The Sicilian cities were not better able to protect their possessions than were private individuals. Segesta was a town that had early ranged itself on the side of the Romans, with whom its people had a legendary relationship. (The story was that Aeneas on his way to Italy had left there some of his followers, who were unwilling any longer to endure the hardships of the journey.) In early days it had been destroyed by the Carthaginians, who had carried off all its most valuable possessions, the most precious being a statue of Diana, a work of great beauty and invested with a peculiar sacredness. When Carthage fell, Scipio its conqueror restored the spoils which had been carried off from the cities of Sicily. Among other things Agrigentum had recovered its famous bull of brass, in which the tyrant Phalaris had burned, it was said, his victims. Segesta was no less fortunate than its neighbors, and got back its Diana. It was set on a pedestal on which was inscribed the name of Scipio, and became one of the most notable sights of the island. It was of a colossal size, but the sculptor had contrived to preserve the semblance of maidenly grace and modesty. Verres saw and coveted it. He demanded it of the authorities of the town and was met with a refusal. It was easy for the governor to make them suffer for their obstinacy. All their imposts were doubled and more than doubled. Heavy requisitions for men and money and corn were made upon them. A still more hateful burden, that of attending the court and progresses of the governor was imposed on their principal citizens. This was a contest which they could not hope to wage with success. Segesta resolved that the statue should be given up. It was accordingly carried away from the town, all the women of the town, married and unmarried, following it on its journey, showering perfumes and flowers upon it, and burning incense before it, till it had passed beyond the borders of their territory.

If Segesta had its Diana, Tyndaris had its Mercury; and this also Verres was resolved to add to his collection. He issued his orders to Sopater, chief magistrate of the place, that the statue was to betaken to Messana. (Messana being conveniently near to Italy was the place in which he stored his plunder.) Sopater refusing was threatened with the heaviest penalties if it was not done without delay, and judged it best to bring the matter before the local senate. The proposition was received with shouts of disapproval. Verres paid a second visit to the town and at once inquired what had been done about the statue. He was told that it was impossible. The senate had decreed the penalty of death against any one that touched it. Apart from that, it would be an act of the grossest impiety. "Impiety?" he burst out upon the unlucky magistrates; "penalty of death! senate! what senate? As for you, Sopater, you shall not escape. Give me up the statue or you shall be flogged to death." Sopater again referred the matter to his townsmen and implored them with tears to give way. The meeting separated in great tumult without giving him any answer. Summoned again to the governor's presence, he repeated that nothing could be done. But Verres had still resources in store. He ordered the lictors to strip the man, the chief magistrate, be it remembered, of an important town, and to set him, naked as he was, astride on one of the equestrian statues that adorned the market-place. It was winter; the weather was bitterly cold, with heavy rain. The pain caused by the naked limbs being thus brought into close contact with the bronze of the statue was intense. So frightful was his suffering that his fellow-townsmen could not bear to see it. They turned with loud cries upon the senate and compelled them to vote that the coveted statue should be given up to the governor. So Verres got his Mercury.

We have a curious picture of the man as he made his progresses from town to town in his search for treasures of art. "As soon as it was spring—and he knew that it was spring not from the rising of any constellation or the blowing of any wind, but simply because he saw the roses—then indeed he bestirred himself. So enduring, so untiring was he that no one ever saw him upon horseback. No—he was carried in a litter with eight bearers. His cushion was of the finest linen of Malta, and it was stuffed with roses. There was one wreath of roses upon his head, and another round his neck, made of the finest thread, of the smallest mesh, and this, too, was full of roses. He was carried in this litter straight to his chamber; and there he gave his audiences."

When spring had passed into summer even such exertions were too much for him. He could not even endure to remain in his official residence, the old palace of the kings of Syracuse. A number of tents were pitched for him at the entrance of the harbor to catch the cool breezes from the sea. There he spent his days and nights, surrounded by troops of the vilest companions, and let the province take care of itself.

Such a governor was not likely to keep his province free from the pirates who, issuing from their fastnesses on the Cilician coast and elsewhere, kept the seaboard cities of the Mediterranean in constant terror. One success, and one only, he seems to have gained over them. His fleet was lucky enough to come upon a pirate ship, which was so overladen with spoil that it could neither escape nor defend itself. News was at once carried to Verres, who roused himself from his feasting to issue strict orders that no one was to meddle with the prize. It was towed into Syracuse, and he hastened to examine his booty. The general feeling was one of delight that a crew of merciless villains had been captured and were about to pay the penalty of their crimes. Verres had far more practical views. Justice might deal as she pleased with the old and useless; the young and able bodied, and all who happened to be handicraftsmen, were too valuable to be given up. His secretaries, his retinue, his son had their share of the prize; six, who happened to be singers, were sent as a present to a friend at Rome. As to the pirate captain himself, no one knew what had become of him. It was a favorite amusement in Sicily to watch the sufferings of a pirate, if the government had had the luck but to catch one, while he was being slowly tortured to death. The people of Syracuse, to whom the pirate captain was only too well known, watched eagerly for the day when he was to be brought out to suffer. They kept an account of those who were brought out to execution, and reckoned them against the number of the crew, which it had been easy to conjecture from the size of the ship. Verres had to correct the deficiency as best he could. He had the audacity to fill the places of the prisoners whom he had sold or given away with Roman citizens, whom on various false pretenses he had thrown into prison. The pirate captain himself was suffered to escape on the payment, it was believed, of a very large sum of money.

But Verres had not yet done with the pirates. It was necessary that some show, at least, of coping with them should be made. There was a fleet, and the fleet must put to sea. A citizen of Syracuse, who had no sort of qualification for the task, but whom Verres was anxious to get out of the way, was appointed to the command. The governor paid it the unwonted attention of coming out of his tent to see it pass. His very dress, as he stood upon the shore, was a scandal to all beholders. His sandals, his purple cloak, his tunic, or under-garment, reaching to his ankles, were thought wholly unsuitable to the dignity of a Roman magistrate. The fleet, as might be expected, was scandalously ill equipped. Its men for the most part existed, as the phrase is, only "on paper." There was the proper complement of names, but of names only. The praetor drew from the treasury the pay for these imaginary soldiers and marines, and diverted it into his own pocket. And the ships were as ill provisioned as they were ill manned. After they had been something less than five days at sea they put into the harbor of Pachynus. The crews were driven to satisfy their hunger on the roots of the dwarf palm, which grew, and indeed still grows, in abundance on that spot. Cleomenes meanwhile was following the example of his patron. He had his tent pitched on the shore, and sat in it drinking from morning to night. While he was thus employed tidings were brought that the pirate fleet was approaching. He was ill prepared for an engagement. His hope had been to complete the manning of his ships from the garrison of the fort. But Verres had dealt with the fort as he had dealt with the fleet. The soldiers were as imaginary as the sailors. Still a man of courage would have fought. His own ship was fairly well manned, and was of a commanding size, quite able to overpower the light vessels of the pirates; and such a crew as there was was eager to fight. But Cleomenes was as cowardly as he was incompetent. He ordered the mast of his ship to be hoisted, the sails to be set, and the cable cut, and made off with all speed. The rest of his fleet could do nothing but follow his example. The pirates gave chase, and captured two of the ships as they fled. Cleomenes reached the port of Helorus, stranded his ship, and left it to its fate. His colleagues did the same. The pirate chief found them thus deserted and burned them. He had then the audacity to sail into the inner harbor of Syracuse, a place into which, we are told, only one hostile fleet, the ill-fated Athenian expedition, three centuries and a half before, had ever penetrated. The rage of the inhabitants at this spectacle exceeded all bounds, and Verres felt that a victim must be sacrificed. He was, of course, himself the chief culprit. Next in guilt to him was Cleomenes. But Cleomenes was spared for the same scandalous reason which had caused his appointment to the command. The other captains, who might indeed have shown more courage, but who were comparatively blameless, were ordered to execution. It seemed all the more necessary to remove them because they could have given inconvenient testimony as to the inefficient condition of the ships.

The cruelty of Verres was indeed as conspicuous as his avarice. Of this, as of his other vices, it would not suit the purpose of this book to speak in detail. One conspicuous example will suffice. A certain Gavius had given offense, how we know not, and had been confined in the disused stone quarries which served for the public prison of Syracuse. From these he contrived to escape, and made his way to Messana. Unluckily for himself, he did not know that Messana was the one place in Sicily where it would not be safe to speak against the governor. Just as he was about to embark for Italy he was heard to complain of the treatment which he had received, and was arrested and brought before the chief magistrate of the town. Verres happened to come to the town the same day, and heard what had happened. He ordered the man to be stripped and flogged in the market-place. Gavius pleaded that he was a Roman citizen and offered proof of his claim. Verres refused to listen, and enraged by the repetition of the plea, actually ordered the man to be crucified. "And set up," he said to his lictors, "set up the cross by the straits. He is a Roman citizen, he says, and he will at least be able to have a view of his native country." We know from the history of St. Paul what a genuine privilege and protection this citizenship was. And Cicero exactly expresses the feeling on the subject in his famous words. "It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in irons; it is positive wickedness to inflict stripes upon him; it is close upon parricide to put him to death; as to crucifying him there is no word for it." And on this crowning act of audacity Verres had the recklessness to venture.

After holding office for three years Verres came back to Rome. The people of Messana, his only friends in the islands, had built a merchantman for him, and he loaded it with his spoils. He came back with a light heart. He knew indeed that the Sicilians would impeach him. His wrong-doings had been too gross, too insolent, for him to escape altogether. But he was confident that he had the means in his hands for securing an acquittal. The men that were to judge him were men of his own order. The senators still retained the privilege which Sulla had given them. They, and they alone, furnished the juries before whom such causes were tried. Of these senators not a few had a fellow-feeling for a provincial governor accused of extortion and wrong. Some had plundered provinces in the past; others hoped to do so in the future. Many insignificant men who could not hope to obtain such promotion were notoriously open to bribes. And some who would have scorned to receive money, or were too wealthy to be influenced by it, were not insensible to the charms of other gifts—to a fine statue or a splendid picture judiciously bestowed. A few, even more scrupulous, who would not accept such presents for their own halls or gardens, were glad to have such splendid ornaments for the games which they exhibited to the people. Verres came back amply provided with these means of securing his safety. He openly avowed—for indeed he was as frank as he was unscrupulous—that he had trebled his extortions in order that, after leaving a sufficiency for himself, he might have wherewith to win the favor of his judges. It soon became evident to him that he would need these and all other help, if he was to escape. The Sicilians engaged Cicero to plead their cause. He had been quaestor in a division of the province for a year six years before, and had won golden opinions by his moderation and integrity. And Cicero was a power in the courts of the law, all the greater because he had never yet prosecuted, but had kept himself to what was held the more honorable task of defending persons accused.[2] Verres secured Hortensius. He too was a great orator; Cicero had chosen him as the model which he would imitate, and speaks of him as having been a splendid and energetic speaker, full of life both in diction and action. At that time, perhaps, his reputation stood higher than that of Cicero himself. It was something to have retained so powerful an advocate; it would be still more if it could be contrived that the prosecutor should be a less formidable person. And there was a chance of contriving this. A certain Caecilius was induced to come forward, and claim for himself, against Cicero, the duty of prosecuting the late governor of Sicily. He too had been a quaestor in the province, and he had quarreled, or he pretended that he had quarreled, with Verres. The first thing there had to be argued before the court, which, like our own, consisted of a presiding judge and a jury, was the question, who was to prosecute, Cicero or Caecilius, or the two together. Cicero made a great speech, in which he established his own claim. He was the choice of the provincials; the honesty of his rival was doubtful, while it was quite certain that he was incompetent. The court decided in his favor, and he was allowed one hundred and ten days to collect evidence. Verres had another device in store. This time a member of the Senate came forward and claimed to prosecute Verres for misdoings in the province of Achaia in Greece. He wanted one hundred and eight days only for collecting evidence. If this claim should be allowed, the second prosecution would be taken first; of course it was not intended to be serious, and would end in an acquittal. Meanwhile all the available time would have been spent, and the Sicilian affair would have to be postponed till the next year. It was on postponement indeed that Verres rested his hopes. In July Hortensius was elected consul for the following year, and if the trial could only be put off till he had entered upon office, nothing was to be feared. Verres was openly congratulated in the streets of Rome on his good fortune. "I have good news for you," cried a friend; "the election has taken place and you are acquitted." Another friend had been chosen praetor, and would be the new presiding judge. Consul and praetor between them would have the appointment of the new jurors, and would take care that they should be such as the accused desired. At the same time the new governor of Sicily would be also a friend, and he would throw judicious obstacles in the way of the attendance of witnesses. The sham prosecution came to nothing. The prosecutor never left Italy. Cicero, on the other hand, employed the greatest diligence. Accompanied by his cousin Lucius he visited all the chief cities of Sicily, and collected from them an enormous mass of evidence. In this work he only spent fifty out of the hundred and ten days allotted to him, and was ready to begin long before he was expected.

[Footnote 2: So Horace compliments a friend on being "the illustrious safeguard of the sad accused."]

Verres had still one hope left; and this, strangely enough, sprang out of the very number and enormity of his crimes. The mass of evidence was so great that the trial might be expected to last for a long time. If it could only be protracted into the next year, when his friends would be in office, he might still hope to escape. And indeed there was but little time left. The trial began on the fifth of August. In the middle of the month Pompey was to exhibit some games. Then would come the games called "The Games of Rome," and after this others again, filling up much of the three months of September, October, and November. Cicero anticipated this difficulty. He made a short speech (it could not have lasted more than two hours in delivering), in which he stated the case in outline. He made a strong appeal to the jury. They were themselves on their trial. The eyes of all the world were on them. If they did not do justice on so notorious a criminal they would never be trusted any more. It would be seen that the senators were not fit to administer the law. The law itself was on its trial. The provincials openly declared that if Verres was acquitted, the law under which their governors were liable to be accused had better be repealed. If no fear of a prosecution were hanging over them, they would be content with as much plunder as would satisfy their own wants. They would not need to extort as much more wherewith to bribe their judges. Then he called his witnesses. A marvelous array they were. "From the foot of Mount Taurus, from the shores of the Black Sea, from many cities of the Grecian mainland, from many islands of the Aegean, from every city and market-town of Sicily, deputations thronged to Rome. In the porticoes, and on the steps of the temples, in the area of the Forum, in the colonnade that surrounded it, on the housetops and on the overlooking declivities, were stationed dense and eager crowds of impoverished heirs and their guardians, bankrupt tax-farmers and corn merchants, fathers bewailing their children carried off to the praetor's harem, children mourning for their parents dead in the praetor's dungeons, Greek nobles whose descent was traced to Cecrops or Eurysthenes, or to the great Ionian and Minyan houses, and Phoenicians, whose ancestors had been priests of the Tyrian Melcarth, or claimed kindred with the Zidonian Jah."[3] Nine days were spent in hearing this mass of evidence. Hortensius was utterly overpowered by it. He had no opportunity for displaying his eloquence, or making a pathetic appeal for a noble oppressed by the hatred of the democracy. After a few feeble attempts at cross-examination, he practically abandoned the case. The defendant himself perceived that his position was hopeless. Before the nine days, with their terrible impeachment, had come to an end he fled from Rome.

[Footnote 3: Article in "Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology," by William Bodham Donne.]

The jury returned an unanimous verdict of guilty, and the prisoner was condemned to banishment and to pay a fine. The place of banishment (which he was apparently allowed to select outside certain limits) was Marseilles. The amount of the fine we do not know. It certainly was not enough to impoverish him.

Much of the money, and many of the works of art which he had stolen were left to him. These latter, by a singularly just retribution, proved his ruin in the end. After the death of Cicero, Antony permitted the exiles to return. Verres came with them, bringing back his treasures of art, and was put to death because they excited the cupidity of the masters of Rome.



CHAPTER V.

A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE.

There were various courts at Rome for persons accused of various crimes. One judge, for instance, used to try charges of poisoning; another, charges of murder; and, just as is the case among us, each judge had a jury, who gave their verdict on the evidence which they had heard. But this verdict was not, as with us, the verdict of the whole jury, given only if all can be induced to agree, but of the majority. Each juryman wrote his opinion on a little tablet of wood, putting A. (absolvo, "I acquit") if he thought the accused innocent, K. (condemno, "I condemn") if he thought him guilty, and N.L. (non liquet, "It is not clear") if the case seemed suspicious, though there was not enough evidence to convict.

In the year 66 B.C. a very strange trial took place in the Court of Poison Cases. A certain Cluentius was accused of having poisoned his step-father, Oppianicus, and various other persons. Cicero, who was praetor that year (the praetor was the magistrate next in rank to the consul), defended Cluentius, and told his client's whole story.

Cluentius and his step-father were both natives of Larinum, a town in Apulia, where there was a famous temple of Mars. A dispute about the property of this temple caused an open quarrel between the two men, who had indeed been enemies for some years. Oppianicus took up the case of some slaves, who were called Servants of Mars, declaring that they were not slaves at all, but Roman citizens. This he did, it would seem, because he desired to annoy his fellow-townsmen, with whom he was very unpopular. The people of Larinum, who were very much interested in all that concerned the splendor of their temple services, resisted the claim, and asked Cluentius to plead their case. Cluentius consented. While the cause was going on, it occurred to Oppianicus to get rid of his opponent by poison. He employed an agent, and the agent put the matter into the hands of his freedman, a certain Scamander. Scamander tried to accomplish his object by bribing the slave of the physician who was attending Cluentius. The physician was a needy Greek, and his slave had probably hard and scanty fare; but he was an honest man, and as clever as he was honest. He pretended to accept the offer, and arranged for a meeting. This done, he told the whole matter to his master the physician, and the physician told it again to his patient. Cluentius arranged that certain friends should be present in concealment at the interview between the slave and his tempter. The villain came, and was seized with the poison and a packet of money, sealed with his master's seal, upon him.

Cluentius, who had put up with many provocations from his mother's husband, now felt that his life was in danger, and determined to defend himself. He indicted Scamander for an attempt to poison. The man was found guilty. Scamander's patron (as they used to call a freedman's old master) was next brought to trial, and with the same result. Last of all Oppianicus, the chief criminal, was attacked. Scamander's trial had warned him of his danger, and he had labored to bring about the man's acquittal. One vote, and one only, he had contrived to secure. And to the giver of this vote, a needy and unprincipled member of the Senate, he now had recourse. He went, of course, with a large sum in his hand—something about five thousand six hundred pounds of our money. With this the senator—Staienus by name—was to bribe sixteen out of the thirty-two jurymen. They were to have three hundred and fifty pounds apiece for their votes, and Staienus was to have as much for his own vote (which would give a majority), and something over for his trouble. Staienus conceived the happy idea of appropriating the whole, and he managed it in this way. He accosted a fellow-juror, whom he knew to be as unprincipled as himself. "Bulbus," he said, "you will help me in taking care that we sha'n't serve our country for nothing." "You may count on me," said the man. Staienus went on, "The defendant has promised three hundred and fifty pounds to every juror who will vote 'Not Guilty.' You know who will take the money. Secure them, and come again to me." Nine days after, Bulbus came with beaming face to Staienus. "I have got the sixteen in the matter you know of; and now, where is the money?" "He has played me false," replied the other; "the money is not forthcoming. As for myself, I shall certainly vote 'Guilty.'"

The trial came to an end, and the verdict was to be given. The defendant claimed that it should be given by word of mouth, being anxious to know who had earned their money. Staienus and Bulbus were the first to vote. To the surprise of all, they voted "Guilty." Rumors too of foul play had spread about. The two circumstances caused some of the more respectable jurors to hesitate. In the end five voted for acquittal, ten said "Not Proven," and seventeen "Guilty." Oppianicus suffered nothing worse than banishment, a banishment which did not prevent him from living in Italy, and even in the neighborhood of Rome. The Romans, though they shed blood like water in their civil strife, were singularly lenient in their punishments. Not long afterwards he died.

His widow saw in his death an opportunity of gratifying the unnatural hatred which she had long felt for her son Cluentius. She would accuse him of poisoning his step-father. Her first attempt failed completely. She subjected three slaves to torture, one of them her own, another belonged to the younger Oppianicus, a third the property of the physician who had attended the deceased in his last illness. But the cruelties and tortures extorted no confession from the men. At last the friends whom she had summoned to be present at the inquiry compelled her to desist. Three years afterwards she renewed the attempt. She had taken one of the three tortured slaves into high favor, and had established him as a physician at Larinum. The man committed an audacious robbery in his mistress's house, breaking open a chest and abstracting from it a quantity of silver coin and five pounds weight of gold. At the same time he murdered two of his fellow-slaves, and threw their bodies into the fish-pond. Suspicion fell upon the missing slaves. But when the chest came to be closely examined, the opening was found to be of a very curious kind. A friend remembered that he had lately seen among the miscellaneous articles at an auction a circular saw which would have made just such an opening. It was found that this saw had been bought by the physician. He was now charged with the crime. Thereupon a young lad who had been his accomplice came forward and told the story. The bodies were found in the fish-pond. The guilty slave was tortured. He confessed the deed, and he also confessed, his mistress declared, that he had given poison to Oppianicus at the instance of Cluentius. No opportunity was given for further inquiry. His confession made, the man was immediately executed. Under strong compulsion from his step-mother, the younger Oppianicus now took up the case, and indicted Cluentius for murder. The evidence was very weak, little or nothing beyond the very doubtful confession spoken of above; but then there was a very violent prejudice against the accused. There had been a suspicion—perhaps more than a suspicion—of foul play in the trial which had ended in the condemnation of Oppianicus. The defendant, men said, might have attempted to bribe the jury, but the plaintiff had certainly done so. It would be a fine thing if he were to be punished even by finding him guilty of a crime which he had not committed.

In defending his client, Cicero relied as much upon the terrible list of crimes which had been proved against the dead Oppianicus as upon any thing else. Terrible indeed it was, as a few specimens from the catalogue will prove.

Among the wealthier inhabitants of Larinum was a certain Dinaea, a childless widow. She had lost her eldest son in the Social War (the war carried on between Rome and her Italian allies), and had seen two others die of disease. Her only daughter, who had been married to Oppianicus, was also dead. Now came the unexpected news that her eldest son was still alive. He had been sold into slavery, and was still working among a gang of laborers on a farm in Gaul. The poor woman called her kinsfolk together and implored them to undertake the task of recovering him. At the same time she made a will, leaving the bulk of her property to her daughter's son, the younger Oppianicus, but providing for the missing man a legacy of between three and four thousand pounds. The elder Oppianicus was not disposed to see so large a sum go out of the family. Dinaea fell ill, and he brought her his own physician. The patient refused the man's services; they had been fatal, she said, to all her kinsfolk. Oppianicus then contrived to introduce to her a traveling quack from Ancona. He had bribed the man with about seventeen pounds of our money to administer a deadly drug. The fee was large, and the fellow was expected to take some pains with the business; but he was in a hurry; he had many markets to visit; and he gave a single dose which there was no need to repeat.

Meanwhile Dinaea's kinsfolk had sent two agents to make inquiries for the missing son. But Oppianicus had been beforehand with them. He had bribed the man who had brought the first news, had learned where he was to be found, and had caused him to be assassinated. The agents wrote to their employers at Larinum, saying that the object of their search could not be found, Oppianicus having undoubtedly tampered with the person from whom information was to be obtained. This letter excited great indignation at Larinum; and one of the family publicly declared in the market-place that he should hold Oppianicus (who happened to be present) responsible if any harm should be found to have happened to the missing man. A few days afterwards the agents themselves returned. They had found the man, but he was dead. Oppianicus dared not face the burst of rage which this news excited, and fled from Larinum. But he was not at the end of his resources. The Civil War between Sulla and the party of Marius (for Marius himself was now dead) was raging, and Oppianicus fled to the camp of Metellus Pius, one of Sulla's lieutenants. There he represented himself as one who had suffered for the party. Metellus had himself fought in the Social War, and fought against the side to which the murdered prisoner belonged. It was therefore easy to persuade him that the man had deserved his fate, and that his friends were unworthy persons and dangerous to the commonwealth. Oppianicus returned to Larinum with an armed force, deposed the magistrates whom the towns-people had chosen, produced Sulla's mandate for the appointment of himself and three of his creatures in their stead, as well as for the execution of four persons particularly obnoxious to him. These four were, the man who had publicly threatened him, two of his kinsfolk, and one of the instruments of his own villainies, whom he now found it convenient to get out of the way.

The story of the crimes of Oppianicus, of which only a small part has been given, having been finished, Cicero related the true circumstances of his death. After his banishment he had wandered about for a while shunned by all his acquaintances. Then he had taken up his quarters in a farmhouse in the Falernian country. From these he was driven away by a quarrel with the farmer, and removed to a small lodging which he had hired outside the walls of Rome. Not long afterwards he fell from his horse, and received a severe injury in his side. His health was already weak, fever came on, he was carried into the city and died after a few days' illness.

Besides the charge of poisoning Oppianicus there were others that had to be briefly dealt with. One only of these needs to be mentioned. Cluentius, it was said, had put poison into a cup of honey wine, with the intention of giving it to the younger Oppianicus. The occasion, it was allowed, was the young man's wedding-breakfast, to which, as was the custom at Larinum, a large company had been invited. The prosecutor affirmed that one of the bridegroom's friends had intercepted the cup on its way, drunk off its contents, and instantly expired. The answer to this was complete. The young man had not instantly expired. On the contrary, he had died after an illness of several days, and this illness had had a different cause. He was already out of health when he came to the breakfast, and he had made himself worse by eating and drinking too freely, "as," says the orator, "young men will do." He then called a witness to whom no one could object, the father of the deceased. "The least suspicion of the guilt of Cluentius would have brought him as a witness against him. Instead of doing this he gives him his support. Read," said Cicero to the clerk, "read his evidence. And you, sir," turning to the father, "stand up a while, if you please, and submit to the pain of hearing what I am obliged to relate. I will say no more about the case. Your conduct has been admirable; you would not allow your own sorrow to involve an innocent man in the deplorable calamity of a false accusation."

Then came the story of the cruel and shameful plot which the mother had contrived against her son. Nothing would content this wicked woman but that she must herself journey to Rome to give all the help that she could to the prosecution. "And what a journey this was!" cried Cicero. "I live near some of the towns near which she passed, and I have heard from many witnesses what happened. Vast crowds came to see her. Men, ay, and women too, groaned aloud as she passed by. Groaned at what? Why, that from the distant town of Larinum, from the very shore of the Upper Sea, a woman was coming with a great retinue and heavy money-bags, coming with the single object of bringing about the ruin of a son who was being tried for his life. In all those crowds there was not a man who did not think that every spot on which she set her foot needed to be purified, that the very earth, which is the mother of us all, was defiled by the presence of a mother so abominably wicked. There was not a single town in which she was allowed to stay; there was not an inn of all the many upon that road where the host did not shun the contagion of her presence. And indeed she preferred to trust herself to solitude and to darkness rather than to any city or hostelry. And now," said Cicero, turning to the woman, who was probably sitting in court, "does she think that we do not all know her schemes, her intrigues, her purposes from day to day? Truly we know exactly to whom she has gone, to whom she has promised money, whose integrity she has endeavored to corrupt with her bribes. Nay, more: we have heard all about the things which she supposes to be a secret, her nightly sacrifice, her wicked prayers, her abominable vows."

He then turned to the son, whom he would have the jury believe was as admirable as the mother was vile. He had certainly brought together a wonderful array of witnesses to, character. From Larinum every grown-up man that had the strength to make the journey had come to Rome to support their fellow-townsman. The town was left to the care of women and children. With these witnesses had come, bringing a resolution of the local senate full of the praises of the accused, a deputation of the senators. Cicero turned to the deputation and begged them to stand up while the resolution was being read. They stood up and burst into tears, which indeed are much more common among the people of the south than among us, and of which no one sees any reason to be ashamed. "You see these tears, gentlemen," cried the orator to the jury. "You may be sure, from seeing them, that every member of the senate was in tears also when they passed this resolution." Nor was it only Larinum, but all the chief Samnite towns that had sent their most respected citizens to give their evidence for Cluentius. "Few," said Cicero, "I think, are loved by me as much as he is loved by all these friends."

Cluentius was acquitted. Cicero is said to have boasted afterwards that he had blinded the eyes of the jury. Probably his client had bribed the jury in the trial of his step-father. That was certainly the common belief, which indeed went so far as to fix the precise sum which he paid. "How many miles is your farm from Rome?" was asked of one of the witnesses at a trial connected with the case. "Less than fifty-three," he replied. "Exactly the sum," was the general cry from the spectators. The point of the joke is in the fact that the same word stood in Latin for the thousand paces which made a mile and the thousand coins by which sums of money were commonly reckoned. Oppianicus had paid forty thousand for an acquittal, and Cluentius outbid him with fifty thousand ("less than fifty-three") to secure a verdict of guilty. But whatever we may think of the guilt or innocence of Cluentius, there can be no doubt that the cause in which Cicero defended him was one of the most interesting ever tried in Rome.



CHAPTER VI.

COUNTRY LIFE.

A Roman of even moderate wealth—for Cicero was far from being one of the richest men of his time—commonly possessed more country-houses than belong even to the wealthiest of English nobles. One such house at least Cicero inherited from his father. It was about three miles from Arpinum, a little town in that hill country of the Sabines which was the proverbial seat of a temperate and frugal race, and which Cicero describes in Homeric phrase as

"Rough but a kindly nurse of men."

In his grandfather's time it had been a plain farmhouse, of the kind that had satisfied the simpler manners of former days—the days when Consuls and Dictators were content, their time of office ended, to plow their own fields and reap their own harvests. Cicero was born within its walls, for the primitive fashion of family life still prevailed, and the married son continued to live in his father's house. After the old man's death, when the old-fashioned frugality gave way to a more sumptuous manner of life, the house was greatly enlarged, one of the additions being a library, a room of which the grandfather, who thought that his contemporaries were like Syrian slaves, "the more Greek they knew the greater knaves they were," had never felt the want; but in which his son, especially in his later days, spent most of his time. The garden and grounds were especially delightful, the most charming spot of all being an island formed by the little stream Fibrenus. A description put into the mouth of Quintus, the younger son of the house, thus depicts it: "I have never seen a more pleasant spot. Fibrenus here divides his stream into two of equal size, and so washes either side. Flowing rapidly by he joins his waters again, having compassed just as much ground as makes a convenient place for our literary discussions. This done he hurries on, just as if the providing of such a spot had been his only office and function, to fall into the Liris. Then, like one adopted into a noble family, he loses his own obscurer name. The Liris indeed he makes much colder. A colder stream than this indeed I never touched, though I have seen many. I can scarce bear to dip my foot in it. You remember how Plato makes Socrates dip his foot in Ilissus." Atticus too is loud in his praises. "This, you know, is my first time of coming here, and I feel that I cannot admire it enough. As to the splendid villas which one often sees, with their marble pavements and gilded ceilings, I despise them. And their water-courses, to which they give the fine names of Nile or Euripus, who would not laugh at them when he sees your streams? When we want rest and delight for the mind it is to nature that we must come. Once I used to wonder—for I never thought that there was any thing but rocks and hills in the place—that you took such pleasure in the spot. But now I marvel that when you are away from Rome you care to be any where but here." "Well," replied Cicero, "when I get away from town for several days at a time, I do prefer this place; but this I can seldom do. And indeed I love it, not only because it is so pleasant, so healthy a resort, but also because it is my native land, mine and my father's too, and because I live here among the associations of those that have gone before me."

Other homes he purchased at various times of his life, as his means permitted. The situation of one of them, at Formiae near Cape Caista, was particularly agreeable to him, for he loved the sea; it amused him as it had amused, he tells us, the noble friends, Scipio and Laelius, before him, to pick up pebbles on the shore. But this part of the coast was a fashionable resort. Chance visitors were common; and there were many neighbors, some of whom were far too liberal of their visits. He writes to Atticus on one occasion from his Formian villa: "As to composition, to which you are always urging me, it is absolutely impossible. It is a public-hall that I have here, not a country-house, such a crowd of people is there at Formiae. As to most of them nothing need be said. After ten o'clock they cease to trouble me. But my nearest neighbor is Arrius. The man absolutely lives with me, says that he has given up the idea of going to Rome because he wants to talk philosophy with me. And then, on the other side, there is Sebosus, Catulus' friend, as you will remember. Now what am I to do? I would certainly be off to Arpinum if I did not expect to see you here." In the next letter he repeats the complaints: "Just as I am sitting down to write in comes our friend Sebosus. I had not time to give an inward groan, when Arrius says, 'Good morning.' And this is going away from Rome! I will certainly be off to

'My native hills, the cradle of my race.'"

Still, doubtless, there was a sweetness, the sweetness of being famous and sought after, even in these annoyances. He never ceased to pay occasional visits to Formiae. It was a favorite resort of his family; and it was there that he spent the last days of his life.

But the country-house which he loved best of all was his villa at Tusculum, a Latin town lying on the slope of Mount Algidus, at such a height above the sea[4] as would make a notable hill in England. Here had lived in an earlier generation Crassus, the orator after whose model the young Cicero had formed his own eloquence; and Catulus, who shared with Marius the glory of saving Rome from the barbarians; and Caesar, an elder kinsman of the Dictator. Cicero's own house had belonged to Sulla, and its walls were adorned with frescoes of that great soldier's victories. For neighbors he had the wealthy Lucullus, and the still more wealthy Crassus, one of the three who ruled Rome when it could no longer rule itself, and, for a time at least, Quintus, his brother. "This," he writes to his friend Atticus, "is the one spot in which I can get some rest from all my toils and troubles."

[Footnote 4: 2200 feet.]

Though Cicero often speaks of this house of his, he nowhere describes its general arrangements. We shall probably be not far wrong if we borrow our idea of this from the letter in which the younger Pliny tells a friend about one of his own country seats.

"The courtyard in front is plain without being mean. From this you pass into a small but cheerful space inclosed by colonnades in the shape of the letter D. Between these there is a passage into an inner covered court, and out of this again into a handsome hall, which has on every side folding doors or windows equally large. On the left hand of this hall lies a large drawing-room, and beyond that a second of a smaller size, which has one window to the rising and another to the setting sun. Adjoining this is another room of a semicircular shape, the windows of which are so arranged as to get the sun all through the day: in the walls are bookcases containing a collection of authors who cannot be read too often. Out of this is a bedroom which can be warmed with hot air. The rest of this side of the house is appropriated to the use of the slaves and freedmen; yet most of the rooms are good enough to put my guests into. In the opposite wing is a most elegant bedroom, another which can be used both as bedroom and sitting-room, and a third which has an ante-room of its own, and is so high as to be cool in summer, and with walls so thick that it is warm in winter. Then comes the bath with its cooling room, its hot room, and its dressing chamber. And not far from this again the tennis court, which gets the warmth of the afternoon sun, and a tower which commands an extensive view of the country round. Then there is a granary and a store-room."

This was probably a larger villa than Cicero's, though it was itself smaller than another which Pliny describes. We must make an allowance for the increase in wealth and luxury which a century and a half had brought. Still we may get some idea from it of Cicero's country-house, one point of resemblance certainly being that there was but one floor.

What Cicero says about his "Tusculanum" chiefly refers to its furnishing and decoration, and is to be found for the most part in his letters to Atticus. Atticus lived for many years in Athens and had therefore opportunities of buying works of art and books which did not fall in the way of the busy lawyer and statesman of Rome. But the room which in Cicero's eyes was specially important was one which we may call the lecture-room, and he is delighted when his friend was able to procure some appropriate ornaments for it. "Your Hermathena" he writes (the Hermathena was a composite statue, or rather a double bust upon a pedestal, with the heads of Hermes and Athene, the Roman Mercury and Minerva) "pleases me greatly. It stands so prettily that the whole lecture-room looks like a votive chapel of the deity. I am greatly obliged to you." He returns to the subject in another letter. Atticus had probably purchased for him another bust of the same kind. "What you write about the Hermathena pleases me greatly. It is a most appropriate ornament for my own little 'seat of learning.' Hermes is suitable every where, and Minerva is the special emblem of a lecture-room. I should be glad if you would, as you suggest, find as many more ornaments of the same kind for the place. As for the statues that you sent me before, I have not seen them. They are at my house at Formiae, whither I am just now thinking of going. I shall remove them all to my place at Tusculum. If ever I shall find myself with more than enough for this I shall begin to ornament the other. Pray keep your books. Don't give up the hope that I may be able to make them mine. If I can only do this I shall be richer than Crassus." And, again, "If you can find any lecture-room ornaments do not neglect to secure them. My Tusculum house is so delightful to me that it is only when I get there that I seem to be satisfied with myself." In another letter we hear something about the prices. He has paid about one hundred and eighty pounds for some statues from Megara which his friend had purchased for him. At the same time he thanks him by anticipation for some busts of Hermes, in which the pedestals were of marble from Pentelicus, and the heads of bronze. They had not come to hand when he next writes: "I am looking for them," he says, "most anxiously;" and he again urges diligence in looking for such things. "You may trust the length of my purse. This is my special fancy." Shortly after Atticus has found another kind of statue, double busts of Hermes and Hercules, the god of strength; and Cicero is urgent to have them for his lecture-room. All the same he does not forget the books, for which he is keeping his odds and ends of income, his "little vintages," as he calls them—possibly the money received from a small vineyard attached to his pleasure-grounds. Of books, however, he had an ample supply close at home, of which he could make as much use as he pleased, the splendid library which Lucullus had collected. "When I was at my house in Tusculum," he writes in one of his treatises, "happening to want to make use of some books in the library of the young Lucullus, I went to his villa, to take them out myself, as my custom was. Coming there I found Cato (Cato was the lad's uncle and guardian), of whom, however, then I knew nothing, sitting in the library absolutely surrounded with books of the Stoic writers on philosophy."

When Cicero was banished, the house at Tusculum shared the fate of the rest of his property. The building was destroyed. The furniture, and with it the books and works of art so diligently collected, were stolen or sold. Cicero thought, and was probably right in thinking, that the Senate dealt very meanly with him when they voted him something between four and five thousand pounds as compensation for his loss in this respect. For his house at Formiae they gave him half as much. We hear of his rebuilding the house. He had advertised the contract, he tells us in the same letter in which he complains of the insufficient compensation. Some of his valuables he recovered, but we hear no more of collecting. He had lost heart for it, as men will when such a disaster has happened to them. He was growing older too, and the times were growing more and more troublous. Possibly money was not so plentiful with him as it had been in earlier days. But we have one noble monument of the man connected with the second of his two Tusculum houses. He makes it the scene of the "Discussions of Tusculum," one of the last of the treatises in the writing of which he found consolation for private and public sorrows. He describes himself as resorting in the afternoon to his "Academy," and there discussing how the wise man may rise superior to the fear of death, to pain and to sorrow, how he may rule his passions, and find contentment in virtue alone. "If it seems," he says, summing up the first of these discussions, "if it seems the clear bidding of God that we should quit this life [he seems to be speaking of suicide, which appeared to a Roman to be, under certain circumstances, a laudable act], let us obey gladly and thankfully. Let us consider that we are being loosed from prison, and released from chains, that we may either find our way back to a home that is at once everlasting and manifestly our own, or at least be quit forever of all sensation and trouble. If no such bidding come to us, let us at least cherish such a temper that we may look on that day so dreadful to others as full of blessing to us; and let us look on nothing that is ordered for us either by the everlasting gods or by nature, our common mother, as an evil. It is not by some random chance that we have been created. There is beyond all doubt some mighty Power which watches over the race of man, which does not produce a creature whose doom it is, after having exhausted all other woes, to fall at last into the unending woe of death. Rather let us believe that we have in death a haven and refuge prepared for us. I would that we might sail thither with widespread sails; if not, if contrary winds shall blow us back, still we must needs reach, though it may be somewhat late, the haven where we would be. And as for the fate which is the fate of all, how can it be the unhappiness of one?"



CHAPTER VII.

A GREAT CONSPIRACY.

Sergius Catiline belonged to an ancient family which had fallen into poverty. In the evil days of Sulla, when the nobles recovered the power which they had lost, and plundered and murdered their adversaries, he had shown himself as cruel and as wicked as any of his fellows. Like many others he had satisfied grudges of his own under pretense of serving his party, and had actually killed his brother-in-law with his own hand. These evil deeds and his private character, which was of the very worst, did not hinder him from rising to high offices in the State. He was made first aedile, then praetor, then governor of Africa, a province covering the region which now bears the names of Tripoli and Tunis. At the end of his year of government he returned to Rome, intending to become a candidate for the consulship. In this he met with a great disappointment. He was indicted for misgovernment in his province, and as the law did not permit any one who had such a charge hanging over him to stand for any public office, he was compelled to retire. But he soon found, or fancied that he had found, an opportunity of revenging himself. The two new consuls were found guilty of bribery, and were compelled to resign. One of them, enraged at his disgrace, made common cause with Catiline. A plot, in which not a few powerful citizens were afterwards suspected with more or less reason of having joined, was formed. It was arranged that the consuls should be assassinated on the first day of the new year; the day, that is, on which they were to enter on their office. But a rumor of some impending danger got about; on the appointed day the new consuls appeared with a sufficient escort, and the conspirators agreed to postpone the execution of their scheme till an early day in February. This time the secret was better kept, but the impatience of Catiline hindered the plot from being carried out. It had been arranged that he should take his place in front of the senate-house, and give to the hired band of assassins the signal to begin. This signal he gave before the whole number was assembled. The few that were present had not the courage to act, and the opportunity was lost.

The trial for misgovernment ended in an acquittal, purchased, it was said, by large bribes given to the jurymen and even to the prosecutor, a certain Clodius, of whom we shall hear again, and shall find to have been not one whit better than Catiline himself. A second trial, this time for misdeeds committed in the days of Sulla, ended in the same way. Catiline now resolved on following another course of action. He would take up the character of a friend of the people. He had the advantage of being a noble, for men thought that he was honest when they saw him thus turn against his own order, and, as it seemed, against his own interests. And indeed there was much that he could say, and say with perfect truth, against the nobles. They were corrupt and profligate beyond all bearing. They sat on juries and gave false verdicts for money. They went out to govern provinces, showed themselves horribly cruel and greedy, and then came home to be acquitted by men who had done or hoped to do the very same things themselves. People listened to Catiline when he spoke against such doings, without remembering that he was just as bad himself. He had too, just the reputation for strength and courage that was likely to make him popular. He had never been a soldier, but he was known to be very brave, and he had a remarkable power of enduring cold and hunger and hardships of every kind. On the strength of the favor which he thus gained, he stood again for the consulship. In anticipation of being elected, he gathered a number of men about him, unsuccessful and discontented like himself, and unfolded his plans. All debts were to be wiped out, and wealthy citizens were to be put to death and their property to be divided. It was hoped that the consuls at home, and two at least of the armies in the provinces, would support the movement. The first failure was that Catiline was not elected consul, Cicero being chosen unanimously, with Antonius, who had a small majority over Catiline, for his colleague. Enraged at his want of success, the latter now proceeded to greater lengths than ever. He actually raised troops in various parts of Italy, but especially in Etruria, which one Manlius, an old officer in Sulla's army, commanded. He then again became a candidate for the consulship, resolving first to get rid of Cicero, who, he found, met and thwarted him at every turn. Happily for Rome these designs were discovered through the weakness of one of his associates. This man told the secret to a lady, with whom he was in love, and the lady, dismayed at the boldness and wickedness of the plan, communicated all she knew to Cicero.

Not knowing that he was thus betrayed, Catiline set about ridding himself of his great antagonist. Nor did the task seem difficult. The hours both of business and of pleasure in Rome were what we should think inconveniently early. Thus a Roman noble or statesman would receive in the first hours of the morning the calls of ceremony or friendship which it is our custom to pay in the afternoon. It would sometimes happen that early visitors would find the great man not yet risen. In these cases he would often receive them in bed. This was probably the habit of Cicero, a courteous, kindly man, always anxious to be popular, and therefore easy of access. On this habit the conspirators counted. Two of their number, one of them a knight, the other a senator, presented themselves at his door shortly after sunrise on the seventh of November. They reckoned on finding him, not in the great hall of his mansion, surrounded by friends and dependents, but in his bed-chamber. But the consul had received warning of their coming, and they were refused admittance. The next day he called a meeting of the Senate in the temple of Jupiter the Stayer, which was supposed to be the safest place where they could assemble.

To this meeting Catiline, a member in right of having filled high offices of state, himself ventured to come. A tall, stalwart man, manifestly of great power of body and mind, but with a face pale and wasted by excess, and his eyes haggard and bloodshot, he sat alone in the midst of a crowded house. No man had greeted him when he entered, and when he took his place on the benches allotted to senators who had filled the office of consul, all shrank from him. Then Cicero rose in his place. He turned directly and addressed his adversary. "How long, Catiline," he cried, "will you abuse our patience?" How had he dared to come to that meeting? Was it not enough for him to know how all the city was on its guard against him; how his fellow-senators shrank from him as men shrink from a pestilence? If he was still alive, he owed it to the forbearance of those against whom he plotted; and this forbearance would last so long, and so long only, as to allow every one to be convinced of his guilt. For the present, he was suffered to live, but to live guarded and watched and incapable of mischief. Then the speaker related every detail of the conspiracy. He knew not only every thing that the accomplices had intended to do, but the very days that had been fixed for doing it. Overwhelmed by this knowledge of his plans, Catiline scarcely attempted a defense. He said in a humble voice, "Do not think, Fathers, that I, a noble of Rome, I who have done myself, whose ancestors have done much good to this city, wish to see it in ruins, while this consul, a mere lodger in the place, would save it." He would have said more, but the whole assembly burst into cries of "Traitor! Traitor!" and drowned his voice. "My enemies," he cried, "are driving me to destruction. But look! if you set my house on fire, I will put it out with a general ruin." And he rushed out of the Senate.

Nothing, he saw, could be done in Rome; every point was guarded against him. Late that same night he left the city, committing the management of affairs to Cethegus and Lentulus, and promising to return before long with an army at his back. Halting awhile on his road, he wrote letters to some of the chief senators, in which he declared that for the sake of the public peace he should give up the struggle with his enemies and quietly retire to Marseilles. What he really did was to make his way to the camp of Manlius, where he assumed the usual state of a regular military command. The Senate, on hearing of these doings, declared him to be an outlaw. The consuls were to raise an army; Antonius was to march against the enemy, and Cicero to protect the city.

Meanwhile the conspirators left behind in Rome had been busy. One of the tribes of Gaul had sent deputies to the Capitol to obtain redress for injuries of which they complained. The men had effected little or nothing. The Senate neglected them. The help of officials could only be purchased by heavy bribes. They were now heavily in debt both on their own account and on account of their state, and Lentulus conceived the idea of taking advantage of their needs. One of his freedmen, who had been a trader in Gaul, could speak the language, and knew several of the deputies, opened negotiations with them by his patron's desire. They told him the tale of their wrongs. They could see, they said, no way out of their difficulties. "Behave like men," he answered, "and I will show you a way." He then revealed to them the existence of the conspiracy, explained its objects, and enlarged upon the hopes of success. While he and his friends were busy at Rome, they were to return to Gaul and rouse their fellow-tribesmen to revolt. There was something tempting in the offer, and the deputies doubted long whether they should not accept it. In the end prudence prevailed. To join the conspiracy and to rebel would be to run a terrible risk for very doubtful advantages. On the other hand they might make sure of a speedy reward by telling all they knew to the authorities. This was the course on which they resolved, and they went without loss of time to a Roman noble who was the hereditary "patron" of their tribe. The patron in his turn communicated the intelligence to Cicero. Cicero's instructions were that the deputies should pretend to agree to the proposals which had been made to them, and should ask for a written agreement which they might show to their countrymen at home. An agreement was drawn up, signed by Lentulus and two of his fellow-conspirators, and handed over to the Gauls, who now made preparations to return to their country. Cicero himself tells us in the speech which he delivered next day in the Forum the story of what followed.

"I summoned to my presence two of the praetors on whose courage I knew I could rely, put the whole matter before them, and unfolded my own plans. As it grew dusk they made their way unobserved to the Mulvian Bridge, and posted themselves with their attendants (they had some trusty followers of their own, and I had sent a number of picked swordsmen from my own body-guard), in two divisions in houses on either side of the bridge. About two o'clock in the morning the Gauls and their train, which was very numerous, began to cross the bridge. Our men charged them; swords were drawn on both sides; but before any blood was shed the praetors appeared on the scene, and all was quiet. The Gauls handed over to them the letters which they had upon them with their seals unbroken. These and the deputies themselves were brought to my house. The day was now beginning to dawn. Immediately I sent for the four men whom I knew to be the principal conspirators. They came suspecting nothing, Lentulus, who had been up late the night before writing the letters, being the last to present himself. Some distinguished persons who had assembled at my house wished me to open the letters before laying them before the Senate. If their contents were not what I suspected I should be blamed for having given a great deal of trouble to no purpose. I refused in so important a matter to act on my own responsibility. No one, I was sure, would accuse me of being too careful when the safety of Rome was at stake. I called a meeting of the Senate, and took care that the attendance should be very large. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of the Gauls, I sent a praetor to the house of Cethegus to seize all the weapons that he could find. He brought away a great number of daggers and swords.

"The Senate being now assembled, I brought Vulturcius, one of the conspirators, into the House, promised him a public pardon, and bade him tell all he knew without fear. As soon as the man could speak, for he was terribly frightened, he said, 'I was taking a letter and a message from Lentulus to Catiline. Catiline was instructed to bring his forces up to the walls of the city. They meanwhile would set it on fire in various quarters, as had been arranged, and begin a general massacre. He was to intercept the fugitives, and thus effect a junction with his friends within the walls.' I next brought the Gauls into the House. Their story was as follows. 'Lentulus and two of his companions gave us letters to our nation. We were instructed to send our cavalry into Italy with all speed. They would find a force of infantry. Lentulus told us how he had learned from Sibylline books that he was that "third Cornelius" who was the fated ruler of Rome. The two that had gone before him were Cicero and Sulla. The year too was the one which was destined to see the ruin of the city, for it was the tenth after the acquittal of the Vestal Virgins, the twentieth after the burning of the Capitol. After this Cethegus and the others had a dispute about the time for setting the city on fire. Lentulus and others wished to have it done on the feast of Saturn (December 17th). Cethegus thought that this was putting it off too long.' I then had the letter brought in. First I showed Cethegus his seal. He acknowledged it. I cut the string. I read the letter. It was written in his own handwriting and was to this effect: he assured the Senate and people of the Gauls that he would do what he had promised to their deputies, and begged them on the other hand to perform what their deputies had undertaken. Cethegus, who had accounted for the weapons found in his house by declaring that he had always been a connoisseur in such things, was overwhelmed by hearing his letter read, and said nothing.

"Manlius next acknowledged his seal and handwriting. A letter from him much to the same effect was read. He confessed his guilt. I then showed Lentulus his letter, and asked him, 'Do you acknowledge the seal?' 'I do,' he answered. 'Yes,' said I, 'it is a well-known device, the likeness of a great patriot, your grandfather. The mere sight of it ought to have kept you from such a crime as this.' His letter was then read. I then asked him whether he had any explanation to give. 'I have nothing to say,' was his first answer. After a while he rose and put some questions to the Gauls. They answered him without any hesitation, and asked him in reply whether he had not spoken to them about the Sibylline books. What followed was the strangest proof of the power of conscience. He might have denied every thing, but he did what no one expected, he confessed; all his abilities, all his power of speech deserted him. Vulturcius then begged that the letter which he was carrying from Lentulus to Catiline should be brought in and opened. Lentulus was greatly agitated; still he acknowledged the seal and the handwriting to be his. The letter, which was unsigned, was in these words: You will know who I am by the messenger whom I send to you. Bear yourself as a man. Think of the position in which you now are, and consider what you must now do. Collect all the help you can, even though it be of the meanest kind. In a word, the case was made out against them all not only by the seals, the letters, the handwritings, but by the faces of the men, their downcast look, their silence. Their confusion, their stealthy looks at each other were enough, if there had been no other proof, to convict them."

Lentulus was compelled to resign his office of praetor. He and the other conspirators were handed over to certain of the chief citizens, who were bound to keep them in safe custody and to produce them when they were called for.

The lower orders of the capital, to whom Catiline and his companions had made liberal promises, and who regarded his plans, or what were supposed to be his plans, with considerable favor, were greatly moved by Cicero's account of what had been discovered. No one could expect to profit by conflagration and massacre; and they were disposed to take sides with the party of order. Still there were elements of danger, as there always are in great cities. It was known that a determined effort would be made by the clients of Lentulus, whose family was one of the noblest and wealthiest in Rome, to rescue him from custody. At the same time several of the most powerful nobles were strongly suspected of favoring the revolutionists. Crassus, in particular, the wealthiest man in Rome, was openly charged with complicity. A certain Tarquinius was brought before the Senate, having been, it was said, arrested when actually on his way to Catiline. Charged to tell all he knew, he gave the same account as had been given by other witnesses of the preparations for fire and massacre, and added that he was the bearer of a special message from Crassus to Catiline, to the effect that he was not to be alarmed by the arrest of Lentulus and the others; only he must march upon the city without delay, and so rescue the prisoners and restore the courage of those who were still at large. The charge seemed incredible to most of those who heard it. Crassus had too much at stake to risk himself in such perilous ventures. Those who believed it were afraid to press it against so powerful a citizen; and there were many who were under too great obligations to the accused to allow it, whatever its truth or falsehood, to be insisted upon. The Senate resolved that the charge was false, and that its author should be kept in custody till he disclosed at whose suggestion he had come forward. Crassus himself believed that the consul had himself contrived the whole business, with the object of making it impossible for him to take the part of the accused. "He complained to me," says Sallust the historian, "of the great insult which had thus been put upon him by Cicero.".

Under these circumstances Cicero determined to act with vigor. On the fifth of December he called a meeting of the Senate, and put it to the House what should be done with the prisoners in custody. The consul elect gave his opinion that they should be put to death. Caesar, when his turn came to speak, rose and addressed the Senate. He did not seek to defend the accused. They deserved any punishment. Because that was so, let them be dealt with according to law. And the law was that no Roman citizen could suffer death except by a general decree of the people. If any other course should be taken, men would afterwards remember not their crimes but the severity with which they had been treated. Cato followed, giving his voice for the punishment of death; and Cicero took the same side. The Senate, without dividing, voted that the prisoners were traitors, and must pay the usual penalty.

The consul still feared that a rescue might be attempted. He directed the officials to make all necessary preparations, and himself conducted Lentulus to prison, the other criminals being put into the charge of the praetors. The prison itself was strongly guarded. In this building, which was situated under the eastern side of the Capitoline Hill, was a pit twelve feet deep, said to have been constructed by King Tullius. It had stone walls and a vaulted stone roof; it was quite dark, and the stench and filth of the place were hideous. Lentulus was hurried into this noisome den, where the executioners strangled him. His accomplices suffered the same fate. The consul was escorted to his house by an enthusiastic crowd. When he was asked how it had fared with the condemned, he answered with the significant words "THEY HAVE LIVED."

The chief conspirator died in a less ignoble fashion. He had contrived to collect about twelve thousand men; but only a fourth part of these were regularly armed; the rest carried hunting spears, pikes, sharpened stakes, any weapon that came to hand. At first he avoided an engagement, hoping to hear news of something accomplished for his cause by the friends whom he had left behind him in Rome. When the news of what had happened on the fifth of December reached him, he saw that his position was desperate. Many who had joined the ranks took the first opportunity of deserting; with those that remained faithful he made a hurried march to the north-west, hoping to make his way across the Apennines into Hither Gaul. But he found a force ready to bar his way, while Antonius, with the army from Rome, was pressing him from the south. Nothing remained for him but to give battle. Early in the year 62 B.C. the armies met. The rebel leader showed himself that day at his best. No soldier could have been braver, no general more skillful. But the forces arrayed against him were overpowering. When he saw that all was lost, he rushed into the thickest of the fight, and fell pierced with wounds. He was found afterwards far in advance of his men, still breathing and with the same haughty expression on his face which had distinguished him in life. And such was the contagious force of his example that not a single free man of all his followers was taken alive either in the battle or in the pursuit that followed it. Such was the end of a GREAT CONSPIRACY.



CHAPTER VIII.

CAESAR.

At eight-and-twenty, Caesar, who not thirty years later was to die master of Rome, was chiefly known as a fop and a spendthrift. "In all his schemes and all his policy," said Cicero, "I discern the temper of a tyrant; but then when I see how carefully his hair is arranged, how delicately with a single finger he scratches his head, I cannot conceive him likely to entertain so monstrous a design as overthrowing the liberties of Rome." As for his debts they were enormous. He had contrived to spend his own fortune and the fortune of his wife; and he was more than three hundred thousand pounds in debt. This was before he had held any public office; and office, when he came to hold it, certainly did not improve his position. He was appointed one of the guardians of the Appian Way (the great road that led southward from Rome, and was the route for travelers to Greece and the East). He spent a great sum of money in repairs. His next office of aedile was still more expensive. Expensive it always was, for the aedile, besides keeping the temples and other public buildings in repair (the special business signified by his name), had the management of the public games. An allowance was made to him for his expenses from the treasury, but he was expected, just as the Lord Mayor of London is expected, to spend a good deal of his own money. Caesar far outdid all his predecessors. At one of the shows which he exhibited, three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators fought in the arena; and a gladiator, with his armor and weapons, and the long training which he had to undergo before he could fight in public, was a very expensive slave. The six hundred and forty would cost, first and last, not less than a hundred pounds apiece, and many of them, perhaps a third of the whole number, would be killed in the course of the day. Nor was he content with the expenses which were more or less necessary. He exhibited a great show of wild beasts in memory of his father, who had died nearly twenty years before. The whole furniture of the theater, down to the very stage, was made on this occasion of solid silver.

For all this seeming folly, there were those who discerned thoughts and designs of no common kind. Extravagant expenditure was of course an usual way of winning popular favors. A Roman noble bought office after office till he reached one that entitled him to be sent to govern a province. In the plunder of the province he expected to find what would repay him all that he had spent and leave a handsome sum remaining. Caesar looked to this end, but he looked also to something more. He would be the champion of the people, and the people would make him the greatest man at Rome. This had been the part played by Marius before him; and he determined to play it again. The name of Marius had been in ill repute since the victory of his great rival, Sulla, and Caesar determined to restore it to honor. He caused statues of this great man to be secretly made, on which were inscribed the names of the victories by which he had delivered Rome from the barbarians. On the morning of the show these were seen, splendid with gilding, upon the height of the Capitol. The first feeling was a general astonishment at the young magistrate's audacity. Then the populace broke out into expressions of enthusiastic delight; many even wept for joy to see again the likeness of their old favorite; all declared that Caesar was his worthy successor. The nobles were filled with anger and fear. Catulus, who was their leader, accused Caesar in the Senate. "This man," he said, "is no longer digging mines against his country, he is bringing battering-rams against it." The Senate, however, was afraid or unwilling to act. As for the people, it soon gave the young man a remarkable proof of its favor. What may be called the High Priesthood became vacant. It was an honor commonly given to some aged man who had won victories abroad and borne high honors at home. Such competitors there were on this occasion, Catulus being one of them. But Caesar, though far below the age at which such offices were commonly held, determined to enter the lists. He refused the heavy bribe by which Catulus sought to induce him to withdraw from the contest, saying that he would raise a greater sum to bring it to a successful end. Indeed, he staked all on the struggle. When on the day of election he was leaving his house, his mother followed him to the door with tears in her eyes. He turned and kissed her, "Mother," he said, "to-day you will see your son either High Priest or an exile."

The fact was that Caesar had always shown signs of courage and ambition, and had always been confident of his future greatness. Now that his position in the country was assured men began to remember these stories of his youth. In the days when Sulla was master of Rome, Caesar had been one of the very few who had ventured to resist the great man's will. Marius, the leader of the party, was his uncle, and he had himself married the daughter of Cunia, another of the popular leaders. This wife Sulla ordered him to divorce, but he flatly refused. For some time his life was in danger; but Sulla was induced to spare it, remarking, however, to friends who interceded for him, on the ground that he was still but a boy, "You have not a grain of sense, if you do not see that in this boy there is the material for many Mariuses." The young Caesar found it safer to leave Italy for a time. While traveling in the neighborhood of Asia Minor he fell into the hands of the pirates, who were at that time the terror of all the Eastern Mediterranean. His first proceeding was to ask them how much they wanted for his ransom. "Twenty talents," (about five thousand pounds) was their answer. "What folly!" he said, "you don't know whom you have got hold of. You shall have fifty." Messengers were sent to fetch the money, and Caesar, who was left with a friend and a couple of slaves, made the best of the situation. If he wanted to go to sleep he would send a message commanding his captors to be silent. He joined their sports, read poems and speeches to them, and roundly abused them as ignorant barbarians if they failed to applaud. But his most telling joke was threatening to hang them. The men laughed at the free-spoken lad, but were not long in finding that he was in most serious earnest. In about five weeks' time the money arrived and Caesar was released. He immediately went to Miletus, equipped a squadron, and returning to the scene of his captivity, found and captured the greater part of the band. Leaving his prisoners in safe custody at Pergamus, he made his way to the governor of the province, who had in his hands the power of life and death. But the governor, after the manner of his kind, had views of his own. The pirates were rich and could afford to pay handsomely for their lives. He would consider the case, he said. This was not at all to Caesar's mind. He hastened back to Pergamus, and, taking the law into his own hands, crucified all the prisoners.

This was the cool and resolute man in whom the people saw their best friend and the nobles their worst enemy. These last seemed to see a chance of ruining him when the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered and crushed. He was accused, especially by Cato, of having been an accomplice; and when he left the Senate after the debate in which he had argued against putting the arrested conspirators to death, he was mobbed by the gentlemen who formed Cicero's body-guard, and was even in danger of his life. But the formal charge was never pressed; indeed it was manifestly false, for Caesar was too sure of the favor of the people to have need of conspiring to win it. The next year he was made praetor, and after his term of office was ended, governor of Further Spain. The old trouble of debt still pressed upon him, and he could not leave Rome till he had satisfied the most pressing of his creditors. This he did by help of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who stood security for nearly two hundred thousand pounds. To this time belong two anecdotes which, whether true or no, are curiously characteristic of his character. He was passing, on the way to his province, a town that had a particularly mean and poverty-stricken look. One of his companions remarked, "I dare say there are struggles for office even here, and jealousies and parties." "Yes," said Caesar; "and indeed, for myself, I would sooner be the first man here than the second in Rome." Arrived at his journey's end, he took the opportunity of a leisure hour to read the life of Alexander. He sat awhile lost in thought, then burst into tears. His friends inquired the cause. "The cause?" he replied. "Is it not cause enough that at my age Alexander had conquered half the world, while I have done nothing?" Something, however, he contrived to do in Spain. He extended the dominion of Rome as far as the Atlantic, settled the affairs of the provincials to their satisfaction, and contrived at the same time to make money enough to pay his debts. Returning to Rome when his year of command was ended, he found himself in a difficulty. He wished to have the honor of a triumph (a triumph was a procession in which a victorious general rode in a chariot to the Capitol, preceded and followed by the spoils and prisoners taken in his campaigns), and he also wished to become a candidate for the consulship. But a general who desired a triumph had to wait outside the gates of the city till it was voted to him, while a candidate for the consulship must lose no time in beginning to canvass the people. Caesar, having to make his choice between the two, preferred power to show. He stood for the consulship, and was triumphantly elected.

Once consul he made that famous Coalition which is commonly called the First Triumvirate. Pompey was the most famous soldier of the day, and Crassus, as has been said before, the richest man. These two had been enemies, and Caesar reconciled them; and then the three together agreed to divide power and the prizes of power between them. Caesar would have willingly made Cicero a fourth, but he refused, not, perhaps, without some hesitation. He did more; he ventured to say some things which were not more agreeable because they were true of the new state of things. This the three masters of Rome were not willing to endure, and they determined that this troublesome orator should be put out of the way. They had a ready means of doing it. A certain Clodius, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, felt a very bitter hatred against Cicero, and by way of putting himself in a position to injure him, and to attain other objects of his own, sought to be made tribune. But there was a great obstacle in the way. The tribunes were tribunes of the plebs, that is, of the commons, whose interests they were supposed specially to protect; while Clodius was a noble—indeed, a noble of nobles—belonging as he did to that great Claudian House which was one of the oldest and proudest of Roman families. The only thing to be done was to be adopted by some plebeian. But here, again, there were difficulties. The law provided that an adoption should be real, that the adopter should be childless and old enough to be the father of his adopted son. The consent of the priests was also necessary. This consent was never asked, and indeed never could have been given, for the father was a married man, had children of his own, and was not less than fifteen years, younger than his new son. Indeed the bill for making the adoption legal had been before the people for more than a year without making any progress. The Three now took it up to punish Cicero for his presumption in opposing them; and under its new promoters it was passed in a single day, being proposed at noon made law by three o'clock in the afternoon What mischief Clodius was thus enabled to work against Cicero we shall hear in the next chapter but one.

His consulship ended, Caesar received a substantial prize for his services, the government of the province of Gaul for five years. Before he left Italy to take up his command, he had the satisfaction of seeing Cicero driven into banishment. That done, he crossed the Alps. The next nine years (for his government was prolonged for another period when the first came to an end) he was engaged in almost incessant war, though still finding time to manage the politics of Rome. The campaigns which ended in making Gaul from the Alps to the British Channel, and from the Atlantic to the Rhine, a Roman possession, it is not within my purpose to describe. Nevertheless, it may be interesting to say a few words about his dealings with our own island. In his first expedition, in the summer of 55 B.C., he did little more than effect a landing on the coast, and this not without considerable loss. In the next, made early in the following year, he employed a force of more than forty thousand men, conveyed in a flotilla of eight hundred ships. This time the Britons did not venture to oppose his landing; and when they met him in the field, as he marched inward, they were invariably defeated. They then changed their tactics and retired before him, laying waste the country as they went. He crossed the Thames some little way to the westward of where London now stands, received the submission of one native tribe, and finally concluded a peace with the native leader Cassivelaunus, who gave hostages and promised tribute. The general result of ten years' fighting was to add a great province to the empire at the cost of a horrible amount of bloodshed, of the lives, as some say, of two millions of men, women, and children (for Caesar, though not positively cruel, was absolutely careless of suffering), and to leave the conqueror master of the Roman world. The coalition indeed was broken up, for Crassus had perished in the East, carrying on a foolish and unprovoked war with the Parthians, and Pompey had come to fear and hate his remaining rival. But Caesar was now strong enough to do without friends, and to crush enemies. The Senate vainly commanded him to disperse his army by a certain day, on pain of being considered an enemy of the country. He continued to advance till he came to the boundaries of Italy, a little river, whose name, the Rubicon, was then made famous forever, which separated Cisalpine Gaul from Umbria. To cross this was practically to declare war, and even the resolute Caesar hesitated awhile. He thought his course over by himself; he even consulted his friends. He professed himself pained at the thought of the war of which his act would be the beginning, and of how posterity would judge his conduct. Then with the famous words, "The die is cast," he plunged into the stream. Pompey fled from Rome and from Italy. Caesar did not waste an hour in pursuing his success. First making Italy wholly his own, he marched into Spain, which was Pompey's stronghold, and secured it. Thence he returned to Rome, and from Rome again made his way into Macedonia, where Pompey had collected his forces. The decisive battle was fought at Pharsalia in Thessaly; for though the remnants of Pompey's party held out, the issue of the war was never doubtful after that day.

Returning to Rome (for of his proceedings in Egypt and elsewhere there is no need to speak), he used his victory with as much mercy as he had shown energy in winning it. To Cicero he showed not only nothing of malice, but the greatest courtesy and kindness. He had written to him from Egypt, telling him that he was to keep all his dignities and honors; and he had gone out of his way to arrange an interview with him, and he even condescended to enter into a friendly controversy. Cicero had written a little treatise about his friend Cato; and as Cato had been the consistent adversary of Caesar, and had killed himself rather than fall into the hands of the master of Rome, it required no little good nature in Caesar to take it in good part. He contented himself with writing an answer, to which he gave the title of Anti-Cato, and in which, while he showed how useless and unpractical the policy of Cato had been, he paid the highest compliments to the genius and integrity of the man. He even conferred upon Cicero the distinguished honor of a visit; which the host thus describes in a letter to Atticus. "What a formidable guest I have had! Still, I am not sorry; for all went off very well. On December 8th he came to Philippus' house in the evening. (Philippus was his brother-in-law.) The villa was so crammed with troops that there was scarcely a chamber where the great man himself could dine. I suppose there were two thousand men. I was really anxious what might happen next day. But Barba Cassius came to my help, and gave me a guard. The camp was pitched in the park; the house was strictly guarded. On the 19th he was closeted with Philippus till one o'clock in the afternoon. No one was admitted. He was going over accounts with Balbus, I fancy. After this he took a stroll on the shore. Then came the bath. He heard the epigram to Mamurra, (a most scurrilous epigram by Catullus), and betrayed no annoyance. He dressed for dinner and sat down. As he was under a course of medicine, he ate and drank without apprehension and in the pleasantest humor. The entertainment was sumptuous and elaborate; and not only this, but well cooked and seasoned with good talk. The great man's attendants also were most abundantly entertained in three other rooms. The inferior freedmen and the slaves had nothing to complain of; the superior kind had an even elegant reception. Not to say more, I showed myself a genial host. Still he was not the kind of guest to whom we would say, 'My very dear sir, you will come again, I hope, when you are this way next time.' There was nothing of importance in our conversation, but much literary talk. What do you want to know? He was gratified and seemed pleased to be with me. He told me that he should be one day at Baiae, and another at Puteoli."

Within three months this remarkable career came to a sudden and violent end. There were some enemies whom all Caesar's clemency and kindness had not conciliated. Some hated him for private reasons of their own, some had a genuine belief that if he could be put out of the way, Rome might yet again be a free country. The people too, who had been perfectly ready to submit to the reality of power, grew suspicious of some of its outward signs. The name of King had been hateful at Rome since the last bearer of it, Tarquin the Proud, had been driven out nearly seven centuries before. There were now injudicious friends, or, it may be, judicious enemies, who were anxious that Caesar should assume it. The prophecy was quoted from the books of the Sibyl, that Rome might conquer the Parthians if she put herself under the command of a king; otherwise she must fail. On the strength of this Caesar was saluted by the title of King as he was returning one day from Alba to the Capitol. The populace made their indignation manifest, and he replied, "I am no king, only Caesar;" but it was observed that he passed on with a gloomy air. He bore himself haughtily in the Senate, not rising to acknowledge the compliments paid to him. At the festival of the Lupercalia, as he sat looking on at the sports in a gilded chair and clad in a triumphal robe, Antony offered him a crown wreathed with bay leaves. Some applause followed; it was not general, however, but manifestly got up for the occasion. Caesar put the crown away, and the shout that followed could not be misunderstood. It was offered again, and a few applauded as before, while a second rejection drew forth the same hearty approval. His statues were found with crowns upon them. These two tribunes removed, and at the same time ordered the imprisonment of the men who had just saluted him as king. The people were delighted, but Caesar had them degraded from their office. The general dissatisfaction thus caused induced the conspirators to proceed. Warnings, some of which we may suppose to have come from those who were in the secret, were not wanting. By these he was wrought upon so much that he had resolved not to stir from his house on the day which he understood was to be fatal to him; but Decimus Brutus, who was in the plot, dissuaded him from his purpose. The scene that followed may be told once again in the words in which Plutarch describes it: "Artemidoros, of Cnidus, a teacher of Greek, who had thus come to be intimate with some of the associates of Brutus, had become acquainted to a great extent with what was in progress, and had drawn up a statement of the information which he had to give. Seeing that Caesar gave the papers presented to him to the slaves with him, he came up close and said, 'Caesar, read this alone and that quickly: it contains matters that nearly concern yourself.' Caesar took it, and would have read it, but was hindered by the crowd of persons that thronged to salute him. Keeping it in his hand, he passed into the House. In the place to which the Senate had been summoned stood a statue of Pompey. Cassius is said to have looked at it and silently invoked the dead man's help, and this though he was inclined to the skeptical tenets of Epicurus. Meanwhile Antony, who was firmly attached to Caesar and a man of great strength, was purposely kept in conversation outside the senate-house by Decimus Brutus. As Caesar entered, the Senate rose to greet him. Some of the associates of Brutus stood behind his chair; others approached him in front, seemingly joining their entreaties to those which Cimber Tullius was addressing to him on behalf of his brother. He sat down and rejected the petition with a gesture of disapproval at their urgency. Tullius then seized his toga with both hands and dragged it from his neck. This was the signal for attack. Casca struck him first on the neck. The wound was not fatal, nor even serious, so agitated was the striker at dealing the first blow in so terrible a deed. Caesar turned upon him, seized the dagger, and held it fast, crying at the same time in Latin, 'Casca, thou villain, what art thou about?' while Casca cried in Greek to his brother, 'Brother, help!' Those senators who were not privy to the plot were overcome with horror. They could neither cry nor help: they dared not even speak. The conspirators were standing round Caesar each with a drawn sword in his hand; whithersoever he turned his eyes he saw a weapon ready to strike, and he struggled like a wild beast among the hunters. They had agreed that every one should take a part in the murder, and Brutus, friend as he was, could not hold back. The rest, some say, he struggled with, throwing himself hither and thither, and crying aloud; but as soon as he saw Brutus with a drawn sword in his hand, he wrapped his head in his toga and ceased to resist, falling, whether by chance or by compulsion from the assassins, at the pedestal of Pompey's statue. He is said to have received three-and-twenty wounds. Many of his assailants struck each other as they aimed repeated blows at his body." His funeral was a remarkable proof of his popularity. The pit in which the body was to be burned was erected in the Field of Mars. In the Forum was erected a gilded model of the temple of Mother Venus. (Caesar claimed descent through Aeneas from this goddess.) Within this shrine was a couch of ivory, with coverlets of gold and purple, and at its head a trophy with the robe which he had worn when he was assassinated. High officers of state, past and present, carried the couch into the Forum. Some had the idea of burning it in the chapel of Jupiter in the Capitol, some in Pompey's Hall (where he was killed). Of a sudden two men, wearing swords at their side, and each carrying two javelins, came forward and set light to it with waxen torches which they held in their hands. The crowd of bystanders hastily piled up a heap of dry brush-wood, throwing on it the hustings, the benches, and any thing that had been brought as a present. The flute players and actors threw off the triumphal robes in which they were clad, rent them, and threw them upon the flames, and the veterans added the decorations with which they had come to attend the funeral, while mothers threw in the ornaments of their children.