Chapter XXIX: Book III: , §§ 87, 90.) Apulia, unlike any other division of central or (4)

The Roman slave-code, it may be hoped, has never been equaled in barbarity by that of any civilized state. The slave was “nothing” in law; his master might torture or kill him with no other punishment than the loss of his property; and when, after such a victory as that of Vercellæ, captives could be bought, as we are told, for less than a dollar a head, that motive could have had no weight against the passion of revenge. Happily, society is sometimes better than its laws. Household servants commonly enjoyed the confidence and affection of their masters; physicians and teachers were usually Greek slaves, and their learning and talents caused them to be respected in spite of the misfortune of their condition.

RECAPITULATION.

Though plebeians enjoy political equality, the poor suffer
for want of land and employment. Tiberius Gracchus passes the
Agrarian laws, but becomes a martyr to his zeal for reform.
Scipio Æmilianus, trying to moderate the Agrarian movement,
is also murdered. Caius Gracchus founds colonies in Italy
and abroad; provides for the poor by a public distribution
of grain; gives to the rich plebeians the collection of
provincial revenues, and thus creates a class of great bankers
and publicans. He is opposed with armed violence and slain,
B. C. 121. The crimes of Jugurtha occasion the Numidian war,
B. C. 111-106. Metellus is succeeded in command by Marius,
who becomes consul, B. C. 107. Jugurtha is captured by the
address of Sulla; Marius defeats the Teutones in a great
battle near Aix, B. C. 102; and the Cimbri, the next year,
at Vercellæ. A sedition at Rome is followed by the death of
several magistrates. Sicily is twice devastated by servile
insurrections, B. C. 134-132, and B. C. 102-99.

THE SOCIAL WAR.

=138.= Meanwhile, Rome was shaken by the efforts and death of another reformer, M. Livius Drusus, son of the opponent of Gracchus. As a noble, he was filled with shame for the corruptions of his order, and sought to revive the safest and best of the laws of the Gracchi, by giving the franchise to all Italians, and by taking the judicial power from the knights, who had greatly abused it. He was murdered at his own door by an unknown assassin, B. C. 91, and both of his laws repealed. The allies in the south and center of Italy, disappointed in all their hopes by the death of their champion, now flew to arms. Eight nations, the Marsi, Marrucini, Peligni, Vestini, Picenti´ni, Samnites, Apu´li, and Lucani, formed a federal republic under the name of _Italia_, chose two consuls, and fixed their capital at Corfin´ium, in the Apennines.

The first movements in the “Social War” were disastrous to Rome. L. Cæsar, the consul, Perper´na, his legate, and Postu´mius, a prætor, were defeated. A consular army under Cæpio was destroyed; Campania was overrun, and the northern Italians were almost ready to join the league. But a late concession saved Rome. The coveted rights of citizenship were conferred on all who had taken no part in the war, and on all who would now withdraw from it. The confederate ranks were thus divided; and, at length, even the Samnites and Lucanians, who were the last to submit, were won by a promise of all that they had asked.

=139.= The slow and cautious conduct of Marius in this war had been eclipsed by the brilliant activity of Sulla, who was now consul; and the Senate, choosing to consider the old general unequal to the hardships of a campaign, conferred the command against Mithridates upon the young patrician officer. The jealousy which had long ago supplanted the ancient confidence between Marius and Sulla, now broke out into violent opposition. To defeat his rival, Marius persuaded Rufus, the tribune, to propose a law for distributing the newly enfranchised Italians among all the tribes. The old citizens would thus be greatly outnumbered, and the appointment of Sulla reversed, for all the new voters regarded Marius as their friend and benefactor. The consuls interfered, but Marius and his ally occupied the Forum with an armed force, compelled the consuls to withdraw their interdict, passed the law by intimidation, and easily obtained a vote of the tribes appointing Marius to the command of the Pontic War.

=140.= This brutal interference with the forms of law was naturally met by an opposing force. The military tribunes sent by Marius to take command, in his name, of the army at Nola, were stoned to death by the soldiers of Sulla, who instantly marched upon Rome at the head of six legions. The city was unprepared for resistance; Sulla became its master, and Marius, with his son and partisans, fled. He wandered, a fugitive and outlaw, along the coast of southern Italy; now half starved in a wood, now buried all night to his chin in a swamp; again indebted for a few hours’ sleep to the charity of a ship-master or to a peasant, who refused the reward offered by Sulla for the head of the outlaw, and enabled him to elude his pursuers.

At Mintur´næ he was sheltered by a woman to whom he had formerly rendered some kindness; but the officers of the town resolved to comply with the orders of the government at Rome, and with difficulty prevailed upon a Gallic or Cimbrian soldier to undertake the work of despatching him. But no sooner had the barbarian entered the room where the old general, unarmed and defenseless, lay upon a bed, than his courage failed, his drawn sword fell from his hand, and he rushed from the house, exclaiming, “I can not kill Caius Marius!”

=141.= The people of Minturnæ now took more generous counsel, and resolved not to destroy the deliverer of Italy. They provided him with a ship, and conducted him with good wishes to the sea, where he embarked for Africa. Here, too, he was warned by the governor to leave the country, or be treated as an enemy of Rome. But a revolution had by this time taken place in Rome itself, which favored the return of Marius. Cinna, one of the new consuls, was of the Marian party, and wished to enforce the laws of Rufus. The aristocrats armed, under the command of the other consul, Octavius, and a battle was fought in the Forum, in which Cinna was defeated and expelled from the city. Like Sulla, he appealed to the army; and as the army was now composed of Italians, who could not but favor that party which promised them supreme power in the Roman elections, the tide was turned against the aristocrats.

Marius returned, seized upon Ostia and other ports on the Latin coast, captured the corn ships, and thus starved Rome into surrender. This time the captured city was given up to a reign of terror. As Marius walked through the streets, his guards stabbed all persons whom he did not salute. Fresh lists were made out every day of those whom he either feared or hated, as victims for the dagger. Marius and Cinna declared themselves consuls for B. C. 86, in contempt of the usual form of election. But the unrelenting master of Rome did not long enjoy his seventh consulship, which he had all his life superstitiously expected, and now so unscrupulously obtained. He died on the eighteenth day of his magistracy, and in the seventy-first year of his age.

=142.= Sulla had brought the Mithridatic War to a victorious conclusion, having conducted five difficult and costly campaigns at his own expense, and recovered for Rome the revolted territories of Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor. But he never forgot that the Republic which he was serving had declared him a public enemy, confiscated his wealth, and murdered his best friends for their adherence to him. If his vengeance was delayed, it was only the more bitter and effectual. He now returned with a powerful army devotedly attached to his person, and laden with treasure collected from the conquered cities of Asia.

To disarm the enmity of the Italians, who formed the most valuable part of his opponents’ forces, he proclaimed that he would not interfere with the rights of any citizen, old or new. He suffered no injury to be done to either the towns or fields of the Italians, and he made separate treaties with many of their cities, by which he guaranteed their full enjoyment of Roman privileges so long as they should favor his interests. The Samnites alone held out against Sulla, and in concert with the Marian party renewed their old hostilities. Cinna was murdered by his own troops, on his way to meet Sulla in Dalma´tia.

=143.= Landing at Brundis´ium, Sulla marched without opposition through Calabria, Apulia, and Campania; defeated one consul near Capua, and won over the entire army of the other by means of emissaries well supplied with gold. He was reinforced by three legions, under Cneius Pompey, and by the adherence of many distinguished citizens, among whom were Metellus Pius, Crassus, and Lucullus. He was still outnumbered by the Marians, who, in 82 B. C., brought into the field an army of 200,000 men, under the two consuls Papir´ius Carbo and the younger Marius. The latter was defeated, however, with great loss at Sacripor´tus, and took refuge in Præneste, where he had deposited his military chest, enriched by the treasures of the Capitoline temples. This town was blockaded, while Sulla marched upon Rome. Marius had secretly ordered his partisans in the city to put to death the most illustrious of the Cornelian faction; and thus perished the pontifex maximus, and many others whose sacred office or exalted character would, in more virtuous times, have made them secure from violence.

=144.= The army of Samnites and Lucanians, by the request of Marius, moved toward Rome, Telesi´nus, their leader, declaring that he would raze the city to the ground. A furious battle was fought near the Colline Gate, in which Sulla was victorious; and, with a cold-blooded ferocity too common in those fearful times, ordered 6,000 prisoners to be cut to pieces in the Campus Martius. Sulla was now master of Rome and of Italy, and his vengeance had begun. A “proscription list” of his enemies was exhibited in the Forum, and a reward of two talents was offered to all who would kill these outlawed persons, or even show the place of their concealment. As usual, private hatred and even the meanest avarice found indulgence under the name of political enmity. Any friend of Sulla was permitted to add names to the list; and as the property of the proscribed usually went to his accuser, the possession of a house, a field, or even a piece of silver plate was often enough to mark a man as a public enemy.

Sulla was appointed dictator, with unlimited power to “restore order to the Republic.” The constitutional changes which he made, were designed to re-instate the Senate and nobles in the preëminence which they had enjoyed in the earliest years after the expulsion of the kings. He limited the sway of the tribunes of the people, and lowered the dignity of their office by prohibiting those who had held it from becoming consuls. Though himself a man of dissolute morals, Sulla clearly saw that the worst miseries of the Roman people proceeded from their own corruption, and he tried to check luxury and crime by the most stringent enactments. But the attempt was hopeless; the character of the nation was so far degraded that no rank or class was fit to rule, and its subjection to the will of a tyrant had become a necessity.

=145.= Sulla increased the number of the Senate by 300 new members chosen from the knights, all, of course, adherents of his own. He gained, also, a sort of body-guard, by giving the rights of citizenship to 10,000 slaves of those whom he had proscribed. These freedmen all received his own clan-name, Cornelius, and became his clients. He rewarded his veterans with the confiscated lands of the Marian party, thus replacing honest and industrious farmers with too often lawless and thriftless military communities. When Sulla had held the dictatorship three years, he surprised the world by suddenly resigning it, and retiring to his country-seat at Pute´oli. Here he devoted his days to the amusements of literature, mingled, unhappily, with less ennobling pleasures. He died B. C. 78, the year following his abdication. Two days before his death he completed the history of his own life and times, in twenty-two volumes, in which he recorded the prediction of a Chaldæan soothsayer, that he should die, after a happy life, at the very height of his prosperity.

=146.= A remnant of the Marian faction still held out in the west of Spain. Sertorius had been sent to command that province, chiefly because, as the most honest and keen-sighted of the Marians, he was troublesome to his brother officers. During the proscription by Sulla, he was joined by many exiles, who aided him in drilling the native troops. Though driven for a time into Africa by the proconsul An´nius, he returned, upon the invitation of the Lusitanians, with a Libyan and Moorish army, which defeated the fleet of Sulla in the Straits of Gibraltar, and his land forces near the Guadalquivir. All Roman Spain became subject to Sertorius. With the aid of Cilician pirates, he captured the islands of Ivi´ca and Formente´ra. He formed a government, in which the senate was composed only of Romans; but he distinguished the native Spaniards by many marks of favor, and won their confidence not only by his brilliant genius, but by his perfect justice in the administration of their affairs.

=147.= Metellus, Sulla’s colleague in the consulship, who commanded his armies in Spain, was completely baffled by the unwearied activity and superior knowledge of the country displayed by Sertorius. At length Cneius Pompey, who had already, in his thirtieth year, gained the title of Great, and the honor of a triumph for his victories over the allies of the Marians in Africa, was sent into Spain with the title of proconsul, to share the command with Metellus. His military skill far surpassed that of his predecessors, but for five years the war was still dragged out with more loss and vexation than success.

At last, Sertorius was murdered by one of his own officers, a man of high birth, who envied the ascendency of genius and integrity, and hoped by removing his general to open the way to his own advancement. He was totally defeated and captured by Pompey in the first battle which he fought as commander-in-chief; and though he tried to save his life by giving up the papers of Sertorius, and thus betraying the secrets of his party in Rome, he was ordered to instant execution, B. C. 72.

=148.= The Spanish war was now ended, but a nearer and greater danger threatened Rome. The pride and luxury fed by foreign conquest had brought no increase of refinement to the common people; and their favorite amusement for festal days was to see the bravest captives, taken in war and trained for the purpose, slaughter each other in the amphitheater. The ædiles, who provided the public shows, vied with each other in the numbers and training of the gladiators, whom they either bought or hired from their owners for exhibition. Among the unhappy men who were under training in the school at Capua, was a Thracian peasant named Spar´tacus. His soul revolted against the beastly fate to which he was doomed, and he communicated his spirit to seventy of his comrades. Forcibly breaking bounds, they passed out at the gates of Capua, seized upon the road some wagon-loads of gladiators’ weapons, and took refuge in an extinct crater of Vesuvius. They defeated 3,000 soldiers who besieged them, and armed themselves more effectively with the spoils of the slain.

Spartacus proclaimed freedom to all slaves who would join him. The half-savage herdsmen of the Bruttian and Lucanian mountains sprang to arms at his call, and the number of insurgents quickly rose to 40,000. They defeated two legions under the prætor Varinius, stormed and plundered Thurii and Metapon´tum, Nola and Nuce´ria, and many other towns of southern Italy. In the second year their forces were increased to 100,000 men, and they defeated successively two consuls, two prætors, and the governor of Cisalpine Gaul. All Italy, from the Alps to the Straits of Messana, quaked at the name of Spartacus, as it had done, more than a hundred years before, at that of Hannibal; but it only proved the decay of Roman character, that a mere bandit chief could accomplish what had once taxed the genius of the greatest general whom the world had yet produced.

=149.= Spartacus, however, saw clearly that in the end the organized power and resources of Rome must be superior to his own, and he only proposed to his followers to fight their way to and beyond the Alps, and then disperse to their homes; but the insurgents, spoiled with success, refused to leave Italy, and turned again to the south. Their winter-quarters, near Thurii, were like an immense fair crowded with the plunder of the whole peninsula, which merchants from far and near assembled to buy. Spartacus refused gold or silver, and took in exchange only iron or brass, which he converted into weapons of war by means of foundries established in his camp. In the panic which pervaded Rome, no one was willing to offer himself for the office of prætor. At length, Licinius Crassus accepted the appointment, and led eight legions into the field.

=150.= Spartacus was twice defeated, and driven to the southern point of Bruttium. Thence he tried to escape into Sicily, where the servile war was still smoldering and ready to be rekindled, and where, by holding the grain fields, he could soon have raised a bread-riot among the hungry mob of Rome. But the Cilician pirates, who had engaged to transport him, proved treacherous; and his attempt to convey his army across the straits on rafts and wicker boats was ineffectual. He then, in despair, broke the lines of Crassus, and once more threw Rome into great consternation.

But the same jealousies which had scattered the forces of Greeks and Romans, doomed the barbarians, also, to destruction. Thirty thousand Gauls separated themselves from Spartacus and his Thracians, and were totally destroyed near Crotona. The final encounter took place on the head-waters of the Silarus. Spartacus fell desperately fighting, and his army was destroyed. Only 5,000 of his men made their way to the north of Italy, where they were met by Pompey on his return from Spain, and all put to the sword. The 6,000 prisoners taken by Crassus were crucified along the Appian Way.

=151.= The two triumphant generals, Pompey and Crassus, demanded the consulship as their reward. To attain this, it was needful to set aside some of the Sullæan laws, for Pompey had neither reached the required age nor passed through the preliminary offices. But the deliverers of Rome could not ask in vain. On Dec. 31, B. C. 71, Pompey triumphed a second time for his victories in Spain; the next day, Jan. 1, B. C. 70, he entered on the duties of his consulship with Licinius Crassus. Though formerly a chief instrument of the oligarchy under Sulla, Pompey now attached himself to the democratic party, more especially to the wealthy middle class. He restored to the tribunes of the people the power which Sulla had taken away, and caused judges to be chosen no longer exclusively from the Senate, but in equal proportions from the Senate, the knights, and the tribunes of the treasury—a class of moneyed men who collected and paid the revenues due to the soldiers.

Reform in the government of the provinces was a rallying cry of the new party, and the year of Pompey’s consulate was marked by the prosecution of Verres, ex-prætor of Syracuse, for his shameless robbery of the province of Sicily. The impeachment was conducted by Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great lawyer and orator, whose wonderful learning and eloquence had already made him illustrious. Cicero was allowed one hundred and ten days to collect evidence of Verres’s guilt. In less than half the time he returned from Sicily, followed by a long train of witnesses, whose fortunes had been ruined by the fraud and inhumanity of the prætor. Verres himself had been heard to boast that he had amassed wealth enough to support a life-time of luxury, even if he should spend two-thirds of his ill-gotten gains in hushing inquiry or in buying a pardon; and the unhappy provincials plainly declared that, if he were acquitted, they would petition the Senate to repeal all the laws against official injustice, that in future their governors might, at least, only plunder to enrich themselves, and not to bribe their judges. But Verres was condemned, and not even awaiting his sentence, escaped with his treasures to Massilia.

=152.= At the end of his consulship, Pompey did not accept a province, but remained quietly in Rome, taking no part in public affairs. An increasing danger soon demanded the exercise of his talents. Since the destruction of the naval power of Carthage, Syria, and Egypt, the pirates of the Cilician coast had cruised unchecked throughout the Mediterranean, and had even been encouraged by Mithridates and Sertorius in their enmity against Rome. They captured the corn-ships, plundered the wealthiest cities, and even attacked Roman dignity in its most imposing form, by carrying off great magistrates, with their trains of attendants, from the Appian Way.

The crisis demanded extraordinary measures, and, in B. C. 67, Pompey was intrusted with absolute and irresponsible control of the Mediterranean, with a district extending fifty miles inland from its coasts, and with unlimited command of ships, money, and men. The price of provisions fell instantly upon his appointment, showing the confidence which his great ability had inspired. In forty days he had swept the western sea, and restored the broken communication between Italy, Africa, and Spain. Then sailing from Brundisium, he cleared the sea to the eastward, hunting the corsairs from all their inlets by means of the several squadrons under his fifteen lieutenants, and winning many to voluntary submission by his merciful treatment of the prisoners who fell into his hands.

The final battle took place near the Cilician coast, above which, on the heights of Mount Taurus, the pirates had placed their families and their plunder. They were defeated; 10,000 men were slain, their arsenals, magazines, and 1,300 vessels destroyed, while 400 ships and 20,000 prisoners were taken. Pompey showed no less wisdom in disposing of his captives than energy in defeating them. They were settled in isolated towns, and provided with honest employment; and as a result of the short and decisive conflict of three months, the Mediterranean remained safe and open to peaceful traffic for many years.

=153.= The Mithridatic War, though conducted with great ability by Lucullus, had become disastrous to the Romans; and a new law, proposed by Manil´ius, now extended Pompey’s jurisdiction over all the forces in Asia, with power to make war, peace, or alliance with the several kings at his own discretion. Within a year, B. C. 66, he received the submission of the king of Armenia, and drove Mithridates beyond the Cau´casus. He deposed the last of the Seleucidæ, and placed Syria, as well as Pontus and Bithynia, under provincial management.

As centers of Roman or Greek civilization, he founded thirty-nine new cities, beside rebuilding or reviving many old ones. Among the former was Nicop´olis—“the city of victory”—which he caused to be built as a home for his veteran soldiers, on the site of the decisive overthrow of Mithridates. He subdued Phœnicia and Palestine, B. C. 63, captured the temple-fortress of Jerusalem by a siege of three months, and established Hyrcanus as “high priest and ruler of the people.” The next year he returned to Italy in a long triumphal procession.

RECAPITULATION.

Death of Drusus is followed by the Social War, in the
victorious ending of which Sulla gains great glory. Marius
interferes by violence with his appointment to command in the
war against Pontus. Sulla overpowers the city by his legions,
and Marius becomes an exile. After Sulla’s departure he
returns, captures Rome, and massacres his opponents, but dies
soon after the beginning of his seventh consulship. Sulla,
returning triumphant from the East, defeats the new consuls and
their allies, and by his proscriptions makes havoc with life
and property at Rome. As dictator, he restores the aristocratic
government of the early Republic. He dies in retirement, B.
C. 78. Sertorius, ten years sovereign in Spain, is opposed by
Pompey, and murdered, B. C. 72. War of the gladiators, under
Spartacus, fills all Italy with terror, B. C. 73-71. It is
ended by Crassus, who, with Pompey the Great, becomes consul
for B. C. 70. Cicero impeaches Verres for extortion in Sicily.
Pompey, intrusted with extraordinary powers by the Gabinian
law, destroys the Cilician pirates; then completes the Pontic
War, and establishes Roman dominion in western Asia.

CONQUESTS OF JULIUS CÆSAR.

=154.= Rome, meanwhile, had narrowly escaped ruin from the iniquitous schemes of one of her own nobles. L. Ser´gius Catili´na, a man of ancient family, but worthless character and ruined fortunes, seized the time when all the troops were absent from Italy, to plot with other nobles, as wicked and turbulent as himself, for the overthrow of the government. The new consuls were to be murdered on the day of their inauguration. Catiline and Autro´nius were to take the supreme command in Italy, and Piso was to lead an army into Spain. The first plot failed through the imprudence of its leader; but a second, of still bolder and more comprehensive character, was formed. Eleven senators were drawn into the conspiracy; magazines of arms were formed, and troops levied in various parts of the peninsula. The wide-spread discontent of the people with the existing government aided the success of the movement; and, in the end, slaves, gladiators, and even criminals from the common prisons, were to be liberated and armed.

The secret was kept by a vast number of persons for eighteen months, but the main features of the plot were at length made known to Cicero, then consul, and by his vigilance and prudence it was completely foiled. He confronted Catiline in the Senate—where the arch conspirator had the boldness to take his usual place—with an oration, in which he laid open with unsparing vehemence the minutest circumstances of the plot. The convicted ringleader fled from Rome in the night, and placed himself at the head of his two legions, hoping yet to strike an effective blow before the levies ordered by the Senate could be fit for service. His chief accomplices were seized and strangled in prison, by order of the Senate, while he himself was followed and defeated in Etruria by the proconsul Antonius. The battle was decisive. Catiline fell fighting far in advance of his troops, and 3,000 of his followers perished with him. No free Roman was taken alive. B. C. 62.

=155.= Though this daring conspiracy was thus happily crushed, the weakness and disorder of society alarmed the best and wisest citizens. It was feared that some man of commanding talent might yet succeed where Catiline had failed, and overthrow the liberties of Rome. Pompey, now returning with his victorious legions from the East, was the immediate object of dread to the Senate and aristocratic party. But he quieted apprehension by disbanding his army as soon as he touched the soil of Italy, and proceeded slowly to Rome accompanied by only a few friends. They could not refuse his claim to a triumph, and from the number and extent of his victories, this pageant was the most imposing that Rome had ever seen. Although there was no army to lengthen the procession, it occupied two days in passing through the city. The inscriptions enumerated 22 kings and 12,000,000 of people as conquered; 800 ships, nearly 900 towns, and 1,000 fortresses taken; and the Roman revenues nearly doubled.

By an unusual act of clemency, Pompey spared the lives of all his captives, and dismissed to their homes all except Aristobulus, of Judæa, and the young Tigranes, of Armenia, who were detained lest they should stir up revolts in their respective countries. But though the aristocrats of the Senate had taken part in the public honors paid to Pompey, they could not forget that his appointment in the East had been in defiance of their opposition. His demands of allotments of land to his veterans, and for himself a second consulship and the ratification of his official acts, were refused; and Pompey, to redeem his pledges to his soldiers, now made an alliance with an abler man, and one far more dangerous to the old order of things—if the Senate could but have foreseen it—than himself. B. C. 60.

=156.= Caius Julius Cæsar had been proscribed in his eighteenth year, because he had refused to put away his young wife, Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, at the command of Sulla. He was for a time a fugitive in danger of death, but his friends at length, with great difficulty, procured his pardon from the dictator, on the plea of his youth and insignificance. Sulla was more discerning; he remarked, “That boy will some day be the ruin of the aristocracy, for there are many Marii in him.”

Upon the death of his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius, Cæsar defied the law which had pronounced her husband an enemy of the state, by causing his waxen image to be carried in the funeral procession. It was welcomed by the people with loud acclamations. In his ædileship, three years later—which, in the magnificence of the games celebrated, and the buildings erected at his own expense, surpassed all that had preceded it—Cæsar ventured upon a bolder step. He replaced in the Capitol, during one night, the statues of Marius, and the representations of his victories in Africa and Gaul, which had been removed by Sulla. When morning dawned, the common people and the veterans of Marius wept and shouted for joy at the re-appearance of the well-known features, and greeted Cæsar with rapturous applause. Though formally accused in the Senate of violating a law, he could not be condemned against the voice of the people.

=157.= Dignities and honors followed in rapid succession. He became pontifex maximus in 63 B. C.; prætor, in 62; and at the end of his prætorship he obtained the government of Farther Spain. In this first military command he acquired not only wealth for himself and his soldiers, but great reputation by subduing the Lusitanian mountaineers. On his return, he desired both a triumph and the consulship; but he could not obtain the one if he entered the city before it was decreed, nor the other without being personally present at the approaching election; so he abandoned the showy for the solid advantage, and was duly chosen consul, with Bib´ulus, a tool of the Senate, for his colleague.

=158.= He now managed to detach Pompey from the senatorial party, and form with him and Crassus a _triumvirate_, which, though only a secret agreement, not a public magistracy, ruled the Roman world for several years. The power of Crassus was due to his enormous wealth; that of Pompey, to his great military services; and that of Cæsar, to his unequaled genius and unbounded popularity. Their combined influence was soon felt in the official acts of Cæsar. He brought forward an Agrarian law for dividing the rich public lands of Campania among the poorest citizens. It was passed against the violent opposition of Bibulus and all the aristocratic party; a commission of twenty, with Pompey and Crassus at its head, was appointed to divide the lands, and the veterans thus obtained most of their claims.

The defeated consul, who had declared that he would rather die than yield, now shut himself up in his house, and never re-appeared in public until his year of office had expired. Cæsar obtained a ratification of all Pompey’s acts in Asia, and, at the same time, attached the equites to his party, by giving them more favorable terms in farming the provincial revenues. At the close of his consulship he obtained the government of Illyricum and Gaul, on both sides of the Alps, for a term of five years, with a general commission to “protect the friends and allies of the Roman people.”

=159.= The religious and national bond between the many Celtic tribes which inhabited the ancient territories of Britain, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and a part of Spain, was strong enough to unite them, now and then, in resistance to their common enemies, the Germans on the north and the Romans on the south, but not strong enough to prevent rivalries among themselves, which often gave the foreign power room to interfere in their affairs. The Roman province, founded B. C. 121, now extended northward along the Rhone as far as Geneva; and a great emigration of Germans had occupied territories west of the Rhine, from the neighborhood of the modern Strasbourg to the German Ocean.

=160.= During his first summer in Gaul, Cæsar, by the extraordinary swiftness and decision of his movements, subdued two nations and established Roman supremacy in the center of the country. The Helvetii, who lived between Lake Geneva and the Jura, finding themselves in too narrow quarters, had resolved to emigrate and conquer new habitations to the westward. They burned their twelve towns and four hundred villages, and assembled at Geneva to the number of 368,000 persons, men, women, and children, intending to pass through the Roman province into western Gaul. Cæsar prevented this move by a wall nineteen miles in length, which he extended along the left bank of the Rhone; and bringing up three legions from Italy, he followed the Helvetians along their second route, and defeated them near Bibrac´te. The remnant of the nation—less than one-third of the number on their muster-rolls when the migration began—were ordered back to their native hills.

The Seq´uani, a Celtic tribe north of the Helvetii, had called in Ariovis´tus, the most powerful of the German chiefs, against their rivals the Ædui, who were styled allies and kinsmen of the Romans. Having subdued the Ædui, Ariovistus turned upon his late allies, and demanded two-thirds of their lands in payment for his services. All the Gauls begged aid of Cæsar, who met the German prince near the Rhine, in what is now Alsace. So great was the fame of Ariovistus and his gigantic barbarians, who for fourteen years had not slept under a roof, that the Roman soldiers were afraid to fight; and though shamed out of their cowardice by the stirring appeal of their general, every man made his will before going into battle. The result of the combat was the complete destruction of the German host, only Ariovistus and a few followers escaping across the Rhine.

=161.= The second year, Cæsar conquered the Belgians north of the Seine, and the Senate decreed a public thanksgiving of fifteen days for the subjugation of Gaul. His lieutenant, Decimus Brutus, fought the first naval battle on the Atlantic, with the high-built sailing vessels of the Celts. The maritime tribes revolting the following winter, were subdued; and but for a few brief rebellions, the territories of France and Belgium remained under Roman dominion. Cæsar repaired each winter to his province of Cisalpine Gaul, to watch affairs in Italy. In 56 B. C., he had to reconcile Pompey with Crassus, and re-arrange, in his camp at Luca, the affairs of the triumvirate.

It was agreed that Pompey and Crassus should be consuls the next year, and that, after their term had expired, the former should govern Spain, and the latter Asia, while the proconsular government of Cæsar in Gaul should be prolonged to a second term of five years. In choosing the most arduous and least lucrative province for himself, Cæsar wished to begin the execution of his great scheme for civilizing the West, and organizing the whole Roman dominion into one compact state. The revolution begun by the Gracchi was not yet completed, and it was easy to see that the strife of parties must come again to the sword, as it had in the time of Marius and Sulla. In such a case, Cæsar desired to be near Italy, and to have an army trained to perfect discipline and devotion to himself.

=162.= In the fourth year, B. C. 55, he threw a bridge across the Rhine and invaded Germany. Late in the autumn, he made a reconnoitering expedition to Britain, and received hostages from the tribes. This time the Senate decreed twenty days’ thanksgiving, though Cato stoutly insisted that Cæsar ought, rather, to be given up to the vengeance of the barbarians, to avert the anger of the gods for his having seized the German embassadors. The next year, B. C. 54, Cæsar again invaded Britain with five legions. Notwithstanding the brave resistance of a native chief, Cas´sivelau´nus, he penetrated north of the Thames, took hostages, and imposed tribute; but he left no military posts to hold the island in subjection.

A formidable revolt of the Gauls, the following winter, destroyed one of the six divisions of the Roman army, and imperiled another, commanded by Quintus Cicero, brother of the orator. Cæsar came to its relief, defeated 60,000 of the enemy, and restored quietness to the north. The Germans having aided in this revolt, he again crossed the Rhine near Coblentz, in the summer of 53 B. C. He fought no battles, for the people took refuge among their wooded hills; but the invasion served, as before, to make an imposing display of Roman power.

=163.= The following year, Gaul was every-where in a blaze of revolt, and the campaign was the most difficult and brilliant of all Cæsar’s operations. Ver´cinget´orix, king of the Arver´ni, and the ablest of the Gallic chieftains, stirred up all the tribes, and nearly wrested the country from Roman control. While Cæsar was besieging him in Ale´sia, a Gallic army of more than a quarter of a million of men encamped around the Romans and besieged them in turn. But the genius of the proconsul surmounted even this crisis. He kept down all attempts at sortie, while he defeated the outer army; then forced the town to surrender, and captured Vercingetorix himself. Six years later, the Gallic chief adorned the triumph of Cæsar, and was then executed in the Mamertine prison at the foot of the Capitol. The Gauls now saw that resistance was hopeless. The firm and skillful management of Cæsar in pacifying the country and organizing the Roman rule, completed the work that his brilliant victories had prepared; and by the year 50 B. C., Gaul was at peace.

=164.= Meanwhile, Crassus, fearing that his colleagues would reap all the warlike glory of the league, undertook, after plundering the temples of the East, to make war against Parthia—a war unprovoked by the enemy, unauthorized by the Senate, and unwarranted by his own abilities. Contrary to advice, he plunged into the hot and sandy desert east of the Euphrates, lost the greater part of his army in a battle near Carrhæ (the Haran of Abraham), and was himself slain, soon after, by the treachery of the Parthian general, B. C. 53.

Pompey, now sole consul, no longer pretended any friendship for Cæsar. The conqueror of Mithridates and the Cilician pirates did not fancy that he could be eclipsed by any man; and the relationship between them was lately dissolved by the death of Julia, the daughter of Cæsar, who had been the wife of Pompey. The enemies of the former obtained a decree of the Senate requiring him to surrender his proconsular power, and return to Rome before becoming candidate for a second consulship. Cato had declared that he would prosecute Cæsar for capital offenses as soon as he should resign his command.

It could hardly have been expected that the governor of Gaul would quit his devoted legions, and all the treasures of the conquered province, to place himself unarmed at the mercy of his enemies. Such virtue had been known in the days of Curtius, but self-surrender for the public good had ceased to be fashionable at Rome. Moreover, Cæsar may well have doubted whether the sacrifice of his life would promote the public interests. The Romans required a master; and his own plans for building up a great empire from the scattered fragments of provinces, by extending equal rights to all the conquered peoples, were doubtless the most enlarged and beneficent that had yet been formed. He believed that the great interests of Rome were consistent with his own.

=165.= His enemies lost no opportunity to deprive him of resources. Under pretext of a war with Parthia, the two former colleagues of Crassus were required to furnish each one legion to be sent to Asia. Pompey had formerly lent a legion to Cæsar, and now demanded its return. Cæsar dismissed the two legions, giving to each man his share of the treasure which was to be distributed at his approaching triumph. He wrote at the same time to the Senate, offering to resign his command if Pompey would do the same, but not otherwise. The two legions were kept in Italy. After a violent debate, it was enacted that Cæsar should, without conditions, disband his army on a certain day, under penalty of being declared an enemy of the state. The tribunes, Antonius and Cassius, vetoed the motion, but their veto was set aside; and believing their lives in danger, they fled to Cæsar’s camp at Raven´na.

RECAPITULATION.

Catiline’s deep-laid conspiracy is defeated by Cicero, and its
lender slain in battle. Pompey disbands his army and triumphs
for his conquests in Asia. He forms with Cæsar, now consul, and
Crassus, the first triumvirate. The next year, B. C. 58, Cæsar,
as proconsul, assumes the command in Gaul; subdues the Helvetii
and the Germans, under Ariovistus, in one campaign; afterward
conquers the Belgæ; twice bridges the Rhine and ravages
Germany; twice invades Britain; suppresses revolts in Gaul,
and organizes the whole country into a peaceful and permanent
part of the Roman dominion. Crassus, in Asia, is overwhelmingly
defeated, with the loss of his army and his life, B. C. 53.
Pompey breaks with Cæsar, and becomes the champion of the
Senate.

CÆSAR MASTER OF ROME.

=166.= It was time for decisive action. Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, a little river which separated his province from Roman Italy, and advanced with one legion, the troops in Gaul having received orders to follow without delay. To enter the country without resigning his command was itself a declaration of war. Panic seized Rome, and the Senate fled, leaving the public treasures behind. Fifteen thousand recruits, destined for Pompey’s army, seized their officers and handed them over, with themselves and the town Corfin´ium, where they were quartered, to Cæsar. Other bodies of recruits followed their example. Pompey, having lost more than half his ten legions, retired to Brundisium; and though besieged by Cæsar, succeeded in escaping with 25,000 men to Greece.

The Roman world was now really divided between the two generals. Pompey controlled Spain, Africa, and the East, and hoped, by commanding the sea and the corn islands, to starve Italy into surrender. Cæsar had only Italy, Illyricum, and Gaul. If Pompey had acted with energy, he might speedily have created an army in the East and regained Rome, but by delay he allowed Cæsar to attack his provinces in detail, and wrest the entire empire from his grasp. The emigrated nobles assembled themselves at Thessalonica and re-organized a senate, in which they made a vain show of keeping up the constitutional forms, while, by their petty jealousies, they hampered every movement of their general-in-chief.

=167.= Cu´rio, the ablest of Cæsar’s lieutenants, captured Sicily, and thus averted famine from Rome. In Africa he was less fortunate. Drawn into an unexpected combat with the whole army of King Juba, he was defeated, and chose to be slain rather than meet his general in disgrace. Instead of the anarchy and general proscription which his enemies had predicted, Cæsar soon restored order in Italy, and universal confidence, by the moderation and forbearance of his conduct. Friends and foes were equally protected. The moneyed class, which had most to gain from a settled government, came over to the side of Cæsar, and the “rich lords resumed their daily task of writing their rent-rolls.”

His first foreign enterprise was against Spain, where Pompey had seven legions. It was conquered by a severe and toilsome campaign of forty days. Returning through Gaul, Cæsar received the surrender of Massilia, and learned of his appointment to the dictatorship at Rome. He held this high office only eleven days, but long enough to preside at the election of consuls, in which he himself, of course, received the greatest number of votes; to pass laws relieving debtors, and restoring to the enjoyment of their estates the descendants of those whom Sulla had proscribed; and to begin his scheme of consolidating the provinces, by granting the full rights of Roman citizenship to the Gauls.

=168.= As consul, he then led his army to Brundisium and crossed into Greece. Pompey had assembled from the eastern countries a great army and fleet, the latter of which commanded the sea, and seemed to forbid the passage of Cæsar. But Bibulus, the admiral, confiding in his superior numbers and the wintry season, was off his guard until seven legions were landed in Epirus. The attempt to capture Pompey’s camp and treasures, at Dyrra´chium, failed; but the vain confidence inspired by their partial success, in the proud and frivolous young nobles of the refugee party, eventually proved their ruin.

Cæsar was, indeed, in a perilous position; his fleet was destroyed, and he was cut off in a hostile country where food must soon fail. Nevertheless, with his usual good fortune or consummate skill, he contrived to draw his victorious enemy after him to the interior of the country, where Pompey’s fleet gave him no advantage, and then to choose his own battle-field at Pharsa´lia, in Thessaly. The army of Pompey, in horse and foot, numbered 54,000 men; that of Cæsar, scarcely more than 22,000. The former was abundantly supplied both with provisions and military materials, while the latter was near the point of starvation, and compelled to stake its existence on one desperate venture. So certain did the result appear, that the patricians in Pompey’s camp were already disputing among themselves the succession to Cæsar’s pontificate.

=169.= On the 9th of August, B. C. 48, the Pompeians crossed the river which separated the two camps, and with their cavalry commenced the attack. Cæsar’s horsemen were driven in, but a picked troop of his legionaries, tried on a hundred Gallic fields, unexpectedly charged the assailants. Their orders were to aim their javelins at the enemies’ faces. Confused by this novel attack, the cavalry turned and fled; and Pompey, who had been urged by the reproaches of his self-appointed counselors to give battle, contrary to his better judgment, and who had never shared their confidence, did not wait to see the general attack, but galloped away to his camp.

His army was completely routed; 15,000 lay dead upon the field, and 20,000 surrendered on the morning after the battle. Many of the aristocracy hastened to make their peace with the conqueror; the “irreconcilables” either betook themselves to the mountains or the sea, to carry on for years a predatory warfare; or to Africa, where King Juba, of Numidia, perceiving that Cæsar’s consolidating policy would deprive him of his kingdom, still stood firmly on the Pompeian side. The other client-states withdrew their quotas of ships and men as soon as they saw that Pompey’s cause was lost.

=170.= Pompey fled to Egypt. The young queen, Cleopatra, was now in Syria, having been driven from her kingdom by her brother’s guardian, Pothi´nus, who was with an army holding the eastern frontier against her. The perfidious statesmen who surrounded the king, sent out a boat inviting the illustrious fugitive to land; but just as he had reached the shore, he was stabbed by a former centurion of his own, who was now in the service of Ptolemy. Pompey perceived his fate; without a word, he covered his face with his toga, and submitted to the swords of his executioners. His head was cut off, and his body cast out upon the sand, where it was buried by one of his own attendants.

Cæsar soon arrived in pursuit; but when the ghastly head was presented to him, he turned away weeping, and ordered the murderers to be put to death. He remained five mouths at Alexandria, regulating the affairs of the kingdom, which he secured to Cleopatra jointly with her brother. He thus became involved in war with the people, and in a naval battle was once compelled to save his life by swimming from ship to ship, holding his sword in his teeth, and the manuscript of his Commentaries upon the Gallic Wars in one hand over his head. He was victorious at last, and Ptolemy was drowned in the Nile.

=171.= Cæsar then turned rapidly toward Asia Minor, where Pharnaces of Pontus was trying to regain his father’s lost dominions. The Roman army had been defeated at Nicopolis with great loss, but Cæsar won a decisive victory at Zie´la, and finished the campaign in five days. It was on this occasion that he sent to the Senate his memorable dispatch, “Veni, vidi, vici.”[75] The presence of the chief made a similar transformation of the war in Africa. The Pompeian party had re-established its senate at Utica, and during Cæsar’s long delay in Egypt had raised an army fully equal to that which had been conquered at Pharsalia.

In attempting to carry the war into Africa, Cæsar met an unexpected obstacle in a mutiny of his veterans in southern Italy. Wearied out with the unusual hardships of their last campaigns, and imagining that their general could do nothing without them, they refused to embark for Sicily, and commenced their march toward Rome. Having provided for the security of the city, Cæsar suddenly appeared among the legions, and demanded to know what they wanted. Cries of “discharge!” were heard on every hand. He took them instantly at their word; and then addressing them as “citizens,” not as “soldiers,” promised them, at his approaching triumph, their full share in the treasure and lands which he had destined for his faithful followers, though in the triumph itself they could, of course, have no part.

His presence and his voice revived their old affection; they stood mute and ashamed at the sudden severing of the bond which had been their only glory in the past. At length they began to beg, even with tears, that they might be restored to favor, and honored again with the name of “Cæsar’s soldiers.” After some delay their prayer was granted; the ring-leaders were only punished by a reduction of one-third in their triumphal presents, and the revolt was at an end.

=172.= The campaign in Africa was not less difficult than the one in Greece. The Pompeians were well supplied with cavalry and elephants, and were able to fight on fields of their own choosing. They gained a battle near Rus´pina, but in the more decisive conflict at Thapsus, they were completely overthrown. The soldiers of Cæsar disregarded his orders to spare their fellow-citizens; they were determined to obtain rest from war at any cost of Roman blood, and 50,000 Pompeians were left dead upon the battle-field. Cæsar was now master of all Africa. Cato, commanding at Utica, provided for the safety of his friends either by flight or surrender; then shutting himself in his room, read all night the treatise of Plato on the Immortality of the Soul, and toward morning killed himself with his own sword.