had been unable even to pass the moats and trenches, and
+did not come into action till his friends had abandoned the attack.
+
+The Gauls had not yet taken advantage of their enormous numbers.
+Defeated on the level ground, they next tried the heights. The Romans
+were distributed in a ring now fourteen miles in extent. On the north
+side, beyond the Ose, the works were incomplete, owing to the nature of
+the ground, and their lines lay on the slope of the hills descending
+towards the river. Sixty thousand picked men left the Gauls' camp
+before dawn; they stole round by a distant route, and were allowed to
+rest concealed in a valley till the middle of the day. At noon they
+came over the ridge at the Romans' back; and they had the best of the
+position, being able to attack from above. Their appearance was the
+signal for a general assault on all sides, and for a determined sally
+by Vercingetorix from within. Thus before, behind, and everywhere, the
+legions were assailed at the same moment; and Caesar observes that the
+cries of battle in the rear are always more trying to men than the
+fiercest onset upon them in front; because what they cannot see they
+imagine more formidable than it is, and they depend for their own
+safety on the courage of others.
+
+Caesar had taken his stand where he could command the whole action.
+There was no smoke in those engagements, and the scene was
+transparently visible. Both sides felt that the deciding trial had
+come. In the plain the Gauls made no more impression than on the
+preceding day. At the weak point on the north the Romans were forced
+back down the slope, and could not hold their positions. Caesar saw it,
+and sent Labienus with six cohorts to their help. Vercingetorix had
+seen it also, and attacked the interior lines at the same spot. Decimus
+Brutus was then despatched also, and then Caius Fabius. Finally, when
+the fighting grew desperate, he left his own station; he called up the
+reserves which had not yet been engaged, and he rode across the field,
+conspicuous in his scarlet dress and with his bare head, cheering on
+the men as he passed each point where they were engaged, and hastening
+to the scene where the chief danger lay. He sent round a few squadrons
+of horse to the back of the hills which the Gauls had crossed in the
+morning. He himself joined Labienus. Wherever he went he carried
+enthusiasm along with him. The legionaries flung away their darts and
+rushed upon the enemy sword in hand. The cavalry appeared above on the
+heights. The Gauls wavered, broke, and scattered. The German horse were
+among them, hewing down the brave but now helpless patriots who had
+come with such high hopes and had fought so gallantly. Out of the sixty
+thousand that had sallied forth in the morning, all but a draggled
+remnant lay dead on the hill-sides. Seventy-four standards were brought
+in to Caesar. The besieged retired into Alice again in despair. The
+vast hosts that were to have set them free melted away. In the morning
+they were streaming over the country, making back for their homes, with
+Caesar's cavalry behind them, cutting them down and capturing them in
+thousands.
+
+The work was done. The most daring feat in the military annals of
+mankind had been successfully accomplished. A Roman army which could
+not at the utmost have amounted to fifty thousand men had held
+blockaded an army of eighty thousand--not weak Asiatics, but European
+soldiers, as strong and as brave individually as the Italians were; and
+they had defeated, beaten, and annihilated another army which had come
+expecting to overwhelm them, five times as large as their own.
+
+Seeing that all was over, Vercingetorix called the chiefs about him. He
+had gone into the war, he said, for no object of his own, but for the
+liberty of his country. Fortune had gone against him; and he advised
+them to make their peace, either by killing him and sending his head to
+the conqueror or by delivering him up alive. A humble message of
+submission was despatched to Caesar. He demanded an unconditional
+surrender, and the Gauls, starving and hopeless, obeyed. The Roman
+general sat amidst the works in front of the camp while the chiefs one
+by one were produced before him. The brave Vercingetorix, as noble in
+his calamity as Caesar himself in his success, was reserved to be shown
+in triumph to the populace of Rome. The whole of his army were
+prisoners of war. The Aedui and Arverni among them were set aside, and
+were dismissed after a short detention for political reasons. The
+remainder were sold to the contractors, and the proceeds were
+distributed as prize-money among the legions. Caesar passed the winter
+at Bibracte, receiving the submission of the chiefs of the Aedui and of
+the Auvergne. Wounds received in war soon heal if gentle measures
+follow a victory. If tried by the manners of his age, Caesar was the
+most merciful of conquerors. His high aim was, not to enslave the
+Gauls, but to incorporate them in the Empire; to extend the privileges
+of Roman citizens among them and among all the undegenerate races of
+the European provinces. He punished no one. He was gracious and
+considerate to all, and he so impressed the central tribes by his
+judgment and his moderation that they served him faithfully in all his
+coming troubles, and never more, even in the severest temptation, made
+an effort to recover their independence.
+
+[Sidenote B.C. 51.] Much, however, remained to be done. The
+insurrection had shaken the whole of Gaul. The distant tribes had all
+joined in it, either actively or by sympathy; and the patriots who had
+seized the control, despairing of pardon, thought their only hope was
+in keeping rebellion alive. During winter they believed themselves
+secure. The Carnutes of the Eure and Loire, under a new chief named
+Gutruatus,[7] and the Bituriges, untaught by or savage at the fate of
+Bourges, were still defiant. When the winter was at its deepest, Caesar
+suddenly appeared across the Loire. He caught the country people
+unprepared, and captured them in their farms. The swiftness of his
+marches baffled alike flight and resistance; he crushed the whole
+district down, and he was again at his quarters in forty days. As a
+reward to the men who had followed him so cheerfully in the cold
+January campaign, he gave each private legionary 200 sesterces and each
+centurion 2,000. Eighteen days' rest was all that he allowed himself,
+and with fresh troops, and in storm and frost, he started for the
+Carnutes. The rebels were to have no rest till they submitted. The
+Bellovaci were now out also. The Remi alone of all the Gauls had
+continued faithful in the rising of Vercingetorix. The Bellovaci, led
+by Commius of Arras, were preparing to burn the territory of the Remi
+as a punishment. Commius was not as guilty, perhaps, as he seemed.
+Labienus had suspected him of intending mischief when he was on the
+Seine in the past summer, and had tried to entrap and kill him. Anyway
+Caesar's first object was to show the Gauls that no friends of Rome
+would be allowed to suffer. He invaded Normandy; he swept the country.
+He drove the Bellovaci and the Carnutes to collect in another great
+army to defend themselves; he set upon them with his usual skill; and
+destroyed them. Commius escaped over the Rhine to Germany. Gutruatus
+was taken. Caesar would have pardoned him; but the legions were growing
+savage at these repeated and useless commotions, and insisted on his
+execution. The poor wretch was flogged till he was insensible, and his
+head was cut off by the lictor's axe.
+
+All Gaul was now submissive, its spirit broken, and, as the event
+proved, broken finally, except in the southwest. Eight years out of the
+ten of Caesar's government had expired. In one corner of the country
+only the dream still survived that, if the patriots could hold out till
+Caesar was gone, Celtic liberty might yet have a chance of recovering
+itself. A single tribe on the Dordogne, relying on the strength of a
+fortress in a situation resembling that of Gergovia, persisted in
+resistance to the Roman authority. The spirit of national independence
+is like a fire: so long as a spark remains a conflagration can again be
+kindled, and Caesar felt that he must trample out the last ember that
+was alive. Uxellodunum--so the place was named--stood on an
+inaccessible rock, and was amply provisioned. It could be taken only as
+Edinburgh Castle was once taken, by cutting off its water; and the
+ingenious tunnel may still be seen by which the Roman engineers tapped
+the spring supplied the garrison. They, too, had then to yield, and the
+war in Gaul was over.
+
+[Sidenote B.C. 50.] The following winter Caesar spent at Arras. He
+wished to hand over his conquests to his successor not only subdued,
+but reconciled, to subjection. He invited the chiefs of all the tribes
+to come to him. He spoke to them of the future which lay open to them
+as members of a splendid Imperial State. He gave them magnificent
+presents. He laid no impositions either on the leaders or their people,
+and they went to their homes personally devoted to their conqueror,
+contented with their condition, and resolved to maintain the peace
+which was now established--a unique experience in political history.
+The Norman Conquest of England alone in the least resembles it. In the
+spring of 50 Caesar went to Italy. Strange things had happened
+meanwhile in Rome. So long as there was a hope that Caesar would be
+destroyed by the insurrection, the ill-minded Senate had waited to let
+the Gauls do the work for him. The chance was gone. He had risen above
+his perils more brilliant than ever, and nothing now was left to them
+but to defy and trample on him. Servius Galba, who was favorable to
+Caesar, had stood for the consulship for 49, and had received a
+majority of votes. The election was set aside. Two patricians, Lentulus
+and Caius Marcellus, were declared chosen, and their avowed purpose was
+to strip the conqueror of Gaul of his honors and rewards.[8] The people
+of his own Cisalpine Province desired to show that they at least had no
+sympathy with such envenomed animosities. In the colonies in Lombardy
+and Venetia Caesar was received with the most passionate demonstrations
+of affection. The towns were dressed out with flags and flowers. The
+inhabitants crowded into the streets with their wives and children to
+look at him as he passed. The altars smoked with offerings; the temples
+were thronged with worshippers praying the immortal gods to bless the
+greatest of the Romans. He had yet one more year to govern. After a
+brief stay he rejoined his army. He spent the summer in organizing the
+administration of the different districts and assigning his officers
+their various commands. That he did not at this time contemplate any
+violent interference with the Constitution may be proved by the
+distribution of his legions, which remained stationed far away in
+Belgium and on the Loire.
+
+[1] Above Orleans, on the Loire.
+
+[2] Four miles from Clermont, on the Allier, in the Puy-de-Dome.
+
+[3] "Extrema fames."--_De Bell. Gall_., vii. 17.
+
+[4] "Summa se iniquitatis condemnari debere nisi eorum vitam sua salute
+    habeat cariorem."
+
+[5] _De Bell. Gall_., vii. 33.
+
+[6] "Tantis subito difficultatibus objectis ab animi virtute consilium
+    petebat."
+
+[7] Gudrund? The word has a German sound.
+
+[8] "Insolenter adversarii sui gloriabantur L. Lentulum et C. Marcellum
+    consules creatos, qui omnem honorem et dignitatem Caesaris
+    exspoliarent. Ereptum Servio Galbae consulatum cum is multo plus
+    gratia, suffragiisque valuisset, quod sibi conjunctus et
+    familiaritate et necessitudine legationis esset."--_Auli Hirtii
+    De Bell. Gall_. viii. 50.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 51.] Crassus had been destroyed by the Parthians. The
+nomination of his successor lay with the Senate, and the Senate gave a
+notable evidence of their incapacity for selecting competent governors
+for the provinces by appointing in his place Caesar's old colleague,
+Bibulus. In their whole number there was no such fool as Bibulus. When
+he arrived in Syria he shut himself into a fortified town, leaving the
+Parthians to plunder and burn at their pleasure. Cicero mocked at him.
+The Senate thanked him for his distinguished services. The few serious
+men in Rome thought that Caesar or Pompey should be sent out;[1] or, if
+they could not be spared, at least one of the consuls of the
+year--Sulpicius Rufus or Marcus Marcellus. But the consuls were busy
+with home politics and did not wish to go, nor did they wish that
+others should go and gather laurels instead of them. Therefore nothing
+was done at all,[2] and Syria was left to fate and Bibulus. The consuls
+and the aristocracy had, in fact, more serious matters to attend to.
+Caesar's time was running out, and when it was over he had been
+promised the consulship. That consulship the faction of the
+conservatives had sworn that he should never hold. Cato was threatening
+him with impeachment, blustering that he should be tried under a guard,
+as Milo had been.[3] Marcellus was saying openly that he would call him
+home in disgrace before his term was over. Como, one of the most
+thriving towns in the north of Italy, had been enfranchised by Caesar.
+An eminent citizen from Como happening to be at Rome, Marcellus
+publicly flogged him, and bade him go back and tell his fellow-townsmen
+the value of Caesar's gift to them, Cicero saw the folly of such
+actions;[4] but the aristocracy were mad--mad with pride and conscious
+guilt and fear. The ten years of Caesar's government would expire at
+the end of 49. The engagement had been entered into that he was to see
+his term out with his army and to return to Rome for 48--as consul.
+They remembered his first consulship and what he had done with it, and
+the laws which he had passed--laws which they could not repeal; yet how
+had they observed them? If he had been too strong for them all when he
+was but one of themselves, scarcely known beyond the Forum and
+senate-house, what would he do now, when he was recognized as the
+greatest soldier which Rome had produced, the army, the people, Italy,
+the provinces all adoring his name? Consul again he could not, must not
+be. Yet how could it be prevented? It was useless now to bribe the
+Comitia, to work with clubs and wire-pullers. The enfranchised citizens
+would come to vote for Caesar from every country town. The legionaries
+to a man would vote for him; and even in the venal city he was the idol
+of the hour. No fault could be found with his administration. His wars
+had paid their own expenses. He had doubled the pay of his troops, but
+his military chest was still full, and his own wealth seemed boundless.
+He was adorning the Forum with new and costly buildings. Senators,
+knights, young men of rank who had been extravagant, had been relieved
+by his generosity and were his pensioners. Gaul might have been
+impatient at its loss of liberty, but no word of complaint was heard
+against Caesar for oppressive government. The more genius he had shown
+the more formidable he was. Let him be consul, and he would be the
+master of them all.
+
+Caesar had been credited with far-reaching designs. It has been assumed
+that in early life he had designed the overthrow of the Constitution;
+that he pursued his purpose steadily through every stage in his career,
+and that he sought the command of Gaul only to obtain an army devoted
+to him which would execute his will. It has not seemed incredible that
+a man of middle age undertook the conquest of a country of which
+nothing is known save that it was inhabited by warlike races, who more
+than once had threatened to overrun Italy and destroy Rome; that he
+went through ten years of desperate fighting exposed to a thousand
+dangers from the sword, from exposure and hardship; that for ten years
+he had banished himself from Rome, uncertain whether he would ever see
+it again; and that he had ventured upon all this with no other object
+than that of eventually controlling domestic politics. A lunatic might
+have entertained such a scheme, but not a Caesar. The Senate knew him.
+They knew what he had done. They knew what he would now do, and for
+this reason they feared and hated him. Caesar was a reformer. He had
+long seen that the Roman Constitution was too narrow for the functions
+which had fallen to it, and that it was degenerating into an instrument
+of tyranny and injustice. The courts of law were corrupt; the elections
+wore corrupt. The administration of the provinces was a scandal and a
+curse. The soil of Italy had become a monopoly of capitalists, and the
+inhabitants of it a population of slaves. He had exerted himself to
+stay the mischief at its fountain, to punish bribery, to punish the
+rapacity of proconsuls and propraetors, to purify the courts, to
+maintain respect for the law. He had endeavored to extend the
+franchise, to raise the position of the liberated slaves, to replace
+upon the land a free race of Roman citizens. The old Roman sentiment,
+the consciousness of the greatness of the country and of its mighty
+destinies, was chiefly now to be found in the armies. In the families
+of veteran legionaries, spread in farms over Italy and the provinces,
+the national spirit might revive; and, with a due share of political
+power conceded to them, an enlarged and purified constituency might
+control the votes of the venal populace of the city. These were
+Caesar's designs, so far as could have been gathered from his earlier
+actions; but the manipulation of elections, the miserable contests with
+disaffected colleagues and a hostile Senate, were dreary occupations
+for such a man as he was. He was conscious of powers which in so poor a
+sphere could find no expression. He had ambition doubtless--plenty of
+it--ambition not to pass away without leaving his mark on the history
+of his country. As a statesman he had done the most which could be done
+when he was consul the first time, and he had afterward sought a free
+field for his adventurous genius in a new country, and in rounding off
+into security the frontiers of the 'Empire on the side where danger was
+most threatening. The proudest self-confidence could not have allowed
+him at his time of life to calculate on returning to Rome to take up
+again the work of reformation.
+
+But Cesar had conquered. He had made a name for himself as a soldier
+before which the Scipios and the Luculluses, the Syllas and Pompeys
+paled their glory. He was coming back to lay at his country's feet a
+province larger than Spain--not subdued only, but reconciled to
+subjugation; a nation of warriors, as much devoted to him as his own
+legions. The aristocracy had watched his progress with the bitterest
+malignity. When he was struggling with the last spasms of Gallic
+liberty, they had talked in delighted whispers of his reported ruin.[5]
+But his genius had risen above his difficulties and shone out more
+glorious than before. When the war was over the Senate had been forced
+to vote twenty days of thanksgiving. Twenty days were not enough for
+Roman, enthusiasm. The people made them into sixty.
+
+If Caesar came to Rome as consul, the Senate knew too well what it
+might expect. What he had been before he would be again, but more
+severe as his power was greater. Their own guilty hearts perhaps made
+them fear another Marian proscription. Unless his command could be
+brought to an end in some far different form, their days of power were
+numbered, and the days of inquiry and punishment would begin.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 50.] Cicero had for some time seen what was coming. He
+had preferred characteristically to be out of the way at the moment
+when he expected that the storm would break, and had accepted the
+government of Cilicia and Cyprus. He was thus absent while the active
+plot was in preparation. One great step had been gained--the Senate had
+secured Pompey. Caesar's greatness was too much for him. He could never
+again hope to be the first on the popular side, and he preferred being
+the saviour of the Constitution to playing second to a person whom he
+had patronized. Pompey ought long since to have been in Spain with his
+troops; but he had stayed at Rome to keep order, and he had lingered on
+with the same pretext. The first step was to weaken Caesar and to
+provide Pompey with a force in Italy. The Senate discovered suddenly
+that Asia Minor was in danger from, the Parthians. They voted that
+Caesar and Pompey must each spare a legion for the East. Pompey gave as
+his part the legion which he had lent to Caesar for the last campaign.
+Caesar was invited to restore it and to furnish another of his own.
+Caesar was then in Belgium. He saw the object of the demand perfectly
+clearly; but he sent the two legions without a word, contenting himself
+with making handsome presents to the officers and men on their leaving
+him. When they reached Italy the Senate found that they were wanted for
+home service, and they were placed under Pompey's command in Campania.
+The consuls chosen for the year 49 were Lucius Cornelius Lentulus and
+Caius Marcellus, both of them Caesar's open enemies. Caesar himself had
+been promised the consulship (there could be no doubt of his election,
+if his name was accepted in his absence) for the year 48. He was to
+remain with his troops till his term had run out, and to be allowed to
+stand while still in command. This was the distinct engagement which
+the assembly had ratified. After the consular election had been secured
+in the autumn of 50 to the conservative candidates, it was proposed
+that by a displacement of dates Caesar's government should expire, not
+at the close of the tenth year, but in the spring, on the 1st of March.
+Convenient constitutional excuses were found for the change. On the 1st
+of March he was to cease to be governor of Gaul. A successor was to be
+named to take over his army. He would then have to return to Rome, and
+would lie at the mercy of his enemies. Six months would intervene
+before the next elections, during which he might be impeached,
+incapacitated, or otherwise disposed of; while Pompey and his two
+legions could effectually prevent any popular disturbance in his favor.
+The Senate hesitated before decisively voting the recall. An intimation
+was conveyed to Caesar that he had been mistaken about his term, which
+would end sooner than he had supposed; and the world was waiting to see
+how he would take it. Atticus thought that he would give way. His
+having parted so easily with two legions did not look like resistance.
+Marcus Caelius, a correspondent of Cicero, who had been elected praetor
+for 49, and kept his friend informed how things were going on, wrote in
+the autumn:
+
+"All is at a standstill about the Gallic government. The subject has
+been raised, and is again postponed. Pompey's view is plain that Caesar
+must leave his province after the 1st of March ... but he does not
+think that before that time the Senate can properly pass a resolution
+about it. After the 1st of March he will have no hesitation. When he
+was asked what he would do if a tribune interposed, he said it made no
+difference whether Caesar himself disobeyed the Senate or provided some
+one else to interfere with the Senate. Suppose, said one, Caesar wishes
+to be consul and to keep his army. Pompey answered, 'What if my son
+wishes to lay a stick on my back'.... It appears that Caesar will
+accept one or other of two conditions: either to remain in his
+province, and postpone his claim for the consulship; or, if he can be
+named for the consulship, then to retire. Curio is all against him.
+What he can accomplish, I know not; but I perceive this, that if Caesar
+means well, he will not be overthrown." [6]
+
+The object of the Senate was either to ruin Caesar, if he complied with
+this order, or to put him in the wrong by provoking him to
+disobedience. The scheme was ingenious; but if the Senate could mine,
+Caesar could countermine. Caelius said that Curio was violent against
+him: and so Curio had been. Curio was a young man of high birth,
+dissolute, extravagant, and clever. His father, who had been consul
+five-and-twenty years before, was a strong aristocrat and a close
+friend of Cicero's. The son had taken the same line; but, among other
+loose companions, he had made the acquaintance, to his father's regret,
+of Mark Antony, and though they had hitherto been of opposite politics,
+the intimacy had continued. The Senate's influence had made Curio
+tribune for the year 49. Antony had been chosen tribune also. To the
+astonishment of everybody but Cicero, it appeared that these two, who
+were expected to neutralize each other, were about to work together,
+and to veto every resolution which seemed an unfair return for Caesar's
+services. Scandal said that young Curio was in money difficulties, and
+that Caesar had paid his debts for him. It was perhaps a lie invented
+by political malignity; but if Curio was purchasable, Caesar would not
+have hesitated to buy him. His habit was to take facts as they were,
+and, when satisfied that his object was just, to go the readiest way to
+it.
+
+The desertion of their own tribune was a serious blow to the Senate.
+Caelius, who was to be praetor, was inclining to think that Caesar
+would win, and therefore might take his side also. The constitutional
+opposition would then be extremely strong; and even Pompey, fiercely as
+he had spoken, doubted what to do. The question was raised in the
+Senate, whether the tribunes' vetoes were to be regarded. Marcellus,
+who had flogged the citizen of Como, voted for defying them, but the
+rest were timid. Pompey did not know his own mind.[7] Caelius's account
+of his own feelings in the matter represented probably those of many
+besides himself.
+
+"In civil quarrels," he wrote to Cicero, "we ought to go with the most
+honest party, as long as the contest lies within constitutional limits.
+When it is an affair of camps and battles, we must go with the
+strongest. Pompey will have the Senate and the men of consideration
+with him. All the discontented will go with Caesar. I must calculate
+the forces on both sides, before I decide on my own part." [8]
+
+When the question next came on in the Senate, Curio, being of course
+instructed in Caesar's wishes, professed to share the anxiety lest
+there should be a military Dictatorship; but he said that the danger
+was as great from Pompey as from Caesar. He did not object to the
+recall of Caesar, but Pompey, he thought, should resign his province
+also, and the Constitution would then be out of peril. Pompey professed
+to be willing, if the Senate desired it; but he insisted that Caesar
+must take the first step. Curio's proposal was so fair, that it gained
+favor both in Forum and Senate. The populace, who hated Pompey, threw
+flowers upon the tribune as he passed. Marcellus, the consul, a few
+days later, put the question in the Senate: Was Caesar to be recalled?
+A majority answered Yes. Was Pompey to be deprived of his province? The
+same majority said No. Curio then proposed that both Pompey and Caesar
+should dismiss their armies. Out of three hundred and ninety-two
+senators present, three hundred and seventy agreed. Marcellus told them
+bitterly that they had voted themselves Caesar's slaves. But they were
+not all insane with envy and hatred, and in the midst of their terrors
+they retained some prudence, perhaps some conscience and sense of
+justice. By this time, however, the messengers who had been sent to
+communicate the Senate's views to Caesar had returned. They brought no
+positive answer from himself; but they reported that Caesar's troops
+were worn out and discontented, and certainly would refuse to support
+him in any violent action. How false their account of the army was, the
+Senate had soon reason to know; but it was true that one, and he the
+most trusted officer that Caesar had, Labienus, who had fought through
+so many battles with him in the Forum as well as in the field, whose
+high talents and character his Commentaries could never praise
+sufficiently--it was true that Labienus had listened to the offers made
+to him. Labienus had made a vast fortune in the war. He perhaps
+thought, as other distinguished officers have done, that he was the
+person that had won the victories; that without him Caesar, who was
+being so much praised and glorified, would have been nothing; and that
+he at least was entitled to an equal share of the honors and rewards
+that might be coming; while if Caesar was to be disgraced, he might
+have the whole recompense for himself. Caesar heard of these overtures;
+but he had refused to believe that Labienus could be untrue to him. He
+showed his confidence, and he showed at the same time the integrity of
+his own intentions, by appointing the officer who was suspected of
+betraying him Lieutenant-General of the Cisalpine Province. None the
+less it was true that Labienus had been won over. Labienus had
+undertaken for his comrades; and the belief that Caesar could not
+depend on his troops renewed Pompey's courage and gave heart to the
+faction which wished to precipitate extremities. The aspect of things
+was now altered. What before seemed rash and dangerous might be safely
+ventured. Caesar had himself followed the messengers to Ravenna. To
+raise the passions of men to the desired heat, a report was spread that
+he had brought his troops across and was marching on Rome. Curio
+hastened off to him, to bring back under his own hand a distinct
+declaration of his views.
+
+It was at this crisis, in the middle of the winter 50-49, that Cicero
+returned to Rome. He had held his government but for two years, and
+instead of escaping the catastrophe, he found himself plunged into the
+heart of it. He had managed his province well. No one ever suspected
+Cicero of being corrupt or unjust. He had gained some respectable
+successes in putting down the Cilician banditti. He had been named
+imperator by his soldiers in the field after an action in which he had
+commanded; he had been flattering himself with the prospect of a
+triumph, and had laid up money to meet the cost of it. The quarrel
+between the two great men whom he had so long feared and flattered, and
+the necessity which might be thrown on him of declaring publicly on one
+side or the other, agitated him terribly. In October, as he was on his
+way home, he expressed his anxieties with his usual frankness to
+Atticus.
+
+"Consider the problem for me," he said, "as it affects myself: you
+advised me to keep on terms both with Pompey and Caesar. You bade me
+adhere to one because he had been good to me, and to the other because
+he was strong. I have done so. I so ordered matters that no one could
+be dearer to either of them than I was. I reflected thus: while I stand
+by Pompey, I cannot hurt the Commonwealth; if I agree with Caesar, I
+need not quarrel with Pompey; so closely they appeared to be connected.
+But now they are at a sharp issue. Each regards me as his friend,
+unless Caesar dissembles; while Pompey is right in thinking that what
+he proposes I shall approve. I heard from both at the time at which I
+heard from you. Their letters were most polite. What am I to do? I
+don't mean in extremities. If it comes to fighting, it will be better
+to be defeated with one than to conquer with the other. But when I
+arrive at Rome, I shall be required to say if Caesar is to be proposed
+for the consulship in his absence, or if he is to dismiss his army.
+What must I answer? Wait till I have consulted Atticus? That will not
+do. Shall I go against Caesar? Where are Pompey's resources? I myself
+took Caesar's part about it. He spoke to me on the subject at Ravenna.
+I recommended his request to the tribunes as a reasonable one. Pompey
+talked with me also to the same purpose. Am I to change my mind? I am
+ashamed to oppose him now. Will you have a fool's opinion? I will apply
+for a triumph, and so I shall have an excuse for not entering the city.
+You will laugh. But oh, I wish I had remained in my province. Could I
+but have guessed what was impending! Think for me. How shall I avoid
+displeasing Caesar? He writes most kindly about a 'Thanksgiving' for my
+success." [9]
+
+Caesar had touched the right point in congratulating Cicero on his
+military exploits. His friends in the Senate had been less delicate.
+Bibulus had been thanked for hiding from the Parthians. When Cicero had
+hinted his expectations, the Senate had passed to the order of the day.
+
+"Cato," he wrote, "treats me scurvily. He gives me praise for justice,
+clemency, and integrity, which I did not want. What I did want he will
+not let me have. Caesar promises me everything.--Cato has given a
+twenty days' thanksgiving to Bibulus. Pardon me, if this is more than I
+can bear.--But I am relieved from my worst fear. The Parthians have
+left Bibulus half alive." [10]
+
+The shame wore off as Cicero drew near to Rome. He blamed the tribunes
+for insisting on what he had himself declared to be just. "Any way," he
+said, "I stick to Pompey. When they say to me, Marcus Tullius, what do
+you think? I shall answer, I go with Pompey; but privately I shall
+advise Pompey to come to terms.--We have to do with a man full of
+audacity and completely prepared. Every felon, every citizen who is in
+disgrace or ought to be in disgrace, almost all the young, the city
+mob, the tribunes, debtors, who are more numerous than I could have
+believed, all these are with Caesar. He wants nothing but a good cause,
+and war is always uncertain." [11]
+
+Pompey had been unwell at the beginning of December, and had gone for a
+few days into the country. Cicero met him on the 10th. "We were two
+hours together," he said. "Pompey was delighted at my arrival. He spoke
+of my triumph, and promised to do his part. He advised me to keep away
+from the Senate, till it was arranged, lest I should offend the
+tribunes. He spoke of war as certain. Not a word did he utter pointing
+to a chance of compromise.--My comfort is that Caesar, to whom even his
+enemies had allowed a second consulship, and to whom fortune had given
+so much power, will not be so mad as to throw all this away." [12]
+Cicero had soon to learn that the second consulship was not so certain.
+On the 29th he had another long conversation with Pompey.
+
+"Is there hope of peace?" he wrote, in reporting what had passed. "So
+far as I can gather from his very full expressions to me, he does not
+desire it. For he thinks thus: If Caesar be made consul, even after he
+has parted from his army, the constitution will be at an end. He thinks
+also that when Caesar hears of the preparations against him, he will
+drop the consulship for this year, to keep his province and his troops.
+Should he be so insane as to try extremities, Pompey holds him in utter
+contempt. I thought, when he was speaking, of the uncertainties of war;
+but I was relieved to hear a man of courage and experience talk like a
+statesman of the dangers of an insincere settlement.--Not only he does
+not seek for peace, but he seems to fear it.--My own vexation is, that
+I must pay Caesar my debt, and spend thus what I had set apart for my
+triumph. It is indecent to owe money to a political antagonist." [13]
+
+Events were hurrying on. Cicero entered Rome the first week in January,
+to find that the Senate had begun work in earnest. Curio had returned
+from Ravenna with a letter from Caesar. He had offered three
+alternatives. First, that the agreement already made might stand, and
+that he might be nominated, in his absence, for the consulship; or that
+when he left his army, Pompey should disband his Italian legions; or,
+lastly, that he should hand over Transalpine Gaul to his successor,
+with eight of his ten legions, himself keeping the north of Italy and
+Illyria with two, until his election. It was the first of January. The
+new consuls, Lentulus and Caius Marcellus, with the other magistrates,
+had entered on their offices, and were in their places in the Senate.
+Pompey was present, and the letter was introduced. The consuls objected
+to it being read, but they were overruled by the remonstrances of the
+tribunes. The reading over, the consuls forbade a debate upon it, and
+moved that the condition of the Commonwealth should be taken into
+consideration. Lentulus, the more impassioned of them, said that if the
+Senate would be firm, he would do his duty; if they hesitated and tried
+conciliation, he should take care of himself, and go over to Caesar's
+side. Metellus Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, spoke to the same
+purpose. Pompey, he said, was ready to support the constitution, if the
+Senate were resolute. If they wavered, they would look in vain for
+future help from him. Marcus Marcellus, the consul of the preceding
+year, less wild than he had been when he flogged the Como citizen,
+advised delay, at least till Pompey was better prepared. Calidius,
+another senator, moved that Pompey should go to his province. Caesar's
+resentment at the detention of the two legions from the Parthian war he
+thought, was natural and justifiable. Marcus Rufus agreed with
+Calidius. But moderation was borne down by the violence of Lentulus;
+and the Senate, in spite of themselves,[14] voted, at Scipio's
+dictation, that Caesar must dismiss his army before a day which was to
+be fixed, or, in default, would be declared an enemy to the State. Two
+tribunes, Mark Antony and Cassius Longinus, interposed. The tribunes'
+veto was as old as their institution. It had been left standing even by
+Sylla. But the aristocracy were declaring war against the people. They
+knew that the veto was coming, and they had resolved to disregard it.
+The more passionate the speakers, the more they were cheered by
+Caesar's enemies. The sitting ended in the evening without a final
+conclusion; but at a meeting afterwards, at his house, Pompey quieted
+alarms by assuring the senators that there was nothing to fear.
+Caesar's army he knew to be disaffected. He introduced the officers of
+the two legions that had been taken from Caesar, who vouched for their
+fidelity to the constitution. Some of Pompey's veterans were present,
+called up from their farms; they were enthusiastic for their old
+commander. Piso, Caesar's father-in-law, and Roscius, a praetor, begged
+for a week's delay, that they might go to Caesar, and explain the
+Senate's pleasure. Others proposed to send a deputation to soften the
+harshness of his removal. But Lentulus, backed by Cato, would listen to
+nothing. Cato detested Caesar as the representative of everything which
+he most abhorred. Lentulus, bankrupt and loaded with debts, was looking
+for provinces to ruin, and allied sovereigns to lay presents at his
+feet. He boasted that he would be a second Sylla.[15] When the Senate
+met again in their places, the tribunes' veto was disallowed. They
+ordered a general levy through Italy. The consuls gave Pompey the
+command-in-chief, with the keys of the treasury. The Senate
+redistributed the provinces; giving Syria to Scipio, and in Caesar's
+place appointing Domitius Ahenobarbus, the most inveterate and
+envenomed of his enemies. Their authority over the provinces had been
+taken from them by law, but law was set aside. Finally, they voted the
+State in danger, suspended the constitution, and gave the consuls
+absolute power.
+
+The final votes were taken on the 7th of January. A single week had
+sufficed for a discussion of the resolutions on which the fate of Rome
+depended. The Senate pretended to be defending the constitution. They
+had themselves destroyed the constitution, and established on the ruins
+of it a senatorial oligarchy. The tribunes fled at once to Caesar.
+Pompey left the city for Campania, to join his two legions and
+superintend the levies.
+
+The unanimity which had appeared in the Senate's final determination
+was on the surface only. Cicero, though present in Rome, had taken no
+part, and looked on in despair. The "good" were shocked at Pompey's
+precipitation. They saw that a civil war could end only in a despotism.
+[16] "I have not met one man," Cicero said, "who does not think it
+would be better to make concessions to Caesar than to fight him.--Why
+fight now? Things are no worse than when we gave him his additional
+five years, or agreed to let him be chosen consul in his absence. You
+wish for my opinion. I think we ought to use every means to escape war.
+But I must say what Pompey says. I cannot differ from Pompey." [17]
+
+A day later, before the final vote had been taken, he thought still
+that the Senate was willing to let Caesar keep his province, if he
+would dissolve his army. The moneyed interests, the peasant
+landholders, were all on Caesar's side; they cared not even if monarchy
+came so that they might have peace. "We could have resisted Caesar
+easily when he was weak," he wrote. "Now he has eleven legions and as
+many cavalry as he chooses with him, the Cisalpine provincials, the
+Roman populace, the tribunes, and the hosts of dissolute young men. Yet
+we are to fight with him, or take account of him unconstitutionally.
+Fight, you say, rather than be a slave. Fight for what? To be
+proscribed, if you are beaten; to be a slave still, if you win. What
+will you do then? you ask. As the sheep follows the flock and the ox
+the herd, so will I follow the 'good,' or those who are called good,
+but I see plainly what will come out of this sick state of ours. No one
+knows what the fate of war may be. But if the 'good' are beaten, this
+much is certain, that Caesar will be as bloody as Cinna, and as greedy
+of other men's properties as Sylla." [18]
+
+Once more, and still in the midst of uncertainty:
+
+"The position is this: We must either let Caesar stand for the
+consulship, he keeping his army with the Senate's consent, or supported
+by the tribunes; or we must persuade him to resign his province and his
+army, and so to be consul; or if he refuses, the elections can be held
+without him, he keeping his province; or if he forbids the election
+through the tribunes, we can hang on and come to an interrex; or,
+lastly, if he brings his army on us, we can fight. Should this be his
+choice, he will either begin at once, before we are ready, or he will
+wait till his election, when his friends will put in his name and it
+will not be received. His plea may then be the ill-treatment of
+himself, or it may be complicated further should a tribune interpose
+and be deprived of office, and so take refuge with him.... You will say
+persuade Caesar, then, to give up his army, and be consul. Surely, if
+he will agree, no objection can be raised; and if he is not allowed to
+stand while he keeps his army, I wonder that he does not let it go. But
+a certain person (Pompey) thinks that nothing is so much to be feared
+as that Caesar should be consul. Better thus, you will say, than with
+an army. No doubt. But a certain person holds that his consulship would
+be an irremediable misfortune. We must yield if Caesar will have it so.
+He will be consul again, the same man that he was before; then, weak as
+he was, he proved stronger than the whole of us. What, think you, will
+he be now? Pompey, for one thing, will surely be sent to Spain.
+Miserable every way; and the worst is, that Caesar cannot be refused,
+and by consenting will be taken into supreme favor by all the 'good.'
+They say, however, that he cannot be brought to this. Well, then, which
+is the worst of the remaining alternatives? Submit to what Pompey calls
+an impudent demand? Caesar has held his province for ten years. The
+Senate did not give it him. He took it himself by faction and violence.
+Suppose he had it lawfully, the time is up. His successor is named. He
+disobeys. He says that he ought to be considered. Let him consider us.
+Will he keep his army beyond the time for which the people gave it to
+him, in despite of the Senate? We must fight him then, and, as Pompey
+says, we shall conquer or die free men. If fight we must, time will
+show when or how. But if you have any advice to give, let me know it,
+for I am tormented day and night." [19]
+
+These letters give a vivid picture of the uncertainties which
+distracted public opinion during the fatal first week of January.
+Caesar, it seems, might possibly have been consul had he been willing
+to retire at once into the condition of a private citizen, even though
+Pompey was still undisarmed. Whether in that position he would have
+lived to see the election-day is another question. Cicero himself, it
+will be seen, had been reflecting already that there were means less
+perilous than civil war by which dangerous persons might be got rid of.
+And there were weak points in his arguments which his impatience passed
+over. Caesar held a positive engagement about his consulship, which the
+people had ratified. Of the ten years which the people had allowed him,
+one was unexpired, and the Senate had no power to vote his recall
+without the tribunes' and the people's consent. He might well hesitate
+to put himself in the power of a faction so little scrupulous. It is
+evident, however, that Pompey and the two consuls were afraid that, if
+such overtures were made to him by a deputation from the Senate, he
+might perhaps agree to them; and by their rapid and violent vote they
+put an end to the possibility of an arrangement. Caesar, for no other
+crime than that as a brilliant democratic general he was supposed
+dangerous to the oligarchy, had been recalled from his command in the
+face of the prohibition of the tribunes, and was declared an enemy of
+his country unless he instantly submitted. After the experience of
+Marius and Sylla, the Senate could have paid no higher compliment to
+Caesar's character than in believing that he would hesitate over his
+answer.
+
+[1] "Caelius ad Ciceronem," _Ad Fam_. viii. 10.
+
+[2] _Ibid_.
+
+[3] Suetonius, _De Vita Julii Caesaris_.
+
+[4] "Marcellus foede do Comensi. Etsi ille magistratum non gesserat, erat
+    tamen Transpadanus. Ita mihi videtur non minus stomachi nostro ac
+    Caesari fecisse."--_To Atticus_, v. 11.
+
+[5] "Quod ad Caesarem crebri et non belli de eo rumores. Sed susurratores
+    dumtaxat veniunt.... Neque adhuc certi quidquam est, neque haec
+    incerta tamen vulgo jactantur. Sed inter paucos, quos tu nosti,
+    palam secreto narrantur. At Domitius cum manus ad os
+    apposuit!"--Caelius to Cicero, _Ad Fam_. viii. 1.
+
+[6] Caelius to Cicero, _Ad Fam_. viii. 8.
+
+[7] _Ibid_., viii. 13.
+
+[8] Caelius to Cicero, _Ad Fam_. viii. 14.
+
+[9] _To Atticus_, vii. 1, abridged.
+
+[10] _Ibid._, vii. 2.
+
+[11] _Ibid._, vii. 3.
+
+[12] _To Atticus_, vii. 4.
+
+[13] "Mihi autem illud molestissimum est, quod solvendi sunt nummi
+    Caesari, et instrumentum triumphi eo conferendum. Est [Greek: amorphon
+    hantipoliteuomenou chreopheiletaen] esse."--_Ibid_., vii. 8.
+
+[14] "Inviti et coacti" is Caesar's expression. He wished, perhaps, to
+    soften the Senate's action. (_De Bello Civili_, i. 2.)
+
+[15] "Seque alterum fore Sullam inter suos gloriatur."--_De Bello
+    Civili_, i. 4.
+
+[16] "Tum certe tyrannus existet."--_To Atticus_, vii. 5.
+
+[17] _To Atticus_, vii. 6.
+
+[18] _Ibid_., vii. 7, abridged.
+
+[19] _To Atticus_, vii. 9, abridged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Caesar,  when the report of the Senate's action reached him, addressed
+his soldiers. He had but one legion with him, the 13th. But one legion
+would represent the rest. He told them what the Senate had done, and
+why they had done it. "For nine years he and his army had served their
+country loyally and with some success. They had driven the Germans over
+the Rhine; they had made Gaul a Roman province; and the Senate for
+answer had broken the constitution, and had set aside the tribunes
+because they spoke in his defence. They had voted the State in danger,
+and had called Italy to arms when no single act had been done by
+himself to justify them." The soldiers whom--Pompey supposed
+disaffected declared with enthusiasm that they would support their
+commander and the tribunes. They offered to serve without pay. Officers
+and men volunteered contributions for the expenses of the war. In all
+the army one officer alone proved false. Labienus kept his word to
+Pompey and stole away to Capua. He left his effects behind, and Caesar
+sent them after him untouched.
+
+Finding that all the rest could be depended on, he sent back over the
+Alps for two more legions to follow him. He crossed the little river
+Rubicon, which bounded his province, and advanced to Rimini, where he
+met the tribunes, Antony, Cassius Longinus, and Curio, who were coming
+to him from Rome.[1] At Rimini the troops were again assembled. Curio
+told them what had passed. Caesar added a few more words. The
+legionaries, officers and privates, were perfectly satisfied; and
+Caesar, who, a resolution once taken, struck as swiftly as his own
+eagles, was preparing to go forward. He had but 5,000 men with him, but
+he understood the state of Italy, and knew that he had nothing to fear.
+At this moment Lucius Caesar, a distant kinsman, and the praetor
+Roscius arrived, as they said, with a private message from Pompey. The
+message was nothing. The object was no more than to gain time. But
+Caesar had no wish for war, and would not throw away a chance of
+avoiding it. He bade his kinsman tell Pompey that it was for him to
+compose the difficulties which had arisen without a collision. He had
+been himself misrepresented to his countrymen. He had been recalled
+from his command before his time; the promise given to him about his
+consulship had been broken. He had endured these injuries. He had
+proposed to the Senate that the forces on both sides should be
+disbanded. The Senate had refused. A levy had been ordered through
+Italy, and the legions designed for Parthia had been retained. Such an
+attitude could have but one meaning. Yet he was still ready to make
+peace. Let Pompey depart to Spain. His own troops should then be
+dismissed. The elections could be held freely, and Senate and people
+would be restored to their joint authority. If this was not enough,
+they two might meet and relieve each other's alarms and suspicions in a
+personal interview.
+
+With this answer the envoys went, and Caesar paused at Rimini.
+Meanwhile the report reached Rome that Caesar had crossed the Rubicon.
+The aristocracy had nursed the pleasant belief that his heart would
+fail him, or that his army would desert him. His heart had not failed,
+his army had not deserted; and, in their terror, they saw him already
+in their midst like an avenging Marius. He was coming. His horse had
+been seen on the Apennines. Flight, instant flight, was the only
+safety. Up they rose, consuls, praetors, senators, leaving wives and
+children and property to their fate, not halting even to take the money
+out of the treasury, but contenting themselves with leaving it locked.
+On foot, on horseback, in litters, in carriages, they fled for their
+lives to find safety under Pompey's wing in Capua. In this forlorn
+company went Cicero, filled with contempt for what was round him.
+
+"You ask what Pompey means to do," he wrote to Atticus. "I do not think
+he knows himself. Certainly none of us know.--It is all panic and
+blunder. We are uncertain whether he will make a stand, or leave Italy.
+If he stays, I fear his army is too unreliable. If not, where will he
+go, and how and what are his plans? Like you, I am afraid that Caesar
+will be a Phalaris, and that we may expect the very worst. The flight
+of the Senate, the departure of the magistrates, the closing of the
+treasury, will not stop him.--I am broken-hearted; so ill-advisedly, so
+against all my counsels, the whole business has been conducted. Shall I
+turn my coat, and join the victors? I am ashamed. Duty forbids me; but
+I am miserable at the thought of my children." [2]
+
+A gleam of hope came with the arrival of Labienus, but it soon clouded.
+"Labienus is a hero," Cicero said. "Never was act more splendid. If
+nothing else comes of it, he has at least made Caesar smart.--We have a
+civil war on us, not because we have quarrelled among ourselves, but
+through one abandoned citizen. But this citizen has a strong army, and
+a large party attached to him.--What he will do I cannot say; he cannot
+even pretend to do anything constitutionally; but what is to become of
+us, with a general that cannot lead?--To say nothing of ten years of
+blundering, what could have been worse than this flight from Rome? His
+next purpose I know not. I ask, and can have no answer. All is
+cowardice and confusion. He was kept at home to protect us, and
+protection there is none. The one hope is in two legions invidiously
+detained and almost not belonging to us. As to the levies, the men
+enlist unwillingly, and hate the notion of a war." [3]
+
+In this condition of things Lucius Caesar arrived with the answer from
+Rimini. A council of war was held at Teano to consider it; and the
+flames which had burnt so hotly at the beginning of the month were
+found to have somewhat cooled. Cato's friend Favonius was still
+defiant; but the rest, even Cato himself, had grown more modest.
+Pompey, it was plain, had no army, and could not raise an army. Caesar
+spoke fairly. It might be only treachery; but the Senate had left their
+families and their property in Rome. The public money was in Rome. They
+were willing to consent that Caesar should be consul, since so it must
+be. Unluckily for themselves, they left Pompey to draw up their reply.
+Pompey intrusted the duty to an incapable person named Sestius, and the
+answer was ill-written, awkward, and wanting on the only point which
+would have proved his sincerity. Pompey declined the proposed
+interview. Caesar must evacuate Rimini, and return to his province;
+afterwards, at some time unnamed, Pompey would go to Spain, and other
+matters should be arranged to Caesar's satisfaction. Caesar must give
+securities that he would abide by his promise to dismiss his troops;
+and meanwhile the consular levies would be continued.[4]
+
+To Cicero these terms seemed to mean a capitulation clumsily disguised.
+Caesar interpreted them differently. To him it appeared that he was
+required to part with his own army, while Pompey was forming another.
+No time was fixed for the departure to Spain. He might be himself named
+consul, yet Pompey might be in Italy to the end of the year with an
+army independent of him. Evidently there was distrust on both sides,
+yet on Caesar's part a distrust not undeserved. Pompey would not see
+him. He had admitted to Cicero that he desired a war to prevent Caesar
+from being consul, and at this very moment was full of hopes and
+schemes for carrying it on successfully. "Pompey writes," reported
+Cicero on the 28th of January, "that in a few days he will have a force
+on which he can rely. He will occupy Picenum,[5] and we are then to
+return to Rome. Labienus assures him that Caesar is utterly weak. Thus
+he is in better spirits." [6]
+
+[Sidenote: February, B.C. 49.] A second legion had by this time arrived
+at Rimini. Caesar considered that if the Senate really desired peace,
+their disposition would be quickened by further pressure. He sent
+Antony across the mountains to Arezzo, on the straight road to Rome;
+and he pushed on himself toward Ancona, before Pompey had time to throw
+himself in the way. The towns on the way opened their gates to him. The
+municipal magistrates told the commandants that they could not refuse
+to entertain Caius Caesar, who had done such great things for the
+Republic. The officers fled. The garrisons joined Caesar's legions.
+Even a colony planted by Labienus sent a deputation with offers of
+service. Steadily and swiftly in gathering volume the army of the north
+came on. At Capua all was consternation. "The consuls are helpless,"
+Cicero said. "There has been no levy. The commissioners do not even try
+to excuse their failure. With Caesar pressing forward and our general
+doing nothing, men will not give in their names. The will is not
+wanting, but they are without hope. Pompey, miserable and incredible
+though it be, is prostrate. He has no courage, no purpose, no force, no
+energy.... Caius Cassius came on the 7th to Capua, with an order from
+Pompey to the consuls to go to Rome and bring away the money from the
+treasury. How are they to go without an escort, or how return? The
+consuls say he must go himself first to Picenum. But Picenum is
+lost.--Caesar will soon be in Apulia, and Pompey on board ship. What
+shall I do? I should not doubt had there not been such shameful
+mis-management, and had I been myself consulted. Caesar invites me to
+peace, but his letter was written before his advance." [7]
+
+Desperate at the lethargy of their commander, the aristocracy tried to
+force him into movement by acting on their own account. Domitius, who
+had been appointed Caesar's successor, was most interested in his
+defeat. He gathered a party of young lords and knights and a few
+thousand men, and flung himself into Corfinium, a strong position in
+the Apennines, directly in Caesar's path. Pompey had still his two
+legions, and Domitius sent an express to tell him that Caesar's force
+was still small, and that with a slight effort he might enclose him in
+the mountains. Meanwhile Domitius himself tried to break the bridge
+over the Pescara. He was too late. Caesar had by this time nearly
+30,000 men. The Cisalpine territories in mere enthusiasm had raised
+twenty-two cohorts for him. He reached the Pescara while the bridge was
+still standing. He surrounded Corfinium with the impregnable lines
+which had served him so well in Gaul, and the messenger sent to Capua
+came back with cold comfort. Pompey had simply ordered Domitius to
+retreat from a position which he ought not to have occupied, and to
+join him in Apulia. It was easy to say Retreat! No retreat was
+possible. Domitius and his companions proposed to steal away in the
+night. They were discovered. Their own troops arrested them, and
+carried them as prisoners to Caesar. Fortune had placed in his hands at
+the outset of the campaign the man who beyond others had been the
+occasion of it. Domitius would have killed Caesar like a bandit if he
+had caught him. He probably expected a similar fate for himself. Caesar
+received his captives calmly and coldly. He told them that they had
+made an ungrateful return to him for his services to his country; and
+then dismissed them all, restoring even Domitius's well-filled military
+chest, and too proud to require a promise from him that he would
+abstain personally from further hostility. His army, such as it was,
+followed the general example, and declared for Caesar.
+
+The capture of Corfinium and the desertion of the garrison made an end
+of hesitation. Pompey and the consuls thought only of instant flight,
+and hurried to Brindisi, where ships were waiting for them; and Caesar,
+hoping that the evident feeling of Italy would have its effect with the
+reasonable part of the Senate, sent Cornelius Balbus, who was on
+intimate terms with many of them, to assure them of his eagerness for
+peace, and to tell Cicero especially that he would be well contented to
+live under Pompey's rule if he could have a guarantee for his personal
+safety.[8]
+
+[Sidenote: March B.C. 49.] Cicero's trials had been great, and were not
+diminishing. The account given by Balbus was simply incredible to him.
+If Caesar was really as well disposed as Balbus represented, then the
+senatorial party, himself included, had acted like a set of madmen. It
+might be assumed, therefore, that Caesar was as meanly ambitious, as
+selfish, as revolutionary as their fears had represented him, and that
+his mildness was merely affectation. But what then? Cicero wished for
+himself to be on the right side, but also to be on the safe side.
+Pompey's was the right side, the side, that is, which, for his own
+sake, he would prefer to see victorious. But was Pompey's the safe
+side? or rather, would it be safe to go against him? The necessity for
+decision was drawing closer. If Pompey and the consuls went abroad, all
+loyal senators would be expected to follow them, and to stay behind
+would be held treason. Italy was with Caesar; but the East, with its
+treasures, its fleets, its millions of men, this was Pompey's, heart
+and soul. The sea was Pompey's. Caesar might win for the moment, but
+Pompey might win in the long run. The situation was most perplexing.
+Before the fall of Corfinium, Cicero had poured himself out upon it to
+his friend. "My connections, personal and political," he said, "attach
+me to Pompey. If I stay behind, I desert my noble and admirable
+companions, and I fall into the power of a man whom I know not how far
+I can trust. He shows in many ways that he wishes me well. I saw the
+tempest impending, and I long ago took care to secure his good-will.
+But suppose him to be my friend indeed, is it becoming in a good and
+valiant citizen, who has held the highest offices and done such
+distinguished things, to be in the power of any man? Ought I to expose
+myself to the danger, and perhaps disgrace, which would lie before me,
+should Pompey recover his position? This on one side; but now look at
+the other. Pompey has shown neither conduct nor courage, and he has
+acted throughout against my advice and judgment. I pass over his old
+errors: how he himself armed this man against the constitution; how he
+supported his laws by violence in the face of the auspices; how he gave
+him Further Gaul, married his daughter, supported Clodius, helped me
+back from exile indeed, but neglected me afterward; how he prolonged
+Caesar's command, and backed him up in everything; how in his third
+consulship, when he had begun to defend the constitution, he yet moved
+the tribunes to curry a resolution for taking Caesar's name in his
+absence, and himself sanctioned it by a law of his own; how he resisted
+Marcus Marcellus, who would have ended Caesar's government on the 1st
+of March. Let us forget all this: but what was ever more disgraceful
+than the flight from Rome? What conditions would not have been
+preferable? He will restore the constitution, you say, but when? by
+what means? Is not Picenum lost? Is not the road open to the city? Is
+not our money, public and private, all the enemy's? There is no cause,
+no rallying point for the friends of the constitution.... The rabble
+are all for Caesar, and many wish for revolution.... I saw from the
+first that Pompey only thought of flight: if I now follow him, whither
+are we to go? Caesar will seize my brother's property and mine, ours
+perhaps sooner than others', as an assault on us would be popular. If I
+stay, I shall do no more than many good men did in Cinna's
+time.--Caesar may be my friend, not certainly, but perhaps; and he may
+offer me a triumph which it would be dangerous to refuse, and invidious
+with the "good" to accept. Oh, most perplexing position!--while I
+write, word comes that Caesar is at Corfinium. Domitius is inside, with
+a strong force and eager to fight. I cannot think Pompey will desert
+him." [9]
+
+[Sidenote: February, B.C. 49.] Pompey did desert Domitius, as has been
+seen. The surrender of Corfinium, and the circumstances of it, gave
+Cicero the excuse which he evidently desired to find for keeping clear
+of a vessel that appeared to him to be going straight to shipwreck. He
+pleased himself with inventing evil purposes for Pompey, to justify his
+leaving him. He thought it possible that Domitius and his friends might
+have been purposely left to fall into Caesar's hands, in the hope that
+Caesar would kill them and make himself unpopular. Pompey, he was
+satisfied, meant as much to be a despot as Caesar. Pompey might have
+defended Rome, if he had pleased; but his purpose was to go away and
+raise a great fleet and a great Asiatic army, and come back and ruin
+Italy, and be a new "Sylla." [10] In his distress Cicero wrote both to
+Caesar and to Pompey, who was now at Brindisi. To Caesar he said that,
+if he wished for peace, he might command his services. He had always
+considered that Caesar had been wronged in the course which had been
+pursued toward him. Envy and ill-nature had tried to rob him of the
+honors which had been conferred on him by the Roman people. He
+protested that he had himself supported Caesar's claims, and had
+advised others to do the same. But he felt for Pompey also, he said,
+and would gladly be of service to him.[11]
+
+To Pompey he wrote:
+
+[Sidenote: March, B.C. 49.] "My advice was always for peace, even on
+hard terms. I wished you to remain in Rome. You never hinted that you
+thought of leaving Italy. I accepted your opinion, not for the
+constitution's sake, for I despaired of saving it. The constitution is
+gone, and cannot be restored without a destructive war; but I wished to
+be with you, and if I can join you now, I will. I know well that my
+conduct has not pleased those who desired to fight. I urged peace; not
+because I did not fear what they feared, but because I thought peace a
+less evil than war. When the war had begun and overtures were made to
+you, you responded so amply and so honorably that I hoped I had
+prevailed.... I was never more friendly with Caesar than they were; nor
+were they more true to the State than I. The difference between us is
+this, that while they and I are alike good citizens, I preferred an
+arrangement, and you, I thought, agreed with me. They chose to fight,
+and as their counsels have been taken, I can but do my duty as a member
+of the Commonwealth, and as a friend to you." [12]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In this last sentence Cicero gives his clear opinion that the
+aristocracy had determined upon war, and that for this reason and no
+other the attempted negotiations had failed. Caesar, hoping that a
+better feeling might arise after his dismissal of Domitius, had waited
+a few days at Corfinium. Finding that Pompey had gone to Brindisi, he
+then followed, trusting to overtake him before he could leave Italy,
+and again by messengers pressed him earnestly for an interview. By
+desertions, and by the accession of volunteers, Caesar had now six
+legions with him. If Pompey escaped, he knew that the war would be long
+and dangerous. If he could capture him, or persuade him to an
+agreement, peace could easily be preserved. When he arrived outside the
+town, the consuls with half the army had already gone. Pompey was still
+in Brindisi, with 12,000 men, waiting till the transports could return
+to carry him after them. Pompey again refused to see Caesar, and, in
+the absence of the consuls, declined further discussion. Caesar tried
+to blockade him, but for want of ships was unable to close the harbor.
+The transports came back, and Pompey sailed for Durazzo.[13]
+
+A few extracts and abridgments of letters will complete the picture of
+this most interesting time.
+
+_Cicero to Atticus_.[14]
+
+"Observe the man into whose hands we have fallen. How keen he is, how
+alert, how well prepared! By Jove, if he does not kill any one, and
+spares the property of those who are so terrified, he will be in high
+favor. I talk with the tradesmen and farmers. They care for nothing but
+their lands, and houses, and money. They have gone right round. They
+fear the man they trusted, and love the man they feared; and all this
+through our own blunders. I am sick to think of it."
+
+_Balbus to Cicero_.[15]
+
+"Pompey and Caesar have been divided by perfidious villains. I beseech
+you, Cicero, use your influence to bring them together again. Believe
+me, Caesar will not only do all you wish, but will hold you to have
+done him essential service. Would that I could say as much of Pompey,
+who I rather wish than hope may be brought to terms! You have pleased
+Caesar by begging Lentulus to stay in Italy, and you have more than
+pleased me. If he will listen to you, will trust to what I tell him of
+Caesar, and will go back to Rome, between you and him and the Senate,
+Caesar and Pompey may be reconciled. If I can see this, I shall have
+lived long enough. I know you will approve of Caesar's conduct at
+Corfinium."
+
+_Cicero to Atticus_.[16]
+
+"My preparations are complete. I wait till I can go by the upper sea; I
+cannot go by the lower at this season. I must start soon, lest I be
+detained. I do not go for Pompey's sake. I have long known him to be
+the worst of politicians, and I know him now for the worst of generals.
+I go because I am sneered at by the optimates. Precious optimates! What
+are they about now? Selling themselves to Caesar? The towns receive
+Caesar as a god. When this Pisistratus does them no harm, they are as
+grateful to him as if he had protected them from others. What
+receptions will they not give him? What honors will they not heap upon
+him? They are afraid, are they? By Hercules, it is Pompey that they are
+afraid of. Caesar's treacherous clemency enchants them. Who are these
+optimates, that insist that I must leave Italy, while they remain? Let
+them be who they may, I am ashamed to stay, though I know what to
+expect. I shall join a man who means not to conquer Italy, but to lay
+it waste."
+
+_Cicero to Atticus_.[17]
+
+"Ought a man to remain in his country after it has fallen under a
+tyranny? Ought a man to use any means to overthrow a tyranny, though he
+may ruin his country in doing it? Ought he not rather to try to mend
+matters by argument as opportunity offers? Is it right to make war on
+one's country for the sake of liberty? Should a man adhere at all risks
+to one party, though he considers them on the whole to have been a set
+of fools? Is a person who has been his country's greatest benefactor,
+and has been rewarded by envy and ill usage, to volunteer into danger
+for such a party? May he not retire, and live quietly with his family,
+and leave public affairs to their fate?
+
+"I amused myself as times passes with these speculations."
+
+_Cicero to Atticus_.[18]
+
+"Pompey has sailed. I am pleased to find that you approve of my
+remaining. My efforts now are to persuade Caesar to allow me to be
+absent from the Senate, which is soon to meet. I fear he will refuse. I
+have been deceived in two points. I expected an arrangement; and now I
+perceive that Pompey has resolved upon a cruel and deadly war. By
+Heaven, he would have shown himself a better citizen, and a better man,
+had he borne anything sooner than have taken in hand such a purpose."
+
+_Cicero to Atticus_.[19]
+
+"Pompey is aiming at a monarchy after the type of Sylla. I know what I
+say. Never did he show his hand more plainly. Has he not a good cause?
+The very best. But mark me, it will be carried out most foully. He
+means to strangle Rome and Italy with famine, and then waste and burn
+the country, and seize the property of all who have any. Caesar may do
+as ill; but the prospect is frightful. The fleets from Alexandria,
+Colchis, Sidon, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, Rhodes, Chios, Byzantium,
+will be employed to cut off our supplies, and then Pompey himself will
+come in his wrath."
+
+_Cicero to Atticus_.[20]
+
+"I think I have been mad from the beginning of this business. Why did
+not I follow Pompey when things were at their worst? I found him (at
+Capua) full of fears. I knew then what he would do, and I did not like
+it. He made blunder on blunder. He never wrote to me, and only thought
+of flight. It was disgraceful. But now my love for him revives. Books
+and philosophy please me no more. Like the sad bird, I gaze night and
+day over the sea, and long to fly away.[21] Were flight the worst, it
+would be nothing, but I dread this terrible war, the like of which has
+never been seen. The word will be, 'Sylla could do thus and thus; and
+why should not I?' Sylla, Marius, Cinna, had each a constitutional
+cause, yet how cruel was their victory! I shrank from war because I saw
+that something still more cruel was now intended. I, whom some have
+called the saviour and parent of my country! I to bring Getes, and
+Armenians, and Colchians upon Italy! I to famish my fellow-citizens and
+waste their lands! Caesar, I reflected, was in the first place but
+mortal; and then there were many ways in which he might be got rid
+of.[22] But, as you say, the sun has fallen out of the sky. The sick
+man thinks that while there is life there is hope. I continued to hope
+as long as Pompey was in Italy. Now your letters are my only
+consolation."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Caesar was but mortal!" The rapture with which Cicero hailed Caesar's
+eventual murder explains too clearly the direction in which his
+thoughts were already running. If the life of Caesar alone stood
+between his country and the resurrection of the constitution, Cicero
+might well think, as others have done, that it was better that one man
+should die rather than the whole nation perish. We read the words with
+sorrow, and yet with pity. That Cicero, after his past flatteries of
+Caesar, after the praises which he was yet to heap on him, should yet
+have looked on his assassination as a thing to be desired, throws a
+saddening light upon his inner nature. But the age was sick with a
+moral plague, and neither strong nor weak, wise nor unwise, bore any
+antidote against infection.
+
+
+[1] The vision on the Rubicon, with the celebrated saying that "the die is
+    cast," is unauthenticated, and not at all consistent with Caesar's
+    character.
+
+[2] _Ibid_., vii. 12.
+
+[3] "Delectus ... invitorum est et pugnando ab horrentium."--_To
+    Atticus_, vii. 13.
+
+[4] Compare Caesar's account of these conditions, _De Bello Civili_,
+    i. 10, with _Cicero to Atticus_, vii. 17.
+
+[5] Between the Apennines and the Adriatic, about Ancona; in the line of
+    Caesar's march should he advance from Kimini.
+
+[6] _To Atticus_, vii. 16.
+
+[7] _Ibid_., vii. 21.
+
+[8] "Balbus quidem major ad me scribit, nihil malle Caesarem, quam
+    principe Pompeio sine metu vivere. Tu puto haec credis."--_To
+    Atticus_, viii. 9.
+
+[9] _To Atticus_, viii. 3.
+
+[10] _To Atticus_, viii. 11.
+
+[11] "Judicavique te bello violari, contra cujus honorem, populi Romani
+    beneficio concessum, inimici atque invidi niterentur. Sed ut eo
+    tempore non modo ipse fautor dignitatis tuae fui, verum etiam
+    caeteris auctor ad te adjuvandum, sic me nunc Pompeii dignitas
+    vehementer movet," etc.--_Cicero to Caesar, enclosed in a letter to
+    Atticus_, ix. 11.
+
+[12] Enclosed to Atticus, viii. 11.
+
+[13] Pompey had for _two years_ meditated on the course which he was
+    now taking. Atticus had spoken of the intended flight from Italy as
+    base. Cicero answers: "Hoc turpe Cnaeus noster biennio ante cogitavit:
+    ita Sullaturit animus ejus, et diu proscripturit;" "so he apes Sylla
+    and longs for a proscription."--_To Atticus_, ix. 10.
+
+[14] _To Atticus_, viii. 13.
+
+[15] Enclosed to Atticus, viii. 15.
+
+[16] _To Atticus_, viii. 16.
+
+[17] _To Atticus_, ix. 4.
+
+[18] _Ibid_., ix. 6.
+
+[19] _To Atticus_, ix. 7 and 9.
+
+[20] _Ibid_.
+
+[21] "Ita dies et noctes tanquam avis illa mare prospecto, evolare
+    cupio."
+
+[22] "Hunc primum mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis extingui
+    posse cogitabam."--_To Atticus_, ix. 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+[Sidenote: April B.C. 49.] Pompey was gone, gone to cover the
+Mediterranean with fleets which were to starve Italy, and to raise an
+army which was to bring him back to play Sylla's game once more. The
+consuls had gone with him, more than half the Senate, and the young
+patricians, the descendants of the Metelli and the Scipios, with the
+noble nature melted out of them, and only the pride remaining. Caesar
+would have chased them at once, and have allowed them no time to
+organize, but ships were wanting, and he could not wait to form a
+fleet. Pompey's lieutenants, Afranius and Petreius and Varro, were in
+Spain, with six legions and the levies of the Province. These had to be
+promptly dealt with, and Sicily and Sardinia, on which Rome depended
+for its corn, had to be cleared of enemies, and placed in trustworthy
+hands. He sent Curio to Sicily and Valerius to Sardinia. Both islands
+surrendered without resistance, Cato, who was in command in Messina,
+complaining openly that he had been betrayed. Caesar went himself to
+Rome, which he had not seen for ten years. He met Cicero by appointment
+on the road, and pressed him to attend the Senate. Cicero's example, he
+said, would govern the rest. If his account of the interview be true,
+Cicero showed more courage than might have been expected from his
+letters to Atticus. He inquired whether, if he went, he might speak as
+he pleased; he could not consent to blame Pompey, and he should say
+that he disapproved of attacks upon him, either in Greece or Spain.
+Caesar said that he could not permit language of this kind. Cicero
+answered that he thought as much, and therefore preferred to stay
+away.[1]Caesar let him take his own course, and went on by himself. The
+consuls being absent, the Senate was convened by the tribunes, Mark
+Antony and Cassius Longinus, both officers in Caesar's army. The house
+was thin, but those present were cold and hostile. They knew by this
+time that they need fear no violence. They interpreted Caesar's
+gentleness into timidity, but they were satisfied that, let them do
+what they pleased, he would not injure them. He addressed the Senate
+with his usual clearness and simplicity. He had asked, he said, for no
+extraordinary honors. He had waited the legal period of ten years for a
+second consulship. A promise had been given that his name should be
+submitted, and that promise had been withdrawn. He dwelt on his
+forbearance, on the concessions which he had offered, and again on his
+unjust recall, and the violent suppression of the legal authority of
+the tribunes. He had proposed terms of peace, he said; he had asked for
+interviews, but all in vain. If the Senate feared to commit themselves
+by assisting him, he declared his willingness to carry on the
+government in his own name; but he invited them to send deputies to
+Pompey, to treat for an arrangement.
+
+The Senate approved of sending a deputation; but Pompey had sworn, on
+leaving, that he would hold all who had not joined him as his enemies;
+no one, therefore, could be found willing to go. Three days were spent
+in unmeaning discussion, and Caesar's situation did not allow of
+trifling. With such people nothing could be done, and peace could be
+won only by the sword. By an edict of his own he restored the children
+of the victims of Sylla's proscription to their civil rights and their
+estates, the usurpers being mostly in Pompey's camp. The assembly of
+the people voted him the money in the treasury. Metellus, a tribune in
+Pompey's interest, forbade the opening of the doors, but he was pushed
+out of the way. Cesar took such money as he needed, and went with his
+best speed to join his troops in Gaul.
+
+His singular gentleness had encouraged the opposition to him in Rome.
+In Gaul he encountered another result of his forbearance more
+practically trying. The Gauls themselves, though so lately conquered in
+so desperate a struggle, remained quiet. Then, if ever, they had an
+opportunity of reasserting their independence. They not only did not
+take advantage of it, but, as if they disdained the unworthy treatment
+of their great enemy, each tribe sent him, at his request, a body of
+horse, led by the bravest of their chiefs. His difficulty came from a
+more tainted source. Marseilles, the most important port in the western
+Mediterranean, the gate through which the trade of the Province passed
+in and out, had revolted to Pompey. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had been
+dismissed at Corfinium, had been despatched to encourage and assist the
+townspeople with a squadron of Pompey's fleet. When Caesar arrived,
+Marseilles closed its gates, and refused to receive him. He could not
+afford to leave behind him an open door into the Province, and he could
+ill spare troops for a siege. Afranius and Petreius were already over
+the Ebro with 30,000 legionaries and with nearly twice as many Spanish
+auxiliaries. Yet Marseilles must be shut in, and quickly. Fabius was
+sent forward to hold the passes of the Pyrenees. Caesar's soldiers were
+set to work in the forest. Trees were cut down and sawn into planks. In
+thirty days twelve stout vessels, able to hold their own against
+Domitius, were built and launched and manned. The fleet thus
+extemporized was trusted to Decimus Brutus. Three legions were left to
+make approaches, and, if possible, to take the town on the land side;
+and, leaving Marseilles blockaded by sea and land, Caesar hurried on to
+the Spanish frontier. The problem before him was worthy of his genius.
+A protracted war in the peninsula would be fatal. Pompey would return
+to Italy, and there would be no one to oppose him there. The Spanish
+army had to be destroyed or captured, and that immediately; and it was
+stronger than Caesar's own, and was backed by all the resources of the
+province.
+
+The details of a Roman campaign are no longer interesting. The results,
+with an outline of the means by which they were brought about, alone
+concern the modern reader. Pompey's lieutenant, having failed to secure
+the passes, was lying at Lerida, in Catalonia, at the junction of the
+Segre and the Naguera, with the Ebro behind them, and with a mountain
+range, the Sierra de Llena, on their right flank. Their position was
+impregnable to direct attack. From their rear they drew inexhaustible
+supplies. The country in front had been laid waste to the Pyrenees, and
+everything which Caesar required had to be brought to him from Gaul. In
+forty days from the time at which the armies came in sight of each
+other Afranius and Petreius, with all their legions, were prisoners.
+Varro, in the south, was begging for peace, and all Spain lay at
+Caesar's feet. At one moment he was almost lost. The melting of the
+snows in the mountains brought a flood down the Segre. The bridges were
+carried away, the fords were impassable, and his convoys were at the
+mercy of the enemy. News flew to Rome that all was over, that Caesar's
+army was starving, that he was cut off between the rivers, and in a few
+days must surrender. Marseilles still held out. Pompey's, it seemed,
+was to be the winning side, and Cicero and many others, who had hung
+back to watch how events would turn, made haste to join their friends
+in Greece before their going had lost show of credit.[2]
+
+The situation was indeed most critical. Even Caesar's own soldiers
+became unsteady. He remarks that in civil wars generally men show less
+composure than in ordinary campaigns. But resource in difficulties is
+the distinction of great generals. He had observed in Britain that the
+coast fishermen used boats made out of frames of wicker covered with
+skins. The river banks were fringed with willows. There were hides in
+abundance on the carcasses of the animals in the camp. Swiftly in these
+vessels the swollen waters of the Segre were crossed; the convoys were
+rescued. The broken bridges were repaired. The communications of the
+Pompeians were threatened in turn, and they tried to fall back over the
+Ebro; but they left their position only to be intercepted, and after a
+few feeble struggles laid down their arms. Among the prisoners were
+found several of the young nobles who had been released at Corfinium.
+It appeared that they regarded Caesar as an outlaw with whom
+obligations were not binding. The Pompeian generals had ordered any of
+Caesar's soldiers who fell into their hands to be murdered. He was not
+provoked into retaliation. He again dismissed the whole of the captive
+force, officers and men, contenting himself with this time exacting a
+promise from them that they would not serve against him again. They
+gave their word and broke it. The generals and military tribunes made
+their way to Greece to Pompey. Of the rest, some enlisted in Caesar's
+legions; others scattered to combine again when opportunity allowed.
+
+Varro, who commanded a legion in the south, behaved more honorably. He
+sent in his submission, entered into the same engagement, and kept it.
+He was an old friend of Caesar's, and better understood him. Caesar,
+after the victory at Lerida, went down to Cordova, and summoned the
+leading Spaniards and Romans to meet him there. All came and promised
+obedience. Varro gave in his accounts, with his ships, and stores, and
+money. Caesar then embarked at Cadiz, and went round to Tarragona,
+where his own legions were waiting for him. From Tarragona he marched
+back by the Pyrenees, and came in time to receive in person the
+surrender of Marseilles.
+
+The siege had been a difficult one, with severe engagements both by
+land and sea. Domitius and his galleys had attacked the ungainly but
+useful vessels which Caesar had extemporized. He had been driven back
+with the loss of half his fleet. Pompey had sent a second squadron to
+help him, and this had fared no better. It had fled after a single
+battle and never reappeared. The land works had been assailed with
+ingenuity and courage. The agger had been burnt and the siege towers
+destroyed. But they had been repaired instantly by the industry of the
+legions, and Marseilles was at the last extremity when Caesar arrived.
+He had wished to spare the townspeople, and had sent orders that the
+place was not to be stormed. On his appearance the keys of the gates
+were brought to him without conditions. Again he pardoned every one;
+more, he said, for the reputation of the colony than for the merits of
+its inhabitants. Domitius had fled in a gale of wind, and once more
+escaped. A third time he was not to be so fortunate.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 48] Two legions were left in charge of Marseilles;
+others returned to their quarters in Gaul. Well as the tribes had
+behaved, it was unsafe to presume too much on their fidelity, and
+Caesar was not a partisan chief, but the guardian of the Roman Empire.
+With the rest of his army he returned to Rome at the beginning of the
+winter. All had been quiet since the news of the capitulation at
+Lerida. The aristocracy had gone to Pompey. The disaffection among the
+people of which Cicero spoke had existed only in his wishes, or had not
+extended beyond the classes who had expected from Caesar a general
+partition of property, and had been disappointed. His own successes had
+been brilliant. Spain, Gaul, and Italy, Sicily and Sardinia, were
+entirely his own. Elsewhere and away from his own eye things had gone
+less well for him. An attempt to make a naval force in the Adriatic had
+failed; and young Curio, who had done Caesar such good service as
+tribune, had met with a still graver disaster. After recovering Sicily,
+Curio had been directed to cross to Africa and expel Pompey's garrisons
+from the Province. His troops were inferior, consisting chiefly of the
+garrison which had surrendered at Corfinium. Through military
+inexperience he had fallen into a trap laid for him by Juba, King of
+Mauritania, and had been killed.
+
+Caesar regretted Curio personally. The African misfortune was not
+considerable in itself, but it encouraged hopes and involved
+consequences which he probably foresaw. There was no present leisure,
+however, to attend to Juba. On arriving at the city he was named
+Dictator. As Dictator he held the consular elections, and, with
+Servilius Isauricus for a colleague, he was chosen consul for the year
+which had been promised to him, though under circumstances so strangely
+changed. With curious punctiliousness he observed that the legal
+interval had expired since he was last in office, and that therefore
+there was no formal objection to his appointment.
+
+Civil affairs were in the wildest confusion. The Senate had fled; the
+administration had been left to Antony, whose knowledge of business was
+not of a high order; and over the whole of Italy hung the terror of
+Pompey's fleet and of an Asiatic invasion. Public credit was shaken.
+Debts had not been paid since the civil war began. Moneylenders had
+charged usurious interest for default, and debtors were crying for
+_novae tabulae_, and hoped to clear themselves by bankruptcy. Caesar
+had but small leisure for such matters. Pompey had been allowed too
+long a respite, and unless he sought Pompey in Greece, Pompey would be
+seeking him at home, and the horrid scenes of Sylla's wars would be
+enacted over again. He did what he could, risking the loss of the favor
+of the mob by disappointing dishonest expectations. Estimates were
+drawn of all debts as they stood twelve months before. The principal
+was declared to be still due. The interest for the interval was
+cancelled. Many persons complained of injustice which they had met with
+in the courts of law during the time that Pompey was in power. Caesar
+refused to revise the sentences himself, lest he should seem to be
+encroaching on functions not belonging to him; but he directed that
+such causes should be heard again.
+
+Eleven days were all he could afford to Rome. So swift was Caesar that
+his greatest exploits were measured by days. He had to settle accounts
+with Pompey while it was still winter, and while Pompey's preparations
+for the invasion of Italy were still incomplete; and he and his
+veterans, scarcely allowing themselves a breathing-time, went down to
+Brindisi.
+
+It was now the beginning of January by the unreformed calendar (by the
+seasons the middle of October)--a year within a few days since Caesar
+had crossed the Rubicon. He had nominally twelve legions under him. But
+long marches had thinned the ranks of his old and best-tried troops.
+The change from the dry climate of Gaul and Spain to the south of Italy
+in a wet autumn had affected the health of the rest, and there were
+many invalids. The force available for field service was small for the
+work which was before it: in all not more than 30,000 men. Pompey's
+army lay immediately opposite Brindisi, at Durazzo. It was described
+afterward as inharmonious and ill-disciplined, but so far as report
+went at the time Caesar had never encountered so formidable an enemy.
+There were nine legions of Roman citizens with their complements full.
+Two more were coming up with Scipio from Syria. Besides these there
+were auxiliaries from the allied princes in the East; corps from Greece
+and Asia Minor, slingers and archers from Crete and the islands. Of
+money, of stores of all kinds, there was abundance, for the Eastern
+revenue had been all paid for the last year to Pompey, and he had
+levied impositions at his pleasure.
+
+Such was the Senate's land army, and before Caesar could cross swords
+with it a worse danger lay in his path. It was not for nothing that
+Cicero said that Pompey had been careful of his fleet. A hundred and
+thirty ships, the best which were to be had, were disposed in squadrons
+along the east shore of the Adriatic; the head-quarters were at Corfu;
+and the one purpose was to watch the passage and prevent Caesar from
+crossing over.
+
+[Sidenote: January, B.C. 48.] Transports run down by vessels of war
+were inevitably sunk. Twelve fighting triremes, the remains of his
+attempted Adriatic fleet, were all that Caesar could collect for a
+convoy. The weather was wild. Even of transports he had but enough to
+carry half his army in a single trip. With such a prospect and with the
+knowledge that if he reached Greece at all he would have to land in the
+immediate neighborhood of Pompey's enormous host, surprise has been
+expressed that Caesar did not prefer to go round through Illyria,
+keeping his legions together. But Caesar had won many victories by
+appearing where he was least expected. He liked well to descend like a
+bolt out of the blue sky; and, for the very reason that no ordinary
+person would under such circumstances have thought of attempting the
+passage, he determined to try it. Long marches exhausted the troops. In
+bad weather the enemy's fleet preferred the harbors to the open sea;
+and perhaps he had a further and special ground of confidence in
+knowing that the officer in charge at Corfu was his old acquaintance,
+Bibulus--Bibulus, the fool of the aristocracy, the butt of Cicero, who
+had failed in everything which he had undertaken, and had been thanked
+by Cato for his ill successes. Caesar knew the men with whom he had to
+deal. He knew Pompey's incapacity; he knew Bibulus's incapacity. He
+knew that public feeling among the people was as much on his side in
+Greece as in Italy. Above all, he knew his own troops, and felt that he
+could rely on them, however heavy the odds might be. He was resolved to
+save Italy at all hazards from becoming the theatre of war, and
+therefore the best road for him was that which would lead most swiftly
+to his end.
+
+On the 4th January, then, by unreformed time, Caesar sailed with 15,000
+men and 500 horses from Brindisi. The passage was rough but swift, and
+he landed without adventure at Acroceraunia, now Cape Linguetta, on the
+eastern shore of the Straits of Otranto. Bibulus saw him pass from the
+heights of Corfu, and put to sea, too late to intercept him--in time,
+however, unfortunately, to fall in with the returning transports.
+Caesar had started them immediately after disembarking, and had they
+made use of the darkness they might have gone over unperceived; they
+lingered and were overtaken; Bibulus captured thirty of them, and, in
+rage at his own blunder, killed every one that he found on board.
+
+Ignorant of this misfortune, and expecting that Antony would follow him
+in a day or two with the remainder of the army, Caesar advanced at once
+toward Durazzo, occupied Apollonia, and entrenched himself on the left
+bank of the river Apsus. The country, as he anticipated, was
+well-disposed and furnished him amply with supplies. He still hoped to
+persuade Pompey to come to terms with him. He trusted, perhaps not
+unreasonably, that the generosity with which he had treated Marseilles
+and the Spanish legions might have produced an effect; and he appealed
+once more to Pompey's wiser judgment. Vibullius Rufus, who had been
+taken at Corfinium, and a second time on the Lerida, had since remained
+with Caesar. Rufus, being personally known as an ardent member of the
+Pompeian party, was sent forward to Durazzo with a message of peace.
+
+"Enough had been done," Caesar said, "and Fortune ought not to be
+tempted further. Pompey had lost Italy, the two Spains, Sicily, and
+Sardinia, and a hundred and thirty cohorts of his soldiers had been
+captured. Caesar had lost Curio and the army of Africa. They were thus
+on an equality, and might spare their country the consequences of
+further rivalry. If either he or Pompey gained a decisive advantage,
+the victor would be compelled to insist on harder terms. If they could
+not agree, Caesar was willing to leave the question between them to the
+Senate and people of Rome, and for themselves, he proposed that they
+should each take an oath to disband their troops in three days."
+
+Pompey, not expecting Caesar, was absent in Macedonia when he heard of
+his arrival, and was hurrying back to Durazzo. Caesar's landing had
+produced a panic in his camp. Men and officers were looking anxiously
+in each other's faces. So great was the alarm, so general the distrust,
+that Labienus had sworn in the presence of the army that he would stand
+faithfully by Pompey. Generals, tribunes, and centurions had sworn
+after him. They had then moved up to the Apsus and encamped on the
+opposite side of the river, waiting for Pompey to come up.
+
+There was now a pause on both sides. Antony was unable to leave
+Brindisi, Bibulus being on the watch day and night. A single vessel
+attempted the passage. It was taken, and every one on board was
+massacred. The weather was still wild, and both sides suffered. If
+Caesar's transports could not put to sea, Bibulus's crews could not
+land either for fuel or water anywhere south of Apollonia. Bibulus held
+on obstinately till he died of exposure to wet and cold, so ending his
+useless life; but his death did not affect the situation favorably for
+Caesar; his command fell into abler hands.
+
+[Sidenote: February, B.C. 48.] At length Pompey arrived. Vibullius
+Rufus delivered his message. Pompey would not hear him to the end.
+"What care I," he said, "for life or country if I am to hold both by
+the favor of Caesar? All men will think thus of me if I make peace
+now.... I left Italy. Men will say that Caesar has brought me back."
+
+In the legions the opinion was different. The two armies were divided
+only by a narrow river. Friends met and talked. They asked each other
+for what purpose so desperate a war had been undertaken. The regular
+troops all idolized Caesar. Deputations from both sides were chosen to
+converse and consult, with Caesar's warmest approval. Some arrangement
+might have followed. But Labienus interposed. He appeared at the
+meeting as if to join in the conference; he was talking in apparent
+friendliness to Cicero's acquaintance, Publius Vatinius, who was
+serving with Caesar. Suddenly a shower of darts were hurled at
+Vatinius. His men flung themselves in front of him and covered his
+body; but most of them were wounded, and the assembly broke up in
+confusion, Labienus shouting, "Leave your talk of composition; there
+can be no peace till you bring us Caesar's head."
+
+[Sidenote: April, B.C. 48.] Cool thinkers were beginning to believe
+that Caesar was in a scrape from which his good fortune would this time
+fail to save him. Italy was on the whole steady, but the slippery
+politicians in the capital were on the watch. They had been
+disappointed on finding that Caesar would give no sanction to
+confiscation of property, and a spark of fire burst out which showed
+that the elements of mischief were active as ever. Cicero's
+correspondent, Marcus Caelius, had thrown himself eagerly on Caesar's
+side at the beginning of the war. He had been left as praetor at Rome
+when Caesar went to Greece. He in his wisdom conceived that the wind
+was changing, and that it was time for him to earn his pardon from
+Pompey. He told the mob that Caesar would do nothing for them, that
+Caesar cared only for his capitalists. He wrote privately to Cicero
+that he was bringing them over to Pompey,[3] and he was doing it in the
+way in which pretended revolutionists so often play into the hands of
+reactionaries. He proposed a law in the Assembly in the spirit of Jack
+Cade, that no debts should be paid in Rome for six years, and that
+every tenant should occupy his house for two years free of rent. The
+administrators of the government treated him as a madman, and deposed
+him from office. He left the city pretending that he was going to
+Caesar. The once notorious Milo, who had been in exile since his trial
+for the murder of Clodius, privately joined him; and together they
+raised a band of gladiators in Campania, professing to have a
+commission from Pompey. Milo was killed. Caelius fled to Thurii, where
+he tried to seduce Caesar's garrison, and was put to death for his
+treachery. The familiar actors in the drama were beginning to drop.
+Bibulus was gone, and now Caelius and Milo. Fools and knaves are
+usually the first to fall in civil distractions, as they and their
+works are the active causes of them.
+
+Meantime months passed away. The winter wore through in forced
+inaction, and Caesar watched in vain for the sails of his coming
+transports. The Pompeians had for some weeks blockaded Brindisi. Antony
+drove them off with armed boats; but still he did not start, and Caesar
+thought that opportunities had been missed.[4] He wrote to Antony
+sharply. The legions, true as steel, were ready for any risks sooner
+than leave their commander in danger. A south wind came at last, and
+they sailed. They were seen in mid-channel, and closely pursued. Night
+fell, and in the darkness they were swept past Durazzo, to which Pompey
+had again withdrawn, with the Pompeian squadron in full chase behind
+them. They ran into the harbor of Nymphaea, three miles north of Lissa,
+and were fortunate in entering it safely. Sixteen of the pursuers ran
+upon the rocks, and the crews owed their lives to Caesar's troops, who
+saved them. So Caesar mentions briefly, in silent contrast to the
+unvarying ferocity of the Pompeian leaders. Two only of the transports
+which had left Brindisi were missing in the morning. They had gone by
+mistake into Lissa, and were surrounded by the boats of the enemy, who
+promised that no one should be injured if they surrendered. "Here,"
+says Caesar, in a characteristic sentence, "may be observed the value
+of firmness of mind." One of the vessels had two hundred and twenty
+young soldiers on board, the other two hundred veterans. The recruits
+were sea-sick and frightened. They trusted the enemy's fair words, and
+were immediately murdered. The others forced their pilot to run the
+ship ashore. They cut their way through a band of Pompey's cavalry, and
+joined their comrades without the loss of a man.
+
+Antony's position was most dangerous, for Pompey's whole army lay
+between him and Caesar; but Caesar marched rapidly round Durazzo, and
+had joined his friend before Pompey knew that he had moved.
+
+[Sidenote: May, B.C. 48.] Though still far outnumbered, Caesar was now
+in a condition to meet Pompey in the field, and desired nothing so much
+as a decisive action. Pompey would not give him the opportunity, and
+kept within his lines. To show the world, therefore, how matters stood
+between them, Caesar drew a line of strongly fortified posts round
+Pompey's camp and shut him in. Force him to surrender he could not, for
+the sea was open, and Pompey's fleet had entire command of it. But the
+moral effect on Italy of the news that Pompey was besieged might, it
+was hoped, force him out from his entrenchments. If Pompey could not
+venture to engage Caesar on his own chosen ground, and surrounded by
+his Eastern friends, his cause at home would be abandoned as lost. Nor
+was the active injury which Caesar was able to inflict inconsiderable.
+He turned the streams on which Pompey's camp depended for water. The
+horses and cattle died. Fever set in with other inconveniences. The
+labor of the siege was, of course, severe. The lines were many miles in
+length, and the difficulty of sending assistance to a point threatened
+by a sally was extremely great. The corn in the fields was still green,
+and supplies grew scanty. Meat Caesar's army had, but of wheat little
+or none; they were used to hardship, however, and bore it with
+admirable humor. They made cakes out of roots, ground into paste and
+mixed with milk; and thus, in spite of privation and severe work, they
+remained in good health, and deserters daily came into them.
+
+So the siege of Durazzo wore on, diversified with occasional
+encounters, which Caesar details with the minuteness of a scientific
+general writing for his profession, and with those admiring mentions of
+each individual act of courage which so intensely endeared him to his
+troops. Once an accidental opportunity offered itself for a successful
+storm, but Caesar was not on the spot. The officer in command shrank
+from responsibility; and, notwithstanding the seriousness of the
+consequences, Caesar said that the officer was right.
+
+[Sidenote: June, B.C. 48.] Pompey's army was not yet complete. Metellus
+Scipio had not arrived with the Syrian legions. Scipio had come
+leisurely through Asia Minor, plundering cities and temples and flaying
+the people with requisitions. He had now reached Macedonia, and
+Domitius Calvinus had been sent with a separate command to watch him.
+Caesar's own force, already too small for the business on hand, was
+thus further reduced, and at this moment there fell out one of those
+accidents which overtake at times the ablest commanders, and gave
+occasion for Caesar's observation, that Pompey knew not how to conquer.
+
+There were two young Gauls with Caesar whom he had promoted to
+important positions. They were reported to have committed various
+peculations. Caesar spoke to them privately. They took offence and
+deserted. There was a weak spot in Caesar's lines at a point the
+furthest removed from the body of the army. The Gauls gave Pompey
+notice of it, and on this point Pompey flung himself with his whole
+strength. The attack was a surprise. The engagement which followed was
+desperate and unequal, for the reliefs were distant and came up one by
+one. For once Caesar's soldiers were seized with panic, lost their
+order, and forgot their discipline. On the news of danger he flew
+himself to the scene, threw himself into the thickest of the fight, and
+snatched the standards from the flying bearers. But on this single
+occasion he failed in restoring confidence. The defeat was complete;
+and, had Pompey understood his business, Caesar's whole army might have
+been overthrown. Nearly a thousand men were killed, with many field
+officers and many centurions. Thirty-two standards were lost, and some
+hundreds of legionaries were taken. Labienus begged the prisoners of
+Pompey. He called them mockingly old comrades. He asked them how
+veterans came to fly. They were led into the midst of the camp and were
+all killed.
+
+Caesar's legions had believed themselves invincible. The effect of this
+misfortune was to mortify and infuriate them. They were eager to fling
+themselves again upon the enemy and win back their laurels; but Caesar
+saw that they were excited and unsteady, and that they required time to
+collect themselves. He spoke to them with his usual calm cheerfulness.
+He praised their courage. He reminded them of their many victories, and
+bade them not be cast down at a misadventure which they would soon
+repair; but he foresaw that the disaster would affect the temper of
+Greece and make his commissariat more difficult than it was already. He
+perceived that he must adopt some new plan of campaign, and with
+instant decision he fell back upon Apollonia.
+
+[Sidenote: July, B.C 48.] The gleam of victory was the cause of
+Pompey's ruin. It was unlooked for, and the importance of it
+exaggerated. Caesar was supposed to be flying with the wreck of an army
+completely disorganized and disheartened. So sure were the Pompeians
+that it could never rally again that they regarded the war as over;
+they made no efforts to follow up a success which, if improved, might
+have been really decisive; and they gave Caesar the one thing which he
+needed, time to recover from its effects. After he had placed his sick
+and wounded in security at Apollonia, his first object was to rejoin
+Calvinus, who had been sent to watch Scipio, and might now be cut off.
+Fortune was here favorable. Calvinus, by mere accident, learnt his
+danger, divined where Caesar would be, and came to meet him. The next
+thing was to see what Pompey would do. He might embark for Italy. In
+this case Caesar would have to follow him by Illyria and the head of
+the Adriatic. Cisalpine Gaul was true to him, and could be relied on to
+refill his ranks. Or Pompey might pursue him in the hope to make an end
+of the war in Greece, and an opportunity might offer itself for an
+engagement under fairer terms. On the whole he considered the second
+alternative the more likely one, and with this expectation he led his
+troops into the rich plains of Thessaly for the better feeding which
+they so much needed. The news of his defeat preceded him. Gomphi, an
+important Thessalian town, shut its gates upon him; and, that the
+example might not be followed, Gomphi was instantly stormed and given
+up to plunder. One such lesson was enough. No more opposition was
+ventured by the Greek cities.
+
+[Sidenote: August 9, B.C. 48.] Pompey meanwhile had broken up from
+Durazzo, and after being joined by Scipio was following leisurely.
+There were not wanting persons who warned him that Caesar's legions
+might still be dangerous. Both Cicero and Cato had advised him to avoid
+a battle, to allow Caesar to wander about Greece till his supplies
+failed and his army was worn out by marches. Pompey himself was
+inclined to the same opinion. But Pompey was no longer able to act on
+his own judgment. The senators who were with him in the camp considered
+that in Greece, as in Rome, they were the supreme rulers of the Roman
+Empire. All along they had held their sessions and their debates, and
+they had voted resolutions which they expected to see complied with.
+They had never liked Pompey. If Cicero was right in supposing that
+Pompey meant to be another Sylla, the senators had no intention of
+allowing it. They had gradually wrested his authority out of his hands,
+and reduced him to the condition of an officer of the Senatorial
+Directory. These gentlemen, more especially the two late consuls,
+Scipio and Lentulus, were persuaded that a single blow would now make
+an end of Caesar. His army was but half the size of theirs, without
+counting the Asiatic auxiliaries. The men, they were persuaded, were
+dispirited by defeat and worn out. So sure were they of victory that
+they were impatient of every day which delayed their return to Italy.
+They accused Pompey of protracting the war unnecessarily, that he might
+have the honor of commanding such distinguished persons as themselves.
+They had arranged everything that was to be done. Caesar and his band
+of cutthroats were in imagination already despatched. They had
+butchered hitherto every one of them who had fallen into their hands,
+and the same fate was designed for their political allies. They
+proposed to establish a senatorial court after their return to Italy,
+in which citizens of all kinds who had not actually fought on the
+Senate's side were to be brought up for trial. Those who should be
+proved to have been active for Caesar were to be at once killed, and
+their estates confiscated. Neutrals were to fare almost as badly, Not
+to have assisted the lawful rulers of the State was scarcely better
+than to have rebelled against them. They, too, were liable to death or
+forfeiture, or both. A third class of offenders was composed of those
+who had been within Pompey's lines, but had borne no part in the
+fighting. These cold-hearted friends were to be tried and punished
+according to the degree of their criminality. Cicero was the person
+pointed at in the last division. Cicero's clear judgment had shown him
+too clearly what was likely to be the result of a campaign conducted as
+he found it on his arrival, and he had spoken his thoughts with
+sarcastic freedom. The noble lords came next to a quarrel among
+themselves as to how the spoils of Caesar were to be divided. Domitius
+Ahenobarbus, Lentulus Spinther, and Scipio were unable to determine
+which of them was to succeed Caesar as Pontifex Maximus, and which was
+to have his palace and gardens in Rome. The Roman oligarchy were true
+to their character to the eve of their ruin. It was they, with their
+idle luxury, their hunger for lands and office and preferment, who had
+brought all this misery upon their country; and standing, as it were,
+at the very bar of judgment, with the sentence of destruction about to
+be pronounced upon them, their thoughts were still bent upon how to
+secure the largest share of plunder for themselves.
+
+The battle of Pharsalia was not the most severe, still less was it the
+last, action of the war. But it acquired a special place in history,
+because it was a battle fought by the Roman aristocracy in their own
+persons in defence of their own supremacy. Senators and the sons of
+senators; the heirs of the names and fortunes of the ancient Roman
+families; the leaders of society in Roman saloons, and the chiefs of
+the political party of the optimates in the Curia and Forum, were here
+present on the field; representatives in person and in principle of the
+traditions of Sylla, brought face to face with the representative of
+Marius. Here were the men who had pursued Caesar through so many years
+with a hate so inveterate. Here were the haughty Patrician Guard, who
+had drawn their swords on him in the senate-house, young lords whose
+theory of life was to lounge through it in patrician _insouciance_. The
+other great actions were fought by the ignoble multitude whose deaths
+were of less significance. The plains of Pharsalia were watered by the
+precious blood of the elect of the earth. The battle there marked an
+epoch like no other in the history of the world.
+
+For some days the two armies had watched each other's movements.
+Caesar, to give his men confidence, had again offered Pompey an
+opportunity of fighting. But Pompey had kept to positions where he
+could not be attacked. To draw him into more open ground, Caesar had
+shifted his camp continually. Pompey had followed cautiously, still
+remaining on his guard. His political advisers were impatient of these
+dilatory movements. They taunted him with cowardice. They insisted that
+he should set his foot on this insignificant adversary promptly and at
+once; and Pompey, gathering courage from their confidence, and trusting
+to his splendid cavalry, agreed at last to use the first occasion that
+presented itself.
+
+One morning, on the Enipeus, near Larissa, the 9th of August, old
+style, or toward the end of May by real time, Caesar had broken up his
+camp and was preparing for his usual leisurely march, when he perceived
+a movement in Pompey's lines which told him that the moment which he
+had so long expected was come. Labienus, the evil genius of the Senate,
+who had tempted them into the war by telling them that his comrades
+were as disaffected as himself, and had fired Caesar's soldiers into
+intensified fierceness by his barbarities at Durazzo, had spoken the
+deciding word: "Believe not," Labienus had said, "that this is the army
+which defeated the Gauls and the Germans. I was in those battles, and
+what I say I know. That army has disappeared. Part fell in action; part
+perished of fever in the autumn in Italy. Many went home. Many were
+left behind unable to move. The men you see before you are levies newly
+drawn from the colonies beyond the Po. Of the veterans that were left,
+the best were killed at Durazzo."
+
+A council of war had been held at dawn. There had been a solemn taking
+of oaths again. Labienus swore that he would not return to the camp
+except as a conqueror; so swore Pompey; so swore Lentulus, Scipio,
+Domitius; so swore all the rest. They had reason for their high
+spirits. Pompey had forty-seven thousand Roman infantry, not including
+his allies, and seven thousand cavalry. Caesar had but twenty-two
+thousand, and of horse only a thousand. Pompey's position was carefully
+chosen. His right wing was covered by the Enipeus, the opposite bank of
+which was steep and wooded. His left spread out into the open plain of
+Pharsalia. His plan of battle was to send forward his cavalry outside
+over the open ground, with clouds of archers and slingers, to scatter
+Caesar's horse, and then to wheel round and envelop his legions. Thus
+he had thought they would lose heart and scatter at the first shock.
+Caesar had foreseen what Pompey would attempt to do. His own scanty
+cavalry, mostly Gauls and Germans, would, he well knew, be unequal to
+the weight which would be thrown on them. He had trained an equal
+number of picked active men to fight in their ranks, and had thus
+doubled their strength. Fearing that this might be not enough, he had
+taken another precaution. The usual Roman formation in battle was in
+triple line. Caesar had formed a fourth line of cohorts specially
+selected to engage the cavalry; and on them, he said, in giving them
+their instructions, the result of the action would probably depend.
+
+Pompey commanded on his own left with the two legions which he had
+taken from Caesar; outside him on the plain were his flying companies
+of Greeks and islanders, with the cavalry covering them. Caesar, with
+his favorite 10th, was opposite Pompey. His two faithful tribunes, Mark
+Antony and Cassius Longinus, led the left and centre. Servilia's son,
+Marcus Brutus, was in Pompey's army. Caesar had given special
+directions that Brutus, if recognized, should not be injured. Before
+the action began he spoke a few general words to such of his troops as
+could hear him. They all knew, he said, how earnestly he had sought for
+peace, how careful he had always been of his soldiers' lives, how
+unwilling to deprive the State of the services of any of her citizens,
+to whichever party they might belong. Crastinus, a centurion, of the
+10th legion, already known to Caesar for his gallantry, called out,
+"Follow me, my comrades, and strike, and strike home, for your general.
+This one battle remains to be fought, and he will have his rights and
+we our liberty. General," he said, looking to Caesar, "I shall earn
+your thanks this day, dead or alive."
+
+Pompey had ordered his first line to stand still to receive Caesar's
+charge.[5] They would thus be fresh, while the enemy would reach them
+exhausted--a mistake on Pompey's part, as Caesar thought; "for a fire
+and alacrity," he observes, "is kindled in all men when they meet in
+battle, and a wise general should rather encourage than repress their
+fervor."
+
+The signal was given. Caesar's front rank advanced running. Seeing the
+Pompeians did not move, they halted, recovered breath, then rushed on,
+flung their darts, and closed sword in hand. At once Pompey's horse
+bore down, outflanking Caesar's right wing, with the archers behind and
+between them raining showers of arrows. Caesar's cavalry gave way
+before the shock, and the outer squadrons came wheeling round to the
+rear, expecting that there would be no one to encounter them. The
+fourth line, the pick and flower of the legions, rose suddenly in their
+way. Surprised and shaken by the fierceness of the attack on them, the
+Pompeians turned, they broke, they galloped wildly off. The best
+cavalry in those Roman battles were never a match for infantry when in
+close formation, and Pompey's brilliant squadrons were carpet-knights
+from the saloon and the circus. They never rallied, or tried to rally;
+they made off for the nearest hills. The archers were cut to pieces;
+and the chosen corps, having finished so easily the service for which
+they had been told off, threw themselves on the now exposed flank of
+Pompey's left wing. It was composed, as has been said, of the legions
+which had once been Caesar's, which had fought under him at the
+Vingeanne and at Alesia. They ill liked, perhaps, the change of
+masters, and were in no humor to stand the charge of their old comrades
+coming on with the familiar rush of victory. Caesar ordered up his
+third line, which had not yet been engaged; and at once on all sides
+Pompey's great army gave way, and fled. Pompey himself, the shadow of
+his old name, long harasssd out of self-respect by his senatorial
+directors, a commander only in appearance, had left the field in the
+beginning of the action. He had lost heart on the defeat of the
+cavalry, and had retired to his tent to wait the issue of the day.
+
+The stream of fugitives pouring in told him too surely what the issue
+had been. He sprang upon his horse and rode off in despair. His legions
+were rushing back in confusion. Caesar, swift always at the right
+moment, gave the enemy no leisure to re-form, and fell at once upon the
+camp. It was noon, and the morning had been sultry; but heat and
+weariness were forgotten in the enthusiasm of a triumph which all then
+believed must conclude the war. A few companies of Thracians, who had
+been left on guard, made a brief resistance, but they were soon borne
+down. The beaten army, which a few hours before were sharing in
+imagination the lands and offices of their conquerors, fled out through
+the opposite gates, throwing away their arms, flinging down their
+standards, and racing, officers and men, for the rocky hills which at a
+mile's distance promised them shelter.
+
+The camp itself was a singular picture. Houses of turf had been built
+for the luxurious patricians, with ivy trained over the entrances to
+shade their delicate faces from the summer sun; couches had been laid
+out for them to repose on after their expected victory; tables were
+spread with plate and wines, and the daintiest preparations of Roman
+cookery. Caesar commented on the scene with mournful irony. "And these
+men," he said, "accused my patient, suffering army, which had not even
+common necessaries, of dissoluteness and profligacy!"
+
+Two hundred only of Caesar's men had fallen. The officers had suffered
+most. The gallant Crastinus, who had nobly fulfilled his promise, had
+been killed, among many others, in opening a way for his comrades. The
+Pompeians, after the first shock, had been cut down unresisting.
+Fifteen thousand of them lay scattered dead about the ground. There
+were few wounded in these battles. The short sword of the Romans seldom
+left its work unfinished.
+
+"They would have it so," Caesar is reported to have said, as he looked
+sadly over the littered bodies in the familiar patrician dress.[6]
+"After all that I had done for my country, I, Caius Caesar, should have
+been condemned by them as a criminal if I had not appealed to my army."
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 48.] But Caesar did not wait to indulge in reflections.
+His object was to stamp the fire out on the spot, that it might never
+kindle again. More than half the Pompeians had reached the hills and
+were making for Larissa. Leaving part of his legions in the camp to
+rest, Caesar took the freshest the same evening, and by a rapid march
+cut off their line of retreat. The hills were waterless, the weather
+suffocating. A few of the guiltiest of the Pompeian leaders, Labienus,
+Lentulus, Afranius, Petreius, and Metellus Scipio (Cicero and Cato had
+been left at Durazzo), contrived to escape in the night. The rest,
+twenty-four thousand of them, surrendered at daylight. They came down
+praying for mercy, which they had never shown, sobbing out their
+entreaties on their knees that the measure which they had dealt to
+others might not be meted out to them. Then and always Caesar hated
+unnecessary cruelty, and never, if he could help it, allowed executions
+in cold blood. He bade them rise, said a few gentle words to relieve
+their fears, and sent them back to the camp. Domitius Ahenobarbus,
+believing that for him at least there could be no forgiveness, tried to
+escape, and was killed. The rest were pardoned.
+
+So ended the battle of Pharsalia. A hundred and eighty standards were
+taken and all the eagles of Pompey's legions. In Pompey's own tent was
+found his secret correspondence, implicating persons, perhaps, whom
+Caesar had never suspected, revealing the mysteries of the past three
+years. Curiosity and even prudence might have tempted him to look into
+it. His only wish was that the past should be forgotten: he burnt the
+whole mass of papers unread.
+
+Would the war now end? That was the question. Caesar thought that it
+would not end as long as Pompey was at large. The feelings of others
+may be gathered out of abridgments from Cicero's letters:
+
+_Cicero to Plancius_.[7]
+
+"Victory on one side meant massacre, on the other slavery. It consoles
+me to remember that I foresaw these things, and as much feared the
+success of our cause as the defeat of it. I attached myself to Pompey's
+party more in hope of peace than from desire of war; but I saw, if we
+had the better, how cruel would be the triumph of an exasperated,
+avaricious, and insolent set of men; if we were defeated, how many of
+our wealthiest and noblest citizens must fall. Yet when I argued thus
+and offered my advice I was taunted for being a coward."
+
+_Cicero to Caius Cassius_.[8]
+
+"We were both opposed to a continuance of the war [after Pharsalia]. I,
+perhaps, more than you; but we agreed that one battle should be
+accepted as decisive, if not of the whole cause, yet of our own
+judgment upon it. Nor were there any who differed from us save those
+who thought it better that the Constitution should be destroyed
+altogether than be preserved with diminished prerogatives. For myself I
+could hope nothing from the overthrow of it, and much if a remnant
+could be saved.... And I thought it likely that, after that decisive
+battle, the victors would consider the welfare of the public, and that
+the vanquished would consider their own."
+
+_To Varro_.[9]
+
+"You were absent [at the critical moment]. I for myself perceived that
+our friends wanted war, and that Caesar did not want it, but was not
+afraid of it. Thus much of human purpose was in the matter. The rest
+came necessarily; for one side or the other would, of course, conquer.
+You and I both grieved to see how the State would suffer from the loss
+of either army and its generals; we knew that victory in a civil war
+was itself a most miserable disaster. I dreaded the success of those to
+whom I had attached myself. They threatened most cruelly those who had
+stayed quietly at home. Your sentiments and my speeches were alike
+hateful to them. If our side had won, they would have shown no
+forbearance."
+
+_To Marcus Marius_.[10]
+
+"When you met me on the 13th of May (49), you were anxious about the
+part which I was to take. If I stayed in Italy, you feared that I
+should be wanting in duty. To go to the war you thought dangerous for
+me. I was myself so disturbed that I could not tell what it was best
+for me to do. I consulted my reputation, however, more than my safety;
+and if I afterwards repented of my decision it was not for the peril to
+myself, but on account of the state of things which I found on my
+arrival at Pompey's camp. His forces were not very considerable, nor
+good of their kind. For the chiefs, if I except the general and a few
+others, they were rapacious in their conduct of the war, and so savage
+in their language that I dreaded to see them victorious. The most
+considerable among them were overwhelmed with debt. There was nothing
+good about them but their cause. I despaired of success and recommended
+peace. When Pompey would not hear of it, I advised him to protract the
+war. This for the time he approved, and he might have continued firm
+but for the confidence which he gathered from the battle at Durazzo.
+From that day the great man ceased to be a general. With a raw and
+inexperienced army he engaged legions in perfect discipline. On the
+defeat he basely deserted his camp and fled by himself. For me this was
+the end: I retired from a war in which the only alternatives before me
+were either to be killed in action or be taken prisoner, or fly to Juba
+in Africa, or hide in exile, or destroy myself."
+
+_To Caecina_.[11]
+
+"I would tell you my prophecies but that you would think I had made
+them after the event. But many persons can bear me witness that I first
+warned Pompey against attaching himself to Caesar, and then against
+quarrelling with him. Their union (I said) had broken the power of the
+Senate; their discord would cause a civil war. I was intimate with
+Caesar; I was most attached to Pompey; but my advice was for the good
+of them both.... I thought that Pompey ought to go to Spain. Had he
+done so, the war would not have been. I did not so much insist that
+Caesar could legally stand for the consulship as that his name should
+be accepted, because the people had so ordered at Pompey's own
+instance. I advised, I entreated. I preferred the most unfair peace to
+the most righteous war. I was overborne, not so much by Pompey (for on
+him I produced an effect) as by men who relied on Pompey's leadership
+to win them a victory, which would be convenient for their personal
+interests and private ambitions. No misfortune has happened in the war
+which I did not predict."
+
+
+[1] _To Atticus_, ix. 18.
+
+[2] "Tullia bids me wait till I see how things go in Spain, and she says
+    you are of the same opinion. The advice would be good, if I could
+    adapt my conduct to the issue of events there. But one of three
+    alternatives must happen. Either Caesar will be driven back, which
+    would please me best, or the war will be protracted, or he will be
+    completely victorious. If he is defeated, Pompey will thank me little
+    for joining him. Curio himself will then go over to him. If the war
+    hangs on, how long am I to wait? If Caesar conquers, it is thought we
+    may then have peace. But I consider, on the other hand, that it would
+    be more decent to forsake Caesar in success than when beaten and in
+    difficulties. The victory of Caesar means massacre, confiscation,
+    recall of exiles, a clean sweep of debts, every worst man raised to
+    honor, and a rule which not only a Roman citizen but a Persian could
+    not endure.... Pompey will not lay down his arms for the loss of
+    Spain; he holds with Themistocles that those who are masters at sea
+    will be the victors in the end. He has neglected Spain. He has given
+    all his care to his ships. When the time comes he will return to Italy
+    with an overwhelming fleet. And what will he say to me if he finds me
+    still sitting here?--Let alone duty, I must think of the danger....
+    Every course has its perils; but I should surely avoid a course which
+    is both ignominious and perilous also.
+
+    "I did not accompany Pompey when he went himself? I could not. I had
+    not time. And yet, to confess the truth, I made a mistake which,
+    perhaps, I should not have made. I thought there would be peace, and I
+    would not have Caesar angry with me after he and Pompey had become
+    friends again. Thus I hesitated; but I can overtake my fault if I lose
+    no more time, and I am lost if I delay.--I see that Caesar cannot
+    stand long. He will fall of himself if we do nothing. When his affairs
+    were most flourishing, he became unpopular with the hungry rabble of
+    the city in six or seven days. He could not keep up the mask. His
+    harshness to Metellus destroyed his credit for clemency, and his
+    taking money from the treasury destroyed his reputation for riches.
+
+    "As to his followers, how can men govern provinces who cannot manage
+    their own affairs for two months together? Such a monarchy could not
+    last half a year. The wisest men have miscalculated.... If that is my
+    case, I must bear the reproach ... but I am sure it will be as I say.
+    Caesar will fall, either by his enemies or by himself, who is his
+    worst enemy.... I hope I may live to see it, though you and I should
+    be thinking more of the other life than of this transitory one: but so
+    it come, no matter whether I see it or foresee it."--_To
+    Atticus_, x. 8.
+
+[3] "Nam hic nunc praeter foeneratores paucos nec homo nec ordo quisquam
+    est nisi Pompeianus. Equidem jam effeci ut maxime plebs et qui antea
+    noster fuit populus vester esset."--Caelius to Cicero, _Ad Fam_.,
+    viii. 71.
+
+[4] Caesar says nothing of his putting to sea in a boat, meaning to go
+    over in person, and being driven back by the weather. The story is
+    probably no more than one of the picturesque additions to reality made
+    by men who find truth too tame for them.
+
+[5] I follow Caesar's own account of the action. Appian is minutely
+    circumstantial, and professes to describe from the narratives of
+    eye-witnesses. But his story varies so far from Caesar's as to be
+    irreconcilable with it, and Caesar's own authority is incomparably the
+    best.
+
+[6] Suetonius, quoting from Asinius Pollio, who was present at the
+    battle.
+
+[7] _Ad Familiares_, iv. 14.
+
+[8] _Ibid_., xv. 15.
+
+[9] _Ad Fam_., ix. 6.
+
+[10] _Ibid_., vii. 3.
+
+[11] _Ad Fam_., vi. 6.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+The strength of the senatorial party lay in Pompey's popularity in the
+East. A halo was still supposed to hang about him as the creator of the
+Eastern Empire, and so long as he was alive and at liberty there was
+always a possibility that he might collect a new army. To overtake him,
+to reason with him, and, if reason failed, to prevent him by force from
+involving himself and the State in fresh difficulties, was Caesar's
+first object. Pompey, it was found, had ridden from the battlefield
+direct to the sea, attended by a handful of horse. He had gone on board
+a grain vessel, which carried him to Amphipolis. At Amphipolis he had
+stayed but a single night, and had sailed for Mitylene, where he had
+left his wife and his sons. The last accounts which the poor lady had
+heard of him had been such as reached Lesbos after the affair at
+Durazzo. Young patricians had brought her word that her husband had
+gained a glorious victory, that he had joined her father, Metellus
+Scipio, and that together they were pursuing Caesar with the certainty
+of overwhelming him. Rumor, cruel as usual,
+
+    Had brought smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.
+
+Rumor had told Cornelia that Caesar had "stooped his head" before
+Pompey's "rage." Pompey came in person to inform her of the miserable
+reality. At Mitylene Pompey's family were no longer welcome guests.
+They joined him on board his ship to share his fortunes, but what those
+fortunes were to be was all uncertain. Asia had seemed devoted to him.
+To what part of it should he go? To Cilicia? to Syria? to Armenia? To
+Parthia? For even Parthia was thought of. Unhappily the report of
+Pharsalia had flown before him, and the vane of sentiment had
+everywhere veered round. The Aegean islands begged him politely not to
+compromise them by his presence. He touched at Rhodes. Lentulus, flying
+from the battlefield, had tried Rhodes before him, and had been
+requested to pass on upon his way. Lentulus was said to be gone to
+Egypt. Polite to Pompey the Rhodians were, but perhaps he was
+generously unwilling to involve them in trouble in his behalf. He went
+on to Cilicia, the scene of his old glory in the pirate wars. There he
+had meant to land and take refuge either with the Parthians or with one
+of the allied princes. But in Cilicia he heard that Antioch had
+declared for Caesar. Allies and subjects, as far as he could learn,
+were all for Caesar. Egypt, whither Lentulus had gone, appeared the
+only place where he could surely calculate on being welcome. Ptolemy
+the Piper, the occasion of so much scandal, was no longer living, but
+he owed the recovery of his throne to Pompey. Gabinius had left a few
+thousand of Pompey's old soldiers at Alexandria to protect him against
+his subjects. These men had married Egyptian wives and had adopted
+Egyptian habits, but they could not have forgotten their old general.
+They were acting as guards at present to Ptolemy's four children, two
+girls, Cleopatra and Arsinoe, and two boys, each called Ptolemy. The
+father had bequeathed the crown to the two elder ones, Cleopatra, who
+was turned sixteen, and a brother two years younger. Here at least,
+among these young princes and their guardians, who had been their
+father's friends, their father's greatest benefactor might count with
+confidence on finding hospitality.
+
+For Egypt, therefore, Pompey sailed, taking his family along with him.
+He had collected a few ships and 2,000 miscellaneous followers, and
+with them he arrived off Pelusium, the modern Damietta. His forlorn
+condition was a punishment sufficiently terrible for the vanity which
+had flung his country into war. But that it had been his own doing the
+letters of Cicero prove with painful clearness; and though he had
+partially seen his error at Capua, and would then have possibly drawn
+back, the passions and hopes which he had excited had become too strong
+for him to contend against. From the day of his flight from Italy he
+had been as a leaf whirled upon a winter torrent. Plain enough it had
+long been to him that he would not be able to govern the wild forces of
+a reaction which, if it had prevailed, would have brought back a more
+cruel tyranny than Sylla's. He was now flung as a waif on the shore of
+a foreign land; and if Providence on each occasion proportioned the
+penalties of misdoing to the magnitude of the fault, it might have been
+considered that adequate retribution had been inflicted on him. But the
+consequences of the actions of men live when the actions are themselves
+forgotten, and come to light without regard to the fitness of the
+moment. The senators of Rome were responsible for the exactions which
+Ptolemy Auletes had been compelled to wring out of his subjects. Pompey
+himself had entertained and supported him in Rome when he was driven
+from his throne, and had connived at the murder of the Alexandrians who
+had been sent to remonstrate against his restoration. It was by Pompey
+that he had been forced again upon his miserable subjects, and had been
+compelled to grind them with fresh extortions. It was not unnatural
+under these circumstances that the Egyptians were eager to free
+themselves from a subjection which bore more heavily on them than
+annexation to the Empire. A national party had been formed on Ptolemy's
+death to take advantage of the minority of his children. Cleopatra had
+been expelled. The Alexandrian citizens kept her brother in their
+hands, and were now ruling in his name; the demoralized Roman garrison
+had been seduced into supporting them, and they had an army lying at
+the time at Pelusium, to guard against Cleopatra and her friends.
+
+Of all this Pompey knew nothing. When he arrived off the port he learnt
+that the young king with a body of troops was in the neighborhood, and
+he sent on shore to ask permission to land. The Egyptians had already
+heard of Pharsalia. Civil war among the Romans was an opportunity for
+them to assert their independence, or to secure their liberties by
+taking the side which seemed most likely to be successful. Lentulus had
+already arrived, and had been imprisoned--a not unnatural return for
+the murder of Dion and his fellow-citizens. Pompey, whose name more
+than that of any other Roman was identified with their sufferings, was
+now placing himself spontaneously in their hands. Why, by sparing him,
+should they neglect the opportunity of avenging their own wrongs, and
+of earning, as they might suppose that they would, the lasting
+gratitude of Caesar? The Roman garrison had no feeling for their once
+glorious commander. "In calamity," Caesar observes, "friends easily
+become foes." The guardians of the young king sent a smooth answer,
+bidding Pompey welcome. The water being shallow, they despatched
+Achillas, a prefect in the king's army, and Septimius, a Roman officer,
+whom Pompey personally knew, with a boat to conduct him on shore. His
+wife and friends distrusted the tone of the reception, and begged him
+to wait till he could land with his own guard. The presence of
+Septimius gave Pompey confidence. Weak men, when in difficulties, fall
+into a kind of despairing fatalism, as if tired of contending longer
+with adverse fortune. Pompey stepped into the boat, and when out of
+arrow-shot from the ship was murdered under his wife's eyes. His head
+was cut off and carried away. His body was left lying on the sands. A
+man who had been once his slave, and had been set free by him, gathered
+a few sticks and burnt it there; and thus the last rites were bestowed
+upon one whom, a few months before, Caesar himself would have been
+content to acknowledge as his superior.
+
+So ended Pompey the Great. History has dealt tenderly with him on
+account of his misfortunes, and has not refused him deserved admiration
+for qualities as rare in his age as they were truly excellent. His
+capacities as a soldier were not extraordinary. He had risen to
+distinction by his honesty. The pirates who had swept the Mediterranean
+had bought their impunity by a tribute paid to senators and governors.
+They were suppressed instantly when a commander was sent against them
+whom they were unable to bribe. The conquest of Asia was no less easy
+to a man who could resist temptations to enrich himself. The worst
+enemy of Pompey never charged him with corruption or rapacity. So far
+as he was himself concerned, the restoration of Ptolemy was gratuitous,
+for he received nothing for it. His private fortune, when he had the
+world at his feet, was never more than moderate; nor as a politician
+did his faults extend beyond weakness and incompetence. Unfortunately
+he had acquired a position by his negative virtues which was above his
+natural level, and misled him into overrating his capabilities. So long
+as he stood by Caesar he had maintained his honor and his authority. He
+allowed men more cunning than himself to play upon his vanity, and
+Pompey fell--fell amidst the ruins of a Constitution which had been
+undermined by the villanies of its representatives. His end was
+piteous, but scarcely tragic, for the cause to which he was sacrificed
+was too slightly removed from being ignominious. He was no Phoebus
+Apollo sinking into the ocean, surrounded with glory. He was not even a
+brilliant meteor. He was a weak, good man, whom accident had thrust
+into a place to which he was unequal; and ignorant of himself, and
+unwilling to part with his imaginary greatness, he was flung down with
+careless cruelty by the forces which were dividing the world. His
+friend Lentulus shared his fate, and was killed a few days later, while
+Pompey's ashes were still smoking. Two of Bibulus's sons, who had
+accompanied him, were murdered as well.
+
+Caesar meanwhile had followed along Pompey's track, hoping to overtake
+him. In Cilicia he heard where he was gone; and learning something more
+accurately there of the state of Egypt, he took two legions with him,
+one of which had attended him from Pharsalia, and another which he had
+sent for from Achaia. With these he sailed for Alexandria. Together, so
+much had they been thinned by hard service, these legions mustered
+between them little over 3,000 men. The force was small, but Caesar
+considered that, after Pharsalia, there could be no danger for him
+anywhere in the Mediterranean. He landed without opposition, and was
+presented on his arrival, as a supposed welcome offering, with the head
+of his rival. Politically it would have been better far for him to have
+returned to Rome with Pompey as a friend. Nor, if it had been certain
+that Pompey would have refused to be reconciled, were services such as
+this a road to Caesar's favor. The Alexandrians speedily found that
+they were not to be rewarded with the desired independence. The
+consular fasces, the emblem of the hated Roman authority, were carried
+openly before Caesar when he appeared in the streets; and it was not
+long before mobs began to assemble with cries that Egypt was a free
+country, and that the people would not allow their king to be insulted.
+Evidently there was business to be done in Egypt before Caesar could
+leave it. Delay was specially inconvenient. A prolonged absence from
+Italy would allow faction time to rally again. But Caesar did not look
+on himself as the leader of a party, but as the guardian of Roman
+interests, and it was not his habit to leave any necessary work
+uncompleted. The etesian winds, too, had set in, which made it
+difficult for his heavy vessels to work out of the harbor. Seeing that
+troubles might rise, he sent a message to Mithridates of Pergamus,[1]
+to bring him reinforcements from Syria, while he himself at once took
+the government of Egypt into his hands. He forbade the Alexandrians to
+set aside Ptolemy's will, and insisted that the sovereignty must be
+vested jointly in Cleopatra and her brother as their father had
+ordered.[2]he cries of discontent grew bolder. Alexandria was a large,
+populous city, the common receptacle of vagabonds from all parts of the
+Mediterranean. Pirates, thieves, political exiles, and outlaws had
+taken refuge there, and had been received into the king's service. With
+the addition of the dissolute legionaries left by Gabinius, they made
+up 20,000 as dangerous ruffians as had ever been gathered into a single
+city. The more respectable citizens had no reason to love the Romans.
+The fate of Cyprus seemed a foreshadowing of their own. They too,
+unless they looked to themselves, would be absorbed in the devouring
+Empire. They had made an end of Pompey, and Caesar had shown no
+gratitude. Caesar himself was now in their hands. Till the wind changed
+they thought that he could not escape, and they were tempted, naturally
+enough, to use the chance which fate had given them.
+
+Pothinus, a palace eunuch and one of young Ptolemy's guardians, sent
+secretly for the troops at Pelusium, and gave the command of them to
+Achillas, the officer who had murdered Pompey. The city rose when they
+came in, and Caesar found himself blockaded in the palace and the part
+of the city which joined the outer harbor. The situation was irritating
+from its absurdity, but more or less it was really dangerous. The
+Egyptian fleet which had been sent to Greece in aid of Pompey had come
+back, and was in the inner basin. It outnumbered Caesar's, and the
+Alexandrians were the best seamen in the Mediterranean. If they came
+out, they might cut his communications. Without hesitation he set fire
+to the docks; burnt or disabled the great part of the ships; seized the
+Pharos and the mole which connected it with the town; fortified the
+palace and the line of houses occupied by his troops; and in this
+position he remained for several weeks, defending himself against the
+whole power of Egypt. Of the time in which legend describes him as
+abandoned to his love for Cleopatra, there was hardly an hour of either
+day or night in which he was not fighting for his very life. The
+Alexandrians were ingenious and indefatigable. They pumped the sea into
+the conduits which supplied his quarters with water, for a moment it
+seemed with fatal effect. Fresh water was happily found by sinking
+wells. They made a new fleet; old vessels on the stocks were launched,
+others were brought down from the canals on the river. They made oars
+and spars out of the benches and tables of the professors' lecture
+rooms. With these they made desperate attempts to retake the mole. Once
+with a sudden rush they carried a ship, in which Caesar was present in
+person, and he was obliged to swim for his life.[3] Still, he held on,
+keeping up his men's spirits, and knowing that relief must arrive in
+time. He was never greater than in unlooked-for difficulties. He never
+rested. He was always inventing some new contrivance. He could have
+retired from the place with no serious loss. He could have taken to his
+ships and forced his way to sea in spite of the winds and the
+Alexandrians. But he felt that to fly from such an enemy would dishonor
+the Roman name, and he would not entertain the thought of it.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 47.] The Egyptians made desperate efforts to close the
+harbor. Finding that they could neither capture the Pharos nor make an
+impression on Caesar's lines, they affected to desire peace. Caesar had
+kept young Ptolemy with him as a security. They petitioned that he
+should be given up to them, promising on compliance to discontinue
+their assaults. Caesar did not believe them. But the boy was of no use
+to him; the army wished him gone, for they thought him treacherous; and
+his presence would not strengthen the enemy. Caesar, says Hirtius,
+considered that it would be more respectable to be fighting with a king
+than with a gang of ruffians. Young Ptolemy was released, and joined
+his countrymen, and the war went on more fiercely than before. Pompey's
+murderers were brought to justice in the course of it. Pothinus fell
+into Caesar's hands, and was executed. Ganymede, another eunuch,
+assassinated Achillas, and took his place as commander-in-chief.
+Reinforcements began to come in. Mithridates had not yet been heard of;
+but Domitius Calvinus, who had been left in charge of Asia Minor, and
+to whom Caesar had also sent, had despatched two legions to him. One
+arrived by sea at Alexandria, and was brought in with some difficulty.
+The other was sent by land, and did not arrive in time to be of
+service. There was a singular irony in Caesar being left to struggle
+for months with a set of miscreants, but the trial came to an end at
+last. Mithridates, skilful, active, and faithful, had raised a force
+with extraordinary rapidity in Cilicia and on the Euphrates. He had
+marched swiftly through Syria; and in the beginning of the new year
+Caesar heard the welcome news that he had reached Pelusium, and had
+taken it by storm. Not delaying for a day, Mithridates had gone up the
+bank of the Nile to Cairo. A division of the Egyptian army lay opposite
+to him, in the face of whom he did not think it prudent to attempt to
+cross, and from thence he sent word of his position to Caesar. The news
+reached Caesar and the Alexandrians at the same moment. The
+Alexandrians had the easiest access to the scene. They had merely to
+ascend the river in their boats. Caesar was obliged to go round by sea
+to Pelusium, and to follow the course which Mithridates had taken
+himself. Rapidity of movement made up the difference. Taking with him
+such cohorts as could be spared from his lines, Caesar had joined
+Mithridates before the Alexandrians had arrived. Together they forced
+the passage; and Ptolemy came only for his camp to be stormed, his army
+to be cut to pieces, and himself to be drowned in the Nile, and so end
+his brief and miserable life.
+
+Alexandria immediately capitulated. Arsinoe, the youngest sister, was
+sent to Rome. Cleopatra and her surviving brother were made joint
+sovereigns; and Roman rumor, glad to represent Caesar's actions in
+monstrous characters, insisted in after years that they were married.
+The absence of contemporary authority for the story precludes also the
+possibility of denying it. Two legions were left in Egypt to protect
+them if they were faithful, or to coerce them if they misconducted
+themselves. The Alexandrian episode was over, and Caesar sailed for
+Syria. His long detention over a complication so insignificant had been
+unfortunate in many ways. Scipio and Cato, with the other fugitives
+from Pharsalia, had rallied in Africa, under the protection of Juba.
+Italy was in confusion. The popular party, now absolutely in the
+ascendant, were disposed to treat the aristocracy as the aristocracy
+would have treated them had they been victorious. The controlling hand
+was absent; the rich, long hated and envied, were in the power of the
+multitude, and wild measures were advocated, communistic, socialistic,
+such as are always heard of in revolutions, meaning in one form or
+another the equalization of wealth, the division of property, the poor
+taking their turn on the upper crest of fortune and the rich at the
+bottom. The tribunes were outbidding one another in extravagant
+proposals, while Caesar's legions, sent home from Greece to rest after
+their long service, were enjoying their victory in the license which is
+miscalled liberty. They demanded the lands, or rewards in money, which
+had been promised them at the end of the war. Discipline was relaxed or
+abandoned. Their officers wore unable, perhaps unwilling, to control
+them. They, too, regarded the Commonwealth as a spoil which their
+swords had won, and which they were entitled to distribute among
+themselves.
+
+In Spain, too, a bad feeling had revived. After Caesar's departure his
+generals had oppressed the people, and had quarrelled with one another.
+The country was disorganized and disaffected. In Spain, as in Egypt,
+there was a national party still dreaming of independence. The
+smouldering traditions of Sertorius were blown into flame by the
+continuance of the civil war. The proud motley race of Spaniards,
+Italians, Gauls, indigenous mountaineers, Moors from Africa, the
+remnants of the Carthaginian colonies, however they might hate one
+another, yet united in resenting an uncertain servitude under the
+alternate ascendency of Roman factions. Spain was ripe for revolt. Gaul
+alone, Caesar's own province, rewarded him for the use which he had
+made of his victory, by unswerving loyalty and obedience.
+
+On his landing in Syria, Caesar found letters pressing for his instant
+return to Rome. Important persons were waiting to give him fuller
+information than could be safely committed to writing. He would have
+hastened home at once, but restless spirits had been let loose
+everywhere by the conflict of the Roman leaders. Disorder had broken
+out near at hand. The still recent defeat of Crassus had stirred the
+ambition of the Asiatic princes; and to leave the Eastern frontier
+disturbed was to risk a greater danger to the Empire than was to be
+feared from the impatient politics of the Roman mob, or the dying
+convulsions of the aristocracy.
+
+Pharnaces, a legitimate son of Mithridates the Great, had been left
+sovereign of Upper Armenia. He had watched the collision between Pompey
+and Caesar with a neutrality which was to plead for him with the
+conqueror, and he had intended to make his own advantage out of the
+quarrels between his father's enemies. Deiotarus, tributary king of
+Lower Armenia and Colchis, had given some help to Pompey, and had sent
+him men and money; and on Pompey's defeat, Pharnaces had supposed that
+he might seize on Deiotarus's territories without fear of Caesar's
+resentment. Deiotarus had applied to Domitius Calvinus for assistance;
+which Calvinus, weakened as he was by the despatch of two of his
+legions to Egypt, had been imperfectly able to give. Pharnaces had
+advanced into Cappadocia. When Calvinus ordered him to retire, he had
+replied by sending presents, which had hitherto proved so effective
+with Roman proconsuls, and by an equivocating profession of readiness
+to abide by Caesar's decision. Pharnaces came of a dangerous race.
+Caesar's lieutenant was afraid that, if he hesitated, the son of
+Mithridates might become as troublesome as his father had been. He
+refused the presents. Disregarding his weakness, he sent a peremptory
+command to Pharnaces to fall back within his own frontiers, and
+advanced to compel him if he refused. In times of excitement the minds
+of men are electric, and news travels with telegraphic rapidity if not
+with telegraphic accuracy. Pharnaces heard that Caesar was shut up in
+Alexandria and was in a position of extreme danger, that he had sent
+for all his Asiatic legions, and that Calvinus had himself been
+summoned to his assistance. Thus he thought that he might safely
+postpone compliance till the Roman army was gone, and he had the
+country to himself. The reports from Egypt were so unfavorable that,
+although as yet he had received no positive orders, Calvinus was in
+daily expectation that he would be obliged to go. It would be unsafe,
+he thought, to leave an insolent barbarian unchastised. He had learnt
+in Caesar's school to strike quickly. He had not learnt the comparison
+between means and ends, without which celerity is imprudence. He had
+but one legion left; but he had a respectable number of Asiatic
+auxiliaries, and with them he ventured to attack Pharnaces in an
+intricate position. His Asiatics deserted. The legion behaved
+admirably; but in the face of overwhelming numbers, it could do no more
+than cut its way to security. Pharnaces at once reclaimed his father's
+kingdom, and overran Pontus, killing, mutilating, or imprisoning every
+Roman that he encountered; and in this condition Caesar found Asia
+Minor on his coming to Syria.
+
+It was not in Caesar's character to leave a Roman Province behind him
+in the hands of an invader, for his own political interests. He saw
+that he must punish Pharnaces before he returned to Rome, and he
+immediately addressed himself to the work. He made a hasty progress
+through the Syrian towns, hearing complaints and distributing rewards
+and promotions. The allied chiefs came to him from the borders of the
+Province to pay their respects. He received them graciously, and
+dismissed them pleased and satisfied. After a few days spent thus, he
+sailed for Cilicia, held a council at Tarsus, and then crossed the
+Taurus, and went by forced marches through Cappadocia to Pontus. He
+received a legion from Deiotarus which had been organized in Roman
+fashion. He sent to Calvinus to meet him with the survivors of his lost
+battle; and when they arrived, he reviewed the force which was at his
+disposition. It was not satisfactory. He had brought a veteran legion
+with him from Egypt, but it was reduced to a thousand strong. He had
+another which he had taken up in Syria; but even this did not raise his
+army to a point which could assure him of success. But time pressed,
+and skill might compensate for defective numbers.
+
+Pharnaces, hearing that Caesar was at hand, promised submission. He
+sent Caesar a golden crown, in anticipation perhaps that he was about
+to make himself king. He pleaded his desertion of Pompey as a set-off
+against his faults. Caesar answered that he would accept the
+submission, if it were sincere; but Pharnaces must not suppose that
+good offices to himself could atone for injuries to the Empire.[4] The
+provinces which he had invaded must be instantly evacuated; his Roman
+prisoners must be released, and their property must be restored to them.
+
+Pharnaces was a politician, and knew enough of Caesar's circumstances
+to mislead him. The state of Rome required Caesar's presence. A
+campaign in Asia would occupy more time than he could afford, and
+Pharnaces calculated that he must be gone in a few days or weeks. The
+victory over Calvinus had strengthened his ambition of emulating his
+father. He delayed his answer, shifted from place to place, and tried
+to protract the correspondence till Caesar's impatience to be gone
+should bring him to agree to a compromise.
+
+Caesar cut short negotiations. Pharnaces was at Zela, a town in the
+midst of mountains behind Trebizond, and the scene of a great victory
+which had been won by Mithridates over the Romans. Caesar defied
+auguries. He seized a position at night on the brow of a hill directly
+opposite to the Armenian camp, and divided from it by a narrow valley.
+As soon as day broke the legions were busy intrenching with their
+spades and pickaxes. Pharnaces, with the rashness which if it fails is
+madness, and if it succeeds is the intuition of genius, decided to fall
+on them at a moment when no sane person could rationally expect an
+attack; and Caesar could not restrain his astonishment when he saw the
+enemy pouring down the steep side of the ravine, and breasting the
+ascent on which he stood. It was like the battle of Maubeuge over
+again, with the difference that he had here to deal with Asiatics, and
+not with the Nervii. There was some confusion while the legions were
+exchanging their digging tools for their arms. When the exchange had
+been made, there was no longer a battle, but a rout. The Armenians were
+hurled back down the hill, and slaughtered in masses at the bottom of
+it. The camp was taken. Pharnaces escaped for the moment, and made his
+way into his own country; but he was killed immediately after, and Asia
+Minor was again at peace.
+
+Caesar, calm as usual, but well satisfied to have ended a second
+awkward business so easily, passed quickly down to the Hellespont, and
+had landed in Italy before it was known that he had left Pontus.
+
+
+[1] Supposed to have been a natural son of Mithridates the Great. The
+    reason for the special confidence which Caesar placed in him does not
+    appear. The danger at Alexandria, perhaps, did not appear at the
+    moment particularly serious.
+
+[2] Roman scandal discovered afterward that Caesar had been fascinated by
+    the charms of Cleopatra, and allowed his politics to be influenced by
+    a love affair. Roman fashionable society hated Caesar, and any carrion
+    was welcome to them which would taint his reputation. Cleopatra
+    herself favored the story, and afterward produced a child, whom she
+    named Caesarion. Oppius, Caesar's most intimate friend, proved that
+    the child could not have been his--of course, therefore, that the
+    intrigue was a fable; and the boy was afterward put to death by
+    Augustus as an impostor. No one claims immaculate virtue for Caesar.
+    An amour with Cleopatra may have been an accident of his presence in
+    Alexandria. But to suppose that such a person as Caesar, with the
+    concerns of the world upon his hands, would have allowed his public
+    action to be governed by a connection with a loose girl of sixteen is
+    to make too large a demand upon human credulity; nor is it likely
+    that, in a situation of so much danger and difficulty as that in which
+    he found himself, he would have added to his embarrassments by
+    indulging in an intrigue. The report proves nothing, for whether true
+    or false it was alike certain to arise. The _salons_ of Rome,
+    like the _salons_ of London and Paris, took their revenge on
+    greatness by soiling it with filth; and happily Suetonius, the chief
+    authority for the scandal, couples it with a story which is
+    demonstrably false. He says that Caesar made a long expedition with
+    Cleopatra in a barge upon the Nile; that he was so fascinated with her
+    that he wished to extend his voyage to Aethiopia, and was prevented
+    only by the refusal of his army to follow him. The details of Caesar's
+    stay at Alexandria, so minutely given by Hirtius, show that there was
+    not a moment when such an expedition could have been contemplated.
+    During the greater part of the time he was blockaded in the palace.
+    Immediately after the insurrection was put down, he was obliged to
+    hurry off on matters of instant and urgent moment. Of the story of
+    Cleopatra's presence in Rome at the time of his murder, more will be
+    said hereafter.
+
+[3] Legend is more absurd than usual over this incident. It pretends that
+    he swam with one hand, and carried his Commentaries, holding them
+    above water, with the other. As if a general would take his MSS. with
+    him into a hot action!
+
+[4] "Neque provinciarum injurias condonari iis posse qui fuissent in se
+    officiosi."--_De Bello Alexandrino_, 70.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Cicero considered that the Civil War ought to have ended with
+Pharsalia; and in this opinion most reasonable men among the
+conservatives were agreed. They had fought one battle; and it had gone
+against them. To continue the struggle might tear the Empire to pieces,
+but could not retrieve a lost cause; and prudence and patriotism alike
+recommended submission to the verdict of fortune. It is probable that
+this would have been the result, could Caesar have returned to Italy
+immediately after his victory. Cicero himself refused to participate in
+further resistance. Cato offered him a command at Corcyra, but he
+declined it with a shudder, and went back to Brindisi; and all but
+those whose consciences forbade them to hope for pardon, or who were
+too proud to ask for it, at first followed his example. Scipio, Cato,
+Labienus, Afranius, Petreius, were resolute to fight on to the last;
+but even they had no clear outlook, and they wandered about the
+Mediterranean, uncertain what to do, or whither to turn. Time went on,
+however, and Caesar did not appear. Rumor said at one time that he was
+destroyed at Alexandria. The defeat of Calvinus by Pharnaces was an
+ascertained fact. Spain was in confusion. The legions in Italy were
+disorganized, and society, or the wealthy part of society, threatened
+by the enemies of property, began to call for some one to save it. All
+was not lost. Pompey's best generals were still living. His sons,
+Sextus and Cnaeus, were brave and able. The fleet was devoted to them
+and to their father's cause, and Caesar's officers had failed, in his
+absence, to raise a naval force which could show upon the sea. Africa
+was a convenient rallying point. Since Curio's defeat, King Juba had
+found no one to dispute his supremacy, and between Juba and the
+aristocracy who were bent on persisting in the war, an alliance was
+easily formed. While Caesar was perilling his own interest to remain in
+Asia to crush Pharnaces, Metellus Scipio was offering a barbarian chief
+the whole of Roman Africa, as the price of his assistance, in a last
+effort to reverse the fortune of Pharsalia. Under these scandalous
+conditions, Scipio, Labienus, Cato, Afranius, Petreius, Faustus Sylla,
+the son of the Dictator, Lucius Caesar, and the rest of the
+irreconcilables, made Africa their new centre of operations. Here they
+gathered to themselves the inheritors of the Syllan traditions, and
+made raids on the Italian coasts and into Sicily and Sardinia. Seizing
+Caesar's officers when they could find them, they put them invariably
+to death without remorse. Cicero protested honorably against the
+employment of treacherous savages, even for so sacred a cause as the
+defence of the constitution;[1] but Cicero was denounced as a traitor
+seeking favor with the conqueror, and the desperate work went on.
+Caesar's long detention in the East gave the confederates time. The
+young Pompeys were strong at sea. From Italy there was an easy passage
+for adventurous disaffection. The shadow of a Pompeian Senate sat once
+more, passing resolutions, at Utica; while Cato was busy organizing an
+army, and had collected as many as thirteen legions out of the
+miscellaneous elements which drifted in to him. Caesar had sent orders
+to Cassius Longinus to pass into Africa from Spain, and break up these
+combinations; but Longinus had been at war with his own provincials. He
+had been driven out of the Peninsula, and had lost his own life in
+leaving it. Caesar, like Cicero, had believed that the war had ended at
+Pharsalia. He found that the heads of the Hydra had sprouted again, and
+were vomiting the old fire and fury. Little interest could it give
+Caesar to match his waning years against the blinded hatred of his
+countrymen. Ended the strife must be, however, before order could be
+restored in Italy, and wretched men take up again the quiet round of
+industry. Heavy work had to be done in Rome. Caesar was consul
+now--annual consul, with no ten years' interval any longer possible.
+Consul, dictator, whatever name the people gave him, he alone held the
+reins; he alone was able to hold them. Credit had to be restored;
+debtors had to be brought to recognize their liabilities. Property had
+fallen in value since the Civil Wars, and securities had to be freshly
+estimated. The Senate required reformation; men of fidelity and ability
+were wanted for the public offices. Pompey and Pompey's friends would
+have drowned Italy in blood. Caesar disappointed expectation by
+refusing to punish any one of his political opponents. He killed no
+one. He deprived no one of his property. He even protected the
+money-lenders, and made the Jews his constant friends. Debts he
+insisted must be paid, bonds fulfilled, the rights of property
+respected, no matter what wild hopes imagination might have indulged
+in. Something only he remitted of the severity of interest, and the
+poor in the city were allowed their lodgings rent free for a year.
+
+He restored quiet, and gave as much satisfaction as circumstances
+permitted. His real difficulty was with the legions, who had come back
+from Greece. They had deserved admirably well, but they were
+unfortunately over-conscious of their merits. Ill-intentioned officers
+had taught them to look for extravagant rewards. Their expectations had
+not been fulfilled; and when they supposed that their labors were over,
+they received orders to prepare for a campaign in Africa. Sallust, the
+historian, was in command of their quarters in Campania. They mutinied,
+and almost killed him. He fled to Rome. The soldiers of the favored
+10th legion pursued him to the gates, and demanded speech with Caesar.
+He bade them come to him, and with his usual fearlessness told them to
+bring their swords.
+
+The army was Caesar's life. In the army lay the future of Rome, if Rome
+was to have a future. There, if anywhere, the national spirit survived.
+It was a trying moment; but there was a calmness in Caesar, a rising
+from a profound indifference to what man or fortune could give or take
+from him, which no extremity could shake.
+
+The legionaries entered the city, and Caesar directed them to state
+their complaints. They spoke of their services and their sufferings.
+They said that they had been promised rewards, but their rewards so far
+had been words, and they asked for their discharge. They did not really
+wish for it. They did not expect it. But they supposed that Caesar
+could not dispense with them, and that they might dictate their own
+terms.
+
+During the wars in Gaul, Caesar had been most munificent to his
+soldiers. He had doubled their ordinary pay. He had shared the spoils
+of his conquests with them. Time and leisure had alone been wanting to
+him to recompense their splendid fidelity in the campaigns in Spain and
+Greece. He had treated them as his children; no commander had ever been
+more careful of his soldiers' lives; when addressing the army he had
+called them always "commilitones," "comrades," "brothers-in-arms."
+
+The familiar word was now no longer heard from him. "You say well,
+quirites," [2] he answered; "you have labored hard, and you have
+suffered much; you desire your discharge--you have it. I discharge you
+who are present. I discharge all who have served their time. You shall
+have your recompense. It shall never be said of me that I made use of
+you when I was in danger, and was ungrateful to you when the peril was
+past."
+
+"Quirites" he had called them; no longer Roman legionaries, proud of
+their achievements, and glorying in their great commander, but
+"quirites"--plain citizens. The sight of Caesar, the familiar form and
+voice, the words, every sentence of which they knew that he meant, cut
+them to the heart. They were humbled, they begged to be forgiven. They
+said they would go with him to Africa, or to the world's end. He did
+not at once accept their penitence. He told them that lands had been
+allotted to every soldier out of the _ager publicus_, or out of his own
+personal estates. Suetonius says that the sections had been carefully
+taken so as not to disturb existing occupants; and thus it appeared
+that he had been thinking of them and providing for them when they
+supposed themselves forgotten. Money, too, he had ready for each, part
+in hand, part in bonds bearing interest, to be redeemed when the war
+should be over. Again, passionately, they implored to be allowed to
+continue with him. He relented, but not entirely.
+
+"Let all go who wish to go," he said; "I will have none serve with me
+who serve unwillingly."
+
+"All, all!" they cried; "not one of us will leave you"--and not one
+went. The mutiny was the greatest peril, perhaps, to which Caesar had
+ever been exposed. No more was said; but Caesar took silent notice of
+the officers who had encouraged the discontented spirit. In common
+things, Dion Cassius says, he was the kindest and most considerate of
+commanders. He passed lightly over small offences; but military
+rebellion in those who were really responsible he never forgave.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 46.] The African business could now be attended to. It
+was again midwinter. Winter campaigns were trying, but Caesar had
+hitherto found them answer to him; the enemy had suffered more than
+himself; while, as long as an opposition Senate was sitting across the
+Mediterranean, intrigue and conspiracy made security impossible at
+home. Many a false spirit now fawning at home on Caesar was longing for
+his destruction. The army with which he would have to deal was less
+respectable than that which Pompey had commanded at Durazzo, but it was
+numerically as strong or stronger. Cato, assisted by Labienus, had
+formed into legions sixty thousand Italians. They had a hundred and
+twenty elephants, and African cavalry in uncounted multitudes. Caesar
+perhaps despised an enemy too much whom he had so often beaten. He
+sailed from Lilybaeum on the 19th of December, with a mere handful of
+men, leaving the rest of his troops to follow as they could. No
+rendezvous had been positively fixed, for between the weather and the
+enemy it was uncertain where the troops would be able to land, and the
+generals of the different divisions were left to their discretion.
+Caesar on arriving seized and fortified a defensible spot at
+Ruspinum.[3] The other legions dropped in slowly, and before a third of
+them had arrived the enemy were swarming about the camp, while the
+Pompeys were alert on the water to seize stray transports or provision
+ships. There was skirmishing every day in front of Caesar's lines. The
+Numidian horse surrounded his thin cohorts like swarms of hornets.
+Labienus himself rode up on one occasion to a battalion which was
+standing still under a shower of arrows, and asked in mockery who they
+were. A soldier of the 10th legion lifted his cap that his face might
+be recognized, hurled his javelin for answer, and brought Labienus's
+horse to the ground. But courage was of no avail in the face of
+overwhelming numbers. Scipio's army collected faster than Caesar's, and
+Caesar's young soldiers showed some uneasiness in a position so
+unexpected. Caesar, however, was confident and in high spirits.[4]
+Roman residents in the African province came gradually in to him, and
+some African tribes, out of respect, it was said, for the memory of
+Marius. A few towns declared against the Senate in indignation at
+Scipio's promise that the province was to be abandoned to Juba. Scipio
+replied with burning the Roman country houses and wasting the lands,
+and still killing steadily every friend of Caesar that he could lay
+hands on. Caesar's steady clemency had made no difference. The
+senatorial faction went on as they had begun till at length their
+ferocity was repaid upon them.
+
+The reports from the interior became unbearable. Caesar sent an
+impatient message to Sicily that, storm or calm, the remaining legions
+must come to him, or not a house would be left standing in the
+province. The officers were no longer what they had been. The men came,
+but bringing only their arms and tools, without change of clothes and
+without tents, though it was the rainy season. Good will and good
+hearts, however, made up for other shortcomings. Deserters dropped in
+thick from the Senate's army. King Juba, it appeared, had joined them,
+and Roman pride had been outraged, when Juba had been seen taking
+precedence in the council of war, and Metellus Scipio exchanging his
+imperial purple in the royal presence for a plain dress of white.
+
+[Sidenote: April 6, B.C. 46.] The time of clemency was past. Publius
+Ligarius was taken in a skirmish. He had been one of the captives at
+Lerida who had given his word to serve no further in the war. He was
+tried for breaking his engagement, and was put to death. Still,
+Scipio's army kept the field in full strength, the loss by desertions
+being made up by fresh recruits sent from Utica by Cato. Caesar's men
+flinched from facing the elephants, and time was lost while other
+elephants were fetched from Italy, that they might handle them and grow
+familiar with them. Scipio had been taught caution by the fate of
+Pompey, and avoided a battle, and thus three months wore away before a
+decisive impression had been made. But the clear dark eyes of the
+conqueror of Pharsalia had taken the measure of the situation and
+comprehended the features of it. By this time he had an effective
+squadron of ships, which had swept off Pompey's cruisers; and if Scipio
+shrank from an engagement it was possible to force him into it. A
+division of Scipio's troops were in the peninsula of Thapsus.[5] If
+Thapsus was blockaded at sea and besieged by land, Scipio would be
+driven to come to its relief, and would have to fight in the open
+country. Caesar occupied the neck of the peninsula, and the result was
+what he knew it must be. Scipio and Juba came down out of the hills
+with their united armies. Their legions were beginning to form
+intrenchments, and Caesar was leisurely watching their operations, when
+at the sight of the enemy an irresistible enthusiasm ran through his
+lines. The cry rose for instant attack; and Caesar, yielding willingly
+to the universal impulse, sprang on his horse and led the charge in
+person. There was no real fighting. The elephants which Scipio had
+placed in front wheeled about and plunged back into the camp,
+trumpeting and roaring. The vallum was carried at a rush, and afterward
+there was less a battle than a massacre. Officers and men fled for
+their lives like frightened antelopes, or flung themselves on their
+knees for mercy. This time no mercy was shown. The deliberate cruelty
+with which the war had been carried on had done its work at last. The
+troops were savage, and killed every man that they overtook. Caesar
+tried to check the carnage, but his efforts were unavailing. The
+leaders escaped for the time by the speed of their horses. They
+scattered with a general purpose of making for Spain. Labienus reached
+it, but few besides him. Afranius and Faustus Sylla with a party of
+cavalry galloped to Utica, which they expected to hold till one of the
+Pompeys could bring vessels to take them off. The Utican towns-people
+had from the first shown an inclination for Caesar. Neither they nor
+any other Romans in Africa liked the prospect of being passed over to
+the barbarians.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 46.] Cowards smarting under defeat are always cruel.
+The fugitives from Thapsus found that Utica would not be available for
+their purpose, and in revenge they began to massacre the citizens. Cato
+was still in the town. Cato was one of those better natured men whom
+revolution yokes so often with base companionship. He was shocked at
+the needless cruelty, and bribed the murderous gang to depart. They
+were taken soon afterward by Caesar's cavalry. Afranius and Sylla were
+brought into the camp as prisoners. There was a discussion in the camp
+as to what was to be done with them. Caesar wished to be lenient, but
+the feeling in the legions was too strong. The system of pardons could
+not be continued in the face of hatred so envenomed. The two commanders
+were executed; Caesar contenting himself with securing Sylla's property
+for his wife, Pompeia, the great Pompey's daughter. Cato Caesar was
+most anxious to save; but Cato's enmity was so ungovernable that he
+grudged Caesar the honor of forgiving him. His animosity had been
+originally the natural antipathy which a man of narrow understanding
+instinctively feels for a man of genius. It had been converted by
+perpetual disappointment into a monomania, and Caesar had become to him
+the incarnation of every quality and every principle which he most
+abhorred. Cato was upright, unselfish, incorruptibly pure in deed and
+word; but he was a fanatic whom no experience could teach, and he
+adhered to his convictions with the more tenacity, because fortune or
+the disposition of events so steadily declared them to be mistaken. He
+would have surrendered Caesar to the Germans as a reward for having
+driven them back over the Rhine. He was one of those who were most
+eager to impeach him for the acts of his consulship, though the acts
+themselves were such as, if they had been done by another, he would
+himself have most warmly approved; and he was tempted by personal
+dislike to attach himself to men whose object was to reimpose upon his
+country a new tyranny of Sylla. His character had given respectability
+to a cause which, if left to its proper defenders, would have appeared
+in its natural baseness, and thus on him rested the responsibility for
+the color of justice in which it was disguised. That after all which
+had passed he should be compelled to accept his pardon at Caesar's
+hands was an indignity to which he could not submit, and before the
+conqueror could reach Utica he fell upon his sword and died. _Ultimus
+Romanorum_ has been the epitaph which posterity has written on the tomb
+of Cato. Nobler Romans than he lived after him; and a genuine son of
+the old Republic would never have consented to surrender an imperial
+province to a barbarian prince. But at least he was an open enemy. He
+would not, like his nephew Brutus, have pretended to be Caesar's
+friend, that he might the more conveniently drive a dagger into his
+side.
+
+The rest of the party was broken up. Scipio sailed for Spain, but was
+driven back by foul weather into Hippo, where he was taken and killed.
+His correspondence was found and taken to Caesar, who burnt it unread,
+as he had burnt Pompey's. The end of Juba and Petreius had a wild
+splendor about it. They had fled together from Thapsus to Zama, Juba's
+own principal city, and they were refused admission. Disdaining to be
+taken prisoners, as they knew they inevitably would be, they went to a
+country house in the neighborhood belonging to the king. There, after a
+last sumptuous banquet, they agreed to die like warriors by each
+other's hand. Juba killed Petreius, and then ran upon his own sword.
+
+So the actors in the drama were passing away. Domitius, Pompey,
+Lentulus, Ligarius, Metellus Scipio, Afranius, Cato, Petreius, had sunk
+into bloody graves. Labienus had escaped clear from the battle; and
+knowing that if Caesar himself would pardon him Caesar's army never
+would, he made his way to Spain, where one last desperate hope
+remained. The mutinous legions of Cassius Longinus had declared for the
+Senate. Some remnants of Pompey's troops who had been dismissed after
+Lerida had been collected again and joined them; and these, knowing, as
+Labienus knew, that they had sinned beyond forgiveness, were prepared
+to fight to the last and die at bay.
+
+One memorable scene in the African campaign must not be forgotten.
+While Caesar was in difficulty at Ruspinum, and was impatiently waiting
+for his legions from Sicily, there arrived a general officer of the
+10th, named Caius Avienus, who had occupied the whole of one of the
+transports with his personal servants, horses, and other conveniences,
+and had not brought with him a single soldier. Avienus had been already
+privately noted by Caesar as having been connected with the mutiny in
+Campania. His own habits in the field were simple in the extreme, and
+he hated to see his officers self-indulgent. He used the opportunity to
+make an example of him and of one or two others at the same time.
+
+He called his tribunes and centurions together. "I could wish," he
+said, "that certain persons would have remembered for themselves parts
+of their past conduct which, though I overlooked them, were known to
+me; I could wish they would have atoned for these faults by special
+attention to their duties. As they have not chosen to do this, I must
+make an example of them as a warning to others.
+
+"You, Caius Avienus, instigated soldiers in the service of the State to
+mutiny against their commanders. You oppressed towns which were under
+your charge. Forgetting your duty to the army and to me, you filled a
+vessel with your own establishment which was intended for the transport
+of troops; and at a difficult moment we were thus left, through your
+means, without the men whom we needed. For these causes, and as a mark
+of disgrace, I dismiss you from the service, and I order you to leave
+Africa by the first ship which sails.
+
+"You, Aulus Fonteius [another tribune], have been a seditious and a bad
+officer. I dismiss you also.
+
+"You, Titus Salienus, Marcus Tiro, Caius Clusinas, centurions, obtained
+your commissions by favor, not by merit. You have shown want of courage
+in the field; your conduct otherwise has been uniformly bad; you have
+encouraged a mutinous spirit in your companies. You are unworthy to
+serve under my command. You are dismissed, and will return to Italy."
+
+The five offenders were sent under guard on board ship, each noticeably
+being allowed a single slave to wait upon him, and so were expelled
+from the country.
+
+This remarkable picture of Caesar's method of enforcing discipline is
+described by a person who was evidently present;[6] and it may be taken
+as a correction to the vague stories of his severity to these officers
+which are told by Dion Cassius.
+
+[1] _To Atticus_, xi. 7.
+
+[2] Citizens.
+
+[3] Where the African coast turns south from Cape Bon.
+
+[4] "Animum enim altum et erectum prae se gerebat."--_De Bello
+    Africano_.
+
+[5] Between Carthage and Utica.
+
+[6] _De Bella Africano_, c. 54. This remarkably interesting narrative
+    is attached to Caesar's _Commentaries_. The author is unknown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 45.] The drift of disaffection into Spain was held at
+first to be of little moment. The battle of Thapsus, the final breaking
+up of the senatorial party, and the deaths of its leaders, were
+supposed to have brought an end at last to the divisions which had so
+long convulsed the Empire. Rome put on its best dress. The people had
+been on Caesar's side from the first. Those who still nursed in their
+hearts the old animosity were afraid to show it, and the nation
+appeared once more united in enthusiasm for the conqueror. There were
+triumphal processions which lasted for four days. There were sham
+fights on artificial lakes, bloody gladiator shows, which the Roman
+populace looked for as their special delight. The rejoicings being
+over, business began. Caesar was, of course, supreme. He was made
+inspector of public morals, the censorship being deemed inadequate to
+curb the inordinate extravagance. He was named Dictator for ten years,
+with a right of nominating the person whom the people were to choose
+for their consuls and praetors. The clubs and caucuses, the bribery of
+the tribes, the intimidation, the organized bands of voters formed out
+of the clients of the aristocracy, were all at an end. The courts of
+law were purified. No more judges were to be bought with money or by
+fouler temptations. The Leges Julias became a practical reality. One
+remarkable and darable reform was undertaken and carried through amidst
+the jests of Cicero and the other wits of the time--the revision of the
+Roman calendar. The distribution of the year had been governed hitherto
+by the motions of the moon. The twelve annual moons had fixed at twelve
+the number of the months, and the number of days required to bring the
+lunar year into correspondence with the solar had been supplied by
+irregular intercalations, at the direction of the Sacred College. But
+the Sacred College during the last distracted century had neglected
+their office. The lunar year was now sixty-five days in advance of the
+sun. The so-called winter was really the autumn, the spring the winter.
+The summer solstice fell at the beginning of the legal September. On
+Caesar as Pontifex Maximus devolved the duty of bringing confusion into
+order, and the completeness with which the work was accomplished at the
+first moment of his leisure shows that he had found time in the midst
+of his campaigns to think of other things than war or politics.
+Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, was called in to superintend the
+reform. It is not unlikely that he had made acquaintance with Sosigenes
+in Egypt, and had discussed the problem with him in the hours during
+which he is supposed to have amused himself "in the arms of Cleopatra."
+Sosigenes, leaving the moon altogether, took the sun for the basis of
+the new system. The Alexandrian observers had discovered that the
+annual course of the sun was completed in 365 days and six hours. The
+lunar twelve was allowed to remain to fix the number of the months. The
+numbers of days in each month were adjusted to absorb 365 days. The
+superfluous hours were allowed to accumulate, and every fourth year an
+additional day was to be intercalated. An arbitrary step was required
+to repair the negligence of the past. Sixty-five days had still to be
+made good. The new system, depending wholly on the sun, would naturally
+have commenced with the winter solstice. But Caesar so far deferred to
+usage as to choose to begin, not with the solstice itself, but with the
+first new moon which followed.  It so happened in that year that the
+new moon was eighty days after the solstice; and thus the next year
+started, as it continues to start, from the 1st of January. The eight
+days were added to the sixty-five, and the current year was lengthened
+by nearly three months. It pleased Cicero to mock, as if Caesar, not
+contented with the earth, was making himself the master of the heavens.
+"Lyra," he said, "was to set according to the edict;" but the unwise
+man was not Caesar in this instance.[1]
+
+While Sosigenes was at work with the calendar, Caesar personally again
+revised the Senate. He expelled every member who had been guilty of
+extortion or corruption; he supplied the vacancies with officers of
+merit, with distinguished colonists, with foreigners, with meritorious
+citizens, even including Gauls, from all parts of the Empire. Time,
+unfortunately, had to pass before these new men could take their
+places, but meanwhile he treated the existing body with all forms of
+respect, and took no step on any question of public moment till the
+Senate had deliberated on it. As a fitting close to the war he
+proclaimed an amnesty to all who had borne arms against him. The past
+was to be forgotten, and all his efforts were directed to the
+regeneration of Roman society. Cicero paints the habits of fashionable
+life in colors which were possibly exaggerated; but enough remains of
+authentic fact to justify the general truth of the picture. Women had
+forgotten their honor, children their respect for parents. Husbands had
+murdered wives, and wives husbands. Parricide and incest formed common
+incidents of domestic Italian history; and, as justice had been ordered
+in the last years of the Republic, the most abandoned villain who came
+into court with a handful of gold was assured of impunity. Rich men,
+says Suetonius, were never deterred from crime by a fear of forfeiting
+their estates; they had but to leave Italy, and their property was
+secured to them. It was held an extraordinary step toward improvement
+when Caesar abolished the monstrous privilege, and ordered that
+parricides should not only be exiled, but should forfeit everything
+that belonged to them, and that minor felons should forfeit half their
+estates.
+
+Cicero had prophesied so positively that Caesar would throw off the
+mask of clemency when the need for it was gone, that he was
+disappointed to find him persevere in the same gentleness, and was
+impatient for revenge to begin. So bitter Cicero was that he once told
+Atticus he could almost wish himself to be the object of some cruel
+prosecution, that the tyrant might have the disgrace of it.[2]
+
+He could not deny that "the tyrant" was doing what, if Rome was to
+continue an ordered commonwealth, it was essential must be done.
+Caesar's acts were unconstitutional! Yes; but constitutions are made
+for men, not men for constitutions, and Cicero had long seen that the
+Constitution was at an end. It had died of its own iniquities. He had
+perceived in his better moments that Caesar and Caesar only could
+preserve such degrees of freedom as could be retained without universal
+destruction. But he refused to be comforted. He considered it a
+disgrace to them all that Caesar was alive.[3] Why did not somebody
+kill him? Kill him? And what then? On that side too the outlook was not
+promising. News had come that Labienus and young Cnaeus Pompey had
+united their forces in Spain. The whole Peninsula was in revolt, and
+the counter-revolution was not impossible after all. He reflected with
+terror on the sarcasms which he had flung on young Pompey. He knew him
+to be a fool and a savage. "Hang me," he said, "if I do not prefer an
+old and kind master to trying experiments with a new and cruel one. The
+laugh will be on the other side then." [4]
+
+Far had Cicero fallen from his dream of being the greatest man in Rome!
+Condemned to immortality by his genius, yet condemned also to survive
+in the portrait of himself which he has so unconsciously and so
+innocently drawn.
+
+The accounts from Spain were indeed most serious. It is the misfortune
+of men of superior military ability that their subordinates are
+generally failures when trusted with independent commands. Accustomed
+to obey implicitly the instructions of their chief, they have done what
+they have been told to do, and their virtue has been in never thinking
+for themselves. They succeed, and they forget why they succeed, and in
+part attribute their fortune to their own skill. With Alexander's
+generals, with Caesar's, with Cromwell's, even with some of Napoleon's,
+the story has been the same. They have been self-confident, yet when
+thrown upon their own resources they have driven back upon a judgment
+which has been inadequately trained. The mind which guided them is
+absent. The instrument is called on to become self-acting, and
+necessarily acts unwisely. Caesar's lieutenants while under his own eye
+had executed his orders with the precision of a machine. When left to
+their own responsibility they were invariably found wanting. Among all
+his officers there was not a man of real eminence. Labienus, the ablest
+of them, had but to desert Caesar, to commit blunder upon blunder, and
+to ruin the cause to which he attached himself. Antony, Lepidus,
+Trebonius, Calvinus, Cassius Longinus, Quintus Cicero, Sabinus, Decimus
+Brutus, Vatinius, were trusted with independent authority, only to show
+themselves unfit to use it. Cicero had guessed shrewdly that Caesar's
+greatest difficulties would begin with his victory. He had not a man
+who was able to govern under him away from his immediate eye.
+
+Cassius Longinus, Trebonius, and Marcus Lepidus had been sent to Spain
+after the battle of Pharsalia. They had quarrelled among themselves.
+They had driven the legions into mutiny. The authority of Rome had
+broken down as entirely as when Sertorius was defying the Senate; and
+Spain had become the receptacle of all the active disaffection which
+remained in the Empire. Thither had drifted the wreck of Scipio's
+African army. Thither had gathered the outlaws, pirates, and banditti
+of Italy and the Islands. Thither too had come flights of Numidians and
+Moors in hopes of plunder; and Pompey's sons and Labienus had collected
+an army as numerous as that which had been defeated at Thapsus, and
+composed of materials far more dangerous and desperate. There were
+thirteen legions of them in all, regularly formed, with eagles and
+standards; two which had deserted from Trebonius; one made out of Roman
+Spanish settlers, or old soldiers of Pompey's who had been dismissed at
+Lerida; four out of the remnants of the campaign in Africa; the rest a
+miscellaneous combination of the mutinous legions of Longinus and
+outlawed adventurers who knew that there was no forgiveness for them,
+and were ready to fight while they could stand. It was the last cast of
+the dice for the old party of the aristocracy. Appearances were thrown
+off. There were no more Catos, no more phantom Senates to lend to
+rebellion the pretended dignity of a national cause. The true barbarian
+was there in his natural colors.
+
+Very reluctantly Caesar found that he must himself grapple with this
+last convulsion. The sanguinary obstinacy which no longer proposed any
+object to itself save defiance and revenge, was converting a war which
+at first wore an aspect of a legitimate constitutional struggle, into a
+conflict with brigands. Clemency had ceased to be possible, and Caesar
+would have gladly left to others the execution in person of the sharp
+surgery which was now necessary. He was growing old: fifty-five this
+summer. His health was giving way. For fourteen years he had known no
+rest. That he could have endured so long such a strain on mind and body
+was due only to his extraordinary abstinence, to the simplicity of his
+habits, and the calmness of temperament which in the most anxious
+moments refused to be agitated. But the work was telling at last on his
+constitution, and he departed on his last campaign with confessed
+unwillingness. The future was clouded with uncertainty. A few more
+years of life might enable him to introduce into the shattered frame of
+the Commonwealth some durable elements. His death in the existing
+confusion might be as fatal as Alexander's. That some one person not
+liable to removal under the annual wave of electoral agitation must
+preside over the army and the administration, had been evident in lucid
+moments even to Cicero. To leave the prize to be contended for among
+the military chiefs was to bequeath a legacy of civil wars and probable
+disruption; to compound with the embittered remnants of the aristocracy
+who were still in the field would intensify the danger; yet time and
+peace alone could give opportunity for the conditions of a permanent
+settlement to shape themselves. The name of Caesar had become
+identified with the stability of the Empire. He no doubt foresaw that
+the only possible chief would be found in his own family. Being himself
+childless, he had adopted his sister's grandson, Octavius, afterward
+Augustus, a fatherless boy of seventeen; and had trained him under his
+own eye. He had discerned qualities doubtless in his nephew which, if
+his own life was extended for a few years longer, might enable the boy
+to become the representative of his house and perhaps the heir of his
+power. In the unrecorded intercourse between the uncle and his niece's
+child lies the explanation of the rapidity with which the untried
+Octavius seized the reins when all was again chaos, and directed the
+Commonwealth upon the lines which it was to follow during the remaining
+centuries of Roman power.
+
+Octavius accompanied Caesar into Spain. They travelled in a carriage,
+having as a third with them the general whom Caesar most trusted and
+liked, and whom he had named in his will as one of Octavius's
+guardians, Decimus Brutus--the same officer who had commanded his fleet
+for him at Quiberon and at Marseilles, and had now been selected as the
+future governor of Cisalpine Gaul. Once more it was midwinter when they
+left Rome. They travelled swiftly; and Caesar, as usual, himself
+brought the news that he was coming. But the winter season did not
+bring to him its usual advantages, for the whole Peninsula had
+revolted, and Pompey and Labienus were able to shelter their troops in
+the towns, while Caesar was obliged to keep the field. Attempts here
+and there to capture detached positions led to no results. On both
+sides now the war was carried on upon the principles which the Senate
+had adopted from the first. Prisoners from the revolted legions were
+instantly executed, and Cnaeus Pompey murdered the provincials whom he
+suspected of an inclination for Caesar. Attagona was at last taken.
+Caesar moved on Cordova; and Pompey, fearing that the important cities
+might seek their own security by coming separately to terms, found it
+necessary to risk a battle.
+
+[Sidenote: March 17, B.C. 45.] [Sidenote: B.C. 45.] The scene of the
+conflict which ended the civil war was the plain of Munda. The day was
+the 17th of March, B.C. 45. Spanish tradition places Munda on the
+Mediterranean, near Gibraltar. The real Munda was on the Guadalquiver,
+so near to Cordova that the remains of the beaten army found shelter
+within its walls after the battle. Caesar had been so invariably
+victorious in his engagements in the open field that the result might
+have been thought a foregone conclusion. Legendary history reported in
+the next generation that the elements had been pregnant with auguries.
+Images had sweated; the sky had blazed with meteors; celestial armies,
+the spirits of the past and future, had battled among the
+constellations. The signs had been unfavorable to the Pompeians; the
+eagles of their legions had dropped the golden thunderbolts from their
+talons, spread their wings, and had flown away to Caesar. In reality,
+the eagles had remained in their places till the standards fell from
+the hands of their dead defenders; and the battle was one of the most
+desperate in which Caesar had ever been engaged. The numbers were
+nearly equal--the material on both sides equally good. Pompey's army
+was composed of revolted Roman soldiers. In arms, in discipline, in
+stubborn fierceness, there was no difference. The Pompeians had the
+advantage of situation, the village of Munda, with the hill on which it
+stood, being in the centre of their lines. The Moorish and Spanish
+auxiliaries, of whom there were large bodies on either side, stood
+apart when the legions closed; they having no further interest in the
+matter than in siding with the conqueror, when fortune had decided who
+the conqueror was to be. There were no manoeuvres; no scientific
+evolutions. The Pompeians knew that there was no hope for them if they
+were defeated. Caesar's men, weary and savage at the protraction of the
+war, were determined to make a last end of it; and the two armies
+fought hand to hand with their short swords, with set teeth and pressed
+lips, opened only with a sharp cry as an enemy fell dead. So equal was
+the struggle, so doubtful at one moment the issue of it, that Caesar
+himself sprang from his horse, seized a standard, and rallied a
+wavering legion. It seemed as if the men meant all to stand and kill or
+be killed as long as daylight lasted. The ill fate of Labienus decided
+the victory. He had seen, as he supposed, some movement which alarmed
+him among Caesar's Moorish auxiliaries, and had galloped conspicuously
+across the field to lead a division to check them. A shout rose, "He
+flies--he flies!" A panic ran along the Pompeian lines. They gave way,
+and Caesar's legions forced a road between their ranks. One wing broke
+off and made for Cordova; the rest plunged wildly within the ditch and
+walls of Munda, the avenging sword smiting behind into the huddled mass
+of fugitives. Scarcely a prisoner was taken. Thirty thousand fell on
+the field, among them three thousand Roman knights, the last remains of
+the haughty youths who had threatened Caesar with their swords in the
+senate-house, and had hacked Clodius's mob in the Forum. Among them was
+slain Labienus--his desertion of his general, his insults and his
+cruelties to his comrades, expiated at last in his own blood. Attius
+Varus was killed also, who had been with Juba when he destroyed Curio.
+The tragedy was being knitted up in the deaths of the last actors in
+it. The eagles of the thirteen legions were all taken. The two Pompeys
+escaped on their horses, Sextus disappearing in the mountains of
+Grenada or the Sierra Morena; Cnaeus flying for Gibraltar, where he
+hoped to find a friendly squadron.
+
+Munda was at once blockaded, the enclosing wall--savage evidence of the
+temper of the conquerors--being built of dead bodies pinned together
+with lances, and on the top of it a fringe of heads on swords' points
+with the faces turned toward the town. A sally was attempted at
+midnight, and failed. The desperate wretches then fought among
+themselves, till at length the place was surrendered, and fourteen
+thousand of those who still survived were taken, and spared. Their
+comrades, who had made their way into Cordova, were less fortunate.
+When the result of the battle was known, the leading citizen, who had
+headed the revolt against Caesar, gathered all that belonged to him
+into a heap, poured turpentine over it, and, after a last feast with
+his family, burnt himself, his house, his children, and servants. In
+the midst of the tumult the walls were stormed. Cordova was given up to
+plunder and massacre, and twenty-two thousand miserable people--most of
+them, it may be hoped, the fugitives from Munda--were killed. The
+example sufficed. Every town opened its gates, and Spain was once more
+submissive. Sextus Pompey successfully concealed himself. Cnaeus
+reached Gibraltar, but to find that most of the ships which he looked
+for had been taken by Caesar's fleet. He tried to cross to the African
+coast, but was driven back by bad weather, and search parties were
+instantly on his track. He had been wounded; he had sprained his ankle
+in his flight. Strength and hope were gone. He was carried on a litter
+to a cave on a mountain side, where his pursuers found him, cut off his
+head, and spared Cicero from further anxiety.
+
+Thus bloodily ended the Civil War, which the Senate of Rome had
+undertaken against Caesar, to escape the reforms which were threatened
+by his second consulship. They had involuntarily rendered their country
+the best service which they were capable of conferring upon it, for the
+attempts which Caesar would have made to amend a system too decayed to
+benefit by the process had been rendered forever impossible by their
+persistence. The free constitution of the Republic had issued at last
+in elections which were a mockery of representation, in courts of law
+which were an insult to justice, and in the conversion of the Provinces
+of the Empire into the feeding-grounds of a gluttonous aristocracy. In
+the army alone the Roman character and the Roman honor survived. In the
+Imperator, therefore, as chief of the army, the care of the Provinces,
+the direction of public policy, the sovereign authority in the last
+appeal, could alone thenceforward reside. The Senate might remain as a
+Council of State; the magistrates might bear their old names, and
+administer their old functions. But the authority of the executive
+government lay in the loyalty, the morality, and the patriotism of the
+legions to whom the power had been transferred. Fortunately for Rome,
+the change came before decay had eaten into the bone, and the genius of
+the Empire had still a refuge from platform oratory and senatorial
+wrangling in the hearts of her soldiers.
+
+Caesar did not immediately return to Italy. Affairs in Rome were no
+longer pressing, and, after the carelessness and blunders of his
+lieutenants, the administration of the Peninsula required his personal
+inspection. From open revolts in any part of the Roman dominions he had
+nothing more to fear. The last card had been played, and the game of
+open resistance was lost beyond recovery. There might be dangers of
+another kind: dangers from ambitious generals, who might hope to take
+Caesar's place on his death; or dangers from constitutional
+philosophers, like Cicero, who had thought from the first that the
+Civil War had been a mistake, "that Caesar was but mortal, and that
+there were many ways in which a man might die." A reflection so frankly
+expressed, by so respectable a person, must have occurred to many
+others as well as to Cicero; Caesar could not but have foreseen in what
+resources disappointed fanaticism or baffled selfishness might seek
+refuge. But of such possibilities he was prepared to take his chance;
+he did not fly from them, he did not seek them; he took his work as he
+found it, and remained in Spain through the summer, imposing fines and
+allotting rewards, readjusting the taxation, and extending the
+political privileges of the Roman colonies. It was not till late in the
+autumn that he again turned his face toward Rome.
+
+
+[1] In connection with this subject it is worth while to mention another
+    change in the division of time, not introduced by Caesar, but which
+    came into general use about a century after. The week of seven days
+    was unknown to the Greeks and to the Romans of the Commonwealth, the
+    days of the month being counted by the phases of the moon. The
+    seven-days division was supposed by the Romans to be Egyptian. We know
+    it to have been Jewish, and it was probably introduced to the general
+    world on the first spread of Christianity. It was universally adopted
+    at any rate after Christianity had been planted in different parts of
+    the Empire, but while the Government and the mass of the people were
+    still unconverted to the new religion. The week was accepted for its
+    convenience; but while accepted it was paganized; and the seven days
+    were allotted to the five planets and the sun and moon in the order
+    which still survives among the Latin nations, and here in England with
+    a further introduction of Scandinavian mythology. The principle of the
+    distribution was what is popularly called "the music of the spheres,"
+    and turns on a law of Greek music, which is called by Don Cassius the
+    [Greek: armonia dia teddaron]. Assuming the earth to be the centre of
+    the universe, the celestial bodies which have a proper movement of
+    their own among the stars were arranged in the order of their apparent
+    periods of revolution--Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury,
+    the Moon. The Jewish Jehovah was identified by the Graeco-Romans with
+    Saturn, the oldest of the heathen personal gods. The Sabbath was the
+    day supposed to be specially devoted to him. The first day of the week
+    was, therefore, given to Saturn. Passing over Jupiter and Mars,
+    according to the laws of the [Greek: armonia], the next day was given
+    to the Sun; again passing over two, the next to the Moon, and so on,
+    going round again to the rest, till the still existing order came out.
+    Dies Saturni, dies Solis, dies Lunae, dies Martis, dies Mercurri,
+    dies Jovis, and dies Veneris. See Dion Cassius, _Historia
+    Romana_, lib. xxxvii. c. 18. Dion Cassius gives a second account of
+    the distribution, depending on the twenty-four hours of the day. But
+    the twenty-four hours being a division purely artificial, this
+    explanation is of less interest.
+
+[2] _To Atticus_, x. 12.
+
+[3] "Cum vivere ipsum turpe sit nobis."--_To Atticus_, xiii. 28.
+
+[4] "Peream nisi sollicitus sum, ac malo veterem et clementem dominum
+    habere, quam novum et crudelem experiri. Scis, Cnaeus quam sit fatuus.
+    Scis, quomodo crudelitatem virtutem putet. Scis, quam se semper a
+    nobis derisum putet. Vereor, ne nos rustice gladio velit
+    [Greek: antimuktaerisai]"--_To Caius Cassius, Ad Fam_. xv. 19.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Caesar came back to Rome to resume the suspended work of practical
+reform. His first care was to remove the fears which the final spasm of
+rebellion had again provoked. He had already granted an amnesty. But
+the optimates were conscious that they had desired and hoped that the
+Pompeys might be victorious in Spain. Caesar invited the surviving
+leaders of the party to sue for pardon on not unbecoming conditions.
+Hitherto they had kept no faith with him, and on the first show of
+opportunity had relapsed into defiance. His forbearance had been
+attributed to want of power rather than of will to punish; when they
+saw him again triumphant, they assumed that the representative of the
+Marian principles would show at last the colors of his uncle, and that
+Rome would again run with blood. He knew them all. He knew that they
+hated him, and would continue to hate him; but he supposed that they
+had recognized the hopelessness and uselessness of farther conspiracy.
+By destroying him they would fall only under the rod of less scrupulous
+conquerors; and therefore he was content that they should ask to be
+forgiven. To show further that the past was really to be forgotten, he
+drew no distinction between his enemies and his friends, and he
+recommended impartially for office those whose rank or services to the
+State entitled them to look for promotion. Thus he pardoned and
+advanced Caius Cassius, who would have killed him in Cilicia.[1] But
+Cassius had saved Syria from being overrun by the Parthians after the
+death of Crassus; and the service to the State outweighed the injury to
+himself. So he pardoned and advanced Marcus Brutus, his friend
+Servilia's son, who had fought against him at Pharsalia, and had been
+saved from death there by his special orders. So he pardoned and
+protected Cicero; so Marcus Marcellus, who, as consul, had moved that
+he should be recalled from his government, and had flogged the citizen
+of Como, in scorn of the privileges which Caesar had granted to the
+colony. So he pardoned also Quintus Ligarius,[2] who had betrayed his
+confidence in Africa; so a hundred others, who now submitted, accepted
+his favors, and bound themselves to plot against him no more. To the
+widows and children of those who had fallen in the war he restored the
+estates and honors of their families. Finally, as some were still
+sullen, and refused to sue for a forgiveness which might imply an
+acknowledgment of guilt, he renewed the general amnesty of the previous
+year; and, as a last evidence that his victory was not the triumph of
+democracy, but the consolidation of a united Empire, he restored the
+statues of Sylla and Pompey, which had been thrown down in the
+revolution, and again dedicated them with a public ceremonial.
+
+Having thus proved that, so far as he was concerned, he nourished no
+resentment against the persons of the optimates, or against their
+principles, so far as they were consistent with the future welfare of
+the Roman State, Caesar set himself again to the reorganization of the
+administration. Unfortunately, each step that he took was a fresh crime
+in the eyes of men whose pleasant monopoly of power he had overthrown.
+But this was a necessity of the revolution. They had fought for their
+supremacy, and had lost the day.
+
+He increased the number of the Senate to nine hundred, filling its
+ranks from eminent provincials; introducing even barbarian Gauls, and,
+still worse, libertini, the sons of liberated slaves, who had risen to
+distinction by their own merit. The new members came in slowly, and it
+is needless to say were unwillingly received; a private handbill was
+sent round, recommending the coldest of greetings to them.[3]
+
+The inferior magistrates were now responsible to himself as Dictator.
+He added to their numbers also, and to check the mischiefs of the
+annual elections, he ordered that they should be chosen for three
+years. He cut short the corn grants, which nursed the city mob in
+idleness; and from among the impoverished citizens he furnished out
+masses of colonists to repair the decay of ancient cities. Corinth rose
+from its ashes under Caesar's care. Eighty thousand Italians were
+settled down on the site of Carthage. As inspector of morals, Caesar
+inherited in an invigorated form the power of the censors. Senators and
+officials who had discredited themselves by dishonesty were ruthlessly
+degraded. His own private habits and the habits of his household were
+models of frugality. He made an effort, in which Augustus afterward
+imitated him, to check the luxury which was eating into the Roman
+character. He forbade the idle young patricians to be carried about by
+slaves in litters. The markets of the world had been ransacked to
+provide dainties for these gentlemen. He appointed inspectors to survey
+the dealers' stalls, and occasionally prohibited dishes were carried
+off from the dinner table under the eyes of the disappointed guests,[4]
+Enemies enough Caesar made by these measures; but it could not be said
+of him that he allowed indulgences to himself which he interdicted to
+others. His domestic economy was strict and simple, the accounts being
+kept to a sesterce. His frugality was hospitable. He had two tables
+always, one for his civilian friends, another for his officers, who
+dined in uniform. The food was plain, but the best of its kind; and he
+was not to be played with in such matters. An unlucky baker who
+supplied his guests with bread of worse quality than he furnished for
+himself was put in chains. Against moral offences he was still more
+severe. He, the supposed example of licentiousness with women, executed
+his favorite freedman for adultery with a Roman lady. A senator had
+married a woman two days after her divorce from her first husband;
+Caesar pronounced the marriage void.
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 45-44.] Law reforms went on. Caesar appointed a
+commission to examine the huge mass of precedents, reduce them to
+principles, and form a Digest. He called in Marcus Varro's help to form
+libraries in the great towns. He encouraged physicians and men of
+science to settle in Rome, by offering them the freedom of the city. To
+maintain the free population of Italy, he required the planters and
+farmers to employ a fixed proportion of free laborers on their estates.
+He put an end to the pleasant tours of senators at the expense of the
+provinces; their proper place was Italy, and he allowed them to go
+abroad only when they were in office or in the service of the
+governors. He formed large engineering plans, a plan to drain the
+Pontine marches and the Fucine lake, a plan to form a new channel for
+the Tiber, another to improve the roads, another to cut the Isthmus of
+Corinth. These were his employments during the few months of life which
+were left to him after the close of the war. His health was growing
+visibly weaker, but his superhuman energy remained unimpaired. He was
+even meditating and was making preparation for a last campaign. The
+authority of Rome on the eastern frontier had not recovered from the
+effects of the destruction of the army of Crassus. The Parthians were
+insolent and aggressive. Caesar had determined to go in person to bring
+them to their senses as soon as he could leave Rome. Partly, it was
+said that he felt his life would be safer with the troops; partly, he
+desired to leave the administration free from his overpowering
+presence, that it might learn to go alone; partly and chiefly, he
+wished to spend such time as might remain to him where he could do most
+service to his country. But he was growing weary of the thankless
+burden. He was heard often to say that he had lived long enough. Men of
+high nature do not find the task of governing their fellow-creatures
+particularly delightful.
+
+The Senate meanwhile was occupied in showing the sincerity of their
+conversion by inventing honors for their new master, and smothering him
+with distinctions since they had failed to defeat him in the field. Few
+recruits had yet joined them, and they were still substantially the old
+body. They voted Caesar the name of Liberator. They struck medals for
+him, in which he was described as Pater Patriae, an epithet which
+Cicero had once with quickened pulse heard given to himself by Pompey.
+"Imperator" had been a title conferred hitherto by soldiers in the
+field on a successful general. It was now granted to Caesar in a
+special sense, and was made hereditary in his family, with the
+command-in-chief of the army for his life. The Senate gave him also the
+charge of the treasury. They made him consul for ten years. Statues
+were to be erected to him in the temples, on the Rostra, and in the
+Capitol, where he was to stand as an eighth among the seven Kings of
+Rome. In the excess of their adoration, they desired even to place his
+image in the Temple of Quirinus himself, with an inscription to him as
+[Greek: Theos animaetos], the invincible god. Golden chairs, gilt
+chariots, triumphal robes were piled one upon another with laurelled
+fasces and laurelled wreaths. His birthday was made a perpetual
+holiday, and the month Quinctilis[5] was renamed, in honor of him,
+July. A temple to Concord was to be erected in commemoration of his
+clemency. His person was declared sacred, and to injure him by word or
+deed was to be counted sacrilege. The Fortune of Caesar was introduced
+into the constitutional oath, and the Senate took a solemn pledge to
+maintain his acts inviolate. Finally, they arrived at a conclusion that
+he was not a man at all; no longer Caius Julius, but Divus Julius, a
+god or the son of god. A temple was to be built to Caesar as another
+Quirinus, and Antony was to be his priest.
+
+Caesar knew the meaning of all this. He must accept their flattery and
+become ridiculous, or he must appear to treat with contumely the Senate
+which offered it. The sinister purpose started occasionally into sight.
+One obsequious senator proposed that every woman in Rome should be at
+his disposition, and filthy libels against him were set floating under
+the surface. The object, he perfectly understood, "was to draw him into
+a position more and more invidious, that he might the sooner perish."
+[6] The praise and the slander of such men were alike indifferent to
+him. So far as he was concerned, they might call him what they pleased;
+god in public, and devil in their epigrams, if it so seemed good to
+them. It was difficult for him to know precisely how to act, but he
+declined his divine honors; and he declined the ten years' consulship.
+Though he was sole consul for the year, he took a colleague, and when
+his colleague died on the last day of office, he named another, that
+the customary forms might be observed. Let him do what he would, malice
+still misconstrued him. Cicero, the most prominent now of his
+senatorial flatterers, was the sharpest with his satire behind the
+scenes. "Caesar," he said, "had given so active a consul that there was
+no sleeping under him." [7]
+
+Caesar was more and more weary of it. He knew that the Senate hated
+him; he knew that they would kill him, if they could. All these men
+whose lips were running over with adulation, were longing to drive
+their daggers into him. He was willing to live, if they would let him
+live; but, for himself, he had ceased to care about it. He disdained to
+take precautions against assassination. On his first return from Spain,
+he had been attended by a guard; but he dismissed it in spite of the
+remonstrances of his friends, and went daily into the senate-house
+alone and unarmed. He spoke often of his danger with entire openness;
+but he seemed to think that he had some security in the certainty that,
+if he was murdered, the Civil War would break out again, as if personal
+hatred was ever checked by fear of consequences. It was something to
+feel that he had not lived in vain. The Gauls were settling into
+peaceful habits. The soil of Gaul was now as well cultivated as Italy.
+Barges loaded with merchandise were passing freely along the Rhone and
+the Saone, the Loire, the Moselle, and the Rhine. [8] The best of the
+chiefs were made senators of Rome, and the people were happy and
+contented. What he had done for Gaul he might, if he lived, do for
+Spain, and Africa, and the East. But it was the concern of others more
+than of himself. "Better," he said, "to die at once than live in
+perpetual dread of treason."
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 44.] But Caesar was aware that conspiracies were being
+formed against him; and that he spoke freely of his danger, appears
+from a speech delivered in the middle of the winter by Cicero in
+Caesar's presence. It has been seen that Cicero had lately spoken of
+Caesar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the State. It has been
+seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the readiest
+means of ending it. He asserted afterward that he had not been
+consulted when the murder was actually accomplished; but the
+perpetrators were assured of his approbation, and when Caesar was
+killed he deliberately claimed for himself a share of the guilt, if
+guilt there could be in what he regarded as the most glorious
+achievement in human history,[9] It maybe assumed, therefore, that
+Cicero's views upon the subject had remained unchanged since the
+beginning of the Civil War, and that his sentiments were no secret
+among his intimate friends.
+
+Cicero is the second great figure in the history of the time. He has
+obtained the immortality which he so much desired, and we are,
+therefore, entitled and obliged to scrutinize his conduct with a
+niceness which would be ungracious and unnecessary in the case of a
+less distinguished man. After Pharsalia he had concluded that the
+continuance of the war would be unjustifiable. He had put himself in
+communication with Antony and Caesar's friend and secretary Oppius, and
+at their advice he went from Greece to Brindisi, to remain there till
+Caesar's pleasure should be known. He was very miserable. He had joined
+Pompey with confessed reluctance, and family quarrels had followed on
+Pompey's defeat. His brother Quintus, whom he had drawn away from
+Caesar, regretted having taken his advice. His sons and nephews were
+equally querulous and dissatisfied; and for himself, he dared not
+appear in the streets of Brindisi, lest Caesar's soldiers should insult
+or injure him. Antony, however, encouraged him to hope. He assured him
+that Caesar was well disposed to him, and would not only pardon him,
+but would show him every possible favor,[10] and with these
+expectations he contrived for a while to comfort himself. He had
+regarded the struggle as over, and Caesar's side as completely
+victorious. But gradually the scene seemed to change. Caesar was long
+in returning. The optimates rallied in Africa, and there was again a
+chance that they might win after all. His first thought was always for
+himself. If the constitution survived under Caesar, as he was inclined
+to think that in some shape it would, he had expected that a place
+would be found in it for him.[11] But how if Caesar himself should not
+survive? How if he should be killed in Alexandria? How if he should be
+defeated by Metellus Scipio? He described himself as excruciated with
+anxiety.[12] Through the year which followed he wavered from day to day
+as the prospect varied, now cursing his folly for having followed the
+Senate to Greece, now for having deserted them, blaming himself at one
+time for his indecision, at another for having committed himself to
+either side.[13]
+
+Gradually his alarms subsided. The Senate's party was finally
+overthrown. Caesar wrote to him affectionately, and allowed him to
+retain his title as Imperator. When it appeared that he had nothing
+personally to fear, he recovered his spirits, and he recovered along
+with them a hope that the constitution might be restored, after all, by
+other means than war. "Caesar could not live forever, and there were
+many ways in which a man might die."
+
+Caesar had dined with him in the country, on his way home from Spain.
+He had been as kind as Cicero could wish, but had avoided politics.
+When Caesar went on to Rome, Cicero followed him, resumed his place in
+the Senate, which was then in the full fervor of its affected
+adulation, and took an early opportunity of speaking. Marcus Marcellus
+had been in exile since Pharsalia. The Senate had interceded for his
+pardon, and Caesar had granted it, and granted it with a completeness
+which exceeded expectation. Cicero rose to thank him in his presence,
+in terms which most certainly did not express his real feelings,
+whatever may have been the purpose which they concealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"He had long been silent," he said, "not from fear, but from grief and
+diffidence. The time for silence was past. Thenceforward he intended to
+speak his thoughts freely in his ancient manner. Such kindness, such
+unheard-of generosity, such moderation in power, such incredible and
+almost godlike wisdom, he felt himself unable to pass over without
+giving expression to his emotions." [14] No flow of genius, no faculty
+of speech or writing, could adequately describe Caesar's actions, yet
+on that day he had achieved a yet greater glory. Often had Cicero
+thought, and often had said to others, that no king or general had ever
+performed such exploits as Caesar. In war, however, officers, soldiers,
+allies, circumstances, fortune, claimed a share in the result; and
+there were victories greater than could be won on the battlefield,
+where the honor was undivided.
+
+"To have conquered yourself," he said, addressing Caesar directly, "to
+have restrained your resentment, not only to have restored a
+distinguished opponent to his civil rights, but to have given him more
+than he had lost, is a deed which raises you above humanity, and makes
+you most like to God. Your wars will be spoken of to the end of time in
+all lands and tongues; but in tales of battles we are deafened by the
+shoutings and the blare of trumpets. Justice, mercy, moderation,
+wisdom, we admire even in fiction, or in persons whom we have never
+seen; how much more must we admire them in you, who are present here
+before us, and in whose face we read a purpose to restore us to such
+remnants of our liberty as have survived the war! How can we praise,
+how can we love you sufficiently? By the gods, the very walls of this
+house are eloquent with gratitude.... No conqueror in a civil war was
+ever so mild as you have been. To-day you have surpassed yourself. You
+have overcome victory in giving back the spoils to the conquered. By
+the laws of war we were under your feet, to be destroyed, if you so
+willed. We live by your goodness.... Observe, conscript fathers, how
+comprehensive is Caesar's sentence. We were in arms against him, how
+impelled I know not. He cannot acquit us of mistake, but he holds us
+innocent of crime, for he has given us back Marcellus at your entreaty.
+Me, of his own free will, he has restored to myself and to my country.
+He has brought back the most illustrious survivors of the war. You see
+them gathered here in this full assembly. He has not regarded them as
+enemies. He has concluded that you entered into the conflict with him
+rather in ignorance and unfounded fear than from any motives of
+ambition or hostility.
+
+"For me, I was always for peace. Caesar was for peace, so was
+Marcellus. There were violent men among you, whose success Marcellus
+dreaded. Each party had a cause. I will not compare them. I will
+compare rather the victory of the one with the possible victory of the
+other. Caesar's wars ended with the last battle. The sword is now
+sheathed. Those whom we have lost fell in the fury of the fight, not
+one by the resentment of the conqueror. Caesar, if he could, would
+bring back to life many who lie dead. For the others, we all feared
+what they might do if the day had been theirs. They not only threatened
+those who were in arms against them, but those who sate quietly at
+home."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cicero then said that he had heard a fear of assassination expressed by
+Caesar. By whom, he asked, could such an attempt be made? Not by those
+whom he had forgiven, for none were more attached to him. Not by his
+comrades, for they could not be so mad as to conspire against the
+general to whom they owed all that they possessed. Not by his enemies,
+for he had no enemies. Those who had been his enemies were either dead
+through their own obstinacy, or were alive through his generosity. It
+was possible, however, he admitted, that there might be some such
+danger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Be you, therefore," he said, again speaking to Caesar,--"be you
+watchful, and let us be diligent. Who is so careless of his own and the
+common welfare as to be ignorant that on your preservation his own
+depends, and that all our lives are bound up in yours? I, as in duty
+bound, think of you by night and day; I ponder over the accidents of
+humanity, the uncertainty of health, the frailty of our common nature,
+and I grieve to think that the Commonwealth which ought to be immortal
+should hang on the breath of a single man. If to these perils be added
+a nefarious conspiracy, to what god can we turn for help? War has laid
+prostrate our institutions; you alone can restore them. The courts of
+justice need to be reconstituted, credit to be recovered, license to be
+repressed, the thinned ranks of the citizens to be repaired. The bonds
+of society are relaxed. In such a war, and with such a temper in men's
+hearts, the State must have lost many of its greatest ornaments, be the
+event what it would. These wounds need healing, and you alone can heal
+them. With sorrow I have heard you say that you have lived long enough.
+For nature it may be that you have, and perhaps for glory. But for your
+country you have not. Put away, I beseech you, this contempt of death.
+Be not wise at our expense. You repeat often, I am told, that you do
+not wish for longer life. I believe you mean it; nor should I blame
+you, if you had to think only of yourself. But by your actions you have
+involved the welfare of each citizen and of the whole Commonwealth in
+your own. Your work is unfinished: the foundations are hardly laid, and
+is it for you to be measuring calmly your term of days by your own
+desires?... If, Caesar, the result of your immortal deeds is to be no
+more than this, that, after defeating your enemies, you are to leave
+the State in the condition in which it now stands, your splendid
+qualities will be more admired than honored. It remains for you to
+rebuild the constitution. Live till this is done. Live till you see
+your country tranquil, and at peace. Then, when your last debt is paid,
+when you have filled the measure of your existence to overflowing, then
+say, if you will, that you have had enough of life. Your life is not
+the life which is bounded by the union of your soul and body, your life
+is that which shall continue fresh in the memory of ages to come, which
+posterity will cherish, and eternity itself keep guard over. Much has
+been done which men will admire: much remains to be done, which they
+can praise. They will read with wonder of empires and provinces, of the
+Rhine, the ocean, and the Nile, of battles without number, of amazing
+victories, of countless monuments and triumphs; but unless this
+Commonwealth be wisely re-established in institutions by you bestowed
+upon us, your name will travel widely over the world, but will have no
+stable habitation; and those who come after us will dispute about you
+as we have disputed. Some will extol you to the skies, others will find
+something wanting and the most important element of all. Remember the
+tribunal before which you will hereafter stand. The ages that are to be
+will try you, with minds, it may be, less prejudiced than ours,
+uninfluenced either by desire to please you or by envy of your
+greatness.
+
+"Our dissensions have been crushed by the arms, and extinguished by the
+lenity of the conqueror. Let all of us, not the wise only, but every
+citizen who has ordinary sense, be guided by a single desire. Salvation
+there can be none for us, Caesar, unless you are preserved. Therefore,
+we exhort you, we beseech you, to watch over your own safety. You
+believe that you are threatened by a secret peril. From my own heart I
+say, and I speak for others as well as myself, we will stand as
+sentries over your safety, and we will interpose our own bodies between
+you and any danger which may menace you." [15]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such, in compressed form, for necessary brevity, but deserving to be
+studied in its own brilliant language, was the speech delivered by
+Cicero, in the Senate in Caesar's presence, within a few weeks of his
+murder. The authenticity of it has been questioned, but without result
+beyond creating a doubt whether it was edited and corrected, according
+to his usual habit, by Cicero himself. The external evidence of
+genuineness is as good as for any of his other orations, and the Senate
+possessed no other speaker known to us, to whom, with any probability,
+so splendid an illustration of Roman eloquence could be assigned.
+
+Now, therefore, let us turn to the second Philippic delivered in the
+following summer when the deed had been accomplished which Cicero
+professed to hold in so much abhorrence. Then, fiercely challenging for
+himself a share in the glory of tyrannicide, he exclaimed:
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What difference is there between advice beforehand and approbation
+afterward? What does it matter whether I wished it to be done, or
+rejoiced that it was done? Is there a man, save Antony and those who
+were glad to have Caesar reign over us, that did not wish him to be
+killed, or that disapproved when he was killed? All were in fault, for
+all the _Boni_ joined in killing him, so far as lay in them. Some were
+not consulted, some wanted courage, some opportunity. All were
+willing," [16]
+
+Expressions so vehemently opposite compel us to compare them. Was it
+that Cicero was so carried away by the stream of his oratory, that he
+spoke like an actor, under artificial emotion which the occasion called
+for? Was it that he was deliberately trying to persuade Caesar that
+from the Senate he had nothing to fear, and so to put him off his
+guard? If, as he declared, he himself and the _Boni_, who were
+listening to him, desired so unanimously to see Caesar killed, how else
+can his language be interpreted? Cicero stands before the tribunal of
+posterity, to which he was so fond of appealing. In him, too, while
+"there is much to admire," "something may be found wanting."
+
+Meanwhile the Senate went its way, still inventing fresh titles and
+conferring fresh powers. Caesar said that these vain distinctions
+needed limitation, rather than increase; but the flattery had a purpose
+in it, and would not be checked.
+
+One day a deputation waited on him with the proffer of some "new
+marvel." [17] He was sitting in front of the Temple of Venus Genetrix,
+and when the senators approached he neglected to rise to receive them.
+Some said that he was moving, but that Cornelius Balbus pulled him
+down. Others said that he was unwell. Pontius Aquila, a tribune, had
+shortly before refused to rise to Caesar. The senators thought he meant
+to read them a lesson in return. He intended to be king, it seemed; the
+constitution was gone, another Tarquin was about to seize the throne of
+Republican Rome.
+
+Caesar was king in fact, and to recognize facts is more salutary than
+to ignore them. An acknowledgment of Caesar as king might have made the
+problem of reorganization easier than it proved. The army had thought
+of it. He was on the point of starting for Parthia, and a prophecy had
+said that the Parthians could only be conquered by a king.--But the
+Roman people were sensitive about names. Though their liberties were
+restricted for the present, they liked to hope that one day the Forum
+might recover its greatness. The Senate, meditating on the insult which
+they had received, concluded that Caesar might be tempted, and that if
+they could bring him to consent he would lose the people's hearts. They
+had already made him Dictator for life; they voted next that he really
+should be King, and, not formally perhaps, but tentatively, they
+offered him the crown. He was sounded as to whether he would accept it.
+He understood the snare, and refused. What was to be done next? He
+would soon be gone to the East. Rome and its hollow adulations would
+lie behind him, and their one opportunity would be gone also. They
+employed some one to place a diadem on the head of his statue which
+stood upon the Rostra.[18] It was done publicly, in the midst of a vast
+crowd, in Caesar's presence. Two eager tribunes tore the diadem down,
+and ordered the offender into custody. The treachery of the Senate was
+not the only danger. His friends in the army had the same ambition for
+him. A few days later, as he was riding through the streets, he was
+saluted as King by the mob. Caesar answered calmly that he was not King
+but Caesar, and there the matter might have ended; but the tribunes
+rushed into the crowd to arrest the leaders; a riot followed, for which
+Caesar blamed them; they complained noisily; he brought their conduct
+before the Senate, and they were censured and suspended. But suspicion
+was doing its work, and honest republican hearts began to heat and
+kindle.
+
+The kingship assumed a more serious form on the 15th of February at the
+Lupercalia--the ancient carnival. Caesar was in his chair, in his
+consular purple, wearing a wreath of bay, wrought in gold. The honor of
+the wreath was the only distinction which he had accepted from the
+Senate with pleasure. He retained a remnant of youthful vanity, and the
+twisted leaves concealed his baldness. Antony, his colleague in the
+consulship, approached with a tiara, and placed it on Caesar's head,
+saying, "The people give you this by my hand." That Antony had no
+sinister purpose is obvious. He perhaps spoke for the army;[19] or it
+may be that Caesar himself suggested Antony's action, that he might end
+the agitation of so dangerous a subject. He answered in a loud voice
+"that the Romans had no king but God," and ordered that the tiara
+should be taken to the Capitol, and placed on the statue of Jupiter
+Olympius. The crowd burst into an enthusiastic cheer; and an
+inscription on a brass tablet recorded that the Roman people had
+offered Caesar the crown by the hands of the consul, and that Caesar
+had refused it.
+
+The question of the kingship was over; but a vague alarm had been
+created, which answered the purpose of the optimates. Caesar was at
+their mercy any day. They had sworn to maintain all his acts. They had
+sworn, after Cicero's speech, individually and collectively to defend
+his life. Caesar, whether he believed them sincere or not, had taken
+them at their word, and came daily to the Senate unarmed and without a
+guard. He had a protection in the people. If the optimates killed him
+without preparation, they knew that they would be immediately
+massacred. But an atmosphere of suspicion and uncertainty had been
+successfully generated, of which they determined to take immediate
+advantage. There were no troops in the city. Lepidus, Caesar's master
+of the horse, who had been appointed governor of Gaul, was outside the
+gates, with a few cohorts; but Lepidus was a person of feeble
+character, and they trusted to be able to deal with him.
+
+Sixty senators, in all, were parties to the immediate conspiracy. Of
+these nine-tenths were members of the old faction whom Caesar had
+pardoned, and who, of all his acts, resented most that he had been able
+to pardon them. They were the men who had stayed at home, like Cicero,
+from the fields of Thapsus and Munda, and had pretended penitence and
+submission that they might take an easier road to rid themselves of
+their enemy. Their motives were the ambition of their order and
+personal hatred of Caesar; but they persuaded themselves that they were
+animated by patriotism, and as, in their hands, the Republic had been a
+mockery of liberty, so they aimed at restoring it by a mock
+tyrannicide. Their oaths and their professions were nothing to them. If
+they were entitled to kill Caesar, they were entitled equally to
+deceive him. No stronger evidence is needed of the demoralization of
+the Roman Senate than the completeness with which they were able to
+disguise from themselves the baseness of their treachery. One man only
+they were able to attract into co-operation who had a reputation for
+honesty, and could be conceived, without absurdity, to be animated by a
+disinterested purpose.
+
+Marcus Brutus was the son of Cato's sister Servilia, the friend, and a
+scandal said the mistress, of Caesar. That he was Caesar's son was not
+too absurd for the credulity of Roman drawing-rooms. Brutus himself
+could not have believed in the existence of such a relation, for he was
+deeply attached to his mother; and although, under the influence of his
+uncle Cato, he had taken the Senate's side in the war, he had accepted
+afterward not pardon only from Caesar, but favors of many kinds, for
+which he had professed, and probably felt, some real gratitude. He had
+married Cato's daughter Portia, and on Cato's death had published a
+eulogy upon him. Caesar left him free to think and write what he
+pleased. He had made him praetor; he had nominated him to the
+governorship of Macedonia. Brutus was perhaps the only member of the
+senatorial party in whom Caesar felt genuine confidence. His known
+integrity, and Caesar's acknowledged regard for him, made his accession
+to the conspiracy an object of particular importance. The name of
+Brutus would be a guarantee to the people of rectitude of intention.
+Brutus, as the world went, was of more than average honesty. He had
+sworn to be faithful to Caesar as the rest had sworn, and an oath with
+him was not a thing to be emotionalized away; but he was a fanatical
+republican, a man of gloomy habits, given to dreams and omens, and
+easily liable to be influenced by appeals to visionary feelings. Caius
+Cassius, his brother-in-law, was employed to work upon him. Cassius,
+too, was praetor that year, having been also nominated to office by
+Caesar. He knew Brutus, he knew where and how to move him. He reminded
+him of the great traditions of his name. A Brutus had delivered Rome
+from the Tarquins. The blood of a Brutus was consecrated to liberty.
+This, too, was mockery; Brutus, who expelled the Tarquins, put his sons
+to death, and died childless; Marcus Brutus came of good plebeian
+family, with no glories of tyrannicide about them; but an imaginary
+genealogy suited well with the spurious heroics which veiled the
+motives of Caesar's murderers.
+
+Brutus, once wrought upon, became with Cassius the most ardent in the
+cause which assumed the aspect to him of a sacred duty. Behind them
+were the crowd of senators of the familiar faction, and others worse
+than they, who had not even the excuse of having been partisans of the
+beaten cause; men who had fought at Caesar's side till the war was
+over, and believed, like Labienus, that to them Caesar owed his
+fortune, and that he alone ought not to reap the harvest. One of these
+was Trebonius, who had misconducted himself in Spain, and was smarting
+under the recollection of his own failures. Trebonius had long before
+sounded Antony on the desirableness of removing their chief. Antony,
+though he remained himself true, had unfortunately kept his friend's
+counsel. Trebonius had been named by Caesar for a future consulship,
+but a distant reward was too little for him. Another and a yet baser
+traitor was Decimus Brutus, whom Caesar valued and trusted beyond all
+his officers, whom he had selected as guardian for Augustus, and had
+noticed, as was seen afterward, with special affection in his will. The
+services of these men were invaluable to the conspirators on account of
+their influence with the army. Decimus Brutus, like Labienus, had
+enriched himself in Caesar's campaigns, and had amassed near half a
+million of English money.[20] It may have been easy to persuade him and
+Trebonius that a grateful Republic would consider no recompense too
+large to men who would sacrifice their commander to their country. To
+Caesar they could be no more than satellites; the first prizes of the
+Empire would be offered to the choice of the saviours of the
+constitution.
+
+So composed was this memorable band, to whom was to fall the bad
+distinction of completing the ruin of the senatorial rule. Caesar would
+have spared something of it; enough, perhaps, to have thrown up shoots
+again as soon as he had himself passed away in the common course of
+nature. By combining in a focus the most hateful characteristics of the
+order, by revolting the moral instincts of mankind by ingratitude and
+treachery, they stripped their cause by their own hands of the false
+glamour which they hoped to throw over it. The profligacy and avarice,
+the cynical disregard of obligation, which had marked the Senate's
+supremacy for a century, had exhibited abundantly their unfitness for
+the high functions which had descended to them; but custom and natural
+tenderness for a form of government, the past history of which had been
+so glorious, might have continued still to shield them from the penalty
+of their iniquities. The murder of Caesar filled the measure of their
+crimes, and gave the last and necessary impulse to the closing act of
+the revolution.
+
+Thus the ides of March drew near. Caesar was to set out in a few days
+for Parthia. Decimus Brutus was going, as governor, to the north of
+Italy, Lepidus to Gaul, Marcus Brutus to Macedonia, and Trebonius to
+Asia Minor. Antony, Caesar's colleague in the consulship, was to remain
+in Italy. Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law, was to be consul with him as
+soon as Caesar should have left for the East. The foreign appointments
+were all made for five years, and in another week the party would be
+scattered. The time for action had come, if action there was to be.
+Papers were dropped in Brutus's room, bidding him awake from his sleep.
+On the statue of Junius Brutus some hot republican wrote "Would that
+thou wast alive!" The assassination in itself was easy, for Caesar
+would take no precautions. So portentous an intention could not be kept
+entirely secret; many friends warned him to beware; but he disdained
+too heartily the worst that his enemies could do to him to vex himself
+with thinking of them, and he forbade the subject to be mentioned any
+more in his presence. Portents, prophecies, soothsayings, frightful
+aspects in the sacrifices, natural growths of alarm and excitement,
+were equally vain. "Am I to be frightened," he said, in answer to some
+report of the haruspices, "because a sheep is without a heart?"
+
+[Sidenote: March 14, B.C. 44.] An important meeting of the Senate had
+been called for the ides (the 15th) of the month. The Pontifices, it
+was whispered, intended to bring on again the question of the kingship
+before Caesar's departure. The occasion would be appropriate. The
+senate-house itself was a convenient scene of operations. The
+conspirators met at supper the evening before at Cassius's house.
+Cicero, to his regret, was not invited. The plan was simple, and was
+rapidly arranged. Caesar would attend unarmed. The senators not in the
+secret would be unarmed also. The party who intended to act were to
+provide themselves with poniards, which could be easily concealed in
+their paper boxes. So far all was simple; but a question rose whether
+Caesar only was to be killed, or whether Antony and Lepidus were to be
+despatched along with him. They decided that Caesar's death would be
+sufficient. To spill blood without necessity would mar, it was thought,
+the sublimity of their exploit. Some of them liked Antony. None
+supposed that either he or Lepidus would be dangerous when Caesar was
+gone. In this resolution Cicero thought that they made a fatal
+mistake;[21] fine emotions were good in their place, in the perorations
+of speeches and such like; Antony, as Cicero admitted, had been
+signally kind to him; but the killing Caesar was a serious business,
+and his friends should have died along with him. It was determined
+otherwise. Antony and Lepidus were not to be touched. For the rest, the
+assassins had merely to be in their places in the Senate in good time.
+When Caesar entered, Trebonius was to detain Antony in conversation at
+the door. The others were to gather about Caesar's chair on pretence of
+presenting a petition, and so could make an end. A gang of gladiators
+were to be secreted in the adjoining theatre to be ready should any
+unforeseen difficulty present itself.
+
+The same evening, the 14th of March, Caesar was at a "Last Supper" at
+the house of Lepidus. The conversation turned on death, and on the kind
+of death which was most to be desired. Caesar, who was signing papers
+while the rest wore talking, looked up and said, "A sudden one." When
+great men die, imagination insists that all nature shall have felt the
+shock. Strange stories were told in after years of the uneasy labors of
+the elements that night.
+
+  A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
+  The graves did open, and the sheeted dead
+  Did squeak and jibber in the Roman streets.
+
+The armor of Mars, which stood in the hall of the Pontifical Palace,
+crashed down upon the pavement. The door of Caesar's room flew open.
+Calpurnia dreamt her husband was murdered, and that she saw him
+ascending into heaven, and received by the hand of God.[22] In the
+morning the sacrifices were again unfavorable. Caesar was restless.
+Some natural disorder affected his spirits, and his spirits were
+reacting on his body. Contrary to his usual habit, he gave way to
+depression. He decided, at his wife's entreaty, that he would not
+attend the Senate that day.
+
+[Sidenote: March 15, B.C. 44.] The house was full. The conspirators
+were in their places with their daggers ready. Attendants came in to
+remove Caesar's chair. It was announced that he was not coming. Delay
+might be fatal. They conjectured that he already suspected something. A
+day's respite, and all might be discovered. His familiar friend whom he
+trusted--the coincidence is striking!--was employed to betray him.
+Decimus Brutus, whom it was impossible for him to distrust, went to
+entreat his attendance, giving reasons to which he knew that Caesar
+would listen, unless the plot had been actually betrayed. It was now
+eleven in the forenoon. Caesar shook off his uneasiness, and rose to
+go. As he crossed the hall, his statue fell, and shivered on the
+stones. Some servant, perhaps, had heard whispers, and wished to warn
+him. As he still passed on, a stranger thrust a scroll into his hand,
+and begged him to read it on the spot. It contained a list of the
+conspirators, with a clear account of the plot. He supposed it to be a
+petition, and placed it carelessly among his other papers. The fate of
+the Empire hung upon a thread, but the thread was not broken, As Caesar
+had lived to reconstruct the Roman world, so his death was necessary to
+finish the work. He went on to the Curia, and the senators said to
+themselves that the augurs had foretold his fate, but he would not
+listen; he was doomed for his "contempt of religion." [23]
+
+Antony, who was in attendance, was detained, as had been arranged, by
+Trebonius. Caesar entered, and took his seat. His presence awed men, in
+spite of themselves, and the conspirators had determined to act at
+once, lest they should lose courage to act at all. He was familiar and
+easy of access. They gathered round him. He knew them all. There was
+not one from whom he had not a right to expect some sort of gratitude,
+and the movement suggested no suspicion. One had a story to tell him;
+another some favor to ask. Tullius Cimber, whom he had just made
+governor of Bithynia, then came close to him, with some request which
+he was unwilling to grant. Cimber caught his gown, as if in entreaty,
+and dragged it from his shoulders. Cassius,[24] who was standing
+behind, stabbed him in the throat. He started up with a cry, and caught
+Cassius's arm. Another poniard entered his breast, giving a mortal
+wound. He looked round, and seeing not one friendly face, but only a
+ring of daggers pointing at him, he drew his gown over his head,
+gathered the folds about him that he might fall decently, and sank down
+without uttering another word,[25] Cicero was present. The feelings
+with which he watched the scene are unrecorded, but may easily be
+imagined. Waving his dagger, dripping with Caesar's blood, Brutus
+shouted to Cicero by name, congratulating him that liberty was
+restored.[26] The Senate rose with shrieks and confusion, and rushed
+into the Forum. The crowd outside caught the words that Caesar was
+dead, and scattered to their houses. Antony, guessing that those who
+had killed Caesar would not spare himself, hurried off into
+concealment. The murderers, bleeding some of them from wounds which
+they had given one another in their eagerness, followed, crying that
+the tyrant was dead, and that Rome was free; and the body of the great
+Caesar was left alone in the house where a few weeks before Cicero told
+him that he was so necessary to his country that every senator would
+die before harm should reach him!
+
+
+[1] Apparently when Caesar touched there on his way to Egypt, after
+    Pharsalia. Cicero says (_Philippic_ ii. 11): "Quid? C.
+    Cassius ... qui etiam sine his clarissimis viris, hanc rem in Cilicia
+    ad ostium fluminis Cydni confecisset, si ille ad eam ripam quam
+    constituerat, non ad contrariam, navi appulisset."
+
+[2] To be distinguished from Publius Ligarius, who had been put to death
+    before Thapsus.
+
+[3] The Gauls were especially obnoxious, and epigrams were circulated to
+    insult them:--
+      "Gallos Caesar in triumphum ducit, idem in Curiam.
+      Galli braccas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumpserunt"
+
+      SUETONIUS, _Vita Jullii Caesaris_, 80.
+
+[4] Suetonius.
+
+[5] The fifth, dating the beginning of the year, in the old style, from
+    March.
+
+[6] Dion Cassius.
+
+[7] The second consul who had been put in held office but for a few
+    hours.
+
+[8] Dion Cassius.
+
+[9] See the 2nd _Philippic_, passim. In a letter to Decimus Brutus,
+    he says: "Quare hortatione tu quidem non egos, si ne illa quidem in
+    re, quae a te gesta est post hominum memoriam maxima, hortatorem
+    desiderasti." _Ad Fam_. xi. 5.
+
+[10] _To Atticus_, xi. 5, 6.
+
+[11] _Ad Caelium, Ad Fam_. ii. 16.
+
+[12] _To Atticus_, xi. 7.
+
+[13] See _To Atticus_, xi. 7-9; _To Terentia, Ad Fam_. xiv. 12.
+
+[14] "Tantam enim mansuetudinem, tam inusitatam inauditamque clementiam,
+    tantum in summa potestate rerum omnium modum, tam denique incredibilem
+    sapientiam ac paene divinam tacitus nullo modo praeterire
+    possum."--_Pro Marco Marcello_, 1.
+
+[15] _Pro Marco Marcello_, abridged.
+
+[16] "Non intelligis, si id quod me arguis voluisse interfici Caesarem
+    crimen sit, etiam laetatum esse morte Caesaris crimen esse? Quid enim
+    interest inter suasorem facti et approbatorem? Aut quid refert utrum
+    voluerim fieri an gaudeam factum? Ecquis est igitur te excepto et iis
+    qui illum regnare gaudebant, qui illud aut fieri noluerit, aut factum
+    improbarit? Omnes enim in culpa. Etenim omnes boni quantum in ipsis
+    fuit Caesarem occiderunt. Aliis consilium, aliis animus, aliis occasio
+    defuit. Voluntas nemini."--_2nd Philippic_, 12.
+
+[17] Dion Cassius.
+
+[18] So Dion Cassius states, on what authority we know not. Suetonius says
+    that as Caesar was returning from the Latin festival some one placed a
+    laurel crown on the statue, tied with a white riband.
+
+[19] The fact is certain. Cicero taunted Antony with it in the Senate,
+in
+    the Second Philippic.
+
+[20] "Cum ad rem publicam liberandam accessi, HS. mihi fuit
+    quadringenties amplius."--_Decimus Brutus to Cicero,
+    Ad Fam_. xi. 10.
+
+[21] "Vellem Idibus Martiis me ad coenam invitasses. Reliquiarum nihil
+    fuisset."--_Ad Cassium, Ad Fam_. xii. 4. And again: "Quam vellem
+    ad illas pulcherrimas epulas me Idibus Martiis invitasses! Reliquiarum
+    nihil haberemus."--_Ad Trebonium, Ad Fam_. x. 28.
+
+[22] Dion Cassius, _C. Julius Caesar_, xliv. 17.
+
+[23] "Spreta religione."--Suetonius.
+
+[24] Not perhaps Caius Cassius, but another. Suetonius says "alter e
+    Cassiis."
+
+[25] So says Suetonius, the best extant authority, who refers to the
+    famous words addressed to Brutus only as a legend: "Atque ita tribus
+    et viginti plagis confossus est, uno modo ad primum ictum gemitu sine
+    voce edito. Etsi tradiderunt quidam Marco Bruto irruenti dixisse
+    [Greek: kai su ei ekeinon kai su teknon]"--_Julius Caesar_, 82.
+
+[26] "Cruentum alte extollens Marcus Brutus pugionem, Ciceronem
+    nominatim exclamavit atque ei recuperatam libertatem est
+    gratulatus."--_Philippic ii_. 12.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+[Sidenote: March 16, B.C. 44.] The tyrannicides, as the murderers of
+Caesar called themselves, had expected that the Roman mob would be
+caught by the cry of liberty, and would hail them as the deliverers of
+their country. They found that the people did not respond as they had
+anticipated. The city was stunned. The Forum was empty. The gladiators,
+whom they had secreted in the Temple, broke out and plundered the
+unprotected booths. A dead and ominous silence prevailed everywhere. At
+length a few citizens collected in knots. Brutus spoke, and Cassius
+spoke. They extolled their old constitution. They said that Caesar had
+overthrown it; that they had slain him, not from private hatred or
+private interest, but to restore the liberties of Rome. The audience
+was dead and cold. No answering shouts came back to reassure them. The
+citizens could not forget that these men who spoke so fairly had a few
+days before fawned on Caesar as the saviour of the Empire, and, as if
+human honors were too little, had voted a temple to him as a god. The
+fire would not kindle. Lepidus came in with troops, and occupied the
+Forum. The conspirators withdrew into the Capitol, where Cicero and
+others joined them, and the night was passed in earnest discussion what
+next was to be done. They had intended to declare that Caesar had been
+a tyrant, to throw his body into the Tiber, and to confiscate his
+property to the State. They discovered to their consternation that, if
+Caesar was a tyrant, all his acts would be invalidated. The praetors
+and tribunes held their offices, the governors their provinces, under
+Caesar's nomination. If Caesar's acts were set aside, Decimus Brutus
+was not governor of North Italy, nor Marcus Brutus of Macedonia; nor
+was Dolabella consul, as he had instantly claimed to be on Caesar's
+death. Their names, and the names of many more whom Caesar had
+promoted, would have to be laid before the Comitia, and in the doubtful
+humor of the people they little liked the risk. That the dilemma should
+have been totally unforeseen was characteristic of the men and their
+capacity.
+
+Nor was this the worst. Lands had been allotted to Caesar's troops.
+Many thousands of colonists were waiting to depart for Carthage and
+Corinth and other places where settlements had been provided for them.
+These arrangements would equally fall through, and it was easy to know
+what would follow. Antony and Lepidus, too, had to be reckoned with.
+Antony, as the surviving consul, was the supreme lawful authority in
+the city; and Lepidus and his soldiers might have a word to say if the
+body of their great commander was flung into the river as the corpse of
+a malefactor. Interest and fear suggested more moderate counsels. The
+conspirators determined that Caesar's appointments must stand; his
+acts, it seemed, must stand also; and his remains, therefore, must be
+treated with respect. Imagination took another flight. Caesar's death
+might be regarded as a sacrifice, an expiatory offering for the sins of
+the nation; and the divided parties might embrace in virtue of the
+atonement. They agreed to send for Antony, and invite him to assist in
+saving society; and they asked Cicero to be their messenger. Cicero,
+great and many as his faults might be, was not a fool. He declined to
+go on so absurd a mission. He knew Antony too well to dream that he
+could be imposed on by fantastic illusions. Antony, he said, would
+promise anything, but if they trusted him, they would have reason to
+repent.[1] Others, however, undertook the office. Antony agreed to meet
+them, and the next morning the Senate was assembled in the Temple of
+Terra.
+
+Antony presided as consul, and after a few words from him Cicero rose.
+He disapproved of the course which his friends were taking; he foresaw
+what must come of it; but he had been overruled, and he made the best
+of what he could not help. He gave a sketch of Roman political history.
+He went back to the secession to Mount Aventine. He spoke of the
+Gracchi, of Saturninus and Glaucia, of Marius and Sylla, of Sertorius
+and Pompey, of Caesar and the still unforgotten Clodius. He described
+the fate of Athens and of other Grecian states into which faction had
+penetrated. If Rome continued divided, the conquerors would rule over
+its ruins; therefore he appealed to the two factions to forget their
+rivalries and to return to peace and concord. But they must decide at
+once, for the signs were already visible of a fresh conflict.
+
+"Caesar is slain," he said. "The Capitol is occupied by the optimates,
+the Forum by soldiers, and the people are full of terror. Is violence
+to be again answered by more violence? These many years we have lived
+less like men than like wild beasts in cycles of recurring revenge. Let
+us forget the past. Let us draw a veil over all that has been done, not
+looking too curiously into the acts of any man. Much may be said to
+show that Caesar deserved his death, and much against those who have
+killed him. But to raise the question will breed fresh quarrels; and if
+we are wise we shall regard the scene which we have witnessed as a
+convulsion of nature which is now at an end. Let Caesar's ordinances,
+let Caesar's appointments be maintained. None such must be heard of
+again. But what is done cannot be undone." [2]
+
+Admirable advice, were it as easy to act on good counsel as to give it.
+The murder of such a man as Caesar was not to be so easily smoothed
+over. But the delusive vision seemed for a moment to please. The Senate
+passed an act of oblivion. The agitation in the army was quieted when
+the men heard that their lands were secure. But there were two other
+questions which required an answer, and an immediate one. Caesar's
+body, after remaining till evening on the floor of the senate-house,
+had been carried home in the dusk in a litter by three of his servants,
+and was now lying in his palace. If it was not to be thrown into the
+Tiber, what was to be done with it? Caesar had left a will, which was
+safe with his other papers in the hands of Antony. Was the will to be
+read and recognized? Though Cicero had advised in the Senate that the
+discussion whether Caesar had deserved death should not be raised, yet
+it was plain to him and to every one that, unless Caesar was held
+guilty of conspiring against the Constitution, the murder was and would
+be regarded as a most execrable crime. He dreaded the effect of a
+public funeral. He feared that the will might contain provisions which
+would rouse the passions of the people. Though Caesar was not for
+various reasons to be pronounced a tyrant, Cicero advised that he
+should be buried privately, as if his name was under a cloud, and that
+his property should be escheated to the nation. But the humor of
+conciliation and the theory of "the atoning sacrifice" had caught the
+Senate. Caesar had done great things for his country. It would please
+the army that he should have an honorable sepulture.
+
+[Sidenote: March, B.C. 44.] If they had refused, the result would not
+have been greatly different. Sooner or later, when the stunning effects
+of the shock had passed off, the murder must have appeared to Rome and
+Italy in its true colors. The optimates talked of the Constitution. The
+Constitution in their hands had been a parody of liberty. Caesar's
+political life had been spent in wresting from them the powers which
+they had abused. Caesar had punished the oppressors of the provinces.
+Caesar had forced the nobles to give the people a share of the public
+lands. Caesar had opened the doors of citizenship to the libertini, the
+distant colonists, and the provincials. It was for this that the Senate
+hated him. For this they had fought against him; for this they murdered
+him. No Roman had ever served his country better in peace or war, and
+thus he had been rewarded.
+
+Such thoughts were already working in tens of thousands of breasts. A
+feeling of resentment was fast rising, with as yet no certain purpose
+before it. In this mood the funeral could not fail to lead to some
+fierce explosion. For this reason Antony had pressed for it, and the
+Senate had given their consent.
+
+The body was brought down to the Forum and placed upon the Rostra. The
+dress had not been changed; the gown, gashed with daggers and soaked in
+blood, was still wrapped about it. The will was read first. It reminded
+the Romans that they had been always in Caesar's thoughts, for he had
+left each citizen seventy-five drachmas (nearly L3 of English money),
+and he had left them his gardens on the Tiber as a perpetual recreation
+ground, a possession which Domitius Ahenobarbus had designed for
+himself before Pharsalia. He had made Octavius his general heir; among
+the second heirs, should Octavius fail, he had named Decimus Brutus,
+who had betrayed him. A deep movement of emotion passed through the
+crowd when, besides the consideration for themselves, they heard from
+this record, which could not lie, a proof of the confidence which had
+been so abused. Antony, after waiting for the passion to work, then
+came forward.
+
+Cicero had good reason for his fear of Antony. He was a loose soldier,
+careless in his life, ambitious, extravagant, little more scrupulous
+perhaps than any average Roman gentleman. But for Caesar his affection
+was genuine. The people were in intense expectation. He produced the
+body, all bloody as it had fallen, and he bade a herald first read the
+votes which the Senate had freshly passed, heaping those extravagant
+honors upon Caesar which he had not desired, and the oath which the
+senators had each personally taken to defend him from violence. He then
+spoke--spoke with the natural vehemence of a friend, yet saying nothing
+which was not literally true. The services of Caesar neither needed nor
+permitted the exaggeration of eloquence.
+
+He began with the usual encomiums. He spoke of Caesar's family, his
+birth, his early history, his personal characteristics, his thrifty
+private habits, his public liberality; he described him as generous to
+his friends, forbearing with his enemies, without evil in himself, and
+reluctant to believe evil of others.
+
+"Power in most men," he said, "has brought their faults to light. Power
+in Caesar brought into prominence his excellences. Prosperity did not
+make him insolent for it gave him a sphere which corresponded to his
+nature. His first services in Spain a deserved triumph; of his laws I
+could speak forever. His campaigns in Gaul are known to you all. That
+land from which the Teutons and Cimbri poured over the Alps is now as
+well ordered as Italy. Caesar would have added Germany and Britain to
+your Empire, but his enemies would not have it so. They regarded the
+Commonwealth as the patrimony of themselves. They brought him home.
+They went on with their usurpations till you yourselves required his
+help. He set you free. He set Spain free. He labored for peace with
+Pompey, but Pompey preferred to go into Greece, to bring the powers of
+the East upon you, and he perished in his obstinacy.
+
+"Caesar took no honor to himself for this victory. He abhorred the
+necessity of it. He took no revenge. He praised those who had been
+faithful to Pompey, and he blamed Pharnaces for deserting him. He was
+sorry for Pompey's death, and he treated his murderers as they
+deserved. He settled Egypt and Armenia. He would have disposed of the
+Parthians had not fresh seditions recalled him to Italy. He quelled
+those seditions. He restored peace in Africa and Spain, and again his
+one desire was to spare his fellow-citizens. There was in him an
+'inbred goodness.'[3] He was always the same--never carried away by
+anger, and never spoilt by success. He did not retaliate for the past;
+he never tried by severity to secure himself for the future. His effort
+throughout was to save all who would allow themselves to be saved. He
+repaired old acts of injustice. He restored the families of those who
+had been proscribed by Sylla, but he burnt unread the correspondence of
+Pompey and Scipio, that those whom it compromised might neither suffer
+injury nor fear injury. You honored him as your father; you loved him
+as your benefactor; you made him chief of the State, not being curious
+of titles, but regarding the most which you could give as less than he
+had deserved at your hands. Toward the gods he was High Priest. To you
+he was Consul; to the army he was Imperator; to the enemies of his
+country, Dictator. In sum he was _Pater Patriae_. And this your father,
+your Pontifex, this hero, whose person was declared inviolable, lies
+dead--dead, not by disease or age, not by war or visitation of God, but
+here at home, by conspiracy within your own walls, slain in the
+Senate-house, the warrior unarmed, the peacemaker naked to his foes,
+the righteous judge in the seat of judgment. He whom no foreign enemy
+could hurt has been killed by his fellow-countrymen--he, who had so
+often shown mercy, by those whom he had spared. Where, Caesar, is your
+love for mankind? Where is the sacredness of your life? Where are your
+laws? Here you lie murdered--here in the Forum, through which so often
+you marched in triumph wreathed with garlands; here upon the Rostra
+from which you were wont to address your people. Alas for your gray
+hairs dabbled in blood! alas for this lacerated robe in which you were
+dressed for the sacrifice!"[4]
+
+Antony's words, as he well knew, were a declaration of irreconcilable
+war against the murderers and their friends. As his impassioned
+language did its work the multitude rose into fury. They cursed the
+conspirators. They cursed the Senate who had sate by while the deed was
+being done. They had been moved to fury by the murder of Clodius. Ten
+thousand Clodiuses, had he been all which their imagination painted
+him, could not equal one Caesar. They took on themselves the order of
+the funeral. They surrounded the body, which was reverently raised by
+the officers of the Forum. Part proposed to carry it to the Temple of
+Jupiter, in the Capitol, and to burn it under the eyes of the
+assassins; part to take it into the Senate-house and use the
+meeting-place of the Optimates a second time as the pyre of the
+people's friend. A few legionaries, perhaps to spare the city a general
+conflagration, advised that it should be consumed where it lay. The
+platform was torn up and the broken timbers piled into a heap. Chairs
+and benches were thrown on to it, the whole crowd rushing wildly to add
+a chip or splinter. Actors flung in their dresses, musicians their
+instruments, soldiers their swords. Women added their necklaces and
+scarves. Mothers brought up their children to contribute toys and
+playthings. On the pile so composed the body of Caesar was reduced to
+ashes. The remains were collected with affectionate care and deposited
+in the tomb of the Caesars, in the Campus Martius. The crowd, it was
+observed, was composed largely of libertini and of provincials whom
+Caesar had enfranchised. The demonstrations of sorrow were most
+remarkable among the Jews, crowds of whom continued for many nights to
+collect and wail in the Forum at the scene of the singular ceremony.
+
+When the people were in such a mood, Rome was no place for the
+conspirators. They scattered over the Empire; Decimus Brutus, Marcus
+Brutus, Cassius, Cimber, Trebonius retreated to the provinces which
+Caesar had assigned them, the rest clinging to the shelter of their
+friends. The legions--a striking tribute to Roman discipline--remained
+by their eagles, faithful to their immediate duties, and obedient to
+their officers, till it could be seen how events would turn. Lepidus
+joined the army in Gaul; Antony continued in Rome, holding the
+administration in his hands and watching the action of the Senate.
+Caesar was dead. But Caesar still lived. "It was not possible that the
+grave should hold him." The people said that he was a god, and had gone
+back to heaven, where his star had been seen ascending;[5] his spirit
+remained on earth, and the vain blows of the assassins had been but
+"malicious mockery." "We have killed the king," exclaimed Cicero in the
+bitterness of his disenchantment, "but the kingdom is with us still;"
+"we have taken away the tyrant: the tyranny survives." Caesar had not
+overthrown the oligarchy; their own incapacity, their own selfishness,
+their own baseness had overthrown them. Caesar had been but the
+reluctant instrument of the power which metes out to men the inevitable
+penalties of their own misdeeds. They had dreamt that the Constitution
+was a living force which would revive of itself as soon as its enemy
+was gone. They did not know that it was dead already, and that they had
+themselves destroyed it. The Constitution was but an agreement by which
+the Roman people had consented to abide for their common good. It had
+ceased to be for the common good. The experience of fifty miserable
+years had proved that it meant the supremacy of the rich, maintained by
+the bought votes of demoralized electors. The soil of Italy, the
+industry and happiness of tens of millions of mankind, from the Rhine
+to the Euphrates, had been the spoil of five hundred families and their
+relatives and dependents, of men whose occupation was luxury, and whose
+appetites were for monstrous pleasures. The self-respect of reasonable
+men could no longer tolerate such a rule in Italy or out of it. In
+killing Caesar the optimates had been as foolish as they were
+treacherous; for Caesar's efforts had been to reform the Constitution,
+not to abolish it. The civil war had risen from their dread of his
+second consulship, which they had feared would make an end of their
+corruptions; and that the Constitution should be purged of the poison
+in its veins was the sole condition on which its continuance was
+possible. The obstinacy, the ferocity, the treachery of the aristocracy
+had compelled Caesar to crush them; and the more desperate their
+struggles the more absolute the necessity became. But he alone could
+have restored as much of popular liberty as was consistent with the
+responsibilities of such a government as the Empire required. In Caesar
+alone were combined the intellect and the power necessary for such a
+work; and they had killed him, and in doing so had passed final
+sentence on themselves. Not as realities any more, but as harmless
+phantoms, the forms of the old Republic were henceforth to persist. In
+the army only remained the imperial consciousness of the honor and duty
+of Roman citizens, To the army, therefore, the rule was transferred.
+The Roman nation had grown as the oak grows, self-developed in severe
+morality, each citizen a law to himself, and therefore capable of
+political freedom in an unexampled degree. All organizations destined
+to endure spring from forces inherent in themselves, and must grow
+freely, or they will not grow at all. When the tree reaches maturity,
+decay sets in; if it be left standing, the disintegration of the fibre
+goes swiftly forward; if the stem is severed from the root, the
+destroying power is arrested, and the timber will endure a thousand
+years. So it was with Rome. The Constitution under which the Empire had
+sprung up was poisoned, and was brought to a violent end before it had
+affected materially for evil the masses of the people. The solid
+structure was preserved--not to grow any longer, not to produce a new
+Camillus or a new Regulus, a new Scipio Africanus or a new Tiberius
+Gracchus, but to form an endurable shelter for civilized mankind, until
+a fresh spiritual life was developed out of Palestine to remodel the
+conscience of humanity.
+
+A gleam of hope opened to Cicero in the summer. Octavius, who was in
+Greece at the time of the murder, came to Rome to claim his
+inheritance. He was but eighteen, too young for the burden which was
+thrown upon him; and being unknown, he had the confidence of the
+legions to win. The army, dispersed over the provinces, had as yet no
+collective purpose. Antony, it is possible, was jealous of him, and
+looked on himself as Caesar's true representative and avenger.
+Octavius, finding Antony hostile, or at least indifferent to his
+claims, played with the Senate with cool foresight till he felt the
+ground firm under his feet. Cicero boasted that he would use Octavius
+to ruin Antony, and would throw him over when he had served his
+purpose. "Cicero will learn," Octavius said, when the words were
+reported to him, "that I shall not be played with so easily."
+
+[Sidenote: B.C. 44-43.] [Sidenote: B.C. 43.] For a year the confusion
+lasted; two of Caesar's officers, Hirtius and Pausa, were chosen
+consuls by the senatorial party, to please the legions; and Antony
+contended dubiously with them and Decimus Brutus for some months in the
+North of Italy. But Antony joined Lepidus, and the Gallic legions with
+judicial fitness brought Cicero's dreams to the ground. Cicero's
+friend, Plancus, who commanded in Normandy and Belgium, attempted a
+faint resistance, but was made to yield to the resolution of his
+troops. Octavius and Antony came to an understanding; and Caesar's two
+generals, who were true to his memory, and Octavius, who was the heir
+of his name, crossed the Alps, at the head of the united army of Gaul,
+to punish the murder and restore peace to the world. No resistance was
+possible. Many of the senators, like Cicero, though they had borne no
+part in the assassination, had taken the guilt of it upon themselves by
+the enthusiasm of their approval. They were all men who had sworn
+fidelity to Caesar, and had been ostentatious in their profession of
+devotion to him. It had become too plain that from such persons no
+repentance was to be looked for. They were impelled by a malice or a
+fanaticism which clemency could not touch or reason influence. So long
+as they lived they would still conspire; and any weapons, either of
+open war or secret treachery, would seem justifiable to them in the
+cause which they regarded as sacred. Caesar himself would, no doubt,
+have again pardoned them. Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus were men of
+more common mould. The murderers of Caesar, and those who had either
+instigated them secretly or applauded them afterward, were included in
+a proscription list, drawn by retributive justice on the model of
+Sylla's. Such of them as were in Italy were immediately killed. Those
+in the provinces, as if with the curse of Cain upon their heads, came
+one by one to miserable ends. Brutus and Cassius fought hard and fell
+at Philippi. In three years the tyrannicides of the ides of March, with
+their aiders and abettors, were all dead, some killed in battle, some
+in prison, some dying by their own hand--slain with the daggers with
+which they had stabbed their master.
+
+Out of the whole party the fate of one only deserves special notice, a
+man whose splendid talents have bought forgiveness for his faults, and
+have given him a place in the small circle of the really great whose
+memory is not allowed to die.
+
+[Sidenote: Dec. 7, B.C. 43.] After the dispersion of the conspirators
+which followed Caesar's funeral, Cicero had remained in Rome. His
+timidity seemed to have forsaken him, and he had striven, with an
+energy which recalled his brightest days, to set the Constitution again
+upon its feet. Antony charged him in the Senate with having been the
+contriver of Caesar's death. He replied with invectives fierce and
+scurrilous as those which he had heaped upon Catiline and Clodius. A
+time had been when he had affected to look on Antony as his preserver.
+Now there was no imaginable infamy in which he did not steep his name.
+He spoke of the murder as the most splendid achievement recorded in
+history, and he regretted only that he had not been taken into counsel
+by the deliverers of their country. Antony would not then have been
+alive to rekindle civil discord. When Antony left Rome, Cicero was for
+a few months again the head of the State. He ruled the Senate,
+controlled the Treasury, corresponded with the conspirators in the
+provinces, and advised their movements. He continued sanguine himself,
+and he poured spirit into others. No one can refuse admiration to the
+last blaze of his expiring powers. But when he heard that Antony and
+Lepidus and Octavius had united, and were coming into Italy with the
+whole Western army, he saw that all was over. He was now
+sixty-three--too old for hope. He could hardly have wished to live, and
+this time he was well assured that there would be no mercy for him.
+Caesar would have spared a man whom he esteemed in spite of his
+infirmities. But there was no Caesar now, and fair speeches would serve
+his turn no longer. He retired from the city with his brother Quintus,
+and had some half-formed purpose of flying to Brutus, who was still in
+arms in Macedonia. He even embarked, but without a settled resolution,
+and he allowed himself to be driven back by a storm. Theatrical even in
+extremities, he thought of returning to Rome and of killing himself in
+Caesar's house, that he might bring the curse of his blood upon
+Octavius. In these uncertainties he drifted into his own villa at
+Formiae,[6] saying in weariness, and with a sad note of his old
+self-importance, that he would die in the country which he had so often
+saved. Here, on the 4th of December, B.C. 43, Popilius Loenas, an
+officer of Antony's, came to find him. Peasants from the neighborhood
+brought news to the villa that the soldiers were approaching. His
+servants thrust him into a litter and carried him down through the
+woods toward the sea. Loenas followed and overtook him. To his slaves
+he had been always the gentlest of masters. They would have given their
+lives in his defence if he would have allowed them; but he bade them
+set the litter down and save themselves. He thrust out his head between
+the curtains, and it was instantly struck off.
+
+So ended Cicero, a tragic combination of magnificent talents, high
+aspirations, and true desire to do right, with an infirmity of purpose
+and a latent insincerity of character which neutralized and could
+almost make us forget his nobler qualities. It cannot be said of Cicero
+that he was blind to the faults of the party to which he attached
+himself. To him we owe our knowledge of what the Roman aristocrats
+really were, and of the hopelessness of expecting that they could have
+been trusted any longer with the administration of the Empire, if the
+Empire itself was to endure. Cicero's natural place was at Caesar's
+side; but to Caesar alone of his contemporaries he was conscious of an
+inferiority which was intolerable to him. In his own eyes he was always
+the first person. He had been made unhappy by the thought that
+posterity might rate Pompey above himself. Closer acquaintance had
+reassured him about Pompey, but in Caesar he was conscious of a higher
+presence, and he rebelled against the humiliating acknowledgment.
+Supreme as an orator he could always be, and an order of things was,
+therefore, most desirable where oratory held the highest place. Thus he
+chose his part with the "_boni_," whom he despised while he supported
+them, drifting on through vacillation into treachery, till "the
+ingredients of the poisoned chalice" were "commended to his own lips."
+
+In Cicero Nature half-made a great man and left him uncompleted. Our
+characters are written in our forms, and the bust of Cicero is the key
+to his history. The brow is broad and strong, the nose large, the lips
+tightly compressed, the features lean and keen from restless
+intellectual energy. The loose bending figure, the neck, too weak for
+the weight of the head, explain the infirmity of will, the passion, the
+cunning, the vanity, the absence of manliness and veracity. He was born
+into an age of violence with which he was too feeble to contend. The
+gratitude of mankind for his literary excellence will forever preserve
+his memory from too harsh a judgment.
+
+
+[1] _Philippic_ ii. 35.
+
+[2] Abridged from Dion Cassius, who probably gives no more than the
+    traditionary version of Cicero's words.
+
+[3] [Greek: emphutos chraestotaes] are Dion Cassius's words. Antony's
+    language was differently reported, and perhaps there was no literal
+    record of it. Dion Cassius, however, can hardly have himself composed
+    the version which he gives in his history, for he calls the speech as
+    ill-timed as it was brilliant.
+
+[4] Abridged from Dion Cassius. xliv. 36.
+
+[5] "In deorum numerum relatus est non ore modo decernentium sed et
+    persuasione vulgi."--_Suetonius_.
+
+[6] Near Gaeta.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+It remains to offer a few general remarks on the person whose life and
+actions I have endeavored to describe in the preceding pages.
+
+In all conditions of human society distinguished men are the subjects
+of legend; but the character of the legend varies with the disposition
+of the time. In ages which we call heroic the saint works miracles, the
+warrior performs exploits beyond the strength of natural man. In ages
+less visionary which are given to ease and enjoyment the tendency is to
+bring a great man down to the common level, and to discover or invent
+faults which shall show that he is or was but a little man after all.
+Our vanity is soothed by evidence that those who have eclipsed us in
+the race of life are no better than ourselves, or in some respects are
+worse than ourselves; and if to these general impulses be added
+political or personal animosity, accusations of depravity are
+circulated as surely about such men, and are credited as readily, as
+under other influences are the marvellous achievements of a Cid or a
+St. Francis. In the present day we reject miracles and prodigies; we
+are on our guard against the mythology of hero worship, just as we
+disbelieve in the eminent superiority of any one of our contemporaries
+to another. We look less curiously into the mythology of scandal; we
+accept easily and willingly stories disparaging to illustrious persons
+in history, because similar stories are told and retold with so much
+confidence and fluency among the political adversaries of those who
+have the misfortune to be their successful rivals. The absurdity of a
+calumny may be as evident as the absurdity of a miracle; the ground for
+belief may be no more than a lightness of mind, and a less pardonable
+wish that it may be true. But the idle tale floats in society, and by
+and by is written down in books and passes into the region of
+established realities.
+
+The tendency to idolize great men and the tendency to depreciate them
+arises alike in emotion; but the slanders of disparagement are as truly
+legends as the wonder-tales of saints and warriors; and anecdotes
+related of Caesar at patrician dinner-parties at Rome as little deserve
+attention as the information so freely given upon the habits of modern
+statesmen in the _salons_ of London and Paris. They are read now by us
+in classic Latin, but they were recorded by men who hated Caesar and
+hated all that he had done; and that a poem has survived for two
+thousand years is no evidence that the author of it, even though he
+might be a Catullus, was uninfluenced by the common passions of
+humanity.
+
+Caesar, it is allowed, had extraordinary talents, extraordinary energy,
+and some commendable qualities; but he was, as the elder Curio said,
+"omnium mulierum vir et omnium virorum mulier;" he had mistresses in
+every country which he visited, and he had _liaisons_ with half the
+ladies in Rome. That Caesar's morality was altogether superior to that
+of the average of his contemporaries is in a high degree improbable. He
+was a man of the world, peculiarly attractive to women, and likely to
+have been attracted by them. On the other hand, the undiscriminating
+looseness attributed to him would have been peculiarly degrading in a
+man whose passions were so eminently under control, whose calmness was
+never known to be discomposed, and who, in everything which he did,
+acted always with deliberate will. Still worse would it be if, by his
+example, he made ridiculous his own laws against adultery and indulged
+himself in vices which he punished in others. What, then, is the
+evidence? The story of Nicomedes may be passed over. All that is
+required on that subject has been already said. It was never heard of
+before Caesar's consulship, and the proofs are no more than the libels
+of Bibulus, the satire of Catullus, and certain letters of Cicero's
+which were never published, but were circulated privately in Roman
+aristocratic society.[1] A story is suspicious which is first produced
+after twenty years in a moment of political excitement. Caesar spoke of
+it with stern disgust. He replied to Catullus with an invitation to
+dinner; otherwise he passed it over in silence--the only answer which
+an honorable man could give. Suetonius quotes a loose song sung by
+Caesar's soldiers at his triumph. We know in what terms British sailors
+often speak of their favorite commanders. Affection, when it expresses
+itself most emphatically, borrows the language of its opposites. Who
+would dream of introducing into a serious life of Nelson catches
+chanted in the forecastle of the "Victory"? But which of the soldiers
+sang these verses? Does Suetonius mean that the army sang them in
+chorus as they marched in procession? The very notion is preposterous.
+It is proved that during Caesar's lifetime scandal was busy with his
+name; and that it would be so busy, whether justified or not, is
+certain from the nature of things. Cicero says that no public man in
+Rome escaped from such imputations. He himself flung them broadcast,
+and they were equally returned upon himself. The surprise is rather
+that Caesar's name should have suffered so little, and that he should
+have been admitted on reflection by Suetonius to have been
+comparatively free from the abominable form of vice which was then so
+common.
+
+As to his _liaisons_ with women, the handsome, brilliant Caesar,
+surrounded by a halo of military glory, must have been a Paladin of
+romance to any woman who had a capacity of admiration in her. His own
+distaste for gluttony and hard drinking, and for the savage amusements
+in which the male Romans so much delighted, may have made the society
+of cultivated ladies more agreeable to him than that of men, and if he
+showed any such preference the coarsest interpretation would be
+inevitably placed upon it. These relations, perhaps, in so loose an age
+assumed occasionally a more intimate form; but it is to be observed
+that the first public act recorded of Caesar was his refusal to divorce
+his wife at Sylla's bidding; that he was passionately attached to his
+sister; that his mother, Aurelia, lived with him till she died, and
+that this mother was a Roman matron of the strictest and severest type.
+Many names were mentioned in connection with him, yet there is no
+record of any natural child save Brutus, and one other whose claims
+were denied and disproved.
+
+Two intrigues, it may be said, are beyond dispute. His connection with
+the mother of Brutus was notorious. Cleopatra, in spite of Oppius, was
+living with him in his house at the time of his murder. That it was so
+believed a hundred years after his death is, of course, indisputable;
+but in both these cases the story is entangled with legends which show
+how busily imagination had been at work. Brutus was said to be Caesar's
+son, though Caesar was but fifteen when he was born; and Brutus, though
+he had the temper of an Orestes, was devotedly attached to his mother
+in spite of the supposed adultery, and professed to have loved Caesar
+when he offered him as a sacrifice to his country's liberty. Cleopatra
+is said to have joined Caesar at Rome after his return from Spain, and
+to have resided openly with him as his mistress. Supposing that she did
+come to Rome, it is still certain that Calpurnia was in Caesar's house
+when he was killed. Cleopatra must have been Calpurnia's guest as well
+as her husband's; and her presence, however commented upon in society,
+could not possibly have borne the avowed complexion which tradition
+assigned to it. On the other hand, it is quite intelligible that the
+young Queen of Egypt, who owed her position to Caesar, might have come,
+as other princes came, on a visit of courtesy, and that Caesar after
+their acquaintance at Alexandria should have invited her to stay with
+him. But was Cleopatra at Rome at all? The only real evidence for her
+presence there is to be found in a few words of Cicero: "Reginae fuga
+mihi non molesta."--"I am not sorry to hear of the flight of the
+queen." [2] There is nothing to show that the "queen" was the Egyptian
+queen. Granting that the word Egyptian is to be understood, Cicero may
+have referred to Arsinoe, who was called Queen as well as her sister,
+and had been sent to Rome to be shown at Caesar's triumph.
+
+But enough and too much on this miserable subject. Men will continue to
+form their opinions about it, not upon the evidence, but according to
+their preconceived notions of what is probable or improbable. Ages of
+progress and equality are as credulous of evil as ages of faith are
+credulous of good, and reason will not modify convictions which do not
+originate in reason.
+
+Let us pass on to surer ground.
+
+In person Caesar was tall and slight. His features were more refined
+than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose
+large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray like an eagle's, the
+neck extremely thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and
+mustache were kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally
+scanty, falling off toward the end of his life and leaving him
+partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high
+and shrill. His health was uniformly strong until his last year, when
+he became subject to epileptic fits. He was a great bather, and
+scrupulously clean in all his habits, abstemious in his food, and
+careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching wine, and
+noting sobriety as the highest of qualities when describing any new
+people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all manly
+exercises, and especially in riding. In Gaul, as has been said already,
+he rode a remarkable horse, which he had bred himself, and which would
+let no one but Caesar mount him. From his boyhood it was observed of
+him that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quarrels, and
+was most easily appeased when offended. In manner he was quiet and
+gentlemanlike, with the natural courtesy of high-breeding. On an
+occasion when he was dining somewhere the other guests found the oil
+too rancid for them. Caesar took it without remark, to spare his
+entertainer's feelings. When on a journey through a forest with his
+friend Oppius, he came one night to a hut where there was a single bed.
+Oppius being unwell, Caesar gave it up to him, and slept on the ground.
+
+In his public character he may be regarded under three aspects, as a
+politician, a soldier, and a man of letters.
+
+Like Cicero, Caesar entered public life at the bar. He belonged by
+birth to the popular party, but he showed no disposition, like the
+Gracchi, to plunge into political agitation. His aims were practical.
+He made war only upon injustice and oppression; and when he commenced
+as a pleader he was noted for the energy with which he protected a
+client whom he believed to have been wronged. At a later period, before
+he was praetor, he was engaged in defending Masintha, a young Numidian
+prince, who had suffered some injury from Hiempsal, the father of Juba.
+Juba himself came to Rome on the occasion, bringing with him the means
+of influencing the judges which Jugurtha had found so effective. Caesar
+in his indignation seized Juba by the beard in the court; and when
+Masintha was sentenced to some unjust penalty Caesar carried him off,
+concealed him in his house, and took him to Spain in his carriage. When
+he rose into the Senate, his powers as a speaker became strikingly
+remarkable. Cicero, who often heard him, and was not a favorable judge,
+said that there was a pregnancy in his sentences and a dignity in his
+manner which no orator in Rome could approach. But he never spoke to
+court popularity; his aim from first to last was better government, the
+prevention of bribery and extortion, and the distribution among
+deserving citizens of some portion of the public land which the rich
+were stealing. The Julian laws, which excited the indignation of the
+aristocracy, had no other objects than these; and had they been
+observed they would have saved the Constitution. The obstinacy of
+faction and the civil war which grew out of it obliged him to extend
+his horizon, to contemplate more radical reforms--a large extension of
+the privileges of citizenship, with the introduction of the provincial
+nobility into the Senate, and the transfer of the administration from
+the Senate and annually elected magistrates to the permanent chief of
+the army. But his objects throughout were purely practical. The purpose
+of government he conceived to be the execution of justice; and a
+constitutional liberty under which justice was made impossible did not
+appear to him to be liberty at all.
+
+The practicality which showed itself in his general aims appeared also
+in his mode of working. Caesar, it was observed, when anything was to
+be done, selected the man who was best able to do it, not caring
+particularly who or what he might be in other respects. To this faculty
+of discerning and choosing fit persons to execute his orders may be
+ascribed the extraordinary success of his own provincial
+administration, the enthusiasm which was felt for him in the North of
+Italy, and the perfect quiet of Gaul after the completion of the
+conquest. Caesar did not crush the Gauls under the weight of Italy. He
+took the best of them into the Roman service, promoted them, led them
+to associate the interests of the Empire with their personal
+advancement and the prosperity of their own people. No act of Caesar's
+showed more sagacity then the introduction of Gallic nobles into the
+Senate; none was more bitter to the Scipios and Metelli, who were
+compelled to share their august privileges with these despised
+barbarians.
+
+It was by accident that Caesar took up the profession of a soldier; yet
+perhaps no commander who ever lived showed greater military genius. The
+conquest of Gaul was effected by a force numerically insignificant,
+which was worked with the precision of a machine. The variety of uses
+to which it was capable of being turned implied, in the first place,
+extraordinary forethought in the selection of materials. Men whose
+nominal duty was merely to fight were engineers, architects, mechanics
+of the highest order. In a few hours they could extemporize an
+impregnable fortress on an open hillside. They bridged the Rhine in a
+week. They built a fleet in a month. The legions at Alesia held twice
+their number pinned within their works, while they kept at bay the
+whole force of insurgent Gaul, entirely by scientific superiority. The
+machine, which was thus perfect, was composed of human beings who
+required supplies of tools, and arms, and clothes, and food, and
+shelter, and for all these it depended on the forethought of its
+commander. Maps there were none. Countries entirely unknown had to be
+surveyed; routes had to be laid out; the depths and courses of rivers,
+the character of mountain passes, had all to be ascertained. Allies had
+to be found among tribes as yet unheard of. Countless contingent
+difficulties had to be provided for, many of which must necessarily
+arise, though the exact nature of them could not be anticipated. When
+room for accidents is left open, accidents do not fail to be heard of.
+Yet Caesar was never defeated when personally present, save once at
+Gergovia, and once at Durazzo; and the failure at Gergovia was caused
+by the revolt of the Aedui; and the manner in which the failure at
+Durazzo was retrieved showed Caesar's greatness more than the most
+brilliant of his victories. He was rash, but with a calculated
+rashness, which the event never failed to justify. His greatest
+successes were due to the rapidity of his movements, which brought him
+on the enemy before they heard of his approach. He travelled sometimes
+a hundred miles a day, reading or writing in his carriage, though
+countries without roads, and crossing rivers without bridges. No
+obstacles stopped him when he had a definite end in view. In battle he
+sometimes rode; but he was more often on foot, bareheaded, and in a
+conspicuous dress, that he might be seen and recognized. Again and
+again by his own efforts he recovered a day that was half lost. He once
+seized a panic-stricken standard-bearer, turned him round, and told him
+that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy. He never misled his
+army as to an enemy's strength, or if he mis-stated their numbers it
+was only to exaggerate. In Africa, before Thapsus, when his officers
+were nervous at the reported approach of Juba, he called them together
+and said briefly, "You will understand that within a day King Juba will
+be here with the legions, thirty thousand horse, a hundred thousand
+skirmishers, and three hundred elephants. You are not to think or ask
+questions. I tell you the truth, and you must prepare for it. If any of
+you are alarmed, I shall send you home."
+
+Yet he was singularly careful of his soldiers. He allowed his legions
+rest, though he allowed none to himself. He rarely fought a battle at a
+disadvantage. He never exposed his men to unnecessary danger, and the
+loss by wear and tear in the campaigns in Gaul was exceptionally and
+even astonishingly slight. When a gallant action was performed, he knew
+by whom it had been done, and every soldier, however humble, might feel
+assured that if he deserved praise he would have it. The army was
+Caesar's family. When Sabinus was cut off, he allowed his beard to
+grow, and he did not shave it till the disaster was avenged. If Quintus
+Cicero had been his own child, he could not have run greater personal
+risk to save him when shut up at Charleroy. In discipline he was
+lenient to ordinary faults, and not careful to make curious inquiries
+into such things. He liked his men to enjoy themselves. Military
+mistakes in his officers too he always endeavored to excuse, never
+blaming them for misfortunes, unless there had been a defect of courage
+as well as judgment. Mutiny and desertion only he never overlooked. And
+thus no general was ever more loved by, or had greater power over, the
+army which served under him. He brought the insurgent 10th legion into
+submission by a single word. When the civil war began and Labienus left
+him, he told all his officers who had served under Pompey that they
+were free to follow if they wished. Not another man forsook him.
+
+Suetonius says that he was rapacious, that he plundered tribes in Spain
+who were allies of Rome, that he pillaged shrines and temples in Gaul,
+and destroyed cities merely for spoil. He adds a story which Cicero
+would not have left untold and uncommented on if he had been so
+fortunate as to hear of it: that Caesar when first consul took three
+thousand pounds weight of gold out of the Capitol and replaced it with
+gilded brass. A similar story is told of the Cid and of other heroes of
+fiction. How came Cicero to be ignorant of an act which, if done at
+all, was done under his own eyes? When praetor Caesar brought back
+money from Spain to the treasury; but he was never charged at the time
+with peculation or oppression there. In Gaul the war paid its own
+expenses; but what temples were there in Gaul which were worth
+spoiling? Of temples, he was, indeed, scrupulously careful. Varro had
+taken gold from the Temple of Hercules at Cadiz. Caesar replaced it.
+Metellus Scipio had threatened to plunder the Temple of Diana at
+Ephesus. Caesar protected it. In Gaul the Druids were his best friends;
+therefore he certainly had not outraged religion there; and the quiet
+of the province during the civil war is a sufficient answer to the
+accusation of gratuitous oppression.
+
+The Gauls paid the expenses of their conquest in the prisoners taken in
+battle, who were sold to the slave merchants; and this is the real blot
+on Caesar's career. But the blot was not personally upon Caesar, but
+upon the age in which he lived. The great Pomponius Atticus himself was
+a dealer in human chattels. That prisoners of war should be sold as
+slaves was the law of the time, accepted alike by victors and
+vanquished; and the crowds of libertini who assisted at Caesar's
+funeral proved that he was not regarded as the enemy of these
+unfortunates, but as their special friend.
+
+His leniency to the Pompeian faction has already been spoken of
+sufficiently. It may have been politic, but it arose also from the
+disposition of the man. Cruelty originates in fear, and Caesar was too
+indifferent to death to fear anything. So far as his public action was
+concerned, he betrayed no passion save hatred of injustice; and he
+moved through life calm and irresistible, like a force of nature.
+
+Cicero has said of Caesar's oratory that he surpassed those who had
+practised no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is yet
+more delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writings are lost;
+but there remain seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul (the
+eighth was added by another hand), and three books upon the civil war,
+containing an account of its causes and history. Of these it was that
+Cicero said, in an admirable image, that fools might think to improve
+on them, but that no wise man would try it; they were _nudi omni ornatu
+orationis, tanquam veste detracta_--bare of ornament, the dress of
+style dispensed with, like an undraped human figure perfect in all its
+lines as nature made it. In his composition, as in his actions, Caesar
+is entirely simple. He indulges in no images, no labored descriptions,
+no conventional reflections. His art is unconscious, as the highest art
+always is. The actual fact of things stands out as it really was, not
+as mechanically photographed, but interpreted by the calmest
+intelligence, and described with unexaggerated feeling. No military
+narrative has approached the excellence of the history of the war in
+Gaul. Nothing is written down which could be dispensed with; nothing
+important is left untold; while the incidents themselves are set off by
+delicate and just observations on human character. The story is
+rendered attractive by complimentary anecdotes of persons; while
+details of the character and customs of an unknown and remarkable
+people show the attention which Caesar was always at leisure to bestow
+on anything which was worthy of interest, even when he was surrounded
+with danger and difficulty. The books on the civil war have the same
+simplicity and clearness, but a vein runs through them of strong if
+subdued emotion. They contain the history of a great revolution related
+by the principal actor in it; but no effort can be traced to set his
+own side in a favorable light, or to abuse or depreciate his
+adversaries. The coarse invectives which Cicero poured so freely upon
+those who differed from him are conspicuously absent. Caesar does not
+exult over his triumphs or parade the honesty of his motives. The facts
+are left to tell their own story; and the gallantry and endurance of
+his own troops are not related with more feeling than the contrast
+between the confident hopes of the patrician leaders at Pharsalia and
+the luxury of their camp with the overwhelming disaster which fell upon
+them. About himself and his own exploits there is not one word of
+self-complacency or self-admiration. In his writings, as in his life,
+Caesar is always the same--direct, straightforward, unmoved save by
+occasional tenderness, describing with unconscious simplicity how the
+work which had been forced upon him was accomplished. He wrote with
+extreme rapidity in the intervals of other labor; yet there is not a
+word misplaced, not a sign of haste anywhere, save that the conclusion
+of the Gallic war was left to be supplied by a weaker hand. The
+Commentaries, as an historical narrative, are as far superior to any
+other Latin composition of the kind as the person of Caesar himself
+stands out among the rest of his contemporaries.
+
+His other compositions have perished, in consequence, perhaps, of the
+unforgiving republican sentiment which revived among men of letters
+after the death of Augustus--which rose to a height in the "Pharsalia"
+of Lucan--and which leaves so visible a mark in the writings of Tacitus
+and Suetonius. There was a book "De Analogia," written by Caesar after
+the conference at Lucca, during the passage of the Alps. There was a
+book on the Auspices, which, coming from the head of the Roman
+religion, would have thrown a light much to be desired on this curious
+subject. In practice Caesar treated the auguries with contempt. He
+carried his laws in open disregard of them. He fought his battles
+careless whether the sacred chickens would eat or the calves' livers
+were of the proper color. His own account of such things in his
+capacity of Pontifex would have had a singular interest.
+
+From the time of his boyhood he kept a common-place book, in which he
+entered down any valuable or witty sayings, inquiring carefully, as
+Cicero takes pains to tell us, after any smart observation of his own.
+Niebuhr remarks that no pointed sentences of Caesar's can have come
+down to us. Perhaps he had no gift that way, and admired in others what
+he did not possess.
+
+He left in verse "an account of the stars"--some practical almanac,
+probably, in a shape to be easily remembered; and there was a journal
+in verse also, written on the return from Munda. Of all the lost
+writings, however, the most to be regretted is the "Anti-Cato." After
+Cato's death Cicero published a panegyric upon him. To praise Cato was
+to condemn Caesar; and Caesar replied with a sketch of the Martyr of
+Utica as he had himself known him. The pamphlet, had it survived, would
+have shown how far Caesar was able to extend the forbearance so
+conspicuous in his other writings to the most respectable and the most
+inveterate of his enemies. The verdict of fact and the verdict of
+literature on the great controversy between them have been summed up in
+the memorable line of Lucan--
+
+    Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni.
+
+Was Cato right, or were the gods right? Perhaps both. There is a legend
+that at the death of Charles V. the accusing angel appeared in heaven
+with a catalogue of deeds which no advocate could palliate--countries
+laid desolate, cities sacked and burnt, lists of hundreds of thousands
+of widows and children brought to misery by the political ambition of a
+single man. The evil spirit demanded the offender's soul, and it seemed
+as if mercy itself could not refuse him the award. But at the last
+moment the Supreme Judge interfered. The Emperor, He said, had been
+sent into the world at a peculiar time, for a peculiar purpose, and was
+not to be tried by the ordinary rules. Titian has painted the scene:
+Charles kneeling before the Throne, with the consciousness, as became
+him, of human infirmities, written upon his countenance, yet neither
+afraid nor abject, relying in absolute faith that the Judge of all
+mankind would do right.
+
+Of Caesar, too, it may be said that he came into the world at a special
+time and for a special object. The old religions were dead, from the
+Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles
+on which human society had been constructed were dead also. There
+remained of spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of
+justice and morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of
+government had to be constructed, under which quiet men could live and
+labor and eat the fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this
+material kind there can be no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly
+aspirations, no patriotism of the heroic type. It was not to last
+forever. A new life was about to dawn for mankind. Poetry, and faith,
+and devotion were to spring again out of the seeds which were sleeping
+in the heart of humanity. But the life which is to endure grows slowly;
+and as the soil must be prepared before the wheat can be sown, so
+before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up its shoots there was needed
+a kingdom of this world where the nations were neither torn in pieces
+by violence nor were rushing after false ideals and spurious ambitions.
+Such a kingdom was the Empire of the Caesars--a kingdom where peaceful
+men could work, think, and speak as they pleased, and travel freely
+among provinces ruled for the most part by Gallios, who protected life
+and property, and forbade fanatics to tear each other in pieces for
+their religious opinions. "It is not lawful for us to put any man to
+death," was the complaint of the Jewish priests to the Roman governor.
+Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent nations, each with a
+local religion represented in its ruling powers, Christianity must have
+been stifled in its cradle. If St. Paul had escaped the Sanhedrim at
+Jerusalem, he would have been torn to pieces by the silver-smiths at
+Ephesus. The appeal to Caesar's judgment-seat was the shield of his
+mission, and alone made possible his success.
+
+And this spirit, which confined government to its simplest duties,
+while it left opinion unfettered, was especially present in Julius
+Caesar himself. From cant of all kinds he was totally free. He was a
+friend of the people, but he indulged in no enthusiasm for liberty. He
+never dilated on the beauties of virtue, or complimented, as Cicero
+did, a Providence in which he did not believe. He was too sincere to
+stoop to unreality. He held to the facts of this life and to his own
+convictions; and as he found no reason for supposing that there was a
+life beyond the grave he did not pretend to expect it. He respected the
+religion of the Roman State as an institution established by the laws.
+He encouraged or left unmolested the creeds and practices of the
+uncounted sects or tribes who were gathered under the eagles. But his
+own writings contain nothing to indicate that he himself had any
+religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically
+interfered in human affairs. He never pretended that Jupiter was on his
+side. He thanked his soldiers after a victory, but he did not order _Te
+Deums _to be sung for it; and in the absence of these conventionalisms
+he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have displayed by
+the freest use of the formulas of pietism.
+
+He fought his battles to establish some tolerable degree of justice in
+the government of this world; and he succeeded, though he was murdered
+for doing it.
+
+Strange and startling resemblance between the fate of the founder of
+the kingdom of this world and of the Founder of the kingdom not of this
+world, for which the first was a preparation. Each was denounced for
+making himself a king. Each was maligned as the friend of publicans and
+sinners; each was betrayed by those whom he had loved and cared for;
+each was put to death; and Caesar also was believed to have risen again
+and ascended into heaven and become a divine being.
+
+
+[1] Suetonius, _Julius Caesar_, 49.
+
+[2] _To Atticus_, xiv. 8.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: GALLIA in the time of Caesar]
+
+
+Transcriber's note: A sidenote in chapter nine gives Caesar's age as 32
+in B.C. 77. I have corrected this evident misprint to 23.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Caesar: A Sketch, by James Anthony Froude
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