THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 • ■■Ml Ufflll 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/caesarsketchOOfrourich 
 
c ^ s A"K:.i;;;-; 
 
 A SKETCH 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDL M. A. 
 
 FOBMERLT FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE OXFORD 
 
 "Pardon, gentles all 
 The flat unraised spirit that hath dared 
 On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth 
 Bo gfreat an object." 
 
 Shakespeare, Henry V. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 743-745 Broadway 
 
^ « ,'- s. 
 
 A-«-W-<a:x^-><''V^ 
 
 li-s'iy 
 
 Trow*« 
 
 Printing and Bookbinding Co. 
 205-213 Mast X'zth SLf 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
F7i 
 
 To 
 
 GEORGE BUTLER, 
 
 IN TOKEN OP 
 
 A FBISNDSHIF WHICH COUMSNCED THIKTT-SEVEN TEARS A€K>, 
 
 WHEN Mm WEEE ELECTED TOGETHER FELLOWS OF OUB COLLEai, 
 
 WHICH HAS QEOWN WITH OUR INCREASING AGE, 
 
 AND WHX CONTINUE, I HOPE, UNBROKEN 
 
 ▲■ MNG AS WE BOTH SHALL UYB. 
 
 5;89 
 
\ 
 
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 au- 
 thorities 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 cam- 
 paigns. 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 con- 
 temporary 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. 
 
viii Preface, 
 
 They had means of knowledge which no longer exist 
 — the writings, for instance, of Asinius PoUio, who 
 was one of Caesar's officers. But Asinius Pollio's 
 «^ccounts of Csesar's actions, as reported by Appian, 
 nannot 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 Csesars 
 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 ve- 
 racity, an antiquarian curiosity and diligence, and a 
 serious anxiety to tell his story impartially. Sueto- 
 nius, in the absence of evidence direct or presump- 
 tive to the contrary, I have felt myself able to fol- 
 low. The other three writers I have trusted only 
 when I have found them partially confirmed by evi- 
 dence 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. — Instructive- 
 ness of Roman history. — Character of historical epochs. 
 
 — The age of Caesar. — Spiritual state of Rome. — Con- 
 trasts between ancient and modern civilization .... 1 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 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 degener- 
 acy. — The Roman noble. — Influence of wealth. — Be- 
 ginnings of discontent 9 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 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 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Victory of the Optimates. — The Moors. — History of Ju- 
 gurtha. — 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 Ma- 
 rius. — Marriage of Marius. — The Csesars. — Marius con- 
 sul. — First notice of Sylla — Capture and death of Ju- 
 j?nrtha 33 
 
X Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAOI 
 
 Birth of Cicero. — The Cimbri and Teutons. — German im- 
 migration 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 46 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 Birth and childhood of Julius Cassar. — Italian franchise. — 
 Discontent of the Italians. — Action of the land laws. — 
 The social war. — Partial concessions. — Sylla and Ma- 
 rius. — Mithridates of Pontus. — First mission of Sylla 
 into Asia 55 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 vVar 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 Ma- 
 rius, — 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. — Capitula- 
 tion of Rome. — Massacre of patricians and equites. — 
 Triumph of Democracy 65 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The young Cassar. — 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 appear- 
 ance of Pompey. — Civil war. — Victory of Sylla. — The 
 dictatorship and the proscription. — Destruction of the 
 popular party and murder of the popular leaders. — Gen- 
 eral character of aristocratic revolutions. — The Constitu- 
 tion remodelled. — Concentration of power in the Senate. 
 
 — Sylla's general policy. — The army. — Flight of Serto- 
 
Contents. xi 
 
 PA«a 
 rius to Spain. — Pompey and Sjlla. — Caesar refuses to 
 divorce his wife at Sylla's order. — Danger of Caesar. — 
 His pardon. — Growing consequence of Cicero. — De- 
 fence of Roscius. — Sylla's abdication and death ... 76 
 
 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 scan- 
 dal. — Conspiracy of Lepidus. — Caesar returns to Rome. 
 
 — Defeat of Lepidus. — Prosecution of Dolabella. — Cae- 
 sar taken by pirates. — Senatorial corruption. — Universal 
 disorder. — Civil war in Spain. — Growth of Mediterra- 
 nean piracy. — Connivance of the Senate. — Provincial 
 administration. — Verres in' Sicily. — Prosecuted by Cic- 
 ero. — Second war with Mithridates. — First success of 
 LucuUuS. — 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 99 
 
 . CHAPTER X. 
 
 Caesar military tribune. — Becomes known as a speaker. — 
 Is made quaestor. — Speech at his aunt's funeral. — Con- 
 sulship of Pompey and Crassus. — Caesar marries Pom- 
 pey' 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. — Suppres- 
 sion of the pirates by Pompey. — The Manilian law.— 
 Speech of Cicero. — Recall of Lucullus. — Pompey sent 
 'o command in Asia. — Defeat and death of Mithridates. 
 •- Conquest of Asia by Pompey 120 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 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 Maxi- 
 mus. — And Praetor. — Cicero's conduct as consul. — 
 
Ku Contents. 
 
 FAOa 
 
 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 Cic- 
 ero. — Meeting at Catiline's house. — Speech of Cicero 
 iL the Senate. — Catiline 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 the future state. — Speech of Cato. 
 
 — And of Cicero. — The conspirators executed untried. 
 
 — Death of Catiline 132 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 Preparations for the return of Ponlpey. — Scene in the Fo- 
 rum. — 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 pro-praetor 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. — Un- 
 easiness of Cicero 162 
 
 CHAPTER XHI. 
 
 The consulship of Caesar. — Character of his intended legis- 
 lation. — 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 sup- 
 port 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. — Alli- 
 ance of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. — The Dynasts. — 
 
Contents. xiii 
 
 PAQK 
 
 Indignation of the aristocracy. — Threats to repeal Cae- 
 sar's laws. — Necessity of controlling Cicero and Cato. — 
 Clodius is made tribune. — Prosecution of Cicero for ille- 
 gal acts when consul. — Cicero's friends forsake him. — 
 He flies and is banished 189 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CaBsar's military: narrative. — Divisions of Gaul. — Distribu- 
 tion of population. — The Celts. — Degree of civilization. 
 
 — Tribal system. — The Druids. — The -^dui and the 
 Sequani. — Roman and German parties. — Intended mi- 
 gration 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 
 Coluiar. — 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 sec- 
 ond campaign 214 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Cicero and Clodius. — Position and character of Clodius. — 
 Cato sent to Cyprus. — Attempted recall of Cicero de- 
 feated 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 towards 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 
 
xiv Contents. 
 
 PAttl 
 
 Crassus. — Cicero deserts the Senate. — Explains his 
 motives. — Confirmation of the Ordinances of Lucca. — 
 Pompey and Crassus consuls. — Caesar's command pro- 
 longed for five additional years. — Rejoicings in Rome. — 
 Spectacle in the amphitheatre 247 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Revolt of the Yeneti. — Fleet prepared in the Loire. — Sea- 
 fight at Quiberon. — Reduction of Normandy and of 
 Aquitaine. — Complete conquest of Gaul. — Fresh ar- 
 rival 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. — Cae- 
 ear goes to Italy for the winter. — Large naval prepara- 
 tions. — Return of spring. — Alarm on the Moselle. — 
 Fleet collects at Boulogne. — Caesar sails for Britain a 
 second time. — Lands at Deal. — Second and more de- 
 structive 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 280 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 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 array. — 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 re- 
 volted chiefs. — Execution of Acco 301 
 
Contents. xv 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 FAOI 
 
 Correspondence of Cicero with Cassar. — Intimacy with 
 Pompeyand Crassus. — Attacks on Piso and Gabinius. — 
 Cicero compelled to defend Gabinius. — And Vatinius. 
 
 — Dissatisfaction with his position. — Corruption at the 
 consular elections. — Public scandal. — CaBsar and Pom- 
 pey. — Deaths of Aurelia and Julia. — Catastrophe in 
 the East. — Overthrow and death of Crassus. — Intrigue 
 to detach Pompey from Cassar. — Milo a candidate for 
 the consulship. — Murder of Clodius. — Burning of the 
 Senate-house. — Trial and exile of Milo. — Fresh engage- 
 ments with Caesar. — Promise of the consulship at the end 
 
 of his term in Gaul 819 
 
 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. — Surren- 
 der of Alesia. — Campaign against the Carnutes and the 
 Bellovaci. — Rising on the Dordogne. — Capture of Uxel- 
 lodunum. — Caesar at Arras. — Completion of the conquest Ml 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Bibulus in Syria. — Approaching term of Caesar's govern- 
 ment. — Threats of impeachment. — Caesar to be consul 
 or not to be consul? — Caesar's political ambition. — Ha- 
 tred felt towards him by the aristocracy. — Two legions 
 taken from him on pretence of service against the Par- 
 thians. — 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 
 
xvi Contents, 
 
 Txam 
 consuls. — Csesar recalled. — Alarm in Rome. — Alterna- 
 tive schemes. — Letters of Cicero. — Caesar's crime in 
 the eyes of the Optimates 368 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Caesar appeals to his army. — The tribunes join him at Rim- 
 in'. — Panic and flight of the Senate. — Incapacity of 
 Pompey. — Fresh negotiations. — Advance of Cassar. — 
 The country districts refuse to arm against him. — Cap- 
 ture of Corfinium. — Release of the prisoners. — Offers 
 of Caesar. — Continued hesitation of Cicero. — Advises 
 Pompey to make peace. — Pompey with th^ Senate and 
 consuls flies to Greece. — Cicero's reflections. — Pompey 
 to be another Sylla. — Caesar mortal, and may die by 
 more means than one 389 
 
 CHAPTER XXn. 
 
 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 Yarro. 
 
 — 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 divisions 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 40f 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Pompey flies to Egypt. — State of parties in Egypt. — Mur- 
 dei 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 
 
Contents. xvii 
 
 PAQH 
 
 the Optimates to rally. — III conduct of Caesar's officers 
 in Spain. — War with Pharnaces. — Battle of Zela, and 
 settlement of Asia Minor 439 
 
 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. — Diffi- 
 culties of the campaign. — Battle of Thapsus. — No more 
 pardons. — Afranius and Faustus Sylla put to death. — 
 Cato kills himself at Utica. — Scipio killed. — Jnba and 
 Petreius die on each other's swords. — A scene in Caesar's 
 camp 457 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Rejoicings in Rome. — Caesar Dictator for the year. — Re- 
 forms the Constitution. — Reforms the Calendar. — And 
 the criminal law. — Dissatisfaction of Cicero. — Last ef- 
 forts 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 471 
 
 CHAPTER XXVL 
 
 Caesar once more in Rome. — General amnesty. — The sur- 
 viving Optimates pretend to submit. — Increase in the 
 number of Senators. — Introduction of foreigners. — New 
 colonies. — Carthage. — Corinth. — Sumptuary regula- 
 tions. — Digest of the law. — Intended Parthian war. — 
 Honors heaped on Caesar. — The object of them. — Cae- 
 sar's indifference. — Some consolations. — Hears of con- 
 spiracies, 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 Csesar's among them. — Warnings. — 
 Meeting of the conspirators. — Caesar's last evening. — 
 The Ides of March. — The Senate-house. — Caesar killed. 486 
 
xviii Contents, 
 
 CHAPTER XXVn. 
 
 Consternation in B-ome. — 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 515 
 
 CHAPTER XXVm. 
 
 General remarks on CsBsar. — Mythological tendencies. — 
 Supposed profligacy of Caesar. — Nature of the evidence. 
 
 — Servilia. — Cleopatra. — Personal appearance of Cae- 
 sar. — 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. — Univer- 
 sality 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 Cae- 
 sar should be estimated. — Legend of Charles V. — Spir- 
 itual 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 58'I 
 
C^SAR: A SKETCH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 To the student of political history and to the Eng- 
 lish 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 our- 
 selves. In virtue of their temporal freedom, they be- 
 came 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 un- 
 able or unwilling to extend her privileges. If Eng- 
 land 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 un- 
 willing 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 alti- 
 tudes 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 in- 
 stinct ; 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 distinc- 
 tion. He deals with each question as it arises, leav- 
 ing future consequences to those who are to come 
 after him. The situation changes from period to 
 period, and tendencies are generated with an acceler- 
 ating force, which, when once established, can never 
 be reversed. When the control of reason is once re- 
 moved, 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 insti- 
 tution, pass through the inevitably recurring stages 
 of growth and transformation and decay. A com- 
 monwealth, says Cicero, ought to be immortal, and 
 forever to renew its youth. Yet commonwealths 
 have proved as unenduring as any other natural 
 object: — 
 
 Everjrthing that grows 
 Holds in perfection but a little moment, 
 
 And this huge state presenteth nought but shows, 
 Whereon the stars in silent influence comment. 
 
Conditions of National Life. 3 
 
 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 : sub- 
 ject 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 pro- 
 longed 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 na- 
 tional revolutions is to statesmanship what the pathol- 
 ogy of disease is to the art of medicine. The physi- 
 cian 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, 
 un misled by superficial differences, who can shun the 
 rocks where others have been wrecked, or from fore- 
 sight 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 power- 
 ful that ever existed was put on its trial, and found 
 
4 CcBsar. 
 
 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 pa- 
 tient'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 his- 
 tory 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 them- 
 selves must have been parties to the scenes which 
 they describe. They must have had full opportuni- 
 ties 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 he- 
 roes and its villains, its triumphs and its sorrows ; 
 but the history is formless legend, incredible and un- 
 intelligible ; the figures of the actors are indistinct aa 
 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 thera 
 
Teachings of History. b 
 
 wliicli have been woven into tradition as tlie^ ap- 
 peared 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 pe- 
 riods are the proper subject of the philosophic his- 
 torian, 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 our- 
 selves plunged amidst the hopes and fears of the 
 hour, to feel the conflicting emotions and to sympa- 
 thize 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 preordained 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 clear- 
 ness the age stands before us of Cato and Pompey, 
 of Cicero and Julius Caesar ; the more distinctly be' 
 
6 Ccesar. 
 
 cause it was an age in so many ways the counterpart 
 of oar own, the blossoming period of the old civiliza- 
 tion, 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 pam- 
 phlets 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 so- 
 ciety. The free cultivators were disappearing from 
 the soil. Italy was being absorbed into vast estates, 
 held ly 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 pleas- 
 ures ; the occupation of the higher classes was to ob- 
 tain money without labor, and to spend it in idle 
 enjoyment. Patriotism survived on the lips, but pa- 
 triotism meant the ascendency of the party which 
 would maintain the existing order of things, or would 
 
Ancient mid Modern Civilization contrasted. 1 
 
 oyerthrow it for a more equal distribution of the good 
 tilings which alone were valued. Religion, once the 
 foundation of the laws and rnle 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 scru- 
 pulously observed. Public men spoke conventionally 
 of Providence, that they might throw on their op- 
 ponents the odium of impiety ; but of genuine belief 
 that life had any serious meaning, there was none re- 
 maining beyond the circle of the silent, patient, igno- 
 rant multitude. The whole spiritual atmosphere was 
 saturated with cant — cant moral, cant political, cant 
 religious ; an affectation of high principle w^hich had 
 ceased to touch the conduct, and flowed on in an in- 
 creasing volume of insincere and unreal speech. The 
 truest thinkers were those who, like Lucretius, spoke 
 frankly out their real convictions, declared that Prov- 
 idence was a dream, and that man and the world he 
 lived in were material phenomena, generated by nat- 
 ural 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, un- 
 less 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 ad- 
 just 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 
 
8 Coesar, 
 
 pleasure, and "justice th^n material expediency. Rome 
 at any rate bad 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 reyolutiona 
 in modern Europe, lay then outside societ}^, 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 dis- 
 tress them. Their s^mipathies, 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, Avere 
 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 11. 
 
 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 free- 
 man 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 resolu- 
 tions, a single consul or a single tribune might in- 
 terpose 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 privi- 
 lege 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 
 
10 Ccesar, 
 
 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 
 Komans had engraved into their nature. They were 
 called a nation of kings, kings over their own ap- 
 petites, passions, and inclinations. Tbey were not 
 imaginative, they were not intellectual ; tbey had 
 little national poetry, little art, little philosophy. 
 They were moral and practical. In these two direc- 
 tions 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 disci- 
 pline 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 
 viomets and shooting stars. Birds, winged messen- 
 gers, 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 
 
Moral Character of the Romans, 11 
 
 men has produced anything like. Tliey did not era- 
 body 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 tradi- 
 tions 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 he- 
 roes and heroines of their national history. The 
 Manlii and Valerii were patterns of courage, the Lu- 
 cretias and Virginias of purity, the Decii and Curtii 
 of patriotic devotion, the Reguli and Fabricii of stain- 
 less 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 
 \iabits 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 
 
.12 Ccesar. 
 
 to a body on whose reputation no sliadow could be al- 
 lowed to rest. 
 
 Such the Romans were in the day when their do- 
 minion bad 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. 
 
 IMorahty thus ingrained 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 over- 
 come the weakness of the will, and with wider knowl- 
 edge 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 en- 
 thusiasm, but they had no horror of immorality as 
 Buch. 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 real- 
 ity, 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 w^as believed, produced 
 characters nobler and grander than any which Re- 
 publican Rome produced. But the Catholic Church 
 turned its penances into money payments. Calvin- 
 ism made demands on faith beyond what truth would 
 bear* and when doubt had once entered, the spell of 
 
Morality and Intellect, 13 
 
 Calvinism was broken. The veracity of the Romans, 
 and perliaps the happy accident that they h&,d no in- 
 herited religious traditions, saved them for centuries 
 from similar trials. They had hold of real truth un- 
 alloyed 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 trans- 
 parent, 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 be- 
 ings from the rest of animated things. Every other 
 creature exists for itself, and cares for its own preser- 
 vation. 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 jou. will disobey at your peril. 
 Thus and thus only are nations formed which are 
 destined to endure ; and as habits based on such con- 
 victions are slow in growing, so when grown to ma- 
 turity they survive extraordinary trials. But nations 
 are made up of many persons in circumstances of 
 endless variety. In country districts, where the rou- 
 tine 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 
 
14 Ccesar, 
 
 a part of it. Moral habits grow under given condi- 
 tions. They correspond to a given degree of temp- 
 tation. 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. In- 
 tellectual 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 tra- 
 ditionary 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 compara- 
 tively 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 southeast 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 Ro* 
 man provinces, governed directly under Roman mag- 
 
Expansion of Roman Power. 15 
 
 istrates. On the African side Mauritania (Morocco) 
 was still free. Numidia (the modern Algeria) re- 
 tained its native dynasty, but was a Koman de- 
 pendency. The Carthaginian dominions, Tunis and 
 Tripoli, had been annexed to the Empire. The in- 
 terior 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 Avith 
 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 extraor- 
 dinary opportunities. Governors with their staffs, 
 permanent officials, contractors for the revenue, nego- 
 tiators, 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 fam- 
 ilies. 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 sen- 
 timent, 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 
 
16 Ccesar, 
 
 been quaestors, sediles, praetors, or consuls ; and these 
 offices had been long open to the plebeians. It was 
 an aristocrac3^ 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 bad 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 grand- 
 sons 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 disappear- 
 ing, and the soil of Italy was fast passing into the 
 hands of a few territorial magnates, who, unfort- 
 unately (for it tended to aggravate the mischief), 
 were enabled by another cause to turn their vast pos- 
 sessions to advantage. The conquest of the world 
 had turned the flower of the defeated nations into 
 
Moman Slavery* 17 
 
 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 Span- 
 iards, able at once to turn their hands to some form 
 of skilled labor, either as clerks, mechanics, or farm 
 servants. The great land-owners might have paused 
 in their purchases had the alternative lain before 
 them of letting their lands lie idle or of having free- 
 men 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 work- 
 shops 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 be- 
 come the clients of the millionnaires, 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 
 
18 CoBsar, 
 
 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 knowl- 
 edge and culture; but the culture seldom passed 
 below the surface, and knowledge bore but the old 
 fralt 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 di- 
 vinities 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 them- 
 selves 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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 ir^ more and more, and luxury grew more un- 
 bounded. Palaces sprang up in the city, castles in 
 
The Roman Nolle, 19 
 
 the country, villas at pleasant places by the sea, and 
 parks, and fish-poncls, and game preserves, and 
 gardens, and vast retinues of servants. When nat- 
 ural pleasures had been indulged in to satiety, pleas- 
 ures which were against nature were imported from 
 the East to stimulate the exhausted appetite. To 
 make money — money by any means, lawful or un- 
 lawful — 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 paint- 
 ing were formed among themselves. They decorated 
 their porticoes and their saloons with the plunder of 
 the East. The stage was never more than an ar- 
 tificial 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 I 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 
 extra"*'agance, they returned with millions for fresh 
 riot. To obtain a province was the first ambition 
 
20 Ccesar. 
 
 o-f a Roman noble. The road to it lay through the 
 prsetorsiiip and the consulship ; tliese offices, there- 
 fore, 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 re- 
 ceivers. 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 Com- 
 monwealth 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 Avho 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 ordinarj?- 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 ex- 
 pense 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 be- 
 come, 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 Com- 
 
Beginnings of Discontent. 21 
 
 mon weal til was a plutocracy. The free forms of the 
 constitution were themselves the instruments of cor- 
 ruption. 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 remain 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 or- 
 ders 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 ex- 
 pected that men of noble natures, young men espe- 
 cially whose enthusiasm had not been cooled by expe- 
 rience, would sit calmly by while their country was 
 going thus headlong to perdition. Redemption, if re- 
 demption was to be hoped for, could come only from 
 free citizens in the country districts whose manners 
 and whose minds were still uncontaminated, in whom 
 the ancient habits of life still survived, who still be- 
 lieved in the gods, who were contented to follow the 
 wholesome round of honest labor. The numbers of 
 Buch citizens were fast dwindling away before the 
 omnivorous appetite of the rich for territorial aggran- 
 dizement. To rescue the land from the monopolists, 
 
22 Coesar, 
 
 to renovate the old independent yeomanry, to pre- 
 vent the free population of Italy, out of which the 
 legions had been formed which had built up the Em- 
 pire, from being pushed out of their places and sup- 
 planted 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. 
 
 TiBEKius Geacchus was born about the year 1G4 
 B. c. Pie was one of twelve children, nme 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 Sar- 
 dinia, had attempted reforms at Rome. He had been 
 censor, and in this capacity he had ejected disreputa- 
 ble senators from the Curia ; he had degraded of- 
 fending Equites ; he had rearranged and tried to 
 purify the Comitia. But his connections were aris- 
 tocratic. His wife was the daughter of the most il- 
 lustrious of the Scipios. His own daughter was 
 married to the second most famous of them, Scipio 
 Africanus the Younger. He had been himself in an- 
 tagonism 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 dis- 
 played early remarkable talents. . Tiberius, when ^Id 
 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 
 »torm. Ten years later he went to Spain as Quaes- 
 
24 Ccesar, 
 
 tor, where lie carried on his father's popularit}^, and 
 by taking the people's side in some questions fell into 
 disagreement with his brother-in-law. His political 
 vie Wo had perhaps ah-eady inclined to change. He 
 was still of an age when, indignation at oppression 
 calls out a practical desire to resist it. On his jour- 
 ney home from Spain he witnessed scenes which con- 
 firmed 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 sys- 
 tem 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 laAV was 
 obsolete or sleeping, and avarice and vanity w^ere 
 awake and active. Young Gracchus, in indignant 
 pity, resolved to rescue the people's patrimony. He 
 was chosen tribune in the year 183. His brave 
 mother and a few patricians of the old type encour- 
 aged 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 sub- 
 mitted to the assembly. The constitutional means 
 of preventing tribunes from carrying unwise or un- 
 welcome measures lay in a consul's veto, or iu the 
 
The G-racchL 25 
 
 help of the College of Augurs, who could declare 
 the auspices unfavorable, and so close all public busi- 
 ness. These resources were so awkward that it had 
 been found convenient to secure beforehand the Sen- 
 atti'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 suc- 
 ceeded in engrafting the practice into the constitu- 
 tion. On the land question the leaders of the aris- 
 tocracy 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 pro- 
 posals 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 inclosed and money laid out on them he 
 was willing that the occupants should have compen- 
 Bation. But they had no right to the lands them- 
 selves. Gracchus persisted that the ager puhlieus 
 belonged to the people, and that the race of yeomen, 
 for whose protection the law had been originally 
 passed, must be reestablished on their farms. No 
 form of property gives to its owners so much conse- 
 quence as land, and there is no point on which in 
 every country an aristocracy is more sensitive. The 
 lai'ge 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 mo- 
 nopolists were entitled in justice to less than was 
 offered them. They had no right to a compensation 
 
26 Ccemr, 
 
 at all. Political passion awoke again after tlie sleep 
 of a century. The oligarchy had doubtless con- 
 nived 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 per- 
 petuity ; and the new sedition, as they called it, 
 threatened at once their privileges and their fortunes. 
 The quarrel assumed tlie 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 be- 
 came clear that the majority of the citizens would 
 support Tiberius Gracchus, but the constitutional 
 forms of opposition might still be resorted to. Octa- 
 vius Csecina, 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 states- 
 
The G-racchi. • 27 
 
 man would have kno^\^l that established constitu- 
 tional bulwarks cannot be swept away by a momen- 
 tary 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 reelection. 
 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 posi- 
 tion 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 Martins 
 with their retinues of armed servants and clients; 
 hot-blooded aristocrats, full of disdain for dema- 
 gogues, 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 citi- 
 zens were driven off, Tiberius Gracchus himself and 
 three hundred of his friends were killed and their 
 bodies were flung into the Tiber. 
 
28 • Ccesar. 
 
 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 de- 
 praved, and under other forms preserve for a few 
 more centuries the Roman dominion. Scipio Afri- 
 canus, when he heard in Spain of the end of his 
 brother-in-law, exclaimed " May all who act as he did 
 perish like liim ! " 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 Grac- 
 chus 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 tliat 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 thou- 
 sand families were settled on various parts of the 
 ager puhlieus, which the patricians had been com- 
 pelled 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 in- 
 justice. Those who were ejected were always exas- 
 perated. Those who entered on possession were not 
 always satisfied. The commissioners became unpop- 
 
The Gracchi, 29 
 
 alar. 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 
 reeligible. 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 re- 
 tired 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 regu- 
 lar career, and have risen by the ordinary steps to the 
 consulship. But the Senate saw in him the possibil- 
 ities 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 sus 
 picion and injustice drove him into open war witW 
 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 adminis- 
 tration of the Empire was in the hands of men to- 
 tally 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 disposi- 
 tion of parses. He had seen his brother fall because 
 
80 Ccesar, 
 
 the Equites and the senators, tlie great commoners 
 and the nobles, were combined against him. He re- 
 vived 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 impor- 
 tance, civil or criminal, came before courts of sixty 
 or seventy jurymen, who, as the law stood, must be 
 necessarily senators. The privilege had been ex- 
 tremely lucrative. The corruption of justice was al- 
 ready notorious, though it had not yet reached the 
 level of infamy which it attained in another genera- 
 tion. It was no secret that in ordinary causes jury- 
 Tuen had sold their verdicts ; amd far short of taking 
 bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were 
 many ways in which they could let themselves be ap- 
 proached, 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 in- 
 iquity on principle and to those \vho 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 necessa- 
 rily members of the Senate. Peculation and extor- 
 tion 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 gov- 
 ernor 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 
 \o Rome a millionnaire and would admit others to a 
 jhare in his spoils. The provincials might send dep- 
 itations to complain, but these complaints came be- 
 
The Gracchi. 31. 
 
 fore 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 for- 
 ward, 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 dishonest}^ ! How certainly 
 must such a measure have been deserved when neither 
 consul nor tribune could be found to interpose his 
 vote ! 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 com- 
 mended; 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 enthusi- 
 
82 ' Ccesar, 
 
 astic clapping of every pair of hands in Rome thai 
 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 priv- 
 ilege was confined to Rome, because in Rome the elec- 
 tions were held, and the Roman constituency was the 
 one depositary of power. The effect was to gather 
 into the city a mob of need}^, unemployed voters, liv- 
 ing 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. Ex- 
 cuses could be found, no doubt, for this miserable 
 expedient, in the state of parties, in the unscrupulous 
 violence of the aristocracy, in the general impoverish- 
 ment 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 afterwards to re- 
 call 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 sup- 
 port. 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 
 
The Gracchi. 33 
 
 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 be- 
 tween Romans and Italians, and enfranchising the 
 entire peninsula. These measures were good in 
 themselves — essential, indeed, if the Roman con- 
 quests were to form a compact and permanent do- 
 minion. 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 idle- 
 ness. Carthage was still a name of terror. To re- 
 store 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 
 jifter all; a few things had gone wrong, but these 
 
34 Ccesar. 
 
 had been amended. The Scipios and Metelli had 
 conquered the world : the Scipios and MeteUi 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. 
 
 Cakts Geacchus 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 Sen- 
 ate still claimed the right to set it aside when they 
 held the State to be in danger. With these excep- 
 tions, the administration fell back into its old condi- 
 tion. The tribunes ceased to agitate. The consul- 
 ships and the prsetorships 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 mur- 
 der 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 
 
36 Ccesar, 
 
 of the Nuraidians and the Moors. To what race 
 these people belonged is not precisely known. They 
 were not Negroes. The Negro tribes have never ex- 
 tended north of the Sahara. Nor were they Cartha- 
 ginians, or allied to the Carthaginians. The Cartha- 
 ginian colony found them in possession on its' arrival. 
 Sallast says that they were Persians left behind by 
 Hercules after his invasion of Spain. Sallust's evi- 
 dence 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 considera- 
 ble 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 nu- 
 merous elephants (it may be presumed of the African 
 breed), which they and the Carthaginians had cer- 
 tainly succeeded in domesticating. Masinissa, the 
 king of this people, had been the ally of Rome in the 
 last Carthaginian war; he had been afterwards re- 
 ceived 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 childen, 
 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 ho 
 
Jugurtha. 3'i 
 
 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. Jugur- 
 tha 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 assist- 
 ance 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. Ju- 
 gurtha at once murdered Hiempsal, claimed the sov- 
 ereignty, 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 commis- 
 Bioners. The commissioners received the bribes 
 
38 Coesar. 
 
 wliich they expected. They gave Jugurtha general 
 mstructions to leave his cousin in peace ; but they 
 did not wait to see their orders obeyed, and went 
 quietly home. The natural results immediately fol- 
 lowed. 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. Unfortu- 
 nately in the capture of Cirta a number of Romans 
 who resided there had been killed after the surren- 
 der, 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 inves- 
 tigation ; but it went to work languidl}^ with reluc- 
 tance so evident as to rouse suspicion. Notwithstand- 
 ing the fate of tha Gracchi and their friends, Mem- 
 mius, 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 
 h-easures 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 sur- 
 render of some elephants, which the consul privately 
 restored. 
 
 Public opinion was singularly patient. The mas- 
 
Jugurtha, 39 
 
 sacre six years before Lad killed out the liberal lead- 
 ers, and there was no desire on any side as yet to re- 
 new the struggle with the Senate. But it was possible 
 to presume too far on popular acquiescence. Mem- 
 inius came forward again, and in a passionate speech 
 in the Forum exposed and denounced the i^candalous 
 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 de- 
 tained. The Senate ordered him to leave Italy ; and 
 he departed with the scornful phrase on his lips 
 w^hich has passed into history : " Venal city, and 
 Boon to perish if only it can find a purchaser." ^ 
 A second army was sent across, to end the scandal. 
 
 1 "Urbem venalem, et mature perituram, si emptorera invenerit." 
 Sa'.lust, De Bello Jugmihino, c. 35. Livy's account of the business, how- 
 •Ter, differs from Sallust's, and the expression is perhaps not authentic. 
 
40 Ccesar. 
 
 This time the Senate was in earnest, but the work 
 was less easy than was expected. Army manage- 
 ment 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 es- 
 sential 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 Grac- 
 chus 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 un- 
 provided — a mere 'mob, gathered hastily together 
 and ignorant of the first elements of their duty. With 
 the ofiicers it was still worse. The subordinate com- 
 mands 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 man- 
 ual of the art of war.^ 
 
 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 
 
 *'Atego scio, Quirites, qui, postquam consules facti sunt, acta majo- 
 rum, et Grsecorum militaria prjecepta legere coeperint : Homines pr»po»- 
 teri!" — Speech of Marius, Sallust, Jugurtha, 85. 
 
Marius. 41 
 
 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 hir- 
 ing 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 Csecilius ^ 
 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. 
 
 Cains 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 re- 
 membered 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 use- 
 ful to Scipio ; he forced his way steadily upwards, by 
 his mere soldierlike qualities, to the rank of military 
 tribune. Rome, too, had learnt to know him, for he 
 was chosen tribune of the people the year after the 
 
42 CcB%ar, 
 
 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 imperti- 
 nent, and they could make nothing of their charges 
 against him. He was not bidding at this time, how- 
 ever, for the support of the mob. He had the integ- 
 rity 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 pr^tor, and was sent to 
 Spain, where he left a mark again by the successful 
 severity by which he cleared the province of ban- 
 ditti. He was a man neither given himself to talk- 
 ing, nor much talked about in the world ; but he was 
 nought for wherever work was to be done, and he 
 had made himself respected and valued in high cir- 
 cles, for after his return from the Peninsula he had 
 married into one of the most distinguished of the pa- 
 trician families. 
 
 The Csesars were a branch of the Gens Julia, which 
 claimed descent from lulus the son of iEneas, 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 — Csesar meaning elephant in Moorish ; some 
 to the entrance into the world of the first eminent 
 Caesar by the aid of a surgeon's knife ; ^ some from 
 
 1 "Csesus ab utero matris."- 
 
Marius. 43 
 
 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 Com- 
 monwealth. They had been consuls, censors, prae- 
 tors, 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 can- 
 not 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 his- 
 tory, married a lady named Marcia, supposed to be de- 
 scended 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 
 mSsalUance, which implied the beginning of a polit- 
 ical 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 so- 
 cial 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 Afri- 
 can campaign. He was moderately successful. Towns 
 were taken ; battles were won : Metellus was incor- 
 ruptible, and the Numidians sued for peace. But 
 Jugurtha wanted terms, and the consul demanded un- 
 tonditional surrender. Jugurtha withdrew into the 
 
44 CoBsar, 
 
 desert ; the war dragged on ; and Marius, perhaps am- 
 bitious, 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 it- 
 self. 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. Ma- 
 rius consented to stand. The law required that he 
 must be present in person at the election, and he ap- 
 plied to his commander for leave of absence. Me- 
 tellus 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 en- 
 thusiasm. 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 sen- 
 ate house, when the determination of the people was 
 known. A successful general could not be disposed 
 of so easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately, Ma- 
 rius was not a politician. He had no belief in de- 
 mocracy. 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. Hith- 
 erto the Roman legions had been no more than the 
 citizens in arms, called for the moment from their va- 
 rious occupations, to return to them when the occa- 
 sion for their services was past. Marius had per- 
 ceived that fewer men, better trained and disciplined, 
 could be made more effective and be more easily han- 
 
Marius. 45 
 
 died. 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 pro- 
 fession ; 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 ear- 
 nest, and did not wish that the popular party should 
 have the whole benefit and credit of the improve- 
 ments, 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 fol- 
 lowed the enemy across sandy deserts hitherto found 
 impassable. In less than two years the war was 
 over. The Moors, to whom Jugurtha had fled, sur- 
 rendered 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 impor- 
 tance, from the light which .it throws on the charac- 
 ter of the Senate and on the practical working of the 
 institutions which the Gracchi had perished in un- 
 euccesfc fully attempting to reform. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Jngiirtliine war ended in the year 106 B. 0. 
 At tlie same Arpinum, which had produced Mariua, 
 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 deer or vetches. 
 The present representative of the family was a coun- 
 try gentleman in good circumstances given to liter- 
 ature, residing habitually at his estate on the Liris 
 and paying occasional visits to Rome. In that house- 
 hold 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 mate- 
 rial weapons. Mar i us 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 do^m across the Rhine into Luxemburg. The 
 Cimbri crossed the Danube near its sources into 
 lllyria. Both Teutons and Cimbri were Germans, 
 
The Cimhri and Teutons, 47 
 
 and both were making for Gaul by different routes. 
 The Celts of Gaul had. had their daj^". In past gen- 
 erations they had held the German invaders at bay, 
 and had even followed them into their own territo- 
 ries. 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 inde- 
 pendence, and the question of the future was whether 
 Gaul was to be the prey of Germany or to be a prov- 
 ince of Rome. 
 
 Events appeared already to have decided. The in- 
 vasion of the Teutons and the Cimbri was like the 
 pouring in of two great rivers. Each division con- 
 sisted 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 peo- 
 ple 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 an- 
 other attempt was made to stop them, but the Ro- 
 man 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 Switzer- 
 land, where the Helvetii joined them, and the united 
 mass rolled over the Jura and down the bank of the 
 Rhone. Roused at last into the exertion, the Senate 
 Bent into Gaul the largest force which the Romans 
 
48 Ocesar, 
 
 had ever brought into the field. They met the Cim- 
 bri at Orange, and were simply annihilated. Eighty 
 thousand Romans and forty thousand camp follow- 
 ers were said to have fallen. The numbers in such 
 cases are generally exaggerated, but the extrava- 
 gance of the report is a witness to the greatness of 
 the overthrow. The Romans had received a worsQ 
 blow than at Cannae. They were brave enough, but 
 they were commanded by persons whose recommen- 
 dations for command were birth or fortune ; " pre- 
 posterous 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 constitu- 
 tion 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 
 K9t 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 
 
Change in the Position of the Army, 49 
 
 knocking at its gates. Time was the. important el- 
 ement 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 move- 
 ments 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 Teu- 
 tons joined them and fresh detachments of the Hel- 
 vetia 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 towards Italy, the Cim- 
 bri following their old tracks by the Eastern Alps to- 
 wards Aquileia and the Adriatic, the Teutons pass- 
 ing 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 su- 
 preme. Marius was continued in ofiice, and was a 
 fourth time consul. He had completed his military 
 reforms, and the army was now a professional serv- 
 ice, 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 jave- 
 lin, 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 
 
60 Coesar. 
 
 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 thTust of his sword, and Marius publicly thanked 
 and decorated him. 
 
 The effect of the change was like enchantmenfcc 
 The delay of the Germans made it unnecessary to 
 wait for them in Italy. Leaving Catulus, his col- 
 league 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 towards the Alps. Then, following cau- 
 tiously, 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 ma- 
 chine, 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 un- 
 scientific 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 sum- 
 mer of 101, and Italy was saved. 
 
 The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Ro- 
 man 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 
 BtilL They had votes, and they used them ; but they 
 
Change in the Position of the Army, 51 
 
 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 con- 
 stitution remained to appearance intact, and means 
 were devised sufiScient to encounter, it might be sup- 
 posed, the new danger. Standing armies were pro- 
 hibited in Italy. Victorious generals returning from 
 campaigns abroad were required to disband their le- 
 gions on entering the sacred soil. But the materials 
 of these legions remained a distinct order from the 
 rest of the population, capable of instant combina- 
 tion, and in combination irresistible, save by opposing 
 combinations of the same kind. The Senate might 
 continue to debate, the Comitia might elect the an- 
 nual magistrates. The established institutions pre- 
 served the form and something of the reality of power 
 in a people governed so much by habit as the Ro- 
 mans. 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 w^ith 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 preeminence. The elections could be 
 no longer interfered with or the voters intimidated. 
 The public offices were filled with the most violent 
 
62 Ocesar. 
 
 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 ex- 
 pected 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 fac- 
 tion 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 admin- 
 istration remaining with the Senate, they carried a 
 vote that every senator should take an oath to exe- 
 cute 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, Csecilius Metellus. 
 No stain had ever rested on the name of Metellus. 
 He had accepted no bribes. He had half beaten Ju- 
 gurtha, 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. 
 
Murder of Memmius. 55 
 
 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 aris- 
 tocracy 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 im- 
 peached the senators for the Jugurthine infamies; 
 the other, the advanced radicals, led by Glaucia and 
 Saturninus. Memmius and Glaucia were both can- 
 didates 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 an- 
 other 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, reason- 
 able men and fanatics, business-like men and men 
 of theory. The opposition succeeds ; the Govern- 
 ment is overthrown ; the victors divide into a moder- 
 erate 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 demacrogues and their friends sur- 
 rendered, and were confined in the Curia Hostilia till 
 
64 Coesar. 
 
 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 sa- 
 cred, for one was tribune and the other praBtor. 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 an- 
 swer for himself. On the 12th of the preceding 
 July, B. c. 100,^ was born into the world Caius Ju- 
 lius 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. Au- 
 relia was a strict stately lady of the old school, unin- 
 fected 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 opin- 
 ions which prevailed in the family. 
 
 No anecdotes are preserved of Caesar's childhood. 
 He was taught Greek by Antonius Gnipho, an edu- 
 cated Gaul from the north of Italy. He wrote a 
 poem when a boy in honor of Hercules. He com- 
 posed a tragedy on the story of CEdipus. His pas- 
 sionate attachment to Aurelia in after years shows 
 that between mother and child the relations had been 
 affectionate and happy. But there is nothing to in- 
 
 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 j'ears to the beginning of Caesar's life, and brings him 
 into the world at the time of the battle at Aix. 
 
56 CoBsar. 
 
 dicate 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 popular- 
 ity 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 states- 
 men. 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 men- 
 tion of the invasion of their monopoly a law was 
 passed making the very agitation of the subject pun- 
 ishable by death. 
 
 Political convulsions work in a groove, the direc- 
 tion of which varies little in any age or country. 
 Institutions once sufficient and salutary become un- 
 adapted to a change of circumstances. The tradi- 
 tionary holders of power see their interests threat- 
 
The Italian Franchise, 57 
 
 ened. 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 immedi- 
 ate 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 gen- 
 eral 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 threat- 
 ened, and as various necessities arise, those who are 
 one day enemies are frightened the next into unnatu- 
 ral coalitions, and the next after into more embittered 
 dissensions. 
 
 To an indifferent spectator, armed especially with 
 the political experiences of twenty additional centu- 
 ries, 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 
 
58 Coesar. 
 
 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 con- 
 sulted 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. 
 
 The movement from without united the Romans 
 for the instant in defence of their privileges. The 
 aristocracy resisted change from instinct; the mob, 
 
The Italian War, 59 
 
 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 hear- 
 insf, but he was murdered in his own house. 
 
 B. C. 91. 
 
 To be murdered was the usual end of ex- 
 ceptionally 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 Em- 
 pire. Rome, a city of rich, men with families of 
 slaves, and of a crowd of impoverished freemen with- 
 out 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, Numid- 
 ians, 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 be- 
 .*ore 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 
 chat they were helpless, and must come to terms if 
 
60 Ccesar, 
 
 tLey would escape destruction. They abandoned the 
 original point of diJBference, and they offered to open 
 the franchise to every Italian state south of the Po, 
 which had not taken arms, or which returned im- 
 mediately to its allegiance. The war had broken 
 out for a definite cause. When the cause was re- 
 moved 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 a 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 fort- 
 une, and had spent it like other young men of rank, 
 lounging in theatres, and amusing himself with din- 
 ner-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 
 kban that of a cultivated man of fashion. His dis- 
 tinguished birth was not apparent in his person. He 
 had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white 
 
Sylla. 61 
 
 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 Qusestor to Marius 
 on the African expedition, Marius was disinclined to 
 take him as having no recommendation beyond qual- 
 ifications which the consul of the plebeians disdained 
 and disliked. 
 
 Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Be- 
 neath 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 ac- 
 tions of men, possess, or claim to possess, the most in- 
 timate acquaintance with their motives. They again 
 served together, however, against the Northern in- 
 vaders, and Sylla a second time lent efficient help to 
 give Marius 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 
 
62 Coesar. 
 
 emerged into special notice only when he was praBtor 
 in the year 93 B. C, and when he characteristically 
 distinguished his term of office by exhibiting a hun- 
 dred 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. 
 
 In 92 Sylla went as pro-praetor 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 Da- 
 rius 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 ex- 
 tended from Sinope to Trebizond, and reached in- 
 land to the line of mountains where the rivers divide 
 which flow into the Black Sea and the Mediterra- 
 nean. 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 East- 
 ern imagination, and legend made free with his his- 
 tory 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 mar- 
 gin 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 rea- 
 son, perhaps, as well he might, to doubt the durabil- 
 ity of its power. At any rate, he was no sooner fixed 
 
Mithridates. 63 
 
 on his own throne than he began to annex the terri- 
 tories of the adjoining princes. He advanced his sea 
 frontier through Armenia to Batouni, 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 conniv- 
 ance ; and they opened their eyes at last only when 
 Mithridates thought it unnecessary to subsidize them 
 further, and directed his proceedings against Cappa- 
 docia, which was immediately under Roman protec- 
 tion. 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 Cap- 
 padocia 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 
 Bent a message to him that he must not have Cappa- 
 docia, and Mithridates, waiting for a better opportu- 
 nity, 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 adroit- 
 ness and apparent success, and he returned to Rome 
 with new honors to finish the Social war. 
 
 It was no easy work. The Samnites were tougb 
 
64 Ccesar, 
 
 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 Cim- 
 brian invasion, which brought both parties to consent 
 to suspend their differences by mutual concessions. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BabbAEIAN kings, who found Roman senators 
 ready to take bribes from them, believed not unnat- 
 urally that the days of Roman dominion were num- 
 bered. 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 Ro- 
 man 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 fam- 
 ilies, 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 
 yound numbers, still beyond doubt the signal had 
 
 6 
 
66 Ccesar. 
 
 been given in an appalling massacre to abolish out of 
 Asia the Roman name and power. Swift as a thun- 
 derbolt, 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 Cannse had been received with digni- 
 fied calm. Patricians and plebeians forgot their quar- 
 rels, 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 com- 
 mand 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 Common- 
 wealth 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 
 Bave the Republic, and to prepare in haste for Greece. 
 Bvit Sylla was a bitter aristocrat, the very incarna- 
 
Marius and Sylla, 67 
 
 tion 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 dem- 
 ocratic leaders repented of their folly in encourag- 
 ing 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, 
 
68 Ccesar, 
 
 and claiming for Sylla the capture of Jugurtlia. 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 rcYolution. The tribune carried the assembly along 
 with him. There were fights again in the Forum 
 the young nobles with their gangs once more break- 
 ing 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 any- 
 tbing which Sylla bade them. After so many mur- 
 ders 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 Em- 
 pire; 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 
 
Sylla, 69 
 
 the circle which no legionary in arms was allowed to 
 enter, and he lighted his watchfires in the Forum 
 itself. The people resisted ; Sulpicius was killed ; 
 Marius, the saviour of his countr}^, 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 re- 
 store to wealth a decisive preponderance in the elec- 
 tion of the magistrates. The tribunes of the people 
 were stripped of half their power. Their vote was 
 left to them, but the right of initiation was taken 
 away ; and no law or measure of any kind was thence- 
 forth 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 
 
70 Cmar, 
 
 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 Corio- 
 lanus, 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 pas- 
 sage. 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 favor- 
 ite commander. Sylla disregarded his orders from 
 home. He found men and money as he could. He 
 supported himself out of the countries which he oc- 
 cupied, without resources save in his own skill and 
 in the fidelity and excellence of his legions. He de- 
 feated 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 com- 
 
Sylla. 71 
 
 plete the conquest or completely to avenge the massar 
 ere 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 re- 
 main 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 resto- 
 ration 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 trib- 
 une. A more valuable supporter wa» found in Quin- 
 tus Sertorius, a soldier of fortune, but a man of real 
 gifts, and even of genius. Disregarding the new ob- 
 ligation 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 be- 
 
72 Ccesar, 
 
 fore, the supremacy of the aristocrats had been ac- 
 companied 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 fur}^, and were hewn 
 down in heaps where they stood. No accurate reg- 
 ister 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 feroc- 
 ity, certain to be followed with a retribution ^is sharp 
 and as indiscriminating. Men are not permitted to. 
 deal wi£h their fellow creatures in these methods. 
 Cinna and the tribunes fled, but fled only to be re- 
 ceived with opei^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 Sen- 
 ate issued proclamations. The limitations on the Ital- 
 
Marius and Oinna. 73 
 
 ian 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 to- 
 gether at the gates 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 constitu- 
 tional 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 him- 
 self 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 afterwards 
 been absolute, but he had not abused it for party pur- 
 poses. The Senate had no reason to complain of 
 him. He had touched none of their privileges, inca- 
 pable 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. 
 
74 Ccesar. 
 
 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 per- 
 ished, not those who were specially guilty, but those 
 who were most politically marked as patrician lead- 
 ers. With them fell a thousand equites, commoners 
 of fortune, who had thrown in their lot with the aris- 
 tocracy. From retaliatory political revenge the tran- 
 sition was easy to pillage and wholesale murder ; and 
 for many days the wretched city was made a prey to 
 robbers and cut-throats. 
 
 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 witches' 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 fort- 
 night 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 en- 
 
The Democratic Revolution. 75 
 
 gaged 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 hu- 
 man beings with rights as real as their own. 
 
 The democratic" party were now masters of the situ- 
 ation, and so continued for almost four years. Cinna 
 succeeded to the consulship term after term, nominat- 
 ing 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 distinc- 
 tions of citizenship ceased to exist. The constitution 
 became a rehearsal of the Empire, a democracy con- 
 trolled and guided by a popular Dictator. The aristo- 
 crats 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 
 Buch 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 vio- 
 lence there were long quiet intervals when the ordi- 
 nary 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,^ a sallow complexion, large 
 nose, lips full, features refined and intellectual, neck 
 sinewy and thick, beyond what might have been ex- 
 pected from the generally slender figure. He was 
 particular about his appearance, used the bath fre- 
 quently, 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 be had witnessed Sylla's 
 coming to Rome, the camp-fires in the Forum, the 
 
 1 " Nigris vegetisque oculls." — Suetonius. 
 
Youth and Marriage, 11 
 
 Octavian massacre, the return of his uncle and Cinna, 
 and the bloody triumph of the party to which his fa- 
 ther belonged. He was just at the age when sucb 
 scenes make an indelible impression ; and the con- 
 nection 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 
 intimac}^ 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.^ 
 
 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 four- 
 teen. 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 
 
 1 " Ac primum illud tempus familiaritatis et consuetudinia, quae mihi 
 cum illo, quae fratri meo, quae Caio Varroni, consobrino nostro, ab omnium 
 nostrum adolescentia fuit, praetermitto." — Cicero, Be Provinciis Con- 
 tularibus, 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. 
 
78 Ccesar, 
 
 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 Cassar'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 definitely he committed himself to the pohtics 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 con- 
 ditions 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 
 
Return of Sylla from the East. 79 
 
 footing in Italy, tlieir 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 prac- 
 tical 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 de- 
 termined only when the sword had decided between 
 them. In Cinna lay the presumed lawful authority. 
 He represented the people as organized in the Co- 
 tnitia ; 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 else- 
 where 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 ac- 
 customed 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 decid- 
 ing upon his own, when accident came suddenly to 
 his help. Cinna had gone down to Brindisi, intend- 
 ing himself to c-arry his army into Greece, and to 
 spare Italy the miseries of another civil war, by fight- 
 ing it out elsewhere. The expedition was unpopular 
 with the soldiers, and Cinna was killed in a mutiny. 
 
80 Ccemr. 
 
 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 neu- 
 tral 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 un- 
 der his feet. He intended to reenter Rome with the 
 glory of his conquests about him, for revenge, and a 
 counter revolution. The consuls replied with refus- 
 ing to treat with a rebel in arms, and with a com- 
 mand 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 
 Cnseus Pompey, afterwards 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 dis- 
 trusted 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 
 
Sylla's Return, 81 
 
 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 embezzle- 
 ment. The family house in Rome had been confis- 
 cated ; the old Strabo had been killed ; the son had 
 retired to his family estate in Picenum,^ where he 
 was living when Sylla landed. To the young Roman 
 chivalry, Sylla was a hero of romance. Pompey 
 raised a legion out of bis friends and tenants, scat- 
 tered 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,^ men 
 steeped in crime, stained with murder, incest, adul- 
 tery, forgery, and meaning to secure the fruits of 
 their villainies by well-timed service. They were all 
 welcome, and Sylla was not particular. His prog- 
 ress 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, de- 
 serted to him. But the Italians, especially the Sam- 
 nites, 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 dis- 
 appointment. Suspected patricians were murdered : 
 among them fell the Pontifex Maximus, the venera- 
 ble Scsevola. At length the contest ended in a des- 
 perate 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 
 
 i On the Adriatic, between Ancona and Pescara. 
 
 2 See, for the story of Oppianicus, the remarkable speech of Cicero, 
 Pm Cluentio. 
 
82 Coesar, 
 
 taken, but they were murdered afterwards 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 con- 
 tinued 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 bouses 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 peo- 
 ple ; 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 up- 
 starts, who, instead of being grateful for being al- 
 lowed to live and work and pa}'^ taxes and serve in 
 the army, had dared to claim a share in the govern- 
 ment, had turned against their masters, and had set 
 their feet upon their necks. The miserable multi- 
 tude 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 intel- 
 lect, the country gentlemen, the minority of knights 
 and patricians like Cinna, who had taken the popular 
 side and had deserted their own order. Their mo- 
 tives mattered not ; some might have acted from 
 foolish enthusiasm ; some from personal ambition ; 
 but such traitors, from the Gracchi onwards, had 
 caused all the mischief which had happened to the 
 State. They were determined, they were persever- 
 ing. No concessions had satisfied them, and one de- 
 mand 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. 
 
The Proscription of the Democrats, 83 
 
 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 at- 
 tempt 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 recur- 
 rence of it ; and moderate opposition was as objec- 
 tionable as fanaticism and frenzy. He had no inten- 
 tion 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 re- 
 sistance, and, therefore, for the moment he required 
 complete freedom of action. The Senate at his di- 
 rection 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 im- 
 peached afterwards and his policy reversed, but while 
 his office lasted he could do what he pleased. 
 
 He at once outlawed every magistrate, every public 
 lervant 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 
 ')ver Italy who belonged to the liberal party. He se- 
 lected agents whom he could trust, or supposed he 
 could trust, to enter the names for each district. He 
 selected, for instance, Ojjpianicus of Larino, who in- 
 scribed individuals whom he had already murdered, 
 
84 Coesar, 
 
 and tlieir 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 num- 
 ber, the confiscation of their property, and the divi- 
 sion 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 500Z. was offered for the 
 head of any person whose name was in the sched- 
 ule. 
 
 It was one of those' deliberate acts, carried out with 
 method and order, which are possible only in coun- 
 tries 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 or- 
 dered massacres of selected victims in political and 
 spiritual struggles rise in a different order of feelings, 
 and are remembered through all ages with indigna- 
 tion and shame. The victims perish as the cham- 
 pions of principles which survive through the changes 
 of time. They are marked for the sacrifice on ac- 
 count of their advocacy of a cause which to half nian- 
 kind is the cause of humanity. They are the martyrs 
 of history, and the record of atrocity rises again in 
 
The Proscription of the Demoerats, 85 
 
 immortal witness against the opinions out of which it 
 rose. 
 
 Patricians and plebeians, aristocrats and demo- 
 crats, have alike stained their hands with blood in the 
 working out of the problem of politics. But impartial 
 history also declares 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 gentle- 
 men 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 com- 
 plain, 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, 
 weiilth 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 cruel- 
 ties 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 Rev- 
 olution " were exceeded by the massacre of the Hu- 
 guenots two hundred years before, for which the Rev- 
 olution was the expiatory atonement. 
 
 Four thousand seven hundred persons fell in the 
 proscription of Sylla, all men of education and fort- 
 une. The real crime of many of them was the pos- 
 session 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 
 
86 Ccemr, 
 
 rights which deserved consideration as well as the 
 senators and nobles. The liberal party were extin- 
 guished in their own blood. Their estates were par- 
 titioned into a hundred and twenty thousand allot- 
 ments, which were distributed among Sylla's friends, 
 or soldiers, or freed men. 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 infor- 
 mation was at once indictment and evidence, and ac- 
 cusation 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 im- 
 potence. 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 pa- 
 trician 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, prsetors, cediles, and quaes- 
 tors. The form of a popular constitution would re- 
 main, since the road into the council of State lay 
 through the popular elections. But to guard against 
 
Sylla^s Reforms. 87 
 
 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 afterwards 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 imme- 
 diately 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 reenacted 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 trib- 
 une. 
 
 In the Senate so reconstituted was thus centred a 
 complete restrictive control over the legislation and 
 the administration. And this was not alL The sen- 
 ators had been so corrupt in the use of their judicial 
 functions that Gracchus had disabled them from sit- 
 ting in the law courts, and had provided that the 
 iudges should be chosen in future from the Equites. 
 The knights had been exceptionally pure in their of- 
 fice. Cicero challenged his opponents on the trial of 
 Verres ^ to find a single instance in which an Eques- 
 trian court could be found to have given a corrupt 
 verdict during the forty years for which their priv- 
 ilege 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 : 
 
 1 Appian, on the other hand, says that the Conrts of the Equites had 
 been more corrupt than the Senatorial courts. — De Bello Civili, i. 22. Cic- 
 ero was, perhaps, prejudiced in favT>r of liis own order; but a contempo- 
 r»ry statement tiuis publicly made is far more likely to be trustworthy. 
 
88 Ccesar. 
 
 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 reputa- 
 tion. 
 
 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 reelected year 
 after year, and had been virtual kings. Sylla pro- 
 vided that ten years must elapse between a first con- 
 sulship and a second. Nor was any one to be a con- 
 sul who was not forty-three years old, and had not 
 passed already through the lower senatorial offices of 
 praetor or qusestor. 
 
 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 irre- 
 sponsible. It had the appointment of all the gov- 
 ernors of the provinces. It was surrounded by its 
 own body-guard. It had the administration com- 
 pletely in hand. The members could be tried only 
 by their peers, and were themselves judges of every 
 
The Syllan Constitution, 89 
 
 other order. No legal force was left anywhere to in- 
 terfere with what it might please them to command. 
 A senator was not necessarily a patrician, nor a pa- 
 trician a senator. The Senate was,^ 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 ex- 
 pect 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 spend- 
 thrift or the speculating millionnaire. 
 
 What human foresight could do to prevent democ- 
 racy from regaining the ascendency, Sylla had thus 
 accomplished. He had destroj^ed 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 garri- 
 son ; and here it was, as Csesar said afterwards, 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 
 intrusted, 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 Repub- 
 lic possessed ; but Sylla must have been himself con- 
 scious that fact and theory might be very far from 
 corresponding. 
 
 The key of the situation was the army. As before, 
 DC troops were to be maintained in Italy ; but be- 
 
 ^ Sylla bad himself nominated a larfce number of senators. 
 
90 Ccesar. 
 
 yond the frontiers, the provinces were held by mili- 
 tary 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 al- 
 ready growing even under the Dictator's own eyes, 
 and at the height of his authority. Sertorius had es- 
 caped 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 com- 
 mander 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, Serto- 
 rius 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 condi- 
 tion 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 iittachment 
 
Pompey. 91 
 
 to five hundred elderly rich men who had bought 
 their way into preeminence. 
 
 Sylla did not live to see the significance of the Ser- 
 torian 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 re- 
 ceived 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 asi3iring 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 sum- 
 moned him home; but he gave him a triumph for 
 his Afi-ican conquests, and allowed him to call him- 
 self by the title of " Magnus " or " The Greats Pom- 
 pey was a promising soldier, without political ambi- 
 tion, 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 stepdaughter, named JEmilia. 
 She was already married, and was pregnant. Pom- 
 pey too was married to Antistia, a lady of good fam- 
 ily ; but domestic ties were not allowed to stand in 
 the way of higher objects. - Nor did it matter tliat 
 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 hus- 
 band's horrible death. Late Republican Rome was 
 not troubled with sentiment. Sylla invited Pompey 
 
92 Cmar, 
 
 to divorce Antistia and marry JEmilia. Pompey com- 
 plied. Antistia was sent away. Emilia was di- 
 vorced from her husband, and was brought into Pom- 
 pey's house, where she immediately died. 
 
 In another young man of high rank, whom Sylla 
 attempted to attach to himself by similar meaiiS, 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 pro- 
 scription ; 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. Close- 
 ly 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 constitu- 
 tion must depend on his being able to conciliate the 
 intellect and energy of the next. Making a favor per- 
 haps 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 Csesar 
 would comply. Yet Caesar answered with a distinct 
 and unhesitating refusal. The terrible Sylla, in the 
 fullness of his strength, after desolating half the 
 homes in Italy, after revolutionizing all Roman soci- 
 ety; from the peasant's cottage in the Apennines to 
 the senate-house itself, was defied by a mere boy 1 
 Throughout his career Caesar displayed always a 
 ii*^.g'.ilar indifference to life. He had no sentimental 
 
Ccesar and Sylla. 93 
 
 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 mabter of 
 himself in matters which belonged to himself. Sylla 
 might kill him if he so pleased. It was better to dieu- 
 than to put away a wife who was the mother of his 
 child, and to marry some other woman at a Dic- 
 tator'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 de- 
 prived Cassar 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 es- 
 caped only by bribing Sylla's satellites. His fate 
 Avould soon have overtaken him, but he had powerful 
 relations, whom Sylla did not care to offend. Aure- 
 lius Cotta, who was perhaps his mother's brother, 
 Mamercus JEmilius, a distinguished patrician, and 
 singularly also the College of the Vestal Virgins, in- 
 terceded for his pardon. The Dictator consented at 
 last, but with prophetic reluctance. " Take him," he 
 eaid at length, "since you will have it so — biit I 
 wouid 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 
 
94 Ccesar, 
 
 young Caesar there ar^ many Mariuses."^ 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.. 
 Cassar held to his inherited convictions, remaining 
 constant through good and evil to the cause of hia 
 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 profes- 
 sion; 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 bo 
 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 oppor- 
 tunity of showing. It was to the cause of the consti- 
 tution, 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 
 
 1 So says Suetonius, reporting the traditions of the following century 
 but the authorit}- is doubtful; and the story, like so many otliers is per- 
 bapa apocryphal. 
 
Retirement of Sylla, 95 
 
 destruction, the better cliance tbey 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 re- 
 signed -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 retire- 
 ment 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 Ro- 
 man 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 Avas 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 
 
96 Ci2sar, 
 
 in command. Of assassination he was in no greater 
 danger tlian when Dictator, whileHlie temptation to 
 assassinate him was less. His influence was practi- 
 cally undiminished, and as long as he lived, he re- 
 mained, 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 Dicta- 
 tor'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 follow- 
 ers, and that, young and unknown as he was, his in- 
 significance might protect him, however far he vent- 
 ured. But he had taken the Senate's side. From 
 first to last he had approved of the reactionary con- 
 stitution, and had only condemned the ruthless meth- 
 ods 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 propert3^ 
 
 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 
 fco get possession of his estate. The proscription wag 
 
First Public Appearance of Cicero, 97 
 
 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. Sex- 
 tus 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. Wit- 
 nesses were easily provided. No influential pleader, 
 it was justly supposed, would venture into antago- 
 nism with 83^11 a's favorite, and appear for the defence. 
 Cicero heard of the case, however, and used the op- 
 portunity 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 Uni- 
 verse, 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 Chrys- 
 ogonus as an accomplice in an act of atrocious vil- 
 lainy. 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 wrifc- 
 T 
 
98 OoBsar, 
 
 ing his memoirs, which have been unfortunately lost. 
 He was buried gorgeously in the Campus Martins, 
 among the old kings of Rome. The aristocrats 
 breathed freely when delivered from his overpower- 
 ing presence, and the constitution which he had set 
 upon its feet was now to be tried. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The able men of the democracy had fallen in the 
 proscription. Sertorius, the only eminent surviving 
 Boldier 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 inter- 
 ference, and able to return to those pleasant occupa- 
 tions which for a time had been so rudely inter- 
 rupted. Sertorius was an awkward problem with 
 which Pompey might perliaps be intrusted to deal. 
 No one knew as yet what stuff might be in Pompey. 
 He was for the present sunning himself in his mili- 
 tary splendors ; too young to come forward as a poli- 
 tician, 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 opportuni- 
 ties of distinction to a youth who had so saucily de- 
 fied them. Sertorius was far off, and could be dealt 
 with at leisure. 
 
 In his defence of Roscius, Cicero had given an ad- 
 monition to the noble lords that unless they mended 
 their ways they could not look for any long continu- 
 ance.^ They regarded Cicero perhaps, if they heard 
 
 1 "ITnumhoc dico : nostri isti nobiles, nisi vigilantes et boni et fortes 
 et misericordes erunt, iis hominibns in quibus ha3C erunt, ornamenta sua 
 sontodant necesse est." — Pro Roscio Amerlno, sec. 48. 
 
100 Cmmr, 
 
 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 LucuUus had been a special favorite of 
 Sylla. The Dictator left him his executor, with the 
 charge of his manuscripts. Lucullus was a com- 
 moner, but of consular family, and a thorough-bred 
 aristocrat. He had endeared himself to Sylla by a 
 languid talent which could rouse itself when neces- 
 sary 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. 
 
 Csecilius Metellus, son of the Metellus whom Ma- 
 rius 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 dur- 
 ing the Marian revolution. The son had escaped, 
 
Crassus. ,. /\ \ I -V^' > ' ) iifi'i 
 
 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 plebe- 
 ian 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 exe- 
 cutioner. 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 in- 
 terest. 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 Em- 
 pire, the acknowledged head of the business world of 
 Rome. 
 
 The last person who need be noted was Marcus 
 
102 Ccesar. 
 
 ^milius 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 tlie 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 Sicil- 
 ian subjects. His extortions had been notorious ; he 
 was threatened with prosecution as soon as his con- 
 sulship should expire ; and the adventure to which 
 he was about to commit himself was undertaken, so 
 the aristocrats afterwards 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 opin- 
 ions. 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 mas- 
 ters of their own destiny. 
 
 During this time Ca3sar had been serving his ap- 
 prenticeship 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 JEgean. 
 Lesbos was occupied by adventurers, who were fight- 
 ing for their own hand, and the praetor Minucius 
 Thermus had been sent to clear the seas and extir- 
 pate these nests of brigands. To Thermus Caesar 
 
The Bithynian Scandal. 103 
 
 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 Ceesar, soon after 
 his arrival, was dispatched on this commission to the 
 Bithynian court. 
 
 Long afterwards, when Roman cultivated society 
 had come to hate Caesar, and any scandal was wel- 
 come to them which would make him odious, it was 
 reported that on this occasion he entered into cer- 
 tain 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 cer- 
 tain to be believed ; and similar accusations were 
 flung indiscriminately, so Cicero says, at the reputa- 
 tion of every eminent person whom it was desirable 
 to stain, if his personal appearance gave the story any 
 air of probability.^ 
 
 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 for- 
 cing-pit. But gossip is not evidence, nor does it be- 
 come evidence because it is in Latin and has been re- 
 peated 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 
 
 1 •* Sunt enim ista maledicta pervulgata in omnes, quorum in adoles- 
 eentift forma et species fuit liberalis." — Oratio pro Marco Ccelio. 
 
104 Ccesar, 
 
 particular accusation against Cassar gains, perliajs, 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 njidst 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 dis- 
 dain, 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 Ro- 
 man 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 de- 
 serve 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, Ctesar 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 Grac- 
 chi. 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 circum* 
 
Lepidus and Oinna. 105 
 
 stances, he might think criminal and useless. Lepi- 
 dus was not a wise man, though he may have been 
 an honest one. The aristocrac}^ 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. 
 
 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 
 
 . B. C. 77. 
 
 without him. Young Cinna, his brother-in- c«sar set. 
 law, joined Lepidus. Together they raised 
 a force in Etriiria, and marched on Rome. They 
 made their way into the city, but were met in the 
 Campus Martius by Pompey and the other consul, 
 Catulus, at the head of some of Sylla's old troops ; 
 and an abortive enterprise, which, if it had suc- 
 ceeded, 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. 
 
 Caesar meanwhile felt his way, as Cicero was doing 
 in the law courts, attacking the practical abuses, which 
 the Roman administration was generating everywhere. 
 Cornehus Dolabella had been placed by Sylla in com- 
 mand of Macedonia. His father had been a friend 
 of Saturninus, and had fallen at his side. The son 
 bad gone over to the aristocracy, and for this reason 
 was perhaps an object of aversion to the younger 
 Mberals. The Macedonians pursued him, when his 
 government had expired, with a list of grievances of 
 
106 ' Ccesar. 
 
 the usual kind. Young Csesar took up their cause, 
 and prosecuted him. Dolabella was a favorite of the 
 Senate ; he had been allowed a triumph for his serv- 
 ices, arid 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 
 Csesar 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 ex- 
 pected an orator to deliglit as well as instruct them. 
 The use of the tongue had become a special branch 
 of a statesman's education ; and Csesar, feeling his 
 deficiency, used his leisure to put himself in training, 
 and 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 ad- 
 venture which may be something more than legend. 
 When he was crossing the JEgean, his vessel is said to 
 Uave been taken by pirates. They carried him to 
 Pharmacusa,^ an island off the Carian coast, which 
 was then in their possession ; and there he was de- 
 tained for six weeks with tliree of his attendants, 
 
 1 Now Fermaco 
 
Ccesar and the Pirates. 107 
 
 while the rest of his servants were sent to the near- 
 est Koman station to raise his ransom. The 
 
 CfiGStir set 24 
 
 pirates treated him with politeness. He 
 joined in their sports, played games with them, looked 
 into their habits, and amused himself with them a8 
 well as he could, frankly telling them at the same 
 time that they would all be hanged. 
 
 The ransom, a very large one, about 10,0002., was 
 brought and paid. Caesar was set upon the mainlund 
 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 Avas not a 
 Roman characteristic. It was therefore noted, with 
 some surprise, that Caesar interceded to mitigate the 
 severit}^ 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 tu- 
 ition of the great master. 
 
 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 
 khe 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 Med- 
 iterranean, no longer bound by any special ties to 
 
108 Coemr. 
 
 Rome or Italy, each man of it individually vigorous 
 and energetic, and bent before all things on Jiiaking 
 his own fortune. If no tolerable administration was 
 provided from home, their obvious course could only 
 be to identify themselves with local interests and na- 
 tionalities, and make themselves severally indepen- 
 dent, 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 
 
 B. C. 78-72. . r & ' 
 
 the difficulty was only removed at last by 
 treachery and assassination. 
 
 A more extraordinary and more disgraceful phe- 
 nomenon was the growth of piracy, with the skirts 
 of which Csesar 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 Med- 
 iterranean had become a profitable field of enterprise 
 for these gentry. From everj^ 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. lUyrians from the 
 Adriatic, Greeks from the islands and the Asiatic 
 ports, Sj^rians, 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 
 
Growth of Piracy. 109 
 
 Mediterranean had learnt from the Romans the ad- 
 vantage of union, and had drifted into a vast confed- 
 eration, 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 govern- 
 01*8 and farmers of the taxes were too bent upon fill- 
 ing their private parees, to allow fleets to be main- 
 tained in the provincial harbors adequate to keep the 
 peace. When Servilius retired, the pirates reoccu- 
 pied their old haunts. The Cilician forests furnished 
 them with ship timber. The mountain gorges pro- 
 vided inaccessible storehouses for plunder. Crete was 
 completely in their hands also ; and they had secret 
 fi'iends along the entire Mediterranean shores. They 
 grew at last into a thousand sail, divided into squad- 
 rons, under separate commanders. They were admi- 
 rably armed. They roved over the waters at their 
 pleasure, attacking islands or commercial ports, plun- 
 dering 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. ^ 
 The revenue which ought to have been spent on the 
 protection of the Empire, a few patricians were divid- 
 ing among themselves. The pirates had even marts 
 
 1 "Videbat enim populum Romanum non locupletari quotannis pecuniH 
 juHicsl pr«ter paucos : neque eos quidquam aliud assequi classium nomine, 
 Disi ut, detrimentis accipiendis majore affici turpitudine videremur." — 
 Cicei-o, Pro Lege Manilla^ 23. 
 
110 Ccesar. 
 
 ill 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 pre- 
 posterous an enormity. The ease with which these 
 buccaneers of the Old World were eventually sup- 
 pressed proved conclusively that they existed by con- 
 nivance. It was discovered at last that large sums 
 had been sent regularly from Crete to some of tho 
 most distinguished members of the aristocracy. The 
 Senate was again the same body which it was found 
 by Jugurtha, and the present generation were hap- 
 pier 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 systemat- 
 ically, 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 wholly in the Senate's hands. Such in- 
 dependence as had not been crushed was corrupted. 
 The aristocracy divided the consulships, prsetorships, 
 and quaestorships among themselves, and after the 
 year of ofiice the provincial prizes were then distrib- 
 uted. 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 rep- 
 resented it as worse than it was in the famous prose- 
 cution 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 ex- 
 celled, 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 
 
Provincial Administration, 111 
 
 was noted as an election manager at the Cotnitia. 
 TJie son had been attached to Carbo when the demo- 
 crats 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 afterwards in Greece and 
 Asia, where he distinguished himself by fresh rapac- 
 ity, 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 praetor- 
 ship, 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. 
 
 Yerres 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 isl- 
 and was rich in works of art. Verres had a taste for 
 such things, and seized without scruple the finest pro- 
 ductions 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, 
 wei'e put out of the world. He had an understand- 
 ing 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 Ver- 
 res, 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 Verrea 
 
112 CcBsar, 
 
 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 con- 
 Buls, and the court before which he might be prose- 
 cuted. 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 sena- 
 tors, each of whom might require assistance in a simi- 
 lar situation. The chance of justice on these occa- 
 sions 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 Yerres' con- 
 duct to shame the courts into honesty. Every diffi- 
 culty was thrown in his way. He went in person to 
 Sicily to procure evidence. He was browbeaten and 
 threatened with violence. The witnesses were in- 
 timidated, and in some instances were murdered. 
 The technical ingenuities of Roman law were ex- 
 hausted 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 an- 
 swer save that other governors had been equally 
 iniquitous and had escaped unpunished, created a 
 
Rome under Sylla's Constitution, 113 
 
 Btorra 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 aristoc- 
 racy 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 submis- 
 sion ; the sea abandoned to buccaneers ; decent indus- 
 trious people in the provinces given over to have their 
 fortunes stolen from them, their daughters dishon- 
 ored, and themselves beaten or killed if they com- 
 plained, 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 tyr- 
 anny of a dead hand. A bad king is like a bad sea- 
 son. 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 pros- 
 perous, and she was discharging her great trust by 
 sacrificing them to the luxury and ambition of a few 
 hundred scandalous politicians. 
 
 The nature of man is so constructed that a con- 
 Btitution so administered must collapse. It generates 
 faction within, it invites enemies from without. 
 While Sertorius was defying the Senate in Spain, and 
 
114 . Ccesar, 
 
 the pirates were buying its connivance in the Med- 
 iterranean, Mithridate^ started into life again in Pon- 
 tus. 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 correspond- 
 ents in Rome, and knew everything that was pass- 
 ing there. He saw that he had httle to fear by try- 
 ing 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. Csesar, in the midst 
 of his rhetorical studies at Rhodes, heard the mut- 
 terings 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 inte- 
 rior kingdoms, and of the whole valley of the Eu- 
 phrates to the Persian Gulf. The Black Sea was again 
 covered with his ships. He defeated Cotta in a na- 
 val battle, drove him through the Bosphorus, and de- 
 stroyed the Roman squadron. The Senate exerted it- 
 self at last. Lucullus, Sylla's friend, the only mod- 
 erately able man that the aristocracy had 
 B.C. 74. -^ •^ 
 
 among them, was sent to encounter him. 
 
 Lucullus had been trained in a good school, and the 
 superiority of the drilled Roman legions when toler- 
 ably 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 retreat- 
 mg prince across the Euphrates, won victories, took 
 
LucuUus. 115 
 
 cities and pillaged them. He reached Lake Van, he 
 marched round Mount Ararat, and advanced to Ar- 
 taxata. But Asia was a scene of dangerous tempta- 
 tion for a Roman commander. Cicero, though lie 
 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.^ 
 
 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 admin- 
 istration to prolong his command beyond the usual 
 time ; the rest he had left in the city to accumulate 
 for himself at interest.^ He lived on the plunder of 
 
 1 "Difficile est dictu, Quirites, quanto in odio simns apud exteras na- 
 tiones, propter eoruni, quos ad eas per hos annos cum imperio misimus, 
 injurias ac libidines. Quod enim fanum putatis in illis terris nostris mag- 
 istratibus religiosum, quam civitatem sanctam, quam domum satis clau- 
 sam ac munitam fuisse V Urbes jam locupletes ac copiosse requiruntur, 
 
 quibus causa belli propter diripiendi cupiditatem inferatur Quare 
 
 etiamsi quem habetis, qui collatis signis exercitus regios superare posse vi- 
 deatur, taraen, 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, oculo!?, animum cohibere possit, non erit 
 idoneus, qui ad bellum Asiaticura regiumque mittatur." — Pro Lege Ma- 
 niM, 22, 23. 
 
 * " Quem possumus iraperatorem aliquo in numero putare, cujus in eX' 
 
11^ Ccesar, 
 
 friend and foe ; and the defeat of Mithridates waa 
 never more than a second object to him. The one 
 stead)^ 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 con- 
 sidering 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. Lu- 
 cullus stood on the defensive till he was recalled, and 
 he then returned to Rome to lounge away the re- 
 mainder 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 proscrip- 
 tions 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.! The small peasants fell into debt. 
 Sylla's soldiers were expensive, and became embar- 
 
 ercitu veneant centuriatus atque venierint ? Quid hunc hominem magnum 
 aut amplum de republica cogitare, qui pecuniam ex acrario depi-omtani ad 
 bellum administrandum, aut propter cupiditatem provincije magistratibus 
 diviserit aut propter avaritiam Roma; in quajstu reliquerit ? Vestra ad- 
 murmuratio facit, Quirites, ut agnoscere videamini qui hsec fecerint: ego 
 autem nerainem nomino." — Pro Lege Manilid, 13. 
 
 1 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 conteit 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 plefc-ied. The farmer used to shave only once a week, etc. — M. Ter. 
 Varronis Reliqulce, nd. Alexander Riese, pp. 139, 140. 
 
The Gladiators, 117 
 
 rassed. Thus the small properties artificially rees- 
 tablished were falling rapidly again into the market. 
 The great land-owners 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 dis- 
 persed over the Peninsula, while others in large num- 
 bers 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 patri- 
 cians 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 swordsmen in the circus. 
 
 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 
 
118 Coesar, 
 
 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 com- 
 rades and kindred were up and fighting for freedom. 
 They found a leader in a young Thracian robber 
 chief, named Sparfcacus, 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 com- 
 panions, 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 uni- 
 versal 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 prse- 
 ^■^" ' ' ■ tors, 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 Pompej^ 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 disobe- 
 dience. 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 
 
A Political Dilemma, 119 
 
 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 democ- 
 racy. Both were alike bloody and unscrupulous; 
 and the rule of the Senate meant corruption and im- 
 becility, and the rule of the democracy meant ao- 
 archy. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 C^SAE, having done his small piece of indepen- 
 dent service in Caria, and having finished his course 
 with Appoloniiis, 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 par- 
 ticular notice. But his defiance of Sylla, his prosecu- 
 tion of Dolabella, and his known political sympathies, 
 made him early a favorite with the people. The 
 growing disorders at home and abroad, with the ex- 
 posures on the trial of Verres, were weakening daily 
 the- influence of the Senate. Caesar was elected mil- 
 itary 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 trib- 
 unes of the people. They were again enabled to call 
 the assembly together, and though they were still un- 
 able 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 Cic- 
 ero — without ornament, but directly to the purpose. 
 Among the first uses to which he addressed his influ- 
 ence 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 
 Df high office. He was made qusestor, which gave 
 him a place in the Senate. 
 
Comiection with Pompey. 121 
 
 Soon after his election, his aunt Julia, the widow 
 of Marius, died. It was usual on the death of emi- 
 nent persons for a near relation to make an oration at 
 the funeral. Csesar 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 tlie insignia 
 and images of Marius himself, whose name for some 
 years it had been unsafe to mention.^ 
 
 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 maladministration, and he and Caesar be- 
 gan 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 Csesar a useful subordinate. Caesar 
 naturally liked Pompey, as a really distinguished sol- 
 dier and an upright, disinterested man. Tliey became 
 connected by marriage. Cornelia dying, Csesar 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 se- 
 
 1 Thi name of Marius, it is to be observed, remained so popular in Rome 
 that Cicero after this always spoke of him with respect. 
 
122 Cmar, 
 
 cured 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 direc- 
 tion. The tribunes were restored to their old func- 
 tions, the censorship was reestablished, and the Sen- 
 ate 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 con- 
 trast, arid 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 Sen- 
 ate had yielded to patrician ascendency. Cicero 
 aimed at a reunion of the orders; and the consulship 
 of Crassus, little as Cicero liked Crassus personall}^, 
 was a sign of a growing tendency in this direction. 
 At all costs the knights must be prevented from iden- 
 tifying 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 
 
The Pirates. 123 
 
 and, which was of more importance to them, the sys- 
 tem of farming the taxes, in which so many of them 
 had made their fortunes, and which Sylla had abol- 
 ished, 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 par- 
 celled out among the oligarchy. 
 
 With recovered vitality a keener apprehension be- 
 gan 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 ori- 
 ental 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 ves- 
 sel'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 pos- 
 session 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 
 
124 Ccesar. 
 
 trade on whicli so many of the middle classes were 
 engaged was totally destroyed. The return of the 
 commoners to power was a signal for an active move- 
 ment to put an end to the disgrace. No one ques- 
 tioned 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 un- 
 constitutional authority. But Pompey was at once 
 capable and honest. Pompey could not be 
 
 B- C 67. x^ -^ 
 
 bribed by the pirates, and Pompey could 
 be depended on not to abuse his opportunities to the 
 prejudice of the Commonwealth. 
 
 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 commit- 
 tees of weak and treacherous noblemen, who cared 
 only for the interest of their class. The established 
 forms were scrupulously observed, and the plan de- 
 signed was brought forward first, according to rule, 
 in the Senate. A tribune, Aulus Gabinius, intro- 
 duced 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 
 
The Crobinian Law. 125 
 
 that the money in the treasury should be at his dis- 
 position ; 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 com- 
 mitted to any one man since the abolition of the mon- 
 archy. It was equivalent to a suspension of the Sen- 
 ate 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 out- 
 side the house ready to defend their champion ; the 
 country people had flocked in for the occasion ; the 
 city was thronged with multitudes for 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 as- 
 sembly, and the aristocrats were driven to their old 
 remedy of bribing other members of the college of 
 tribunes to interfere. Two renegades were thus se- 
 cured : and when the voting day came, Trebellius, 
 who was one of them, put in a veto ; the other, Ros- 
 cius, 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 cov- 
 ered. A yell rose from tens of thousands of throats 
 tto piercing that it was said a crow flying over the 
 Forum dropped dead at the sound of it. The old 
 
126 Coesar, 
 
 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 Ro- 
 man world. 
 
 It now appeared how strong the Romans were 
 w|ien 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 prison- 
 ers fell into the hands of Pompey. To the astonish- 
 ment of mankind, Pompey neither impaled them, as 
 the Senate had impaled the followers of Spartacus, 
 nor even sold them for slaves. He was conteiited 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 Sen- 
 
The Manilian Law. 127 
 
 ate and fresh glory on the hero of the houi Cicero, 
 with his thoughts fixed on saving the constitution, 
 considered that Porapey 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 groun'ds 
 Cicero thought that Pompey ought to be recognized 
 by the moderate party which he intended to form ; 
 und 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. Lu- 
 cuUus, 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 suc- 
 cess, 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 for- 
 ward, this time directly before the assembly, th'e 
 Senate's consent not being any more asked for. 
 Caesar again brought his influence to bear on Pom- 
 pey's side ; but Caesar found support in a quarter 
 where it might not have been looked for. The Sen- 
 ate 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 
 
128 Ccesar. 
 
 been the supreme object of his ambitiou. He was 
 vain of the honor which he had won, and delighted 
 with the high company into which he had been re- 
 ceived ; 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 insti- 
 tution itself of which he meant to be an illustrious 
 ornament, he not only supported the Manilian propo- 
 sition, but supported it in a speech more effective 
 than the wildest outpourings of democratic rhetoric. 
 Asia Minor, he said, was of all the Roman prov- 
 inces the most important, because it was the most 
 wealthy. 1 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 ex- 
 ports, there was no country in the world to be com- 
 pared with it ; yet Asia was in danger of being ut- 
 terly lost through the worthlessness 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 your- 
 selves how thej^" 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 collec- 
 tions of statues and pictures. Asia is a land of temp- 
 tations. Send no one thither who cannot resist gold 
 
 1 " Asia vero tam opima est et fertilis, ut et ubertate agrorum et vari* 
 tate frnctuum et magnitudine pastionis, et multitudine earuni rerum, quso 
 exportentur, facile omnibus terris antecellat." — Pro Lege Manilid. Cic- 
 ero's expressions are worth notice at a time when Asia Minor has becoma 
 •f importance to England. 
 
Cicero^s Speech. 129 
 
 and jewels and shrines and pretty women. Pom- 
 pey is upright and pure-sighted. Pompey knows 
 that the State has been impoverished because the rev- 
 enue 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." ^ 
 
 After passing a deserved panegyric on the suppres- 
 sion 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 patriot- 
 ism. He was now in his proper place, where his bet- 
 ter mind must have told him that he ought to have 
 continued, working by the side of Caesar and Pom- 
 pey. 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 
 tnob rule and despotism, the wise course was to recog- 
 nize 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 Cic- 
 ero could never wholly forget his own consequence, 
 or bring himself to persist in any policy where he 
 could play but a secondary part. 
 
 The Manilian law was carried. In addition to his 
 present extraordinary command, Pompey was in- 
 
 1 Pro Lege Manilid, abridged. 
 
130 Ccesar, 
 
 trusted 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 array ; he drove the 
 Armenians back into their own mountains, and ex- 
 torted 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. Bro- 
 ken down at last, he took leave of a world in which 
 for him there was no longer a place. His women poi- 
 soned 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 com- 
 pletely conquered, up to the line of the Euphrates. 
 The Black Sea was held securely by a Roman fleet. 
 Pompey passed down into Syria. Antioch surren- 
 dered without resistance. Tyre and Damascus fol- 
 lowed. Jerusalem was taken by storm, and the Ro- 
 man 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 be- 
 ings. He justified what Cicero had foretold of his 
 moral uprightness. In the midst of opportunities 
 such as had fallen to no commander since Alexander, 
 
Pompey in Asia, 131 
 
 he outraged no woman's honor, and lie kept Ms 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 cam- 
 paign was not a marauding raid, like the march of Lu- 
 cullus on Artaxata. His conquests were permanent. 
 The East, which was then thickly inhabited by an in- 
 dustrious civilized Grseco-Oriental race, be- 
 
 . . B. C. 66-68. 
 
 came incorporated in the Roman dominion, 
 and the annual revenue of the State rose to twice 
 what it had been. Pompey 's success had been daz- 
 zlingly 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, organ- 
 izing 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 nao- 
 ment louder. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Among the patricians who were rising through the 
 lower magistracies and were aspiring to the consul- 
 ship 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 at- 
 tention, Catiline had achieved a notoriety for infamy. 
 He 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 be- 
 cause Aurelia had objected to be incumbered with a 
 step-son. But this, too, was common in high society 
 in those days. Adultery and incest had become fa- 
 miliar excitements. Boys of ten years old had learnt 
 the art of poisoning their fathers,^ and the story of 
 Aurelia Orestilla and Catiline had been rehearsed a 
 few years before by Sassia and Oppianicus at Larino.^ 
 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 
 
 1 " Nunc quis patrem decern annorum natus non modo aufert sed toUit 
 Viisi veneno? " — Varronis Fragmenta, ed. Alexander Riese, p. 216. 
 
 2 See the story in Cicero, Pro Cluentio. 
 
Oatiline, 133 
 
 Benatorial administration. But villainy, however no- 
 torious, 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. 0. 68. 
 Hs went as governor to Africa in the year follow- 
 ing, and he returned with money enough, as he rea- 
 sonably hoped, to purchase the last step to the con- 
 sulship. 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 Psetus 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, appar- 
 ently as a natural resource in the existing contempt 
 into which the constitution had fallen, the disap- 
 pointed 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 precau- 
 tions, Cicero, who was in Rome at the time, de- 
 
134 Ccesar, 
 
 clares that he never heard of the conspiracy.^ When 
 evidence is inconclusive, probability becomes argu- 
 ment. Nothing can be less likely than that a cau- 
 tious capitalist of vast wealth like Crassus should 
 have connected himself with a party of dissolute ad- 
 venturers. Had Cassar 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 Csesar 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 .^ 
 But Cicero was about to stand himself for the consul- 
 ship, the object of his most passionate de- 
 sire. He had several competitors ; and as 
 he thought well of Catiline's prospects, he intended 
 to coalesce with him.^ Catiline was acquitted, ap- 
 parently through a special selection of the judges, 
 with the connivance of the prosecutor. The canvass 
 was violent, and the corruption flagrant.^ Cicero did 
 
 1 Pro P. Sulla, 4. 
 
 2 " Catilina, si judiratum erit, meridie non lucere, certus erit competi- 
 tor." — Episl. ad Atticum, i. 1. 
 
 8 "Hoc tempore Catilinam, competitorem nostrum, defendere cogita- 
 mus. Judices habemus, quos voliimus, summa accusatoris voluntate. 
 Spero, si absolatus erit, conjunctiorem ilium nobis fore in ratione peti- 
 tionis."— /6. i. 2. 
 
 * " Scito nihil tam exercitum nunc esse Romas qr.am candidatos omnibua 
 Initjuitatibus." — lb. i. 11. 
 
Catiline and Cicero, 135 
 
 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 cir- 
 cumstances 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 An- 
 tonius, the uncle of Marc Antony, the triumvir. This 
 Antonius had been prosecuted by Csesar 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 what- 
 ever 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 Anto- 
 aius a revolution, in which they were to share the 
 world between them. Cicero promised his influence 
 io 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 bold- 
 ness with which he had exposed patrician delinquen- 
 
136 Coesar, 
 
 cies. 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 representa- 
 tive. Cicero was consul, and Antonius with him. 
 Catiline had failed. It was the turning-point of Cic- 
 ero's life. Before his consulship he had not irrevo- 
 cably taken a side. No public speaker had more elo- 
 quently shown the necessity for reform ; no one had 
 denounced with keener sarcasm the infamies and fol- 
 lies of senatorial favorites. Conscience and patriot- 
 ism should have alike held him to the reforming 
 part}?^ ; 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 him- 
 self 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 ^ he 
 could easily be ; and he might prefer being at the 
 head of a party which at heart he despised to work-' 
 ing 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 influ- 
 enced, and will be as long as it continues. Csesar 
 and Pompey were soldiers. The army was demo- 
 cratic, 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. 
 
 '- I use a W)rd apparently modern, but Cicero himself gave the name ol 
 Conservatores Reipublicae to the party to which he belonged. 
 
Ccesar elected JEdile, 137 
 
 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 sedile, 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 so- 
 ciety 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 sedileship was a magistracy through 
 which it was ordinarily necessary to pass in order 
 to reach the consulship ; and as the aediles were ex- 
 pected to bear their own expenses, the consulship was 
 thus restricted to those who could afford an extrava- 
 gant 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 sedileship, without ruin to him- 
 self. He was a self-raised man, known to be de- 
 pendent 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 aiid 
 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 exten- 
 sive. Personally he cared nothing for these san- 
 guinary exhibitions, and he displayed his indifference 
 listentatiously by reading or writing while the butch- 
 
138 Cmar, 
 
 ery was going forward.^ 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 pro- 
 duced the insignia of Marius at his aunt's funeral, he 
 restored the trophies for the victories over the Cim- 
 bri 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 cruelties. 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 per- 
 emptorily 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 proscrip- 
 
 1 Suetonius, spe iking of AugustuSj says: " Quoties adesset, nihil prae- 
 terea agebat, seu vitandi rumoris causa, quo patrem Caesarem vulgo rep- 
 rehensum commemorabat, quod inter spectandum epistolis libellisque le« 
 gendis aut rescribendis vacaret; seu studio spectandi et voluptate," etc. — > 
 Vita Octavii, 45. 
 
Inquiry into the Syllan Proscription. 139 
 
 tion, Sylla had employed professional assassins, and 
 payments had been made out of the treasury to 
 wretches who came to him with bloody trophies in 
 tlieir 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 him- 
 self 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. 
 
 Nor did the inquisition stop with Sylla. Titus La- 
 bienus, afterwards so famous and so infa- „ 
 
 mous, 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 ap- 
 pealed 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 Ma- 
 rius 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 con- 
 servative aristocracy, and to censure with all his bit- 
 
140 Coesar, 
 
 terness the democratic reformers. Rabirius was ac- 
 quitted, 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 re- 
 plied 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 attach- 
 ing to the chief of the once sincerely believed Roman 
 religion. Like other objects of ambition, the nomi- 
 nation 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 se- 
 cure 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 nom- 
 ination to the pontificate to themselves. In the same 
 year it fell vacant by the death of the aged Metellus 
 Pius. Two patricians, Quintus Catulus and Caesar's 
 old general Servilius Isauricus, were the Senate's can- 
 didates, and vast sums were subscribed and spent to 
 secure the success of one or other of the two. Caesar 
 came forwai'd to oppose them. Csesar aspired to be 
 Pontifex Maximus — Pope of Rome — he who of all 
 men living was the least given to illusion ; he who 
 waa the most frank in his confession of entire disbe- 
 lief in the legends which, though few credited them 
 
The Pontificate, 141 
 
 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. Com- 
 mitted as he was to a contest with the richest mep in 
 Rome, he spent money freely. He was in debt al- 
 ready for his expenses as sedile. 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 pon- 
 tiff, 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. 
 
 The election for the pontificate was on the 6th of 
 March, and soon after Caesar received a further evi- 
 dence of popular favor on being chosen prgetor 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 repeti- 
 tion of the scandals which he had so eloquently de- 
 nounced, to pass laws which no future Verres or 
 Lucullus could dare to defy. Now was his opportu- 
 nity to take the wind out of the reformers' sails, and 
 to grapple himself with the thousand forms of patri- 
 cian villainy which he well knew to be destroying the 
 Commonwealth. Not one such measure, save an in- 
 effectual attempt to check election bribery, distin- 
 guished the consulship of Cicero. His entire efforts 
 were directed to the combination in a solid phalanx 
 of the equestrian and patrician orders. The danger 
 
142 CcBsar, 
 
 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.^ The land question had become 
 again as pressing as in the time of the Gracchi. The 
 peasant proprietors were mblting 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 com- 
 plained of ; but a remedy could now be found for this 
 fast increasing mischief without injury to any one. 
 Pompey's victories had filled the public treasury. 
 Vast territories abroad had lapsed to the possession 
 of the State ; and RuUus, one of the tribunes, pro- 
 posed 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. Rul- 
 lus'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 immedi- 
 
 1 "Writing three years later to Atticus, he says : "Confirmabam omnium 
 privatorum possessiones, is enim est noster exercitus, ut tute scis locuple- 
 tium." — 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, cul- 
 tivated 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. 
 
' Agrarian Law of Rullus. 143 
 
 ate effect of such a law was concerned, it was against 
 the interests of the democrats. The popular vote de- 
 pended 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 householders in a flutter, 
 and Cicero stooped to be their advocate. He at- 
 tacked 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 Cic- 
 ero ; 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 excel- 
 lent citizens to the Senate as no better than the con- 
 tents of a cesspool.^ 
 
 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 posi- 
 tion 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 ad- 
 ministration is endurable the majority of citizens pre- 
 fer to bear with it, and will assist in repressing vio- 
 
 ^ " Et nimium istud est, quod ab hoc tribuno plebis dictum est in sen- 
 •lu: ui banana plebem nimium in republica posse : exhauriendam esse: hoc 
 vHim verbo est usus ; quasi de aliqua. sentinn, ac non de optimorum civium 
 i^nere loqueretur." — Contra Eullum, ii. 26. 
 
144 . CcBsar, 
 
 lent attempts at its overthrow. Their patience, 
 however, may be exhausted, and the disgust may rise 
 to a point when any change may seem an improve- 
 ment. Authority is no longer shielded by the maj- 
 esty 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 in- 
 dignation 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 patriot- 
 ism, 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 consul- 
 ship, much might be discovered there to explain Cic- 
 ero's and Catiline's hatred of each other. Cicero had 
 once thought of coalescing with Catiline, notwith- 
 standing his knoAvledge 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 him- 
 self 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, 
 
Catiline stands for the Oonsulship. 145- 
 
 whose fortunes were desperate as his own. There 
 was Lentulus, who had been consul a few years be- 
 fore, 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 Qk*, 
 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 disso- 
 lute young patricians, whose theory of the world was 
 that it had been created for them to take their pleas- 
 ure 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 Cati- 
 line 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 him- 
 self, 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 pros- 
 perous 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 Cen- 
 
146 Ccesar. 
 
 sor, 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 revolu- 
 tion. His language became so audacious that, on the 
 eve of the election day, Cicero moved for a postpone- 
 ment, 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 him- 
 self. 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.^ 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. 
 
 Both Cicero and the Senate were evidently in the 
 greatest alarm that Catiline would succeed constitu- 
 tionally 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 
 
 1 Cicero, Pro Murend, 25. 
 
The Catiline Conspiracy. 147 
 
 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 Cati- 
 line failed once more, and was rejected by a small 
 majority i Cicero attributes his defeat to the moral 
 effect produced by the breastplate. But October 
 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. Un- 
 doubtedly 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, Cat- 
 iline 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,^ 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 Fie- 
 sole. Cicero's colleague, Antonius, was secretly in 
 communication with Catiline, evidently thinking it 
 likely that he would succeed. Catiline determined 
 
 1 Murena was afterwards 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 
 m his speech for Murena, Cicero found as many virtues in Luculhis as in 
 his speech on the Manilian Law he had found vices. It was another symp 
 toir of hj' change of attitude. 
 
148 * Ccesar. 
 
 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 ac- 
 count 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 citi- 
 zen 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 tem- 
 per of men's minds, they took precautious 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 accom- 
 plices, and gave daily notice to the consuls of each 
 step which was contemplated. But so weak was au- 
 thority, 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 declara- 
 tion 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 pre- 
 ferred to keep a personal eye upon him. Cicero an- 
 swered that he dared not trust himself with so peril- 
 ous a guest. 
 
The Catiline Conspiracy, 149 
 
 So for a few days matters hung in suspense, Man- 
 lius expecting an order to advance, Catiline November 
 waiting apparently for a spontaneous insur- ^- ^" ^^• 
 rection in the city before he gave the word. In- 
 tended 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 No- 
 vember, 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, im- 
 mediately 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 assem- 
 ble immediately at the Temple of Jupiter Stator — 
 one of the strongest positions in the city.^ The au- 
 dacious 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 ad- 
 dressed himself personally to the principal conspira- 
 tor. 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 even- 
 ing, looking round perhaps in the faces of the sena- 
 tors, who, he was aware, had been present at it. He 
 epoke of the visit designed to himself in the morning, 
 which had been baffled by his precautions. He wont 
 back over the history of the preceding half-century. 
 
 1 " In loco munitissimo." 
 
.1 50 Coesar, 
 
 Fresh from the defence of Rabirius, he showed how 
 dangerous citizens, the Gracchi, Saturninus, Glaucia, 
 had been satisfactorily killed when they were medita- 
 ting 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 in- 
 stant execution. He detailed Catiline's past enormi- 
 ties, 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 ora- 
 tory 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 
 Bounding 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 imper- 
 fect record of history retains for us only the actions 
 of a few individuals whom special talent or special 
 
The Catiline Conspiracy. 151 
 
 circumstances distinguislied, and sucli information is 
 only fragmentary. We lose siglit 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 po- 
 litically 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 accumula- 
 tion of usurious interest. Add to these " the danger- 
 ous 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 of perfumes, as yet beardless or with the 
 first down upon their chins, wearing scarfs and veils 
 and sleeved tunics reaching to their ankles, industri- 
 ous 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. ^ 
 
 1 This description of the young Roman aristocracy is given b}' Cicero in 
 his most powerful vein: *' Postreinum autem genus est, non solum numero, 
 verum etiam genere ipso atque vita, quod proprium est Catilinaa, de ejus 
 deloctu, immo vero de complexu ejus ac sinu; quos pexo capillo, nitidos, 
 aut imberbes, aut bene barbatos, videtis, nianicatis et talaribus tunicis; 
 velis aniictos, non togis: quorum omnis industria vitse et vigilandi labor 
 in antelucanis ccenis expromltur. In his gregibus oranes aleatores, omnea 
 
152 Ccesar, 
 
 Well might Cicero be alarmed at such a combina- 
 tion ; well might he say, that if a generation of such 
 youths lived to manhood, there would be a, common^ 
 wealth 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 exhorta- 
 tions, however true the picture might be. 
 
 None of the promising young gentlemen took 
 Cicero's advice. Catiline went alone, and joined Man- 
 lius, and had he come on at once he might perhaps 
 have taken Rome. The army was to support an in- 
 surrection, 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 pre- 
 cautions 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 pro- 
 vince 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 
 
 A^uiteii, omnes impuri impudicique versantur. Hi pueri tarn lepid,i ac 
 delicati nop soUnp auiare et amari neque cantare et saltare, sed etiam sicas 
 
 vibrare et spargere venena dk|icerimt Niidi in conviviis saltere 
 
 didicerunt." — In Catilinam, ii. 10. CoiTjp^re In Pisontm, 10. 
 
 The Romans shaved their beards at full maturity, and therefore " bene 
 barbatos" does not mean grown men, but youths on the edge 0,1 pian- 
 t»ood. ^ 
 
The Catiline Conspiracy. 153 
 
 of tlie 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 inva- 
 sion 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 communi- 
 cation 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 re- 
 mained 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 
 Beized. 
 
 Cicero, with a pardonable laudation of hiuiself and 
 of the Divine Providence of which he professed to re- 
 gard hmirtelf as the minister, congratulated his coun- 
 try 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 
 
154 Ccesar, 
 
 betrayal of the State to the barbarians ; and with per- 
 sons who had committed themselves to national trea- 
 son there was no occasion to hesitate. Cicero pro- 
 duced 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 danger- 
 ous 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 show- 
 ing with whom they would have to deal. Crassus, 
 it is possible, knew more than he had told the con- 
 sul. Catiline's success had, at one moment, seemed 
 assured ; and great capitalists are apt to insure against 
 contingencies. But Cicero moved and carried a reso- 
 lution that the charge against him was a wicked in- 
 vention. The attempt against Caesar was more deter- 
 mined. Old Catulus, whom Caesar had defeated in 
 the contest for the pontificate, and Caius Calpur- 
 nius Piso,i a bitter aristocrat, whom Caesar had pros- 
 ecuted 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 
 December, f^lsc. Somc of the young lords in their dis- 
 &, B. c. 63, appointment threatened Caesar at the sen- 
 ate-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 
 
 1 Not to be confounded with Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was Cjcsar'a 
 father-in-law. 
 
The Catiline Oonspiraey. 155 
 
 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 Serapronian 
 law forbade distinctly that any Roman citizen should 
 be put to death without a trial, and without the right 
 of appeal to the assembly.^ 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-grand- 
 father 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 inves- 
 tigated. Investigation was perhaps what many sena- 
 tors 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 cer- 
 tainly authentic. For the first time we see through 
 the surface of CsBsar'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 aristo- 
 
 1 "Injussu populi." 
 
156 Ccesar, 
 
 crats in some convenient disturbance. No constitu- 
 tion could survive when the law was habituall}^ 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 pre- 
 cipitate anger which would be unlawful in itself, un- 
 "W^orthy 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 un- 
 certaint}'^ 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 sup- 
 pose him to be influenced by feelings of party ani- 
 mosity. Silanus had recommended the execution of 
 the prisoners, either because he thought their lives in- 
 compatible with the safety of tlie State, or because 
 no milder punishment seemed adequate to the enor- 
 mit}^ of their conduct. But the safety of the State, 
 he said, with a compliment to Cicero, had been suffi- 
 ciently provided for by the diligence of the consul. 
 As to punishment, none could be too severe ; but 
 with that remarkable adherence to /<ifcf, which always 
 distinguished Caesar, that repudiation of illusion and 
 Bincere utterance of his real belief, whatever tliat 
 might be, he contended that death was net a punish- 
 ment at all. Death was the end of human suffer- 
 ing. In the grave there was neither joy nor sorrow. 
 When a man was dead he ceased to be.^ He became 
 
 1 The real opinion of educated Romans on this subject was expressed in 
 the well-known lines of Lucretius, which were probably written near this 
 
 rer^^ time : 
 
 " Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum, 
 Quaudoquidem catura auimi mortalis habetur : 
 
The Catiline Conspiracy, 167 
 
 as he had been before he was born. Probably al- 
 most every one in the Senate thought like Caesar on 
 this subject. Cicero certainly did. The only differ- 
 ence was, that plausible statesmen affected a respect 
 for the popular superstition, and pretended to believe 
 what they did not believe. Caesar spoke his convic- 
 tions 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 ille- 
 galities. He reminded them how they had applauded 
 Sylla, how they had rejoiced when they saw their 
 political enemies summarily dispatched ; 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 com- 
 mitted 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 defi- 
 nite punishment for treason. Those laws had been 
 gravely considered ; they had been enacted by the 
 
 Et, Telut ante acto nil tempore sensimus aegri, 
 Ad confligendum Tenientibus undique Poenia ; 
 Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu, 
 Ilorrida, contremuere sub altis tetheris auris ; 
 In dubioque fuit sub utrorum regna cadendum 
 Omnibus humanis esset, terrSique, marique : 
 Sic, ubi non erimua, cum corporis atque animai 
 Discidium f uerit, quibus e sumus uuiter apti, 
 Scilicet baud nobis quicquam, qui non erimus turn, 
 Accidere omnio poterit, sensumque movere : 
 Non, si terra marl miscebitur, et mare coelo," 
 
 LuoBxiius lib.iii U. 842-864. 
 
158 Cmar, 
 
 great men who had built up the Roman dominion, 
 and were not to be set aside in impatient haste. 
 Csesar therefore recommended that the estates of the 
 conspirators should be confiscated, that they them- 
 selves should 'be kept in strict and solitary confine- 
 ment dispersed in various places, and that a resolu- 
 tion should be passed forbidding an application for 
 their pardon either to Senate or people. 
 
 The speech was weighty in substance and weight- 
 ily delivered, and it produced its effect.^ 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 repu- 
 tation 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.^ 
 
 Marcus Fortius 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-grand- 
 son, 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 Aris- 
 
 1 In the following century when Caesar's life had become mythic, a story 
 was current that Avhen 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. Mere 
 will be said of the supposed liaison between Ciesar 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 Coesar, 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 tliey are on 
 their feet in Parliament; nor, if such an accident sliould happen, do the 
 (overs pass them over to be read by the ladies' brothers. 
 
 a " Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni." — Lucan. 
 
The Catilme Conspiracy. 159 
 
 fcotle, 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 ances- 
 tor 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 im- 
 meaaiirably 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 re- 
 tiring sort. He carried them written upon him in let- 
 ters for all to read, as a testimony to a wicked gen- 
 eration. 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 ap- 
 pointed school-masters. To such a temperament a 
 man of genius is instinctively hateful. Cato had 
 spoken often in the Senate, though so young a mem- 
 ber of it, denouncing the immoral habits of the age. 
 He now rose to match himself against Csesar ; and with 
 passionate vehemence he insisted that the wretches 
 wlio 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 Csesar himself was one of Catiline's ac- 
 complices. 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 xvt- 
 
160 Ccesar. 
 
 ribution. 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. Csesar attempted to 
 reply ; but so tierce were tlie 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 de- 
 bate. He too glanced at Csesar'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 Ca3sar condemned the conspiracy. Ca3sar 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, C^sar himself would defend hiui 
 against the charge of cruelty. Meanwhile lie said 
 that he had the ineffable satisfaction of knowing that 
 he had saved the State. The Senate might adopt 
 Bueh resolutions as might seem good to them Avithout 
 
The Catiline Conspiracy, 161 
 
 alarm for the consequences. The conspiracy was dis- 
 armed. He had made enemies among the bad citi- 
 zens ; but he had deserved and he had won the grati- 
 tude of the good, and he stood secure behind the 
 impregnable bulwark of his country*s love. 
 
 So Cicero, in the first effusion of self-admir^tion 
 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 peo- 
 ple would be against them if an appeal to the assem- 
 bly was allowed. The Senate was contending for 
 the privilege of suspending the laws by its own in- 
 dependent will ; and the privilege, if it was ever con- 
 stitutional, had become so odious by the abuse of il, 
 that to a large section of Roman citizens, a conspir- 
 acy 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 re- 
 cords, 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. 
 11 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The execution of Lentulus and Cethegus was re- 
 ceived in Rome with the feelinej which Cae- 
 B. c. 62. . . ° 
 
 sar 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 re- 
 sume 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 Cic- 
 ero 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 arbi- 
 trary oligarchy. Pompey's name was on every tongu,e. 
 When would Pompey come ? Pompey, the friend 
 of the people, the terror of the aristocracy ! Pom- 
 pey, who had cleared the sea of pirates, and doubled 
 the area of the Roman dominions! Let Pompey re- 
 turn 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 in- 
 stinctive 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 idol- 
 
Preparations for Pompey^s Return. 163 
 
 atry ; and in the case of Pompey their suspicion was 
 the greater, on account of the greatness of his achieve- 
 ments, 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 tlie 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 himfeelf 
 among them without security. He required the pro- 
 tection" of office, and he had sent forward one of his 
 most distinguished officers, Metellus Nepos, to pre- 
 pare 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 indig- 
 nation 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, un- 
 fortunately, 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 pre- 
 pared a speech in which he had gilded his own per- 
 formances ■ with all his eloquence. Metellus com- 
 men'";ed his tribunate with forbidding Cicero to de- 
 liver his oration, and forbidding him on the special 
 ground, that a man who had put Roman citizens to . 
 de-ath without allowing them a hearing, did not him- 
 self deserve to be heard. In the midst of the confu- 
 «ion and uproar which followed, Cicero could only 
 
164 Ccesar. 
 
 Bbriek 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 man}'^ fine qualities, Cicero was 
 wanting in dignity. His vanity was wounded in :ts 
 tenderest point, and he attacked Metellus a day or 
 two after, in one of those violentl}^ abusive outpour- 
 ings, 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 im- 
 peaching 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. 
 
 Csesar, who was now prastor, warmly supported 
 Metellus. To him, if to no one else, it was clear as 
 the sun at noonday, that unless some better govern- 
 ment 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. Me- 
 tellus 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 
 protended, declared Caesar and Metellus degraded 
 fron; their offices. Metellus, probably at Caesar's ad- 
 
Scene in the Assembly. 165 
 
 vice, withdrew and went off to Asia, to describe what 
 had passed to Pomj)ey. Csesar remained, and, quietly- 
 disregarding the Senate's sentence, continued to sit 
 and hear cases as pra3tor. His court was forcibly 
 closed. He yielded to violence and retired under pro- 
 test, 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 com- 
 forted. They gathered day after day. They clus- 
 tered about the pontifical palace. They cried to 
 Csesar to place himself at their head, that they might 
 tear down the senate house, and turn the caitiffs into 
 the street. Csesar neither then nor ever lent him- 
 self 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 re- 
 turn to their homes. 
 
 Terrified at the state of the city, and penitent for 
 their injustice to Csesar, 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 re- 
 mained irreconcilable. Csesar complied, but only to 
 find himself denounced again with passionate perti- 
 nacity 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 
 C3esar was one of the conspirators. Csesar 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 
 
166 Coemr. 
 
 information from Csesar himself. The most violent 
 of his accusers were placed under arrest. The in- 
 formers, after a near escape from being massacred by 
 the crowd, were thrown into prison, and for the mo- 
 ment 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 Cae- 
 sar 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, Csesar had stood by Pompey's 
 officers against the fury of the Senate, Csesar had 
 the people behind him, and Pompey the army. Un- 
 less in some way an apple of discord could be thrown 
 between them, the t\vo 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 Csesar as a. rival in the 
 Commonwealth. On the personal side there was 
 better hope. Csesar was as much admired in the 
 world of fashion as he was detested in the Curia. 
 lie had no taste for the brutal entertainments and 
 more brutal vices of male patrician society. He pre- 
 ferred 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 
 
Roman Scandals. 167 
 
 had the field to itself. Caesar was accused of crimi- 
 nal intimacy with many ladies of the highest rank, 
 and Pompey was privately informed that his friend 
 had taken advantage of liis absence to seduce his 
 wife, Mucia. Pompey was Agamemnon ; Caesar had 
 been iEgisthus ; and Pompey was so far persuaded 
 that Mucia had been unfaithful to him, that he di- 
 vorced 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 acquaint- 
 ance and a strong mutual affection. The world dis- 
 covered that she was Csesar's mistress, and that Bru- 
 tus was his son. It might be enough to say that 
 when Brutus was born Csesar was scarcely fifteen 
 years old, and that, if a later intimacy existed be- 
 tween 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 
 
168 Ccedar, 
 
 Mucici answered its immediate purpose, in producing 
 a temporary coldness on Pompey's part towards 
 Csesar ; but Pompey must either Lave discovered the 
 story to be false or else have condoned it, for soon 
 afterwards he married Caesar's daughter. Two points 
 may be remarked about these legends : first, that on 
 no single occasion does Csesar 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 CleojDatra'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 Csesar was as 
 liberal of his favors as popular scandal pretended. 
 It would be idle to affect a belief that Caesar was par- 
 ticularly virtuous. He was a man of the world, liv- 
 ing 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 Csesar, and was glad of every pre- 
 text 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 fel- 
 lows. 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 his- 
 tory we are less careful or less charitable. An accu- 
 sation of immorality is accepted without examination 
 when brought against eminent persons who can no 
 
Roman Scandals, 169 
 
 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 mis- 
 representation from the venomous tongues of Roman 
 society. Caesar comes into court with a fairer char- 
 acter than those whose virtues are thought to over- 
 shadow him. Marriage, which under the ancient 
 Romans was the most sacred of ties, had become the 
 lightest and the loosest. Cicero divorced Terentif 
 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 bid- 
 ding, 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 conde- 
 scend to a similar compliance. His worst enemies 
 admitted that from the gluttony, the drunkenness, 
 and the viler forms of sensuality, which wei^ then so 
 common, he was totally free. For the rest, it is cer- 
 tain 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. 
 
170 Coemr, 
 
 Turning from scandal to reality, we come now to a 
 curious incident, which occasioned a fresh political 
 convulsion, where Ciesar appears, not as an actor in 
 an affair of gallantry, but as a sufferer. 
 
 Pompey was still absent. Caesar had resumed his 
 duties as a 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 intro- 
 duced into Rome, and an annual festival was held in 
 her honor in the house of one or other of the princi- 
 pal 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 diminu- 
 tive figure and a delicate woman's face. His name 
 was Clodius Pulcher. Cicero played upon it and 
 called him Pulchellus Puer, " the pretty boy." Be- 
 tween 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 
 
Clodius and Pompeia, 171 
 
 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 dis- 
 guise was detected. The insulted Vestals and the 
 other ladies who were present flew upon him like the 
 dogs of Actason, 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 subju- 
 gation, 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 afterwards became ; 
 and immorality, though seasoned with impiety, might 
 easily, it was thought, be made too much of. Ciesar 
 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 criminal- 
 ity, 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, 
 
172 Cmar. 
 
 one of the consuls, was equally peremptory. The 
 hesitation was regarded by the sti-tcter 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 fa- 
 vorite, with young Curio, whom Cicero called in mock- 
 ery 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 re- 
 ject 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 Clo- 
 dius, that he might speak for himself. Cicero had 
 now altered his mind, and was in favor of the prose- 
 cution. 
 
 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 pro- 
 moter of the proceedings against him. When it came 
 to a division, the Senate voted by a majority of four 
 hundred to fifteen that the cons lis must recommend 
 the bill. Piso gave way, and the tribune also who 
 
Ti'ial of Clodius, 173 
 
 had been in Clodius's favor. The people were satis- 
 fied, and a court of fifty-six judges was appointed, 
 before whom the trial was to take place. It rei,j.uary 
 seemed that a conviction must necessarily ^' ^ ^^• 
 follow, for there was no question about the facts, 
 which were all admitted. There was some manoeu- 
 vring, however, in the constitution of the court, which 
 raised Cicero's suspicions. The judges, instead of 
 being selected by the pragtor, were chosen by lot, and 
 the prisoner was allowed to challenge as many names 
 as he pleased. The result was that in Cicero's opin- 
 ion a more scandalous set of persons than those who 
 were finally sworn were never collected round a gam- 
 ing 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.^ 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 ap- 
 peal 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 expecta- 
 tion present in all men's minds the second morning 
 dawned. Even in Rome, accustomed as it was to 
 
 i *'Si causam •quseris absolutionis, egestas judicum fuit et turpitude. 
 . . . Noil vidit (Hortensius) satins esse iiUim in infaraia relinqui ac aor- 
 iibus quara infirmo judicio committi." — I'o Attictts^ i. 16. 
 
174 C(2mr. 
 
 mockeries of justice, public opinion was shocked when 
 the confident anticipation was disappointed. Accord- 
 ing to Cicero, Marcus Crassus, for reasons known to 
 liimself, 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. ^ Be- 
 fore 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 de- 
 clared 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 reestablished 
 m my consulship, all orders of good men being hap- 
 pily 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 Ro- 
 mans 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; 
 
 1 *' Jam vero, oh Dii Boni ! rem perditam ! etiam noctes certarum mulie- 
 rum, atque advlescentulorum nohilium introductiones nonnuUis judicibus 
 pro mercedis cumulo fuerunt." — Ad Atticum, i. 16. 
 
Conquest of Lu&itania, ^ 175 
 
 Cicero stormed in the Senate, rebuked the consul 
 Piso, and lectured Clodius in a speech which he him- 
 self admired exceedingly. The " pretty boy " in re- 
 ply taunted Cicero with wishing to make himself a 
 king. Cicero rejoined with asking Clodius about a 
 man named " King," whose estates he had appropri- 
 ated, and reminded him of a misadventure among the 
 pirates, from which he had come off with nameless 
 ignominy. Neither antagonist very honor- 
 ably 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 di- 
 rected against themselves, and refused to be consoled.^ 
 Caesar had been absent during these scenes. His 
 term of office having expired, he had been dispatched 
 as pro-praBtor to Spain, where the ashes of the Ser- 
 torian 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 Pe- 
 ninsula. He put down the banditti. He reorganized 
 the administration with the rapid skill which always 
 
 1 " Nos hie in republic^, infirtna, misera commutabilique versamur. Credo 
 enim te audisse, nostros equites piene asenatiiesse disjunctos; quiprimuD'. 
 illud valde graviter tulerunt, promulgatum ex senatus consulto fuisse, ut 
 de ih, qui ob judicandum pecuniam accepisseut qusereretur. Qua in re 
 dcceinenda cum ego casu non affuissem, sensissemque id equestreni ordi- 
 nem forre moleste, neque aperte dicere; objurgavi senatum, ut mihi vsup 
 Bum, summa cum auctoritate, et m caus^ non verecu?ida admodum gsavis 
 et copiosus fui." — To Atticus, i. 17. 
 
176 Ccesar, 
 
 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 no- 
 where 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 Pom- 
 pey, 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 sim- 
 plicity, " that six hundred years hence the merits of 
 Sampsiceramus ^ might seem to have been more than 
 mine." ^ 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 
 apon 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 pre- 
 pared beforehand. The Mucia story had perhaps 
 done its work, and the Senate and the great com- 
 mander were willing to meet each other, at least witli 
 outward friendliness. 
 
 1 A nickname undei which Cicero often speaks of Pompey. 
 
 2 "Solebat enim me pungere, ne Sampsicerami merita in patriam ad 
 aanos DC majora viderentur, quam nostra." — To Atticus, ii. 17. 
 
Pompey^s Return, 177 
 
 His successes had been brilliant ; but they were due 
 rath er 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 Mithri- 
 cates 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 re- 
 turned, as he had gone out, himself moderately pro- 
 vided for, and had added nothing to his private in- 
 come. 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 at- 
 mosphere 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 with- 
 out deserting the people. While in Asia, he had re- 
 assured Cicero that nothing was to be feared fiom 
 him.i His hope was to find friends on all sides and 
 in all parties, and he thought that he had deserved 
 iheir friendship. 
 
 i "Pompeius nobis amicissimus esse constat." — To Atticus, i. 12. 
 12 
 
178 Ccesar, 
 
 Thus when Pompey landed at Brindisi his dreaded 
 December, legions were disbanded, and he proceeded to 
 B. c. 62. ^j^g 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 applaud- 
 ing multitades. 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 nad slain or subjected. His triumph was 
 the mos^; 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 Feb- 
 ruary 61, during the debate on the Clodius 
 aft'air. 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 back-bone ; he was not 
 agreeable to the well-to-do ; the wise and good found 
 him wanting in substance ; " ^ in short, the speech 
 was a failure. Pompey applied for a second consul- 
 ship. He was reminded that he had been consul 
 eight years previously, and that the ten years' inter- 
 val prescribed by Sylla, between the first and the sec- 
 ond 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 an- 
 other Agrarian law. Lucullus, who was jealous of 
 
 i " Non jucunda miseris, inanis improbis, beatis non grata, bonis non 
 gravis. Itaque frigebat." — Ti Atticus, i. 14. 
 
State of the Commonwealth. 179 
 
 him, raised difficulties about the second, and thwarted 
 him with continual delays. 
 
 Pompey, being a poor speaker, thus found himself 
 entirely helpless in the new field. Cicero, being re- 
 lieved 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 dis- 
 banded 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 griev- 
 ance. 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. Csecilius 
 Metellus and Lucius Afranius, who had been chosen 
 consuls for the year 60, were mere nothings. February i, 
 Metellus was a vacant aristocrat,^ to be de- ^- ^- ^• 
 pended 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 ; " ^ and one year more might witness the con- 
 sulship 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 
 
 1 " Metellus non homo, sed litus atque aer, et solitudo mera." — ToAtti- 
 ms, i. 18. 
 
 2 "Consul est impositus is nobis, quern nemo, praeter nos phiJosophos, 
 •spicere sine suspiratu potest." — lb. 
 
180 Cmar, 
 
 hope of mending matters and healing our disorders, 
 but we will not endure the necessary medicine. The 
 seat of justice has been publicly debauched. Resolu- 
 tions are introduced against corruption, but no law 
 can be carried. The knights are alienated. The Sen- 
 ate 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.! 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.2 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." ^ 
 
 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 
 
 B> C 60. 
 
 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 Porapey's legionaries. Agrarian laws were 
 
 1 "Pompeius togulam illam pictam silentio tuetur suam." — Ih. 'The 
 * pi3ta togula" means the triumphal robe which Pompey was allowed to 
 wear. 
 
 2 " Ceteros jam nosti; qui ita sunt stulti, ut amissa. republic^ piscinas suas 
 fore salvas sperare videantur." — lb. 
 
 « lb. i. 18, abridged. 
 
Cicero and Pompey, 181 
 
 threatened, and Pompey himself was most eager to 
 Bee his soldiers satisfied. Cicero, who had hitherto 
 opposed an Agrarian law with all his yiolence, dis- 
 covered now that somolhing might be said in favor 
 of draining " the sink of the cit}^," ^ 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. 
 
 So grateful was Pompey for Cicero's support, that 
 he called him, in the Senate, " the saviour of the 
 world." 2 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 cau- 
 tion me about Pompey," he wrote to Atticus in the 
 following July. *' Do not suppose that I j^^^ ^ ^ 
 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 bet- 
 ter, 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 Cossar better also, who is now coming on 
 
 1 " Sentinam urbis," a worse word than he had blamed in Kullus three 
 years before. — To Atticus, i. 19. 
 
 2 "Pompeium adduxi in earn voluntatem, ut in Senatu non semel, sea 
 B»pe, multisque verbis, hujus mihi 'salutem imperii atqus orbis terrarura 
 •djudicarit." — lb. 
 
182 Ccesar. 
 
 with wind and tide ? Will that be so bad a thing? 
 Even if I had no enemies, if I was supported as uni- 
 versally 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. Tho 
 knights have fallen off from the Senate. The nol le 
 lords think they are in heaven when they have bar- 
 bel in their ponds that will eat out of their hands, 
 and they leave the rest to fate. You cannot lovo 
 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." ^ 
 
 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 le- 
 gionaries. They had quarrelled with the knights. 
 They had quarrelled with the moneyed interests. 
 They now added an entirely gratuitous affront to 
 Csesar. His Spanish administration was admitted by 
 every one to have been admirable. He was coming 
 to stand for the consulship, which could not be re- 
 fused; but he asked for a triumph also, and as the 
 rule stood there was a difficulty, for if he was to have 
 
 1 To Atticus, ii. 1, abridged. 
 
Ccesar stands for the Consulship, 183 
 
 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 October 
 the election. The custom, though conven- ^-c-so. 
 lent 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, per- 
 suaded the Senate to refuse. If this was the expec- 
 tation, it was disappointed. Caesar dropped his tri- 
 umph, 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 offi- 
 cer Metellus Nepos. Equally certain it was, that 
 Caesar, as a soldier, would interest himself for Pom- 
 pey'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 uncer- 
 tainty. Crassus, who was the impersonation 'of them, 
 was a friend of Csesar, but had been on bad terms 
 with Pompey. Caesar, however, contrived to recon- 
 cile 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 
 bis better knowledge told him to do, the inevitable 
 
184 Coesar, 
 
 revolution miglit have been accomplished without 
 bloodshed, and the course of history have been dif- 
 ferent. C^sar wished it. But it was not so to be. 
 Cicero perhaps found that he would have to be con- 
 tent with a humbler position than he had anticipated, 
 that in such a combination he would have to folio v^v 
 rather than to lead. He was tempted. He saw a 
 promise of peace, safety, influence, if not absolute, 
 NoTember, 1^^ Considerable. But he could not bring 
 B. G. 60. 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 suc- 
 ceeded with desperate efforts in securing the second 
 place. They subscribed money profusely, the im- 
 maculate Cato prominent among them. The ma- 
 chinery 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 prsetorship, 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 
 Ca3sar, and reduce his office to a nullity. Immedi- 
 ately 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 
 
CcBsar's Consulship. 185 
 
 spleen or to prevent CsBsar from having the command 
 of. an army, they allotted him the department of the 
 " Woods and Forests." ^ 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 under- 
 
 B C 60 
 
 stood. 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 assert- 
 ing them. But he had held carefully within the con- 
 stitutional lines ; he had kept himself clear of con- 
 spiracies ; he had never, like the Gracchi, put himself 
 forward as a tribune or attempted the part of a pop- 
 ular 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 encroach- 
 ments 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. 
 
 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 
 
 1 8Uvas calletquc — to which " woods and forests " is a near equivalent. 
 
186 Ccesar, 
 
 Gracchus had found it. The Gracchan colonists had 
 disappeared. The Syllan mihtary proprietors had 
 disappeared — one by one they had fallen to beg- 
 gary, and had sold their holdings, and again the coun- 
 try 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 Sen- 
 ate resumed its control over the initiative of legisla- 
 tion. Each year the elections became more corrupt. 
 The Clodius judgment had been the most frightful 
 instance which had yet occurred of the de- 
 
 B C. 59. . 
 
 pravity of the law courts ; while, by Cicero's 
 own admission, not a single measure could pass be- 
 yond discussion into act which threatened the inter- 
 ests 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 De- 
 cember it was known that an Agrarian law would be 
 at once proposed under plea of providing for Pom- 
 pey's troops ; and Cicero had to decide whether he 
 would act in earnest in the spirit which he had be- 
 gun to show when the tribunes' bill was under dis- 
 cussion, 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 ab- 
 sent 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 
 
Uneasiness of Cicero, 187 
 
 withdraw into the country, which will be honorable 
 also ; or I may give active help, which I am told 
 Csesar expects of me. His friend, Cornelias Balbus, 
 who was with me lately, aflBrms that Caesar will be 
 guided in everything by my advice and Pompey's, 
 and will use his endeavor to bring Pompey and Cras- 
 sus 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 en- 
 emies. 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.' " ^ 
 
 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 commission from Caesar 
 and Pompey I 
 
 I should blush 
 To face the men and long-robed dames of Troy .2 
 
 What will our Optimates say, if we have any Opti- 
 mates 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 
 
 1 "Interea cursus, quos prim^ a parte juventaj, 
 Quosque ideo consul virtute animoque petisti, 
 Hos retine atque auge f amam laudesque bonorum." 
 
 To Atticusj A. a. 
 
 « lUadf vi. 442. Lord Derby's translation. 
 
i.88 Ccesar, 
 
 am more afraid of that than of the chatter of my con- 
 temporaries." ^ 
 
 So Cicero meditated, thinking as usual of himself 
 first and of his duty afterwards — the latalest of aU 
 courses then and always. 
 
 1 To AUuMt^ ii. 1^ 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The consulship of Caesar -was tlie last chance for 
 the Roman aristocracy. He was not a rev- 
 olutionist. Revolutions are the last des- 
 perate remedy when all else has failed. They may 
 create as many evils as they cure, and wise men al- 
 ways hate them. But if revolution was to be es- 
 caped, reform was inevitable, and it was for the 
 Senajbe 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 pre- 
 serves, 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 pro- 
 longing 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 num- 
 
190 Ccesar. 
 
 bered. A homogeneous and vigorous people may 
 manage their own affairs under a popular constitu- 
 tion so long as their personal characters remain un- 
 degenerate. Parliaments and Senates may represent 
 the general will of the community, and may pass 
 laws and administer them as public sentiment ap- 
 proves. 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. 
 Csesar 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 in- 
 adequacy of them has been proved beyond dispute. 
 Constitutions are never overthrown till they have 
 pronounced sentence on themselves. 
 
 Caesar accordingly commenced office by an en- 
 deavor 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 hope- 
 lessly 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 tA 
 
An Agrarian Latv, 191 
 
 hira. 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 cooperate. 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 pur- 
 chased 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 hurt- 
 ing . 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 
 
192 Ccesar, 
 
 bring others after it. The public lands they had 
 shared conveniently aniong themselves from imme- 
 morial time. The public treasure waa their treas- 
 ure, 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 ap- 
 peal to the assembly. " I invited you to revise the 
 law," he said ; " I was willing that if any clause dis- 
 pleased 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 im- 
 pediments 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 Csesar 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 Ciivia and Octavius, and many a young lord 
 
Scene in the Forum, 193 
 
 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 oJBficials, but they were real forces. 
 Pompey was the idol of every soldier in the State, 
 and at Csesar's invitation he addressed the assembly. 
 He spoke for his veterans. He spoke for the poor citi- 
 zens. 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 Pom- 
 pey, " 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 otliers 
 draw the sword." Applause rang out from a hun- 
 dred 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 
 nselessness 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. Bibu- 
 jbofl said that he had consulted the sky ; the gods for- 
 
 13 
 
194 CoBsar, 
 
 bade further action being taken that day, and he de- 
 clared 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 Csesar 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. Me- 
 tullus 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 com- 
 mission was appointed by Csesar to carry out the Land 
 
The '' Leges Julioe:' 195 
 
 act, composed of twenty of the best men that could 
 be found, one of them being Atius Balbus, the hus- 
 band of Caesar's only sister, and grandfather of a 
 little child now three years old, who was known after- 
 wards to the world as Augustus. Cicero was offered 
 a place, but declined. The land question having been 
 disposed of, Caesar then proceeded with the remain- 
 ing measures by which his consulship was immortal- 
 ized. 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 govern- 
 ment 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 consecrii,ted, and that Cae- 
 sar'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 bodj 
 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 ne/or pass through the pre- 
 liminary stage of resolution 3, 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 mur- 
 der of Saturninus, and tcjuching by implication the 
 
196 CcB^ar, 
 
 killing of Lentulus and his companions. Tliere was 
 a law for the punishment of adultery, most disinter- 
 estedly 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 hold- 
 ing ofiSce 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, Be repetundis^ to exact retribution from pro- 
 consuls, or pro-praetors of the type of Verres who had 
 plundered the provinces. All governors were re- 
 quired, on relinquishing office, to make a double re- 
 turn 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 an- 
 swerable to the last sesterce.^ 
 
 Such laws were words only without the will to ex- 
 ecute 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 ex- 
 isted, and see it perish as it deserved. All that man 
 could do foi the preservation of his country from rev- 
 olution Caesar had accomplished. Sylla had reestal> 
 
 1 See a list of the Leges Juliae in tlie 48th Book of the Corpus Jurii 
 Cirilis. 
 
The '' Leges JuUce" 197 
 
 lished the rule of the aristocracy, and it liad failed 
 grossly and disgracefully. Cinna and Marius had 
 tried democracy, and that had failed. Csesar 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 Juli«," 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 prom- 
 ise of better days to the miserable and pillaged sub- 
 jects of the Roman Empire. 
 
 So the year of Csesar'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 noth- 
 ing, but he was known to desire an opportunity of 
 distinguished service. Csesar was now forty-three. 
 His life was ebbing away, and, with the exception of 
 his two years in Spain, it had been spent in strug- 
 gling 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 
 nad been laid down for the Senate and people to act 
 on, if they could and would. Caesar could only wish 
 tor a long absence in some new sphere of usefulness, 
 where he could achieve something really great which 
 his country would remember. 
 
198 Cmar. 
 
 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. Par- 
 thians might disturb the frontier, but could not seri- 
 ously threaten the Eastern dominions ; and no advan- 
 tage 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 pro- 
 tectorate over them. But even here the inhabitants 
 were uneasy for their independence, and troubles were 
 continually arising with them ; while into these dis- 
 tricts 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 
 ihey had formed settlements beyond the Rhine. 
 These relations were being changed. The Gauls, as 
 they grew in wealth, declined in vigor. The Ger* 
 
State of aaul 199 
 
 mans, still roving and migratory, were throwing cov- 
 etous eyes out of their forests on the fields and vine- 
 yards 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 Csesar's 
 consulship, could still remember the terrors which had 
 been caused by the invasion of the Cimbri and Teu- 
 tons. 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 multi- 
 tudes 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 erup- 
 tion ; 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 CaBsar. It is the fashion to say that he sought a 
 military command that he might have an army be- 
 hind him to overthrow the constitution. If this was 
 his object, ambition never chose a more dangerous 
 or less promising route for himself. 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 
 
200 Cmar, 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances which were taking place beyond the mount- 
 ains recommended, that a wider scope should be al- 
 lowed 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 prov- 
 ince 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 Cae- 
 sar'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 staunch partisans and were to be relied on to re- 
 sist any efforts which might be made to repeal the 
 '* Leges Julise." These matters being arranged, and 
 
Cicero's Grievan:e8. 201 
 
 his own term having expired, Caesar withdrew, ac- 
 cording 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. 
 
 It is easy to conceive how the Senate felt at these 
 transactions, how ill they bore to find them- 
 selves 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." ^ " Freedom 
 is gone," he wrote to Atticus ; " and if we are to be 
 worse enslaved, we shall bear it. Our lives and 
 properti'es are more to us than liberty. We sigh, 
 and we do not even remonstrate." ^ 
 
 Cato, in the desperation of passion, called Pompey 
 
 >• To Atticus, ii. 16. 
 
 2 " Tenemur undique, neque jam, quo minus serviamus, recusamus, sed 
 mortem et ejectionem quasi raajora timeraus quoe multo sunt minora. At- 
 que hie status, qui una voce omnium gemitur neque verbo cujusdam sub* 
 levatur."— fb. ii. 18. 
 
202 Ccesar, 
 
 a Dictator -in the assembly, and barely escaped being 
 killed for his pains.^ The patricians revenged them- 
 Belves in private by savage speeches and plots and 
 purposes. Fashionable society gathered in the thea- 
 tres, and hissed the popular leaders. Lines were in- 
 troduced into the plays reflecting on Pompey, and 
 were encored a thousand times. Bibulus from his 
 closet continued to issue venomous placards, report- 
 ing scandals about Csesar'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 de- 
 tested 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 
 ♦^^hemselves 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 
 
 1 " In concionem ascendit et Pompeium privatus Dictatorem appellavit 
 P"opius nihil est factum quam ut occideretur." — Cicero, Ad Qidntum 
 Fratremy i. 2. 
 
Roman Factions. 203 
 
 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 x 
 often told you, that the wheel of the constitution waa 
 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 com- 
 plaining in the Forum of the publications 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 
 I^lysus, 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.^ — Pompey is sick with 
 
 1 To Atticus, ii. 21. In this comparison Cicero betrays his naive con- 
 viction that Pompey was indebted to him and to his praises for his reputa- 
 iion. Here, as always, Cicero was himself the centre round which all else 
 revolved ^r ought to revolve. 
 
204 Ccesar. 
 
 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 in- 
 sult, that I fear what he may do. What th^ future 
 may have in store for Bibulus I know not. At pres- 
 ent he is the admired of all." ^ 
 
 " Sampsiceramus," Cicero wrote a few days later, 
 " is greatly penitent. He would gladly be restored 
 to the eminence from which he has fallen. Some- 
 times he imparts his griefs to me, and asks me what 
 -he should do, which I cannot tell him." 2 
 
 Unfortunate Cicero, who knew what was right, but 
 was too proud to do it I 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. Csesar 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 legisla- 
 tion. When he had a clear purpose in view, and 
 was satisfied that it was a good purpose, he was 
 uever 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 
 sharacter be what it might. The rank and file of 
 
 1 To Attiais, ii. 21. 2 75. ii. 22. 
 
aodius. ' 206 
 
 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 repources 
 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 in- 
 fluenced by temptation of advantage to himself; 
 Cicero, on accuant of his extreme ability, his per- 
 sonal ambition, and his total want of political prin- 
 ciple. 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 so 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, make 
 strange bedfellows. In this difficulty accident threw 
 ■ n Caesar's way a convenient but most unexpected 
 ally. 
 
 Young Clodius, after his escape from prosecution 
 by the marvellous methods which Crassus had pro- 
 vided for him, was more popular than ever. He had 
 been the occasion of a scandal which had brought in- 
 famy on the detested Senate. His offence in itself 
 seemed slight in so loose an sge and was as nothing 
 compared with the enormity di his judges. He had 
 
206 Ccemr, 
 
 come out of his trial with a determination to be re- 
 venged 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 com- 
 mon forms of pleasure. He wanted a new excite- 
 ment, 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 so- 
 ciety, they are always idolized, because they make 
 vice respectable by connecting it with intellect. Clo- 
 dius was a second, an abler Catiline, equally unprin- 
 cipled and far more dexterous and prudent. In times 
 r,f revolution there is always a disreputable wing to 
 the radical party, composed of men who are the nat- 
 ural enemies of established authority, and these all 
 rallied about their new leader with devout enthusi- 
 asm. 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 magis- 
 Vracies which were open to him as a patrician. He 
 declared his intention of renouncing his order, becom- 
 ing 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 gTowth 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 
 
Olodius chosen Tribune, 207 
 
 Howard were to seek adoption from a shopkeeper in 
 the Strand. 
 
 At first there was universal amazement. Cioero 
 had used the intrigue with Pompeia as a text for a 
 sermon on the immoralities of the age. The aspi- 
 rations 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.^ 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 Clo- 
 dius 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," how- 
 ever, 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. Clo- 
 dius 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 au- 
 thority. He was now a plebeian, and free. He re- 
 mained 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 de- 
 
 l "Jam familiariter cum illo etiam caviller ac jocor." — To Atticus, ii. 1. 
 
208 Cmar, 
 
 pended on, a tribune's power was insignificant. 
 When tlie 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. Cic- 
 ero, 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 lijjd in his mind ; or that, if the design was 
 not his own, he had purposely allowed it to go for- 
 ward. Csesar 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 sena- 
 torial 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 il- 
 legality 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 sit- 
 uation 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 compli- 
 ment 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 
 
Prosecution of Cicero. 209 
 
 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 trades- 
 men. The world, he thought, looked back upon his 
 consulship with as much admiration as he did him- 
 self, and was always contrasting him with his suc- 
 cessors. Never was mistake more profound. The 
 Senate, who had envied his talents and resented his 
 assumption, now despised him as a trimmer. His sar- 
 casms had made him enemies among those who acted 
 with him politically. He had held aloof at, the crisis 
 of Cgesar's election and in the debates which fol- 
 lowed, and therefore all sides distrusted him ; while 
 throughout the body of the people there was, as Cae- 
 sar 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 Sen- 
 ate, 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 irri- 
 tated by his presumption." Those who most agreed 
 in what he had done were not ashamed to shuffle off 
 upon him their responsibilities. Clodius, now om- 
 nipotent with the assembly at his back, cleared the 
 way by a really useful step ; he carried a law abolish- 
 ng the impious form of declaring the heavens unfa- 
 vorable when an inconvenient measure was to be 
 
 14 
 
210 Cce8ar. 
 
 stopped or delayed. Probably it formed a part of hia 
 engagement with Cassar. 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 pro- 
 pose 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 peo- 
 ple, 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 ; ai]d Caesar at once renewed the offer, which 
 he made before, to take Cicero with him. Cicero, 
 now frightened in earnest, still could not bring him- 
 self to owe his escape to Csesar. The Senate, un- 
 grateful as they had been, put on mourning with an 
 affectation of dismay. The knights petitioned the 
 consuls to interfere for Cicero's protection. The con- 
 suls declined to receive their request. Caesar outside 
 the city gave no further sign. A meeting of the citi- 
 zens was held in the camp. Caesar's opinion was in- 
 vited. He said that he had not changed bis senti- 
 ments. 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 passed. 
 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 oflBcer. Gabinius, 
 Cicero thought, would respect Pompey's promise to 
 him. To Piso he made a personal appeal. He found 
 
Prosecution of Cicero. 211 
 
 him, he said afterwards,^ 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 con- 
 sul. Hope in that quarter there was none. Two 
 days later the assembly was called to consider Clo- 
 dius's proposal. Piso was asked to say what he 
 thought of the treatment of the conspirators ; he an- 
 swered 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 serv- 
 ices, sometimes he took credit to himself for refusing 
 to be the occasion of bloodshed.^ 
 
 " I was too timid," he said once ; " I had the coun- 
 try 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, and 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 CaBsar. 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 
 
 1 Oratio in L. Pisonem. 
 
 2 He seems to have even thought of suicide. — To Atticus, iii 9. 
 
212 Ccesar. 
 
 remained silent. They were alarmed perhaps, be- 
 cause the laws which they had carried in the preced- 
 ing 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." ^ 
 
 And again elsewhere : " When I saw that the fac- 
 tion 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 ar- 
 rangement 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 de- 
 feat 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." ^ 
 
 So Cicero, as he looked back afterwards, described 
 the struggle in his own mind. His friends had then 
 rallied ; Csesar 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 
 
 1 Abridged from the Oratiopro P. Sextio. 
 
 2 Oraiio post reditum ad Quirites. 
 
Banishment of Cicero, 213 
 
 to the facts, what harder condemnation can be pro- 
 nounced against a political condition in which such 
 men as these could be raised to the first position in 
 the State ?i 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 lamen- 
 tations unworthy of a woman. 
 
 1 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 
 Bide. 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 suaa 
 pollicentur. Nostra antiqua manus bonorum ardet studio nostri atque 
 amore. Si qui antea aut alieniores fuerant, aut languidiores, nunc horum 
 regum odio se cum bonis conjungunt. Pompeius omnia pollicetur et Cajsar, 
 de quibus ita credo, ut nihil de mea comparatione deminuam." — Ad Qmm». 
 turn Fratrem, i. 2. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 From the fermentation of Roman politics, the pas- 
 sions 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 him- 
 self our guide. We see him in his actions and in the 
 picture of his personal character which he has uncon- 
 sciously 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 person- 
 ality 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 con- 
 templated 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 
 
Ancient Gauh 215 
 
 "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 pro-prse- 
 tor, he had no military experience at all. His ambi- 
 tion hitherto had not pointed in that direction; nor 
 is it likely that a person of so strong an understand- 
 ing would have contemplated beforehand the deliber- 
 ate undertaking of the gigantic war into which cir- 
 cumstances 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 be- 
 ing pressed upon them in self-defence. 
 
 The Transalpine Gaul of CaBsar was the country 
 included between the Rhine, the ocean, the Pyrenees, 
 the Mediterranean, and the Alps. Within these lim- 
 its, 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 Is^re ; but it had been found necessary lately ^ to 
 annex the territory of the AUobroges (Dauphin^ and 
 Savoy), and the proconsular authority was now ex* 
 
 1 Perhaps in consequence of the Catiline conspiracy. 
 
216 Cmar, 
 
 tended 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 con- 
 nected with the Spaniards or perhaps the Basques, 
 held the country between the Pyrenees and the Ga- 
 ronne. The Belgse, 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. Accord- 
 ing to the Druids, they came out of darkness, ah Dite 
 Patre ; they called themselves Children of Night, 
 counting time by nights, instead of days, as we say 
 fortnight and se'nnight. 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 re- 
 mained 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 home- 
 steads. 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 
 
The Druids, 217 
 
 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 prac- 
 tically independent, or united only by common ob- 
 jects 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 fath- 
 er'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 resem- 
 blance 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 Le- 
 vites, 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 
 uvoid military service, from which the Druids were 
 
218 Ccesar, 
 
 exempt. There were no tribal distinctions among 
 them. Their headquarters were in Britain, to which 
 those who aspired to initiation in the more profound 
 mysteries repaired for - instruction ; but they were 
 spread universally over Gau] and the British Islands. 
 They were the ministers of public worship, the de- 
 positaries of knowledge, and the guardians of pub- 
 lic 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 in- 
 heritance. 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 ex- 
 cluded 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 faggots, instead of being plaited into basket- 
 work. So slight a difference does not materially 
 affect the likeness. 
 
 The tribal chieftainship and the religious organiza- 
 tion 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 Cassar's eye, coming new upon them, the Druids 
 
The JEdui. ' 219 
 
 were an established fact, presenting no sign of decay , 
 but in Gaul, infected with Roman manners, they ex- 
 isted 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 in- 
 spiring 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 flam- 
 ing 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 -^dui, a considerable 
 people who occupied the central parts of France, be- 
 tween the Upper Loire and the Sa6ne. The Ro- 
 mans, anxious naturally to extend their influence in 
 the country without direct interference, had taken 
 the -^dui under their protectorate. The JEdui again 
 had their clients in the inferior tribes ; and a Ro- 
 man o-^duan authority of a shadowy kind had thus 
 penetrated through the whole nation. 
 
 But the -^duans had rivals and competitors in the 
 Sequani, another powerful body in Burgundy and 
 Franche-Comt^. If the Romans feared the Gauls, 
 the Gauls in turn feared the Romans ; and a national 
 party had formed itself everywhere, especially among 
 
220 Cceaar. 
 
 the younger men, who were proud of their indepen- 
 dence, impatient of foreign control, and determined to 
 maintain the liberties which had descended to them. 
 To these the Sequani offered themselves as cham- 
 pions. Among the jEdui too there were fiery spirits 
 who cherished the old traditions, and saw in the Ro- 
 man 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,^ each under its own 
 captain, each struggling for supremacy, each conspir- 
 ing 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 council of 
 elders, and these appear almost everywhere to have 
 been ^duan and Roman in their sympathies. The 
 Sequani as the representatives of nationalism, know- 
 ing 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-Comt^ at the invi- 
 
 1 " In GalliS, non solum in omnibus civitatibus atque in omnibus pagis 
 partibusque sed paene etiam in singulis domibus factiones sunt, earuraque 
 factionum principes sunt qui summam auctoritatem eorum judicio habere 
 
 existimantur Hsec est ratio in summ^ 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. 
 ri. capp. 11, 12. 
 
The HelvetiL 221 
 
 tation of the Sequani, bringing his people with him. 
 The few thousand families which were first intro- 
 duced had been followed by fresh detachments ; they 
 had attacked and beaten the JEdui, out of whose ter- 
 ritories they intended to carve a settlement for them- 
 selves. 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 ^dui, three years before Caesar came, had ap- 
 pealed 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 ^dui still harder, and had forced 
 them to renounce the Roman alliance. Among the 
 ^dui, 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 un- 
 easiness ; an old ^duan 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 
 
222 Ccp^mr, 
 
 themselves successfully, but they were growing weary 
 of these constant efforts. Their numbers were increas- 
 ing, 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 reputa- 
 tion as warriors made them welcome to the patriots. 
 In a fight for independence they would form a valua- 
 ble 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 ^dui ; 
 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 njade the cir- 
 cuit 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 
 
The HelvetiL 223 
 
 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 trans- 
 port 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 en- 
 emy 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 ^ 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. Di- 
 vitiacus, chief of the JEdui, 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 Mith- 
 ridates. The people now looked to Caesar, and in- 
 stead 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 
 
 1 Even Dion- Cassius speaks of the Germans as KeArot. 
 
224 Ccesar. 
 
 and spoken with Divitiacus. He was consul when 
 Ariovistus was made " a friend of the Roman peo- 
 ple." 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 reali- 
 ties 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 serv- 
 ice. 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 incumber him with orders from home. The 
 people had given him his command, and to the people 
 alone he was responsible. Lastly, and beyond every- 
 thing, 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 accomplish- 
 ment than have perhaps ever followed a general into 
 vhe field before or since. It was not enough that 
 they could use sword and lance. The campaign on 
 which Csesar was about to enter was fought with 
 spade and pick and axe and hatchet. Corps of en- 
 gineers he may have had ; but if the engineers de- 
 signed the work, the execution lay with the army. 
 No limited department would have been equal to the 
 
Composition of Ccesar^s Army. 22£ 
 
 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 sur- 
 prises, 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 require- 
 ments of an array, 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 sup- 
 plied by contract, had the axes been of soft iron, fair 
 to the eye and failing to the stroke, not a man in 
 Csesar'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 
 Buch a variety of qualitie's. Universal practical ac- 
 complishments must have formed part of the training 
 of the free Roman citizens. Admirable workmanship 
 was still to be had in each department of manufact- 
 
 15 
 
226 Ccesar. 
 
 ure, and ' every article with which Csesar was pro- 
 vided must have been the best of its kind. 
 
 Tlie first quarter of the year 68 was consumed in 
 preparations. Csesar's antagonists in the Senate were 
 Btill raving against the acts of his consulship, threaten- 
 ing him w^ith impeachment for neglecting Bibulus's 
 interpellations, charging him with impiety for disre- 
 garding the weather, and clamoring for the sup- 
 pression of his command. But Cicero's banishment 
 damped the ardor of these gentlemen ; after a few 
 vicious efforts, they subsided into suUennesss, and 
 trusted to Ariovistus or the Helvetii to relieve them 
 of their detested enemy. Csesar himself selected his 
 officers. Cicero having declined to go as his lieuten- 
 ant, 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 elec- 
 tion to the people. Young men of rank in large 
 numbers had forgotten party feeling, and had at- 
 tached themselves to the expedition as volunteers to 
 learn military experience. His own equipments were 
 of the simplest. No common soldier was more care- 
 less of hardships than Csesar. His chief luxury was 
 a favorite horse, which would allow no one but Csesar 
 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 fpretell 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 tlieir 
 families into their wagons, and were upon the point 
 of commencing their emigration. Their numbers, ac- 
 cording to a register which was found afterwards, 
 were 368,000, of whom 92,000 were fighting men. 
 
The HclvetiL 22T 
 
 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 Ehone by the Pas de I'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 Ro- 
 man. 
 
 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 destro3^ed. Yet it was in this direction that the 
 Helvetii were preparing to pass, and would pass un- 
 less they were prevented ; while in the whole Transal- 
 pine province there was but a single legion to oppose 
 them. Caisar 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. Csesar 
 broke it, and thus secured a breathing time. The 
 Helvetii, who were already on the move and were as- 
 sembling 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 I'Ecluse where 
 the river could be forded. The Roman force was 
 small, and CcBsar 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 bo 
 attempted ; and when the time was expired, he de- 
 clined to permit them to enter the Province. They 
 tried to ford; they tried boats; but at every point 
 tliey were beaten back. It remained for them to go 
 
228 Ccemr, 
 
 by the Pus de FEcluse. 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. Evident- 
 ly, 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 
 -^duan and an ardent patriot, the Sequani were in- 
 duced 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 tliat sooner or later they 
 would overflow the borders of the Empire. Csesar 
 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 de- 
 lay his march. In seven days he had surmounted the 
 passes, and was again with Labienus. 
 
 The Helvetii, meanwhile, had gone through the Pas 
 de FEcluse, and were now among the JEdui, 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 oft' the ground. The JEdui threw 
 themselves on the promised protection of Rome. Cse- 
 gar crossed the Rhone above Lyons, and came up with 
 the marauding hosts as they were leisurely passing in 
 boats over the Sa6ne. They had been twenty days 
 
The HelvetiL 229 
 
 upon the river, transporting their wagons and their 
 families. Three quarters of them were on the other 
 side. Tiie Tigurini from Zurich, the most warlike of 
 their tribes, were still on the left bank. The Tigu- 
 rini had destroyed the army of Longinus, and on them 
 the first retribution fell. Csesar cut them to pieces. 
 A single day sufficed to throw a bridge over the Sa6ne, 
 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 iEdui, 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 
 jEduan territories up the level banks of the Sa6ne, 
 thence striking west towards Autun. 
 
 Csesar had no cavalry ; but every Gaul could ride, 
 and he raised a few thousand horse among his sup- 
 posed 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, Csesar's stores accompanied 
 him in barges. He did not choose to let the Helvetii 
 
230 Cmar. 
 
 out of his sight, and when they left the Sa6ne, and 
 when he was obliged to follow, his provisions ran 
 short. He applied to the ^duan chiefs, who prom- 
 ised 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 ai^d. 
 other ^duan leaders were in correspondence with the 
 enemy. The cavalry defeat and the other failures 
 were thus explained. Csesar, who trusted much to 
 gentleness and to personal influence, was unwilling to 
 add the ^dui 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. Tlie corn carts, however, did not ap- 
 pear ; supplies could not be dispensed vrith ; and the 
 Romans, leaving the Helvetii, struck off to Bibracte, 
 on Mont Beauvray, the principal ^duan town in the 
 highlands of Nivernais. Unfortunately for themselves, 
 the Helvetii thought the Romans were flying, and be- 
 came in turn the pursuers. They gave Caesar an op- 
 portunity, 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 be- 
 tween skill and courage, sturdy discipline and wild 
 valor ; and it concluded' as such contests always must, 
 [n 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 
 
Defeat of the HelvetiL 231 
 
 them as were capable of moving (for thousands had 
 perished, and a little more than a third remained of 
 those who had left Switzerland), straggled on to Lan- 
 gres, where they surrendered. Cassar treated the poor 
 creatures with kindness and care. A few were set- 
 tled in Gaul, where they afterwards did valuable sei v- 
 ice. 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 pro- 
 vided 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 
 CaBsar*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 dis- 
 posed of, but the Germans remained ; and till Ari- 
 ovistus was back across the Rhone, no permanent 
 peace was possible. Hitherto Caesar had only received 
 vague information about Ariovistus. When the diet 
 Vas 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 conni- 
 vance of the Sequani. More were coming; in a short 
 time Gaul would be full of them. They had made 
 war on the ^dui ; they were in correspondence with 
 the anti-Roman factions ; their object was the per- 
 manent occupation of the country. 
 
232 Ccesar. 
 
 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 him- 
 self was prompt in forming resolutions and swift in 
 executing them. An injury to the J^dui could be 
 treated as an injury to the Romans, which it would 
 be dishonor to pass over. If the Germans were al- 
 lowed to overrun Gaul, they might soon be seen again 
 in Italy. 
 
 Ariovistus was a "friend of Rome." Csesar had 
 been himself a party to the conferring this distinc- 
 tion 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 Csesar required anything from him, Caesar 
 might do the same. Meanwhile Ceesar was approach- 
 ing 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 nec- 
 essary. Caesar rejoined that since Ariovistus esti- 
 mated so lightly his friendship with the Rouians as to 
 refuse an amicable meeting, he would inform him 
 briefly of his demands upon him. The influx of Ger- 
 mans on the Rhine must cease ; no more must come 
 in. He must restore the hostages which he had taken 
 from the JEdui, and do them no further hurt. If Ari- 
 ovistus 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 pro- 
 tect the JEdui, and he intended to do it. 
 
 Ariovistus answered that he had not interfered with 
 
Alarm in the Roman Army, 233 
 
 the Romans ; and the Romans had no right to inter- 
 fere with him. Conquerors treated their subjects 
 as they pleased. The JEdui 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 Besan9on. Besan9on was a position naturally 
 strong, being surrounded on three sides by the Doubs. 
 It was full of military stores, and was qtherwise im 
 portant for the control of the Sequani. Caesar ad- 
 vanced swiftly and took possession of the place, and 
 announced that he meant to go and look for Ariovis- 
 tus. 
 
 The army so far had gained brilliant successes, but 
 the men were not yet fully acquainted with the nat- 
 ure 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 dread- 
 ful. Young ofiicers, patricians and knights, who had 
 followed Caesar for a little mild experience, began to 
 dislike the notion of these new enemies. Some ap- 
 plied for leave of absence ; others, though ashamed 
 to ask to be allowed to leave the army, cowered m 
 in their tents with sinking hearts, made their wills, 
 and composed last messages for their friends. Tho 
 
234 CcBsar. 
 
 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 in- 
 formed that if he gave the order to march, the army 
 would refuse to move. 
 
 Confident in himself, Caesar had the power, so i i- 
 dispensable for a soldier, of inspiring confidence in 
 others as soon as they came to know what he was. 
 He called his oflBcers together. He summoned the 
 centurions, and rebuked them sharply for questioning 
 his purposes. The German king, he said, had been 
 received at liis own request into alliance with the Ro- 
 mans, and there was no reason to suppose that he 
 meant to break with them. Most likely he w^ould do 
 what was required of him. If not, was it to be con- 
 ceived 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 ra- 
 pacious, and his victory over the Helvetii that as yet 
 he had made no mistake. He should order the ad- 
 vance 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 for- 
 ward alone with the legion which he knew would fol- 
 low him, the 10th, which was already his favorite. 
 
Interview with Ariovistus. 235 
 
 The speech was received with enthusiasm. The 
 10th thanked Caesar for his compliment to them. 
 The rest, officers and men, declared their wiUingness 
 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 milea 
 from him. Since Ciesar 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 JEduan 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 cen- 
 tre of a large plain equi-distant from the two camps. 
 The guard on either side remained two hundred paces 
 in the rear. The German prince and the Roman gen- 
 eral met on horseback at the mound, each accom- 
 panied by ten of his followers. Caesar spoke first and 
 fairly. He reminded Ariovistus of his obligations to 
 the Romans. The J^dui, he said, had from imme- 
 morial time been the leading tribe in Gaul. The Ro' 
 mans had an alliance with them of old standing, and 
 never deserted their friends. He required Ariovistus 
 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 de- 
 manded 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 
 
236 ' Ccesar, 
 
 of the Gauls themselves ; that the territory which he 
 occupied was a gift from them ; and that the hostages 
 of which Csesar spoke had remained with him with 
 their free consent. The JEdui, 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 Cae- 
 sar that he knew something of Rome and of the Ro- 
 man Senate, and had learnt how the great people 
 there stood affected towards 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,^ 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 re- 
 tire and leave him. Ariovistus was misled, not un 
 naturally, 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 
 
 1 * Id se ab ipsis per eorum nuntios compertura habere, quorum omniua; 
 gratiam atque amicitiain ejus morte rediinere posset." — De Bell. Gall. I 
 44. 
 
Battle at Colmar. 237 
 
 true chief of Rome were not in the treacherous Senate, 
 but were before him there on the field in the persons 
 of Csesar and his legions. 
 
 More might have passed between them ; but Ario- 
 vistus 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 ; Csesar fell back and joined them, and, content- 
 ing themselves with simply driving off the enemy, 
 they rode back to the camp. 
 
 The army was now passionate for an engagement. 
 Ariovistus affected a desire for further communica- 
 tion, and two officers were dispatched 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 
 intrenched near Cernay. The Germans were at Col- 
 mar. Csesar 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 Csesar 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 swordt and hand-to- 
 hand grapple of the legionaries. Better arms and 
 better discipline again asserted the superiority ; and 
 
238 CG^mr, 
 
 in a few hours the invaders were flying wildly to the 
 Rhine. Young Publius Crassus, the son of the mil- 
 lionnaire, pursued witli the cavahy. 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 threat- 
 ened the peace of Gaul had been encountered and 
 trampled out in a single summer. The first cam- 
 paign 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. Ca3sar went back over the Alps to the Cisal- 
 pine 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 tlie 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 in- 
 dependence. 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 Csesar marks with 
 approbation, were water-drinkers, and forbade wine 
 to be brought among them, as injurious to their sin- 
 ews and their courage. Csesar learnt while in Italy 
 
Confederacy among the Belgoe, 239 
 
 from Labieims that the Belgse were mustering and 
 combining. A second vast horde of Germans were in 
 Flanders and Artois ; men of the same race with the 
 Belgse 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 tlieir prepara- 
 tions were sounding through the country and feeding 
 the restless spirit which was stunned but not sub- 
 dued. 
 
 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, 
 60,000; 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 Ar- 
 dennes and the Rhine, called collectively Germani, 
 40,000 more. This irregular host was gathered in 
 the forests between Laon and Soissons. 
 
 Csesar did not wait for them to move. He ad- 
 vanced at once to Rheims, where he called the Sen- 
 ate together and encouraged them to be constant to 
 the Roman alliance. He sent a party of ^dui down 
 the Seine to harass the territory of the Bellovaci and 
 recall them to their own defence ; and he went on him- 
 Belf to the Aisne, which he crossed by a bridge already 
 
240 Ccesar. 
 
 existing at Berry-au-Bac. There, with the bridge and 
 river afc his back, he formed an intrenched camp of 
 extraordinary strength, with a wall twelve feet high 
 and a fosse twenty-two feet deep. Against an at- 
 tack with modern artillery such defeiices 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. Csesar, 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 crossbows, 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 the 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. Csesar calmly sent back 
 his cavalry and his archers and slingers. They caught 
 the enemy in the water or struggling out of it in con- 
 fusion ; all who had got over were killed ; multitudes 
 >vere 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. 
 
Movement against the Nervii. 241 
 
 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. Csesar treated them 
 all with scrupulous forbearance, demanding nothing 
 but hostages for their future good behavior. His in- 
 tention 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 ^duan hegemony. 
 
 But the strongest member of the confederacy was 
 still unsubdued. The hardy, brave, and water-drink- 
 ing Nervii remained defiant. The Nervii would send 
 no envoys ; they would listen to no terms of peace.^ 
 Caesar learnt that they were expecting to be joined by 
 the Aduatuci, a tribe of pure Germans, who had been 
 left behind near Li^ge at the time of the invasion of 
 the Teutons. Preferring to engage them separately 
 he marched from Amiens through Canibray, and sent 
 forward some officers and pioneers to choose a spot 
 for a camp on the Sambre. Certain Gauls, who had 
 
 1 Caesar thus records his admiration of the Nervian character: "Quo- 
 rum de natura moribusque Cassar cum quaereret sic reperiebatj-nullum adi- 
 tum esse ad eos mercatovibus; nihil pati vinireliquarumque rerum ad lux- 
 uriam pertinent/urn inferri, quod iis rebus relanguescere animos eorura et 
 temitti virtutem existimarent: esse homines feros magnajque virtutis ; m- 
 trepitare atque incusare reliquos Belgas qui se populo Romano dedidissent 
 patriamque virtutem projecissent; confirmare sese neque legatos missuroa 
 neque ullam conditionem pacis accepturos." — De Bell. Gall. il. 15. 
 16 
 
242 Ccesar. 
 
 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 at- 
 tack in front they could overwhelm the advanced 
 troops, plunder the carts, and escape before the^ 
 could be overtaken. It happened that on this occa- 
 sion the order was reversed. The country was in- 
 closed 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 cor- 
 responding 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 them- 
 selves on the water side. Caesar's light horse which 
 had gone forward, seeing a mere handful of strag- 
 glers, 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 im- 
 petuously that, as Caesar said, they seemed to be in 
 the wood, in the water, and up the opposite bank at 
 Bword's point with the legions at the same moment. 
 Tlie surprise was complete : the Roman army was in 
 
Battle with the Nervii. 243 
 
 confusion. Many of the soldiers were scattered at a 
 distance, cutting turf. None wexe 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. 
 T\^'o 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. Cassar 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 on- 
 slaught 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 Aduat- 
 uci had not come up, the Nervii had allies with 
 them from Arras and the Somme. The allies en- 
 countered 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 pur- 
 suit, 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 
 I2th 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 to- 
 gether in confusion, were fighting at disadvantage, 
 and were falling thick and fast. A party of horse 
 
244 Ooesar. 
 
 from Treves, who had come to treat with Csesar, 
 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 oflBcers 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, 
 bare-headed, 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 com- 
 mander'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 fol- 
 lowers, 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 
 Csesar 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 tlieir ex- 
 termination. 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 
 
Capture of Namur, 245 
 
 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 confed* 
 eracy was almost extinguished. The German Adu- 
 atuci remained only to be brought to submission. 
 They had been on their way to join their country- 
 men ; they were too late for the battle, and returned 
 and shut themselves up in Namur, the strongest posi- 
 tion in the Low Countries. Caesar, after a short rest, 
 pushed on and came under their walls. The Ad- 
 uatuci were a race of giants, and were at first defiant. 
 When they saw the Romans' siege towers in prepara- 
 tion, 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. 
 Cassar 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 obedi- 
 ence. 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 plun- 
 dering. 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 se- 
 
246 Coesar, 
 
 cretly 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 si\ch attempt might be 
 made, he had prepared piles of faggots 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. Cesar's usual 
 practice was gentleness. He honored brave men, and 
 never punished bold and open opposition. Of treach- 
 ery he made a severe example. Namur was con- 
 demned. 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 Belgse were thus crushed as completely as the 
 Gauls had been crushed in the previous year. Pub- 
 lius Crassus had meanwhile made a circuit of Brit- 
 tainy, 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 envojT^s with offers of submission. The second 
 season was over. Caesar left the legions in quarters 
 about Chartres, Orleans, and Blois. He himself re- 
 turned to Italy again, where his presence was impera- 
 tively required. The Senate, on the news of his suc- 
 cesses, had been compelled, by public sentiment, to 
 order an extraordinary thanksgiving ; but there were 
 men who were anxious to prevent Csesar from achiev- 
 ing any further victories since Ariovistus had failed 
 to destroy him. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Before bis own catastrophe, and before he could 
 believe tliat he was in danpjer, Cicero had 
 
 " . B.C. 68. 
 
 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 
 w^as 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 dis- 
 missed 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 steep- 
 ing 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 ac- 
 cidents of a constitution which was still the best tiiat 
 could be conceived, and every one that doubted the 
 
248 Cmar, 
 
 excellence of it he had come to legard 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 coun- 
 try 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 aristo- 
 cratic. 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 op- 
 position had been overcome by purely constitutional 
 means. The great general had obtained his com- 
 mand by land and sea ; he, Cicero, having by elo- 
 quent 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 fac- 
 tion, quarrel, and discontent ! One interpretation 
 only Cicero had been able to place on such a phe- 
 nomenon. In Rome, as in all great communities, 
 there were multitudes of dissolute, ruined wretches, 
 the natural enemies of property and order. Bank- 
 rupt 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 discour- 
 aged 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 srlorv, 
 
Cicero and Clodius. 249 
 
 but now Catiline had revived in Clodius ; and Clodius, 
 so far from being discouraged, was petted and en- 
 couraged 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 incen- 
 diary, and had threatened to call in tffi army if the 
 Senate attempted to repeal Csesav's iniquitous Uws.^ 
 Still more inexplicable was the ingratitude of the 
 aristocracy and their friends, the "boni " or good — 
 the " Conservatives of the State," ^ 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 Hy 
 an insolent reprobate, a patrician turned Radical and 
 demagogue, Publius Clodius. Indignity could be car- 
 ried no farther. 
 
 Clodius is the most extraordinary figure in this ex- 
 traordinary 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 
 
 1 To Atticus, n. 16. 
 
 * " Conservatores Reipublicfle." — Pro Sexiio. 
 
250 Cmar. 
 
 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 fiad gone beyond endurance. We know 
 Clodhis only from^icero ; and a picture of him from 
 a second hand might have made his position more in- 
 telligible, 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 calam- 
 ity. Cicero says that Clodius revived Catiline's fac- 
 tion ; 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 Csesar 
 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 plebe- 
 ians. If none of them were valid, Clodius was not 
 legally tribune, and no commission which Clodius 
 might confer through the people would have validity. 
 
Cato sent to Cyprus. 251 
 
 A service was discovered by which Cato was tempted, 
 and which he was induced to accept at Clodiiis'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 be- 
 queathed both Egypt and Cyprus to Rome ; but the 
 Senate had delayed to enter on their bequest, prefer- 
 ring 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 sov- 
 ereign, but a less prudent client. He had not over- 
 taxed 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 un- 
 willing to give what was expected of him. Clodius, 
 on the plea that the King of Cyprus protected pirates, 
 uersuaded 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 prov- 
 ince to the Empire, and did not return for two years, 
 
252 Ccesar, 
 
 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 — 
 CiBsar 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 establishmeiita 
 in the city — the most demoralizing of all the meas- 
 ures which the democracy had introduced to swell 
 their numbers. He reestablished the political clubs, 
 which were hot-beds of distinctive Radicalism. He 
 took away the right of separate magistrates to lay 
 their vetos on the votes of the sovereign people, and 
 he took from the Senate such power as the}^ still pos- 
 sessed of regulating the government of the Provinces, 
 and passed it over to the Assembly. These resolu- 
 tions, which reduced the administration to a chaos, he 
 induced the people to decree by irresistible majorities. 
 One measure only he passed which deserved commen- 
 dation, though Clodius deserved none for introducing 
 it. He put an end to the impious pretence of " ob- 
 serving the heavens," of which Conservative officials 
 had availed themselves to obstruct unwelcome mo- 
 tions. Some means were, no doubt, necessary to check 
 the precipitate passions of the mob ; but not means 
 which turned into mockery the slight surviving rem- 
 nants of ancient Roman reverence. 
 
 In general politics the young tribune had no def- 
 inite predilections. He had threatened at one time 
 to repeal Caesar's laws himself. He attacked alter- 
 nately the chiefs of the army and of the Senate, and 
 the people let him do what he pleased without with- 
 drawing their confidence from him. He went every- 
 
Clodius as Tribune. 253 
 
 where 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 " Wal- 
 purgis dance of political witches." ^ 
 
 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 Len- 
 tulus, a moderate aristocrat, and Cicero's personal 
 friend ; and Metellus Nepos, who would do what 
 Pompey told him. Caesar had been consulted by let- 
 ter and had given his assent. Cicero, it might be 
 thought, had learnt his lesson, and there was no de- 
 sire of protracting his penance. There were still 
 difficulties, however. Cicero, smarting from wrath 
 and mortification, was more angry with the aristo- 
 crats, who had deserted him, than with his open en- 
 emies. His most intimate companions, he bitterly 
 said, had been false to him. He was looking regret- 
 fully on Caesar's offers,^ 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 forgot- 
 ten nor forgiven the killing of the Catiline conspira- 
 
 ^ Mommsai. 
 
 ^ "-Omnia sunt mek culpS, commissa, qui ab his me amari putabam qui 
 \mv lebant: eos non sequebar qui petebant." — Ad Familiares, xiv. 1. 
 ■* N lUum est meum peccatum nisi quod lis credidi a quibus nefas putabam 
 
 esse m^ decipi Intiinus proximus fainiliarissimus quisque aat sibi 
 
 pertimuit au mihi invidii." — Ad Quintum Fratrein, i. 4. 
 
254 Ccesar, 
 
 tors; while Cicero, aware of the efforts which were 
 being made, had looked for new allies in an impru- 
 dent quarter. His chosen friend on the Conservative 
 side was now Annins Milo, one of the new tribunes, 
 a man as disreputable as Clodius himself ; deep iu 
 debt and looking for a province to indemnify hiiU" 
 self — famous hitherto in the schools of gladiators, iu 
 whose arts he was a proficient, and whose services 
 were at his disposal for any lawless purpose. 
 
 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 
 
 B C 57 
 
 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 antici- 
 pation of a riot the temples on the Forum were occu- 
 pied 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 re- 
 sisted by force. Fabricius, one of the tribunes, had 
 been selected to introduce it. When Fabricius pre- 
 sented himself on the Rostra, there was a general 
 rush to throw him down. The Forum was in theory 
 Htill a sacred spot, where tlie carrying of arms was 
 forbidden ; but the new age had forgotten such ob- 
 
Fight in the Forum, 255 
 
 solete superstitions. The guards issued out of ths 
 temples with drawn swords. The people were des- 
 perate and determined. Hundreds were killed on 
 both sides ; Quintus Cicero, who was present for his 
 brother, narrowly escaping with his 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.^ 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 pre- 
 tended 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 Capitol were entertained daily by 
 fights between the factions of Clodius and Milo. The 
 Commonwealth of the Scipios, the laws and institu- 
 tions of the mistoss of the civilized world, had be- 
 come the football of ruffians. Time and reflection 
 brought some repentance at last. Towards the sum- 
 mer " the cause of order " rallied. The consuls and 
 Pompey exerted themselves to reconcile the more re- 
 spectable citizens to Cicero's return ; and, with the 
 ground better prepared, the attempt was renewed 
 ^vith more success. In July the recall was again pro- 
 
 1 "Meministis turn' judices, corporibus civium Tiberira compleri cloa- 
 
 cas referciri, e foro spongiis eflingi sangiiinein Credem tantnm, 
 
 lantos Hcervos corporuiT) extriictcs, nisi forte illo Cinnano atque Octaviauo 
 die, quis nnqiiam in foro vidit ? '* — Oratio pro P. Sextio, xxxi*. 38. 
 
256 Cmsar. 
 
 posed in the Senate, and Clodins was alcne m op- 
 posing it. When it was laid before the iVssembly, 
 Clodiiis made another effort ; but voters had been 
 brought up from other parts of Italy wh) outnum- 
 bered the city rabble ; Mild and his gladiiitors wei e 
 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 
 h'mself in Greece, bewailing his personal ill-treat- 
 ment. He was the single object of his own reflec- 
 tions. In his own most sincere convictions he was 
 the centre on whioh 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 wait- 
 ing to receive him. The roofs and steps of the tem- 
 ples 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 re- 
 joicing was from the lips outwards ; 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 citi- 
 zens, he persuaded himself, were penitent for their in- 
 gratitude to the most illustrious of their countrymen. 
 The acclamations filled him with the delighted belief 
 
Return of Cicero. 257 
 
 Chat 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 re- 
 venge 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 him- 
 self; if he punished false friends, it would be by 
 never again trusting them. His first and his last ob- 
 ject would be to show his gratitude to his fellow citi- 
 zens.^ 
 
 Such language was rational and moderate. He un- 
 derstood 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. Cal- 
 purnius Piso was Caesar's father-in-law. Both had 
 been named to the government of important prov- 
 inces; and, if authority was not to be brought into 
 
 1 Ad Quirites post Reditum. 
 17 
 
258 Ccesar, 
 
 contempt, they deserved at least a sliow of outward 
 respect. Cicero lived, to desire their friendsliip, 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 magistrate's 
 of the Republic. Piso and Gabinius, he said, were 
 thieves, not consuls. They had been friends of Cati- 
 line, 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.^ Gabinius, he said, had 
 been licentious in his youth ; he had ruined his fort- 
 une ; he had supplied his extravagance by pimping ; 
 and had escaped his creditors only by becoming trib- 
 une. " Behold him," Cicero said, " as lie appeared 
 when consul at a meeting called by the arch thief 
 Clodius, full of w^ine, and sleep, and fornication, his 
 hair moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid, and 
 declaring, with a voice thick with drink, that he dis- 
 approved of putting citizens to death without trial." ^ 
 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 
 
 1 "Ejus vir Catilina." 
 
 2 "Cum in Circo Flaminio non a tribuno plebis censul in concioncm sed 
 a latrone archipirata productus esset, primum processit qua auctoritate vir. 
 Vmi, somni, stupriplenus, madenticoma, gravibus oculis, fluentibus luccis, 
 prossa voce et tenmlenta, quod in cives indemnatos esset animad\'ei?.nn, id 
 Eibl dixit gravid auctor velieinentiasime displicere." — Post Reditum in 
 Seaatu, 6. 
 
Cicero's Abuse of Piso. 259 
 
 (Tieg otiumy ViTithout sense or savor, a Cappadooian 
 picked oat of a drove in the slave market." ^ 
 
 Cicero was not taking the best means to regain his 
 influence in the Senate by stooping to vulgar brutal- 
 ity. 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 re- 
 
 1 Cicero could never leave Gabinius and Piso alone. Again and again 
 he rettirned 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 descrip- 
 tion of Piso : — 
 
 "For Piso! " he said: "oh, 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 ver}' pledge for the common- 
 wealth! Such solemn it}' 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 congratu- 
 lated us on having one friend to save us from the tribune. Alas! I was 
 deceived," etc., etc. 
 
 Piso afterwards 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 them- 
 selves in tears," he said to Piso, " when the temples were groaning and 
 the very houses in tlie 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 villainies 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 laugh- 
 ter, and handshakings — your drunken orgies with the filthy companions 
 of your potations ? Who in those days saw you ever sober, or doing any- 
 tliing 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 Lapithsp, wh -re one cannot say whether 
 you drank most, or vomited most, or spi'.t 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. 
 
260 Ooesar, . 
 
 sisted 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 b6en allowed to 
 return only to be surrounded by mosquitos 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. Clodiua 
 had thought to make sure of his Roman palace, by 
 dedicating it to " Liberty." Cicero challenged the con- 
 secration. It was referred to the College of Priests, 
 and the College returned a judgment in Cicero's fa- 
 vor. 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 tlie 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." ^ 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 hiui 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. 
 Cloditis 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, 
 %s in the '' pirate " days, for some strong man to see 
 1 To AtHcue, iv. 2. 
 
Cicero and Olodius, 261 
 
 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 Pom- 
 pey control over the whole corn trade of the Empire 
 for five years. 
 
 This was something, and Pompey was gratified ; 
 bat 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 
 Bet 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 mag- 
 istrates forgot their duty. He marched to the Pala- 
 tine 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 afterwards 
 tried to burn the house of Milo. Consuls and trib- 
 unes did not interfere. They were, perhaps, fright- 
 ened. The Senate professed regret, and it was pro- 
 posed to prosecute Clodius ; but his friends were too 
 strong, and it could not be done. Could Cicero have 
 wrung his necic, as he had wrung the necks of Len- 
 tulus 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 
 Glthy relations with vulgar millionnaires. He accused 
 bim of having sold himself to Catiline, of having 
 
262 Coesar, 
 
 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 
 haying 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 Com- 
 monwealth 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 him- 
 self with all his soul to those who had will and power 
 to mend it. 
 
 Clodius was at this moment the popular candidate 
 for the asdileship, 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 
 prsetor, and the clientele of the great Claudian fam- 
 ily ; and Cicero's denunciations of him had not af- 
 fected in the least his chances of success. If Clo- 
 dius 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 elec- 
 tion was fixed for the 18th of November, and was to 
 be held in the Campus Martins. Milo and his gladi- 
 ators 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 pu- 
 
Ptolemy Auletes. 263 
 
 litical witch dance was at its height, and Cicero waa 
 in his gloiy. " 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." ^ 
 
 With recovered spirits the Senate began again to 
 attack the laws of Csesar 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 pub- 
 lic 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. Ca3sar's grand victories, the 
 news, of which was now coming in, made it inoppor- 
 tune to press the matter farther; and just then an- 
 other subject rose, on which the Optimates ran olf 
 like hounds upon a fresh scent. 
 
 Ptolemy of Cyprus had been disposed of. Ptol- 
 emy 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 Stni- 
 ate agreed unanimously that he must be restored to 
 
 1 To Atticus, iv. 3. 
 
264 Cmar. 
 
 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 enor- 
 mous 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 jack- 
 als 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. Cic- 
 ero and the respectable Conservatives were for Spin- 
 ther ; Pompey was for Gabinius. Others wished 
 Pompey himself to go ; others wished for Crassus. 
 
 Meanwhile, the poor Egyptians themselves claimed 
 a right to be heard in protest against the reimposi- 
 tion 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 in 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 from allied sovereigns or 
 provinces, he said, were continually being murdered. 
 Noble lords received husli-money, and there had been 
 no inquiry. Such things happened too often, and 
 ought to be stopped. I'he Senate voted decently to 
 Bend for Dion and examine him. But Favonius was 
 
Clodius chosen JEdile. 265 
 
 privately laughed at as " Cato's ape ; ^' the unfortu- 
 nate Dion was made away with, and Pom- 
 pey took Ptolemy into his own house and 
 openly entertained him there. Pompey would him- 
 self perhaps have undertaken the restoration, but the 
 Senate was jealous. His own future was growing 
 uncertain ; and eventually, without asking for a con- 
 sent 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.^ 
 
 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 in- 
 famous notoriety. The Senate was execrated. Pom- 
 pe}^ himself fell in public esteem. His overseership 
 of the granaries had as j^et brought in no corn. He 
 had been too busy over the Egyptian matter to at- 
 tend 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 sedile without further trouble ; and, in- 
 stead 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 
 
 1 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 Book^ di- 
 recting that if an Egyptian king came to Rome as a suppliant, he was to 
 \e entertained hospitably, but was to have no active help. Perhaps Cic- 
 tro was conCerued iu this. 
 
266 Ccesar. 
 
 court was again held. The crowd was enormcus* 
 Cicero happily has left a minute account of the scene. 
 The people were starving, the corn question waa 
 pressing. Milo presented himself, and Ponipey camo 
 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. Poni- 
 pey 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." Clo- 
 dius, pale with anger, called out, " Who is murdering 
 the people with famine ? " A thousand throats an- 
 swered, " Pompey ! " " Who wants to go to Alexan- 
 dria ? " " 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 ac- 
 count. Cicero went off home, wishing to defend 
 Pompey, but wishing also not to offend the "good" 
 party, who Avere clamorous against him. That even- 
 ing nothing could be done. Two days after, the Sen- 
 ate 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 
 
Parties in Rome, 267 
 
 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.^ 
 
 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 Cassar 
 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, repre- 
 senting 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, pas- 
 sionate, 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 pf bribery or vio- 
 lence, and consulates and pra3torships falling to men 
 more than half of whom, if Cicero can be but mod- 
 erately believed, deserved to be crucified. Cicero's 
 main affection was for Titus Annius Milo, to whom 
 be clung as a woman will cling to a man whose 
 
 1 Ad Quintum Fratrem, ii. 3. 
 
268 Ccesar. 
 
 Btrength 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.^ 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. ^ 
 
 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 aristoc- 
 racy 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 thb 
 past year, was under prosecution for one of the innu- 
 merable 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 al- 
 ways been two parties — the populares and the opti- 
 iiates The populares say and do what will please the 
 
 1 " Tito Annio devota et constituta hostia esse videtur." — De Huru^i- 
 turn responsis. 
 a Ibid. 
 
Cicero on the Situation. 269 
 
 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, muni- 
 cipals, 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 ob- 
 ject at which they aim is quiet with honor.^ 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 de- 
 struction ; while the good, I know not why, are lan- 
 guid, 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 w^e 
 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 
 
 ^ " Otium cum dignitate." 
 
270 Ccesar, 
 
 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." ^ 
 
 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 Cesar'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, Dom- 
 itius Ahenobarbus, Cato's brother-in-law and praetor 
 for the year, was a candidate for the consulship. 
 His enormous wealth made his success almost cer- 
 tain, and he announced in the Senate that he meant" 
 to recall Cajsar and repeal his laws. In April a mo- 
 tion 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. 
 
 1 Abridged from the Oratiopro Sexlio. ' 
 
Pompey^ Ccesar^ and Crassus. 271 
 
 Pompey was deeply committed to CaBsar's agrarian 
 law, for it liad been passed primaril}^ 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 tliat 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 CiBsar himself ; and Csesar, 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 phice of meet- 
 ing 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 sena- 
 tors. The talking power of the State was in Rome. 
 The practical and real power was in the Lucca con- 
 ference. Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus were irresisti- 
 ble 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 adeqiuite army. 
 Crassus, who was ambitious also of military distinc- 
 tion, 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 
 
272 Coemr, 
 
 was to be secured, if difficulty arose, by the votes of 
 the army. The elections being in the winter, Caesar's 
 Boldiers were to be allowed to go to Rome on fur- 
 lough. 
 
 In a personal interview Csesar easily asserted his 
 ascendency. Pompey allowed himself to be guided, 
 and the arrangement was probably dictated by Ca2- 
 sar'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 Ario- 
 vistus* to destroy him. The senators who were pres- 
 ent at Lucca implied by their cooperation 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. Csesar was 
 not to be recalled, or his laws repealed. There was 
 no hope for them or for the reaction, till Pompey and 
 Csesar 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 Cte- 
 sar'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 cor- 
 respondence preceded his change of sides. He con- 
 sulted Atticus, and had received characteristic and 
 cautious advice from him. He described in reply his 
 internal struggles, the resolution at which he had ar- 
 
Cicero goes over to Ccesar. 273 
 
 rived, 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, 
 1 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 ; 1 but it is time for me to be loved by myself, 
 since I can get no love from them.^ 
 
 Pompey, after leaving Lucca, sent Cicero a message, 
 through his brother, complaining of his speech on the 
 
 1 "Me germanum asinum fuisse." Perhaps "own brother to an ass " 
 would be am ire proper rendering. 
 * To Atticua, iv. 5. 
 
 18 
 
274 Ccesar, 
 
 Land Act, but assuring him of his own and Csesar's 
 friendship if he would now be true to them. In an 
 apologetic letter to Lentulus Spinther, Cicero ex- 
 plained 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 C'sesar 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 Csesar's consent, and he begged particu- 
 larly that, if I could not support Csesar, 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 j^ou do not like. They were delighted to think 
 that I had offended Pompey, and had made Csesar 
 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.^ .... They meant 
 to irritate me, but I had not spirit to be angry. I 
 purveyed 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 per- 
 son in the Commonwealth was Pompey, whose serv- 
 
 1 Clodius. 
 
Cicero^s Explanations. 275 
 
 ices had been so eminent, whose advancement I had 
 myself furthered, and who stood by me in my difficul- 
 ties, 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 Csesar too ; and here the old friendship 
 came to bear between Csesar, my brother, and myself, 
 as well as Caesar's kindness to me, of which I had 
 seen evidence in word and deed Public inter- 
 est, too, moved me. A quarrel with these men would 
 be most inexpedient, especially after what Csesar has 
 
 done If the persons who assisted in bringing 
 
 me back had been my friends afterwards, 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 
 liis 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. 1 .... 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 
 .'t 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 
 ^ourse. ' Persuade your countrymen, if you can,' 
 said Plato ; ''but use no violence.' Plato found that 
 he could no longer persuade the Athenians, and there- 
 fore he withdrew from public life. Advice could not 
 
 1 Here follows much about himself and his own merits. 
 
276 Ccesar, 
 
 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 fort- 
 unes. Now after so much glory and victory I should 
 Bpeak nobly of him though I owed him nothing." ^ 
 
 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 Csesar 
 united might have restored the authority of the laws, 
 punished corruption and misgoveriiment, made their 
 country the mother as well as the mistress of the 
 world ; and the Republic, modified to suit tlie 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 subordi- 
 nate. He was persuaded that he, and not Csesar, 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 precipi- 
 tated itself. The arrangements at Lucca were the 
 work of the army. The Conservative majority re- 
 fused to let the army dictate to them. Domitius in- 
 tended still to be consul, let the army say what it 
 pleased. Pompey and Crassus l-eturned to Rome for 
 
 1 To LentuUis Spinther, Ad Familiares, i. 9. The length of this remark- 
 ».l)le letter obliges me to give but. an imperfect summary of it. The letter 
 itsel: should be studied carefully by those who would understand Cicero's 
 conduct. 
 
Pompey and Crassus Consuls, 277 
 
 the elections ; the consuls for the year, Marcelhnua 
 and Philip, declined to take their names. The con- 
 suls and the Senate appealed to the Assembl}^, 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 revolu- 
 tion in the person of Clodius. The senators were 
 driven back into the Curia, and Clodius followed them 
 there. The officers forbade his entrance. Furious 
 3'oung 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 in- 
 quiring scornfully if he and Crassus intended to ap- 
 point 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 diffi- 
 culty, the constitution had provided for the appoint- 
 ment of an Interrex till fresh consuls could be chosen. 
 Pompey and Crassus were then nominated, with a 
 foregone conclusion. Domitius still persisted in stand- 
 ing ; and, had it been safe to try the usual methods, 
 the patricians would have occupied the voting places 
 IS 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 
 
278 Coesar. 
 
 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. 
 
 The consent of the Assembly to the other arrange- 
 ments 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. Pub- 
 lius 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 legnl. 
 The tribunes ordered the voting to go forward. The 
 last resource w^as then tried. A riot began, burt 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 re- 
 call, 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 nov- 
 elty eighteen elephants were made to fight with sol- 
 
A Spectacle in the Amphitheatre, 279 
 
 diers ; 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 tliey 
 were half human; that they had been seduced en 
 board the African transports by a promise that they 
 should not be ill-used, and they were supposed to be 
 appealing to the gods.^ Cicero alludes to the scene 
 in a letter to one of his friends. Mentioning Pom- 
 pey's exhibitions with evident contempt, he adds : 
 " There remained the hunts, which lasted five days. 
 All say that they were very fine. But w^hat 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 ele- 
 phants; not interesting to me, however delightful to 
 the rabble. A certain pity was felt for them, as if 
 the elephants had some afiinity with man." ^ 
 
 ^ Dion Cassius. ^ Ad FamUiareSf vii. 1. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 While Csesar was struggling with the Senate for 
 
 leave to complete the conquest of Gaul, fresh 
 B. c. 56. , ^ . „ /. , ,V 
 
 work was preparing tor him there. i oung 
 
 Publius Crassus, before he went to Ital}^ had win- 
 tered with the seventh legion in Brittany. The 
 Breton tribes had nominally made their submission, 
 and Crassus had desired them to supply his com- 
 missariat. They had given hostages for their good 
 behavior, and most of them were ready to obey. 
 The Veneti, the most important of the coast olans, 
 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 countrjmen whom the Romans 
 held in pledge. The legions might be irresistible on 
 •and ; 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 prom- 
 ontories, 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 in- 
 dustrious, 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 
 
The Veneti. 281 
 
 rolled in from tbe 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 un- 
 wieldly, 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 difiicult harbors. They 
 looked on the Romans as mere landsmen, and natu- 
 rally 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 ad- 
 vanced for active operations, Csesar 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 
 Belgse. Titurius Sabinus, with three more, was 
 
282 CoBsar, 
 
 stationed in Normandy. To Brittany Csesar went in 
 person to reduce the rebellious Venel'i. The weathei 
 was too unsettled for his fleet to be able as yet to join 
 him. Without its help he found the problem as difii- 
 cult 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 posi* 
 tion. 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 com- 
 mand at sea was given to Decimus Brutus, a cousin 
 of the afterwards 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 two hundred and twenty sail in all — a force, con- 
 sidering 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 advan- 
 tage in speed ; but that was all. They too, however, 
 had their ingenuities. They had studied the con- 
 struction 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 along- 
 side 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 ; 
 
Normandy and Aquitaine reduced, 283 
 
 Caesar and his army looking on from the shore. The 
 sickles answered well ; ship after ship was disabh^d ; 
 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. Cassar 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 be- 
 come dangerous. He ended them at last, however, 
 successfully, and Csesar 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 Ca3sar, 
 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 
 
284 Coesar. 
 
 highest approbation, and completely subdued the 
 whole country. 
 
 In all France there now remained only a few unim- 
 portant tribes on the coast between Calaifi and the 
 Scheldt which had not formally submitted. The 
 summer being nearly over, Caesar contented himsejf 
 with a hast}^ survey of their frontier. The weather 
 broke up earlier than usual, and the troops were re- 
 distributed in their quarters. Again there had been 
 a year of unbroken success. The Romans were mas- 
 ters of Gaul, and the admirable care of their com- 
 mander had preserved the numbers in his legions 
 almost undiminished. The smallness of the loss with 
 which all these wonders were accomplished is per- 
 haps the most extraordinary feature of the story. 
 Not till a year later is there any notice of fresh re- 
 cruits being brought from Italy. 
 
 The winter which followed brought with it another 
 of the dangerous waves of German immio^ra- 
 
 ,. rpi . 1 c • .• C B.C. 55. 
 
 tion. ine poweriui buevi, a nation ot war- 
 riors who cultivated no lands, who wore no clothes 
 but a deer or sheep skin, who lived by hunting and 
 pasture, despised the restraints of stationarj^ 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 bar- 
 barous to forbid an immigration of harmless and per- 
 secuted strangers ; but if these Germans were perse- 
 
Second German Invasion, 285 
 
 cuted, they were certainly not harmless ; they had 
 come at the instance of the party in Gaul wliich 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^ 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 Csesar to advance no far- 
 ther till he had again heard from them. This oould 
 
 ^ Nassau and Darmetadt. 
 
286 Cmar, 
 
 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 dis- 
 tant from the German headquarters. Again messen- 
 gers came, asking for time — time, at least, till they 
 could learn whether the Ubii would receive them. 
 It 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 scat- 
 tered detachments, that they might make a better 
 fight. Csesar gave, them twenty-four hours. 
 
 The two armies were so near that their front Hues 
 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 defend- 
 ing 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 morn- 
 ing which followed the first action, the principal Ger- 
 man chiefs appeared to apologize and to ask for a 
 truce. They had come in of their own accord. They 
 
Defeat of the G-ermanB. 287 
 
 had not applied for a safe conduct, and war had beou 
 begun by their own people. They were detained as 
 prisoners; and, marching rapidly over the sliorfc space 
 wliich divided tlie camps, Csesar flung hiniseli on the 
 unfortunate people when they were entirely unpre- 
 pared for the attack. Their chiefs were gone. They 
 were lying about in confusion beside their wagons, 
 women and children dispersed among the men ; hun- 
 dreds 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 them- 
 selves 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 nar- 
 rowing 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 exaggera- 
 tion, says that their original number was 430,000. 
 The only survivors, of whom any clear record re- 
 mains, were the detachments who were absent from 
 the battle, and the few chiefs who had come into 
 Ctesar'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 tho 
 Senate. Cato insisted that Csesar had massacred a 
 defenceless people in a time of truce, that he had 
 broken the law of nations, and that he ought to be 
 
288 Ccesar, 
 
 given up to the Germans. The sweeping off tlie 
 earth in such a manner of a quarter of a million hu- 
 man creatures, even in those unscrupulous times, 
 could not be heard of without a shudder. 1 he irrita- 
 tion in the Senate can hardly be taken as disinter- 
 ested. Men who had intrigued with Ariovistus for 
 Ca3sar's destruction, needed not to be credited with 
 feelings of pure humanit}^ when they made the most 
 of the opportunity. But an opportunity had un- 
 doubtedly been offered them. The rights of war 
 have their limits. No living man in ordinary circum- 
 stances recognized those limits more than Ctesar did. 
 No commander was more habitually merciful in vic- 
 tor}^ In this case the limits had been ruthlessly ex- 
 ceeded. The Germans were not indeed defending 
 their own countr^'^ ; tliey were the invaders of an- 
 other ; 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 un- 
 dertaken the conquest of Gaul for the defence of 
 Italy. A powerful party among the Gauls them- 
 selves were content to be annexed to the Roman Em- 
 pire. The patriots looked to the Germans to help 
 them in drivino^ out the Romans. The Germanizinjj 
 of Gaul would lead with certainty to fresh invasions 
 of Italy; and it seemed permissible, and even neces- 
 sary, 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. Csesar respected their character. He 
 Bdmir(^,d their abstinence from wine, their cournge, 
 their frugal habits, and their pure morality. But 
 
Invasion of Grermany, 289 
 
 their virtues made tliem only more dangerous ; and 
 be 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 protectpd by the Sigambri in West- 
 phalia. Cresar had demanded their surrender, and 
 the Sigambri had answered that Roman authority 
 did not reach across the river ; if Csesar forbade Ger- 
 mans 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 na- 
 tional cause. They begged CaBsar 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. Csesar decided to go, but to go with 
 more ostentation. The object was to impress the 
 German imagination ; and boats and barges which 
 miglit 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. Ctjesar 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 hi 
 
 19 
 
290 Ccesar. 
 
 presence. He paid the Ubii a long visit ; and after 
 remaining eighteen days beyond tlie river, he con- 
 sidered that his purpose had been gained, and he re- 
 turned 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 
 Belgse, 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 noticing was known of tliat 
 country, save the white cliffs which could be seen 
 from Calais ; Roman merchants occasionally touched 
 there, but they had never ventured into the interior; 
 the}' 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 inconven- 
 ient; and Caesar wished to look at them with his 
 own eyes. The fleet which had been used in the war 
 with the Veueti 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 Bou- 
 logne, where his vessels were waiting for liim. The 
 gathering of the flotilla and its object had been re- 
 ported to Britain, and envoys from various tribes 
 were waiting there with offers of hostages and hum- 
 ble protestations. Cassar received them graciously, 
 and sent back with them a Gaul, named Commius, 
 
First Expedition into Britain. 291 
 
 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. 
 
 Volusenas 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 comple- 
 ment — or at most ten thousand men ; but for Cse- 
 Bar'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 war- 
 riors, and hung so close over the water that if he at- 
 tempted 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 Wal- 
 mer 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 an- 
 chored where the water was still up to the men's 
 shoulders. They were incumbered 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 crossbowmen to clear the ap- 
 proach ; and as the legionaries still hesitated, an offi- 
 cer 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 
 g*^,neral cheer. The Britons rode their horses into 
 the waves to meet them ; and for a few minutes the 
 
292 Gcesar. 
 
 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 gal- 
 leys 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 anx- 
 iety. 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 sea- 
 worthy. 
 
 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 Ro- 
 mans, 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 
 
Naval Preparations, 293 
 
 hostages, and again begged for peace. The equinox 
 was now coming on. The weather was again threat- 
 ening. Postponing, therefore, further inquiries into 
 the nature of the British and their country, Caisar 
 used the first favorable opportunity, and returned, 
 without further adventure, to Boulogne. The legions 
 were distributed among the Belgse; and CIsesar him- 
 self, who could have no rest, hastened over the Alps, 
 to deal with other disturbances which had broken out 
 in lllyria. 
 
 The bridge over the Rhine and the invasion of a 
 country so rem-ote that it was scarcely be- 
 
 B. C. 54 
 
 lieved to exist, roused the enthusiasm at ' ' ' 
 Rome beyond the point which it had hitherto reached. 
 The Roman popuhice 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 fight- 
 ing, and the interval of winter was spent in prepara- 
 tions for a renewal of the expedition into Britain on 
 a larger scale. Orders had been left with the ofl&cers 
 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, Csesar returned. He visited the different sta- 
 tions, and he found that his expert legionaries, work- 
 ing 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 in- 
 terval he paid a visit to the north of Gaul, where 
 there were rumors of fresh correspondence with the 
 
294 Ccesar. 
 
 Germans. Danger, if danger there was, was threat- 
 ened 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 hira, and once more went 
 doAvn 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 thera to at- 
 tend 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 ^duan prince, Dumnorix, 
 whose intrigues had brought the Helvetii out of Switz- 
 erland, 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 Cae- 
 sar had promised him the chieftainship. He had peti- 
 tioned earnestl}^ to be excused from accompanying the 
 expedition, and, Csesar having for this reason prob- 
 ably 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. Dum- 
 norix had come to Boulogne with the rest, and he or- 
 dered 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 contusion with a party of -3jiduan horse, and it 
 was now certain that he had sinister intentions. The 
 
Second Invasion of Britain, 295 
 
 embarkation was suspended. A detachment of cav- 
 alry was sent in pursuit, with directions to bring 
 Dumnorix back dead or aUve. Dumnorix resisted, 
 and was killed. 
 
 No disturbance followed on his death. The re- 
 maining 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 cav- 
 alry as he had left with Labienus. His flotilla, swol- 
 len by volunteers, amounted to eight hundred vessels, 
 small and great. At sunrise they were in midchan- 
 nel, lying in a dead calm, with the cliffs of Britain 
 plainly visible on their left hand. The tide was flow- 
 ing. 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 op- 
 pose 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 disembark- 
 ation 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 CEesar advanced inland as far 
 as the Stour. The Britons, after an unsuccessful 
 Bland to prevent the Romans from crossing the river, 
 retired into the woods, where they had made them- 
 
296 Ccesar. 
 
 selves a fortress with felled trees. The weak defence 
 was easily stormed ; the Britons were flying ; the Ro- 
 mans 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 Cj^sar did not be- 
 lieve 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 him- 
 self 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 da}^, and in 
 little more than a week Csesar was able to rejoin his 
 troops and renew his march. 
 
 The object of the invasion had been rather to se- 
 cure 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 them- 
 selves a fearless race, who could not be despised. 
 They fought bravely from their cars and horses, re- 
 treated 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 headquarters were at St. Albans, 
 had collected a considerable army from both sides of 
 the Thames, and was found in strength in Caesar's 
 
Second Invasion of Britain. 297 
 
 front when he again began to move. They attacked 
 his foraging parties. They set on his flanking de- 
 tachments. They left their cars, and fought on foot 
 when they could catch an advantage ; and remounted 
 and were swiftly oat of the reach of the heavily 
 armed Roman infantry. The Gauhsh 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 Com- 
 mentaries to the disparagement of brave and open ad- 
 versaries. At length he forced them into a battle, 
 where their best warriors were killed. The confed- 
 eracy of tribes dissolved, and never rallied again, and 
 he pursued his march thenceforward with little mo- 
 lestation. 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 dis- 
 persed, driving off their cattle, and watching his 
 march from a distance. The tribes from the eastern 
 counties made their submission, and at Caesar's or- 
 ders supplied him with corn. Caesar marched on to 
 St. Albans itself, then lying in the midst of forests 
 jind 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 re- 
 turned as he had come. The Kentish men had at- 
 
298 Ccesar. 
 
 tacked 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 depart- 
 ure The only, but unhappily too valuable, booty 
 which they had carried off consisted of some thousands 
 of prisoners. These, when landed in Gaul, were dis- 
 posed 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 accom- 
 plished 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 Ro- 
 mans 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 visi- 
 ble 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 isl- 
 and, 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 ascer« 
 
Account of Britain. 299 
 
 tained 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 coun- 
 try. There were tin mines, he found, in parts of the 
 island, and iron in small quantities ; but copper ;va3 
 imported from the Continent. The vegetation re- 
 sembled 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, civil- 
 ization was as far advanced as on the opposite conti- 
 nent. 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 
 moustaches. In their habits they had not risen out 
 \)i the lowest order of savagery. They had wives in 
 common, and brothers and sisters, parents and chil- 
 dren, lived together with promiscuous unrestraint. 
 PVom 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 
 
300 Cmar, 
 
 correspondence. Cicero, thougli 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 qual- 
 
 ^ "Britannici belli exitus exspectatur. Constat enim, aditus insulaa 
 esse munitos mirificis molibus. Etiam illud jam cogjnitum est, neque ar- 
 genti scrupulum esse ullum in ilia insula, neque ullam spem praedje, nisi 
 ex mancipiis: ex quibis nuUos puto te litteris aut musicis eruditos exspec- 
 tare."— ^c? 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 Ra- 
 man arms. The expedition to Britain had 
 produced all the effects which Caesar ex- 
 pected from it, and Gaul was outwardly calm. Be- 
 low 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 re- 
 turn 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 S^ex, in Normandy; Quintus 
 Cicero at Charleroy, not far from the scene of the 
 battle, with the Nervii. Cicero had chosen this posi- 
 tion for himself as peculiarly advantageous ; and his 
 brother speaks of Csesar's acquiescence in the ar- 
 rangement as a special mark of favor to himself. 
 Labienus was at Lavacherie, on the Ourthe, about 
 seventy miles to the southeast of Cicero ; and Sabi- 
 uus and Cotta were at Tongres, among the Aduatuci, 
 not far from Li^ge, an equal distance from him to the 
 northeast. Caius Fabius had a legion at St. Pol, be- 
 tween Calais and Arras ; Trebonius one at Amiens ; 
 Marcus Crassus one at Montdidier ; Munatius Plan- 
 cus one across the Oise, near Compi^gne. Roscius 
 
802 Omar. 
 
 was far off, but in a comparatively cjuLet counory. 
 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. Ton- 
 gres, on the opposite side of it, to the northeast. 
 Sabin us, beinp' the most exposed, had,, in addition to 
 his legion, a lew 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. Caasar, 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 be- 
 fore the first visit to Britain. At that time Inducio- 
 marus had been able to do nothing ; but a fairer op- 
 portunity had arrived. The overthrow of the great 
 German horde had affected powerfully the semi-Teu- 
 tonic 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 undi- 
 minished, and Induciomarus prevailed on their two 
 chiefs, Ambiorix and Catavolcus, to attack Sabinus 
 and Cotta. It was midwinter. The camp at Ton- 
 gres was isolated. The nearest support was seventy 
 miles distant. If one Roman camp was taken, In- 
 duciomarus calculated that the country woCild rise ; 
 the others could be separately surrounded, and Gaul 
 would be free. The plot was well laid. An in- 
 trenched camp being difficult to storm, the confeder* 
 
Revolt of the Uburones, 303 
 
 ates decided to begin by treachery. Ambiorix was 
 personally known to many of the Roman officers. 
 He sent to Sabinus to say that he wished to commu- 
 nicate with him on a matter of the greatest conse- 
 quence. 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 dar, 
 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, wliich 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 noad. 
 
 A council of officers was held on the receipt of this 
 unwelcome information. It was thought unlikely 
 chat 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 
 hues 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 un- 
 
304 Ccesar. 
 
 fortunately thought differently. He had been over- 
 cautious in Brittany, though he had afterwards re- 
 deemed his fault. Csesar, he persuaded himself, had 
 left the country ; each commander therefore must act 
 on his own responsibility. The story told by Am- 
 biorix was likely in itself. The Germans were known 
 to be furious at the passage of the Rhine, the destruc- 
 tion of Ariovistus, and their other defeats. Gaul r3- 
 sented 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, the}^ would be sur- 
 rounded, and in the end would be starved into sur- 
 render. 
 
 Cotta was not convinced, and the majority of offi- 
 cers supported him. The first duty of a Roman 
 army, he said, was obedience to orders. Their busi- 
 ness was to hold the post which had been committed 
 to them, till they were otherwise directed. The offi- 
 cers were consulting in the midst of the camp, sur- 
 rounded 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 
 
Revolt of the JEJburones, 805 
 
 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 with- 
 drew 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. Every- 
 thing seemed ingeniously done to increase the diffi- 
 culty 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 Csesar says, anticipate pos- 
 sible difficulties, and decide beforehand what they 
 will dp if occasions arise. Sabinus had foreseen noth- 
 ing, 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, Csesar thought ; but the effect was un- 
 fortunate. 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 
 
 20 
 
806 Ccesar, 
 
 not, as might have been expected, fly upon the plun- 
 der. 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 Ro- 
 mans were as numerous as they. But everything 
 else was against the Romans. Sabinus could give no 
 directions. They were in o, 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 re- 
 tired, 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 after- 
 noon, 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 distin- 
 guished 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 
 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 dis- 
 tracted, 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 prom- 
 ised 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. Sabi- 
 
Destruction of Sahinus. 307 
 
 nus, 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 com- 
 manded 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 co- 
 horts. 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 Ro- 
 mans 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 Csesar's legions. A few stragglers, who 
 had been cut off during the battle from their com- 
 rades, 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, 
 but 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 sur- 
 prise, found himself surrounded before he had a 
 ihought of danger. The Gauls, knowing that their 
 
308 Coesar, 
 
 chances depended on the capture ot tne second camp 
 before assistance could arrive, flung themselves so 
 desperately on the intrenchments that the legionaries 
 were barely able to repel the first assault. The as- 
 sailants were driven back at last, and Cicero dis- 
 patched messengers to Caesar to Amiens, to give him 
 notice of the rising ; but not a man was able to pene- 
 trate 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 tow- 
 ers 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 par- 
 ley. 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 tiiat 
 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 iu 
 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 
 
Quintus Cicero besieged, 309 
 
 arms. The Gauls miglit, if they pleased, send a dep- 
 utaticiTi 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 intrenchments. 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 m-any there were of them that the 
 work was completed in three hours.^ 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 disci- 
 pline 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 ex- 
 tinguish the fire. They fought as they stood, strik- 
 ing down rank after rank of the Gauls, who still 
 crowded on, trampling on the bodies of their com- 
 panions, 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. 
 
 1 Caesar saj's 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. 
 
310 Ccesar, 
 
 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 miiea 
 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 inclosed in the shaft 
 of his javelin. He glided out of the camp in the dark, 
 passed undetected among the enemies as one of them- 
 selves, 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 
 l^im instantly from Montdidier. He sent to Fabius 
 at St. Pol to meet him at Arras. He wrote to Labi- 
 enus, 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 morn- 
 ing after the information reached him, with Treboni- 
 us's legion to Cicero's relief. Fabius joined him, as he 
 had been directed, at Arras. He had hoped for La- 
 bienus'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 le- 
 gions, amounting in all to only 7,000 men, he hurried 
 forward to the Nervian border. Learning that Cicero 
 
Relief of Cicero, 311 
 
 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 envelope and 
 destroy their great enemy. Caesar was well served 
 by spies. He knew that Cicero was no longer in " m- 
 mediate danger, and there was thus no occasion for 
 him to risk a battle at a disadvantage to relieve Lim. 
 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 in- 
 vited 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 Ner- 
 vii 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 des- 
 perate 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 
 
312 Cmar, 
 
 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 trusted alwa^^s 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 Cic- 
 ero'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 ex- 
 piated. 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, In- 
 duciomarus and the Treveri had surrounded Labienus 
 at Lavacherie. Cassar had entered Cicero's camp at 
 three o'clock in the afternoon. The news reached 
 Induciomarus before midnight, and he had disap- 
 peared by the morning. Caesar returned to Amiens, 
 but the whole country was now in a state of excite- 
 ment. He had intended to go to Italy, but he aban- 
 doned 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 
 ttfter the relief of Cicero. Caesar again summoned 
 
Lahienus attached, 313 
 
 the chiefs to come to him, and between threats and 
 encouragements succeeded in preventing a general ris- 
 ing. But the tribes on the upper Seine broke into 
 disturbance. The jiEdui and the Renii alone re- 
 mained really loyal ; and it was evident that only a 
 leader was wanted to raise the whole of Gaul. Cce- 
 Bar himself admitted that nothing could be more nat- 
 ural. The more high-spirited of the Gauls were mis- 
 erable 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 Indu- 
 ciomarus, nothing daunted, gathered volunteers on all 
 sides. His camp became a rallying point for disaffec- 
 tion. 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 in- 
 trenchments. When the Gauls approached, he af- 
 fected fear, as Caesar had done, and he secretly formed 
 a body of cavalry, of whose existence they had no 
 suspicion. Induciomarus became careless. T>'^y after 
 day he rode round the intrenchments, insulting the 
 Romans as cowards, and his men flinging their jave- 
 lins 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 
 s^mall nor great, save with Induciomarus only, and 
 
314 Coesar. 
 
 promising a reward for his head. Fortune favored 
 him. Indiiciomarus 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. Cabsar expected fresh 
 trouble in the coming summer, and spent the rest of 
 the winter and spring in preparing for a new strug- 
 gle. Future peace depended on convincing the Gaula 
 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 le- 
 gions in his own province. Pompey had formed a 
 legion in the north of Italy, within Csesar's bounda- 
 ries, for service in Spain. Caesar requested Pompey 
 to lend him this legion for immediate purposes ; and 
 Pompey, who was still on good terms with Csesar, 
 recognized the importance of the occasion, and con- 
 sented without difficulty. 
 
 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. Return- 
 ing 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 Car- 
 nutes to pray for pardon.^ He then turned on the 
 
 1 People about Sens, Melun, and Chartres. 
 
Second Conquest of the Belgoe. 315 
 
 Treveri and their allies, who, under Ambiorix, had 
 destroyed Sabinus. Leaving Labienus with the addi- 
 tional legions to check the Treveri, he went himself 
 into Flanders, where Ambiorix was hiding ajnong the 
 rivers and marshes. He threw bridges over the dykes, 
 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 depopu- 
 late the determinately rebellious by seizing and sell- 
 ing 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 Ro- 
 mans, 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 i:etreated again across the river, 
 and the patriot chiefs, who had gone with Inducio- 
 marus, concealed themselves in the forests of West- 
 phalia. Caesar thought it desirable to renew the ad- 
 monition 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 construc- 
 tion , 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 repeti- 
 tion, and the barrenness of practical results was more 
 rvident than before. The Sueves, who had gone home, 
 vere far away in the interior. To lead the heavily 
 
816 Ccesar, 
 
 armed legions in pursuit of wild light-footed maiau 
 ders, who had not a town which could be burned, or a 
 field of corn which could be cut for food, was to wastt 
 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 Ar- 
 dennes. Ambiorix had added treachery to insurrec- 
 tion, and as long as he was free and unpunished the 
 massacred legion had not been fully avenged. Csesar 
 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 intrenchments were stand- 
 ing as they were left, ready to be occupied. Caesar, 
 finding himself incumbered 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 Caisar 
 recrossed the Rhine two thousand German horse had 
 followed iii bravado, and were then plundering be- 
 
Cicero again in Danger. 317 
 
 tween Tongres and the river. Hearing that there 
 was a rich booty in the camp, that Csesar 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 Ger- 
 mans were on them before they could recover their 
 mtrenchments, 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 Baculus, the same officer who had so brill- 
 iantly 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, un- 
 able to touch food. Hearing the disturbance, Bacu- 
 lus sprang out, snatched a sword, rallied such men as 
 he could find, and checked the attack for a few min- 
 utes. Other officers rushed to his help, and the le- 
 gionaries having their centurions with them recovered 
 their steadiness. Sextius Baculus 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 
 
818 Ccesar. 
 
 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 lia- 
 ble to panics of this kind. The faith with which they 
 relied upon their general avenged itself through the 
 com])leteness 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. Quin- 
 tus Cicero cooled in his zeal, and afterwards 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 Car- 
 nutes and Senones came next. The people them- 
 selves 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. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 The conference at Lucca and the Senate's indif- 
 ference had determined Cicero to throw in 
 
 1 . 1 -11 . TT 1 1 B 0. 56. 
 
 bis lot with the trimmers. He had remon- 
 strated with Pompey on the imprudence of prolong- 
 ing Caesar's command. Pompey, he thought, would 
 find out in time that he had made Csesar 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 corre- 
 spondence with Caesar, and through Quintus sent con- 
 tinued 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 ha4 been 
 earlier on the road, I will follow your advice and 
 
820 Vcesar, 
 
 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 com- 
 mon carriage, but with a four-in-hand of poetry." ^ 
 
 " What does Csesar 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 
 paOv}X(oT€pa (somewhat careless). That 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." ^ 
 
 His affairs were still in disorder. Caesar had now 
 large sums at his disposition. Cicero gave the high- 
 est proof of the sincerity of his conversion by accept- 
 ing 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."^ 
 
 With Pompey and Crassus Cicero seemed equally 
 familiar. When their consulship was over, their prov- 
 inces were assigned as had been determined. Pom- 
 pey had Spain, with six legions. He remained him- 
 self 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 success in 
 the war with the slaves which persuaded him that he 
 too could be a conqueror ; and knowing as much of 
 
 1 Ad Quintum Fratrem, ii. 15. 
 
 2 "Ego enim ne pilo quidem minus me araabo." — Ibid. ii. 16. Other 
 editions read "te." 
 
 * "Videor id judicio facere : jam enim debeo: sed amore sum ipceQ« 
 •BUI." — Ibid. in. 1. 
 
Cicero^s Apology/. 821 
 
 foreign campaigning as the clerks in his factories, he 
 intended to use Syria as a base of operations against 
 the Parthiaiis, and to extend the frontier to the In- 
 dus. The Senate had murmured, but Cicero had 
 passionately defended Crassus ; ^ 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 Len- 
 tulus 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 
 und a very distinguished man (Caesar)." ^ And 
 again : " We must go with the times. Those who 
 have played a great part in public life bave never 
 been able to adhere to the same views on all occa- 
 sions. The art of navigation lies in trimming to the 
 storm. When you can reach your harbor by alter- 
 ing 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 ray- 
 present attitude by the kindness of one set of men, 
 and am driven to it by the injurious conduct of the 
 
 1 Ad Crassum. Ad Familiares, v. 8. 
 
 2 Ad Lentulum. Ad Fam. i. 8. 
 
 91 
 
822 Cmar. 
 
 other, I am content to do wbat I conceive will con- 
 duce 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 con- 
 spiracy of a set of villains to ruin me, unless, in ad- 
 dition to the defences which I always possessed, I had 
 secured the good-will of the men in power." ^ 
 
 Cicero's conscience could not have been easy when 
 
 he was driven to such laborious apologies. 
 
 He spoke often of intendhig to withdraw 
 into his family, and devoting his time entirely to lit- 
 erature ; 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 fron- 
 tiers had been overrun with brigands, and the out- 
 cries of his subjects had been audible even in Rome 
 against his tyranny and incapacity. Gabinius, in 
 Syria, had been more ambitiSus, 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 
 
 , 1 Ad Lentulum. Ad Fam. i. 9. 
 
Prosecution of Gahinius. 323 
 
 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 iriitated the knights, who might otherwise tia\e 
 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 tlie 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 sena- 
 torial party, could they have had their way, would 
 have recalled CsBsar also. Gabinius was Pompey's 
 favorite, and Piso was Caesar's father-in-law. Cicero 
 had no intention of quarrelling with CiBsar ; 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 wait- 
 ing for him at Rome, before he returned to wear 
 :hem. There were persons who would bring liim 
 back, because they did not love him. They would 
 bring him back only to enjoy a triumph. Gaul had 
 
824 Goemr, 
 
 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 great- 
 ness, but the Alps might now sink into the earth. 
 Italy had no more to fear.^ 
 
 The orator perhaps hoped that so splendid a vindi- 
 cation of Csesar in the raidst 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 bit- 
 terest 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 natu- 
 rally 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 in- 
 strument. He used his influence freely. The Egyp- 
 tian spoils furnished a fund to corrupt the judges. 
 The speech for the prosecution was so weak as to in- 
 vite a failure, and Gabinius was acquitted by a major- 
 ity of purchased votes. " You ask me how I endure 
 Buch things," Cicero bitterly wrote, in telling the 
 Btory 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 
 
 1 De Provmcm Consularibus. 
 
Acquittal of Gahinius, 825 
 
 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 a while 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." ^ " Gabinius is acquitted," 
 he wrote to his brother. — '* The verdict is so infa- 
 mous 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 influ- 
 enced me. Pompey would have made a personal 
 quarrel of it with me. He would have come into 
 the city .2 — 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 con- 
 stitution is broken down, and Pompey is omnipotent, 
 why should I contend with him ? Then, says Sallust, 
 I ought to have pleased Pompey by defending Gabin- 
 ius, as he was anxious that I should. A nice friend 
 Sallust, who would have me push myself into danger- 
 ous quarrels, or cover myself with eternal infamy! "^ 
 
 1 To Atticus, iv. 16. 
 
 2 Pompey, as proconsul with a province, was residing outside tlie walU. 
 • Ad Quintum Fratrem, iii, 4. 
 
826 Cmar. 
 
 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 in- 
 vectives on him, the most bitter which he ever uttered 
 against man, nevertheless actually did defend Gabin- 
 Ais. Perhaps he consoled himself with the certainty 
 that his eloquence would be in vain, and that his ex- 
 traordinary client this time could not escape convic- 
 tion. Any way, he appeared at the bar as Gabinius's 
 counsel. The Syrian revenue farmers were present, 
 open-mouthed with their accusations. Gabinius waa 
 condemned, stripped of his spoils, and sent into ban- 
 ishment. 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 w^itli 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.Cgesar's instance, to enter 
 for higher office. He had carried the prastorship 
 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 cor- 
 ruption ; and Cicero was once more compelled to ap- 
 pear on the other side, and defend him, as he had 
 done Gabinius. Caesar and Pompey, wishing, per- 
 haps, to break, completely into harness the brilliant 
 but still half unmanageable orator, liad so ordered, 
 and Cicero had complied. He was ashamed, but he 
 had still his points of satisfaction. It was a matter 
 
Cicero dissatisfied ivith his Position, 327 
 
 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 reveng- 
 ing himself on his conservative allies, who led the 
 prosecution. " Why I praised Vatinias," 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." ^ Vatinius was ac- 
 quitted. Cicero was very miserable. *' Gods and men 
 approved," lie said ; but his own conscience condemned 
 him, and at this time his one consolation, real or pre- 
 tended, was the friendship of Caesar. " Caesar's affec- 
 tionate 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. 1 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 cf my boyhood — 
 
 Aye to be first, and chief among my peers — 
 
 is all departed. Of my enemies, I have left -some un* 
 
 • ^ Ad Familiar es, i. 9. 
 
328 Omar. 
 
 assailed, and some I even defend. Not only I may 
 not think as I like, but I may not hate as I like,^ and 
 Cassar is the only person who loves me as I should 
 wish to be loved, or, as some think, who desires to 
 love me." ^ 
 
 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. Csesar was in the midst of a dangerous war, 
 and might be killed or might die. Pompey was but 
 u weak vessel; a distinguished soldier, perhaps, but 
 without the intellect or the resolution to control a 
 proud, resentful, and supremely unscrupulous aristoc- 
 racy. In spite of Caesar's victories, his most enven- 
 omed 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 consola- 
 tion. In the year that was to follow, the conserva- 
 tives 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 scan- 
 dalous 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 
 
 1 " Meum non modo animum, sed ne odium quidera esse liberum." — Ad 
 Quintum Fratrem, iii. 5. 
 
 2 See the story in a letter to Atticus, lib. iv. 16-17. 
 
Electoral Corruption, 329 
 
 the Ser_ate 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 Dicta- 
 torship 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 politi- 
 cians. They are at issue among themselves. Op- 
 portunities are caught for mutual injury. Those 
 who are in the second rank watcli for the chances of 
 the time. Those who might do better are afraid of 
 the words and designs of their enemies." ^ 
 
 The discord had been suspended, and the intrigues 
 temporarily checked, by the combination of Cagsar 
 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 serv- 
 ices expecting and claiming precedency, do not easily 
 work together. For Pompey to witness the rising 
 glory of Ca3sar, and to feel in his own person the su- 
 perior ascendency of Caesar's character, without an 
 
 "^ De Haraspicum Respinm. 
 
830 CcBsar. 
 
 en.otion 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 anarch}^, by a common in- 
 terest in wringing justice from the Senate for tie 
 army and people, by a pride in the greatness of their 
 country, which they were determined to uphohl. 
 These motives, however, might not long have borne 
 the strain but for other ties, which had cemented 
 their union. Pompey had married Csesar's daughter, 
 to whom he was passionately attached ; and the per- 
 sonal 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 at- 
 tached 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 ob- 
 ject 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 trialwell. He was, on the 
 whole, notwithstanding the Egyptian scandal, honor- 
 able and constitutionally disinterested. He was im- 
 measurably superior to the fanatic Cato, to the shifty 
 Cicero, or the proud and worthless leaders of the sen- 
 atorial 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 Pom- 
 
Catastrophe in the JEast, 331 
 
 pey open to the temptation of patrician intrigue. In 
 the year 54 Caesar's great mother Aurelia, and his 
 daughter 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, vrith a wild ambition 
 of becoming in his turn a great conqueror. At first 
 all had gone well with him. He liad 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 Eu- 
 phrates at the head of a magnificent army, expecting 
 to carry all before him with the ease of an Alexan- 
 der. 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 millionnaire 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 Par- 
 thians 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 
 
382 Cmar, 
 
 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. The hope was in Pompey. 
 If Pompey could be won over from Ca3sar, 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 ani- 
 mosities against Pompey, and Pompey himself was 
 generous, and did not yield to the first efforts of se- 
 duction. 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 
 
Milo, 333 
 
 within the bounds of decency. But Milo's mind was 
 fastened on the province which was to redeem his fort- 
 unes, and be 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 for- 
 given. He had been sedile in 54, and as sedile he 
 had already been magnificent in prodigality. But to 
 Becure 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. " Doub- 
 ly, 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 ; ^ but he is quite mad," 
 Cicero added ; " he has spent 30,000Z. 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.^ 
 
 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. 
 
 A more objectionable candidate than Milo could 
 hardly have been found. He was no better than a 
 
 1 "Angit unus Milo. Sed velim finem afferat consulatus : in quo enitat 
 BOB. minus, quam sum enisus in iiostro." — Ad Quinlum Fratrem, id. 9. 
 
 2 Ad Famiiiarea, ii. 6. 
 
834 Ccesar, 
 
 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 re- 
 sistance. There Ayere 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 Avhich 
 he might misgovern, Pompey forced the Senate to 
 pass a resolution, that consuls and prsetors must wait 
 five years from their term of office before a province 
 was to be allotted to them. The temptation to cor- 
 ruption 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 Clodiiis was reappearing on the 
 scene. He had been silent for two years, 
 
 B C 52. 
 
 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 
 ^f laws to be submitted to the sovereign people ; one 
 
Rome in a State of Anarchy, 335 
 
 of which (if Cicero did not misrepresent it to in- 
 flame the aristocracy) was a measure of some kind 
 for the enfranchisement of the shives, or perhaps of 
 tlie sons of slaves.^ He was as popular as ever. He 
 claimed to be acting for Csesar, 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 Avas out of the way 
 he could secure consuls of his own way of thinking, 
 and thus have the whole constitutional power in his 
 hands.2 
 
 Thus both sides had reason for fearing and post- 
 poning 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 Clo- 
 dius 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 Clo- January 14, 
 dius. Cicero had openly boasted of his ^•^•^2. 
 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 uncer- 
 tainty 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 
 
 1 " Incidebantur jam domi leges quae nos nostris pervis addicerent 
 
 Oppreesisset omnia, possderet, teneret lege nova, qu£e est iiiventa apud 
 eum cum reliquis legibus Clodianis. Servos nostros libertos siios feels- 
 set." — Pro Milone, '42, 33. These strong expressions can hardly refer to 
 a proposed enfranchisement of the libertini, or sons of freedmen, like Hor- 
 ace's father. • 
 
 2 "Cajsaris potentiam suam esse dicebat An consules in praetore 
 
 «oercendo fortes fuissent? Primum, Milone occiso habuisset suos consu- 
 tes." — Pro Milone, 33. 
 
386 Omar, 
 
 road, on his way to Lanuvium (Civita iDdovina), 
 and the two rivals and their escorts met. Milo's 
 party was the largest. The leaders passed one an- 
 other, evidently not intending a collision, but their 
 followers, who were continually at sword's point, 
 came naturally to blows. Clodius rode back to seo 
 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 " predes- 
 tined 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 
 dispatched, and the body was left lying where he fell, 
 where a senator, named Sextus Tedius, who was pass- 
 ing 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 furj^ 
 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 
 
Trial of Milo, 837 
 
 of Clodius in the ashes of the Senate-house itself. 
 The adjoining temples were consumed in the confla- 
 gration. 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 him- 
 self, 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.^ 
 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 ab- 
 horrence of disorder, and so far, he did what Csesar 
 
 1 The Oratiopro Milone, published afterwards by Cicero, was the speech 
 which he intended to deliver and did not. 
 22 
 
338 Ccesar, 
 
 approved and would himself have done in Pompey'a 
 place. 
 
 But there followed symptoms which showed that 
 there were secret influences at work with Porapey, 
 and that he was not the man which he had been, 
 He had taken the consulate alone ; but a single coa- 
 sul was an anomaly ; as soon as order was restoied it 
 was understood that he meant to clioose a colleague ; 
 and Senate and people were watching to see whom 
 he would select as an indication of his future atti- 
 tude. 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 re- 
 placed Julia by Metellus Scipio's daughter, the widow 
 of young Publius Crassus, who had fallen with his 
 father. 
 
 Pompey, however, did not break with Csesar, and 
 did not appear to intend to break with him. Com- 
 munications passed between them on the matter of 
 the consulship. The tribunes had pressed him as 
 Pompey's colleague. Csesar himself, being then in 
 tlie 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 gre.w 
 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 waa 
 to be again consul. His term had still three years to 
 
Promise of a Seco7id. ConsuUhip to Ccesar, 839 
 
 run ; but many things might happen in three years. 
 A party in the Senate were bent on his recalh They 
 might succeed in persuading the people to consent to 
 it. And Csesar 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. There- 
 fore 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 under- 
 standing, 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 con- 
 junction of the men whom they hoped to divide, ap- 
 peared to consent. Cicero himself made a journey to 
 Ravenna to see Caesar about it and make a positive 
 arrangement with him. Pompey submitted the con- 
 dition to the assembly of the people, by whom it was 
 solemnly ratified. Every precaution was observed 
 which would give the promise that Csesar might be 
 elected consul in his absence the character of a bind- 
 ing engagement.^ 
 
 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 
 
 1 Suetonius, De Vitd Julii Ccesaris. Cicero again and again aclcnowl- 
 edges in his letters to Atticus that the engagement had really been made. 
 Writing to Atticus (vii. 1), Cicero saA's : " Non est locus ad tergiversan- 
 dum. Contra Cajsarem ? Ubi illse sunt denssB dextenoV Nam ut illi hoc 
 liceret adjuvi rogatus jib ipso Ravennse de Caelio tribuno plebis. Ab ipso 
 autem? Etiam a Cnaeo nostro in illo diviuo tertio ccnsulatu. Alitei 
 «iensero ? " 
 
840 ^ Coemr, 
 
 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 over- 
 looked by accident. Such accidents require to be in- 
 terpreted by the use which is made of them. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The conquest of .Gaul had been an exploit of ex- 
 traordinary military difficulty. The intri- 
 cacy of the problem had been enhanced by 
 the venom of a domestic faction, to which the victo- 
 ries 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 Csesar in his career of 
 conquest and bring him home to dishonor and per- 
 haps impeachment. They had failed. The efforts 
 of the Gauls to maintain or recover their indepen- 
 dence had been successively beaten down, and at the 
 close of the summer of 53 Ca3sar 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 civil- 
 ians 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 amonor the ^dui 
 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 Sabi- 
 aus, sharply avenged as it had been, kept alive the 
 hope that their independence might yet be recovered. 
 
842 Ccesar, 
 
 The disaffection of tlie preceding summer had been 
 trampled out, but the ashes of it were still smoulder- 
 ing ; 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 passion- 
 ate patriotism kindled once more into flame. Sudden 
 in their resolutions, they did not pause to watch how 
 the balance would incline. Cassar was across the 
 Alps. Either he would be deposed, or civil war 
 would detain him in Italy. His legions were scat- 
 tered between Treves, A uxerre, 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 execu- 
 tion 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 -3Cdui 
 there was no longer a Roman faction and a patriot 
 faction. The whole nation was inspired by a simul- 
 taneous impulse to snatch the opportunity, and unite 
 in a single effort to assert their freedom. The under- 
 standing was complete. A day was fixed for a uni- 
 versal rising. The Carnutes began by a massacre 
 which would cut off possibility of retreat, and, in re- 
 venge for Acco, slaughtered a party of. Roman civil- 
 ians who were engaged in business at Gien.^ A sys- 
 
 1 Above Orleans, on the Loire. 
 
Vercingetorix, 843 
 
 tern of signals had been quietly arranged. The 
 massacre at Glen was known in a few hours in tho 
 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 mo- 
 ment undecided.^ The elder men there, who had 
 known the Romans long, were against immediate ac- 
 tion ; but Vercingetorix carried the people away with 
 him. His name had not appeared in the earlier cam- 
 paigns, 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. Ver- 
 cingetorix had high ability and real organizing pow- 
 ers. He laid out a plan for the general campaign. 
 He fixed a contingent of men and arms wliich each 
 tribe was to supply, and failure brought instantane- 
 ous 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 pro7ince 
 and prevent Cassar, if he should arrive, from passing 
 through. With part he went himself to watch the 
 JEdui, 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 ^dui were hesitating. They called 
 their levies under arms, as if to oppose him, but they 
 withdrew them again ; and to waver at such a mo- 
 ment was to yield to the stream. 
 
 i Four miles from Clermont, on the Allier, in the Puv-de-D6me 
 
844 Ccemr, 
 
 The GaTils had not calculated without reasojj on 
 Csesar's embarrassments. The death of Clodius had 
 been followed by the burning of the Senate-liouse 
 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 tliat order was 
 restored ; and seeing no occasion for his own inter- 
 fereince, 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 North- 
 ern tribes had suffered too desperately in the past 
 years to be in a condition to stir without assistance. 
 But how was Csesar to join them? The garrisons in 
 the province could not be moved. If he sent for the 
 army to eome across to him, Vercingetorix would at- 
 tack them on the march, and he could not feel confi- 
 dent 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 levi^s with him to fill the gaps in the old le- 
 gions, and after a rapid survey of the stations on the 
 provincial frontier he threw hiniself 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 
 
Revolt of Gaul 345 
 
 travellers. The Auvergne rebels dreamt of nothing 
 BO 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 ^dui, 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 intrenched camp, where he left Deciraus 
 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 w^itli 
 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 Csesar, riding day and night through 
 the doubtful territories oi the JEdui, 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 ^dui, 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 re- 
 quired 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, Csesar had planted a colony of them at 
 Gorgobines, near Nevers, on the Loire. These col- 
 
346 Cmar, 
 
 oiusts, called Boii, had refused to take part in the 
 rising ; and Vercingetorix, turning in contempt from 
 Brutus, had gone off to punish them. Csesar ordered 
 the JSdui to furnish his commissariat, sent word to 
 the Boii that he was coming to their relief, swept 
 tlu'ough 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 liis first battle with him ; but the 
 cavalry, on which the Gauls most depended, were 
 scattered by Caesar's German horse. He was ' en- 
 tirely beaten, and Caesar turned next to Avaricum 
 (Bourges), a rich and strongly fortified town of the 
 Bituriges. From past experience Caasar had gath- 
 ered 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 al- 
 legiance. 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 wast- 
 ing his real advantages. Battles in the field he saw 
 that he would lose. But the Roman numbers were 
 
Revolt of Gaul, 347 
 
 limited, and his were infinite. Tens of thousands of 
 gallant yoang men, Avith 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 Ca3sar'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 univer- 
 sal 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 im- 
 plored 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 prop- 
 erty, and Vercingetorix, against his judgment, con- 
 sented, in pity for their entreaties, that Avaricum 
 should be defended. A strong garrison was left in- 
 side. Vercingetorix intrenched himself in the for- 
 ests 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 jEdui were growing negligent. The feeble 
 Boii, grateful, it seemed, for Caesar's treatment of 
 them, exerted themselves to the utmost, but their 
 umall 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 fam- 
 ine.^ " But not one word was heard from them," 
 1 "Extrema fames." —JOe BeU. GaU. vii. 17. 
 
848 Ccesar, 
 
 Bays Caesar, " unworthy of the majesty of the Roman 
 people or their own earlier victories." He told thorn 
 that if th^ distress became unbearable he would raise 
 the siege. With one voice they entreated him to per- 
 severe. 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 un- 
 avenged their countrymen who had been murdered 
 at Gien. 
 
 Vercingetorix, knowing that the Romans were in 
 difficulties, ventured nearer. Cassar surveyed his po- 
 sition. 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 sol- 
 diers dearer than his own interest,^ 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 
 \n 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 fag- 
 •^^ots 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 Csesar himself lay out all 
 
 1 " Summa se Jniquitatis con lemnari debere nisi eorum vitam sua salut« 
 luibeat caiiorem." 
 
Siege of Bourges, 349 
 
 night among the men, encouraging them. One morn- 
 ing at daybreak he observed that the agger was smok- 
 ing. The ingenious Gauls had undermined it and 
 Bet it on fire. At the same moment they appeared 
 along the walls with pitch-balls, torches, faggots, 
 which they hurled in to feed the flames. There was 
 an instant of confusion, but Caesar uniformly had iw a 
 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 gar- 
 rison 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 tem- 
 pest 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 hun- 
 dred only, that had fled at the first sound of the at- 
 tack, 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 
 l)y 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 
 
850 Ccesar, 
 
 in a course of action Avhere 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 create 
 ures who had escaped from the carnage ; and the ef- 
 fect of the storming of Bourges was to make the na- 
 tional enthusiasm hotter and fiercer than before. 
 
 The Komans found in the town large magazines of 
 corn and other provisions, which had been laid in for 
 the siege, and Cjjesar remained there some days to re- 
 fresh his troopSe The winter was now over. The 
 ^dui 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.^ He lect- 
 ured the ^dui on their duty, bade them furnish him 
 with ten thousand men, who were to take charge of 
 the commissariat, and then divided his army. La- 
 bienus, 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 Gergjovia in search of Vercinm^t- 
 orix. The bridges on the Allier were broken, but 
 Csesar 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 vei-y few 
 places, and the surrounding neighborhood is broken 
 
 1 X>e Bell Gall. vii. 33. 
 
Siege of G-ergovia. 851 
 
 with rocky valleys. Yercingetorix lay in force out- 
 side, 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 intrenched camp upon it. He 
 was studying the rest of the problem when bad news 
 came that the ^dui 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 Ro- 
 man officers in charge of them, and were preparing to 
 go over to Vercingetorix. Leaving two legions to 
 guard his works, he intercepted the ^duan contin- 
 gent, took them prisoners, and protected their lives. 
 In his absence Vercingetorix had attacked the camp 
 with determined fury. The fighting had been des- 
 perate, and Caesar only returned in time to save it. 
 The reports from the ^dui were worse and worse. 
 The patriotic faction had the upper hand, and with 
 \he same passionate determination to commit them- 
 selves irrecoverably, which had been shown before at 
 Gien, they had massacred every Roman in their ter- 
 ritory. It was no time for delaying over a tedious 
 siege : Cassar was on the point of raising it, when ac- 
 cident brought on a battle under the walls. An op- 
 portunity seemed to offer itself of capturing the place 
 by escalade, which part of the army attempted con- 
 
852 , Ccesar, 
 
 trary 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 compli- 
 mented their courage, but he said it was for the geji- 
 eral 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. Cae- 
 sar had placed magazines in Nevers, and had trusted 
 them to an iEduan garrison. The jEduans 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 swifb de- 
 cision 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 array passed safely. Food 
 
Labienus on the Seine, 853 
 
 enough and in plenty was found in the ^duans' coun- 
 try, and without waiting he pressed on towards 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 experi- 
 enced troops down the left bank of the river till he 
 came to the Essonne. He found the Gauls in 
 trenched on the other side, and, without attempting 
 to force the passage, he marched back to Melun, 
 w^here he repaired a bridge which the Gauls had 
 broken, crossed over, and descended without interrup- 
 tion 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 Ger^o- 
 
 o 
 
 via, and of the rebellion of the ^Edui. Such news, 
 he understood at once, would be followed b}^ a rising 
 in Belgium. Report had said that CcBsar was falling 
 back on the province. He did not believe it. Csesar, 
 he knew, would not desert him. His own duty, there- 
 fore, 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 inter- 
 cepted. " In these sudden difficulties," says Caesar, 
 "he took counsel from the valor of his mind."^ 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 de- 
 
 1 " Tantis subito difficultatibus objectls ab animi virtute consilium pe- 
 kebat." 
 
 23 
 
354 Coesar. 
 
 tached a few cohorts with orders to go np the river 
 with boats as if they were retreating, splashing their 
 oars, and making as much noise as possible. He liim- 
 self with three legions stole silently in the darkness 
 to h:s 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 ia 
 boisterous confusion. Labienus fell upon them, tell- 
 ing the Romans to fight as if Csesar was present in 
 person ; and the courage with which the Gauls foughl 
 in their surprise only made the overthrow more com- 
 plete. The insurrection in the northwest was for the 
 moment paralyzed, and Labienus, secured by his in- 
 genious and brilliant victory, returned to his quarters 
 without further accident. There Csesar came to him 
 as he expected, and the army was once more to- 
 gether. 
 
 Meanwhile the failure at Gergovia had kindled the 
 enthusiasm of tha central districts into white heat. 
 The JEdui, the most powerful of all the tribes, were 
 now at one with their countrymen, and Bibracte be- 
 came the focus of the national army. The young 
 Vercingetorix was elected sole commander, and his 
 plan, as before, was to starve the Romans out. FI3"- 
 ing bodies harassed the borders of the province, so 
 that no reinforcements could reach them from the 
 south. Csesar, 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, wliich when mounted on Roman 
 horses proved invaluable. In the new form which 
 the insurrection had assumed the iEdui were the first 
 tc be attended to. Coesar advanced leisurely upon 
 
Alesia, 355 
 
 them, through the high country at the rise of the 
 Seine and the Marne, towards Alesia, or Alice St. 
 Reine. Vercingetorix watched him at ten miles' dis- 
 tance. He supposed him to be making for the prov- 
 ince, 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 Sac>ne, and they met the fate which 
 necessarily befell them when their ungovernable mul- 
 titudes 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 Vercin- 
 getorix 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 po- 
 sition was impregnable except to famine. The water- 
 supply was secure. The position was of extraordi- 
 nary strength. The rivers formed natural trenches. 
 Below the town to the east they ran parallel for 
 three miles through an open alluvial plain before thej 
 
356 , Ccesar, 
 
 reached the Brenne. In every other direction 4.ose 
 rocky hills of equal height with the central plateau, 
 originally perhaps one wide tableland, through which 
 the waters had ploughed out the valleys. To attack 
 Vercingetorix where he had placed himself was cut 
 of the question ; but to blockade him there, to cap~ 
 ture 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 be- 
 sieged. The provisions laid in could not be consider- 
 able, 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 blockhouses 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 towards the Brenne river. 
 Vercingetorix had looked on for a time, not under- 
 standing 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 notliing. The Gauls could not be brought 
 to face the Roman intrenchments. Their cavalry 
 were cut to pieces by the German horse. The only 
 Lope was from help 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 wrre. 
 worthy of their fathers, if the enthusiasm with which 
 
Alesia. 857 
 
 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 Cassar 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 in- 
 dependence which they had ceased to deserve would 
 be lost forever. He had food, he bade the messen- 
 gers 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. Csesar learnt from deserters that they 
 had gone out, and understood the message which they 
 carried. Already he was besieging an army far out- 
 numbering 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 also 
 serve 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 situa- 
 tion which determined CcSsar 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 pro- 
 visions 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 equally serve to keep the assail- 
 ants off. His plan was to make a second line of 
 works — an exterior line as well as an interior line j 
 
358 Ccesar. 
 
 and as the extent to be defended would thus bft 
 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 instrumenta 
 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 Ho- 
 man engineering genius. Military students will read 
 the particulars for themselves in Csesar's own lan- 
 guage. Enough that the work was done within tlie 
 time, with the legions in perfect good humor, and 
 giving jesting names to the new instruments of tor- 
 ture as Csesar invented them. Vercingetorix now 
 and then burst out on the working parties, but pro- 
 duced no effect. They knew what they were to ex- 
 pect 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 respond- 
 ing to the call. From every quarter, even from far- 
 off parts of Belgium, horse and foot Were streaming 
 along the roads. Commius of Arras, Ca3sai-'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 ap- 
 pointed rendezvous, and advanced with the easy con- 
 viction 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 
 
Alesia, 359 
 
 were no signs of the coming deliverers. Eager e3^e3 
 were straining froQi the heights of tlie plateau ; but 
 nothing was seen save the tents of the h^gions 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 des- 
 perate effort to cut their way through or die. One 
 speech Caesar preserves for its remarkable and fright- 
 ful 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 fight- 
 ing. 
 
 Vercingetorix was of noble nature. To prevent 
 the adoption of so horrible an expedient, he ordered 
 the peaceful inhabitants, with their wives and chil- 
 dren, to leave the town. Ciesar 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 glit- 
 ter 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. Vercin- 
 getorix came down on the slope to the edge of the 
 first trench, prepared to cross when the turn of bat- 
 tle should give him a chance to strike. Ciesar sent 
 out his German horse, and stood himself watcliing 
 from the spur of an adjoining hill. The Gauls had 
 
860 Ccemr, 
 
 broiiglit innumerable archers witli 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 tlie 
 Gauls flying, and hewed down the unprotected arch- 
 ers. 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 flU 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 or- 
 der. 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. Vercinget- 
 orix had been unable even to pass the moats and 
 trenches, and did nol; 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 dis- 
 tributed in a ring now fourteen miles in extent. On 
 the north side, beyond the Ose, the works were in- 
 complete, owing to the nature of the ground, and 
 tiieir lines lay on the slope of the hills descending to- 
 
Battle before Alesia, 861 
 
 wards the river. Sixty thousand picked men left the 
 Gauls' camp before dawn ; they stole round by a dis- 
 tant 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 gen- 
 eral 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 Csesar 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. 
 
 Csesar had taken his stand where he could com- 
 mand 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 impres- 
 sion 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. Csesar saw 
 it, and sent Labienus with six cohorts to their help. 
 Vercingetorix had seen it also, and attacked the in- 
 terior lines at the same spot. Decimus Brutus was 
 then dispatched also, and then Caius Fabius. Fi- 
 nally, 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, con- 
 spicuous in his scarlet dress and with his bare head, 
 cheering on the men as he passed each point where 
 thby were engaged, and hastening to the scene inhere 
 
862 Ccesar. 
 
 the chief danger lay. He sent round a few squ idrona 
 of horse to the back of the hills which the Gauls had 
 crossed in the morning. He himself joined Labienns. 
 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 Csesar. The besieged retired into 
 Alice again in despair. The vast hosts that Avere to 
 have set them free melted away. In the morning 
 they were streaming over the country, making back 
 for their homes, with CiEsar's cavalry behind them, 
 cutti ug them down and capturing them in thousands. 
 
 The work was done. The most daring feat in the 
 military annals of mankind had been successfully ac- 
 complished. 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 
 
Defeat of the G^auU. 863 
 
 him and sending his head to the conqueror or by de- 
 livering him up alive. A humble message of sub- 
 mission was dispatched to Csesar. 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 Ver- 
 cingetorix, as noble in his calamnity as Csesar 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 -^dui and Arverni 
 among them were set aside, and were dismissed after 
 a short detention for political reasons. The remain- 
 der were sold to the contractors, and the proceeds 
 were distributed as prize-money among the legions. 
 Cassar passed the winter at Bibracte, receiving the 
 submission of the chiefs of the JEdui and of the 
 Auvergne. Wounds received in war soon heal if gen- 
 tle measures follow a victory. If tried by the man- 
 ners of his age, Caesar was the most merciful of con- 
 querors. 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 consid- 
 erate 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 effjrt 
 to recover their independence. 
 
 Much, however, remained to be done. The insur- 
 rection had shaken the whole of Gaul. The „ ^ „ 
 
 . . . . , B. c. 61. 
 
 viistant tribes had all joined in it, either 
 
 actively or by sympathy ; and the patriots who had 
 
864 Cmar, 
 
 seized the control despairing of pardon, thought thtiii* 
 only hope was in keeping rebellion alive. During 
 winter they believed themselves secure. The Car- 
 nutes of the Euro and Loire, under a new chief 
 named Gutruatus,^ and the Bituriges, untaught by 
 or savage at the fate of Bourses, were still defiant. 
 When the winter was at its deepest, Csesar 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 re- 
 ward 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 con- 
 tinued 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 Csesar's 
 first object was to show the Gauls that no friends of 
 Rome would be allowed to suffer. He invaded Nor- 
 mandy ; he swept the country. He drove the Bello- 
 vaci and the Carnutes to collect in another great 
 army to defend themselves ; he set upon them with 
 his usual skill, and destroyed them. Commius es» 
 1 Gudrund ? The word has a German sound. 
 
Final Suppression of the Revolt, 365 
 
 caped over the Rhine to Germany. Gutruatus was 
 taken. Cassar would have pardoned him ; but the 
 legions were growing savagY» 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 oif by the lictor's axe. 
 
 All Gaul was now submisssive, 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 coun- 
 try only the dream still survived that if the patriots 
 could hold out till CsBsar was gone, Celtic liberty 
 might yet have a chance of recovering itself. A sin- 
 gle 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 Csesar 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 
 that supplied the garrison. They, too, had then to 
 yield, and the war in Gaul was over. 
 
 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 impos.' 
 
360 Ccesar. 
 
 tions either on the leaders or their people, and they 
 went to their homes personally devoted to their con- 
 qneror, contented with their condition, and resolved 
 to maintain the peace which was now ostablislied — a 
 unique experience in political history. The Norman 
 Conquest of England alone in the least resembles it. 
 In the spring of 60 Csesar went to Ital}^ 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 brill- 
 iant than ever, and nothing now \vas left to them 
 but to defy and trample on him. Servius Galba, who 
 was favorable to Caisar, had stood for the consulship 
 for 49, and had received a majority of votes. The 
 election was set aside. Two patricians, Lentulus and 
 Caius JMarcellus, were declared chosen, and their 
 avowed purpose was to strip the conqueror of Gaul 
 of his honors and rewards.^ The people of 
 
 . B C 50 
 
 his own Cisalpine Province desired to show 
 that they at least had no sympathy with such enven- 
 omed 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 offer- 
 ings ; the temples were thronged with worshippers 
 graying the immortal gods to bless the greatest of 
 
 1 " Iiipolenter acTversarii sui gloriabantur L. Lentuhun ^ C. IMarcelliim 
 consules creates, qui omnem lionorem et dignitatem Ctesaris exepoliarent. 
 Ereptiini Servio Galbte consulatiini cum is miilto plus gratia suffrai^iisque 
 valuisset, quod sibi coujunctus et familiaritate et uecessitudine legaiionia 
 L." —Auli Hirtii De Bell. Gall. viii. 50. 
 
State of Feeling in Italy. 367 
 
 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 dif- 
 ferent 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. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Cbassus had been destroj^ed 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 num- 
 ber there was no such fool as Bibulus. When he ar- 
 rived 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 ; ^ 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 con- 
 sulship. That consulship the faction of the Con- 
 servatives had sworn that he should never hold. 
 Cato was threatening him with impeachment, blus- 
 tering that he should be tried under a guard, as Mile 
 
 1 " C«!ius ad Ciceronem," Ad Fam. viii. 10. * Ibid. 
 
Fears of the Ar-idocracy. 369 
 
 had been.i Marcellus was saying openly that he 
 would call hina home in disgrace before his term was 
 over. Como, one of the most thriving towns in the 
 north of Italy, had been enfranchised by Csesar. 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 ; ^ 
 but the aristocracy were mad — mad with pride and 
 conscious guilt and fear. The ten years of Csesar's 
 government would expire at the end of 49. The en- 
 gagement 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 con- 
 sulship and what he had done with it, and the laws 
 which he had passed — laws which they could not re- 
 peal ; yet how h-ad 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 .vould 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 administra- 
 tion. His wars had paid their own expenses. He 
 
 1 Suetonius, De Vita Julii CoBsaris. 
 
 2 "Marcellus foede de Comensi, Etsi ille magistratum non gesserat, 
 erat tamen Transpadanus. Ita mihi videtur non minus stomachi nostro M 
 Cttsaii fecisse." — To Atticus, v. 11. 
 
 24 
 
370 Ccesar. 
 
 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 liave been impatient at its loss of liberty, but 
 no word of complaint was hCard against Cassar for 
 oppressive government. The more genius he had 
 shown the more formidable he was. Let him be con- 
 sul, and he would be the master of them all. 
 
 Csesar has 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 ob- 
 tain an army devoted to him which would execute 
 his will. It has not seemed incredible that a man of 
 middle age undertook the conquest o'f a country of 
 which nothing was 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. Csesar was a reformer. He had long 
 Been that the Roman Constitution was too narrow for 
 
Ambition of Ccesar. 371 
 
 the functions which had fallen to it, and that it was 
 degenerating into an instrument of tyranny and in- 
 justice. The courts of law were corrupt ; the elec- 
 tions were corrupt. The administration of the prov- 
 inces was a scandal and a curse. The soil of Italy 
 had become a monopoly of capitalists, and the inhab- 
 itants of it a population of slaves. He had exerted 
 himself to stay the mischie^Hit its fountain, to pun- 
 ish bribery, to punish the rapacity of proconsuls and 
 pro-praetors, to purify the courts, to maintain respect 
 for the law. He had endeavored to extend the fran- 
 chise, to raise the position of the liberated slaves, tc» 
 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 miglity destinies, 
 was chiefly now to be found in the armies. In the 
 famihes of veteran legionaries, spread in farms over 
 Italy and the provinces, the national spirit might re- 
 vive ; and, with a due share of political power con- 
 ceded \^o 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 con- 
 scious 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 
 ae had done the most which could' be done when he 
 was consul the first time, and he had afterwards sought 
 a free field for his adventurous genius in a new coun- 
 try, and in rounding off into security the frontiers of 
 
372 Ccesar. 
 
 the Empire on the side where danger was most threat- 
 ening. The proudest self-confidence could not have 
 allowed him at his time of life to calculate on return- 
 ing to Rome to take up again the work of reforma- 
 tion. 
 
 But Caesar 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 bitter- 
 est malignity. When he was struggling with the last 
 spasms of Gallic liberty, they had talked in delighted 
 whispers of his reported ruin.^ But his genius had 
 risen above his difficulties and shone out more glori- 
 ous 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. 
 
 Cicero had for some time seen what was coming, 
 
 1 " Quod ad Csesarem crebri et non belli de eo rumores. Sed susurrato- 
 
 icsdumtaxat veniunt Neque adhuc certi quidquam est, iieque 
 
 axe incerta tamen viilgo jactantur. Sed inter paucos, quos tu nosti, palata 
 secreto narrantur. At Domitius cum manus ad osapposuit!" — Celiiu 
 to Cicero, Ad Fam. viii. 1. 
 
Senatorial Intrigues. 373 
 
 He had preferred characteristically to be out of the 
 way at the moment when he expected that the storm 
 woidd 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. Cse- 
 sar'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 constitu- 
 tion to playing second to a person whom he had pat- 
 ronized. 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 Csesar and to 
 provide Pompey with a force in Italy. The Senate 
 discovered suddenly that Asia Minor was in danger 
 from thfe Parthians. They voted that Caesar and 
 Pompey must each spare a legion for the East. Pom- 
 pey gave as his part the legion which he 
 had lent to Csesar for the last campaign. 
 Caesar was invited to restore it and 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 him- 
 self with making Jiandsome 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. Cae- 
 sar 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 
 
374 Ccesar. 
 
 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 Cai- 
 sar'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 disturb- 
 ance in his favor. The Senate hesitated before de- 
 cisively voting the recall. An intimation was con- 
 veyed to Csesar 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 .... btit he doea 
 not think that before that time the Senate can prop- 
 erly pass a resolution about it. After the 1st of 
 
Curio, 375 
 
 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 dis- 
 obeyed the Senate, or provided some one else to in- 
 terfere with the Senate. Suppose, said one, Csesar 
 wishes to be consul and to keep his array. 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 consul- 
 ship ; 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." ^ 
 
 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, Csesar 
 could countermine. Ccelius said that Curio was vio- 
 lent 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 
 che 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 
 
 I Cselios to Cicero, Ad. Fam. viii. 8. 
 
378 Cmar. 
 
 resolution whicli seemed an unfair return for Cassar'a 
 services. Scandal said that young Curio was in 
 money difficulties, and that Csssar 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 prsetor, 
 was inclining to think that Cassar would win, and 
 therefore might take his side also. The constitu- 
 tional 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.^ Caelius's ac- 
 count 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 con- 
 test 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." ^ 
 
 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 
 
 1 Cselius to Cicero, Ad. Fam, viii. 13. 
 
 2 lb. viii. 14. 
 
Divisions en the Senate, 377 
 
 military Dictatorship ; but he said that the danger 
 was as great from Pompey as from Csesar. He did 
 not object to the recall of Caesar, but Pompey, he 
 thought, should resign his province also, and the con- 
 stitution would then be out of peril. Pompey pro- 
 fessed to be willing, if the Seiiate 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 Pom- 
 pey, threw flowers upon the tribune as he passed. 
 Marcellus, the consul, a few days later, put the ques- 
 tion in the Senate : Was Caesar to be recalled ? A 
 majority answered Yes. Was Pompey to be de- 
 prived of his province ? The same majority said No. 
 Curio then proposed that both Pompey and Csesar 
 should dismiss their armies. Out of three hundred 
 and ninety-two senators present, three hundred and 
 seventy agreed. MarceUus 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 com- 
 municate the Senate's views to Csesar 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 ac( ount 
 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 — 
 
378 Coemr, 
 
 it "was true that Labienus had listened to the offers 
 made him. Labienus had made a vast fortune in 
 the war. He perhaps tlionght, 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. Csesar 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 in- 
 tegrity of his own intentions, by appointing the officer 
 who was suspected of betraying him Lieutenant-gen- 
 eral 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 Pom- 
 pey's courage and gave heart to the faction which 
 wished to precipitate extremities. The aspect of 
 things w'as 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 re- 
 port 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 es- 
 caping the catastrophe, he found himself plunged 
 into the heart of it. He had managed his province 
 
Cicero^s Difficulties, 379 
 
 well. No one ever suspected Cicero of being corrupt 
 or unjust. He had gained some respectable successes 
 in putting down tbe 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 Lid 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 anxi- 
 eties 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 Csesar. 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 Pom- 
 pey, I cannot hurt the Commonwealth ; if I agree 
 with Csesar, 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 Csesar dissembles ; while Pompey is 
 right in thinking, that what he proposes I shall ap- 
 prove. I heard from both at the time at which I 
 heard from you. Their letters were most polite. 
 What am I 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 Caesa^ 
 iS to be proposed for the consulship in his absence, oi 
 if he is to dismiss his army. What must I answer ? 
 
880 Ccesar. 
 
 "Wait till I have consulted Atticus ? That will not 
 do. Shall I go against Ccesar ? Where are Pom- 
 pey's resources ? I myself took Csssar's part about 
 it. He spoke to me on the subject at Ravenna. I 
 recommended his request to the tribunes as a reason- 
 able one. Pompey talked with me also to the sajne 
 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 ex- 
 cuse 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." ^ 
 
 Csesar had touched the right point in congratulat- 
 ing Cicero on his military exploits. His friends in 
 the Senate had been less delicate. Bibulus had been 
 thanked for hiding from the Parthians. When Cic- 
 ero 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. Csesar promises me everything. — Cato has 
 given a twenty days' thanksgiving to Bibulus. Par- 
 don me, if this is more than I can bear. But I am 
 relieved from my worst fear. The Parthians have 
 left Bibulus half alive." 2 
 
 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 
 
 1 To Aiticua, vii. 1, abridged. 2 lb. vii. 2. 
 
Cieero^s Difficulties. 381 
 
 Tulliiis, what do you tliink ? 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."^ 
 
 Pompey had been unwell at the beginning of De- 
 cember, and had gone for a few days into the coun- 
 try. 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 prom- 
 ised 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 Cassar, 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." ^ Cicero 
 had soon to learn that the second consulship was not 
 80 certain. On the 29th he had another long con- 
 Tersation 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.Csesar 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 
 
 1 To Aiticus, vii. 3. * lb. vii. 4. 
 
382 Ccesar, 
 
 and his troops. Should he be so insane as to try ex- 
 tremities, Pompey holds him in utter contempt. 1 
 thought, when he was speaking, of the uncertainties 
 of war ; but I was relieved to hear a man of courago 
 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 wdiat I ha'd set apart for my triumph. It 
 is indecent to owe money to a political antagonist." ^ 
 Events were hurrying on. Cicero entered Rome 
 the first week in January, to find that the 
 
 B. C. 49. 
 
 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 consul- 
 ship ; 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 en- 
 tered on their offices, and were in their places in the 
 Senate. Pompey was present, and the letter was in- 
 troduced. The consuls objected to it being read, but 
 they were overruled by the remonstrances of the trib- 
 unes. The reading over, the consuls forbade a debate 
 upon it, and moved that the condition of the Common- 
 wealth should be taken into consideration. Lentulus, 
 
 1 "Mihi autem illud molesti&simum est, quod solvendi sunt nummi 
 Caesari, et instrumentum triumphi eo conferendura. Est anop(}>ov dr-tiroA*> 
 ftvofiivov xpew^e«,X«Tij;i' esse." — lb. viii. 8. 
 
Debate in the Senate. 385 
 
 the more impassioned of tliem, said that if the Senate 
 would be firm, he would do his duty ; if they hesi- 
 tated and tried conciliation, he should take care of 
 himself, and go over to Csesar's side. Metellus Scipio, 
 Pompey's father-in-law, spoke to the same purpose. 
 Pompey, he said, was ready to support the constitu- 
 tion, if the Senate were resolute. If they wavered, 
 they would look in vain for future help from him. 
 Marcus MarceUus, the consul of the 'preceding year, 
 less wild than he had been when he flogged the Come 
 citizen, advised delay, at least till Pompey was better 
 prepared. Calidius, another senator, moved that 
 Pompey should go to his province. Caesar's resent- 
 ment at the detention of the two legions from the 
 Parthian war, he thought, was natural and justifiable. 
 Marcus Ruf us agreed with Calidius. But moderation 
 was borne down by the violence of Lentulus ; and the 
 Senate, in spite of themselves,^ voted, at Scipio's dic- 
 tation, that Csesar must dismiss his army before a day 
 which was to be fixed, or, in default, would be de- 
 clared 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 conclu- 
 sion ; but at a meeting afterwards, at his house, Pom- 
 pey quieted alarms by assuring the senators that 
 there was nothing to fear. Caesar's army he knew to 
 
 1 "Inviti et coacti " is Cjesar's expression. He wished, perhaps, to 
 •often the Senate's action. {De Bello Civili, i. 2.) 
 
384 Ccesar. 
 
 be disaffected, He introduced tlie officers of the two 
 legions that had been taken from Ca3sar, who vouched 
 for their fidelity to the constitution. Some of Pom- 
 pey's veterans were present, called up from their 
 farms; they were enthusiastic for their old comman- 
 der. Piso, Caesar's father-in-law, and Roscius, a praj- 
 tor, 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 harsh- 
 ness of his removal. But Lentulus, backed by Cato, 
 would listen to nothing. Cato detested Caesar as 
 the representative of everything which he most ab- 
 horred. Lentulus, bankrupt and loaded with debts, 
 was looking for provinces to ruin, and allied sover- 
 eigns to lay presents at his feet. He boasted that -he 
 would be a second Sylla.^ When the Senate met 
 again in their places, the tribunes' veto was disal- 
 lowed. 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 in- 
 veterate and envenomed of his enemies. Their au- 
 thority 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 constitu- 
 tion. Tliey had themselves destroyed the constitu- 
 
 1 " Seque alteram fore SuUam inter suos gloriatur. "— De BeUo CiviU, 
 i.4. 
 
Alternative SchemeB. 885 
 
 tion, and established on the ruins of it a senatorial ol- 
 igarchy. The tribunes fled at once to Csesar. Pom- 
 pey 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. The^^ saw that a civil war 
 could end only in a despotism.^ " I have not met one 
 man," Cicero said, "who does not think it would be 
 better to make concessions to Csesar 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 Pom- 
 pey says. I cannot differ from Pom pey." ^ 
 
 A day later, before the final vote had been taken, 
 he thought still that the Senate, was willing to let 
 Cfesar keep his province, if he would dissolve his 
 army. The moneyed interests, the peasant land- 
 holders, were all on Caesar's side ; they cared not 
 even if monarchy came so that they might have 
 peace. " We could have resisted Csesar easily when 
 he was weak," he wrote. " Now he has eleven le- 
 gions 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 un- 
 constitutionally. 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 
 
 1 " Turn certe tyrannus existet." — To Atticus, vii. 5. 2 /j. vil. 6. 
 25 
 
386 Coe%ar, 
 
 will you do then ? you ask. As the sheep folio wa 
 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. Sut if 
 the " good " are beaten, this much is certain, that Cae- 
 sar will be as bloody as Ginna, and as greedy of other 
 men's properties as Sylla." ^ 
 
 Once more, and still in the midst of uncertainty: 
 " The position is this : We must either let Csesar 
 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 tlie 
 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 fur- 
 ther should a tribune interpose and be deprived of 
 
 office, and so take refuge with him You will 
 
 say, persuade Csesar, 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 Csesar should be con- 
 sul. Better thus, you will say, than with an army. 
 No doubt. But a certain person holds that his con- 
 
 1 To Atticus, vii. 7, abridged. 
 
Wavering of Public Opinion. 387 
 
 sulship would be an irremediable misfortune. We 
 must yield if Caesar will have it so. He will be con- 
 Bul again, the same man that lie was before ; then, 
 weak as he was, he proved stronger than the wliole 
 of us. What, think you, will he be now ? Pompey, 
 for one thing, will surely be sent to Spain. Misera- 
 ble 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, how- 
 ever, 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 ? 
 Csesar 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 diso- 
 beys. 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 de- 
 spite 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." ^ 
 
 These letters give a vivid picture of the uncertain- 
 ties which distracted public opinion during the fatal 
 first week of January. Csesar, it seems, might pos- 
 sibly 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 
 §een, had been reflecting already that there were 
 
 1 To Atticus, vii. 9, abridged. 
 
388 Cmar. 
 
 means less perilous than civil war by which danger- 
 ous persons might be got rid of. And there were 
 weak points in his arguments which his iuipatience 
 passed over. Caesar held a positive engagement 
 about his consulship, which the people had ratified. 
 Of the ten years Avhich 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 hiuiself in 
 the power of a faction so little scrupulous. It is evi- 
 dent, however, that Porapey 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 compli- 
 ment to Caesar's character than in believing that he 
 would hesitate over his answer. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 C^SAE, when the report of the Senate's action 
 reached him, addressed his soldiers. He 
 
 B C 49 
 
 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 sup- 
 posed 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. La- 
 bienus 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 fol- 
 low 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.^ At 
 
 - The vision on the Rubicon, with the celebrated saying that " the die 
 
890 Ccesar, 
 
 Rimini the troops were again assembled. Curio told 
 them what had passed. C^sar added a few more 
 words. The legionaries, ojficers and privates, were 
 perfectly satisfied ; and Caesar, who, a resolution once 
 taken, struck as swiftly as his own eagles, was pre- 
 paring 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 tliis moment Lucius 
 Caesar, a distant kinsman, and the praitor 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 re- 
 lieve each other's alarms and suspicions in a personal 
 interview. 
 
 is cast," is unauthenticated, and not at all consistent with Caesar's char* 
 •cter. 
 
Flight of the Senate, 391 
 
 With this answer the envoys went, and Csesar 
 paused at Rimiui. Meanwhile the report reached 
 Rome that Cajsar had crossed the Rubicon. The 
 aristocracy had nursed the pleasant beUef that his 
 heart would fail him, or that his army would desert 
 him. His heart had not failed, his army had not de- 
 serted ; and, in their terror, they saw him already in 
 their midst like an avenging Marius. He January, 
 was coming. His horse had been seen on ^" ^' ^^' 
 the Apennines. Flight, instant flight, was the only 
 safety. Up they rose, consuls, prsetors, senators, 
 leaving wives and children and property to their fate, 
 not halting even to take the money out of the treas- 
 ury, 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 Cic- 
 ero, 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. Cer- 
 tainly 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 unre- 
 liable. 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 magis- 
 trates, the closing of the treasury, Avill 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." ^ 
 
 1 To Atticus, vii. 12. 
 
392 Coesar. 
 
 A gleam of hope came with the arrival of Labienus, 
 but it soon clouded. " Labienus is a hero," Cicero 
 said. " Never Avas 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 quar- 
 relled 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 can- 
 not say; he cannot even pretend to do anything con- 
 stitutionally ; but what is to become of us, with a gen- 
 eral 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 le- 
 gions invidiously detained and almost not belonging 
 to us. As to the levies, the men enlist unwillingly, 
 and hate the notion of a war." ^ 
 
 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, 
 fiinco so it must be. Unluckily for themselves, they 
 
 1 Delectus .... invitorum est et pugnaiido ab horrentiura. — To At- 
 NciM, vii. 13. 
 
Pompey^s Reply to Ccesar, 393 
 
 left Pompey to draw up their reply. Pompey in- 
 trusted the dut}^ to an incapable person named Ses 
 tius, and the answer was ill-written, awkward, and 
 wanting on the only point which would have proved 
 his sincerity. Pompey declined the proposed inter- 
 view. Cajsar 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 Ca?sar'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.^ 
 
 To Cicero these terms seemed to mean a capitula- 
 tion clumsily disguised. Cixsar interpreted them dif- 
 ferently. To him it appeared that he was required 
 to part with his own army, while Pompey was form- 
 ing another. No time was fixed for the departure to 
 Spain. He might be himself named consul, yet Pom- 
 pey might be in Italy to the end of the year with an 
 army independent of him. Evidently there was dis- 
 trust 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 suc- 
 cessfully. " 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 Pice- 
 .ium,2 and we are then to return to Rome. Labienus 
 assures him that Caesar is utterly weak. Thus he is 
 m better spirits." ^ 
 
 1 Compare Caesar's account of .these conditions, De Bella Civili, i. 10, 
 with Cicero to Atticus^ vii. 17. 
 
 2 Between the Appcnnines and the Adriatic, about Ancona; in the lin« 
 »f Ceesar's march should he advance from Rimini. 
 
 » To Atticua, vii. 16 
 
394 Ccesar. 
 
 A second legion had by this time arrived at Rim- 
 ini. Caesar considered that if the Senate really de- 
 sired peace, their disposition wotdd be quickened by 
 further pressure. He sent Antony across the-, mount- 
 ains to Arezzo, on the straight road to Rome; and 
 he pushed on himself towards Ancona, before Pompey 
 had time to throw himself in the way. The towns 
 on the way opened their gates to him. The munic- 
 ipal 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 com- 
 missioners do not «ven 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, 
 February. miserable and incredible though it be, is 
 B. 0. 49. prostrate. He has no courage, no purpose, 
 
 no force, no energy Cains 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. Cae- 
 sar will soon be in Apulia, and Pompey on board ship. 
 What shall I do ? I should not doubt had there not 
 been such shameful mismanagement, and had I been 
 myself consulted. Caesar invites me to peace, bat his 
 letter was written before his advance.'* ^ 
 
 I To Atticus, vii. 21. 
 
Capture of Corfinium, 395 
 
 Desperate at the lethargy of their commander, the 
 aristocracy tried to force him into. movement by act- 
 ing on their own account. Domitias, 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 liia two 
 hjgions, and Domitius sent an express to tell him that 
 Caesar's force was still small, and that with a slight 
 effort lie might inclose him in the mountains. Mean- 
 while 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 Do- 
 mitius 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. Do- 
 mitius and his companions proposed to steal away in 
 the night. They were discovered. Their own troops 
 arrested them, and carried them as prisoners to Cae- 
 sar. 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 Cse- 
 sar like a bandit if be 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, 
 
396 Cmar, 
 
 restoring even Domitius's well-filled military chest, 
 and too proud to require a promise from liim 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, 
 Bent 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 guaranty for his personal safety. ^ 
 
 Cicero's trials had been great, and were not dimin- 
 ishing. The account given by Balbus was simply 
 incredible to him. If Csesar was really as well dis- 
 posed 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 
 March fears had represented him, and that his mild- 
 
 B. u. 49. jjggg ^j^g nierely 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 Pompe^^'s 
 the safe side ? or rather, would it be safe to go against 
 him ? The necessity for decision was drawing closer. 
 
 - "Balbus quidem major ad me scribit, nihil malle Csesarem, quam 
 ;riacipe Pompeio sine jnetu vivere. Tu puto haec credis." — To Atticus. 
 riii. 9. 
 
Perplexity of Cicero, 397 
 
 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 politi- 
 cal," he said, " attach me to Pompey. If I stay be- 
 hind, 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 sup- 
 pose 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 
 Furthur Gaul, married his daughter, supported Clo- 
 dius, helped me back from exile indeed, but neglected 
 me afterwards ; how he prolonged Caesar's command, 
 and backed him up in everything ; how in his third 
 consulship, when he had begun to defend the consti- 
 tution, he yet moved the tribunes to carry a resolu- 
 
898 Cmar. 
 
 tion for taking Caesar's name in his absence, and him' 
 self sanctioned it by a law of his own ; how he re- 
 sisted Marcus Marcelliis, who would have ended Cae- 
 sar's government on the 1st of March. Let us forget 
 all this : but what was ever more disgraceful than the 
 ilighi from Rome? What conditions would not have 
 beon 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, pubUc and private, all the enemy's ? There 
 is no cause, no rallying point for the friends of the 
 
 constitution The rabble are all for Csesar, 
 
 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 cer- 
 tainly, 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 po- 
 sition ! — while I write word comes that Ca3sar is at 
 Corfinium. Domitius is inside, with a strong force 
 and eager to fight. I cannot think Pompey will de- 
 Bert him." 1 
 
 Pompey did desert Domitius, as has been seen.. 
 The surrender of Corfinium, and the circumstances of 
 ft, gave Cicero the excuse which he evidently desired 
 tc find for keeping clear of a vessel that appeared to 
 hiin 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 
 1 To AUicua, viii. 3. 
 
Cicero advises Pompey to make Peace, 899 
 
 Domitius and his friends might have been purposely 
 left to fall into Csesar's hands, in the hope j-ebruarv 
 that Ciesar would kill them and make him- ®- ^' *^- 
 self unpopular. Pompey, he was satisfied, meant as 
 much to be a despot as Ceesar. 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 array, and come back and ruin Italy, and be 
 a new " Sylla." ^ 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 con- 
 sidered that Csesar had been wronged in the course 
 which had been pursued towards 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 Csesar'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.*^ 
 
 To Pompey he wrote : — 
 
 " My advice was always for peace, even on hard 
 terms. I wished you to remain in Rome. You never 
 \iinted 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 
 
 1 To Attictis, viii. 11. 
 
 2 " Judicaviqiw te bello violari, contra cujus honorem, populi Romani 
 benelicio concessum, inimici atque invidi niterentnr. Sed ut ec .empore 
 non modo ipse fautor dignitatis tuae fui, verum etiam caeteris auc'or ad te 
 adjuvandum, sic me nunc Pompeii digriitas veheineuter movet," etc. — 
 Ciqero to Ccesar, inclosed in a letter to Atticus, in. 11. 
 
400 Ccesar. 
 
 will. I know well that my conduct has not pleased 
 those who desired to fight. I urged peace ; not be- 
 cause I did not fear what they feared, but because 
 I thought peace a less evil than war. When the war 
 BXarch ^^^ bcguu and overtures were made to you, 
 
 B. c. 49. yQ^ 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 
 us their counsels have been taken, I can but do my 
 duty as a member of the Commonwealth, and as a 
 friend to you." ^ 
 
 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 nego- 
 tiations had failed. Csesar, hoping that a better feel- 
 ing might arise after his dismissal of Domitius, had 
 waited a few days at Corfinium. Finding that Pom- 
 pey 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, 
 Osesar 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 
 naif the army had already gone. Pompey was still 
 in Brindisi, with 12,000 men, waiting till the trans- 
 ports could return to carry him after them. Pompey 
 
 1 Inclosed to Atticus, viii. 11. 
 
Pompey leaves Italy. 401 
 
 again refused to see CaBsar, and, in the absence of the 
 consuls, declined further discussion. Csesar tried to 
 blockade him, but for want of ships was unable to 
 close the harbor. The transports came back, and 
 Pompey sailed for Durazzo.^ 
 
 A few extracts and abridgments of letters will 
 complete the picture of this most interesting time. 
 
 Cicero to Atticus? 
 
 " Observe the man into whose hands we have 
 fallen. How keen he is, how alert, how well pre- 
 pared ! 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." 
 
 Balhus to Cicero,^ 
 
 " Pompey and Csesar have been divided by perfidi- 
 ous villains. I beseech you, Cicero, use your influ- 
 ence to bring them together again. Believe me, Cae- 
 sar 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 Cajsar 
 by begging Lentulus to stay in Italy, and you have 
 
 1 Pompey had for two years meditated on the course which he Avas now 
 taking. Atticus had spoken of the intended flight from Italy as base. 
 Cicero answers : " Hoc turpe Cnaeus noster biennio ante cogitavit : ita Siil- 
 lalurit animus ejus, et diu proscripturit; " "so he apes Srlla and long* 
 <or a proscription." — To Atticus, ix. 10. 
 
 2 To Atticus, viii. 13. 
 
 • lucloded to Atticus, viii. 15. 
 26 
 
402 Gmar. 
 
 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 ap- 
 prove of Csesar's conduct at Corfinium." 
 
 Cicero to Atticus} 
 
 " My preparations are complete. I wait till I Ckn 
 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 Pisis- 
 tratus does them no harm, they are as grateful to him 
 as if he had protected them from others. What re- 
 ceptions 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 con- 
 quer Italy, but to lay it waste." 
 
 Cicero to Atticus.^ 
 
 " 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 
 
 1 To Atticus, viii. 16. 2 /&. ix. 4. 
 
Cicero on the Situation, 403 
 
 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 amuse myself as time passes with these specu- 
 lations." 
 
 Cicero to Atticus.^ 
 
 "Pompey has sailed. I am pleased to find that 
 you approve of my remaining. My efforts now are 
 to persuade Cscsar 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 AtticusJ^ 
 
 " 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, 
 ftnd seize the property of all who have any. Cassar 
 1 To Atiicus, ix. 6. ^ Jb. 7 and 9. 
 
404 Ccesar, 
 
 may do as ill ; but the prospect is friglitful. The 
 fleets from Alexandria, Colchis, Sidon, Cyprus, Pam- 
 phylia, Lycia, Rhodes, Chios, Byzantium, will be 
 employed to cut off our supplies, and then Pompey 
 himself will come in his wrath." 
 
 Cicero to Aitieus.'^ 
 
 " 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.2 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 w^hich he might be got rid 
 of .3 But, as you say, the sun has fallen out of the 
 
 1 To Atticus, ix. 10. 
 
 2 ^'Ita dies et noctes tanquam avis ilia mare prospecto, evolwe cupio." 
 * 'Hunc primum mortalem es«e, deinde etiam multis m(idis extingui 
 
 posse cogitabain." — To Atticus, ix. 10 
 
Shadow of the Future, 405 
 
 sky. The sick man thinks that while there is life 
 there is hope. I continued to hope as long as Pom- 
 pey 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 al- 
 ready running. If the life of Csesar alone stood be- 
 tween his country and the resurrection of the consti- 
 tution, 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 in- 
 fection. 
 
CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 POMPEY was gone, gone to cover the Mediterra- 
 Aprii, nean with fleets which were to starve Italy, 
 B.C. 49. g^jj^ ^Q raise an army which was to bring 
 him back to play Sylla's game once more. The con- 
 suls had gone with him, more than half the Senate, 
 and the young patricians, the de3cendants of the Me- 
 telli and the Scipios, with the noble nature melted 
 out of them, and only the pride remaining. Csesar 
 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 prov- 
 ince. 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 with- 
 out resistance, Cato, who was in command in Mes- 
 sina, complaining openly that he had been betrayed. 
 Caasar 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 
 
Ccesar at Rome. 407 
 
 to blame Pompey, and lie should say that he disap- 
 proved 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.^ Csesar let him 
 take his own course, and went on by himself. The 
 consuls being absent, the Senate was convened b}^ 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 interr 
 preted 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 consulsliip. 
 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- govern- 
 ment 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 
 9.11 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 sit- 
 
 ^ To Atticus, ii. 18. 
 
408 Ocesar. 
 
 nation 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 peo- 
 ple 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. Cae- 
 sar took such money as he needed, and went with his 
 best speed to join his troops in Gaul. 
 
 His singular gentleness had encouraged the opposi- 
 tion to him in Rome. In Gaul he encoun- 
 
 B. C. 49. 
 
 tered 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 re- 
 asserting 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 bod}^ 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 dis- 
 patched to encourage and assist the townspeople with 
 a squadron of Pompey's fleet. When Csesar 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 
 
The Spanish Campaign, 409 
 
 as many Spanisli auxiliaries. Yet Marseilles must 
 be shut in, and qaickl}^ 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 ex- 
 temporized 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 Mar- 
 seilles blockaded by sea and land, Csesar 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 Spanisli army had to be destroyed or captured, 
 and that immediately ; and it was stronger than Cse- 
 sar's own, and was backed by all the resources of the 
 province. 
 
 The details of a Roman campaign are no longer in- 
 teresting. The results, with an outline of the means 
 by which they were brought about, alone concern the 
 modern reader. Pompey 's lieutenants, having failed 
 to secure the passes, was lying at Lerida, in Catalo- 
 nia, 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 
 thft time at which the armies came in sight of each 
 otner Afranius and Petreius, with all their legions, 
 
410 Ccesar. 
 
 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 on 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 surren- 
 der. Marseilles still held out. Poinpey's, it seemeH, 
 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.^ 
 
 1 " 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. Curi(? 
 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 cit- 
 izen but a Persian could not endure Pompey will not lay doAvn 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 i-e- 
 turn to Italy with an overwhelming fleet. And what will he say to me if he 
 finds me still sitting here? — Let alone dut}', I must think of the danger. 
 .... Every course has its perils ; but I should surely avoid a course 
 is which 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 Pompe}' 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 Ciiesar 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 
 
The Sjyanish Campaign. 411 
 
 The situation was indeed most critical. Even Cae- 
 sar's own soldiers became unsteady. He remarks 
 that in civil wars generally men show less composure 
 than in ordinary campaigns. But resource in diffi- 
 culties 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 carcases of the 
 animals in the camp. Swiftly in these vessels the 
 swollen waters of the Segre were crossed; the con- 
 voys were rescued. The broken bridges were re- 
 paired. 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 in- 
 tercepted, 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 Cor- 
 finium. It appeared that they regarded Csesar 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 dis- 
 missed 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 
 
 or seven daj's. He could not keep up the mask. His harshness to Metellus 
 destroyed his credit for clemency, and his taking money from the treas- 
 ury destroyed his reputation for riches. 
 
 "As to his followers, how can men govern provinces who cannot man- 
 age their own affairs for two months together ? Such a monarchy could 
 
 not last half a year. The wisest men have miscalcjiated If that is 
 
 my case, I must bear the reproach but I am sure it will be as I 
 
 say. Cajsar will fall, either by his enemies or by himself, who is his worst 
 
 enemy I hope 1 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 comeg 
 MO matter whether I see it or foresee it." — To Atticus, x. 8. 
 
412 Cces^ar, 
 
 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, be- 
 haved 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 en- 
 gagements 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 
 
State of Rome, 413 
 
 were brought to him without conditions. Again he 
 pardoned every one ; more, he said, for the reputa- 
 tion of the colony than for the merits of its inhab- 
 itants. Domitius had fled in a gale of wind, and 
 once more escaped. A third time he was not to be 
 so fortunate. 
 
 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 CaBSar was not a parti- 
 san 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 
 onl}^ in his wishes, or had not extended beyond the 
 classes who had expected from Csesar a general parti- 
 tion 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 Csesar such good service as tribune, 
 had met with a still graver disaster. After recover- 
 ing 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 gar- 
 rison 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 
 
414 Ccesar, 
 
 misfortune was not considerable in itself, but it en- 
 couraged liopes 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 circum- 
 Btances so strangely changed. With curious punctil- 
 iousness he observed that the legal interval had ex- 
 pired 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 inva- 
 sion. Public credit was shaken. Debts had not been 
 paid since the civil war began. Money-lenders had 
 charged usurious interest for default, and debtors 
 were crying for novoe tahulce, and hoped to clear them- 
 selves by bankruptcy. Csesar 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 inter- 
 val was cancelled. Many persons complained of in- 
 justice which they had met with in the courts of law 
 during the time that Pompey was in power. Csesar 
 
Coesar at Brindisi. 415 
 
 refused to revise the sentences Mmself, 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 meas- 
 ured by days. He had to settle accounts with Pom- 
 pey while it was still winter, and while Pompey's 
 preparations for the invasion of Italy were still in- 
 complete ; and he, and his veterans, scarcely allowing 
 themselves a breathing-time, went down to Brindisi. 
 
 It was now the beginning of January by the unre- 
 formed calendar (by the seasons the middle of Oc- 
 tober) — a year within a few days since Caesar had 
 crossed the Rubicon. He had nominally twelve le- 
 gions 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 Brin- 
 disi, at Durazzo. It was described afterwards as in- 
 harmonious and ill-disciplined, but so far as report 
 went at the time Caesar had never encountered so for- 
 midable an enemy. There were nine legions of Ro- 
 man 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, sling- 
 ers 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 
 
il6 Ccesar. 
 
 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 dis- 
 posed in squadrons along the east shore of the Adri- 
 atic ; the headquarters were at Corfu ; and the one 
 purpose was to watch the passage and prevent Caesar 
 from crossing over. 
 
 Transports run down by vessels of war were in- 
 evitably 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 neighbor- 
 hood 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 cir- 
 custances 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 know- 
 ing 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 
 
Ccesar goes to Gi-eece. 417 
 
 everything which he had undertaken, and had been 
 thanked by Cato for his ill successes. Csesar knew 
 the men with whom he had to deal. He knew Pom- 
 pey's incapacity ; he knew Bibulus's incapacity. He 
 kn^w that public feeling among the people was as 
 
 much on his side in Greece as in . Italy, janu 
 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 haz- 
 ards 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 horse 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 re- 
 turning transports. Caesar had started them immedi- 
 ately 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 to- 
 wards Durazzo, occupied Apollonia, and intrenched 
 himself on the left bank of the river Apsus. The 
 country, as he anticipated, was well-disposed and fur- 
 nished him amply with supplies. He still hoped to 
 persuade Pompey to come to terms with him. He 
 
 27 
 
il8 Coesar, 
 
 trusted, perhaps not unreasonably, that the generos- 
 ity 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. 
 VibuUius 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 for- 
 ward to Durazzo with a message of peace. 
 
 '' Enough had been done," Caesar said, " and For- 
 tune 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 ri- 
 valry. If either he or Pompey gained a decisive ad- 
 vantage, the victor would be compelled to insist on 
 harder terms. If they could not agree, Ca3sar 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 dis- 
 band their troops in three days." 
 
 Pompey, not expecting Caesar, was absent in Ma- 
 cedonia when he heard of his arrival, and was hurry- 
 ing 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 
 Btand faithfully by Pompey. Generals, tribunes, and 
 wenturions had sworn after him. They had then 
 moved up to the Apsus and encamped on the oppo- 
 site side of the river, waiting for Pompey to come up, 
 
Death of Bihulus. 419 
 
 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 Csesar; his com- 
 mand fell into abler hands. 
 
 At length Pompey arrived. Vibullius Rufus deliv- 
 ered his message. Pompey would not hear February, 
 him to the end. "What care I," he said, ^^^■^^^ 
 " for life or country if I am to hold both by the fa- 
 vor 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 Csesar. Deputations 
 from both sides were chosen to converse and consult, 
 with Csesar's warmest approval. Some arrangement 
 might have followed. But Labienus interposed. He 
 appeared at the meeting as if to join in the confer- 
 ence ; he was talking in apparent friendliness to 
 Cicero's acquaintance, Publius Vatinius, who was 
 serving with Caesar. Suddenly a shower of daifcs 
 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 
 
420 CcBsar, 
 
 confusion, Labienus shouting, " Leave your talk of 
 composition ; there can be no peace till you bring us 
 Caesar's head." 
 
 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 find- 
 ing that Caesar would give no sanction to confisca- 
 tion 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 begin- 
 ning of the war. He had been left as praetor at 
 Rome when Caesar went to Greece. He in his wis- 
 dom 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 
 April, wrote privately to Cicero that he was bring- 
 
 B. c. 48. 'j^g them over to Pompey,^ and he was do- 
 ing 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 
 vhe Government treated him as a madman, and de- 
 posed 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 
 
 - "Nam liic nunc prseter foeneratores paucos nee homo nee ordo qais- 
 qum ett nisi Pompeianus. Equidem jam effeci ut maxime plebs et qui 
 witea noster fuit populus vestser esset." — Caelius to Cicero, Ad Fam. viii. 
 17. 
 
Antony Sails for Greece, 421 
 
 murder of Clodius, privately joined him ; and to- 
 gether 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 Csesar'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 Cas- 
 lius 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 Csesar 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 opportuni- 
 ties had been missed.^ He wrote to Antony sharply. 
 The legions, true as steel, were ready for any risks 
 sooner than leave their commander in danger. A 
 Bouth 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 Nymphsea, 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 Cassar'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 
 
 1 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 
 fien who find truth too tame for them. 
 
422 Ccesar, 
 
 had left Brindisi were missing in the morning. 
 They had gone by mistake into Lissa, and were sur- 
 rounded 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 im- 
 mediately 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 com- 
 rades 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. 
 
 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 a surrender he could not, for the 
 pea was open, and Pompey's fleet had entire com- 
 mand of it. But the moral effect on Italy of the 
 news that Pompey was besieged might, it was hoped, 
 force him out from his intrenchments. If Pompey 
 May, could not venture to engage Csesar on his 
 
 *• ^- ^- own chosen ground, and surrounded by his 
 Eastern friends, his cause at home would be aban- 
 doned as lost. Nor was the active injury which 
 
Siege of Durazzo. 423 
 
 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 diJ0B.culty 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 in to 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 pro- 
 fession, and with those admiring mentions of each in- 
 dividual 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 ofiicer in command shrank 
 from responsibility ; and, notwithstanding the seri- 
 ousness of the consequences, Caesar said that the 
 officer was right. 
 
 Pompey's army was not yet complete. Metellus 
 Scipio had not arrived with the Syrian legions. 
 Scipio had come leisurely through Asia Minor, plun- 
 dering 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 
 ioo small for the business on hand, was thus further 
 
424 Ccesar, 
 
 reduced, and at this moment there fell out -one of 
 j^jjg those accidents which overtake at times the 
 
 B.C. 48. 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 
 liad promoted to important positions. They were re- 
 ported to have committed various peculations. Caesar 
 spoke to them privately. They took offence and de- 
 serted. 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 engage- 
 ment 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 ho flew himself to the scene, threw himself 
 into the thickest of the fight, and snatched the stand- 
 ards from the flying bearers. But on this single occa- 
 sion he failed in restoring confidence. The defeat 
 was complete ; and, had Pompey understood his busi- 
 ness, Caesar's whole army might have been over- 
 thrown. 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 Pom- 
 pey. 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 in- 
 furiate them. They were eager to fling themseivea 
 
Retreat of Ccesar. 425 
 
 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 oast 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. 
 
 The gleam of victory was the cause of Pompey's 
 ruin. It was unlocked for, and the importance of it 
 exaggerated. Cassar 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 hj IWjno, 
 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 
 
426 Coesar, 
 
 might offer itself for an engagement under fairer 
 terms. On the whole he considered the second alter- 
 native 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 im- 
 portant Thessalian town, shut its gates upon him ; 
 j^iy^ and, that the example might not be fol- 
 
 ^•c.48. lowed, Gomphi was instantly stormed and 
 given up to plunder. One such lesson was enough. 
 No more opposition was ventured by the Greek cities. 
 Pompey meanwhile had broken up from Durazzo, 
 and after being joined by Scipio was following lei- 
 surely. There were not wanting persons who warned 
 him that Caesar's legions njight 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 oflficer of a Senatorial Di- 
 rectory. These gentlemen, more especially the two 
 late' consuls, Scipio and Lentulus, were persuaded 
 that a single blow would now make an end of Caesar, 
 
The Eve of Fharsalia, 427 
 
 Hia 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 im- 
 patient of every day which delayed their return to 
 Italy. They accused Pompey of protracting the war 
 unnecessarily, that he might have the honor of com- 
 manding such distinguished persons as themselves. 
 They had arranged everything that was to be done. 
 Caesar and his band of cut-throats were in imagina- 
 tion already dispatched. They had butch- August 9, 
 ered hitherto every one of them who had ^•^•^^• 
 fallen into their hands, and the same fate was de- 
 signed 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 per- 
 son 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 
 
428 CcBsar, 
 
 Caesar were to be divided. Domitius Ahenobarbus, 
 Leutulus Spinther, and Scipio were unable to deter- 
 mine which of them was to succeed Caesar as Ponti- 
 fex 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. Senar 
 tors 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; representa- 
 tives in person and in principle of the traditions ot 
 Sylla, brought face to face with the representative of 
 Marius. Here were the men who had pursued Cae- 
 sar through so many years with a hate so inveter- 
 ate. 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 Phar- 
 Balia were watered by the precious blood of the elect 
 
Pharsalia, 429 
 
 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. Csesar, to give his men confi- 
 dence, 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 iidvisers 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 towards the end of May by 
 real time, Caesar had broken up his camp and was 
 preparing for his usual leisurely march, when he per- 
 ceived a movement in Pompey's lines which told him 
 that the movement 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 Csesar's soldiers into intensified fierceness 
 by his barbarities at Durazzo, had spoken the decid- 
 ing 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 ac- 
 tion ; part perished of fever in the autumn in Italy. 
 I^Iany went home. Many were left behind unable to 
 wove. The men you see before you are levies newly 
 
430 Ccesar. 
 
 drawn from the colonies beyond the Po. Of the vet- 
 erans that were left the best were killed at Durazzo." 
 
 A council of war had been hel^i 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 scat- 
 ter Csesar's horse, and then to wheel round and en- 
 velop his legions. Thus he had thought they would 
 lose heart and scatter at the first shock. Csesar had 
 foreseen what Pompey would attempt to do. His 
 own scanty cavalry, mostly Gauls and Germans, would, 
 he" well knew, be unequal to thfe 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 fourtb^line of cohorts specially 
 selected to engage the cavalry ; and on them, he said, 
 in giving them their instructions, the result of the ac- 
 tion would probably depend. 
 
 Pompey commanded on his own left with the two 
 legions which he had taken from Caisar; outside him 
 
Pharsalia. 431 
 
 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 ear- 
 nestly he had sought for peace, how careful he had al- 
 ways been of his soldiers' lives, how unwilling to 
 deprive the State of the services of any of her citi- 
 zens, to whichever party they might belong. Crasti- 
 nus, a centurion, of the 10th legion, already known 
 to Csesar 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 Csesar, " I shall earn your thanks 
 this day, dead or alive." 
 
 Pompey had ordered his first line to stand still to 
 receive Caesar's charge.^ 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 
 
 1 I follow CsBsar's own account of the action. Appian is minutely cir- 
 eamstantial, 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 
 Cffisar's own authority is incomparably the best. 
 
482 Cmar, 
 
 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 show- 
 ers 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 forma- 
 tion, 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 near- 
 est 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, per- 
 haps, 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 harassed out of self-respect by his senato- 
 rial directors, a commander only in appearance, h,ad 
 left the field in the beginning of the action. He had 
 lost heart on the defeat of the cavalry, and had re- 
 tired to his tent to wait the issue of the day. 
 
 The stream of fugitives pouring in told him too 
 
Fharsalia, 433 
 
 surely what the issue had been. He sprang upon his 
 horse and rode off in despair. His legions were rush- 
 ing back in confusion. C^sar, 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 com- 
 panies 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 stand- 
 ards, 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 vic- 
 tory; 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 Crasti- 
 nus, 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 
 
434 Coemr, 
 
 few wounded in these battles. The short sword of 
 the Komans seldom left its work unjBnished. 
 
 " They would have it so," Cassar is reported to have 
 said, as he looked sadly over the littered bodies in the 
 familiar patrician dress.. " After all that I had done 
 for my country, I, Caius Caesar, should have been con- 
 demned by them as a criminal if I had not appealed 
 to my army."^ 
 
 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 Catohad been left at Durazzo), contrived 
 to escape in the night. The rest, twenty-four thou- 
 sand 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, al- 
 lowed 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 Ahenobai'bus, be- 
 lieving that for him at least there could be no forgive- 
 ness, tried to escape, and was killed. The rest were 
 pardoned. 
 
 So ended the battle of Pharsalia. A hundred and 
 
 ^ Suetonius, quoting from Asinius PoUio, who was present at the battle. 
 
Cicero's Refleetions. 435 
 
 eighty standards were taken and all the eagles of 
 Pompey's legions. In Pompey's own tent 
 was found his secret correspondence, impli- 
 cating persons, perhaps, whom Caesar had never sus- 
 pected, 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 pa- 
 pers unread. 
 
 Would the war now end ? That was the question. 
 Caesar thought that it would not end as long as Pom- 
 pey was at large. The feelings of others may be 
 gathered out of abridgments from Cicero's letters : — 
 
 Cicero to Planeius?- 
 
 " 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 oui 
 cause as the defeat of it. I attached myself to Pom- 
 pey'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 in- 
 solent 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? 
 
 " 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 
 
 1 Ad Familiaree, W. 14. ^ jb, xv. 15. 
 
436 Ccesar. 
 
 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, ind 
 that the vanquished would consider their own." 
 
 To Varro?- 
 
 " 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.^ 
 
 " "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 con- 
 sulted my reputation, however, more than my safety ; 
 
 i Ad Fam. ix. 6. 2 /6. yH, 3. 
 
Cicero's Mejlections. 437 
 
 and if I afterwards repented of my decision it was 
 not for the peril to myself, but on account of the 
 state of tilings which I found on my arrival at Pom- 
 pey'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 lan- 
 guage 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 ad- 
 vised 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 Ccecina?- 
 
 " I would tell you my prophecies but that you 
 would think I had made them after the event. But 
 many persons can bare 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 ad- 
 
 1 Ad Fam. vi. 6. 
 
438 Ccesar. 
 
 vice was for the good of them both 1 thought 
 
 that Pompey ought to go to Spain. Had he done so, 
 the war would not have been. I did not so much in- 
 sist that Csesar could legally stand for the consulship 
 as that his name should be accepted, because the peo- 
 ple had so ordered at Pompey's own instance. I ad- 
 vised, 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 mis- 
 fortune has happened in the war which I did not pre- 
 dict." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The strength of the senatorial party lay in Pom* 
 pey's popularity in the East. A halo was 
 Btill supposed to hang about him as the cre- 
 ator 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 
 
440 Cce^ar. 
 
 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 every- 
 where veered round. The JEgean islands begged 
 him politely not to compromise them by his pres- 
 ence. 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 un- 
 willing 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' 
 bad declared for Csesar. 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 Egyp- 
 tian 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 hal be- 
 queathed the crown to the two elder ones, Cleopatra, 
 who was turned sixteen, and a brother two years 
 
Fomyey flies to Egypt, 441 
 
 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 for- 
 lorn 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 tor- 
 rent. Plain enough it had long been to him that he 
 would not be able to govern the wild forces of a re- 
 action 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 penal- 
 ties 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 fit- 
 ness 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 
 .n Rome when he was driven from his throne, and 
 had connived at the murder of the Alexandrians who 
 
442 Ccesar. 
 
 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 un- 
 natural 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 Pe- 
 lusium, to guard against Cleopatra and her friends. 
 
 Of all this Pompey knew nothing. When he ar- 
 rived 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 Egyp- 
 tians 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 suc- 
 cessful. 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 iden- 
 tified 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," Csesar observes. 
 
Beath of Pompey, 443 
 
 "friends easily become foes." The guardians of the 
 young king sent a smooth answer, bidding Pompey 
 welcome. The water being shallow, they disspatched 
 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 sliip 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, Csesar 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 
 ^s 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 
 3orruption or rapacity. So far as he was himself 
 
444 Ccesar. 
 
 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 ex- 
 tend beyond weakness and incompetence. Unfortu- 
 nately he had acquired a position by his negative vir- 
 tues 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 villainies 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 Phcebus 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 Lentu- 
 lus 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 mur- 
 dered as well. 
 
 Cassar meanwhile had followed along Pompey's 
 track, hoping to overtake him. In Cilicia he heard 
 where he was gone; and learning something more 
 \»ccurately 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. To 
 
Revolt in Alexandria. 445 
 
 gether, so much had they been thinned by hard serv- 
 ice, these legions mustered between them little over 
 8,000 men. The force was small, but Caesar con- 
 sidered that, after Pharsalia, there could be no dan- 
 ger 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 au- 
 thority, 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 busi- 
 ness to be done in Egypt before Csesar could leave 
 it. Delay was specially inconvenient. A prolonged 
 absence from Italy would allow faction time to rally 
 again. But Csesar did not look on himself as the 
 leader of a party, but as the guardian of Roman in- 
 terests, and it was not his habit to leave any neces- 
 sary 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 Per- 
 gamus,^ to bring him reinforcements from Syria, 
 
 1 Supposed to have beea a natural son of Mithridates the Great. The 
 reason for the special confidence which Caesar placed in him does not ap- 
 pear. The danger at Alexandria, perhaps, did not appear at the moment 
 particularlj'- serious. 
 
446 Ocesar, 
 
 "while he himself at once took the goyernment 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.^ The 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 Ga- 
 binius, they made up 20,000 as dangerous ruffians as 
 
 1 Roman scandal discovered afterwards that Caesar had been fascinated 
 by the charms of Cleopatra, and allowed his politics to be influenced by a 
 love aifair. Roman fashionable society hated Cassar, and any carrion was 
 welcome to them which would taint his reputation. Cleopatra herself 
 favored the story, and afterwards 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 afterwards put to death by Augustus as an impostor. 
 No one claims immaculate virtue for Cassar. 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 connec- 
 tion 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 dif- 
 ficulty 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 hy 
 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 fascuiated with her that he wished to extend his 
 voyage to Ethiopia, 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 ex- 
 oedition could have been contemplated. During the greater part of the 
 lime 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 hi« 
 mnrder, more will be said hereafter. 
 
Revolt in Alexandria. 447 
 
 had ever been gathered into a single city. The more 
 respectable citizens had no reason to love the Ro- 
 mans. The fate of Cyprus seemed a foreshadowing 
 of their own. They too, unless they looked to them- 
 selves, 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 Ptol- 
 emy's guardians, sent secretly for the troops at Pe- 
 lusium, 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 Med- 
 iterranean. If they came out, they might cut his 
 communications. Without hesitation he set lire to 
 the docks ; burnt or disabled the greater part of the 
 bhips ; seized the Pharos and the mole which con-, 
 nected 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 
 lime 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 
 
448 C(2%ar, 
 
 his very life. The Alexandrians were ingenious and 
 indefatigable. They pumped the sea into the con- 
 duits 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 sliip, 
 in which Caesar was present in person, and he was 
 obliged to swim for his life.^ Still he held on, keep- 
 ing up his men's spirits, and knowing that relief must 
 arrive in time. He was never greater than in un- 
 looked-for difficulties. He never rested. He was al- 
 ways 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 dis- 
 honor the Roman name, and he would not entertain 
 the thought of it. 
 
 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. Cifisar 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 tlie boy was of no use to 
 
 - 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 tJie other. As if a general would take his MSS. 
 with him into a hot actiou 1 
 
Arrival of Mithridates. 449 
 
 ilm, 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 respecta- 
 ble to be fighting with a king than with a gang of 
 ruifiiins. 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 Cae- 
 sar'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 
 dispatched two legions to him. One arrived by sea 
 at Alexandria, and was brought in with some diffi- 
 culty. 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 oi his position to Caesar. The news reached 
 CiEsar and the Alexandrians at the same moment. 
 The Alexandrians luid the easiest access to the scene. 
 
 2!) 
 
450 Cce8ar. 
 
 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 dif- 
 ference. 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 author- 
 ity for the story precludes also the possibility of de- 
 nying 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 de- 
 tention 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 ; 
 tht 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 
 
Fresh Disorders, 451 
 
 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 out- 
 bidding 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 were unable, 
 perhaps unwilling, to control them. They too re- 
 garded the Commonwealth as a spoil which their 
 swords had won, and which they were entitled to dis- 
 tribute 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 Ser- 
 torius 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 press- 
 ing for his instant return to Rome. Important per- 
 sons were waiting to give him fuller information than 
 oould be safely committed to writing. He would have 
 
4:52 Ccesar, 
 
 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 fron- 
 tier disturbed was to risk a greater danger to the Em- 
 pire 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 Arme- 
 nia and Colchis, had given some help to Pompey, and 
 had sent him men and money ; and on Pompey's de- 
 feat, Pharnaces had supposed that he might seize on 
 Deiotarus's territories without fear of Caesar's resent- 
 ment. Deiotarus had applied to Domitius Calvinus 
 for assistance ; which Calvinus, weakened as he was 
 by the dispatch of two of his legions to Egypt, had 
 been imperfectly able to give. Pharnaces had ad- 
 vanced 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 readi- 
 ness to abide by Caesar's decision. Pharnaces camo 
 of a dangerous race. Caesar's lieutenant was afraid 
 that, if he hesitated, the son of Mithridates might be- 
 come as troublesome as his father had been. He re- 
 fused the presents. Disregarding his weakness, he 
 sent a peremptory command to Pharnaces to fall back 
 
Pharnaces, 453 
 
 witliin his own frontiers, and advanced to compel him 
 if he refused. In times of excitement the minds of 
 men are electric, and news travel with telegraphic 
 rapidity if not wdth telegraphic accuracy. Pharnaces 
 heard that Csesar was shut up in Alexandria, and was 
 in a position of extreme danger, that he had sent for 
 all his Asiatic legions, and that Calvin us had himself 
 been summoned to his assistance. Thus he thought 
 that he. might safely postpone compliance till the Ro- 
 man army was gone, and he had the country to him- 
 self. The reports from Egypt were so unfavorable, 
 that, although as yet he had received no positive or- 
 ders, Calvin us 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 at- 
 tack 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 re- 
 claimed 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, 
 
454 Ccesar. 
 
 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 Ronjan fash- 
 ion. He sent to Calvinus to meet him v^ith the sur- 
 vivors 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 de- 
 fective numbers. 
 
 Pharnaces, hearing that Caesar was at hand, prom- 
 ised submission. He sent Caesar a golden crown, in 
 anticipation perhaps that he was about to make him- 
 self king. He pleaded his desertion of Pompey as a 
 set-off against his faults. CiBsar answered that he 
 would accept the submission, if it were sincere ; but 
 Pharnaces must not suppose that good offices to him- 
 self could atone for injuries to the Empire.^ 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 
 Csesar's circumstances to mislead him. The state of 
 
 1 " Neque provinciarum injurias condonari iis posse qui fuissent ia M 
 •fficiosi." ~De Bello Alexandrino, 70. 
 
Defeat of Pharnaces. 455 
 
 Rome required CaBsar'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 Csesar'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 Trebi- 
 zond, and the scene of a great victory which had been 
 won by Mithridates over the Romans. Csesar 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 mo- 
 ment when no sane person could rationally expect an 
 attack ; and Caesar could not restrain his astonish- 
 ment 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 ex- 
 change 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 
 die moment, and made his way into his own country ; 
 
466 Coesar, 
 
 but lie was killed immediately after, and Asia Minor 
 was again at peace. 
 
 Caesar, caltii 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. 
 
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 
 piitriotism alike recommended submission to the ver- 
 dict of fortune. It is probable that this would have 
 been the result, could Csesar 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, Pe- 
 treius, 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 de- 
 stroyed at Alexandria. The defeat of Calvin us 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 
 
458 Ccesar, 
 
 generals were still living. His sons, Sextiis and 
 (/nasus, 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 offer- 
 ing 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 Csesar's oflScers when they could 
 find them, they put them invariably to death without 
 remorse. Cicero protested honorably against the em- 
 ployment of treacherous savages, even for so sacred a 
 cause as the defence of the constitution ; ^ but Cicero 
 was denounced as a traitor seeking favor with the 
 conqueror, and tlie 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 disaffec- 
 tion. 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 
 
 1 To Atticm, xi. 7. 
 
Order in Rome restored. 469 
 
 as thirteen legions out of the miscellaneous elements 
 which drifted in to him.. Cassar 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. CaBsar, 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 pub- 
 lic offices. Pompey and Pompey's friends would 
 have droAvned 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. Some- 
 thing only he remitted of the severity of interest, and 
 
460 Cmar, 
 
 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 ofiicers had taught them to look for ex- 
 travagant rewards. Their expectations had not been 
 fulfilled ; and when they supposed that their labors 
 were over they received orders to prepare for a cam- 
 paign in Africa. Sallust the historian was in com- 
 mand at their quarters in Campania. They mu- 
 tinied, 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 fearless- 
 ness 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 Csesar di- 
 rected them to state their complaints. They spoke 
 of their services and their sufferings. They said 
 that they had been promised rewards, but their re- 
 wards 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 thafe Cresar 
 could not dispense with them, and that they might 
 dictate their own terms. 
 
Mutiny in the Army, 461 
 
 During the wars in Gaul, Caesar had been most 
 munificent to his soldiers. He had doubled their or- 
 dinar}^ pay. He had shared the spoils of his con- 
 quests 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 
 *' comilitones," " comrades," " brothers-in-arms." 
 
 The familiar word was now no longer heard from 
 him. "You say well, Quirites,"^ 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 recom- 
 pense. 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 glory- 
 ing 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 al- 
 lotted 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 
 
 ^ Citizens. 
 
462 Ccesar, 
 
 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 im- 
 plored to be allowed to continue with him. He re- 
 lented, 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 Csesar 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 re- 
 sponsible he never forgave. 
 
 The African business could now be attended to. 
 It was again midwinter. Winter cam- 
 paigns 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 Csesar 
 was longing for his destruction. The army with 
 which he would have to deal was less respectable 
 than that which Pompey had commanded at Du- 
 razzo, 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 
 
Campaign in Africa, 463 
 
 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 fol- 
 low as they could. No rendezvous had been posi- 
 tively 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.^ 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 stilj 
 under a shower of arrows, and asked in mockery wb*,» 
 .they were. A soldier of the 10th legion lifted hio 
 cap, that his face might be recognized, hurled hi;, 
 javelin for answer, and brought Labienus's horse to 
 the ground. But courage was of no avail in the faco 
 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 spiritc. " 
 Roman residents in the African province came grao 
 ually in to him, and some African tribes, out of re- 
 spect, it was said, for the memory of Marius. A few 
 towns declared against the Senate in indignation at 
 
 1 "W here the African coast turns south from Cape Bon. 
 
 2 " Animum enim altum et erectura prae se gerebat. — De Bello Afru 
 
464 Ccesar. 
 
 Scipio's promise that the province was to be aban- 
 doned to Juba. Scipio replied with burning the Ro- 
 man country houses and wasting the lands, and still 
 killing steadily every friend of Caesar that he could 
 lay hands on. Csesar's steady clemency had made no 
 difference. The senatorial faction w^ent 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. 
 
 The time of clemency was past. Publius Ligariua 
 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 deser- 
 tions being made up by fresh recruits sent from Utica 
 by Cato, Cassar's men flinched from facing the ele- 
 April 6, phants, and time was lost while other ele- 
 B. c. 46. pbants were fetched from Italy, that they 
 qaight handle them and grow familiar with thenu 
 
Battle of Thapsus. 465 
 
 Sclplo had been taught caution by the fate of Pom- 
 pey, and avoided a battle, and thus three months 
 wore away before a decisive impression had been 
 made. But the clear dark eyes of the cgn jueror 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.^ If Thapsus was blockaded at sea and be- 
 sieged 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 re- 
 sult 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 intrench ments, 
 and Caesar was leisurely watching their operations, 
 when at the sight of the enemy an irresistible enthu- 
 siasm 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 afterwards 
 there was less a battle than a massacre. Officers 
 and men fled for their lives like frightened antelopes, 
 or flung themselves on their for knees 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 
 
 1 Between Carthage and Utica. 
 30 
 
46(5 Ccesar. 
 
 carnage, but bis efforts were unavailing. Tbe leaders 
 escaped for tbe time by tbe speed of tbeir 
 horses. Tbey scattered with a general pur- 
 pose of making for Spain. LaMenus readied it, but 
 few besides bim. Afranius and Faustus Sylla with 
 a party of cavalry galloped to Utica, wbicli tbey ex- 
 pected to bold till one of tbe Porapeys could bring 
 vessels to take tbem off. Tbe Utican townspeople 
 had from the first shown an inclination for Csesar. 
 Neither tbey nor any other Romans in Africa liked 
 the prospect of being passed over to tbe barbarians. 
 Cowards smarting under defeat are always cruel. 
 Tbe fugitives from Thapsus found that Utica would 
 not be available for their purpose, and in revenge 
 tbey 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 com- 
 panionship. He was shocked at the needless cruelty, 
 and bribed tbe murderous gang to depart. Tbey 
 were taken soon afterwards by Caesar's cavalry. 
 Afranius and Sylla were brought into the camp as 
 prisoners. There was a discussion in tbe camp as to 
 what was to be done with them. Caesar wished to 
 be lenient, but tbe feeling in the legions was too 
 utrong. The system of pardons could not be con- 
 tinued in the face of hatred so envenomed. Tbe two 
 commanders were executed ; Caesar contenting him- 
 self with securing Sylla's property for bis wife, Pom- 
 peia, the great Pompey's daughter. Cato Caesar was 
 most anxious to save ; but Cato's enmity was so un- 
 governable that he grudged Caesar the honor of for- 
 giving him. His animosity bad been originally the 
 naturally antipathy which a man of narrow under- 
 standing instinctively feels for a man of genius. It 
 
Death of Cato, 467 
 
 had been converted by perpetual disappointment 
 into a monomania, and Caesar had become to hira 
 tlie incarnation of every quality and every principle 
 which he most abhorred. Cato was upright, unself- 
 ish, incorruptibly pure in deed and word ; but he was 
 a fanatic whom no experience could teach, and he ad- 
 hered to his convictions with the more tenacity, be- 
 cause fortune or the disposition of events so steadily 
 declared them to be mistaken. He would have sur- 
 rendered Cyesar to the Germans as a reward for hav- 
 ing 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 base- 
 ness, 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 con- 
 queror 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. 
 N(->bler Romans than he lived after him ; and a genu- 
 ine son of the .old Republic woidd never have con- 
 sented to surrender an Imperial province to a bar- 
 Darian prince. But at least he was an open enemy. 
 He would not, like his nephew Brutus, have pre- 
 tended to be Caesar's friend, that he might the more 
 conveniently drive a dagger into his side. 
 
468 Ccesar, 
 
 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 corre- 
 spondence 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 war- 
 riors by each other's hand. Juba killed Petreius, and 
 then ran upon his own sword. 
 
 So the actors in the drama were passing away. Do- 
 mitius, Pompey, Lentulus, Ligarius, Metellus Scipio, 
 Afranius, Cato, Petreius, had sunk into bloody 
 graves. Labienus had escaped clear from the battle ; 
 and knowing that if Csesar himself would pardon him 
 Cagsar's army never would, he made his way to Spain, 
 where one last, desperate hope remained. The mu- 
 tinous 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 Labi- 
 enus 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 difiicul- 
 tves at Ruspinum, and was impatiently waiting for his 
 legions from Sicil}^, 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 bad not 
 
Discipline in Ccesar^s Army, 469 
 
 brought with him a single soldier. Avienus had been 
 already privately noted by Caesar as having been con- 
 nected with the mutiny in Campania. His own hab- 
 its 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 command- 
 ers. You oppressed towns which were under your 
 charge. Forgetting your duty to the army and to 
 me, you filled a vessel wath 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 
 i,lso. 
 
 " You, Titus Salienus, Marcus Tiro, Caius Clusinas, 
 ^^enturions, obtained your commissions by favor, not 
 by merit. You have shown want of courage in the 
 Seld ; your conduct otherwise has been uniformly 
 bad ; you have encouraged a mutinous spirit in your 
 
470 Ccesar, 
 
 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 fro"m the coun- 
 try. 
 
 This remarkable picture of Caesar's method of en- 
 forcing discipline is described by a person who was 
 evidently present ; ^ and it may be taken as a correc- 
 tion to the vague stories of his severity to these offi- 
 cers which are told by Dion Cassius. 
 
 1 De Bella Africano, c. 54. This remarkably interesting: narrative if 
 attached to Csesar's Commentaries. The author is unknown. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 The drift of disaffection into Spain was held at first 
 to be of little moment. The battle of Thap- 
 
 B. C. 46. 
 
 BUS, 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 kmg convulsed the Empire. Rome put on its 
 best dress. The people had been on Ca3sar's side 
 from the first. Those who still nursed in their hearts 
 the old animosity were afraid to show it, and the na- 
 tion appeared once more united in enthusiasm for the 
 conqueror. There were triumphal processions which 
 lasted for four days. There were sham fights on ar- 
 tificial lakes, bloody gladiator shows, which the Ro- 
 man 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 inade- 
 quate to curb the inordinate extravagance. He was 
 named Dictator for ten years, with a right of nomi- 
 nating the persons whom the people were to choose 
 xor their consuls and praetors. The clubs and cau- 
 cuses, 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 Juliae became a practical reality. One remark- 
 able and durable reform was undertaken and carried 
 
472 Ccesar, 
 
 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 hith- 
 erto 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 sup- 
 plied by irregular intercalations, at the direction of 
 tlie 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 Ca3sar as 
 Pontifex Maximus devolved the duty of bringing con- 
 fusion 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 un- 
 likely 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, leav- 
 ing the moon altogether, took the sun for the basis of 
 the new system. The Alexandrian observers had dis- 
 covered that the annual course of the sun was com- 
 pleted in 865 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 arbi- 
 
Reform of the Calendar, 473 
 
 trary 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 Csesar so far deferred to usage as to choose to be- 
 gin, not with the solstice itself, but with the first new 
 moon which followed. It so happened, in that year 
 that the new moon was eiffht days after the 
 
 , . , , , ° '^ , B.C. 45. 
 
 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 cur- 
 rent year was lengthened by nearly three months. It 
 pleased Cicero to mock, as if Csesar, 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 Caisar in 
 this instance.^ 
 
 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 un- 
 known 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 daj's 
 division was supposed by the Romans to be Egyptian. We know it to 
 have been Jewiirh, 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 si ill 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 Scandi- 
 navian niA'thology. 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 b}' Dion Cassius the apfj-ovia Sia rea-crdptov. 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 
 ^f their apparent periods of revolution — Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, 
 Venus, Mercury, the Moon. The Jewish Jehovah was identified by the 
 Grseco-Romans with Saturn, the oldest of the heathen personal gods. The 
 Sabbath was the day supposed to be specially devoted to him. The first 
 
474 (Jcesar. 
 
 While Sosigenes was at work with the calendar, 
 Caesar personally again revised the Senate. He ex- 
 pelled every member who had been guilty of extor- 
 tion 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, unfortu- 
 nately, 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 de- 
 liberated on it. As a fitting close to the war he pro- 
 claimed 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 re- 
 mains of authentic fact to justify the general truth of- 
 the picture. Women had forgotten their honor, chil- 
 dren their respect for parents. Husbands had mur- 
 dered 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 de- 
 terred from crime by a fear of forfeiting their estates ; 
 
 day of the week was therefore given to Saturn. Passing over Jupiter and 
 Mars, according to the laws of the apfxofia, 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 Saturn i, dies 
 Soils, dies Lunss, dies Martis, dies Mercurii, dies Jovis, and dies Veneris. 
 Dion Casaius, See IJistoria Romann, lib. xxxvii, c 18. Dion Cassius gives 
 a second account of the distribution, depending on the twenty-four hours 
 >f the day. But the twenty-four hours being a division purely artificial, 
 this explanation is of less interest. 
 
Dissatisfaction of Cicero, 475 
 
 they had but to leave Italy, and their property was 
 secured to them. It was held an extraordinary step 
 towards improvement when Caesar abolished the mon- 
 strous privilege, and ordered that parricides should 
 not only be exiled, but should forfeit everything that 
 belonged to tbem, and that minor felons should forfeit 
 half their estates. 
 
 Cicero had prophesied so positively that C£8sar 
 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.^ 
 
 He could not deny that " the tyrant " was doing 
 what, if Rome was to continue an ordered common- 
 wealth, it was essential must be done. Csesar's acts 
 were unconstitutional I 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 Csesar, and Caesar only, 
 could preserve such degrees of freedom as could be 
 retained without universal destruction. But he re- 
 fused to be comforted. He considered it a disgrace 
 to them all that Csesar was alive.^ 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 Cnasus 
 Pompey had united their forces in Spain. The whole 
 Peninsula was in revolt, and the counter-revolution 
 
 1 To Atticus, X. 12. 
 
 2 " Cum vivere ipsum turpe sit nobis." — To Atticus^ xiii. 28. 
 
476 Cocsar, 
 
 was not impossible after all. He reflected with ter- 
 ror 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." 1 
 
 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 abil- 
 ity 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, wdth Caesar's, with Crom- 
 well'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 wdiicli has been inade- 
 quately trained. The mind which guided them is 
 absent. The instrument is called on to become self- 
 acting, and necessarily acts unwisely. Caesar's lieu- 
 tenarts while under his own eye had executed his 
 
 1 "Pjream nisi sollicitus sum, ac malo veterem et clementem dominura 
 habere, quam novum et crudelem experiri. Scis, Cnseus quam sit fatuus. 
 Scis, quomodo crudelitatem virtutem putet Scis, quam se semper a nobis 
 derisom putet. Vereor, ne nos rustice glaaio velit di/TiMUKTJjpiVai." — T* 
 CeUiu Cassius, Ad Fam. xv. 19. 
 
Ccesars Officers in Spain, 'ill 
 
 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 Lon- 
 ginus, Quintus Cicero, Sabinus, Decimus Brutus, Va- 
 tinius, were trusted with independent authority, only 
 to show themselves unfit to use it. Cicero had guessed 
 shrewdly that Caesar's greatest difficulties would be- 
 gin 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 re- 
 mained in the Empire. Thither had drifted the 
 wreck of Scipio's African army. Thither had gath- 
 ered the outlaws, pirates, and banditti of Italy and 
 the Islands. Thither too had come ffights of Numid- 
 ians and Moors in hopes of plunder ; and Pompey's 
 eons and Labienus had collected an army as numer- 
 ous as that which had been defeated at Thapsus, and 
 composed of materials far more dangerous and des- 
 perate. 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 
 
478 Ccesar, 
 
 remnants of tlie campaign in Africa ; the rest a mis- 
 cellaneous 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. Ap- 
 pearances were thrown off. There were no m(»re 
 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, i 
 
 Very reluctantly Cassar found that he must him- 
 self grapple with this "last convulsion. The sanguin- 
 ary 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 con- 
 stitutional 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 extraor- 
 dinary abstinence, to the simplicity of his habits, and 
 the calmness of temperament which in the most anx- 
 ious 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 dura- 
 ble 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 
 
Last Campaign in Spain, 479 
 
 of electoral agitation must preside over the army and 
 the administration, had been evident in lucid mo- 
 ments even to Cicero. To leave the prize to be con- 
 tended for among the military chiefs was to bequeath 
 a legacy of civil wars and probable disruption ; to 
 compound with the embittered remnants of the aris- 
 tocracy who were still in the field would intensify the 
 danger ; yet time and peace alone could give oppor- 
 tunity for the conditions of a permanent settlement 
 to shape themselves. The name of CsBsar had be- 
 come 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, Octa- 
 vius, afterwards Augustus, a fatherless boy of seven- 
 teen ; 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 re- 
 maining centuries of Roman power. 
 
 Octavius accompanied Cassar 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 mid- 
 
480 Ccesar, 
 
 winter when they left Rome. They travelled swiftly ; 
 and Caesar, as usual, himself brought the news thai 
 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 prin- 
 ciples which the Senate had adopted from the first. 
 Prisoners from the revolted legions were instantly ex- 
 ecuted, and Cnseus Pompey murdered the provincials 
 whom he suspected of an inclination for Csesar. At- 
 tagona 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. 
 
 The scene of the conflict which ended the Civil War 
 March 17 ^"^'^^ the plain of Munda. The day was the 
 B. c. 45. 27th of March, B. c. 45. Spanish tradition 
 places Munda on the Mediterranean, near Gibraltar. 
 The real Munda was on the Guadalquivir, 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 preg- 
 nant with auguries. Images had sweated ; the sky 
 had blazed with meteors ; celestial armies, the spirits 
 of the past and future, had battled among the cou- 
 stellations. The signs had been unfavorable to the 
 Pompeians ; the eagles of their legions had dropped 
 the golden thunderbolts from their talons, spread their 
 
Battle of Munda, 481 
 
 wings, and Imd flown away to Csesar. In reality, 
 the eagles had remained in their places till the stand- 
 ards fell from the hands of their dead defenders ; 
 and the battle was one of the most desperate in 
 which Csesar had ever been engaged. The num- 
 bers were nearly equal — the material on both sides 
 equally good. Pompey's army was composed of re- 
 volted Roman soldiers. In arms, in discipline, in 
 stubborn fierceness, there was no difference. The 
 Pompeians had the advantage of the 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, Avhen fortune had decided 
 who the conqueror was to be. There were no ma- 
 noeuvres ; 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 en- 
 emy fell dead. So equal was the struggle, so doubt- 
 ful at one moment the issue of it, that Csesar 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 
 aivision to check them. A shout rose, " He flies — 
 
 31 
 
482 Ccesar, 
 
 he flies ! " A panic ran along the Pompeian lines. 
 They gave way, and Csesar'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 fu2ritiv(3s. 
 
 B. C. 45» 
 
 Scarcely a prisoner was taken. Tliirty thou- 
 sand fell on the field, among them three thousand Ro- 
 man 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 de- 
 sertion of his general, his insults and his cruelties to 
 his comrades, expiated at last in his own blood. At- 
 tius 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 disap- 
 pearing in the mountains of Granada or the Sierra 
 Morena ; Cnseus flying for Gibraltar, where he hoped 
 to find a friendly squadron. 
 
 Munda was at once blockaded, the inclosing 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's points with the faces turned towards 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 lead* 
 
End of the Civil War. 488 
 
 ing citizen, who had headed the revolt against Csesar, 
 gathered all that belonged to him into a heap, poured 
 turpentine over it, and, after a last feast with his 
 famil}^, 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 mas- 
 sacre, and twenty-two thousand miserable people — 
 most of them, it maybe hoped, the fugitives from 
 Munda — were killed. The example sufficed. Every 
 town opened its gates, and Spain was once more sub- 
 missive. Sextus Pompey successfully concealed him- 
 self. Cnseus 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 pur- 
 suers 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 Cnesar, to 
 escape the reforms which were threatened by his sec- 
 ond consulship. They had involuntarily rendered 
 their country the best service which they were capa- 
 ble of conferring upon it, for the attempts which 
 Caesar would have made to amend a system too de- 
 cayed 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 
 
484 Ccesar. 
 
 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 Sen- 
 ate might remain as a Council of State; the magis- 
 trates might bear their old names, and administer 
 their old functions. But the authority of the execu- 
 tive 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 plat- 
 form oratory and senatorial vrrangling in the hearts 
 of her soldiers. 
 
 Caesar did not immediately return to Italy. Af- 
 fairs in Rome were no longer pressing, and, after the 
 carelessness and blunders of his lieutenants, the ad- 
 ministration 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 philoso- 
 phers, 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 oc- 
 curred to many others as well as to Cicero ; Caesar 
 could not but have foreseen in what resources disap* 
 
Und of the Civil War. 485 
 
 pointed 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 towards Rome. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 C^SAB came back to Rome to resume the sus- 
 pended work of practical reform. His first 
 
 B C. 46. 
 
 care was to remove the fears which the final 
 spasm of rebellion had again provoked. He had al- 
 ready granted an amnesty. But the Optimates were 
 conscious that they had desired and hoped that the 
 Pompeys might be victorious in Spain. Caesar in- 
 vited 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 forbear- 
 ance 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 
 bim, and would continue to hate him ; but he supposed 
 that they had recognized the hopelessness and useless- 
 ness of further conspiracy. By destroying him they 
 would fall only under the rod of less scrupulous con- 
 querors ; arid 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 distinc- 
 tion 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 pro- 
 motion. Thus he pardoned and advanced Caius Cas- 
 
General Amnesty. 487 
 
 Bius, who would have killed him in Cilicia.^ 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 Pharsa- 
 lia, and had been saved from death there by his spe- 
 cial 01 ders. 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 par- 
 doned also Quintus Ligarius,^ 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 for- 
 giveness 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 revo- 
 lution, and again dedicated them with a public cere- 
 monial. 
 
 Having thus proved that, so far as he was con- 
 cerned, he nourished no resentment against the per- 
 
 1 Apparently when Caesar touched there on his way to Egypt, after 
 Pharsalia. Cicero says {Philippic ii. 11) : " Quid ? C. Cassius .... qui 
 ctiam sine his clarissimis viris, hanc rem in Cilicia ad ostium fluminis 
 Cydni confecisset, si ille ad earn ripam quam coristituerat, non ad contra- 
 riara, navi appulisset." 
 
 2 To be distinguished from Publius Ligar'us, who had been put to dratb 
 before Thapsus. 
 
488 Omar, 
 
 sons of the Optimates, or against their pinciples, so 
 far as they were consistent with the future welfare of 
 the Roman State, Caesar set himself again to the re- 
 organization 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 revolu- 
 tion. 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 unwill- 
 ingly received ; a private handbill was sent round, 
 recommending the coldest of greetings to them.^ 
 
 The inferior magistrates were now responsible to 
 himseK 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 Curthage. As in- 
 spector of morals, Caesar inherited iii an invigorated 
 form the power of the censors. Senators and officials 
 who had discredited themselves by dishonesty were 
 
 1 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-" 
 
 SUETOMCS, Vita Julii Casaris, 80 
 
Sumptuary Regulations, 489 
 
 ruthlessly degraded. His own private habits and the 
 habits of his household were models of frugality. 
 He made an effort, in which A,ugustus afterwards 
 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 pro- 
 vide dainties for these gentlemen. He appointed in- 
 spectors to survey the dealers' stalls, and occasionally 
 prohibited dishes were carried off from the dinner- 
 table under the eyes of the disappointed guests.^ 
 Enemies enough Cassar made by these measures ; but 
 it could not be said of him that he allowed indul- 
 gences to himself which he interdicted to others. His 
 domestic economy was strict and simple, the accounts 
 being kept to a sesterce. His frugality was hospit- 
 able. 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 un- 
 lucky 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 
 Bevere. He, the supposed example of licentiousness 
 with women, executed his favorite freedman for adul- 
 tery with a Roman lady. A senator had married a 
 woman two days after her divorce from her first hus- 
 band ; Csesar pronounced the marriage void. 
 
 Law reforms went on. Cassar appointed a commis- 
 sion 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 
 
 1 Suetonius. 
 
490 Ccesar. 
 
 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 
 Ital}^, 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 marshes 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 growinsr visibly weaker, but 
 ms superhuman energy remamed unim- 
 paired. 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 tlie 
 
Honors heaped on Ccesar, 491 
 
 sincerity of their conversion by inventing honors for 
 their new master, and smothering him with distinc- 
 tions 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 Csesar 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 
 \>o him as ©eos avU-qTO's^ 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 holi- 
 day, and the month Quinctilis ^ was renamed, in 
 honor of him, July. A temple to Concord was to be 
 erected in commemoration of his clemency. His per- 
 son was declared sacred, and to injure him by word or 
 vleed 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 Cains Julius, but 
 
 1 The fifth, dating the beginning of the year, in the old style, from March. 
 
492 Caesar. 
 
 Divns Julius, a God or the Son of God. A temple 
 was to be built to Csesar as another Quirinus, and 
 Antony was to be his priest. 
 
 Ca3sar knew the meaning of all this. He must ac- 
 cept 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 in- 
 vidious, that he might the sooner perish." ^ The 
 praise and the slander of such men were alike in- 
 different 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 difiicult 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 col- 
 league died on the last day of oflBce, he named an- 
 other, that the customary forms might be observed; 
 Let him do what he would, malice still misconstrued 
 him. Cicero, the most prominent now of his senato- 
 rial flatterers, was the sharpest with his satire behind 
 the scenes. " Csesar," he said, " had given them so 
 active a consul, that there was no sleeping under 
 him." 2 
 
 Csesar 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 
 
 - Dion Cassius. 
 
 2 The second consul who had been put in held office but for a few hours. 
 
Conspiracies forming. 493 
 
 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 precau- 
 tions against assassination. On his first return from 
 Spain, he had been attended by a guard ; but he dis- 
 missed it in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, 
 and went dail}^ into the Senate-house alone and un- 
 armed. 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 ha- 
 tred was ever checked by fear of consequences. Ifc 
 was something to feel that he had not Hved in vain. 
 The Gauls were settling into peaceful habits. The 
 soil of Gaul was now as well cultivated as Ital}^ 
 Barges loaded with merchandise were passing freely 
 along the Rhone and the Sa6ne, the Loire, the Mo- 
 selle, and the Rhine.^ 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." 
 
 But Caesar was aware that conspiracies were being 
 formed against him; and that he spoke 
 Treel}^ 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 dis- 
 grace to the State. It has been seen, also, that he 
 bad long thought of assassination as the readiest 
 
 1 Dion Cassias. 
 
i94 Ccesar. 
 
 means of ending it. He asserted afterwards 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 de- 
 liberately claimed for himself a share of the guilt, if 
 guilt thero could be in what he regarded as the most 
 glorious achievement in human history .^ It may be 
 iissumed, therefore, that Cicero's views upon the sub- 
 ject 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 nieeness which 
 would be ungracious and unnecessary in the case of a 
 less distinguished man. After Pharsalia he had con- 
 cluded that the continuance of the war would be un- 
 justifiable. 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, how- 
 ever, encouraged him to hope. He assured him that 
 
 1 See the 2d Philippic, passim. In a letter to Decimus Brutus, he says: 
 * Quare hortatione tu quidem non eges, si ne ilia quidem in re, quae a te 
 gesta est post hominum memoriam maxima, hortatorem desiderasti." Ad 
 Fam, xi. 5. 
 
Speculations of Cicero. 495 
 
 Ca)sar was well disposed to him, and would not only 
 pardon him, but would show him every possible favor,^ 
 and with these expectations he contiived 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. Csesar 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 Gsesar, 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.^ 
 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.^ 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 de- 
 serted them, blaming himself at one time for his in- 
 decision, at another for having committed himself to 
 either side.* 
 
 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 re- 
 covered 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." 
 
 1 To Atticus, xi. 5-6. ^ Ad Ccelium, Ad Fam. ii. 16. 
 
 8 To Atticus, xi. 7.- 
 
 * <See To Atticus, xi. 7-9 : To Terentia, Ad Fam. xiv. 12. 
 
496 Ccesar. 
 
 Caesar had dined with him in the country, on hia 
 way home from Spain. He had been as kind as Cic- 
 ero could wish, but had avoided politics. When Cae- 
 sar 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 op- 
 portunity 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 completeiress which exceeded expectation. Cic- 
 ero rose to thank him in his presence, in terms which 
 most certainly did not express his real feelings, what- 
 ever 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 god- 
 like wisdom, he felt' himself unable to pass over 
 without giving expression to his emotions." ^ No 
 flow of genius, no faculty of speech or writing, could 
 adequately describe Caesar's actions, yet on that day 
 he had yet achieved a greater glory. Often had 
 Cicero thought, and often had said to others, that no 
 king or general had ever performed such exploits as 
 Csesar. In war, however, officers, soldiers, allies, cir- 
 cumstances, fortune, claimed a share in the result ; 
 and there were victories greater than could be won 
 on the battlefield, where the honor was undivided. 
 
 1 " Tantam enim mansuetudinem, tam inusitatam inauditamque cle- 
 mealiam, tantnm in summa potestate rerum omnium modum, tam denique 
 incredibilem sapienfiam ac paene divinam tacitus nullo modo praeterire 
 possum." — Pro Marco Marcello, 1. 
 
Speech of Cicero. 497 
 
 " To have conquered yourself," he said, addressing 
 Caesar directly, " to have restrained your resentment, 
 not onl}^ to have restored a distinguished opponent 
 to his civil rights, but to have given him more than 
 he had lost, is a deed which rises you above human- 
 ity, 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 fic- 
 tion, 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 ? B}^ 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 your- 
 self. 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 in- 
 nocent of crime, for he has given us back Marcellus, 
 at your entreaty. Me, of his own free will, he has re- 
 stored 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 con- 
 cluded that you entered into the conflict with him 
 
 82 
 
498 Ccesar. 
 
 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 pos- 
 sible 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. Csesar, 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 threat- 
 ened those that were in arms against them, but those 
 who sat quietly at home." 
 
 Cicero then said that he had heard a fear of assas- 
 sination 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 ene- 
 mies, for he had no enemies. Those who had been 
 his enemies were either dead through their own ob- 
 stinacy, 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 wel- 
 fare as to be ignorant that on your preservation his 
 
Speech of Cicero, ' 499 
 
 own depends, and that all our lives are bound up in 
 j^ours ? I, as in duty bound, think of you by night 
 and day ; I ponder over the accidents of humanity, 
 the uncertainty of health, the fraility 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 sor- 
 row 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 only to think of yourself. But by your ac- 
 tions 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 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 
 
500 Ccesar. 
 
 honored. It remains for you to rebuild the constitu- 
 tion. 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 tinion 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 the 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 reestablished 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 dis- 
 puted. Some will extol you to the skies, others will 
 find something wanting, and the most important ele- 
 ment 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. Sal- 
 vation there can be none for us, Cassar, unless you are 
 preserved. Therefore, we exhort you, we beseech 
 you to watch over your own safety. You believe 
 
Speech of Cicero, 501 
 
 that you are threatened by a secret peril. From my 
 own heart I say, and I speak for others as well as 
 mj^self, we will stand as sentries over your safety, 
 and we will interpose our own bodies between you 
 and any danger which may menace you." ^ 
 
 Such, in compressed form, for necessary brevity, 
 but deserving to be studied in its own brilliant lan- 
 guage, was the speech delivered by Cicero in the Sen- 
 ate 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 Ora- 
 tions, and the Senate possessed no other speaker 
 known to us, to whom, with any probabilit}^, so splen- 
 did an illustration of Roman eloquence could be as- 
 signed. 
 
 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 chal- 
 lenging for himself a share in the glory of tyranni- 
 cide, he exclaimed : — 
 
 " What difference is there between advice before- 
 hand and approbation afterwards? 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 disap- 
 proved when he was killed ? All were in fault, for 
 
 1 Pro Marco Marcello, abridged. 
 
502 Ccesar, 
 
 all the Boni joined in killing him, so far as lay in 
 them. Some were not consulted, some wanted cour- 
 age, si3me opportunity. All were willing." ^ 
 
 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 noth- 
 ing to fear, and so to put him off his guard ? If, as 
 he declared, he himself and the Boni^ who were list- 
 ening 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." ^ He was sitting in 
 front of the Temple of Venus Genetrix, and when 
 the senators approached he neglected to rise to re- 
 
 1 "Non intelligis, si id quod me arguis voluisse interfici Caesarem crimen 
 sit, etiam laetatum esse morte Csesaris 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 ilium 
 regnare gaudebant, qui illud aut fieri noluerit, aut factum improbarit? 
 Omnes enim in culpji. Etenim omnes boni quantum in ipsis fuit Caesarem 
 occiderunt. Aliis consilium, aliis animus, aliis occasio defuit. Vbluritag 
 Vi^raim:^ —'id Philippic, \% 
 
 3 Dion Cassias. 
 
The Kingship. - 503 
 
 ceive 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 sakitary than to ignore them. An acknowledg- 
 ment of Csesar 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 Par- 
 thians 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 
 whicTi they had received, concluded that Caesar might 
 be tempted, and that if they could bring him to con- 
 sent 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 per- 
 haps, 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.^ It was 
 
 1 So Dion Cassius states, on what authority we know not. Suetonius 
 Bays that as Cassar was returning from the Latin festival some one placed 
 % laurel crown on the statue, tied with a white ribbon. 
 
504 Ccesar. 
 
 done publicly, in the midst of a vast crowd, in Cne- 
 sar'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 republi- 
 can 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 ; ^ 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 
 
 1 The fact is certain. Cicero taunted Antony with it in the Senate, ic 
 the Second Philippic. 
 
The Conspiracy, , , 605 
 
 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 col- 
 lectively to defend his life. Caesar, whether he be- 
 lieved 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. 
 J^ut 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 out- 
 side 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 
 
506 Ccesar. 
 
 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 pro- 
 fessions 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 demoral- 
 ization of the Roman Senate than the completeness 
 with which they were able to disguise from them- 
 selves the baseness of their treachery. One man only 
 they were able to attract into cooperation 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 re- 
 lation, 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 ac- 
 cepted afterwards 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 pub- 
 lished 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 ac- 
 knowledged regard for him, made his accession to the 
 conspiracy an object of particular importance. The 
 
The Conspifacy. 507 
 
 name of Brutus would be a guaranty 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 Csesar 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 
 g:Oomy habits, given to dreams and omens, and easily 
 liable to be influenced by appeals to visionary feel- 
 ings. Caius Cassius, his brother-in-law, was employed 
 to work upon him. Cassius, too, was prsetor that 
 year, having been also nominated to office by Csesar. 
 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 Tar- 
 quins. The blood of a Brutus was consecrated to 
 liberty. This, too, was mockery: Brutus, who ex- 
 pelled the Tarquins, put his sons to death, and died 
 childless; Marcus Brutus came of good plebeian fam- 
 ily, with no glories of tyrannicide about them ; but 
 an imaginary genealogy suited well with the spurious 
 heroics which veiled the motives of Caesar's mur- 
 derers. 
 
 Brutus, once wrought upon, became with Cassius 
 the most ardent in the cause which assumed the as- 
 pect 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 hav- 
 ing been partisans of the beaten cause ; men who had 
 fought at Caesar's side till the war was over, and be- 
 lieved, like Labienus, that to them Caesar owed his 
 fortune, and that he alone ought not to reap the har- 
 vest. One of these was Trebonius, who had miscon- 
 ducted himself in Spain, and was smarting under the 
 recollection of his own failures. Trebonius had long 
 
508 Cmar, 
 
 before sounded Antony on the desirableness of remoy- 
 ing their chief. Antony, though he remained himself 
 true, had unfortunately kept his friend's counsel. 
 Trebonius had been named by Caesar for a future con- 
 sulship, but a distant reward was too little for him. 
 Another and a yet baser traitor was Decimus Brutus, 
 whom Csesar valued and trusted beyond all his officers, 
 whom he had selected as guardian for Augustus, and 
 had noticed, as was seen afterwards, with special 
 affection in his will. The services of these men were 
 invaluable to the conspirators on account of their in- 
 fluence with the army. Decimus Brutus, like Labie- 
 nus, had enriched himself in Csesar's campaigns, and 
 had amassed near half a million of' English money.^ 
 It may have been easy to persuade him and Trebonius 
 that a grateful Republic would consider- no recom- 
 pense too large to men who would sacrifice their com- 
 mander to their country. To Csesar 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 ingrati- 
 tude 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 cyni- 
 
 1 "Cum ad rempublicam liberandam accessi, HS. mihi fuit quadringoiv 
 ties amplius." — Decimus Brutus to Cicero, Ad Fam. xi. 1(. 
 
The Conspiracy, 609 
 
 cal 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 his- 
 tory of which had been so glorious, might have con- 
 tinued 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 im- 
 pulse 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 Tre- 
 bonius 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 porten- 
 tous an intention could not be kept entirely secret ; 
 many friends warned him to beware ; but he dis- 
 dained 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 i<,nd excitement, were equally vain. "Am I 
 
510 CcBBar. 
 
 to be frightened," he said, in answer to some report 
 of the haruspices, "because a sheep is without a 
 heart ? " 
 
 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 de- 
 parture. The occasion would be appropriate. The 
 Senate-house itself was a convenient scene of opera- 
 tions. The conspirators met at supper the evening 
 before at Cassius's house. Cicei'o, to his regret, was 
 not invited. The plan was simple, and was rapidly 
 arranged. Caesar would attend unarmed. The sena- 
 tors not in the secret would be unarmed also. The 
 party who intended to act were to provide them- 
 selves with poniards, which could be easily concealed 
 in their paper boxes. So far all was simple ; but a 
 March 14 qucstion rosc whether Caesar only was to 
 B. c.4i. i^g killed, or whether Antony and Lepidus 
 were to be dispatched along with him. They decided 
 that Caesar's death would be sufficient. To spill blood 
 without necessity would mar, it was thought, the sub- 
 limity 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 ; ^ fine 
 emotions were good in their place, in the perorations 
 of speeches and such like ; Antony, as Cicero admit- 
 ted, had been signally kind to him ; but the killing 
 Caesar was a serious business, and Ms friends should 
 have died along with him. It was determined other- 
 
 1 " Vellem Idibus Martiis me ad coenam invitasses. Reliquiarum nihil" 
 
 faisset." — Ad Cassium, Ad Fam. xii. 4. And again: "Quam vellem ad 
 
 illas pulcherrimas epulas me Idibus Martiis invitasses ! Reliquiarum nihi 
 habercmus." — Ad Trebonium, Ad Fam. x. 28. 
 
The Eve of the Murder. 511 
 
 wise. 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 en- 
 tered, Trebonius was to detain Antony in conversa- 
 tion at the door. The others were to gather about 
 CaBsar'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 were 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 Csesar'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.^ In the morning the sacrifices were 
 again unfavorable. Csesar was restless. Some natu- 
 ral disorder affected his spirits, and his spirits were 
 reacting on his body. Contrary to his usual habit, 
 be gave way to depression. He decided, at his wife's 
 entreaty, that he would not attend the Senate that 
 day. 
 
 A Dion Cassias, C Julius Ctesar, xliv. 17. 
 
512 Ccesar. 
 
 The house was full. The conspirators were in 
 March 15, their places with their daggers ready. At- 
 B. C.44. teudants came in to remove Cagsar'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 impossi- 
 ble for him to distrust, went to entreat his attend- 
 ance, giving reasons to which he knew that Caesar 
 would listen, unless the plot had been actually be- 
 trayed. It was now eleven in the forenoon. Csesar 
 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 Cassar 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 them- 
 selves that the augurs had foretold his fate, but he 
 would not listen ; he was doomed for his " contempt 
 of religion." ^ 
 
 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 
 
 1 " Spreta religione." — Suetonius. 
 
Murder of Ccesar, 613 
 
 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 S'lggested 
 no suspicion. One had a story to tell him; another 
 eome favor to ask. TuUius 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,^ who 
 was standing behind, stabbed him in the throat. He 
 started up with a cry, and caught Cassius's arm. An- 
 other 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 
 drewiiis gown over his head, gathered the folds about 
 him that he might fall decently, and sank down with- 
 out uttering another word.^ 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.^ The Senate rose with shrieks 
 and confusion, and rushed into the Forum. The 
 crowd outside caught the words that Caesar was dead, 
 
 1 Not perhaps Caius Cassias, but another. Suetonius says "alter e 
 Cassiis." 
 
 2 So says Suetonius, the best extant authority, who refers to the famous 
 words addressed to Brutus only as a legend : * Atque ita tribus et vlginti 
 plagis confossus est, uno modo ad primum ictum gemitii sine voce edito. 
 Etsi tradiderunt quidam Marco Bruto irruenti dixisse km <rv el Ueivoty* 
 KoX av TiKvovl " — Julius Ccesar, 82. 
 
 8 "Cruentum alte extollens Marcos Brutus pugionem, Ciceronera nomi- 
 natim exclamavit atque ei recuperatam libertatem est gratulatus." — i'Ai- 
 Ufpic ii. 12. 
 
614 Coesar. 
 
 and scattered to their houses. Antony, guessing that 
 those who had killed Csesar would not spare liimself, 
 hurried off into concealment. The murderers, bleed- 
 ing 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 hi in I 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 The tyrannicides, as the murderers of Osesar called 
 themselves, had expected that the Roman mob would 
 De caught by the cry of Liberty, and would ji^j-ch 15, 
 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, Avhom they had secreted 
 in the Temple, broke out and plundered the unpro- 
 tected booths. A dead and ominous silence prevailed 
 everywhere. At length a few citizens collected in 
 knots. Brutus spoke, and Cassius spoke. They ex- 
 tolled their old constitution. They said that Csesar 
 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 Cse- 
 sar 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 conspira- 
 tors 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 Cnesar had been a tyrant, 
 to throw his bod}^ into the Tiber, and to confiscate 
 bis property to the State. They discovered to their 
 
516 Ccesar. 
 
 consternation that if Caesar was a tryant, all liis acts 
 would be invalidated. The praetors and tribunes 
 held their offices, the governors their provin ^,es, un- 
 der Csesar's nomination. If Caesar's acts were set 
 March 16, asidc, Dccimus Biutus was hot governor of- 
 E.G. 44. North Italy, nor Marcus Brutus of Mace- 
 donia ; 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. Man 37^ 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* 
 .joldiers 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 respecb. Imagination took an- 
 other flight. Caesar's death might be regarded as a 
 Bacrifice, an expiatory offering for the sins of the na- 
 tion ; and the divided parties might embrace in virtue 
 of the atonement. They agreed to send for Antony, 
 
Speech of Cicero, 517 
 
 and invite him to assist in saving societ}^ ; and they 
 asked Cicero to be tlieir 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.^ Others, however, undertook 
 the office. Antony agreed to meet them, and the 
 next morning the Senate was assembled in the 1 am- 
 ple 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 Ave n tine. He spoke of the 
 Gracchi, of Saturninus and Glaucia, of Marius and 
 Sylla, of Sertorius and Pompey, of Csesar and the 
 still unforgotten Clodius. He described the fate of 
 Athens and of other Grecian States into which fac- 
 tion 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. 
 
 " Csesar is slain," he said. *' The Capitol is occu- 
 pied 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 >vo 
 have lived less like men than like wild beasts in cy- 
 
 1 Philippic ii. 35. 
 
518 Ccesar. 
 
 sles of recurring revenge. Let us forgefc 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 Csesar deserved 
 his death, and much against those who have killed 
 him. But to raise the question will breed fresh quar- 
 rels ; 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 Csesar's ordinances, let 
 Caesar's appointments be maintained. None such 
 must be heard of again. But what is done cannot 
 be undone." ^ 
 
 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. Bub 
 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 immedi- 
 ate 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 ad- 
 vised 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 
 
 1 Abridfifed from Dion Cassius, who probably gives no more than the 
 traaltionary version of Cicero's words. 
 
Funeral of Ccesar. 519 
 
 murder was and would be regarded as a most exe- 
 crable crime. He dreaded the effect of a public fu- 
 neral. He feared that the will might contain provi- 
 sions which would rouse the passions of the people. 
 Though Caesar was not for various reasons to be pro- 
 nounced 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 na- 
 tion. But the humor of conciliation and the theory 
 of " the atoning sacrifice " had caught the Senate. 
 Capsar had done great things for his country. It 
 would please the army that he should have an honor- 
 able sepulture. 
 
 If they had refused, the result would not have been 
 greatly different. Sooner or later, when the stun- 
 ning 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 oppres- m^rch 
 Bors of the provinces. Caesar had forced the ^•^•**- 
 nobles to give the people a share of the public lands. 
 Csesar 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 
 bim. No Roman had ever served his country better 
 m peace or war, and thus he had been rewarded. 
 
 Such thoughts were already Avorking in ter.s 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 
 
520 Coesar, 
 
 some fierce explosion. For this reason Antony had 
 pressed for it, and the Senate had given their con- 
 sent. 
 
 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 3^. of English 
 money), and he had left them his gardens on the Ti- 
 ber, as a perpetual recreation ground, a possession 
 which Domitius Ahenobarbus had designed for him- 
 self before Pharsalia. He had made Octavius his 
 general heir ; among the second heirs, should Octa- 
 vius fail, he had named Decimus Brutus, who had 
 betrayed him. A deep movement of emotion passed 
 through the crowd when, beside 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 Ccesar his affec- 
 tion was genuine. The people were in intense expec- 
 tation. 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 de- 
 sired, and the oath which the senators had each per- 
 s»<nally taken to defend him from violence. He then 
 spoke — spoke with the natural vehemence of a 
 
Speech of Antony, 521 
 
 friend, yet saying nothing which was not literally 
 true. The services of Caesar neither needed nor per- 
 mitted 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 hberality ; he described him as generous to his 
 friends, forbearing with his enemies, without evilin 
 himself, and reluctant to believe evil of others. 
 
 " Power in most men," he said, " has brought their 
 faults to light. Power in Csesar brought into prom- 
 inence his excellences. Prosperity did not make him 
 insolent, for it gave him a sphere which corresponded 
 to his nature. His first services in Spain deserved a 
 triumph ; of his laws I could speak forever. His 
 campaigns in Gaul are known to you all. The 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 re- 
 garded the Commonwealth as the patrimony of them- 
 selves. 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 la- 
 bored 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 
 Borry for Pompey's death, and he treated his murder- 
 ers as they deserved. He settled Egypt and Ar- 
 menia. He would have disposed of the Parthians 
 
622 Ctjesar, 
 
 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 good- 
 ness.' ^ He was alwa3^s 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 through 
 out was to save all who would allow themselves to be 
 saved. He repaired old acts of injustice. He re- 
 stored 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 youL 
 benefactor ; you made him chief of the State, not be- 
 ing curious of titles, but regarding the most which 
 you could give as less than he had deserved at your 
 hands. Towards 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 Patrice. And this your father, your Pon- 
 tifex, 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, 
 
 1 ''Eju,(|)t)Tos xpTjo-TOTrjs are Dion Cassius's words. Antony's language wag 
 differently reported, and perhaps there was no literal record of it. Dion 
 Cassius, however, can hardly have himself composed the version which ho 
 gives in his history, for he calls the speech as ill-t'ined as it was brilliant. 
 
Speech of Antony, 523 
 
 CaBsar, 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 sacTifice ! '' ^ 
 
 Antony's words, as he well knew, were a declara- 
 tion 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 w^ho had sat 
 by while the deed was being done. They had been 
 moved to fury by the murder of Clodius. Ten thou- 
 sand Clodiuses, had he been all which their imagina- 
 tion 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 
 Optiraates 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 con- 
 sumed 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 rush- 
 ing wildly to add a chip or splinter. Actors flung in 
 their dresses, musicians their instruments, soldiers 
 their swords. Women added their necklaces and 
 scarfs. Mothers brought up their children to con- 
 
 1 A'Diidgod from Dion Cassius, xliv. 36. 
 
524 Ccesar. 
 
 tribute toys and playthings. On the pile so composed 
 the body of Ciesar was reduced to ashes. The re- 
 mains were collected with affectionate care 
 
 B. C. 44. 
 
 and deposited in the tomb of the Csesars, 
 in the Campus Martins. The crowd, it was observed, 
 was composed largely of liber tini and of provincials 
 whom Csesar 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, Cas- 
 sius, 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 obedi- 
 ent to their officers, till it could be seen how events 
 would turn. Lepidus joined the army in Gaul; An- 
 tony continued in Rome, holding the administration 
 in his hands and watching the action of the Senate. 
 Csesar 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 ; ^ 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 bitter- 
 ness of his disenchantment, " but the kingdom is with 
 Uc still; " " we have taken away the tyrant ; the tyr- 
 
 ^ ** ^n deorum numerum relatus est uon ore modo decernentium sed et 
 pefsuaiuone vulgi." — Suetonius. 
 
Fruitlessness of the Murder. 525 
 
 anny survives." Caesar had not overthrown the oli- 
 garchy ; their own incapacity, their own selfishness, 
 their own baseness, had overthrown them. Caasar 
 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 con- 
 stitution was a living force which would revive of it- 
 self 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 con- 
 sented 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 suprem- 
 acy 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 depend- 
 ents, of men whose occupation was luxury, and whose 
 appetites were for monstrous pleasures. The self- 
 respect of reasonable men could no longer tolerate 
 Buch a rule in Italy or out of it. In killing Caesar 
 the Opti mates had been as foolish as they were treach- 
 erous ; for Caesar's efforts had been to reform the con- 
 stitution, 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 feroc- 
 ity, the treachery of the aristocracy, had compelled 
 Caesar to crush them ; and the more desperate their 
 struggles the more absolute the necessity became. 
 
626 CcBsar. 
 
 But he alone could have restored as much of popular 
 liberty as was consistent vvitli the responsibilities of 
 such a government as the Empire required. In Csesar 
 alone were combined the intellect and the power nec- 
 essary 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 per- 
 sist. In the army only remained the Imperial con- 
 sciousness 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 de- 
 stroying power is arrested, and the timber will endure 
 a thousand years. So it was with Rome. The con- 
 stitution 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 peo- 
 ple. The sohd 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 Tibe- 
 rius (hacchus, but to form an endurable shelter for 
 civilized mankind, until a fresh, sjnritual life was de- 
 veloped 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 
 
Odavius and Antony. 527 
 
 murder, came to Rome to claim bis inlieritance. He 
 was but eigbteeii, too young for tbe burden which 
 was thrown upon him ; and being unknown, he had 
 the confidence of the legions to win. The army, dis- 
 persed over thei 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 
 Avhen 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." 
 
 For a year the confusion lasted ; two of Csesar's 
 officers, Hirtius and Pausa, were chosen b. g.44- 
 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 Cic- 
 ero's dreams to the ground. Cicero's friend. Plan- 
 cus, who commanded in Normandy and Belgium, at-- 
 tempted a faint resistance, but was made to yield to 
 the resolution of his troops. Octavius and Antony 
 came to an understanding ; and CaBsar's two gener- 
 als, who were true to his memory, and Octavius, who 
 was the heir of his name, crossed the Alps, at the 
 liead of the united army of Gaul, to punish the mur- 
 der 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 en- 
 
528 ^ Ccesar, 
 
 thusiasm of their approval. They were all men who 
 had sworn fidelity to Caesar, and had been ostenta- 
 tious in their profession of devotion to him. It had 
 become too plain that from such persons no repent- 
 ance 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 
 w(juld 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. 
 Cagsar 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 ap- 
 plauded them afterwards, were included in a pro- 
 scription 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. Bru- 
 tus 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 de- 
 serves 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 memor}^ is not allowed to die. 
 
 After the dispersion of the conspirators which fol- 
 lowed Caesar's funeral, Cicero had remained in Rome. 
 His timidity seemed to have, forsaken him, and he 
 
Fate of Cicero. 529 
 
 had striven, with an energy which recalled his bright- 
 est 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 in- 
 vectives 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 pre- 
 server. 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, corre- 
 sponded 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 December 7 
 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 in- 
 firmities. 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 with- 
 out a settled resolution, and he allowed himself to be 
 
 34 
 
580 Cmar. 
 
 driven back by a storm. Theatrical even in extremi 
 ties, he thought of returning to Rome and of killing 
 himself in Cesar's house, that he might bring the 
 curse of his blood upon Octavius. In these uncertain- 
 ties he drifted into his own villa at Formiae,^ saying 
 in weariness, and with a sad note of his old self-im- 
 portance, 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 v/ere approaching. 
 His servants thrust him into a litter and carried him 
 down through the woods towards 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 magnifi- 
 cent talents, high aspirations, and true desire to do 
 right, with an infirmity of purpose and a latent insin- 
 cerity 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 adminis- 
 tration of the Empire, if the Empire itself was to en- 
 dure. Cicero's natural place was at Caesar's side; 
 but to CuBsar alone of his contemporaries he was con- 
 scious of an inferiority which was intolerable to him. 
 
 1 Near Gaeta. 
 
Character of Cicero. 531 
 
 In his own eyes he was always the first person. He 
 had been made unhappy by the thouglit that posterity 
 might rate Pompey above himself. Closer acquaint- 
 ance had reassured him about Pompey, but in Ccesar 
 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 
 " Jom," whom he despised while he supported them, 
 drifting on through vacillation into treachery, till 
 " the ingredients of the poisoned chalice " were " com- 
 mended to his own hps." 
 
 In Cicero Nature half-made a great man and left 
 him uncompleted. Our charjicters are written in our 
 forms, and the bust of Cicero is the key to his his- 
 tory. 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. 
 
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 dis- 
 cover 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 an- 
 imosity, accusations of depravity are circulated as 
 surely about such men, and are credited as readily, 
 as under other influences are the marvellous achieve- 
 ments 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 curi- 
 ously into the mythology of scandal, we accept easily 
 and willingly stories disparaging to illustrious per- 
 sons in histor}^, because similar stories are told and 
 
Mythology of Scandal, 533 
 
 retold with so much confidence and fluency among 
 the political adversaries of those who have the mis- 
 fortune 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 so- 
 ciety, 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 ten- 
 dency 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 anec- 
 dotes related of Csesar 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 com- 
 mon passions of humanity. 
 
 Csesar, it is allowed, had extraordinary talents, ex- 
 traordinary energy, and some commendable qualities; 
 but he was, as the elder Curio said, *' omnium mulie- 
 rum vir et omnium virorum mulier ; " he had mis- 
 tresses 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 aver- 
 age of his contemporaries is in a high degree improba- 
 ble. He was a man of the world, peculiarly attract- 
 ive to women, and likely to have been attracted by 
 them. On the other hand, the undiscriminating 
 
634 Gcesar. 
 
 looseness attributed to him would have been pecul- 
 iarly 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 ridicu- 
 lous fcjs own laws against adultery and indulged him- 
 self 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 
 Ceesar's consulship, and the proofs are no more than 
 the libels of Bibulus, the satire of Catullus, and cer- 
 tain letters of Cicero's which were never published, 
 but were circulated privately in Roman aristocratic 
 society.^ A story is suspicious which is first produced 
 after twenty years in a moment of political excite- 
 ment. 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 an- 
 swer 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. Afiiection, 
 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 forcastle of the Victory ? But which 
 cf the soldiers sang these verses? Does Suetonius 
 mean that the army sang them in chorus as they 
 marched in procession ? The very notion is prepos- 
 terous. It is proved that during Caesar's lifetime 
 scandal was busy with his name ; and that it would 
 
 1 Suetonius, Julius Ccesar^ 49. 
 
Ccesar's Relations with Women. 635 
 
 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 him- 
 self flung them broadcast, and they were equally re- 
 turned upon himself. The surprise is rather that 
 Csesar's name should have suffered so little, and that 
 he should have been admitted on reflection by Sueto- 
 nius to have been comparatively free from the abomi- 
 nable form of vice which was then so common. 
 
 As to his liaiso7is with women, the handsome, brill- 
 iant 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 cul- 
 tivated 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 S^dla's 
 bidding ; that he was passionately attached to his 
 sister ; and that his mother, Aurelia, lived with him 
 till she died, and that this mother was a Roman ma- 
 tron 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 noto- 
 rious. Cleopatra, in spite of Oppius, was living with 
 him in his house at the time of his murder. That it 
 
636 Ccesar, 
 
 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 Cassar 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 pro- 
 fessed 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 Cal- 
 purnia's guest as well as her husband's ; and her pres- 
 ence, 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 
 Csesar after their acquaintance at Alexandria should 
 have invited her to stay with him. But was Cleo- 
 patra at Rome at all ? The only real evidence for 
 her presence there is to be found in a few words of 
 Cicero : " Reginse fuga mihi non molesta." — "I am 
 not sorry to hear of the flight of the queen." ^ There 
 is nothing to show that the "queen" was the Egyp- 
 tian 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. 
 
 1 To Alticut, xiv. 8. 
 
Personal Appearance, 537- 
 
 But enouorh and too much on this miserable sub- 
 ject. Men will continue to form their opinions about 
 it, not upon the evidence, but according to their pre- 
 conceived 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 iu 
 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 com- 
 plexion was pale. His beard and moustache were 
 kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and natu- 
 rally scanty, falling off towards 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, ab- 
 stemious 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 
 *et no one but Caesar mount him. From his boy- 
 hood 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 
 
538 Coeaar. 
 
 of high breeding. On an occasion when he was din- 
 ing somewhere the other guests found the oil too 
 rancid for them. Csesar 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 Ju- 
 gurtha had found so effective. Caesar in his indigna- 
 tion seized Juba by the beard in the court ; and when 
 Masintha was sentenced to some unjust penalty Cse- 
 sar 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 strik- 
 ingly remarkable. Cicero, who often heard him, and 
 was not a fayorable judge, said that there was a preg- 
 nancy in his sentences and a dignity in his manner 
 which no orator in Rome could approach. But he 
 
Ccesar as a Statesman. 639 
 
 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 obsti- 
 nacy 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 privi- 
 leges of citizenship, with the introduction of the pro- 
 vincial 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 prac- 
 tical. The purpose of government he conceived to 
 be the execution of justice ; and a constitutional lib- 
 erty 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, se- 
 lected the man who was best able to do it, not caring 
 particularly who or what he might be in other re- 
 spects. To this faculty of discerning and choosing 
 fit persons to execute his orders may be ascribed the 
 extraordinary success of his own provincial adminis- 
 tration, 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 
 
540 Ccesar. 
 
 their personal advancement and the prosperity of 
 their own people. No act of Caesar's showed more 
 sagacity than 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 profes- 
 sion of a soldier ; yet perhaps no commander who 
 ever lived showed greater military genius. The con- 
 quest 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 ca- 
 pable of being turned implied, in the first place, ex- 
 traordinary 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 impregna- 
 ble 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 supe- 
 riority. 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 en- 
 tirely unknown had to be surveyed ; routes had to be 
 laid out ; the depths and courses of rivers, the char- 
 acter 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 pro- 
 vided for, many of which must necessarily arise, 
 ♦ * ough the exact nature of them could not be antici- 
 
Ccesar as a Soldier. 641 
 
 pated. When room for accidents is left open, acci- 
 dents do not fail to be heard of. But 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 ^dui ; and 
 the manner in which the failure at Durazzo was re- 
 trieved 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 ra- 
 pidity of his movements, which brought him on the 
 enemy before they heard of his approach. He trav- 
 elled sometimes a hundred miles a day, reading or 
 writing in his carriage, through countries without 
 /oads, and crossing rivers without bridges. No ob- 
 stacles 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 stand- 
 ard-bearer, turned him rounds 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 
 misstated their numbers it was onl}^ to exaggerate. 
 In Africa, before Thapsus, when his officers were ner- 
 vous at the reported approach of Juba, he called them 
 together and said briefly, " You will understand that 
 >,vithin a day King Juba will be here with ten legions, 
 thirty thousand horse, a hundred thousand skirmish- 
 ers, 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." 
 
642 Ccesar. 
 
 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 disadvan- 
 tage. He never exposed his men to unnecessary 
 danger, and the loss by wear and tear in the cam- 
 paigns in Gaul was exceptionably and even astonish- 
 ingly slight. When a gallant action was .performed, 
 he knew by whom it had been done, and every sol- 
 dier, 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 al- 
 lowed 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 mis- 
 takes 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 judg- 
 ment. Mutiny and desertion only he never over- 
 looked. 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 plun- 
 dered tribes in Spain who were allies of Rome, that 
 he pillaged shrines and temples in Gaul, and de- 
 stroyed cities merely for spoil. He adds a story 
 
CcBsar as a Soldier. 543 
 
 which Cicero would not have left untold and uncom- 
 mented on if he had been so fortunate as to hear of 
 it : that Csesar when first consul took three thousand 
 pounds weight of gold out of the Capitol and re- 
 placed it with gilded brass. A similar story is told 
 of the Cid and of other heroes of fiction. How carae 
 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 ex- 
 penses ; 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 Tem- 
 ple 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 suffi- 
 cient answer to the accusation of gratuitous oppres- 
 viion. 
 
 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 Cae- 
 sar, 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. 
 
644 Ccesar. 
 
 His leniency to the Pompeian faction has alieady 
 been spoken of sufficiently. It may have been pol« 
 itic, but it arose also from the disposition of the man. 
 Cruelty originates in fear, and Caesar was toe indiffer- 
 ent to death to fear anything. So far as his p: blic 
 action was concerned, he betra^^ed no passion save 
 hatred of injustice ; and he moved through life calm 
 and irresistible, like a force of nature. 
 
 Cicero has said of Csesar'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, contain- 
 ing 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 detractd — 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 en- 
 tirely simple. He indulges in no images, no labored 
 descriptions, no conventional reflections. His art is 
 unconscious, as the highest art always is. The act- 
 ual fact of things stands out as it really was, not aa 
 mechanically photographed, but interpreted by the 
 calmest intelligence, and described with unexagger- 
 ated 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 in- 
 cidents themselves are'set off by delicate and just ob. 
 
Coemr as a Man of Letters, 545 
 
 servations on human character. The story is ren- 
 dered attractive by complimentary anecdotes of per- 
 sons ; while details of the character and customs of 
 an unknown and remarkable people show the atten- 
 tion which Csesar was always at leisure to bestow on 
 anything which was worthy of interest, even when 
 he was surrounded with danger and difficult5^ 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 adversa- 
 ries. The coarse invectives which Cicero poured so 
 freely upon those who differed from him are conspic- 
 uously absent. Caesar does not exult over his tri- 
 umphs or parade the honesty of his motives. The 
 facts are left to tell their own story ; and the gallantry 
 and endurance of his own froops 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, un- 
 moved 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 any- 
 where, save that the conclusion of the Gallic war was 
 ^ft to be supplied by a weaker hand. The Commen- 
 viries, as an historical narrative, are as far superior to 
 
646 Ccesar, 
 
 any other Latin composition of the kind as the person 
 of Caesar himself stands out among the rest of his con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 His other compositions have perished, in conse- 
 quence, perhaps, of the unforgiving republican senti- 
 ment ^hich revived among men of letters after the 
 death of Augustus — which rose to a height in tho 
 " Pharsalia " of Lucan — and which leaves so visible 
 a mark in the writings of Tacitus and Suetonius. 
 There was a book, "De Analogic," written by Csesar 
 after the conferonce 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 curi- 
 ous subject. In practice Caesar treated the auguries 
 with contempt. He carried his laws in open disre- 
 gard 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, 
 wi'itten on tiie return from Munda. Of all the lost 
 writings, however, the most to be regretted is the 
 
How Ccesar should he estimated. 647 
 
 " Anti-Cato." After Cato's death Cicero published 
 a panegyric upon him. To praise Cato was to con- 
 demn Caesar ; and Csesar 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 conspic:i- 
 ous 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 contro* 
 versy between them have been summed up in the 
 memorable line of Lucan — 
 
 Yictrix caasa 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 kneel- 
 ing before the Throne, with the consciousness, as be- 
 came 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 
 
548 Ccesar. 
 
 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 moral- 
 ity; 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 aspira- 
 tions, 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 tbe life which is to en- 
 dure 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 2A\j man to death," was the complaint 
 of the Jewish priests to the Roman governor. Had 
 Europe and Asia been covered with independent na- 
 tions, 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 
 
The Kingdom of this World, 549 
 
 silversmiths at Epliesus. 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 Csesar 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 cor.victions ; and as he found no reason for 
 supposing shat there was a life beyond the grave he 
 did not pretend to expect it. He respected the re- 
 ligion of the Roman State as an institution estab- 
 lished 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 him- 
 self had any religious belief at all. He saw no evi- 
 dence 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 
 
650 CcBsar. 
 
 the Founder of the kingdom not of this world, for 
 which the first was a preparation. Each was de- 
 nounced for making himself a king. Each was ma- 
 ligned 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 Csesar also was be- 
 lieved to have risen again and ascended into heaven 
 and become a divine being. 
 
The best Biography of the Greatest of the Romans. 
 
 G^SAR: A Sketch 
 
 BY 
 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 
 
 One vol., 8vo, cloth, with a Steel Portrait and a Slap. 
 Price, $2.50. 
 
 There is no historical writer of our time who can rival Mr. Froude in vivid 
 delineation of character, grace and clearness of style, and elegant and solid 
 scholarship. In his Life of Ccesar, all these qaalities appear in their fullest 
 perfection, resulting in a fascinating narrative which will be read with keen 
 dslight by a multitude of readers, and will enhance, if possible, Mr. Froude's 
 brilliant reputation. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 *• The book is charmingly written, and, on the whole, wisely written. There are many 
 admirable, really noble, passages ; there are hundreds of pages which few living men 
 could match. * * * The political life of Caesar is explained with singular lucidity, 
 and with what seems to us remarkable fairness. The horrible condition of Roman 
 society under the rule of the magnates is painted with startling power and brilliance of 
 coloring. — Atlantic Mo7tthly. 
 
 " Mr. Froude's latest work, " Caesar," is affluent of his most distinctive traits. 
 Nothing that he has written is more brilliant, more incisive, more interesting. * * * 
 He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all that is known of the personal, 
 social, political, and military life of Cassar ; and with his sketch of Csesar, includes other 
 brilliant sketches of the great men, his friends or rivals, who contemporaneously with 
 him formed the principal figures in the Roman world." — Harper's Monthly. 
 
 "This book is a most fascinating biography, and is by far the best account of Julius 
 Caesar to be found in the English language." — London Standard, 
 
 " It is the best biography of the greatest of the Romans we have, and It is in some 
 respects Mr. Froude's best piece of historical writing." — Hartford Courant. 
 
 Mr. Froude has given the public the best of all recent books on the life, charactes- 
 and career of Julius Caesar."— /%z7a. Eve. Bulletin. 
 
 *^* For sale by all booksellers., or will be sent^ prepaid ^ upon 
 receipt of price ^ by 
 
 CHARLES SCRTBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York 
 
A New Edition, Library Style. 
 
 @$p j^isfori! of Plontp, 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO THE PERIOD OF ITS DECLINE. 
 
 By Dr. THEODOR MOMMSEU. 
 
 Translated, with the author's sanction and additions, by the Rev. W. P. Dickson, Regius 
 Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of Glasgow, late Classical Examiner of 
 the University of St. Andrews. With an introduction by Dr. Leonhard Schmitz, and 
 a copious Index of the whole four volumes, prepared especially for this edition. 
 
 REPRmTED FROM THE REVISED LONDON EDITION. 
 Four Volumes, crown 8vo, gilt top. Price per Set, $8.00. 
 
 Dr. Mommsen has long been known and appreciated through his re- 
 searches into the languages, laws, and institutions of Ancient Rome and 
 Italy, as the most thoroughly versed scholar now living in these depart- 
 ments of historical investigation. To a wonderfully exact and exhaustive 
 knowledge of these subjects, he unites great powers of generalization, a 
 vigorous, spirited, and exceedingly graphic style and keen analytical pow- 
 ers, which give this history a degree of interest and a permanent value 
 possessed by no other record of the decline and fall of the Roman Com- 
 monwealth. "Dr. Morflmsen's work," as Dr. Schmitz remarks in the 
 introduction, " though the production of a man of most profound and ex- 
 tensive learning and knowledge of the world, is not as much designed for 
 the professional scholar as for intelligent readers of all classes who take 
 an interest in the history of by-gone ages, and are inclined there to seek 
 information that may guide them safely through the perplexing mazes of 
 modern history." 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 ** A work of the very highest merit ; its learning is exact and profound ; its narrative full 
 of genius and skill ; its descriptions of men are admirably vivid. We wish to place on 
 record our opinion that Dr. Mommsen's is by far the best history of the Decline and Fall 
 of the Roman Commonwealth." — London Times. 
 
 *' This is the best history of the Roman Republic, taking the work on the whble — the 
 author's complete mastery of his subject, the variety of his gifts and acquirements, his 
 graphic power in the delineation of national and individual character, and the vivid interest 
 which he inspires in every portion of his book. He is without an equal in his own sphere." 
 —Edi7iburgh Review. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
Now in process of priblication, uniform with Epochs of Modern History, each 
 volume in i2mo size, and complete in itself 
 
 ^jpor|s of SSnripnl^ j^lsfoFg, 
 
 A series of Books narrating the HISTORY OF GREECE AND ROME, and of their 
 
 relations toother Countries at Successive Epochs. Edited by the Rev. G. W. 
 
 COX, M. A., Author of the " Aryan Mythology," " A History of 
 
 Greece," etc., and jointly by CHARLES SANKEY, 
 
 M. A., late Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford. 
 
 Volumes already issued in the " Epochs of Ancient History." Each one volume 
 12mo, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 The GREEKS and the PERSIANS. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M. A., late Scholar of 
 Trinity College, Oxford : Joint Editor of the Series. With four colored Maps. 
 
 The EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE. From the Assassination of Julius Cassar to the 
 Assassination of Domitian. By the Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M. A., Reader of An- 
 cient History in the University of Oxford. With two colored maps. 
 
 The ATHENIAN EMPIRE from the FLIGHT of XERXES to the FALL of 
 ATHENS. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M. A., late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford : 
 Joint Editor of the Series. With five Maps. 
 
 The ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. Charles Merivale, D. D., 
 Dean of Ely. 
 
 EARLY ROME, to its Capture by the Gauls. By Wilhelm Ihne, Author of '* History 
 of Rome."' With Map. 
 
 THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES. By the Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M. A., Reader 
 of Ancient History in the University at Oxford. 
 
 The GRACCHI, MARIUS, and SULLA. By A. H. Beesly. With Maps. 
 
 THE RISE OF THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE. By A. M. Curteis, M. A. i 
 vol., i6mo, with maps and plans. 
 
 TROY — Its Legend, History, and Literature, with a sketch of the Topography, of the 
 Troad in the light of recent investigation. By S. G. W. Benjamin, i vol. i6mo. With 
 a map. 
 
 *#* The above hooks for sale by all booksellers, or will he sent, post or express charges 
 paid, upon receipt of the price by tite Publishers, 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
*' These volumes contain the .ripe results of the stu'lies of nttn wh% 
 ■re authorities in theii respective fields." — Thk Nation. 
 
 ^orfs of Inio&ppn Jlisforg. 
 
 Each 1 vol. l6mo., with Outline l^aps. Price per volume, in cloth, $1.00, 
 Each Volumk complktk in itsklf and sold separately. 
 
 Edited by EDWARD E. MORRIS, M.A. 
 
 Tb« ERA of the PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. By F. Seebohm, Au6V>r of 
 "The Oxford Reformers — Colet, Erasmus, More." (No7u ready.) 
 
 The CRUSADES. By the Rev. G. W. Cox, M. A., Author of the " History of Greece.* 
 
 (Now ready,) 
 Tha THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 1618—1648. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 
 
 (Now ready.) 
 The HOUSES of LANCASTER and YORK ; with the CONQUEST and LOSS 
 of FRANCE. By James Gairdner, of the Public Record Office. (Noiv ready.) 
 
 The FRENCH REVOLUTION and FIRST EMPIRE; an Historical Sketch. 
 By Wm. O'Connor Morris, with an Appendix by Hon. Andrew D. White, Prest oi 
 Cornell University. ( Ng7v ready.) 
 
 The AGE OF ELIZABETH. By the Rev. M. Creighton, MjV. (Now ready.) 
 
 The PURITAN REVOLUTION. By J. Langton Sanford. (Noiv ready.) 
 
 The FALL oi the STUARTS ; and WESTERN EUROPE from 1678 to 1697. 
 By the Rev. Edward Hale, M.A., Assist. Master at Eton. (Now ready.) 
 
 The EARLI FLANTAGENETS and their relation to the HISTORY of EUROP" • 
 the foundation and growth of CONSTIUTIONAL GOVERNMENT. By the R 
 Wm. Stuebs, M.A., etc., Regius Professor of Modem History in the University oi 
 Oxford. (No7v ready.) 
 
 The BECiiNNING of the MIDDLE AGES; CHARLES the GREAT anfv 
 ALFRED : the HISTORY of ENGLAND in its connection with that of EUROPE 
 in the NINTH CENTURY. By the Very Rev R. W. Church. M.A., Dea« 
 of St Paul's. (Now ready.) 
 
 The above Ten Volumes in Roxburg Style. Leather Labels and Gilt Top. Ful 
 up in a handsome Box. Sold only in Sets. Price per Set, $10.00. 
 
 The AGE of ANNE. By Eiward E. Morris, M.A., Editor of the Series. 
 
 (Now ready.) 
 The NORMAN KINGS and the FEUDAL S"2STEM. By the Rev. A H. 
 
 Johnson, M.A. EDWARD HI. By the Rev. W. Warburton, M.A., late Hei 
 
 Majesty's Senior Inspector of Schools. 
 
 FREDERICK the GREAT and die SEVEN YEARS' WAR. By F. W. Longmah, 
 
 of tialJic College, Oxford. 
 
 •** The eihove book for sale by all booksellers., or will be secti, ^ost or «x^tM 
 tk^rg^t^idt upon receipt qf the price by the publishers, 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, Nkw Yoxk. 
 
**Two as Interestlner and valuable books of travel as have 
 been published in this country." Niw York Express. 
 
 JDR. FIELD'S TRAVELS HOUND THE WORLD, 
 
 I. 
 
 FROM THE LAKES OF KILLABNEY TO THE 
 
 G OLDEN HOR N. 
 
 II. 
 FROM EGYPT TO JAPAN. 
 
 By HENRY M. FIELD, D.D., Editor of the N. Y. Evangelist. 
 Each 1 vol. 12mo. Cloth, gilt top, uniform In style, $2. 
 
 CRITICAIi NOTICES. 
 
 By George Ripley, LL.D., in the New York Tribune. 
 
 Fe*^ recent travellers combine so many qualities that are adapted to command the 
 Interest and sympathy of the public. While he indulges, to its fullest extent, the charac- 
 teristic American curiosity with regard to foreign lands, insisting on seeing every object 
 of interest with his own eyes, shnnking from no peril or difficulty in pursuit of infor- 
 mation — climbing mountains, descending mines, exploring pyramids, with no sense of 
 Batiety or weariness, he has also made a faithful study of the highest authorities on 
 the different subjects of his narrative, thus giving solidity and depth to his descriptions, 
 without sacrificing their facility or grace. 
 
 From the TXevr York Observer. 
 
 The present volume comprises by far the most novel, romantic, and interesting part 
 of the Journey [Round the World], and the story of it is told and the scenes are painted 
 by the hand of a master of the pen. Dr. Field is a veteran traveller ; he knows well 
 what to see, and (which is still more impoitant to the reader) he knows well what to 
 describe and how to do it. 
 
 By Ghas. Dudley Warner, in the Hartford Courant. 
 
 It is thoroughly entertaining; the reader's interest is never allowed to flag ; the 
 author carries us forward from land to land with uncommon vivacity, enlivens the way 
 with a good humor, a careful observation, and treats all peoples with a refreshing liberality. 
 
 From Rev. Dr. R. S. Storrs. 
 
 It is indeed a charming book — full of fresh information, picturesque description, and 
 thoughtful studies of men, countries, and civilizations. 
 
 From Prof. Ros^vell D. Hitchcock, D.D. 
 
 In this second volume, Dr. Field, I think, has surpassed himself in the first, and 
 this is saying a good deal. In both volumes the editorial instinct and habit are conspic- 
 uous. Dr. Prime has said that an editor should have six senses, the sixth being 
 *'a sense of the ««/^r«//«jf." Dr. Field has this to perfection. ♦ * ♦ 
 
 From the Nevr York Herald. 
 
 It would be impossible by extracts to convey an adequate idea of the variety, 
 abundance, or picturesque freshness of these sketches of travel, without copying a great 
 part of the book. 
 
 Rev. Wm. M. Taylor, D.D., In the Christian at Work. 
 
 Dr. Field has an eye, if we may use a photographic illustration, with a great deal o{ 
 conodion in it, so that he sees very clearly. He knows also how to describe just those 
 things in the difFsrent places visited by him which an intelligent man wants to know 
 
 About 
 
 •#♦ Tke above books /or sale by all booksellers, or ivtll be sent, post or expreta 
 charges paidy ■upon receipt of the price by the publishers. 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
Army Life in Russia. 
 
 By F. V. GREENE, 
 
 Lieutenant of Engineers, United States Army, 
 
 Late Military Attache to the U. S. Legation in St. Petersburg, ntid author of 
 " The Russian Army and its Campaigns in Turkey in 1877-78." 
 
 One Volume, 12mo, .... $1.50. 
 
 Lieutenant Greene's opportunities for general as well as technical 
 observation while with the Russian army in Turkey were such as have 
 perhaps never fallen to any other student of the war. The story of this 
 personal experience is embodied in this volume, which contains most 
 vigorous and vivid descriptions of battle scenes, in the chapters on the 
 <Shipka Pass, Plevna, and in the very strong and excellent chapter on the 
 winter campaign across the Balkans with Gourko. The chapters on the 
 Tsar and the Russian generals, and the sections devoted to the Russian 
 soldier, to St. Petersburg, and the army life of the Russian at home, are of 
 absorbing interest. 
 
 " His sketches are excellently well done, graphic, evidently not exaggerated, and 
 very readaV)le. It is a book that will be read with pleasure, and one that contains a 
 great deal of information." — Hart/ord Courant. 
 
 " This volume is in every way an admirable picture of army life in Russia. It is 
 clear, concise, discriminating, and often very picturesque. The author, besides pos- 
 sessing an excellent style, is extremely modest, and there are very few books of tavel 
 in which the first person is kept so absolutely in the background." — International 
 Review. 
 
 " Lieutenant Greene writes in a soldierly way, unaffected, straightforward, and 
 graphic, and, though he has a keen eye for the picturesque, never sacrifices to rhetoric 
 the absolute truthfulness so eminently to be desired in a narrative of this sort. — Nenv 
 York World. 
 
 " He was with the "Russian army throughout the campaign, enjoying perfect free- 
 dom of movement, having every opportunity to visit the points of greatest activity, and 
 to see the operations of greatest moment, in company with the officers who conducted 
 them. His book is, therefore, for all the purposes of ordinary readers, a complete and 
 satisfactory history of the war, founded upon intimate personal knowledge of its events, 
 and of its spirit. It is a work of the rarest interest and of unusual merit." — Neiv York 
 Evening Post. 
 
 "It is most fortimate for the reputation of our country and our army that we had 
 such an officer to send to the far-away land of Turkey in Europe, and most creditable to 
 our War Department that it sent such a man. His book deseves to be universally read, 
 and we are sure that no person whom these lines may lead to purchase it will fail to 
 rejoice that they have been written." — The Nation. 
 
 *.x,* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 
 price, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITIONS. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND, 
 
 From the Fall of "Woolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. 
 
 THE COMPLETE WORK IN TWELVE VOLUMES, 
 
 By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M. A. 
 
 Mr. Froude is a pictorial historian, and his skill in description and full- 
 ness of knowledge make his work abound in scenes and passages that are 
 almost new to the general reader. We close his pages with unfeigned re- 
 gret, and we bid him good speed on his noble mission of exploring the 
 sources of English history in one of its most remarkable periods. — Brif- 
 ish Quarterly Review. 
 
 THE NEW LIBRARY EDITION'. 
 
 Extra cloth, gilt top, and uniform in general style with the re-issue of 
 Momnisen's Rome and Curtius's Greece. Complete in 12 vols. i2mo, 
 in a box. Sold only in sets. Price per set, $18.00. 
 
 Note. 7"/!!^ old Library, Chelsea, and Popular Editions will be discontinued. A fetv 
 sets and single volumes can still be supplied. 
 
 SHORT STUDIES ON GREAT SUBJECTS. 
 
 POPULAR EDITION. Three vols. i2mo, cloth, per vol. . .$1.50 
 LIBRARY EDITION. Three vols. cr. 8vo, cloth, per vol. .$2.50 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN IRELAND 
 
 During the Eighteenth Century. 
 Three vols. cr. 8vo. Price per vol $2.50 
 
 *** The above books for sale by all booksellers^ or will be sent, post or ex- 
 press charges paid, upon receipt of the price by the Publishers, 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
The Origin and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated br 
 
 THE RELIGION OF 
 
 ANCIENT EGYPT. 
 
 By P. LE PAGE RENOUF. 
 
 (T/te Hibbert Lectures for iSjg.J 
 
 One volume, 12mo, --_-_-» $1.50 
 
 M. Le Page Renouf's great reputation as an Egyptologist led to his 
 selection to deliver the second course of the already celebrated Hibbert 
 series. His lectures are the fit companions of Professor Miiller's, both in 
 learning and in interest. The glimpses laboriously gained by the aid of 
 long undeciphered hierogflyphics into one of the most mystical and profound 
 of all the ancient beliefs, have always had a special fascination ; and the 
 time has now come w^hen it is possible to join their results into a fairly 
 complete picture. Done as this is by M. Renouf, with a certain French 
 vividness and clearness, it has a very unusual, and, indeed, unique interest. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 " The narrative is so well put together, the chain of reasoning and 
 inference so obvious, and the illustration so apt, that the general reader 
 can go through it with unabated interest." — Hartford Post. 
 
 " No one can rise from reading this book, in which, by the way, the 
 author is careful about drawing his conclusions, without having increased 
 respect for the religion of ancient Egypt, and hardly less than admiration 
 for its ethical system." — T^e Chiirchman. 
 
 "These lectures are invaluable to students of Egyptology, and as the 
 religion of ancient Egypt stands alone and unconnected with other religions, 
 except those which have been modified by it, itself being apparently original 
 and underived, they should be highly interesting to all students of religious 
 history. . . . It is impossible in a brief notice to convey an adequate 
 idea of Professor Renouf s admirable lectures." — N. Y. World. 
 
 " The present work forms a remarkably intelligent and acutely critical 
 contribution to the history of the origin and growth of religion, as illustrated 
 by the religion of ancient Egypt. As a specialist. Professor Renouf is able 
 to bring forth much information not ordinarily accessible to the general 
 reader, and this he does in such a carefully digested form as to make the 
 work entertaining and instructive in the highest degree." — Boston Courier. 
 
 *** ^°^ ^'^^^ ^y ^^^ booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 
 price, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 
 
• y mrnn'^^ 
 
 ^-^-. 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed b ooks are subject to immediate recalL 
 
 1 6 Apf'63S8 || — 
 
 FEB 2 3 2005 
 
 W STACKS 
 
 APR 51953 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 20JUL63JC 
 
 I I dJ-MNnil^^ 
 
 rw 
 
 AUG 2 01963 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 AUG 1 7 1953 
 
 ■^\S^^ 
 
 REC'D LP 
 
 JUL 6 '6^-4 PM 
 
 LD 21A-50m-ll,'62 
 (D32798l0)476B 
 
 General Library 
 
 University of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
DC 
 
 LIBRARY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE BEFORE CLOSING TIME 
 ON LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW 
 
 ./n.rf 1 r\ *i>f> 
 
 
 lilHJf I [J Ij^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 JAN 1 ^ '66 "6 PM 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD 62A-50m-2,'64 ^, . General Library 
 (E3494S10) 94i2A '^^"''^"igfklley '"^