Chapter II: Part 2

Cornelia, taking upon herself the care of the household and the education of her children, approved herself so discreet a matron, so affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a woman, that Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable in choosing to die for such a woman, who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her his crown and would have married her, refused it and chose rather to live a widow. In this state she continued and lost all her children, except one daughter, who was married to Scipio the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius.

These she brought up with such care, that though they were without dispute in natural endowments and disposition the first among the Romans of their day, yet they seemed to owe their virtues even more to their education than to their birth. And, as in the statues and pictures made of Castor and Pollux, though the brothers resemble one another, yet there is a difference to be perceived in their countenances between the one who delighted in the cestus, and the other that was famous in the course; so between these two youths, though there was a strong general likeness in their common love of fortitude and temperance, in their liberality, their eloquence, and their greatness of mind, yet in their actions and administrations of public affairs, a considerable variation showed itself.

Tiberius, in the form and expression of his countenance and in his gesture and motion, was gentle and composed; but Caius, earnest and vehement. And so in their public speeches to the people, the one spoke in a quiet, orderly manner, standing throughout on the same spot; the other would walk about on the hustings and in the heat of his orations pull his gown off his shoulders, and was the first of all the Romans to use such gestures. Caius’s oratory was impetuous and passionate, making everything tell to the utmost, whereas Tiberius was gentle and persuasive, awakening emotions of pity. His diction was pure and carefully correct, while that of Caius was rich and vehement.

So likewise in their way of living and at their tables; Tiberius was frugal and plain, Caius, compared with others, temperate and even austere, but contrasting with his brother in a fondness for new fashions and varieties. The same difference that appeared in their diction was observable also in their tempers. The one was mild and reasonable; the other rough and passionate, and to that degree that often in the midst of speaking he was so hurried away by his passion against his judgment that his voice lost its tone and he began to pass into mere abusive talking, spoiling his whole speech.

As a remedy to this excess he made use of an ingenious servant of his, one Licinius, who stood constantly behind him with a sort of pitch-pipe, or instrument to regulate the voice by, and whenever he perceived his master’s tone alter and break with anger, he struck a soft note with his pipe, on hearing which Caius immediately checked the vehemence of his passion and his voice grew quieter, and he allowed himself to be recalled to temper.

Such are the differences between the two brothers, but their valor in war against their country’s enemies, their justice in the government of its subjects, their care and industry in office, and their self-command in all that regarded their pleasures, were equally remarkable in both. Tiberius was the elder by nine years; owing to which their actions as public men were divided by the difference of the times in which those of the one and those of the other were performed. The power they would have exercised, had they both flourished together, could scarcely have failed to overcome all resistance.

Their greatest detractors and their worst enemies could not but allow that they had a genius to virtue beyond all other Romans, which was improved also by a generous education. Besides, the Gracchi, happening to live when Rome had her greatest repute for honor and virtuous actions, might justly have been ashamed if they had not also left to the next generation the whole inheritance of the virtues of their ancestors.

The integrity of the two Romans, and their superiority to money was chiefly remarkable in this--that in office and the administration of public affairs they kept themselves from the imputation of unjust gain. The chief things in general which they aimed at were the settlement of cities and mending the highways; and in particular the boldest design which Tiberius is famed for is the recovery of the public land; and Caius gained his greatest reputation by the addition, for the exercise of judicial powers, of three hundred of the order of knights to the same number of senators.

Tiberius was the first who attempted to scale the walls of Carthage, which was no mean exploit. We may add the peace which he concluded with the Numantines, by which he saved the lives of twenty thousand Romans, who otherwise had certainly been cut off. And Caius, not only at home, but in war in Sardinia, displayed distinguished courage. So that their early actions were no small argument that afterward they might have rivaled the best of the Roman commanders if they had not died so young.

Of the Gracchi, neither the one nor the other was the first to shed the blood of his fellow-citizens; and Caius is reported to have avoided all manner of resistance, even when his life was aimed at, showing himself always valiant against a foreign enemy, but wholly inactive in a sedition. This was the reason that he went from his own house unarmed, and withdrew when the battle began, and in all respects showed himself anxious rather not to do any harm to others than not suffer any himself. Even the very flight of the Gracchi must not be looked on as an argument of a mean spirit, but an honorable retreat from endangering others.

The greatest crime that can be laid to Tiberius’s charge was the disposing of his fellow-tribune, and seeking afterward a second tribuneship for himself. Tiberius and Caius by nature had an excessive desire for glory and honors. Beyond this, their enemies could find nothing to bring against them; but as soon as the contention began with their adversaries, their heat and passions would so far prevail beyond their natural temper that by them, as by ill-winds, they were driven afterward to all their rash undertakings. What would be more just and honorable than their first design, had not the power and faction of the rich, by endeavoring to abrogate that law, engaged them both in those fatal quarrels, the one for his own preservation, the other to avenge his brother’s death who was murdered without law or justice.

CAIUS MARIUS.

BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

[An able Roman general and leader of the democratic faction, born
157 B.C., died 86. The military skill of Marius finished the
Jugurthine war and saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutons. Though
of plebeian birth he married into an eminent patrician family, and
became thereby the uncle of Julius Cæsar, who attached himself to
the Marian party in the political wars which raged between the
popular and patrician factions, the latter being led by Sylla. The
worst stain on the memory of Marius is the massacre which he
permitted at the beginning of his last consulate. References:
Mommsen’s “History of Rome,” Froude’s “Life of Cæsar,” Plutarch’s
“Lives.”]

Marius was born at Arpinum, a Latin township, seventy miles from the capital. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plow. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by the 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[6] was there, and made himself specially useful to Scipio;[7] he forced his way steadily upward by his mere soldier-like qualities to the rank of military tribune. Rome, too, had learned to know him, for he was chosen tribune of the people the year after the murder of Caius Gracchus. Being a self-made man, he naturally belonged to the popular party. While in office he gave offense in some way to the men in power, and was called before the senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could make nothing of their charges against him.

He was not bidding, however, at this time for the support of the mob. He had the integrity and sense to oppose the largesses of corn, and he forfeited his popularity by trying to close the public granaries before the practice had passed into a system. He seemed as if made of a block of hard Roman oak, gnarled and knotted but sound in all its fibers. His professional merit continued to recommend him. At the age of forty he became prætor,[8] and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark again by the successful severity by which he cleared the provinces of banditti. He was a man neither given himself to talking nor much talked about in the world; but he was sought for wherever work was to be done, and he had made himself respected and valued; for after his return from the peninsula he had married into one of the most distinguished of the patrician families.

Marius by this marriage became a person of social consequence. His father had been a client of the Metelli; and Cæcelius Metellus, who must have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited him to go as second in command in the African campaign.[9] The war dragged on, and Marius, perhaps ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general’s want of vigor, began to think he could make quicker work of it. There was just irritation that a petty African prince could defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic consul had been unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The patricians strained their resources to defeat him, but he was chosen with enthusiasm.

A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the senate house when the determination of the people was known. A successful general could not be disposed of as easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately Marius was not a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier and had a soldier’s way of thinking on government and the methods of it. His first step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman legions had been no more than the citizens in arms, called for the moment from their various occupations to return to them when the occasion for their services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer men, better trained and disciplined, could be made more effective and be more easily handled. He had studied war as a science. He had perceived that the present weakness need be no more than an accident, and that there was a latent force in the Roman state which needed only organization to resume its ascendancy.

“He enlisted,” it was said, “the worst of the citizens”--men, that is to say, who had no occupation, and became soldiers by profession; and as persons without property could not have furnished themselves at their own cost, he must have carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and equipped them at the expense of the state. His discipline was of the sternest. The experiment was new; and men of rank who had a taste for war in earnest, and did not wish that the popular party should have the whole benefit and credit of the improvements were willing to go with him; among them a dissipated young patrician, called Lucius Sylla, whose name was also destined to be memorable.

Marius had formed an army barely in time to save Italy from being totally overwhelmed. A vast migratory wave of population had been set in motion behind the Rhine and Danube. The hunting-grounds were too strait for the numbers crowded into them, and two enormous hordes were rolling westward and southward in search of some new abiding-place. The Teutons came from the Baltic down across the Rhine into Luxemburg. The Cimbri crossed the Danube near its sources into Illyria. Both Teutons and Cimbri were Germans, and both were making for Gaul by different routes. Each division consisted of hundreds of thousands. They traveled with their wives and children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians and with the modern South African Dutch, being their homes. Two years had been consumed in these wanderings, and Marius was by this time ready for them.

Marius was continued in office, and was a fourth time consul. He had completed his military reforms, and the army was now a professional service with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were henceforth to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as well as with sword and javelin, and the soldiers learned the use of tools as well as of arms. The Teutons were destroyed on the twentieth of July, 102 B.C. In the year following the same fate overtook their comrades. The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Roman history. The legions were no longer the levy of the citizens in arms, who were themselves the state for which they fought. The legionaries were citizens still. They had votes and they used them; but they were professional soldiers with the modes of thought which belong to soldiers, and besides the power of the hustings was now the power of the sword.

The danger from the Germans was no sooner gone than political anarchy broke loose again. Marius, the man of the people, was the savior of his country. He was made a consul a fifth time, and then a sixth. An indifferent politician, however, he stood aloof in the fierce faction contest between the aristocrats and the popular party. At last he had almost withdrawn from public life, as he had no heart for the quarrel, and did not care to exert his power. For eight years both he and his rival Sylla kept aloof from politics and were almost unheard of.

When Sylla came to the front, it was as leader of the aristocratic power in the state. Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the senate and the most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people, and as tribune demanded the deposition of Sylla. The latter replied by leading his legionaries to Rome. Sulpicius was killed; Marius, the savior of his country, had to fly for his life, pursued by assassins, with a price set upon his head.

While Sylla was absent in the East prosecuting that magnificent campaign against Mithridates, King of Pontus, which stamped him the first soldier of his time, the popular party again raised its head. 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. Marius and Cinna joined their forces, appeared together at the gates of the capital, and Rome capitulated. There was a bloody score to be wiped out. Marius bears the chief blame for the scenes which followed. A price had been set on his head, his house had been destroyed, his property had been confiscated, he, himself, had been chased like a wild beast, and he had not deserved such treatment. He had saved Italy, when but for him it would have been wasted by the swords of the Germans.

His power had afterward been absolute, but he had not abused it for party purposes. The senate had no reason to complain of him. 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 to interfere. From retaliatory political vengeance the transition was easy to plunder 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 ensuing year and a witch’s prophecy was fulfilled that Marius should hold a seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun was already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a fortnight after his inauguration, and died in his bed 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.”

MITHRIDATES, KING OF PONTUS.[10]

BY THEODOR MOMMSEN.

[Surnamed “the Great,” born about 132 B.C., died in 63. This
powerful Eastern monarch, who greatly extended his frontiers beyond
his original kingdom, was one of the most formidable barriers to
Roman power in Asia. He organized a league and severely taxed the
military resources of the republic. Sulla spent four years in
compelling him to submit to an honorable peace. In the second
Mithridatic war he was successively defeated by Lucullus and
Pompey. He finally committed suicide by the hands of one of his
mercenaries. References: Mommsen’s “History of Rome,” Arnold’s
“History of Rome.”]

Partly through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the Roman revolution--in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the soil in the province of Asia by Caius Gracchus, in the Roman tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of revenue added to their other avocations there--the Roman rule, barely tolerable from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia, that neither the king’s crown nor the peasant’s hut there was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn seemed to grow for Roman tribute, and every child of free parents seemed born for the Roman slave-driver.

It is true that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his inexhaustible passive endurance; but it was not patience or reflection that made him bear it peacefully. It was rather the peculiarly Oriental want of power to take the initiative; and in these peaceful lands, among these effeminate nations, strange and terrible things might happen if once there should appear among them a man who knew how to give the signal for revolt.

There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithridates VI, surnamed Eupator, who traced back his lineage on the father’s side, in the sixteenth generation to King Darius, son of Hystaspes, in the eighth to Mithridates I, the founder of the Pontic Empire, and was on the mother’s side descended from the Alexandridæ and the Seleucidæ. After the early death of his father, Mithridates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Synope, he had received the title of king when a boy of eleven years old; but the diadem had only brought to him trouble and danger. It is said that in order to escape from the daggers of his legal protectors, he became of his own accord a wanderer; and during seven years, changing his resting-place night after night, a fugitive in his own kingdom, led the life of a lonely hunter.

Thus the boy grew into a mighty man. Although our accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to written records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradition, which is generated with the rapidity of lightning in the East, early adorned the mighty king with many of the traits of its Samson and Rustem. These traits, however, belong to his character just as the crown of clouds belong to the highest mountain peaks; the outline of the figure appears in both cases only more colored and fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered.

The armor which fitted the gigantic frame of King Mithridates excited the wonder of the Asiatics, and still more that of the Italians. As a runner he overtook the swiftest deer; as a rider he broke in the wildest steed, and was able by changing horses to accomplish one hundred and twenty miles in a day; as a charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand, and gained in competition many a prize--it was dangerous, no doubt, in such sport to carry off victory from the king.

In hunting on horseback he hit the game at full gallop, and never missed his aim. He challenged competition at the table also; he arranged banqueting matches and carried off in person the prizes proposed for the most substantial eater and the hardest drinker. His intellectual wants he satisfied by the wildest superstition--the interpretation of dreams and of the Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king’s hours--and by a rude adoption of the Hellenic civilization. He was fond of Greek art and music--that is to say, he collected precious articles, rich furniture, old Persian and Greek articles of luxury--his cabinet of rings was famous--he had constantly Greek historians, philosophers, and poets in his train; and proposed prizes at his court festivals, not only for the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest jester and the best singer.

Such was the man; the sultan corresponded. In the East, where the relation between the ruler and the ruled bears the relation of natural rather than of moral law, the subject resembles the dog alike in fidelity and in falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful. In both respects Mithridates has hardly been surpassed. By his orders there died or pined in perpetual captivity, for real or alleged treason, his mother, his brother, his sister espoused to him, three of his sons, and as many of his daughters. Still more revolting, perhaps, is the fact that among his secret papers were found sentences of death, drawn up beforehand, against his most confidential servants.

In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan that he afterward, for the mere purpose of depriving his enemy of trophies of victory, caused his whole harem to be killed, and distinguished his favorite concubine, a beautiful Ephesian, by allowing her to choose the mode of death. He prosecuted the experimental studies of poisons and antidotes as an important branch of the business of government, and tried to inure his body to particular poisons. He had early learned to look for treason and assassination at the hands of everybody, especially his nearest relations, and he had early learned to practice them against everybody, and most of all against those nearest him; of which the necessary consequence--attested by history--was that all his undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom he trusted.

At the same time we meet with isolated traits of high-minded justice. When he punished traitors, he ordinarily spared those who were involved in the crime solely through their personal relations with the leading culprits; but such fits of equity are to be met with in every barbarous tyrant. What really distinguishes Mithridates amid the multitude of similar sultans is his boundless activity. He disappeared one fine morning from his palace, and remained unheard of for months, so that he was given over as lost; when he returned, he had wandered _incognito_ through all anterior Asia, and reconnoitered everywhere the country and the people.

In like manner he was not only generally fluent in speech, but he administered justice to each of the twenty-two nations over which he ruled in its own language, without needing an interpreter--a trait significant of the versatile East. His whole activity as a ruler bears the same character. So far as we know, his energies, like those of every other sultan, were spent in collecting treasures, in assembling armies--which were usually, in his earlier years at least, led against the enemy not by the king in person, but by some Greek _condottiere_--in efforts to add new satrapies to the old.

Of higher elements--desire to advance civilization, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special gifts of genius--there are found, in our traditional accounts at least, no distinct traces in Mithridates, and we have no reason to place him on a level even with the great rulers of the Osmans, such as Mohammed II and Suleiman. Notwithstanding his Hellenic culture, which sat on him not much better than his Roman armor on his Cappadocians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary stamp, coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, superstitious, cruel, perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous in organization, so powerful in physical endowments, that his defiant laying about him and his unshaken courage in resistance frequently look like talent, sometimes even like genius.

Granting even that during the death-struggle of the republic it was easier to offer resistance than in the times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only in the complication of the Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy that rendered it possible for Mithridates to resist the Romans twice as long as Jugurtha did, it nevertheless remains true that before the Parthian war he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in the East, and that he defended himself as the lion of the desert defends himself against the hunter.

But whatever judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king, his historical position remains in a high degree significant. The Mithridatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political opposition offered by Hellas to Rome and the beginning of a revolt against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper grounds of antagonism--the national reaction of the Asiatics against the Occidentals, a new passage in the huge duel between the West and the East which has been transmitted from the struggle of Marathon to the present generation, and will, perhaps, reckon its future by thousands of years as it has reckoned its past.

LUCIUS SYLLA.

BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla or Sylla (Felix) dictator of Rome, born 138
B.C., died in 78. Leader of the aristocratic party in the state, he
destroyed the party of popular reform, became dictator, and
proscribed thousands of the best citizens of the republic, who were
hunted down like wild beasts. In the Social and the Samnite war, as
in the first war against Mithridates, he displayed the genius of a
great soldier, surpassing even that of his able rival Marius. He
reorganized the Roman Constitution, concentrated all power in the
hands of the senatorial oligarchy, and paved the way for Julius
Cæsar to overthrow the liberties of the republic, though the latter
belonged to the opposite party. References: Froude’s “Life of
Cæsar,” Plutarch’s “Lives,” Mommsen’s “History of Rome.”]

Lucius Sylla, a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank, lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated man of fashion.

His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person. He had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple, with the colors so ill-mixed, that his face was compared to a mulberry sprinkled with flour. Ambition, he appeared to have none, and when he exerted himself to be appointed quæstor[11] to Marius on the African expedition, Marius was disinclined to take him as having no recommendation beyond qualifications which the consul of the plebeians disdained and disliked. Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Beneath his constitutional indolence Sylla was by nature a soldier, a statesman, a diplomatist. He had been too contemptuous of the common objects of politicians to concern himself with the intrigues of the forum, but he had only to exert himself to rise with easy ascendancy to the command of every situation in which he might be placed.

The war of factions which exiled Marius, placed Sylla at the head of the expedition against the King of Pontus. He defeated Mithridates, he drove him back out of Greece and pursued him into Asia. He left him still in possession of his hereditary kingdom; but he left him bound, so far as treaties could bind so ambitious a spirit, to remain thenceforward on his own frontiers. He recovered Greece, 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 could stain but not efface. During his Eastern campaign, a period of more than four years, the popular party had recovered ascendancy at Rome.

The time was come when Sylla was to demand a reckoning for what had been done in his absence. No Roman general had deserved better of his country; his task was finished. He had measured the difficulty of the task which lay before him, but he had an army behind him accustomed to victory, and recruited by thousands of exiles who had fled from the rule of the democracy. He intended to re-enter Rome with the glories of his conquests about him, for revenge, and a counter-revolution. 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 consul’s answer he sailed for Brindisi in the spring of 83 with forty thousand legionaries and a large fleet.

The war lasted for more than a year. At length the contest ended in a desperate fight under the walls of Rome itself on the first of November, B.C., 82. The popular army was at last cut to pieces, a few thousand prisoners taken, but they were murdered afterward in cold blood. Young Marius killed himself. Sertorius fled to Spain, and Sylla and the aristocracy were masters of Rome and Italy. Sylla was under no illusions. He understood the problem which he had in hand. He knew that the aristocracy were detested by nine tenths of the people; he knew that they deserved to be detested, but they were at least gentlemen by birth and breeding.

The democrats, on the other hand, were insolent upstarts who, instead of being grateful for being allowed to live and work and pay taxes and serve in the army, had dared to claim a share in the government, had turned against their masters, and had set their feet upon their necks. They were ignorant, and without leaders could be controlled easily. The guilt and danger lay with the men of wealth and intellect, the country gentlemen, the minority of knights and patricians like Cinna,[12] who had taken the popular side and deserted their own order. There was no hope for an end of agitation till every one of these men had been rooted out.

Appointed dictator, at his own direction, by the senate, he at once outlawed every magistrate, every public servant, civil or municipal, who had held office under the rule of Cinna. It mattered little to Sylla who were included if none escaped who were really dangerous to him; and an order was issued for a slaughter of the entire number, the confiscation of their property, and the division of it between the informers and Sylla’s friends and soldiers. It was one of those deliberate acts, carried out with method and order, which are possible only in countries in an advanced stage of civilization, and which show how thin is the film spread over human ferocity by what is called progress and culture. Four thousand seven hundred persons fell in the proscription of Sylla, all men of education and fortune. Common report or private information was at once indictment and evidence, and accusation was in itself condemnation.

The political reform enforced by the dictator gave the senate complete restrictive control over legislation and administration. All constitutional progress which had been made in the interests of the people was utterly swept away. The senate was made omnipotent and irresponsible. Sylla’s career was drawing to its close, and the end was not the least remarkable feature of it. He resigned the dictatorship and became a private citizen again, amusing the leisure of his age, as he had abused the leisure of his youth, with theatres and actresses and dinner-parties.

He too, like so many of the great Romans, was indifferent to life; of power for the sake of power he was entirely careless; and if his retirement had been more dangerous to him than it really was, he probably would not have postponed it. He was a person of singular character, and not without many qualities which were really admirable. He was free from any touch of charlatanry. He was true, simple, and unaffected, and even without ambition in the mean and personal sense. His fault, which he would have denied to be a fault, was that he had a patrician disdain of mobs and suffrages and the cant of popular liberty.

The type repeats itself era after era. Sylla was but Graham of Claverhouse in a Roman dress and with an ampler stage. His courage in laying down his authority has often been commented on, but the risk which he incurred was insignificant. Of assassination he was in no greater danger than when dictator, while the temptation to assassinate him was less. His influence was practically undiminished, and as long as he lived he remained, and could not but remain, the first person in the republic. He lived a year after his retirement and died 78 B.C., being occupied at the time in writing his memoirs, which have been unfortunately lost. He was buried gorgeously in the Campus Martius, among the old kings of Rome.

POMPEY.

BY THOMAS KERCHEVER ARNOLD.

[Known as Cneius Pompeius Magnus (or the Great), born 106 B.C.,
assassinated in Egypt by one of his own officers in 48. Best known
as the most formidable rival of Julius Cæsar; his career was
eminently fortunate till he sunk before the ascendancy of a greater
man. He achieved brilliant victories for Rome, and was honored with
three triumphs. Pompey was identified in the factional wars of
Italy, with the party led by Sulla. He finally became triumvir in
the division of power with Cæsar and Crassus. In the civil war
which ensued Pompey was defeated by Cæsar at the battle of
Pharsalia in Thessaly. After this defeat he fled to Egypt, where,
as he was leaving the boat for the shore, he was stabbed in the
back.]

The tears shed for Pompey were not only those of domestic infliction; his fate called forth a more general and honorable mourning. No man had ever gained at so early an age the affections of his countrymen; none had enjoyed them so largely, or preserved them so long with so little interruption; and at the distance of eighteen centuries the feeling of his contemporaries may be sanctioned by the sober judgment of history.

He entered upon life as a distinguished member of an oppressed party, which was just arriving at its hour of triumph and retaliation; he saw his associates plunged into rapine and massacre, but he preserved himself pure from the contagion of their crimes; and when the death of Sylla left him almost at the head of the aristocratical party, he served them ably and faithfully with his sword, while he endeavored to mitigate the evils of their ascendancy by restoring to the commons of Rome, on the earliest opportunity, the most important of those privileges and liberties which they had lost under the tyranny of their late master.

He received the due reward of his honest patriotism in the unusual honors and trusts that were conferred on him; but his greatness could not corrupt his virtue; and the boundless powers with which he was repeatedly invested he wielded with the highest ability and uprightness to the accomplishment of his task, and then, without any undue attempts to prolong their duration, he honestly resigned them. At a period of general cruelty and extortion toward the enemies and subjects of the commonwealth, the character of Pompey in his foreign commands was marked by its humanity and spotless integrity.

His conquest of the pirates was effected with wonderful rapidity, and cemented by a merciful policy, which, instead of taking vengeance for the past, accomplished the prevention of evil for the future. His presence in Asia, when he conducted the war with Mithridates, was no less a relief to the provinces from the tyranny of their governors, than it was their protection against the arms of the enemy. It is true that wounded vanity led him, after his return from Asia, to unite himself for a time with some unworthy associates; and this connection, as it ultimately led to all his misfortunes, so did it immediately tempt him to the worst faults of his political life, and involved him in a career of difficulty, mortification, and shame.

But after this disgraceful fall, he again returned to his natural station, and was universally regarded as the fit protector of the laws and liberties of his country when they were threatened by Cæsar’s rebellion. In the conduct of the civil war he showed something of weakness and vacillation; but his abilities, though considerable, were far from being equal to those of his adversary. His inferiority was most seen in that want of steadiness in the pursuit of his own plans which caused him to abandon a system already sanctioned by success, and to persuade himself that he might yield with propriety to the ill-judged impatience of his followers for battle.

His death is one of the few tragical events of those times which may be regarded with unmixed compassion. It was not accompanied, like that of Cato and Brutus, with the rashness and despair of suicide; nor can it be regarded like that of Cæsar, as the punishment of crimes, unlawfully inflicted, indeed, yet suffered deservedly. With a character of rare purity and tenderness in his domestic relations, he was slaughtered before the eyes of his wife and son; while flying from the ruin of a most just cause he was murdered by those whose kindness he was entitled to claim.

His virtues have not been transmitted to posterity with their deserved fame; and while the violent republican writers have exalted the memory of Cato and Brutus; while the lovers of literature have extolled Cicero; and the admirers of successful ability have lavished their praises on Cæsar; Pompey’s many and rare merits have been forgotten in the faults of his triumvirate, and in the weakness of temper which he displayed in conduct of the last campaign.

But he must have been in no ordinary degree good and amiable for whom his countrymen professed their enthusiastic love, unrestrained by servility and unimpelled by faction; and though the events of his life must now be gathered for the most part from unfriendly sources, yet we think that they who read them impartially will continually cherish his memory with a warmer regard.

SERTORIUS.

BY PLUTARCH.

[Quintus Sertorius, a Roman general of Sabine extraction, born
about 121 B.C., assassinated in Spain in 72. A prominent chief of
the Marian party, he fled to Spain and held possession of the
province against the dominant party at Rome for more than ten
years. He was the one leader among the adherents of Marius, as
Pompey was the one general among the followers of Sylla, who showed
moderation and the spirit of clemency. His greatness was chiefly
shown in his career in Spain. He displayed consummate generalship
and skill in holding all the armies of Rome at bay till he was
assassinated by one of his own officers.]

Sertorius at last utterly despaired of Rome, and hastened into Spain, that by taking possession there beforehand he might secure a refuge to his friends from their misfortunes at home. He armed all the Romans who lived in those countries that were of military age, and undertook the building of ships and the making of all sorts of warlike engines, by which means he kept the cities in due obedience, showing himself gentle in all peaceful business, and at the same time formidable to his enemies by his great preparations for war.

When Sertorius was called to Mauritania to assist the enemies of Prince Ascalis, and had made himself absolute master of the whole country, he acted with great fairness to those who had confided in him, and who yielded to his mercy. He restored to them their property, cities, and government, accepting only of such acknowledgments as they themselves freely offered. While he considered which way next to turn his arms, the Lusitanians sent ambassadors to desire him to be their general. For being terrified with the Roman power, and finding the necessity of having a commander of great authority and experience in war; being also sufficiently assured of his worth and valor by those who formerly had known him, they were desirous to commit themselves specially to his care.

In fact, Sertorius is said to have been of a temper unassailable either by fear or pleasure, in adversity and dangers undaunted, and no ways puffed up with prosperity. In straightforward fighting no commander of his time was more bold and daring; and in whatever was to be performed in war by stratagem, secrecy, or surprise, if any strong place was to be secured, any pass to be gained speedily, for deceiving and overreaching an enemy, there was no man equal to him in subtlety and skill.

In bestowing rewards and conferring honors upon those who had performed good service in the wars he was bountiful and magnificent, and was no less sparing and moderate in inflicting punishment. The Lusitanians having sent for Sertorius, he left Africa, and being made general, with absolute authority, he put all in order among them, and brought the neighboring parts of Spain into subjection. Most of the tribes voluntarily submitted themselves, won by the fame of his clemency and of his courage; and to some extent also, he availed himself of cunning artifices of his own devising to impose on them, and gain influence over them.

Among which certainly that of the hind was not the least. Spanus, a countryman who lived in those parts, meeting by chance a hind that had recently calved flying from the hunters, let the dam go, and pursuing the fawn took it, being wonderfully pleased with the rarity of the color, which was all milk white. At that time Sertorius was living in the neighborhood, and accepted gladly any presents of fruits, fowl, or venison that the country afforded, and rewarded liberally those who presented them.

The countryman brought him his young hind, which he took and was well pleased with at first sight; but when in time he made it so tame and gentle that it would come when he called, and follow him wherever he went, and could endure the noise and tumult of the camp, knowing well that uncivilized people are naturally prone to superstition, by little and little he raised it to something supernatural, saying it was given him by the goddess Diana, and that it revealed to him many secrets.

If he had received private intelligence that the enemies had made an incursion into any part of the district under his command, or had solicited any city to revolt, he pretended that the hind had informed him of it in his sleep, and charged him to keep his forces in readiness. Or, again, if he had notice that any of the commanders under him had got a victory, he would hide the messengers and bring forth the hind crowned with flowers, for joy of the good news that was to come, and would encourage them to rejoice and sacrifice to the gods for the good account they should soon receive of their prosperous success.

He was also highly honored for his introducing discipline and good order among them, for he altered their furious mode of fighting, and brought them to make use of Roman armor, taught them to keep their ranks, and observe signals and watch-words; and out of a confused number of thieves and robbers he constituted a well-disciplined army. That which delighted them most, however, was the care he took of their children. He sent for all the boys of noblest parentage out of all their tribes, and placed them in the great city of Osca, where he appointed masters to instruct them in the Latin and Greek learning.

His method of conducting the war against the Romans showed his military skill and foresight. By rapidly assaulting them, by alarming them on all sides, by ensnaring, circumventing, and laying ambushes for them, he cut off all provisions by land, while with his piratical vessels he kept all the coast in awe and hindered their supplies by sea. He thus forced the Roman generals to dislodge and to separate from one another at the last; Metellus departed into Gaul and Pompey wintered among the Vaccæans in a wretched condition, where, being in extreme want of money, he wrote a letter to the senate, to let them know that if they did not speedily supply him he must draw off his army. To these extremities the chiefest and most powerful commanders of the age were brought by the skill of Sertorius; and it was the common opinion in Rome that he would be in Italy before Pompey.

Sertorius showed the loftiness of his temper in calling together all the Roman senators who had fled from Rome and had come and resided with him, giving them the name of a senate. Out of these he chose prætors and quæstors, and adorned his government with all the Roman laws and institutions, and though he made use of the arms, riches, and cities of the Spaniards, yet he never would even in word remit to them the imperial authority, but set Roman officers and commanders over them, intimating his purpose to restore liberty to the Romans, not to raise up the Spaniards’ power against them.

He was a sincere lover of his country and had a great desire to return home; but in his adverse fortune he showed undaunted courage, and behaved himself toward his enemies in a manner free from all dejection and mean spiritedness. In his prosperity and the height of his victories he sent word to Metellus and Pompey that he was ready to lay down his arms and lead a private life if he were allowed to return home, declaring that he had rather live as the meanest citizen in Rome than, exiled from it, be supreme commander of all other cities together.

His negotiations with Mithridates further argue the greatness of his mind. For when Mithridates, recovering himself from his overthrow by Sylla--like a strong wrestler that gets up to try another fall--was again endeavoring to re-establish his power in Asia, at this time the great fame of Sertorius was celebrated in all places. Accordingly, Mithridates sends messengers into Spain with letters and instructions and commission to promise ships and money toward the charge of the war if Sertorius would confirm his pretensions on Asia, and authorize him to possess all that he had surrendered to the Romans in his treaty with Sylla.

Sertorius would by no means agree to it; declaring that King Mithridates should exercise all royal power and authority over Bithynia and Cappadocia--countries accustomed to a monarchical government and not belonging to Rome--but that he could never consent that he should seize or detain a province which, by the justest right and title, was possessed by the Romans. For he looked upon it as his duty to enlarge the Roman possessions by his conquering arms, and not to increase his power by the diminution of Roman territories.

When this was related to Mithridates he was struck with amazement, and said to his intimate friends: “What will Sertorius enjoin on us to do when he comes to be seated in the Palatium at Rome, who, at present, when he is driven out to the borders of the Atlantic Sea, sets bounds to our kingdoms in the East, and threatens us with war if we attempt the recovery of Asia?”

JULIUS CÆSAR.

BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

[A Roman general and statesman and founder of the empire, though
its first ruler was Octavianus, his nephew and adopted son, who
mounted the throne under the name of Augustus Cæsar. Born 100 B.C.,
assassinated in the senate-house 44 B.C. By many historians and
critics Julius Cæsar is regarded as the greatest man who lived
before the Christian era.]

In person Cæsar was tall and slight. His features were more refined than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray, like an eagle’s, the neck extremely thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and mustache were kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally scanty, falling off toward the end of his life, and leaving him partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high and shrill. His health was uniformly good, until his last year when he became subject to epileptic fits.

He was a great bather, and scrupulously neat in his habits, abstemious in his food, and careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching wine, and noting sobriety as the highest of qualities in describing any new people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all manly exercises, and especially in riding. From his boyhood it was observed of him that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quarrels, and was easily appeased when offended. In manner he was quiet and gentleman-like, with the natural courtesy of high breeding.

Like Cicero, Cæsar entered public life at the bar. It was by accident that he took up the profession of the soldier; yet, perhaps, no commander who ever lived showed greater military genius. The conquest of Gaul was effected by a force numerically insignificant, which was worked with the precision of a machine. The variety of uses to which it was capable of being turned implied, in the first place, extraordinary forethought in the selection of materials. Men whose nominal duty was merely to fight were engineers, architects, and mechanics of the highest order. In a few hours they could extemporize an impregnable fortress on the highest hill-side. 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 by scientific superiority. The machine, which was thus perfect, was composed of human beings who required supplies of tools and arms and clothes and food and shelter; and for all these it depended on the forethought of its commander. Maps there were none. Countries entirely unknown had to be surveyed; routes had to be laid out; the depths and courses of rivers, the character of mountain-passes had all to be ascertained. Allies had to be found in tribes as yet unheard of.

He was rash, but with a calculated rashness which the event never failed to justify. His greatest successes were due to the rapidity of his movements, which brought him to the enemy before they heard of his approach. No obstacles stopped him when he had a definite end in view. Again and again by his own efforts he recovered a day that was half lost. He once seized a panic-stricken standard-bearer, turned him around, and told him that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy.

Yet he was singularly careful of his soldiers. He rarely fought a battle at a disadvantage. When a gallant action was performed, he knew by whom it had been done, and every soldier, however humble, might feel assured that if he deserved praise he would have it. The army was Cæsar’s family. In discipline, he was lenient to ordinary faults, and not careful to make curious inquiries into such things. He liked his men to enjoy themselves. Military mistakes in his officers he always endeavored to excuse, never blaming them for misfortunes unless there had been a defect of courage as well as of judgment.